Fiction: The Trouble with Wendy by Karen Regen Tuero

Photo Source: Unsplash

Wendy had been a mess for the last several months. I tried to get her out for walks to take her mind off her life. She came now and then. On walks around the neighborhood she told me bits and pieces of what was going on.

            The problem was her daughter - her only child - who was grown and out of the house. Michelle had moved upstate on a lark. Using money Wendy had set aside for college, Michelle leased a food truck, which Wendy helped outfit. Wendy, a longtime widow, made many trips to help Michelle get on her feet selling smoothies from the truck. Then, Michelle shut her out. She no longer let Wendy stay in the guest room at Wendy’s apartment, despite Wendy having painted and decorated the room, replacing the light fixture with a spare Wendy brought and installed. Instead, Michelle rented out the room. She told Wendy that if she wanted to visit, there was such a thing as a hotel.

            Wendy took this in stride. She explained to me that Michelle needed the extra rental income, and that it was true there were plenty of affordable hotels. But Wendy didn’t understand it when future attempts to make plans with Michelle were met with evasiveness and getting put off. Then it didn’t matter anymore because all of Wendy’s time was going toward visiting Wendy’s dad. He was not just sick, he was dying, and it was the kind of death we all dread. The man, a mechanic, gradually lost the ability to use his hands, and later to speak. For Wendy to see him was a half-day car trip, which she frequently made, and each time tore her up. As he was nearing his end, Wendy asked Michelle to come with her to say goodbye. He lived just an hour from Michelle and her smoothie truck. But Michelle never answered Wendy’s texts or calls. When Wendy finally reached her, Michelle screamed at her. She said, “I am not your security blanket. Deal with it.”

            Wendy thought there really were no words in the dictionary for the particular kind of hurt she felt. A new word needed to be invented for what a mother felt when her grown child caused irrevocable pain. But that wasn’t the end of the pain Michelle caused.

            You see, what little was left of their relationship was downgraded to Facebook. Michelle would post a picture of the smoothie truck and her flock of beloved customers and the flavor of the day and Wendy would give the picture a like and make a little comment. But Michelle ended even this communication by blocking Wendy on the platform. Wendy had only ever posted encouraging comments about Michelle and the smoothie truck, but her daughter took everything the wrong way. Everything Wendy said was taken as negative.

            “It’s her, it’s not you,” I said.

            But it did cross my mind that Wendy herself, in general, could be quite negative, and this was what Michelle was reacting to - the expectation of Wendy being this way.

            Michelle herself was negative. I had spent enough time with her to know this was true. I thought it was no wonder Wendy and Michelle didn’t get along.

            It occurred to me that any contact Michelle had with her mom probably reminded Michelle of what she hated most about herself. Not just Wendy’s negativity, but her aggression - I had once seen Wendy smash a cell phone in frustration against the side of her house. It was also Wendy's physical size - she was six feet tall and more than two hundred pounds. All of this - minus a couple inches of height - was Michelle to a tee. I thought if Michelle only loved herself more - inside and out - these mother-daughter issues would go away.

            I tried explaining this to Wendy on one of our walks. I said this was stuff Michelle needed to figure out for herself. Once she did that, she’d come back into Wendy’s life. In the meantime, Wendy should concentrate on her own happiness. She should do the little things that brought her joy.

            The problem with this suggestion, though, was that Wendy had built her life around Michelle. She told me as much. But I didn’t need to hear it because I had seen it. Wendy had given up a job she loved with unsteady hours in order to work in our school district. She got a job assisting the superintendent to be sure Michelle got into all the best programs at every stage from kindergarten to high school and could avail herself of every opportunity, despite Wendy’s meager single income. Michelle had gone on every school trip over the years from Disney to Barcelona.

            “Let her fail, let her learn for herself. Once she sees she can indeed do things independently, she’ll be open to you again. This is the problem with being a good mother. What do you get for it?” I said, shaking my head.

            Wendy thought there could be truth in this. “Of course,” I insisted. “What you need to do is build a separate life.”

            I did my best to help her do just that. Over the next few years we went on bicycle rides together. We went to the beach. We even went to Nova Scotia where she meant to show me the house her dad grew up in only to discover it had been replaced by a Tim Hortons. In the meantime, I kept loose tabs on Michelle. My own daughter knew people who were friends with Michelle. Through this, I heard things that were notable, things that fell into the category of “lifestyle choices.” Michelle was living on a commune, my daughter told me with a giggle. Michelle had not just one partner, but two, as she was a firm believer in polyamory, a word my daughter seemed to know but which I had to later look up. One of Michelle’s partners wore his hair in a man bun and had lost a great deal of teeth. The working theory was that he - and possibly Michelle - was smoking meth. Bits and pieces of this lifestyle were posted on Facebook. I thought it was no wonder Michelle had blocked her mom from the platform.

            All of this made me reflect on my own behavior toward my mom in my youth. I felt more than contrite. At Michelle’s age, I had treated my mom badly. I thought there needed to be a new word invented for the regret a grown daughter feels looking back at the nightmare she put her mother through. I had never joined a commune or done any threesomes but I had moved as far away from my mother as I could get without leaving the planet. I did many things that fell into the category of “lifestyle choices,” which earned my mother’s intense disapproval and only made me more determined to never again be in the same room with her. To be rid of her, I refrained from returning phone calls. I went long stretches without any contact. I only wanted to be free of her and her judgment. I wondered if this was the same desire that motivated Michelle. Regardless, from where I stood now as a mother myself, we were both bad daughters.

            This recognition of who I once was had the effect of bringing me closer to my own daughter. I felt nothing but gratitude to her for never joining a commune and cutting me out of her life. I wanted to believe that my early parenting choices - like keeping the job I loved and not hovering - made all the difference. That this molded my daughter into someone who would not kick me out of her life. But it could just as easily have been that my daughter was timid and conventional by nature, that it was nothing more than luck.

            As time went by I saw less and less of Wendy. She made excuses for not going on walks. It occurred to me that this was understandable. Our walks were always centered on Michelle; in fact, even when we weren't talking about Michelle, she loomed in some fashion. To see me, was to remember.

            I did wonder what Wendy knew about Michelle. I never told her what I heard from my daughter about the possibility of meth. Or about polyamory. Later I learned Michelle had a stillborn daughter, but I didn’t say a word. There were posts by Michelle expressing gratitude toward her chosen family for getting her through this tragedy. Their unconditional support was unlike anything she had known growing up. Seeing this, I wondered, What did Wendy know?

            When last I saw Wendy, she was going into the yoga studio. I was coming out of CVS next door and we said hello. She had dropped a good deal of weight and was maybe down to 170. She wore a bright blue shirt and sported a yoga roll tucked under one arm. She had on more makeup than she used to wear. We made small talk about the neighborhood. About changes to the school district. The superintendent was leaving and Wendy wasn’t sure she wanted to stick around for this new jerk coming in. Instead, she might get certified as an ultrasound tech. Cancer wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon and qualified people were in demand.

            I told her that sounded great, I was happy for her, and she thanked me. I didn’t say it but I was impressed. She had indeed built a life apart from her only child, an extraordinary feat.

            I decided not to share my own news. To tell her I had a newborn grandchild was only to inflict pain. Inviting Wendy to someday hold the infant and get a nice dose of the ineffable smell of a newborn would be tantamount to torture. I went to end our conversation with a quick hug and a “Good seeing you,” but Wendy stopped me. She congratulated me on my granddaughter. She had seen the photo I posted of me and the baby on Facebook. She was a cutie.

            “Thank you,” I said.

            Wendy responded by looking me in the eye and saying, “I had one but they buried her without me ever seeing her. Can you imagine that?”

            When I swallowed and pretended not to know anything about this, Wendy’s eyes drilled into me. “Pff. Well, probably you can’t imagine it. How could you when you’ve got your perfect daughter? Your f—- perfect life.”

            The anger in her voice took me aback. It reminded me of the trouble with Wendy: her negativity. It made me want to get as far away from her as possible. I could imagine how her daughter would feel the same way and arrange her life accordingly. I told Wendy how sorry I was for her loss.

            “Whatever,” Wendy said and gave me the finger. Then, hoisting up the yoga roll, she marched inside.

Karen Regen Tuero's micro, flash, and short fiction have appeared in North American Review, Lunch Ticket, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, New World Writing, Potomac Review, Iron Horse, Gargoyle, and more. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. For links to her published work, go to: https://linktr.ee/kregentuero