Page 9 of Take What Hurts

Mackenzie, knowing the fight that was to come and feeling entirely sapped of the energy to have it, withered.

“Why what, darling?”

Mackenzie dropped her eyes to the pristine tablecloth. It was easier to appease. She’d learned it first in her teenage years when she’d begun to push against her mother, like most teenagers. She’d learned quicker than most that pushing was a cardinal sin and only made things worse. So she reeled the words she wanted to say back into her brain. “Nothing. That’s lovely, thank you.”

Sensing weakness, her mother turned her phone so Mackenzie could see the screen. “Look at these photos Reilly sent me yesterday.”

And Mackenzie’s stomach dropped to her feet. Because there was that thing she’d resolutely decided not to think about in San Francisco, and had done a bang-up job of avoiding in the hours since. But apparently the time for avoidance was over, because there on the screen was Reilly and her wife, cozied up together on a large hospital bed, holding in their arms a tiny bundle of flesh and bone with a sweet button nose and a pink knitted hat atop her tiny head. The ringing started in Mackenzie’s ears, and her vision went white around the edges. She registered dimly her mother prattling on as she scrolled through more photos. Reilly cradling the little girl in her arms, Reilly placing a soft kiss on her forehead. Reilly’s wife bringing the tiny girl to her breast, Reilly looking on with tender care and love in her eyes.

Her mother took the phone back to her side of the table, and the noise in the restaurant came rushing back. “Addison, they’ve named her. Lovely name,” her mother finished, sitting back in her chair.

Bile burned Mackenzie’s throat. “Addison?” she croaked.

Her mother nodded, narrow eyed. “Yes. Like I said. A lovely name.”

Mackenzie stared at her, the backs of her eyes burning. Addison. The name they’d chosen for their little girl. The one who had been there and then who, in an afternoon that made Mackenzie sick to think about, wasn’t anymore. The one Mackenzie had mourned. Still mourned. That had consumed her with grief. She would not cry. She would not give her mother the satisfaction.

“Right. Yes. A lovely name.” The words pushed past Mackenzie’s lips without her permission. How could she? Mackenzie swallowed the relentless bile and sucked in a breath to quell the tears trying to squeeze out of her eyes. “How often do you speak with Reilly?”

Her mother scrunched up her face, thinking. “Oh, a few times a week, I suppose?”

“A few—but you were never interested in talking to her when we were together. Why do you talk to her now?” Mackenzie asked, confused and knowing she was toeing a fine line between having a conversation with her mother and having an argument with her mother, as her mother would assert in no uncertain terms. That had been a pattern throughout her childhood, and when Mackenzie was assessed to have been argumentative, her mother existed in silence until such a time as Mackenzie apologized.

Her mother shrugged, taking a sip of the wine that had arrived during the bombardment of photographic evidence of Reilly’s attempt to completely erase their life together. Their family. “We both have experience with you, and we bond over that.”

Mackenzie fell back into her chair, feeling in every way as though she’d been slapped. “What do you mean by that?”

Her mother waved her hand absently. “Oh, you know. The lateness, the career obsession, the lack of time spent with loved ones, the volatile emotions, the inability to move on and let things go.” Mackenzie just stared at her across the table as her mother continued. “You really did make that girl miserable after you had that loss. Perhaps if you’d quit drinking coffee, like I said you should, or if you’d eaten more red meat and paid more attention to how you were preparing food, it wouldn’t have happened and you and Reilly would still be together. And then, to drag out the misery of it all rather than moving on. Really, how was anyone supposed to tolerate all of that?”

The waiter chose that moment to place their meals in front of them. “Thank you, dear.” Her mother smiled up at the waiter, showing more warmth toward him than Mackenzie thought she’d ever directed at her. “Could I trouble you for some butter for the greens, please?”

“Of course, madam.”

“Thank you.” She flashed another smile, which she dropped just as quickly as he departed. She returned her gaze to the table, picked up her silverware, and sawed into the leathery hunk of meat. “And I understand that, because you rarely make time for me, despite everything I did for you.” Here it came. The heavy guilt kicked at her insides while she waited for her mother to land the next blow. “You’re only here because of me. I brought you into this world and it cost me everything, and yet, you never make time unless I hound you for it.”

Mackenzie stared at the perfect greens sitting in the middle of the table. Her hands shook where they were clenched tightly in her lap under the tablecloth. Her cheeks were faintly wet. She wasn’t sure she could speak. The inaccuracy of it all—her brain niggled at her to correct it. To deny it. It warred with the churning ache that told her she deserved this. That her mother was right.

God, she fucking hated herself in these moments.

She surreptitiously darted her eyes around the restaurant, praying that no one from work was here to witness the complete collapse of the carefully crafted person she was professionally. If they only knew how pathetic she was when it came to her mother, she was sure they’d fire her.

“Why aren’t you eating, dear? Don’t waste it; you’ll regret it later when the bill comes,” she tittered, placing another forkful of meat in her mouth.

Mackenzie lifted her eyes to her mother, sitting across the table from her—chewing her steak like it was the most wonderful thing she’d ever put in her mouth, picking at the now perfectly buttered greens, sipping her expensive wine—with all the contentment and self-satisfaction of a person enjoying a simple, pleasant evening out at a restaurant. There was no hint of embarrassment or discomfort with what she’d relayed to her own daughter. No ounce of regret.

Rage bubbled in Mackenzie’s empty stomach. Her heart kicked into high gear with the shot of adrenaline that accompanied the way her brain pushed every word she’d ever wanted to say to her mother into her mouth. She swallowed most of them with a fortifying sip of wine, but this was too much and she was too old and too broken and too tired to sit and say nothing. Swallowing hard around the fear that rose up in her throat, she finally spoke. “Why would you say such a thing to me? How could you say that to me?” Mackenzie wasn’t certain which thing in particular she meant. There was so much in one conversation.

Her mother looked at her with what Mackenzie was despairing to see was genuine confusion. “Oh, Mackenzie, it’s just facts, dear.”

The blood ran out of her head, and she sucked in a breath. “Don’t you think an ounce of compassion might be in order? That perhaps losing a child—” Her voice failed her, and she sucked in a deep breath before she continued, looking anywhere but across the table. “Losing a child, at any point. But especially after we’d started putting furniture together, and painting, and we had named her. Don’t you think that might give me a pass… with my own mother?”

Her mother rolled her eyes on a scoff. “I did tell you it was too early to put furniture together, and it was absolutely ridiculous that you’d named her.”

Mackenzie shoved her seat back and stood abruptly, the rage finally strong enough to beat out the guilt. “I’m leaving,” she snapped, throwing her napkin onto the rib eye.

Her mother leveled her with a stare. Quietly, dangerously, she spat, “You sit down right now. Don’t you dare embarrass me here.”

Cold discomfort slid down her spine, and the animal part of her brain that was biologically geared to maintain the presence of the person who was her first caregiver screamed at her. It was an urgent, inherent need that made it entirely impossible for Mackenzie to think of anything her therapist had ever said to her about this type of response. The rage mostly evaporated, and, clammy with what remained, she lowered herself back down into her chair. Her bottom lip shuddered as she sat there while her mother pulled her face into a satisfied smile and continued with her steak.