“I’m not trying to be clever. I was hoping to talk to you about the situation now—before I lose you to Mac.” She puts her phone down and focuses on me intently, her petal-soft hand stroking my cheek and then my hair. She smells of Crème de la Mer moisturizer, and I feel like a little girl under her touch. She holds my chin as she speaks.
“Sweetheart, you aren’t losing me to Mac. You’ll always be my little girl.” It’s the same speech she used to give every time she fell for a new man, and it’s a piece of her worst acting. But she has to know that at thirty-seven years old, I’m not worried about losing my mommy to a new lover. She’s intentionally manipulating the situation.
“Mom, Mac wants to dig up Grandpa’s grave.” She doesn’t flinch, which means this isn’t new information to her. He’s already introduced this wild idea, and when my mom is entranced by a man, there’s little that can be done to snap her out of it. But I have to try.
“I can’t stop you legally, but professionally I have to tell you—it doesn’t read well. I’ve told Mac and I’ll tell you—I can’t be a part of this project if you sign off on this.” I try to keep a firm line, which isn’t easy with my mom. I can hold out on a deal, or a tabloid, or a lawsuit, but Gracelyn Branson has powers over me akin to dark magic.
“You’re making a big ole fuss over this, Lisey. Nobody’s digging up your grandpa.”
“Wait, what? That’s great news.”
“Yes. Now, will you stop freaking out and let Mac do his job?”
“I wasn’t exactly ‘freaking out.’ And I still have questions . . .” Like why Grandpa isn’t listed among the casualties for the Battle of the Bulge, and the dates for the purchase of the headstone, as well as the wealthy Highwards of Philadelphia, and Father Antonio Trombello.
“We can have a nice chat later, but right now I’m bushed. I was up at three in the morning to get to the airport in time for my flight. I need a nap.”
I sit stunned, staring at my mother typing on her phone again.
“Can you answer one thing, Mom? Just one. Is Mac gonna let it go? That whole storyline with the grave?”
“I already told you. No one’s going to touch your grandpa’s grave. I promise.” She shrugs. “I’m sorry, honey. I thought I told Patty to text you about it last week. I was slammed. Press junket for Finding Mrs. Franklin was intense. You know how Toro and Brit Parsons hate one another. After they loved one another, I guess that is.” What follows is a detailed retelling of the conflict between the lead and director on the set of the historical where my mom played the elderly version of Ben Franklin’s wife. Mom acts like she’s above such feuds because of her age and pedigree, but she actually revels in it all.
Her phone dings loudly, and she stops to check the notification. The font size on her screen is three times mine, so I can read it from where I’m sitting—a reminder to take her medication. She scrambles around in her bag, mumbling about how she’d been searched at security but was sure it was an attempt to snag a trophy or two for her rabid internet fans.
“It was only a little thing of mace on my key chain. Can you believe it? They made me take it off and throw it away even after I explained how important it is for a woman to defend herself these days. I swear I hate flying commercial. It’s always a fiasco.”
“So, not a rabid fan, then?” I ask with heavy sarcasm, still frustrated that I’ll have to wait—again—for answers to my questions. We need to have this conversation about our family. Especially since anyone who is curious enough to turn on their TV will soon know everything. Is it wrong that I, as Vivian Snow and Tom Highward’s granddaughter, would like to know first?
“What makes you say that? You don’t think I have rabid fans, do you?” She takes half of the contents of her purse out, places the items on the cushion beside her, and then keeps digging, looking for her pillbox. “’Cause I do, Elise. I do. One man last month sent me a doll dressed like Suzie from that little stint I did on The Cubical, and it had real hair. Real human hair.” She drags another load out of her handbag and shouts, “Ah-ha!” as she pulls out a complicated plastic container that looks way too big to be misplaced.
She gets up to search my minibar for “something to wash it down with” and asks me to reload the contents of her purse as she makes her way to the bathroom.
I assumed it would make a difference to talk with her in person without assistants or boyfriends around. But I always forget it’s not any particular person keeping my mom from understanding me—it’s just who she is. She’s never understood me, and as my therapist said, the one I went to briefly after Dean died, I need to get used to the idea that she never will.
“Mourn it,” my therapist used to say. But I already had so much to mourn at the time that I wasn’t ready to mourn a mother who was still alive. So I didn’t. And I’m not sure I’m ready even now. Though at this moment, as I’m refilling her purse with stacks of paper and empty notebooks and a confusing number of pens, I’m wondering why it seems so impossible. Other daughters have mothers who understand them. Nonna loved my mom, cared for her, sacrificed for her. So why didn’t my mom learn how to be that kind of parent to her own children?
As I toss the last two items into her bag, I see an ancient-looking scrapbook and a flat rectangular box that looks like a COVID home test. I stop. The scrapbook looks familiar. I remember it sitting next to Nonna’s bedside. When I stayed with her, we’d look through the pages at the postcard-sized drawings and watercolors of various exotic locales, some she’d visited and some she’d still dreamed of seeing with her own eyes.
I haven’t seen this book in decades. I’m tempted to take a look inside, but then the other item pulls my attention. I place the scrapbook in my mom’s bag and inspect the small box, checking to make sure she’s still in the bathroom. It’s not a COVID test after all. I hold up the box and read the packaging again and again, confused.
Why does my mom have a mail-in DNA paternity test in her bag? And why is the box empty?
I shove the test under the scrapbook and toss the bag with everything in it into the corner of the couch as my mom leaves the bathroom, holding the now-empty pill tray.
“Those antibiotic pills are so large they make me gag every time. Patty broke them up into smaller pieces, but they still stick to my throat, I swear. Don’t get old, darling. It’s not as glamorous as we make it look.” She puts the tray back in her purse and then shoves the pictures into the envelope, drapes her coat over her arm, and puts her sunglasses on, even though we’re inside.
“Mom, those pictures . . .”
“Oh, sorry, I thought they were for me.”
“I was hoping to keep them until we had our talk.”
“I totally understand.” She reaches into her bag, takes out the envelope, and shakes it in front of me. “I’ll send Mac’s assistant down later, though. Get these scanned so we both have a copy. Sound good?”
I start to say no but find the word hard to say. Nothing works with my mom—nothing. She puts the envelope on the coffee table.