She Thought My Mom’s Country House Was Her Personal Resort—Until I Set One Firm Rule!
Susan looked down at her hands.
“We thought we were being so good to her,” she said. “We thought we were taking care of her.”
Nobody said anything. Richard was standing in the doorway now too. And Daniel, behind him.
“And one day,” Susan said, “she told me something. At Thanksgiving. The last one. Before she died. She was sitting in her chair in the living room. By herself. While everybody else was in the kitchen doing everything. And I went in to bring her a cup of coffee.”
She stopped. She swallowed.
“And she looked up at me,” Susan said, “and she said, Susie, you’ve all made me feel so useless.“
My mother put her book down in her lap.
“She said we’d decided she was old,” Susan said quietly. “Before she was. She said that every single time we told her to sit down, every time we took something out of her hands, what she heard was that nobody needed her anymore. That she didn’t have a job anymore. That she was just—waiting. To die.”
Susan’s eyes were wet behind her sunglasses.
“She died four months later,” she said. “And I never got to tell her I was sorry.”
I looked at my mother.
She was watching Susan very carefully. Very quietly. With her hands folded on top of her book.
“So when your mother told me this house was getting harder for her,” Susan said, “but she kept saying, over and over, how much she loved having everybody here—how much she loved cooking for everybody, how the house felt empty without people in it—I thought I understood. I thought, I’m not going to do to Maggie what I did to my mother. I’m not going to take this away from her.“
“So you thought making her wait on you hand and foot,” I said, “was helping her?”
“I thought,” Susan said, “letting her host the way she wanted to host was helping her. Letting her feel needed.”
And for one uncomfortable second, I could almost see how she got there.
Almost.
A woman who’d hurt her own mother by doing too much. Who’d sworn she’d never do it again. Who swung all the way to the other side.
Almost.
Then I remembered the flowers.
“And what does any of that,” I said, “have to do with leaving your coffee cup on the table every morning?”
Susan didn’t answer.
“Or making her drive forty minutes to town,” I said, “because you don’t like the mayonnaise she buys?”
Nothing.
“Or telling her where she’s allowed to put her own flowers? In her own house? That her husband bought? That she’s been coming to for thirty years?”
Susan’s face changed.
Across from her, my mother looked down at her lap.
I kept going. I couldn’t stop now.
“Maybe that’s why you let her make breakfast the first weekend,” I said. “Maybe that’s even why you let her make it the second weekend. Because you were trying to let her feel needed. Fine. I believe you.”
I looked right at her.
“But that isn’t why you stopped saying thank you.”
Susan’s mouth opened.
Then it closed.
She didn’t have an answer.
Richard was staring down at the deck boards. At his own feet. In his fishing hat.
Daniel was standing behind him in the doorway. Very still.
Nobody said anything. The wind moved through the pine trees around the cabin. A boat went by out on the lake, far away. A loon called somewhere.
It was a long, long silence.
And then my mother spoke.
“I do like it,” she said.
I turned toward her.
She folded her hands on top of her mystery novel. She looked out at the water.
“I like cooking for everybody,” Mom said. “I really do. I like having all the bedrooms full. I like hearing people moving around down here in the morning. I like the sound of it. The dishes. The voices. Somebody laughing on the deck.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“When your father died,” she said to me, “this house was so quiet. For so long. Two whole summers, I couldn’t come up here. Because it was so quiet. And now it’s not quiet anymore. And I love that. I really do love that.”
Susan looked relieved. Too quickly. Her shoulders came down.
But my mother wasn’t finished.
“But I suppose,” Mom said slowly, “I got carried away.”
“With what, Mom?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“Trying to make them want to come back,” she said.
I didn’t understand at first.
I just stood there on the deck. Looking at her.
And then I did.
All at once. Like a wave coming in off the lake.
My mother gave a small, embarrassed little laugh. She looked down at her hands.
“You got married, honey,” she said. “And suddenly there was this whole other family. Susan and Richard. Daniel’s aunts and uncles and cousins. All these people I didn’t know. And I just—” She stopped. “I wanted things to be easy. For you. I wanted them to like being here. I wanted them to like me. I wanted you to never have to worry that your mother and your husband’s mother couldn’t get along.”
I looked at her.
“The sheets,” I said quietly.
Mom smiled. Just a little. A tired, sheepish smile.
“The sheets,” she said.
“The four-hundred-thread-count sheets. And the new towels. And the little soap basket in the bathroom.”
“I wanted everybody to be comfortable.”
“The special mayonnaise,” I said. “Eleven dollars a jar.”
“Susan likes it,” Mom said.
“The peach cobbler. Every Saturday night. Because Richard said once, back in June, that he liked peach cobbler.”
Across the deck, Richard looked up. Surprised.
“You make that for me?” he said. “Every week?”
“You said you liked it,” Mom said.
Richard looked stricken.
“I did say that,” he said slowly. “I remember saying that. I don’t even—I don’t even really like peach cobbler that much. I was just being polite.”
My mother stared at him.
And then, for some reason, she started to laugh.
“Every time we came back,” I said. “Every Friday night. When our cars pulled in.”
Mom looked at me. She stopped laughing.
“I thought I was doing something right,” she said quietly.
The whole summer rearranged itself in my head. Like furniture being moved around in a room.
My mother hadn’t been serving Susan just because she couldn’t say no. Just because she was soft. Just because she wanted to keep the peace.
She’d been auditioning.
For eight weeks. Every weekend. Every pancake, every pot roast, every eleven-dollar jar of mayonnaise, every coffee cup picked up off the side table.
She’d been auditioning for a place in my new family.
She’d been trying to earn it.
Susan was looking at my mother. Her face had gone pale.
“Maggie,” she said. “I thought—I honestly thought you liked doing all of this. That it made you happy. You always looked so happy.”
Mom nodded.
“I do like it,” she said.
Susan blinked. Confused.
And then my mother said the thing that I think about all the time now. The thing I’ve written down and stuck on my own refrigerator at home.
“I like taking care of people, Susan,” Mom said quietly. “I don’t like being taken for granted. Those aren’t the same thing.”
Nobody had anything to say after that.
Susan sat very still in her plastic chair. Looking at my mother. Looking at the corner of the deck. At the six blue flower boxes full of red geraniums, sitting next to the trash cans.
Richard took off his fishing hat. He held it in both hands.
Daniel came out onto the deck. He sat down on the steps. He didn’t say anything either.
We all just sat there. The five of us. On my mother’s deck. Looking at the lake.
For a long time.
At five o’clock, Susan came into the kitchen.
She stood in front of the dry-erase board. She read it again.
Her name was beside dinner. Saturday: Susan.
For a second, I thought we were about to start the whole fight all over again. I braced myself. I was standing at the sink, washing lettuce.
Susan stared at the board.
Then she turned around and looked at my mother. Who was sitting at the kitchen table. With her mystery novel. On page thirty-one now. She’d made some progress.
“Maggie,” Susan said. “What were you planning to make? For tonight?”
Mom started to stand up.
I gave her a look.
She sat back down.
“Chicken,” Mom said. “With roasted potatoes. And green beans. The chicken’s in the refrigerator. I marinated it last night.”
Susan sighed. A long sigh. Like somebody about to climb a mountain.
“Fine,” she said. “Where do you keep the potatoes?”
Dinner wasn’t great.
It wasn’t awful either.
Susan overcooked the chicken. It was a little dry. Like the eggs. She forgot to put salt on the green beans. The potatoes were a little crunchy in the middle.
She asked about every single cabinet in the kitchen. Where’s the baking sheet? Where’s the olive oil? Where’s the pepper? Is this the oven mitt or a pot holder? What’s the difference?
But halfway through cooking, something changed.
She stopped asking my mother.
She started looking for things herself. Opening drawers. Opening cabinets. Finding things.
At one point, she found the spatula. The one she couldn’t find that morning. It was hanging on a hook on the side of the refrigerator. Right where it’s always been.
She held it up. She looked at it.
“Huh,” she said.
We all sat down to eat.
Susan’s dry chicken. Susan’s crunchy potatoes. Susan’s unsalted green beans.
Everybody ate everything.
“This is good, Mom,” Daniel said.
“No, it isn’t,” Susan said.
“It’s fine,” Richard said.
“It’s edible,” Susan said.
My mother took a bite of chicken. She chewed very slowly. Very carefully.
“It’s very good, Susan,” she said. “Thank you.”
Susan looked at her. For a long moment.
“You’re welcome, Maggie,” she said.
After dinner, my mom automatically reached for the plates.
Out of habit. Thirty years of habit. Her hands just went out on their own.
But Susan picked them up first.
“Leave those,” Susan said. “I’ll get them.”
My mother smiled.
And then her expression changed.
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