Ole Miss is only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Tuscaloosa. I understand the need to want your daughter close, but just because I understand it doesn’t make what Genevieve did right.
“Is it going well now that you’re here at least?” I ask, always looking for the silver lining.
“Yeah, I like it just fine.” She shrugs and leans back against the booth. “Ole Miss is a good school, but it just feels like I went on to college with everyone that I went to high school with, except now we all live together and don’t have curfews. Some people love it. But that’s not what I’m trying to do.”
I can’t help but laugh because I was one of those people. I went to school with the same three hundred kids through high school and only made it as far as Tulane for college. “Sounds like you and Genevieve don’t get along so well.” I use her way of referring to her mom, hoping she’ll notice I’m respecting where things are at with their relationship.
She snorts. “That’s the understatement of the year.” She twirls the straw in her water glass.
“What happened between the two of you? Besides the fact that she forced you into going to a college you didn’t want to?” It was a nasty move for Genevieve and incredibly selfish, but it’s a pretty privileged problem to have. It’s hard to feel too sorry for her when I’m pretty sure the red BMW parked outside in the parking lot is the one she pulled up in.
“I can tell you exactly when everything changed.” She grips her water with both hands and peers at me intently. “After I quit doing pageants.”
“Why’d you stop?” She looked like a natural in all the photos. Just like her mom. Chin up. Chest out. Shoulders back. Toes pointed. All that posture was gone when she walked in the door today. She doesn’t hold herself like a former pageant princess, but you couldn’t miss it when she was younger.
“Genevieve started putting me in pageants when I was three. I was little Miss Wee Tot in Mississippi my first year. Miss Wee Tot, can you believe that? Like, how is that even possible? But anyway, I was. I earned the sash or the crown or whatever it was called back then. It’s been so long I can’t remember.” She fiddles with the necklace around her neck. Her fingernails are chewed down to nubs. “It was fun when I started because it was just me and Genevieve doing our thing. We spent our weekends traveling all over the place to different pageants and competitions. I liked getting my hair done and all the makeup because it felt like I was playing dress-up with my mom all weekend long in fancy hotels, you know?”
“It sounds like it’d be a lot of fun.”
She nods, a slight smile turning up the sides of her lips at the memory despite herself. “Things changed the older I got, because I loved hanging out with my mom, but I hated the stage. Absolutely hated it. You know how there are some people that just love being the center of attention?” She locks eyes with me, and I nod my response. “I’m not one of those people. I hate it, which is a big problem, since getting on stage is a pretty big deal if you want to be in pageants.” She laughs and brings her hand down to her bracelet. It’s one of those embroidered ones, and not what you’d expect from someone with her background. She twists it around her wrist while she speaks. “I liked the dresses and the hair, but I didn’t want to get out there and walk or talk in front of a bunch of people. She used to have to bribe me to get onstage.”
“You looked like you were enjoying yourself in the pictures.” I instantly regret my words, since they’re inherently shaming, and wish I could take them back.
“You’ve been in my house?” She raises her eyebrows. I can’t tell if she’s angry or impressed.
“I have,” I say slowly, gauging her response.
“So you’ve seen all the Miss Alabama pictures too?”
“They’re a bit hard to miss.” I smile. She does too. I catch the server heading over, and I wave him off so he doesn’t interrupt us yet.
“Genevieve loved being Miss Alabama. She’s one of those people I’m talking about. The ones who come out of the womb ready to be onstage. That’s her. Which is totally fine. But that’s not me. It never was, and it was never going to be. The harder she tried to push me, the harder it got to be up there. I’d get so anxious and upset that I’d secretly throw up in the bathroom beforehand. Nobody noticed because by then half the girls had eating disorders anyway, and it was an unspoken rule that we never talked about what went down in the bathrooms.” Her eyes slip into the memory, traveling out of the restaurant and back there. Her body stiffens. “It got to a point where I hated every single minute of it, even the parts I used to like. The makeup. The hair. The lights on the stage. God, I hated those lights. And then one day, I just couldn’t go out there. I couldn’t get on that stage.” Tears prick the corners of her eyes. She quickly wipes them away before they have a chance to move down her cheeks. “I was standing frozen behind the curtain. Just standing there. Couldn’t move or do anything. And then suddenly somebody shoved me, and I stumbled out onto it.” She works her jaw, struggling hard not to cry. “Genevieve was the one who shoved me. She pushed me right out on that stage. I stumbled forward and then froze in front of everyone. It was mortifying. Two of the judges finally jumped up and helped me off stage. She said she pushed me because she figured as soon as I got out onstage that I’d snap out of it. Kind of like how sometimes you have to slap a person in the face when they’re freaking out? That’s how she explained it. She never even apologized for it.”
I reach across the table and take her hand in mine. Her fingers haven’t warmed up yet. They might even be colder. “That sounds awful. I’m sorry she did that to you.”
My touch makes her uncomfortable, and she slowly pulls her hand out from underneath mine. “Thanks, it was.” She wipes her nose on the back of her sleeve and tries to shove her emotions back inside. “I quit after that. Never went back. Never did another show. She was so incredibly angry with me. She didn’t speak to me for three days. Not a word. It was like I’d done something horribly wrong to her by quitting. She even said those exact words: ‘How can you do this to me?’”
“Wow.” I couldn’t imagine treating Harper that way. It must’ve been so painful and confusing for her. “How old were you at the time?”
“Ten.”
“And y’all never did anything to make it better between you?”
She shakes her head. “Mason got diagnosed shortly after that, so she became totally obsessed with all his stuff. Which is understandable, right?” She raises one shoulder and tries to look understanding, but there’s no mistaking the weight of her sadness. “All that was going on with Mason, and then my daddy died a couple years later . . .” Her emotions catch in her throat, and she takes a moment to gather her composure. I wish she’d quit trying to be so strong and just allow herself to feel.
Losing a parent is a gut-wrenching and disorienting loss. I’m only in the beginning phases myself, so her pain hits me square in the chest. I clasp my hands on my lap to keep from reaching out to her since it makes her uncomfortable, but I really want to comfort her.