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I feel myself getting worked up over Maggie’s unexpected mention of Beryl, but I don’t want her to know how much it’s affecting me.
If she knows, she might not confide in me.
So, I busy myself with slurping.
Easy to do, with a smoothie this good. After buying myself a full minute, I pat my lips with a cloth napkin and look out toward the desert landscape. “What’s Beryl have to do with you and Trent?” I ask.
“Olivia, if you don’t want to talk about this, it’s okay. Just tell me.”
“No, it’s not that. Yeah, maybe it’s sort of… I don’t know…prickly, talking about her. But I can get over that. Honestly. I really want to know what’s up with you and Trent. Maybe I can help.”
She slides her delicate fingers over her layered bangs, clearing her eyes. “Okay… it’s just… I worry a lot about his relationship with her. I mean, she’s hismother. That’s a hugely important relationship. And he’s got this big problem with her, and I’m trying to get him to see that it’s not healthy.”
Nothealthy? I have a few thoughts about what’s healthy. A mother making time for her children is healthy. A mother calling her kids—at least on their birthdays.
A mother attending, oh, you know, likeoneschool function, somewhere between kindergarten and senior year. A play. A recital. Graduation.Anything.
Those are healthy things.
Me and Trent didn’t get treated to that sort of healthy family life, growing up.
I shouldn’t complain, though. Grandma Georgia and Grandpa Ray treated us like gold. We didn’t go without, except in the parental love department.
And who’s keeping score, anyway?
“I can see this is getting to you,” Maggie tells me.
“Here’s the thing. Beryl is barely a mother to us.”
“I know, that’s what Trent keeps telling me. But she is your biological mother, and I think Trent’s issues with her have a lot to do with his emotional health in general. I really want him tofind some peace with her—for his sake. For his own well-being, you know? Did you know she called him a few times, recently?”
“No…”
“She did. A handful of times since Christmas. She heard about the wedding and wanted to know all about it. I know she’s not been there for you guys, but I think she’s really trying to do better. So, I’ve been trying to get him to invite her to the wedding. But he won’t do it, and now we’re two weeks from our big day and he still hasn’t—”
“Wait.” I scrunch my brow. “She’s been calling Trent? That makes no sense. O thought neither of us has talked to her in years, ever since she moved out of this guy Larry’s house. She was hopping around to all these different places, and both of us gave up on trying to keep it straight. We’ve been disappointed too many times.”
“Everyone deserves a chance to make amends, don’t you think? Especially family. She wants to be involved.”
“It’s a little late for that.”
“Olivia don’t get upset with me. I have enough to deal with, with Trent.”
“I’m not upset!” Why did my hand fly up into that frantic wave? I pin it down under one thigh and take a deep breath. “So, you’ve been talking with her, I’m guessing?”
“Yeah. Sometimes she calls the landline, and we’ve been talking.”
“About what?”
My mother has been so busy with her mediocre acting career over the entire span of my life that I gave up on having meaningful conversations with her a long time ago.
It was bad enough when she had a minor role in a soap opera,Josie’s Glory. She was almost impossible to get in touch with for those years, because she was constantly in and out of show trailers, getting makeup done, and parading around a set.
Then, for years after that show ended, she was desperately going after any little scrap of a role she could sink her claws into.
Working too hard to talk to me, her own daughter. Too wrapped up in herself to talk with Trent much, either.
Maggie keeps nibbling her nails. “We talk about the wedding. She wants to come, but she doesn’t have the money. And she says she wouldn’t show up anyway, even if she had the funds. She thinks it’d be rude unless Trent wants her there. She said she’d feel like a wedding crasher.”
