"They knew in what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you can't."
– J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
4
The week before our world imploded, the family had come together to celebrate my nephew's christening. We weren't actively religious but had all been christened as babies, and my sister and brother-in-law saw it as simply giving their son a choice. It was mostly a beautiful day for celebrating that he was now in our lives.
My mother didn't show until we were back at Charlie's house for lunch. She was always full of excuses. First she said she didn't even think she had been invited in the first place, and then she said she had the day wrong and remembered at the last minute, and then it was that she had been so busy. She was always so busy. Doing what exactly, I never knew.
I was talking with Emmett's mother Jude when Renee joined us. She didn't mind that she interrupted Jude mid-sentence, she bowled up and started gushing away to the poor woman about Renee's beautiful family and oh, Rosalie reminds me so very much of me as a mother. She always found a way of reverting everything back to her. Always. It was possibly her worst trait, because it meant she never truly heard what was being said to her. She never connected with the person speaking. Not to mention that she also never took a breath, and if she let someone else get a sentence in, she was simply in her own head about to speak again. Oh and Alice is so creative – she couldn't name exactly what it was Alice was doing at the moment – oh and that husband of hers, Jacksper, so handsome! It was all babble in my ear, as I stood there staring at Jude's awkwardly stunned face in pity. She didn't mention me; she didn't even know about the screenwriting.
"Jasper, Renee, it's Jasper," I muttered.
"What was that, Isabella?" she said, pausing from her monologue.
"Nothing, Mother," I said, with a forced smile.
"Don't be facetious, darling. It's not very becoming," she said, as if she knew me well enough to know what was becoming on me. I don't think she knew what the word facetious meant, she just knew to use it.
"Jude, I think Emmett is trying to get your attention in the kitchen," I said, taking my mother's distraction as an opportunity to give Jude an escape route.
"Thanks, honey," she replied, a mix of gratitude and pity in her eyes. "I'll catch up with you, Renee."
"That was terribly rude, Bella. I was having a lovely discussion with Mrs. McCarty," Renee reprimanded.
I didn't feel like biting my tongue, my filter with my mother getting thinner by the day.
"You can't just claim us when you want to, Renee. When it's convenient for you to be a fantastic mother and have these lovely daughters to brag about," I said through gritted teeth.
"That's not fair," she replied, clearly sorry for herself once again.
"I'm not sure we have the same understanding of the meaning of the word 'fair'," I muttered, before moving away to find the bundle of joy that was Ben. You always forgot the world when you were around that little munchkin.
I didn't know whether it even made me sad anymore, my relationship with my mother. Or lack of one as the case may be. I almost had a disaffected attitude toward her. I suppose that alone was sad, but it was certainly the way things were headed. Despite my attempt at indifference, she had still managed to make me cry a couple of times recently. That only further spurred a desire to maintain a blasé approach, because what was the point in wasting my energy caring when I only ended up hurt or disappointed? She never changed. She never would.
I remembered crying into my pillow as a teenager the night after she had forgotten my birthday. She was once again so busy. She said she didn't forget it, she had just lost track of time and forgotten to call. I thought that was basically the same thing. As my mascara smudged into my white pillowcase, I felt terrible for wondering what I would do if my mother was to die. I knew that I would be sad, but in what way? Would most of my sadness be out of regret for not having ignored all her rubbish, all her intricacies and "quirks," and just gotten along with her? Would I be sad for what I had missed, or sad for what she had missed with me? Would I feel guilty for anything? I had thought that it all sounded easier in theory; that it took two of us putting in equal effort for us to have a decent relationship. It wasn't simply a decision I could make. Would I feel that soul-destroying feeling of regret? Was I a selfish, horrible daughter for wondering such things at all?
I always found my feelings for Renee very difficult to voice. Most of the people I would try to explain it to had good relationships with their mothers, and it seemed as though I was instantly in the wrong for speaking so negatively of the woman who had given birth to me. But what they didn't know was that even to Renee, the parenting had pretty much stopped after the baby years. To the point that Rose as a twenty-two year old called Renee to get a payment for my school fees – she wouldn't speak with Charlie that week – and was told something that would unfortunately stick with all of us. Even at thirteen I'd had the eye to notice her excessive spending on things she didn't need, nor could she afford. I've done my time as a mother, now I'll go out and buy a pair of shoes if I want to. Needless to say, Charlie had to foot the whole bill that semester, and the rest.
I used to say that I loved my mother; I just didn't like her very much. I think I used to like her, but there was a point at which that was challenged. It had been challenged extensively recently, and I had started to wonder if the love part was a partial cover for those who would question me otherwise. What sort of cold person doesn't love their mother? I was at my worst toward her not when she hurt or frustrated me, but when she did something to upset one or both of my sisters. She had been particularly disappointing with Rose when she became a mother herself. Renee had an uncanny ability to turn up to stay under the guise of helping but do absolutely fucking nothing other than disrupt, upset, cause drama and stress everybody out, all from her spot on the couch. The worst bit was she had no fucking idea she was doing all of those things. Her brain was a mystery and not at all in a good way.
The whole thing was made more confusing because she was both difficult to love and difficult to hate. Amongst the chilly, dark nights left waiting when she was late for ballet pick-up, the events ruined with drama from her or her asshole boyfriend, or general moments of utter selfish ignorance, there had been those few moments of motherly brilliance. The problem was they were so on her terms that they were never times when we really could have used a mother, like for Rose when Ben was born. Instead there was that one surprise visit when she turned up on your doorstep with a cake on your birthday, after saying that she couldn't be there. Or when she dropped off drugs when you were sick or came to take you shopping for prom. Those moments were harder and scarcer to pick out of the memories, yet amongst all the unreliability and sadness, there was still potential for another successful moment of mothering. So we did our best to tolerate, and as sisters we took solace in each other.
Then suddenly, there were bigger things in the world than my troubling but seemingly petty issues with my ignorant and absent mother. We were in a place where the joy in our lives was overshadowing the heartaches of the past. Then in a blinding flash of total horror, I had a tiny nephew without a mother, a brother-in-law missing his other half, a father crumpled by the loss of one of his stars.
