Like mother, like daughter. In the saddest, most inevitable of all possible ways. We’ve been out of touch, bad, bad lovers — my bad. I’ve been writer-ing so, so hard, y’all, and work, too–the paid kind–puts a big ole hole in the day. But Venus is back, with just a short li’l Thang, a wee, sad amuse-bouche, to get our toes wet again. Going forward I will try to keep her coming at reasonable intervals (anything beyond a month is unreasonable, agreed) through to the end. Funnily, I’m still, twenty-some years later, writing about mothers and daughters. Because adopted? No idea, you figure that out.
After you look in on Danae, and maybe light a candle or two for her; she could use it. And if you’d like some leftovers to take the hungry edge off so you don’t eat like a pig at the restaurant, you can dig around in the fridge by clicking right here.
~
Danae had known that her mother would leave, but she had thought, had believed, had hoped that Marta would leave with the lawyer, not because of him. On the morning after Cornelia’s dinner—no one knew it yet, but she might have been, at that very moment, purchasing the ticket that would send her painlessly from this life; everyone would later insist on the painless part, as though Marta had lived without any pain, ever—on the way down the stairs to breakfast, Danae didn’t stop. Marta would be there, and the lawyer wouldn’t be coming again anyway, so stopping on the landing didn’t mean anything anymore.
Instead, Danae imagined it. She’d looked in on Marta sleeping so many times, on so many mornings, that she could bring it all up, right down to the last detail. Her mother’s beautiful, disappointed face, turned up toward the hypnotic rotations of the ceiling fan. Her hair, dark like Danae’s, spilling over the yellowed pillowcase Aunt Cornelia had embroidered, years ago when she was young, with very proper yellow and blue flowers.
Marta’s head was always tilted to one side when she slept, one arm flung up like a rainbow above the dark cloud of hair. She looked like she was floating down from heaven on the bedclothes, a snapshot of a falling angel, beauty frozen and captured and held in limbo forever, away from the reaches of the passage of time. Danae had imagined her mother like that as she walked quietly down the stairs to breakfast on the morning after Cornelia’s dinner.
~
And she imagined her mother like that now, as she finished applying the dark lipstick. She no longer needed to look at the photograph, the one beneath the glass on her dressing table, to see the resemblance. They made them at the funeral home, Pearl had told her, for the family. To help them remember. As if Danae would ever forget. As if she could.
Pearl had given the portrait to her on the first anniversary of Marta’s death. Which Livia always said was an apotheosis. Danae had had to look the word up in the dictionary. When she’d found it, she’d liked it.
Her sister was waiting downstairs. One last time, Danae would pretend to want to go out to dinner.
~
More to come, Bad, Bad Lovers, more to come.
Right here, eventually (this semester is kickin’ my @$$, and the novel chews up whatever’s left).
It’ll happen, though. Promise. And when it does, same bad channel, same bad, bad place…
Till then, y’all be good. Or if you can’t be good, then please, please, please be very, very bad.
~
