RDC vowed that this wasn't abridged, but it was. Maybe that's why it sounded choppy. I liked it, and there's nothing like an audio book for a lot of driving. The only time I listened to music on my road trip was during the one traffic jam.
In the morning I drove through pissing, peeing, or at least slobbering rain back to Old Lyme.
When I got back to the house at 9:41, my mother and her husband were just getting into the car to leave. If I had bothered to communicate with her since Wednesday afternoon I would have learned that Granny's sister-in-law's funeral was Saturday morning. As it was, they were about to head off and my mother asked if I would get in the car right then and go with them.
"I have nothing even vaguely appropriate to wear," I said, my clothing for the week being my beloved grey sweatskirt (currently), short natural linen skirt, long ivory skirt, and overalls.
"She won't care, but just put some feet on, we'll be late." I also hadn't showered since Friday afternoon, wasn't wearing underwear of any sort, and hadn't washed my hair since Thursday morning. Possibly, to honor my great-aunt's memory, attending her funeral even as I was would have been better than not attending. More probably, I should have called my mother to let her know my movements: she continued to expect me home every night despite the itinerary I had given her as recently as Wednesday. Also, I can change in a moving car as well as the next person and so could have swapped comfy for nice if not funereal, but my mother's husband would not have had a heart attack if I had put on a bra in front of him--in the back seat and without exposing myself would count as in front of him.
Being able to blame my nonattendance on superficial reasons of wardrobe or on my rudeness or on my callousness is better for my mother to do than to know the ulterior, ultimate reason: even if I had been close to this great-aunt, even if I had been clean and dressed, even if going wouldn't mean sacrificing last minutes at the beach, in no case would I have voluntarily entered that car to be engulfed in the clouds of my mother's Miasma (I don't know her scent, but that's a fitting name).
Whew. I let myself into the house and closed off my nose and eyes as I got a glass of water and the phone.
Outside, I called AAC. Having canceled UncasCon, and with its being rained out anyway, I did the same as I did at UConn on Thursday, see more people longer than I otherwise could have. She was only too pleased to have a reason not to do her painting project and I cleaned up and was on my way. Possibly I project onto my three girls the head-shakingness I felt when my mother installed the second bathroom in her house years after my sister and I left: the house they grew up in was small for three kids, while this new one is roomy but inhabited by only 40% as many people as lived in the previous. And it is lovely and spacious and lofty and gorgeous and meant to look like a barn, with salvaged 100-year-old beams throughout and lots of open space, and a nautical mood to the decor. A set of drawers in the kitchen is shallow but wide and deep, for table linens and silverware, and AAC was pleased it recalled to my mind a map chest. She was also proud that I knew the purpose of the faucet over the stove (though without a drain as well, is a pot-filler so necessary? I guess it saves 50% of water-lugging).
AAC was an excellent baby-sitting mother by asking if I had pictures of the house, since RKC had said it was so charming. She spotted the album entitled "Blake" and looked at him, and she laughed at the one called "Nieces and Nephews," since none of those people is a blood relative, and she laughed further when she saw I had pictures of my sister's cat among them.
And of course, I got the latest dish on my girls.
My mother said they'd be home before 2:00, so I made sure to be back by then. I considered a detour to Uncas, but I had already canceled on everyone and my insanity does not extend to swimming in cold rain. Warm rain, maybe. So instead I went to the beach, where it was not raining. Really it was a good trip beachwise, because for years I have been home only in the summer when jellyfish make Long Island Sound not so nice for swimming. I returned to the house and was repacking my bags on the deck in between raindrops when they returned.
I apologized for not calling. Her expectations for my tenure in Old Lyme were delusional, and I had told her my schedule, but since I knew she had these expectaions and wouldn't register anything to the contrary, I should have kept her informed--silly me, telling her a thing only once and acting accordingly instead of calling to counter repetitious "but I thought you were staying here"s. She told me about her various family and I told her about mine, and her criticisms of me continued, and I continued to neither lash back (yet) nor learn how to deflect it.
Wearing a tank top, I was shaking out a canvas bag over the deck railing and my mother said nothing about particles of beach sand destroying her loam, which was good, but she did say, disdainfully, "You certainly do have your father's shoulders." If I were male she would not find so much fault with however true that observation is. And would she have me be craven-shouldered? Into this bag I put clothes for Sunday and toothbrush and syrup Charenton had given me and jam my mother'd given me. Clothes out and backpack crammed in, it would be my carryon. "Oh, so that's how you pack clothes, is it?"
I wish she would just outright say: "I don't like the way you pack your clothes" or "You look like a slob all wrinkledy like that" (this the woman who thought utter slovenliness suitable for a funeral) or "I just don't like you so I'm going to pick you apart bit by bit but I still don't understand why you don't spend more time with me." But then, I also cannot, or do not, say, "Ma, your constant criticism pisses me right the fuck off and hurts me to boot."
Except that I did. Wednesday at the beach, she asked, "Why aren't you wearing your hair in that nice style I saw back in January?"
I seethed. I said, "It's the same exact fucking cut it was in January. It's in a ponytail because we're at the beach." Then I tried a diversionary tactic and continued, "Actually my haircutter wants to take it two inches shorter, but I've refused so far."
"Is that why you jumped down my throat?" Woohoo, she actually called me on my tone and cussing! However, I don't think I'm unreasonable to infer that she thereby tried to blame my alleged defensiveness on my haircutter rather than on herself.
"No, it's not. If you can't hear the criticism inherent in your question, you're deafer than I think. Try to rephrase it."
She fumbled but couldn't do it. I explained to her that her saying my hair isn't in "that nice style" works out to mean she thinks it's in a not-nice style and it is not a pleasant or positive or necessary comment. She denied this. Whatever.
Friday night I mentioned this exchange to TJZD as an example of my mother's usual criticism and my, for once, instead of only seething at her, trying to explain my problem with her statement right then, instead of later in a letter when she'd call it "dwelling" instead of "a response carefully thought out and not in the heat of the moment." TJZD said her mother would say the exact same thing and think it a compliment, because after all she's saying something nice about you--though eight months ago and in contrast to now. We laughed.
So on Saturday after the clothes-packing crack I told my mother about telling that to TJZD and that how her mother would think it was a compliment. "Well, it is a compliment," BJWL interrupted.
"Of how I looked eight months ago," I pointed out again. "It's negative now." CLH got the logic immediately as well.
The other day I heard someone correct a child who said, "[Whoever's] mother brang us." She corrected, "She brought you." In the first sentence of the paragraph, is it clear enough that "whoever" is an indefinite pronoun, that I don't remember a name which is not pertinent to my point? My mother said something about funerals being a chance to see family. (She didn't mean that the reunion element superseded the mourning and consolation elements.) I agreed, commenting that on several occasions when I have seen someone's pleasant, even rather smiley, photograph of a large family group and asked the occasion, they'll say, "It was someone's funeral, but that was the last time we were all together." She followed my sentence with this question: "Oh, They forgot whose funeral it was?" She is mind-numbingly difficult to communicate with. I told her, in dulcet tones of annoyance, that the subject of the funeral was immaterial to my point, which was in fact to agree with her, that funerals are occasions when everyone is together so let's take a photograph of all the cousins. If people actually wore somber colors to funerals I might not mistake such photographs for ordinary family gatherings anyway, which is another thing.
Why is it, when my mantra otherwise in life is "Change is bad," that I so fervently hope it can be brought about in my mother?
Then I wasn't staying in Old Lyme long enough this day to suit her either. I might have stayed longer, but there was a game at Fenway and so I would have to get to Boston early enough to find a neighborhood parking space. "But CLH has a parking space behind her building," she protested, since I am an habitual liar. I didn't say "not anymore" because that would be telling her my sister's business and defending myself from false accusation, which I endeavor not to (want to) do. My other option was to arrive after the game, but I was tired. Weary from beating myself up over apparently nothing, from regretting that I had canceled UncasCon and wouldn't see HEBD and ZBD, and from sleeping poorly and eating worse. I was weary, and I was ready to go home.
I had Jessie's number and considered calling her and trying to get in touch with Molly to put together an impromptu BostonCon, but, driving, I realized that I was too tired even to drive, let alone go out and be merry and not talk about my mother all at the same time. For slumming and slandering, I wanted only my sister.
CLH and I ate potato skins plus I dug through all the various candy she keeps in a silver wine bucket looking for the chocolate stuff. Tragically, a lot of the chocolates had picked up the flavor of the powerful Wint-O-Green Lifesavers. (Note to self: exclude Wint-o-Green from future stockings in favor of chocolates.)