too, Mr. Tennant.”
FIVE
People often say that the direct link to our behaviors is through our parents. That whether or not we receive a certain amount of praise, or affection, or love can alter how we treat those around us when we're grown.
I'll admit, as a child, I loved my mother. Like most little girls do. She was a beautiful woman, whose smile was always soft and perfume even softer. Her voice always quiet, gentle, warm like a fine cordial. She had honey-golden hair and warm brown eyes, and she always wore her hair in curls; pinned up with jeweled combs that sparkled in a way that always managed to keep my attention.
However, I had few memories of my time with her. She was a distant woman, much too preoccupied with her own affairs to engage in the traditional mother-daughter tendencies; shopping, lunch dates. And as a child, most of what I could recall consisted of moments where I was scolded for getting into her things. Like her silk scarfs, or once, a set of those delicate combs. I remember sneaking in – I was maybe eight or nine years old – and opening up the jewelry box; noting how she kept them all spread out with a perfect spacing. Each centimeter calculated, perfect, just as she was.
I picked up my favorite one, gold with emeralds inlaid in the shape of a flower, and set it in my hair. I smiled at myself in the mirror, perfectly pleased. I was exactly who I wanted to be.
When my mother saw, she laughed, plucking the thing out of my hair in a way that unintentionally snagged against the thin strands. My lips puckered immediately when she set the comb back into her jewelery box, touching my face with a warm hand. She smelled of lilacs.
I loved my mother, though. I really did.
“Oh, you silly girl,” she cooed. “These combs aren't toys. We don't play with them.”
She was wrong, just like she was wrong about everything else. You see, all of the finer things were toys, just as all the pretty clothes for the pretty girls and pretty boys were costumes. All of the mansions and oceans that sailed yachts and dreams were merely sets for a grander scheme.
I was just too young to correct her.
And my mother, my beautiful mother with her kind voice and wandering eyes, she closed the silver box and left the room, beckoned by my father's booming laughter.
From the window, I saw as she ran out into the garden, surrounded by the same white lilacs that kissed her skin, and he swept her up in his arms like she was the only woman he would ever want. They were madly, inconceivably in love. He named stores stuffed with the finest clothing and jewels and everything after her.
If he could have, I think he would have written her name in the stars. He couldn't, of course. But he had one named after her. He kept the framed document in his office.
It's a funny thing, how people go. How you can be so consumed by one person, and then as the years go by, like a slow-working serum, something seeps into your skin that renders the person you once loved so dearly a total stranger. It's as if, despite the memories, and despite all of the things that we weep and beg and cry out to hold onto - nothing can save what is inevitably damned. There's that moment when you look at that person who once carried everything so intrinsic to your own being in the palm of their hand, and you think to yourself: did I ever truly love you? Or was it for that moment of intoxicating thrill?
He tried to hold onto her, even after the affair was discovered; but she left anyway – as most people do. She left us for a life at sea; sailing yachts and remarrying in an event so lavish that it caught fire in the newspapers. For the water that maybe, she hoped, would carry her to a life that would give her some greater happiness.
My father sobbed. He kept the newsclippings for awhile until Vivian asked him to burn them. He broke all the crystal statues that my mother had kept – angels - in the study. Glass was sprayed like frozen rain, like ice; turning
FIVE
People often say that the direct link to our behaviors is through our parents. That whether or not we receive a certain amount of praise, or affection, or love can alter how we treat those around us when we're grown.
I'll admit, as a child, I loved my mother. Like most little girls do. She was a beautiful woman, whose smile was always soft and perfume even softer. Her voice always quiet, gentle, warm like a fine cordial. She had honey-golden hair and warm brown eyes, and she always wore her hair in curls; pinned up with jeweled combs that sparkled in a way that always managed to keep my attention.
However, I had few memories of my time with her. She was a distant woman, much too preoccupied with her own affairs to engage in the traditional mother-daughter tendencies; shopping, lunch dates. And as a child, most of what I could recall consisted of moments where I was scolded for getting into her things. Like her silk scarfs, or once, a set of those delicate combs. I remember sneaking in – I was maybe eight or nine years old – and opening up the jewelry box; noting how she kept them all spread out with a perfect spacing. Each centimeter calculated, perfect, just as she was.
I picked up my favorite one, gold with emeralds inlaid in the shape of a flower, and set it in my hair. I smiled at myself in the mirror, perfectly pleased. I was exactly who I wanted to be.
When my mother saw, she laughed, plucking the thing out of my hair in a way that unintentionally snagged against the thin strands. My lips puckered immediately when she set the comb back into her jewelery box, touching my face with a warm hand. She smelled of lilacs.
I loved my mother, though. I really did.
“Oh, you silly girl,” she cooed. “These combs aren't toys. We don't play with them.”
She was wrong, just like she was wrong about everything else. You see, all of the finer things were toys, just as all the pretty clothes for the pretty girls and pretty boys were costumes. All of the mansions and oceans that sailed yachts and dreams were merely sets for a grander scheme.
I was just too young to correct her.
And my mother, my beautiful mother with her kind voice and wandering eyes, she closed the silver box and left the room, beckoned by my father's booming laughter.
From the window, I saw as she ran out into the garden, surrounded by the same white lilacs that kissed her skin, and he swept her up in his arms like she was the only woman he would ever want. They were madly, inconceivably in love. He named stores stuffed with the finest clothing and jewels and everything after her.
If he could have, I think he would have written her name in the stars. He couldn't, of course. But he had one named after her. He kept the framed document in his office.
It's a funny thing, how people go. How you can be so consumed by one person, and then as the years go by, like a slow-working serum, something seeps into your skin that renders the person you once loved so dearly a total stranger. It's as if, despite the memories, and despite all of the things that we weep and beg and cry out to hold onto - nothing can save what is inevitably damned. There's that moment when you look at that person who once carried everything so intrinsic to your own being in the palm of their hand, and you think to yourself: did I ever truly love you? Or was it for that moment of intoxicating thrill?
He tried to hold onto her, even after the affair was discovered; but she left anyway – as most people do. She left us for a life at sea; sailing yachts and remarrying in an event so lavish that it caught fire in the newspapers. For the water that maybe, she hoped, would carry her to a life that would give her some greater happiness.
My father sobbed. He kept the newsclippings for awhile until Vivian asked him to burn them. He broke all the crystal statues that my mother had kept – angels - in the study. Glass was sprayed like frozen rain, like ice; turning
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