Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 96

“Hi, Mom,” Amanda said as she and Jamie came in the door from their aborted trip to the museum.

“Hey! You guys are back much earlier than I thought,” Becky said with a nervous smile. She had just gotten home herself.

“It’s a long story. Jamie, why don’t you go get ready for a nap, and one of us will be in to tuck you in?”

“Okay,” he said and toddled off to his room.

“Where were you this morning,” Amanda asked.

“I, uh, went to see your grandmother,” Becky answered after Jamie was well down the hallway. Amanda tried and failed to hide her look of disgust at the mention of the woman.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Becky said as she walked into the living room with Amanda following. “Closure, maybe.”

“So that was the last time?”

“I think so for me, but you don’t have to cut her off if you don’t want to,” Becky said. She didn’t want to Amanda to break off her relationship with her grandmother just because she was. She didn’t know how Amanda felt about Dana; it was something, she realized, she’d avoided thinking about along with everything else about her mother Becky had repressed.

Amanda’s forehead creased and her features grew tight. Knowing Jamie was down the hall with his door probably open kept her voice down. “Yes I fucking do. Everything she did to you and to Jamie she did to me too. That’s how it works Fuck her!”

“Amanda …”

“No. Fuck her.”

“I’m sorry,” Becky said, losing some of her composure. Through all the firm certainty Becky had been outwardly displaying, it was harder than she’d let on. Her eyes watered. “She’s still my mom,” she said, her voice just barely but clearly breaking.

Amanda could understand that, though only in the same way she understood people who stayed in abusive relationships. Amanda sighed and scooted over on the couch so she could put her arm around her mom. “I know. I’m sorry, too.” That she’s your mom, Amanda finished the thought in her heard. “So where did you guys leave it?”

“Same place. I told she’s not welcome around us and to stop trying to contact me through Danny. I told her we’re done.”

“How did she take that?”

“She got emotional then angry then emotional like she’s the victim here, and when I didn’t budge, she just said, ‘Fine,’ and left.” Becky was unsure whether her mother’s ability to swing between emotions and then, seemingly, to turn them off was proof it was all an act or if her mother really was hurting inside, or if not hurt than maybe upset she was losing the outlet for all her passive and not-so-passive aggressive impulses.

Becky wanted to give her mother the benefit of the doubt, to at least believe losing contact with her daughter and granddaughter hurt, that she wasn’t the kind of person who could be disowned one of her children without even caring. She suspected Dana’s seeming ability to turn on an emotional dime was a defense mechanism, the beginning of the narrative Dana would spin to convince herself it didn’t hurt, that she’d done everything she could, that it had never been appreciated, that she should’ve stopped trying to help her daughter long ago but just couldn’t bring herself to do it – all claptrap that would allow her to believe she was the victim and to tell anyone who might care to know that she was the victim. A noble, patient victim with an ungrateful daughter deserving of sympathy. All drivel.

Amanda didn’t know what it was like to disown your mother. She understood Rebecca didn’t have any parents left; she wondered if maybe Becky was feeling like an orphan and was in much worse shape for it than she was willing or able to show to her daughter and little. Regardless of who and what Dana was, Amanda could understand at least in the abstract how that must feel.

“Thank you,” Amanda said, “For protecting yourself and Jamie and me.” Maybe she could take solace in that. She leaned over and hugged her mom. Becky hugged her back and wiped her eyes when they parted.

“So what happened to you guys? Why are you home so early,” Becky asked. Amanda recounted the entire story.

“You’re going to tell me I should have been calm and not argued with them,” Amanda said in anticipation.

Rebecca smiled and placed her hands on both of Amanda’s cheeks, then pulled her in and kissed her forehead. “No. You did exactly the right thing. I’m proud of you.”

“Even the wet diaper part?”

“Well, at least it wasn’t dirty.”

Amanda chuckled. “O, I so would have done if it was. I was tempted to leave it business side down on the table, but then that poor waitress would have had to clean it up.”

“I’m going to write to the museum director and the restaurant and anyone else I can think of. Those are public accommodations and public art.”

“Think it will make a difference?”

“Maybe not at first.”

“We can’t be the only people this has happened to,” Amanda said.

“Maybe, but how many littles want to see the art instead of color in the basement?”

“I guess I never noticed before that all the littles in the museum were in their strollers.”

“They probably weren’t complaining,” Becky shrugged.

“And I just never paid attention to it; probably wouldn’t have thought much of it even if I’d noticed.” That made Amanda think about what other small injustices she may not have noticed in the world. She sighed and said, “Jamie’s probably wondering what’s keeping us.”

The two of them went into his nursery together. Jamie must’ve grown impatient.

“Aww.”

“Should we move him?”

“Nah. Let him be.”

They left him on the carpet wearing just his diaper and wrapped in his blanket holding his bear.