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years have been compressed into sentences,
Armed with sharp knives, fragrant spices, and fire, my mother could create feasts whose aromas alone would entice ships full of men onto the rocks, where she would delight in watching them plunge into the abyss. I knew about the Sirens from reading Greek mythology and marveled at my mother’s powers.
Love a siren
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noticed how his gaze kept returning to my mother throughout the meal. My mother seemed to delight in these glances, giving equine tosses of her head and laughing readily.
Horse girl
Charles and Lily, unperturbed by my drinking, unfazed by their spouses’ flirtation, erupted in laughter too.
“Sweetheart. Please. I need you.” At this, I opened my eyes. Malabar was in her nightgown, her hair mussed. I sat up. “Mom, what’s wrong? Is everything okay?” “Ben Souther just kissed me.”
The Southers had been married for thirty-five years.
One kiss—the gleam and shine of it, what it might portend—had changed everything.
“Sweetie, you can’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Not your brother, not your father, not your friends. No one. This is serious. Promise me that, Rennie. You must take this secret to your grave.”
we are to believe that a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can stir up a storm in Texas, what might be the unruly consequences of an illicit kiss on a country road?
I love thi
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In our family, being right trumped being truthful.
an alluring face with a dimple high on her left cheek, a mark left by forceps that was a reminder of her tough entry into this world.
strode into our kitchen, took both my mother’s hands in his, and, in full view of his wife and my stepfather, kissed her right on the mouth. “Malabar,” he said, his face close enough to hers that he could see her pupils expand, “that might have been the best damn dinner of my entire life!” “Ben,” Lily said, playfully scolding her husband, “leave that poor woman alone.”
“That poor woman” the irony
Ben Souther had just publicly declared her marvelous, and that act had awakened the dormant marvelousness within her.
From here on out, I would be lying to everyone.
eels slithered along thighs, minnows bumped ankles, spiny creatures crawled over bare feet.
Imagery
Having kissed, they could never not have kissed. Could that be their rationale? We’ve already done this thing . . .
Stunned by my grandfather’s extravagance and generosity, my grandmother accepted his proposal, and the two remarried in 1940. A year later, my grandfather secretly sired a son with a woman he promised to marry.
If I’d disappointed her in some way, had acted selfishly or broken an unspoken rule, she would stay silent, allowing me to feel the full weight of her abandonment and the possibility that she loved Peter or Christopher more than me.
Her new husband, Gregory, hailed from Plymouth and was a direct descendant of the Pilgrims, just like Ben Souther.
was as if Vivian had left a map for her daughter to follow.
“When it comes to cooking, I’m a thief,” she’d whisper to me, her exhale fragrant with spices.
life’s most sacred sensual duet: eating and making love.
“I’m sure this is all my fault. As Rennie probably told you, I can be a bit exuberant with the cayenne.”
Same
As if any amount of jazz hands and blathering could divert attention from the ticktock of the grandfather clock and how absurdly long it was taking two adults to locate a ten-pound bag of charcoal.
“Besides, I’ve had someone in mind for you for quite some time. I’ve just been waiting for you to hit eighteen.” I blushed. Who could he mean?
I still don’t know who he was referring to? His son?
“A chip off the old block!”
“Loneliness is not about how many people you have around. It’s about whether or not you feel connected. Whether or not you’re able to be yourself.” I was at a loss for words. Was Malabar not being herself when she was being Malabar?
On October 20, just a few days after his surgery, Charles suffered a massive stroke and died alone in his hospital room. My mother was with Ben at the time.
“Charles was so good to me, Rennie. And look at how I treated him. I gave him the worst of me.”
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. —SøREN KIERKEGAARD
In my case, this was Hank from the clam bar; he’d been my boyfriend since August, when I encouraged him to extricate himself from his relationship with Sally.
“The problem was with Lily,” my mother said. “Of course, everyone assumed it was Ben’s issue.” She paused. “Such a horrible stigma for any man to endure.”
The afternoon sun beckoned dormant freckles, and beads of water slid down our tall iced-tea glasses.
Imagery
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Honestly, Rennie, if you need a book to teach you how to be a good mother,” Malabar said with disdain, “you’re probably not up for the job.”
Irony
“I told you she was a peach,” he said to Jack. I blushed and looked at Jack. “You were right about that,” Jack replied and winked at me, causing that inner current to pull again, every molecule in my body shifting toward him.
“I told you she was a peach” referring to who Ben had in mind for her when she turned 18?
clandestine love was electrifying. Sneaking around upped the pleasure quotient. I’d find myself restrained against a wall one moment, Jack’s warm breath on my neck, his body pressed against mine. Then, at the sound of footsteps—that sweet chance of getting caught—we’d let go of each other, turn in opposite directions, and casually rejoin the group as nonchalantly as if we’d merely been getting something, lip balm or a novel, in our rooms, confident that no one had noticed our absence.
craved grand gestures from him just as my mother had from Ben and wanted to be able to ignite Jack’s passion and cause him to do spontaneous things. Did he want to sleep in on Sunday morning and linger in bed for a long while? He did not. How about breakfast just this once, a bagel and cream cheese while we read the paper? Nope. Or maybe a morning hike together in lieu of his run? Jack would not budge.
Sounds familiar !
Kate Sessions Park,
Been there!
We’d been talking about our upcoming wedding, now five short months away.
Same!!!!
Ben had one final thing to say, a last promise to make. He swore to Jack on everything he held dear that he would never see or speak to my mother again. Jack and I were getting married in July. Ben’s promise would be impossible to keep, of course, and we all knew it.
Since Ben had chosen to stay with Lily, my mother was in a state of abject despair.
“Shall we talk about the dress?” I was excited and nervous to show Malabar the photographs of my wedding gown. My mother hadn’t seemed all that concerned about the La Jolla bridal-boutique debacle.
Going back to read this after finding out what happened in this situation is so sad
knew that children who’d been neglected emotionally, as my mother had been by her parents, often formed attachments to objects instead of people.
had thought we were in her bedroom to talk about my wedding attire, but in fact, we were here to talk about hers.
Her secret weapon would be wrapped around her neck, and I wanted her to have it.
Sad
For one brief moment, I was the daughter again.
She was the most dazzling woman in sight.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —ANAïS NIN
LOVE
I’d been spinning plates for so long that now that all the china finally lay shattered on the floor, I mostly felt relief.
So Swiftian
