Hotel Indigo (3 page)

“What do you need, Mom?”
 

“Just letting you know brunch is ready.”
 

“I’m good.”
 

“Good at what?”
 

“I mean I don’t need brunch.”
 

“What do you mean,
you don’t need brunch?”
 

I resist the desire to roll my eyes. “I just don’t need it.”
 

“Of course you need it.”
 

“I already had breakfast.”
 

“Why did you have breakfast? It’s Sunday.”
 

“I eat breakfast every day.”
 

“Even on Sundays?”
 

I sigh.

“Carlos made eggs Benedict,” she says.

“I don’t like eggs. You know I don’t like eggs.”
 

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not overweight anymore.”
 

I look down at my hips, which are totally fine but suddenly seem a mile wide. I’m fairly sure my stomach is flat, but start to wonder if I’m sporting a cookie belly, and in denial.
Thanks, Mom.
 

“You’re a grown woman,” she says. “You should have brunch.”
 

“I don’t see the logical connection between those two things.”

“At least have a mimosa.”
 

“I don’t want a mimosa.”
 

She looks me over, spies the mascara brush in my hand. It’s only makeup, but suddenly I feel like I’ve been busted for something. “Are you going out?”
 

“Just to the grocery store.”
 

“Carlos can shop.”
 

“He’s only supposed to get stuff for the food he cooks, Mom.” I’ve actually had this chat with Carlos. Mom doesn’t have or want full-time help, but she hates cooking as much as she’s afraid (thanks to Dad, though she’d never admit it) of going out. So she hired a personal chef for a few meals a week almost the second she moved into this ludicrously expensive rental. Carlos is supposed to buy supplies for cooking, but my mother thinks he’s a concierge. She’s asked him to buy toilet paper and tampons; once she asked him to pick out a birthday card for Caspian. It was in Spanish.
 

“Oh, he doesn’t mind.”
 

“I don’t need brunch. I can do the shopping.”
 

“That’s absurd. Caspian pays you half a million dollars per year.”
 

I actually stop moving for a second. I’m not sure how she knows my GameStorming salary, but I’m torn between complaining about another breach of privacy or rebutting her.
 

“Anyone can shop,” I say, “regardless of income.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I want to.”
 

“Why would you
want
to?” She wrinkles her nose.
 

I think:
So I can get out of this house and away from you. Because I lied to myself when I came here to help you through your breakdown after Dad’s death, telling myself that a hiatus from San Francisco would double as a vacation here — yet I’ve barely had a moment alone. And I need it, Mom. I love you, but holy shit do I need a break from you sometimes
.

“I just want to get out, is all.”
 

“
Out
?”
 

“Yes, Mom. Out of the house.”
 

“I need you to take me to the lawyer’s office later today. And the banker handling your father’s estate.”

“It’s Sunday.”
 

“We’ve paid enough that they can be available when we need them.”
 

“That’s not the kind of
out
I have in mind.”
 

She glances at my makeup. “Well. Then you should really tone it down. You look like a prostitute.”
 

I feel a strong urge to make a defiant teenager face and say,
Nuh-uuuh!
Instead I stare at her.
 

“You should be glad I’m telling you. Men won’t want you if you seem too …
adventurous
.”
 

This feels Freudian to me. I’m pretty sure she’s talking about herself. From the stories she’s told as her grief-slash-release-from-captivity passed in the wake of my dad’s death, I get the feeling Mom used to be a free spirit. Dad trained her right out of that. The mother who raised me was gravestone silent when the man of the house was around, practically tiptoeing through life as if afraid of being noticed. When he went to work, she moved into her other mode: obsessive helicopter parent, where there was no rule or expectation too minor for Caspian and me to live and die by.
 

“I’m not adventurous, Mom.” I hate myself a little for saying it, but at this point I only want the arguments to end.
 

“Many of my friends have sons they’d love you to meet.”
 

Friends
. It’s a funny choice of words. Mom hasn’t seen these people she calls friends for twenty years, but somehow the same old society circles have kept spinning in her absence.

“I’m not looking to meet anyone.”
 

“You just said you wanted to go out!”
 

“To the store. Maybe to Hill of Beans?”
 

“Hill of Beans! Who are you going to meet at Hill of Beans?”
 

“I don’t want to
meet
anyone other than a barista!”
 

“Why would you want to meet a
barista?”
 

This time, I actually roll my eyes. I don’t know what’s more insulting: that she keeps trying to hook me up at the worst possible time for a relationship, or that she’d honestly be angry at me if I happened to ever date anyone who made less than seventy bucks an hour.
 

“Don’t roll your eyes at me.”
 

“I wasn’t—”

“You stay in my house, you’ll respect me.”
 

“I’m here
for you!
I came here to help
you
out!”
 

“And this is how you help? By rolling your eyes at me?”
 

“Don’t turn this around.”
 

This is an argument we have a few times a week, but it never gets resolved. Mom acts like she’s putting me up during my time of need, but the inverse is true. I’d
rather
have stayed in San Francisco. I’d
rather
still be working. But no matter how much Mom pretends that her moving away from the home she shared with my father was business as usual, the depth of her mental breakdown was apparent since long before the funeral.
 

And who would keep her sane? Who would stop her from taking all of her sleeping pills at once and never waking up? Caspian? No, of course not. He’s too important, too busy. He cut the apron strings long ago — maybe around the time my father burned scars into his arms and Mom buried her head in the sand.
 

“You chose to come here, Lucy.”
 

Finally, a “Lucy.” But the word sounds painful

She goes on: “I didn’t ask you to follow me to Inferno.”
 

“You needed me.”
 

Her face has twisted a bit, becoming more of a sneer. She’s done a chameleon’s flip, from henpecking to aggressive. This is how she handles hurt. I keep trying to remember that when she cuts me with words, it’s because she can’t face her own pain. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

“I didn’t
need you.”
 

“You were—”
 

“I never
needed
you. Your father was sick for a very long time. And who dealt with it just fine on her own?”

“You weren’t dealing fine. You were—”
 

Again she interrupts me, her eyes like daggers. “I sure didn’t
need you
back in the old house. Who went to all his appointments? Who took care of him
every day?
”
 

“I was over there all the time!” I feel my own hurt mixing with anger. The only thing worse than watching my father die week by week is being yelled at for it. I get the worst of both worlds: the pain of being there for them, and the guilt that comes with Mom not noticing, or thinking it was never enough.
 

I want to throw Caspian under the bus. He never showed up, not once. But Caspian made his stand long ago. I was the sucker who let these people keep their hooks in me.
 

“I washed him,” she spits. “I tended to him and waited on him. I kept him company. And you? You were out being an
entrepreneur
.”
 

“That’s not fair, Mom.” I’m less angry than I should be. My eyes prickle with moisture.

“So you want to go? Fine. Go out. Gallivant around. Have fun out there.”
 

“I’m just talking about going to the store!”
 

“Are you?” She gives me a
gotcha
expression. “I found that brochure in your room.”
 

“Why were you in my room?”
 

“It’s my house!”
 

I’d ask which brochure, but I already know. My home is across the country. I’m temporary here and barely moved out of my suitcase. It’s not like I have tons of literature lying around.
 

My mother’s angry face shifts into something else. Softer, more vulnerable. “If you want to stay at that hotel instead of here, go ahead.”
 

“It’s not
really
a hotel, Mom.
Hotel Indigo
is just its name, but really it’s a resort. You go for a few days or a week, as a vacation.”
 

“Ah.” She looks away. “A resort. A vacation.”
 

I know what she’s doing. If she looked at the brochure at all, she knows goddamn well that Hotel Indigo is basically a high-end spa. She’s acting surprised for effect, and of course it’s working. Guilt threatens me. But holy shit, I can’t keep taking this.
 

“I was just thinking about it.”
 

“Thinking about a vacation. While you’re here to
help
me.”
 

“You’re fine here, Mom. It’s not like you’re in a nursing home, needing me every second.”
 

“Not yet.”
 

“If I went, I wouldn’t even be ‘away.’ It’s just outside of town. Anything you need, you could just let me know and I’d come right over.”
 

“Hmm. Seems like you’ve got it all figured out.”
 

“Mom …”
 

But she turns on a dime and clacks away in her sensible heels, presumably to have Eggs Benedict and mimosas. Alone, if necessary.

I sigh. I haven’t actually started applying mascara, so I decide not to bother. No reason I should look like a prostitute, according to my mother. Can’t meet the right kind of men that way, and this matters a whole fuckload of not-at-all because that’s the
last
thing I want or need right now.
 

I go into my room, biding time before I cave and go down to brunch. I know the guilt will eventually get me, but I need this few minutes first, to pretend I still have some self-respect.
 

I sit on the massive bed, with all its old-lady coverings. This house my mom rented is practically a palace, but she’s already saturated its air with her suffocating personality. I can’t relax here. And God knows I need to relax, whether Mom has a problem with it or not.
 

I open the Hotel Indigo brochure.
 

Massages.
 

Facials.
 

Pedicures and manicures.
 

Mud baths, seaweed wraps.
 

All that stuff I’ve been able to afford for years but never,
ever
let myself indulge in.
 

I pull out my phone and dial the number.
 

Just one week. My work is already on hold, and I can take
one week
for myself amid my mother’s chaos,
can’t I?
 

One week away from this pressure cooker, and then I’ll get back to work.