Her reply snuffed Claire’s anger. “How could they not want their daughter and grandchild?”
Cold as frost, she replied, “To my parents, what other people thought was more important to them than their daughter.”
Compassion warmed Claire’s heart. “You must have felt very alone.”
“Alone was better than their constant judgment and criticism.” Her heavy-lidded eyes dulled.
The realization that her mother treated Claire the way her parents had treated her rolled through Claire, fueling the tangle of anger and compassion. But her quest for understanding burst through. “What about my father?”
“Everything was beautiful until you arrived.” Her eyes sparkled for a second—Claire thought in memory of him—and then her eyes darkened. She was so quick to answer it seemed to Claire she had wanted to tell the tale for years. “Two days after you were born, he said he wasn’t having any fun. The reality of caring for you was too much for him. He went out that night to get a pizza and didn’t return. I never heard from him again.”
Claire couldn’t imagine abandoning a mother and infant. “How terrible. Did no one else know what happened to him?”
Mother dropped her head, resting her chin on her chest. And at that moment Claire realized how despairing and unloved she must have felt. She wanted to comfort her mother, but the woman was as rigid as she was cold. If Claire got close, her mother might shatter like a piece of glass, or worse, stop talking.
“He was from Canada, and I imagine he fled across the border.”
“Did you report him missing?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want him back. If he left me once, he’d do it again.”
Claire felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. Neither of her parents had wanted her. She’d let that sink in later. She wanted the whole story, now. “But how did you support us?”
Mother sat back, taking a deep drag on her cigarette and shot the smoke out toward the ceiling. “He left a few thousand dollars on the dresser—he could afford it—he was a musician. When that ran out, I took in typing jobs until I could afford a babysitter.”
“You blame me for losing everyone in your life.” Claire thought that would have pricked some emotion, but her mother just gave a half smile.
“I was happy before you came along.”
Claire didn’t let that sting for a second. “How could you be happy with people who controlled and abandoned you?”
Mother stared at a place far away, beyond Claire.
She wasn’t going to let her mother ignore her. “You could have given me up for adoption.” She raised her voice. “Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to defy my parents. I’d gone to college while living at home, working part time, and taking care of them. I’d done everything that was expected of me. When they threatened to disown me, I wanted to hurt them, show them what if felt like to be ignored, as they had ignored me, my dreams, my hopes.”
“So you used me to spite them.”
“Yes.”
Claire’s voice erupted before she had time to think. “You didn’t want me.”
“No.”
Claire’s fingers tingled with cold. She had cushioned her heart with all the kindness the Sisters had shown her. But her mother’s malice chipped away at Claire’s heart like a pecking bird. Try as her mother might, Claire would never allow her to destroy the Sisters’ love that Claire secreted in her heart.
She wanted her mother to know what being hated felt like. “Giving birth to me was a big price to pay for getting rid of all those losers—losers who you say made you happy.”
Mother’s lips opened, but no words nor smoke escaped her gaping mouth.
Claire stood. “Just think, if you’d had the courage to leave them on your own, you wouldn’t have needed me as your pathetic excuse.”
The ashes on her mother’s cigarette dropped onto her lap.
A sharp taste flushed Claire’s mouth. “I’m returning to the convent this afternoon. I don’t want to be near anyone who hates me.” She picked up the poodle and shook the ashes into her mother’s coffee. “You’re no better than your parents. You are as selfish and cold to me as they were to you.”
Claire longed to say she understood why her father left her mother, but she knew in her heart she couldn’t be that cruel. She tucked the poodle in her pocket and picked up her suitcase. Her mother wouldn’t look at her, so Claire figured that at least she had shamed her. She voiced the promise she made to herself. “For the rest of my life, I will do everything to ensure I never become anything like you.”
