Page 92 of Something Borrowed

“Oooo, a ‘conversation,’” Audra mocked. “Sounds serious.”

Vic just nodded and took a seat at the table.

The quiet, non-emotional response seemed to startle Audra into compliance. She did as Vic asked, taking a chair opposite her.

“What’s all this about then?” Audra asked, her face and tone tough.

Vic swallowed hard and did something she rarely had in her whole life. She told Audra what she honestly thought.

She started with how she was doing her best to be a good daughter and to help take care of her. Next, she shared her deep concerns about Audra’s health.

“Seeing a doctor is no longer a suggestion, Mom. It’s a must,” she added.

Audra glared at her balefully and made no reply.

“And regardless of how you feel about me or the way I take care of you or the house, or all the perceived ways I’m a failure in your eyes, there will be no more screaming or yelling or making insulting comments to me.”

As Vic spoke, holding her hand up at two different intervals to stave off indignant interruptions, Audra’s face lost its angry taunting sneer. She seemed almost . . . vulnerable.

“So, that’s it, I guess,” Audra huffed. “You get your wish, and I get no say. I’m a terrible burden and a monster to live with, so you’ll go off with that wrench monkey and leave me alone here to rot.”

“What?” Vic could hardly formulate a response. After everything she’d said, that was how Audra summed it up? That’s what she heard. “That is not what I was saying at all. God, Mom—you’re impossible.”

“I’m impossible! You’ve been wanting to leave me ever since you were thirteen and met that druggie loser dropout Gerome.”

Gerome. Now there was an unwelcome blast from the past. And maybe Vic had wanted him to take her far away from Greenridge, but who could blame her? Audra today was a walk in the park compared to Audra back then.

“He—no surprise to anybody but you—was a waste of space and didn’t last long, but then it was always another boy, wannabe man until you met Kyle and got yourself knocked up.”

Vic flinched. She, of course, knew her pathetic life story, but hearing it boiled down to one sad, not inaccurate sentence was brutal.

“Any other girl would’ve turned to her mother for help and support, but you? Oh no, not you. You had to pretend your story would be different, that you were different, better than anybody else.”

Vic blinked. Audra’s take on how Vic had felt during that terrible, scary time compared to how Vic had really felt was . . . not even apples to oranges or night to day. They were different universes of aliens that had no concept of each other’s existence.

“So, then you moved away with that pretty-talking orangutan and kept my grandson from me—and for what? He was gone in a year, and still, you never came home.”

Vic shook her head. There was something new in this version of Audra’s unhappiness. What was it?

Something that sounded shockingly like a sob escaped Audra. “And I knew it! I knew you’d do it to me again, but still I thought maybe, just maybe, this time would be different—but now, here we are. I’m one foot in the grave, you’re the wrong side of fifty, and you’re still like a cat in heat, looking for anyone to take you away from here. From me. Just like your no-good, waste-of-skin, pathetic-excuse-of-a-man father—”

Vic held up her hand. “I’m going to stop you right there.”

“You’re what?”

Vic lifted her hand in the stop motion again. Audra scowled.

It had been a horrible tirade, filled with a lot to unpack. But Audra’s thinly—and not so thinly—veiled attacks barely pricked Vic.

She realized something shocking. Audra was scared. Scared of being abandoned by her. Of being left again. It was totally, utterly, in every single way, absolutely messed up, but somehow Audra had been so convinced that Vic was going to leave her that she pushed her away. Unbelievably and pathologically, Audra had somehow put all her abandonment trauma onto Vic. And Vic, who once upon a time, not so long ago, would’ve relished the opportunity to have it out with Audra about her childhood and how Audra had treated her, found now that the chance had finally arrived, she had no energy or desire to dredge up the past and tell Audra how unhinged she was and how awful her treatment of her had been—and still mostly was.

She reached across the table and rested her hand over Audra’s trembling, veiny one.

“I think you misunderstood me, Mom. I’m not going anywhere. Please don’t worry or be afraid. I meant it when I told you I’d come back to stay and help you out. We are going to make you a doctor’s appointment, though, and you’re going to go.”

“I’ll—”

Vic shook her head. “It’s non-negotiable.”