by Janel Alania (bio at end of story)
Hot, soft, fresh bagels from the bakery down the street; slowly ripened, home-grown tomatoes; tiny-but-plump Italian capers; red, seedless grapes and locally grown raspberries, plus slices of fresh pineapple and wedges of melon; oranges - ready and waiting to sacrifice their spherical perfection to the press and twist of the juicer; and cream cheese - plain old, ordinary, full-fat, original flavor cream cheese - the simplest yet most noble of all bagel accoutrements.
Rachael searched the tabletop, hoping for some indication of what essential ingredient might be missing. The bagels stared blankly at her, but she was sure she hadn’t imagined the sound of disdainful mutterings coming from the general vicinity of the capers. She eyed them suspiciously, but they said nothing more.
This brunch should be perfect, at least as far as the menu was concerned, Rachael thought. That much she could control. Conversation would be an entirely different matter, and Rachael knew that she should be ready for anything. It was the first time her mother would be visiting her in her new home, and it was the first home Rachael had ever actually owned. It was the home she had always imagined, and which she had helped to build with her own hands. It was the home that signified her final and irreversible descent into the abyss of adulthood. But she knew that no matter how grown-up she thought she was, in the eyes of her mother she was still just a little girl.
“A little girl with a big old house,” Rachael smiled to herself. “I don’t know what I’m stressing about.” She ground some coffee beans and dumped them into the percolator’s filter. “Half-and-half,” she suddenly said aloud. “I think I forgot the half-and-half!”
She rummaged frantically through the fridge and then triumphantly held aloft the quart-sized carton of the only product her mother would use to enhance the flavor of the dark, rich coffee she loved. As she poured its contents into a creamer, her mind drifted back through childhood, and Rachael remembered having breakfast with her mother one summer morning.
She was 16, and it was the morning after she had lost her virginity. She thought about the expression on her mother’s face when she had casually mentioned this fact while adding a splash of half-and-half to their coffees. It was the picture of serene - if forced - acceptance, only partially concealed by a mug imprinted with Munch’s “The Scream.” Her mother had politely excused herself from the table then, and upon her return, announced that she had just thrown up and, having got that out of the way, was now ready to discuss this like an adult. And discuss they did, for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon. That conversation had ended with Rachael’s mother promising to buy her as many condoms as Rachael thought she might need. “If you’re old enough to do it, you’re old enough to be smart about it,” she had said.
“There was never any point in hiding anything from her,” Rachael quietly explained to the empty half-and-half carton. “It was just always easier to be honest - God, that’s so Brady Bunch and pathetic,” she muttered. “Maybe I just figured she really did know everything, like mothers always say they do, and at least she never gave me a good reason not to tell her things.”
Not that the relationship had always been perfect. There had been plenty of times when Rachael had wished her mother had been a little less involved in her life, and there had been times when she had criticized her mother for not being involved enough. Rachael had taken childish offense at her mother’s courage in daring to live and enjoy her own life, to attempt to remain an individual, successful woman while raising two children. As a teenager, Rachael had been as independent as they come - or so she had imagined. And although she had respected her mother’s choices in theory, she never really got over the fact that her mother had a life that was separate from the children, separate from the neighborhood, and actually exciting and rewarding in its own right.
Rachael’s mother had been a successful figure in local politics, and Rachael had spent much of her childhood accompanying her in races to and from meetings, speeches, parties and dinners. Rachael had not learned until much later that her mother’s political success was due in large part to the battle she had fought to improve the school district that Rachael and her brother would both later attend.
She still felt a twinge of guilt when she remembered the way she had screamed at her mother, accusing her of bad mothering in general, and specifically of not taking an active interest in the education of her own children. That had been when was Rachael was in college, experiencing that period of political and personal self-righteousness that makes most students impossible company for anyone outside of the world of academia and a good percentage of those within.
She remembered her mother’s façade of cool collectedness behind the coffee cup (this one emblazoned with the words, “PTA MOM”), but the façade did not last for long. Within seconds, her mother’s voice could have been heard throughout suburbia, as she listed sacrifice after sacrifice that she had made to ensure that her children would have the best of everything, including education. Their conversations had never ended in anger though, and it wasn’t long before noses were blown and tears were wiped away, another round of coffee was poured, and an air of civility returned to the table.
A breeze came through the window and roused Rachael from her reverie. On the front porch, the chimes sang their praises of the North Wind. She glanced at the clock above the stove. She still had about ten minutes before her mother was due to arrive.
She surveyed the kitchen, confirming that all was in order. She then wandered through the house, slowly examining each piece of furniture, each piece of artwork, every detail, trying to see it as though through her mother’s eyes. Her gaze fell on a pair of hand-carved, teak candlesticks that she had bought for herself on one of her trips to Thailand. She had bought a similar set for her mother, and Rachael shuddered as she remembered presenting them to her when she arrived home for the first time after spending three years abroad.
Her mother didn’t have a problem with the candlesticks. In fact, along with the mother-of-pearl caviar spoon Rachael had given her, they were amongst her mother’s most prized and oft-used possessions. No, the problem, as far as her mother was concerned, was with Rachael. Her mother had taken Rachael’s decision to travel as a personal affront, as evidence that she had failed in some capacity as a mother. Why else would her little girl want to go halfway around the world if not simply to escape her maternal clutches? She couldn’t understand why Rachael chose to “waste” her life, to spend her time doing “God-knows-what” in “those God-forsaken-places” with “I-don-t-even-want-to-know-whom,” when she could have used that time to pursue a PhD - or a law degree at the very least.
So when Rachael and her mother had begun playing “catch-up” over coffee in her mother’s new home, it wasn’t long before Rachael realized that her mother really wasn’t interested in her exciting stories of mountaineering in New Zealand and jungle trekking in Southeast Asia. From behind her “Home Is Where The Heart Is” mug, she asked what Rachael planned to do next, where she expected to live and what sort of employment she hoped to obtain. When Rachael told her that she planned to continue her travels, the conversation had turned quickly into a shouting match, and the shouting had ultimately led to tears. Both Rachael and her mother were amazed that the other could be so stubborn, so set in her ways, so blind, as to believe that her way of thinking was actually the right one.
That had been more than ten years earlier, and Rachael thought about the therapy sessions that had eventually led them to an increased sense of mutual understanding. “Therapy,” for them, regardless of where in the world they met, had consisted of a full table of food, a full pot of coffee, and a full box of tissues. She smiled as she ran her fingertips across the glass and gold-leaf globe her mother had recently given her as a symbol of her acceptance of Rachael’s life and choices.
“Ah, Mom,” Rachael thought. “We have both craved independence, and we have both faulted one another for it. Perhaps if you and I weren’t so very much alike, there would have been fewer tears and angry words between us,” she said to herself. “Perhaps…but I wouldn’t change a thing about either one of us.”
As she set the “World’s Greatest Mom” mug on the table, the doorbell rang.
© Janel Alania. All Rights Reserved.
Finalist - In-Dependence by Janel Alania
Janel wrote to tell us she would prefer for her story to stand as her bio for this contest.
Editor’s Note: “In-Dependence” was chosen for the first round for the following reasons: Interesting title, mouth-watering opening lead, ease of reading with no stumbling blocks. Unusual twist on the theme to talk about a relationship between mother and daughter. Great ending, excellent writing, correct punctuation, no spelling errors. Interesting inner dialogue. “In-Dependence” made the cut with the perspective on the theme, as well as for the casual touches or irony throughout the story, which lent a realistic aspect to the portrayed relationship. The ending is a fine example of that treatment.
