And when we got to her little house and I helped her up the steps, she turned to me at the door and said, “Honey, you don’t have to put up with everything just because you love someone.”
I said, “Mom, he’s having a hard time.”
She just looked at me. The way she used to look at me when I was eight and I’d lied about not eating the last cookie. She kissed my forehead and went inside.
I drove home crying. When I got back that night, my husband was in a good mood. The house smelled like the steaks he’d finally gotten to grill.
He’d made a Caesar salad. He’d opened a bottle of wine. He hugged me and said it was nice to have our space back.
He said he knew it had been hard on me, too. He said next time we should think more carefully about whether bringing her here was really the best thing for her, since she’d seemed so uncomfortable. I let him hug me.
I didn’t say anything. I went to bed early. That was October.
Now I have to tell you about December because that’s where this story actually turns. His mother flies in from Connecticut every year for Christmas. She stays from December 22nd to January 2nd.
Eleven days. She is a perfectly nice woman in the way that women who have never been told no in their lives can be perfectly nice. She has very specific preferences.
She drinks her coffee a certain way. She likes her bedroom at exactly sixty-eight degrees. She doesn’t eat onions or peppers or anything she calls ethnic, which is a long list.
She does not lift a finger in the kitchen, not because she’s rude, but because she genuinely doesn’t seem to understand that food appears on tables through human labor. I have hosted her for six Christmases. I have learned her coffee order.
I have removed onions from every recipe in our holiday rotation. I have driven her to the outlet mall in High Point three times because she likes the Coach store there. I have sat through her stories about the country club fundraiser and which of her friends had work done on their faces.
I have done all of this with a smile because I love my husband, or I thought I did, and his mother is part of the package. This year, she arrived on December 22nd at three in the afternoon. I had spent four days preparing.
I deep-cleaned the guest room. I’d bought her specific brand of decaffeinated tea, which is only sold at one Whole Foods in our area. I’d made her a welcome basket with the lavender hand cream she likes and the magazine subscriptions she pretends she doesn’t read.
I had stocked the fridge with the food she’d eat and put away the food she wouldn’t. I had even moved the throw pillows on the guest bed because last year she’d mentioned they gave her allergies. My husband picked her up from the airport.
He came home grinning. He carried her bags in like a bellhop. He’d stopped on the way and gotten her favorite scones from a bakery in Cary.
That’s a forty-minute detour. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said to me at the door. She kissed both my cheeks.
She handed me her coat and said, “I’m just exhausted. The flight was a disaster. I need to lie down for a bit.”
I hung up her coat.
I carried her bags upstairs. I drew the blinds in the guest room because she likes them halfway open. I brought her a cup of her tea and a plate with two of the scones.
When I came back downstairs, my husband was opening a bottle of wine. He smiled at me and said, “It’s so nice to have her here, isn’t it?”
I said, “Yes.”
He poured me a glass. He said, “I love Christmas with my family.”
I held the glass in my hand and looked at him.
And something in my chest went very, very still. That night, his mother came down for dinner. I had made a roast chicken with rosemary and lemon.
She picked at it and said it was a little dry, but very nice. “Thank you, dear.”
She said the table looked lovely. She said it must be hard for me, working full-time and trying to keep a home.
She said it in the way she always did, like a compliment with a fishhook in it. My husband doted on her. He cut her chicken into smaller pieces.
He refilled her water glass twice without being asked. He laughed at every story she told, including one I had heard four times before about a woman at her bridge club who married a man twenty years younger. After dinner, he insisted I sit down.
He said, “Mom, you’ve been on your feet all week getting ready. Let me handle the dishes.”
He handed his mother a glass of port. He led her to the couch.
He turned on a holiday movie she liked. Then he disappeared into the kitchen. I sat on the love seat across from her, and she patted my knee and said, “He’s such a good boy.
You’re so lucky.”
I smiled. Twenty minutes later, my husband came back into the living room and said, “Honey, can you come help me figure out the dishwasher? I think it’s broken.”
The dishwasher was not broken.
The dishwasher was full of dirty dishes, exactly as I had left it. He had not loaded a single thing. He had been on his phone in the kitchen the entire time.
He whispered to me, “Just do it quick. Mom’s tired, and I don’t want her to hear it running while she’s trying to relax.”
I stood in the kitchen and I loaded the dishwasher. I scrubbed the roasting pan.
I wiped down the counters. I emptied the trash and took it out to the bin in the garage. It took me forty-five minutes.
When I came back into the living room, his mother was asleep on the couch with the port glass empty on the side table. My husband had his feet up on the ottoman and was scrolling on his phone. He looked up and smiled at me.
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