Page 46 of Malaise
My nails dig into my legs, and I step slowly over to the sofa to take a seat. “Did it occur to you that I might struggle to find a place to live at my age? I have no credit rating, what barely qualifies as a part-time job, and no references.”
“Dad said you were going to stay with your new friends.” She cocks her head to the side, her back ramrod straight. All she needs is a high-waisted swing skirt and a cashmere sweater to complete the Stepford image.
“Dad’s lying.”
“Oh, no, Meg. Don’t be silly.” She giggles politely. “I’m sure Dad knows what he’s talking about.”
“And I’m sure I’m not imagining things either when I can recall the entire conversation we had in the kitchen where he told me I had two weeks to shape up or ship out.”
Her placid demeanour shifts. I swear the weather darkens, the dim sunlight into the room now near non-existent. A storm brews in more ways than one.
“Now, Meg, you listen to me when I say this, because I’ll only say it once. Everything isn’t always about you.” I go to protest, but she whips a palm up to stop me. “You’ve always done this, right since you were learning to walk. Anything to do with Den, you wanted to overshadow it. You continually stole the limelight from him with your temper tantrums and… and”—her lips snarl as she waves a hand at my outfit—“appearance. You don’t always have to be the centre of attention.”
Pretty sure my jaw just scraped the carpet. “Are you serious? You sound exactly like him, you know that?”
“Perhaps then it’s time you gave serious consideration to the thought that we may be right.” Her hands are perfectly posed on her knee, her chin turned down ever so slightly.
“Answer me this: when is the last time you can remember that you and Dad celebrated something I did?”
“Oh, I’m sure there are plenty of occasions where we praised you for your efforts.”
Efforts. Even subconsciously she cuts me down. “Name one.”
“Well… I’m sure we did something when you got your job?”
“You handed me your bank account number and told me I could start paying board.”
She looks affronted at the idea, nose curled up and eyes hard. “When you got your driver’s licence?”
“Dad joked that he was surprised I got it without having to resit the test five times.”
“There’s no need for us to sit here and split hairs over it. I’m sure your dad and I would have showed you on plenty of occasions how proud we were of you.”
Were.Is she saying these things on purpose?
I shake my head, pained that I have to explain this to my own mother. “That’s just it, Mum—there isn’t. Everything was always about Den, so no wonder I tried to pull the light my way every so often. Did you ever think to ask yourself why I acted out? Why I had to go to extremes to get my parents’ attention?”
“We figured it was just the way you were,” she says quietly. “You and Den were so different.”
“No. We weren’t.” I lean both elbows on my knees and bury my face in my hands to groan. “He got held behind at school just as many times as I did. His grades were the same as mine. And yet I got punished for not doing enough, when he got praised for achieving what he did.”
“Because he was handicapped with his deaf ear, Meg,” she argues. “He had to fight to get what he did.”
“Bullshit.” I shake my head. “He wasn’t dyslexic, or illiterate, he just had to turn his head to hear better.”
“It still impeded him, and whether you choose to accept it or not, you could have done better if you’d really wanted to apply yourself.”
“So could he,” I shout, throwing my hands in the air. “But you two slipped your rose-tinted glasses on whenever he came in the room.” Tears battle at the back of my eyes, but I take a deep breath and think of Carver’s words: keep your cool. “All I wanted,” I whisper, “was one day where you guys treated me the same.”
“Then why didn’t you ask for it?”
“I did,” I murmur. “But more to the point, I shouldn’t have to. I tried so damn hard to impress you two, and when that wasn’t enough, I tried the opposite—I acted out knowing that at least if I got punished and told off it would buy me ten minutes of your time.”
“No.” Mum shakes her head. “You can’t blame what you’ve done on us. Not now.” My supressed tears manifest in her eyes. “You can’t blame us for your selfish behaviour.” She sniffs and dabs under her eye with the side of her index finger. “I think perhaps your father did do the right thing asking you to leave sooner.”
“So that’s it?”
“What more can I say?”