Abby’s mind replayed what her mother had told her, seizing on the words dating and options. “What about you?” she said. “Did you marry dad because you didn’t have choices? Because no one else wanted you?”
“Oh, Abby,” her mother said sadly. “I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know who else might have wanted me. I don’t know how it might have turned out.” She gathered up the sliced tomatoes and arranged them on the platter, then started scooping cream cheese out of its plastic tub, into a glass dish. “If I hadn’t married Bernie, I wouldn’t have had you. Or your brother and sister. So I can’t regret it. Not at all. And I know I’ve made mistakes. I know I haven’t always done the right things.” She looked Abby in the eye. “But everything I did, right or wrong, I did because I love you. I only ever wanted things to be easy for you.”
“And for me to look good in your wedding pictures,” Abby said, her voice tart.
“Well, yes,” Eileen said. “That was part of it. A silly, superficial part. I’m ashamed about it. And I apologize if I ever made you feel…” She swallowed hard. “Not beautiful. Because you are. And you always have been. You’re beautiful, inside and out.”
Now she’s going to hug me, Abby thought. Then I’m going to stand up and find out that I’m wearing ice skates, because hell has frozen over. Or I’m going to wake up in the hospital in Seneca Falls with a concussion.
“I know I didn’t go about it the right way. I know that now. But I just wanted what every mother wants. I wanted you to be happy. I wanted you to have choices.” She looked into Abby’s eyes, her expression beseeching. “I wanted you to have all the choices in the world.”
Abby knew this was the moment where she should have said, I understand. Or even, I forgive you. But she could still feel the sting of being exiled to Camp Golden Hills, the pain of feeling like her body was wrong and shameful, piled on top of the fresh grief of being alone. “And look how well that worked out,” she said.
“Oh, Abby.” Eileen walked around the counter and perched on the barstool next to Abby, close enough that Abby could smell perfume, and the retinoid cream Eileen dabbed under her eyes at night. Eileen touched Abby’s hair. “Mark was a nice guy. But being a nice guy doesn’t make him the right guy for you.”
Abby stared at her mother, shocked beyond words. Eileen’s hand was very gentle as it smoothed her curls. “Come on. This can’t be such a surprise. Your father was a nice guy. Is a nice guy. But we weren’t a good fit. And you and Mark weren’t a good fit, either.”
“You…” Abby shook her head, wondering how many more surprises Eileen had for her. “I thought you loved Mark! I thought you wanted me to marry him!”
Eileen looked genuinely puzzled. “Why would you think that?”
Abby shook her head again, still feeling like the world had gone sideways, like nothing was what she’d thought and everything had changed. Like, if she reached for her water glass she’d find herself grasping a goldfish, or a hammer. Had she been completely wrong about her mother? Had Eileen been enthralled with the idea of Abby marrying a nice Jewish doctor because she was convinced Mark was the best （and possibly only） man who’d love her second daughter? Or had Abby herself internalized those ideas about who, and what, she was supposed to want, about what she deserved and what was possible for someone like her? Had she swallowed them all down, all those rigid notions and demeaning expectations and hashtag life goals, then, somehow, projected them onto the size-two screen that was her mother? Her mother, who, it turned out, had been a victim of diet culture, too?
Abby closed her eyes. She was remembering how her mother would comb her hair when she was little, using a wide-toothed plastic comb, gently teasing out each knot, telling Abby how pretty her hair was. Had she made herself forget the times when Eileen had been kind to her? Had she erased those memories on purpose, unwilling to see Eileen as anything other than cold and critical, judgmental and withholding? Unwilling to believe, no matter how many times she said it, that Eileen really did want her to be happy?
“Abby,” her mother was saying. “Mark never ate dessert and he doesn’t ride a bike. And he wasn’t willing to change.”
“He… but I thought…” Abby sniffled. “He’s a doctor!” she blurted.
“He is,” Eileen confirmed.
“And he loved me!” Abby sniffled.