Glitter and Glue

by Kelly Corrigan

My mom did not come—not that weekend, not that year. Cross-country travel is no casual thing, and we were seeing each other back east for weddings plenty. My roommate’s mom came three times in the first year. After one of her visits, I said to my roommate, “I’ve been here for fourteen months, and my mother literally never even mentions coming. I mean, you’d think she’d want to see where her child was living.” I wasn’t afraid to phrase things dramatically; blame it on five months of Santa Barbara. I wanted to take my mom to my office and introduce her to my manager, a strange and loving woman who fancied long fingernails, scarves, and dirty jokes. I wanted to take my mom for a burrito, surely her first, and show her all the fleeced boys in their hiking boots. I wanted to drive her across the Golden Gate Bridge with the top down. “What does she say when you ask her?” my roommate said. “Do I really have to ask her? I mean, don’t parents just automatically—” “I don’t know. You’re not, like, super-nice to her on the phone. Maybe she thinks you don’t care.” I paused, then shook it off. “Oh, come on, that’s crazy.” But the idea stayed with me, and the next time my mom called I asked her to come out, and she said she would look into it. “She won’t come, watch,” I said to my roommate when I hung up. Later that evening, she called me back with a choice of dates and flight times.