Free The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson Page A

showing. “I knew you’d get it. I mean, I know it’s small, but do you realize this is the first place in my life that has been just mine, all mine?”
    I sighed. This wasn’t going to be so easy, getting her to go back home to my father, not if she was willing to live here . She didn’t even look the same as she used to. Her dark hair was longer, and she wasn’t wearing it in a chignon anymore. It was down around her shoulders, loose and curly in a perm, and parted in the middle. She had on lots of eyeliner and blush. And she was wearing tight blue jeans and a hot pink shirt that didn’t button up as far as it might have. She looked mind-blowingly young, even though, by my quick calculation, she was forty-two, and therefore ancient.
    She saw me looking at her and did a little twirl. “Do you like my hair?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    “It’s long,” she said. “I’ve always loved it long, but your father wanted me to wear it short or else in a bun, because that’s how his mother wore her hair.” She rolled her eyes. “All my life with this trying to measure up to his sainted mother.” She bounced on the bed again and grinned at me. “But Dmitri likes it long.”
    She launched into a whole story about Dmitri the art teacher, and how he was handsome and free-spirited and beloved by all the women in the class—but it was my mother whom he’d identified with the most. He was empowering her to truly express her deep feelings, she said. Who could believe that there were men in the world who truly respected women and wanted the best for them, who didn’t think of them strictly as sex objects, and yet because of that were the best lovers?
    “Oh, Mom,” I said.
    She reached over and ruffled my hair a little. “Aw, I suppose it seems strange to you. You’re seeing me in a whole new way, aren’t you?”
    I shrugged, not knowing what to say. Tears sprang to my eyes, and she hugged me. “Oh, my sweet, sweet angel girl,” she said. “You’ve always been the one who understood me the best. Even when you were a baby, I could tell by those big hazel eyes of yours that followed me around the room that you truly saw me.”
    I burst into tears. She came and held me, and I had a thought that everything would turn out all right after all.
    “Come on, come on, stop crying.” She dabbed at my cheeks. “Look at me. I’m happy! I’m doing paintings again, and making jewelry. I’m finding parts of myself that I didn’t even know existed.”
    I cried harder.
    “Why, who knows what’s still lurking around in this crazy brain of mine?” she said, smiling real big. “Maybe I’ll turn out to be a doctor, or an architect . Or maybe some kind of sex therapist!”
    Oh, God , I thought. Don’t start talking to me about sex. Could we please be like normal mothers and daughters, who don’t talk about such things?
    She reached over and tucked some of my crazier curls behind my ear. “How’s your father, speaking of sex therapists? That, by the way, is a joke.”
    “He says he’s fine.”
    “Well, then he probably is fine. In his worldview, at least,” she said.
    The phone rang then, and she went over to answer it. Obviously it was Dmitri; I could tell from the way she curled her entire body around the phone receiver, holding it up to her face as if it were a beloved object. I stared down at the sandal on the floor as if it were a snake.
    When she got off the phone, we went to a diner that we’d gone to a million times with my father and brother, a place where we’d often had breakfast on weekend mornings.
    She leaned forward on her elbows and smiled brightly at me. “For starters, tell me all about the men in your life.”
    “Well,” I said slowly, “I broke up with Jay three times and got back together with him only twice, which is for the best.”
    “Jay … Jay,” she said, frowning. “He’s the guy in your band? The sexy one?”
    I couldn’t remember ever describing him to her as sexy, but I said,