The Perfect Mum

Both laughed. “J-O,” Kathleen told him kindly. “Short for Josephine.”

Ah. Satisfied, he jotted down the measurement.

“So, you didn’t put me on your calendar,” he remarked.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her flush.

“I did. But the day went hayfire from the get-go.”

The kid decided, at last, to speak. In a loud, clear voice, she said, “I thought Emma was dead. She fell on the floor and there was blood and she didn’t talk to me.”

“Hush,” her mother murmured.

“My daughter fainted and hit her head,” Kathleen said. “We had an ambulance here and everything. I just got back from the hospital. I’m sorry! It was scary, and everything else just left my mind.”

“She okay?”

“Just has a concussion. They’re keeping her overnight.”

Uh-huh. She’d fallen apart because her daughter had bumped her head.

He wasn’t buying.

Writing down another measurement, he asked, “How old is she?”

“Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

A teenager. Well, that explained the “she hates me” part. It also upped his estimate of her mom’s age. Kathleen Monroe had to be mid-thirties, at least.

Satisfied with his measurements, Logan turned to them. “Let’s talk about wood and styles.”

They sat at the kitchen table. Ginny at last became bored and, after a murmured consultation with her mother, wandered away. A moment later, canned voices came from the living room.

He nodded after her. “How old is she?”

“Ginny just turned six. She’s in first grade.”

He hadn’t been around children enough to judge ages. Opening his clipboard, Logan took out a sheaf of pictures.

They discussed panel doors versus plain, maple versus oak, open shelves versus ones hidden behind cupboard doors.

As expensive as Kathleen Monroe looked, Logan half expected her to choose something fancy: mahogany with gothic panels and glossy finish, maybe.

Instead she went for a simple Shaker style in a warm brown maple. “I want it to suit the era of the house,” she explained. “Later, when—if—I can afford it, we’ll re-do the rest of the kitchen to match.”

He sketched out an L shape of cabinets to fit in the corner, then lightly turned it into a U. “A peninsula there,” he said, pointing, “would visually separate your work area from the dining area. Plus, it would give you more counter space. You could have suspended shelves or cabinets from the ceiling, too.”

“Um…” Kathleen frowned into space. “It sounds wonderful,” she finally decided, “but it may be beyond my means. This may all be beyond my means,” she admitted frankly. “We looked at ready-made cabinets at Home Depot and Lowe’s, but Ryan thought we could do as well going to you, plus you could configure them more specifically for our needs.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, standing. “I’ll have the bid to you in a couple of days.”

The bottom line would be affordable, he already knew, even if he took a dive on the job. He wanted to help these women achieve their dream, he wanted to know why Kathleen Monroe had been sobbing—and he wanted to find out what a woman that classy would feel like in his arms when she wasn’t crying her heart out.

Even if that didn’t have a damn thing to do with building cabinets.

EMMA LAY IN THE DARK, feeling the sugar trickling into her body. It was like…like sipping on soda pop nonstop, all day long, until you ballooned with fat. She could feel it sliding through her veins, cool and sticky. Every time a bag emptied, somebody came and changed it.

She hated the nurses who had put the IV needle back in three times, and even more the ones who had finally tied her hands to the bars of the hospital bed so she couldn’t tear it out again.

But most of all, so much it corroded her belly, she hated her mother for letting them do this. For making them do it. Mom could have said, “I’m taking her home.” She could have told them not to force calories on her.

Instead, she was committing her own daughter to a jail. Just because Emma wouldn’t stuff her face.

She was, like, almost at a perfect weight. She used to think eighty pounds would be good, but she had still been pudgy when she got there. So she made her goal seventy-five. Or less. Less would be good. It would give her some room to go up a pound or two and not freak so much.

She didn’t even know why she was surprised. Mom wanted to control her, and food had become their main battlefield. It was so weird, because Emma knew her mother used to think she was fat. Her eyebrows arching disdainfully, she’d say, “Emma, do you really need a second serving?” Or, “Don’t you think carrots would be better for your figure than potato chips?”

She liked to give these little mother-daughter lectures, too. She’d sit on Emma’s bed and say, in this friendly voice, “I know you’re only twelve—” or thirteen or fourteen, the lecture didn’t change “—but pretty soon you’re going to want boys to notice you. It’s going to really matter to you if you feel plump or don’t like the way you look in cute clothes.”

What she really meant was, You embarrass your father and me. To her friends, she said with a laugh, “Emma still has some baby fat, but she’s stretching into this tall beautiful girl.” Baby fat, of course, would magically melt away. Real fat was just disgusting and stayed.

And Mom and Emma both knew that was the kind Emma had.

Emma had started dieting when she turned fourteen not because she wanted to look good in cute clothes, but to please her mother and father. Mom’s face would glow with delight and pride when Emma said no to seconds and dessert and snacks.

When he saw her picking at a salad for lunch instead of pigging out on macaroni and cheese, Dad would say something like, “Keep on that way and we’ll have two beauties in this house before we know it.” Meaning that Mom already was one, but Emma was plain and fat and he hated it when he entertained and he had to produce his one-and-only child and admit she was his.

For a while, Emma had been filled with hope. Finally, she was doing something right. She was making them proud. She would become beautiful, like her mother. Every morning, she’d look at herself in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that, sucking in her cheeks, lifting her hair in different styles, trying to imagine that moment when she would know: I am beautiful. She’d told herself she was the duckling—a plump duckling—becoming a swan.

Only, she stayed a duck. She never saw a beauty in the mirror. And her parents’ pride slowly faded as they started complaining about other things. She slouched. Shouldn’t she start plucking her eyebrows? Her table manners! The way she hung her head when she was introduced to their friends and business acquaintances. Obviously she needed braces. How could she possibly be getting B’s and even a C on her report card, when she was a smart girl?

And she understood at last that she would never be good enough for them. She wouldn’t be pretty enough, smart enough, charming enough to be their daughter.

Hearing the slap slap of approaching footsteps, Emma closed her eyes. The curtain around her bed rattled. A nurse lifted her covers enough to see the needle still stuck in Emma’s hand. A moment later, the footsteps went away and Emma opened her eyes again.

She could see only a band of light coming through the half open door from the hall, diffused by her curtain. She didn’t have a roommate, either because the hospital wasn’t that full or because they thought she was a bad influence or something. She was glad. What if she had some middle-aged woman having her gall bladder out, or an old lady moaning? They might want to talk!

Of course, she wouldn’t be here that long anyway. They were moving her tomorrow. It made her sick, thinking about it. Her therapist, Sharon Russell, used it as a threat: If you don’t eat, we’ll send you there, where they’ll stick tubes down your throat if you won’t eat and not let you alone for a single second in case you try to puke.

They’d watch her pee and everything!

She wondered if, once they untied her tomorrow and left her to get dressed, she’d have a chance to run away. Emma didn’t know where she’d go or what she’d do, but anything had to be better than jail, where some warden stared at you while you sat on the toilet! Energized, she started planning.

She was almost seventeen. She could get a job, maybe, and find a bunch of other kids she could share an apartment with. Or she’d call Uncle Ryan and see if he’d let her come live with him and Melissa and Tyler. They never paid any attention to what she ate. Uncle Ryan wasn’t embarrassed by her. He didn’t want to control her every move.

That was what Emma had finally decided: she couldn’t make her parents happy no matter what she did, so she might as well at least be in charge of her own life. She didn’t want to be fat. It was so like them to want to control what went in her mouth. One minute she was fat and disgusting and she was supposed to nibble on green leaves instead of pizza. The next minute, she was getting too skinny and she should stuff her face. The real issue was, she should do what they told her to do.

Smile. Try to look dignified, if you know how. When you laugh like that people can see your tonsils. You should be on the honor roll. Your idea is silly—write about this topic instead. Eat. Don’t eat. Make conversation. Quit chattering.