“Hmm.”
“Mom.”
“He likes you,” Joan said gleefully.
“Well, yeah. Because we’re friends.” Friends who’ve kissed.
“I’ve had a few friends like that in my day. One of them resulted in a daughter.”
“Gross,” Heather muttered. She was all for the Gilmore Girls–type relationship she and her mom had, more friends than mother/daughter, but she drew the line at sex talk.
“You’re young, honey! A little fling might be just what—”
“Nope. Not doing that,” Heather said. “Subject change . . . have you thought about my offer for Thanksgiving?”
The moment of silence from her usually chatty mother was all the answer she needed, and Heather tried to ward off the stab of frustration, but it came anyway.
“The new manager at the restaurant is thinking of staying open,” her mom said. “If I worked a shift, it’d be double pay.”
“Mom, if you need money—”
“No,” her mother said, a sharpness to her tone that Heather was unaccustomed to hearing. “I appreciate it, I do, but I’m doing just fine. And you know I’d love to see you on Thanksgiving, if you want to come out—”
“Mom, I’ve been in New York for nearly five years now,” Heather said quietly. “You haven’t come out to visit once.”
Her mom didn’t respond, and Heather’s frustration made the usual transition into hurt. She knew that New York was her dream, not her mother’s. Knew that her mother was perfectly happy back home in her trailer in a way that Heather never could have been.
But despite repeated offers to pay for her mother to come to visit, Joan always found an excuse. It always ended up that Heather trudged back to Michigan for the holidays, falling into old habits as she and her mom crowded around the tiny kitchen table and had ham sandwiches or canned soup because her mom’s grand plans of “cooking something new” had been derailed by a new TV show or a phone call from Sissy.
“New York just isn’t for me,” Joan said in a conciliatory tone.
“How do you know?” Heather asked with more snippiness than usual. “You’ve never been here.”
Her mom sighed. “Honey, you know that I’m proud of all you’ve accomplished, but you need to accept that I’m happy here.”
“I’m not asking you to move here. I don’t need you to live my life. I just want you to see it,” Heather said with a bit of pleading.
“I do see it. I always like everything you put on Facebook, and—”
“That isn’t the same, Mom.”
“What do you want from me, honey? You want me to put on high heels and come drink martinis with you?”
“You don’t have to mock. That’s not what I’m asking for, and you know it.”
There was a long sigh on the other end. “Maybe we should both cool off a little bit,” Joan said. “I hate fighting with you.”
“I hate fighting, too,” Heather said. “But it shouldn’t be a fight just because I invite you to my home for Thanksgiving.”
“I have to get going, sweetie.”
For what? One of your shows? Heather said to herself, and then immediately regretted the unkind thought. Her mom worked hard, harder than almost any other woman Heather knew, and she deserved the chance to take a load off. But she couldn’t help but feel like she was leaving her mother behind in a way, and the thought made her almost unbearably sad.
“All right,” Heather said, forcing brightness into her voice so her mom wouldn’t sense her bitterness. “No problem.”
“Good luck with the wedding stuff. I can’t wait to hear all about it next week!”
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I love you. You know that, right? And I mean it. I’m so proud.”
“I know,” Heather said. “I love you, too.”
They said their good-byes, and after hanging up, Heather pulled her blue throw blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around her, trying to ward off the stab of loneliness.
Her mom had Sissy and her salon friends and her restaurant clients. Heck, even the noisy, sometimes-bickering trailer-park community was there for each other.