“Right.”
“Plus, the stress of the tour could be getting to him. People are complicated, it’s often more than one thing that’s upsetting them.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“So go easy on yourself, all right? It sounds like you’ve done nothing wrong. And Ruben will come around. Just make it clear you’re there for him, just as a friend.”
“I will. Anyway, I’m sorry to vent.”
“Don’t be. I’m sorry all this is happening. I hope it gets better.”
“Me, too. Thanks, Mom. This helped a lot, so thanks.”
“Of course! I’m always here for you. And if you ever want to talk more, you can, okay? About anything.”
“Yep, I know.”
“Okay, cool. Look after yourself, all right?”
“All right. I’ll let you go to bed. Night.”
“Night. Or, well, morning. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I hang up. The energy leaves my body, and I can’t even move. I chew my lip and try to stop the tears from brimming, but I can’t help it.
All these lies, and I don’t even know why I’m saying them.
I glance around. The room is dark, and still.
I’m totally alone.
NINE
RUBEN
I’m halfway through a workout in our hotel gym in Antwerp when Mom calls me.
In a weird way, I’m almost expecting it when she does. Growing up, working on myself acted almost like a summoning spell for her. She’d just materialize from the shadows in a poof, whatever I was doing, with what she liked to call constructive feedback. Endless, relentless constructive feedback.
You’re not enunciating, I can’t tell what you’re saying, it’s just “muh muh meh meh muh.”
I don’t know how you expect to get this move when you can barely even land a box step on the beat. Why are you always in such a rush to get ahead of yourself before you’ve mastered the basics?
Where’s the emotion? You look like you’re watching paint dry. I don’t care if no one’s watching, you need to practice the way you plan to deliver it.
She says I can’t take feedback, but I can. I take everything our team gives me to heart, and I’m constantly overhearing glowing, whispered exchanges about how well I implement critique. How I never need to be told twice. Of course I don’t. I learned early that needing to be told twice came with consequences, and it’s not a lesson I’m likely to unlearn now. The thing about Mom is, though, she doesn’t judge the finished product, she judges the process. She doesn’t seem to believe in “learning.”
For example, if you want to increase your upper range—which I worked on just this morning before heading down here to blow off steam—you get there gradually, by pushing your voice past your comfort zone. I’m only following my vocal coach’s instructions, and she’s always assured me that doing it right involves aiming and missing, with cracked notes and flat notes and a ton of other embarrassing sounds, until you’re hitting it, consistently and with ease. But growing up, I was shamed for this very process. How could I sound so bad, my mom would ask, when she was paying so much on the best training? Why wasn’t I listening to my teachers? Why wasn’t I doing it right?
So, I learned to practice increasing my range only when my parents were out and there was no one to hear me mess it up. It helped, doing it in private. At least, at first. It meant I was the only one left who knew just how terrible I could sound. But that meant the only voice that directed cutting jabs at me, cringed when I messed up, and told me I would never get it right the first time, was the voice that lived inside my head.
The only voice I can’t ever escape from.
Of course, I know logically Mom isn’t calling me from across the Atlantic to tell me I was singing like a starving goat this morning, but my cheeks start burning automatically anyway. Once you’ve learned shame, it settles into your skin like a tattoo. You can cover it up but you can’t scrub off the sense of inadequacy.
The In This House album, which I was working out to, abruptly cuts off as I pick up. “Hey,” I say. “You’re up late.” It’s after midnight over there.
When she speaks, I’m hit by the familiar, tangled mess of fondness and fear. The genuine love for my own mother, mixed up with the trepidation of not knowing where this will go. I’m really not in the mood for more conflict at the moment, and I would’ve ignored the call, but the only thing that irritates Mom more than being spoken back to is being ignored. “Hey, baby. It’s good to hear your voice. I went out for dinner with the girls after work and it ran late, so I thought I’d try and catch you before I went to bed.”