Marilyn chuckled sadly. “Oh, honey. That was never going to work.” She took a sip of Spritz and fished the orange slice out, eating it with relish.
“I don’t understand him. I try, but . . . It’s like he’s jealous of me or something. Which is crazy, but that’s how it feels.”
“Well. They say jealousy is nothing more than admiration turned inside out.”
“Mom . . .”
“He probably is jealous. He’s definitely resentful. But it has nothing to do with you being his daughter, or me being his wife, or Blah being his mother, or even little Coed Kelly being whatever.” The orange rind was poised like a cynical cigarette between her fingers. “We are all one big ball of women. And sorry to say, but that’s your father’s real problem.”
“How so?”
Marilyn sat forward, dropped the rind on her plate. She put her chin in her hands and paused, thinking. “Your father did love something once. Not someone, something: New York City. And when his father died, he left his ‘love’ to be with his mother, to help his mother. To be loved by his mother? To do the right thing? I don’t know. He just wanted to feel useful and ended up feeling useless. Not on purpose, but . . . Barbara was Barbara.” Marilyn shrugged. “Henry felt rejected, unappreciated for everything he had given up to help her. He was hurt. He’s still hurt.”
Marilyn was quiet for a while. Sewanee could see her tongue working at her teeth inside her closed mouth, trying to dislodge orange pith. “It all boils down to this, I think: Your father has never felt appreciated. The male code word for feeling loved. And sadly, Henry is a man who always found love to be a question, never an answer. It started with Barbara and metastasized in every woman who ever crossed his path. So unhealthy. Not that he would ever say that, not that he would ever ask for that, God forbid. As far as your father is concerned, women are supposed to intuit this.”
Marilyn leaned back, sighed. “So you take all of that hurt and resentment, suffered in silence, and you let it simmer for decades and it distills down into anger.” She looked out at the canal next to them, the water close enough to throw late-afternoon ripples onto her face. “That’s what I found so hard, Swan. I didn’t know how to love an angry man who pretended to be fine.” To stave off Sewanee’s response, Marilyn held up a hand, her left one, ringless. “We had a good life together. Life is never one thing. But I think I was his consolation prize. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, Swanling: never be a consolation prize.”
How could Sewanee not think of Nick when Marilyn said this? Didn’t this justify her feelings? And then Marilyn added, “Especially your own,” which spun Sewanee’s head around.
A heavy silence fell over them, and she took an olive, washed it down with a sip of Spritz. The salt and oil and the alcohol and the bitterness and the prosecco’s fizz hit her and seemed to immediately restore her equilibrium. The Italians have it all figured out, she thought abstractly. She considered her words as she chewed. “Everything feels fake, Mom. Like this is not my life. Like I’m acting my life. Like I’m playing out someone else’s, waiting to get mine back.” She swallowed. “And then I tried to get it back because”–she rolled her eye–“Adaku thought I could and it turns out I can’t.”
Marilyn squinted, trying to put this puzzle together. “What did Ada do–”
“She just . . . she pushes. She’s so relentlessly optimistic and she doesn’t . . . she doesn’t understand why I haven’t–” She snapped her fingers. “–gotten over everything. Moved on. Forgotten about it. But I have! In my own way.”
The last came out more defensively than she’d intended. Sewanee waited to hear that her mother agreed with her, while Marilyn took another sip of her Spritz and said, “Well, these things do take time.”
“Exactly.” Relieved, Sewanee picked up her drink again.
“But is it possible,” Marilyn began, and Sewanee set the glass back down, “that you may have gotten in your own way and mistaken that for doing it your own way?”
“Are you agreeing with A?”
“I don’t think so. I’m just saying to check in with yourself.”
“You don’t think I have? I do?”
Seeing her mother’s unvoiced answer, the desire not to hurt warring with Marilyn’s compulsive need to tell the truth, instantly brought tears. Sewanee surreptitiously wiped her cheek, pivoting away from the rest of the crowd on the patio. “I wanted my life and it wanted me. And now it doesn’t and I still do.”