“I suppose you’re right, but when I was a kid all I saw was a mother who cared more about research and a career than me, except when she could show me off to her friends by having me recite ‘Evangeline’ in French.” Longfellow had detailed the plight of the Acadians’, or Cajuns’, historical exile in that well-loved poem. He’d come to hate it.
“Remember when they pulled ‘Evangeline’ from the English curriculum in high school? Some people need to get a life and leave other people’s alone.”
He nodded.
“Now I understand. Your mother relishes highbrow stuff. Me, I’m lowbrow, for sure.” Charmaine smiled after she spoke. It was obvious she could care less what his mother thought of her. Bless her self-confident soul!
“I kind of like lowbrow,” he said. Way too much!
“I know,” she said, and smiled again.
Does she have any idea how my heart races when she smiles like that?
No, someone replied.
His head jerked to the right. St. Jude just stared straight ahead.
“Back to my mother. You can’t be offended by my mother disliking you, chère. She’s pretty good at spreading her dislikes around.”
“Personally, I think she abused you as a child… with neglect.”
They’d had this conversation before, and he wasn’t in the mood for rehashing the old argument. “Some women—rather, some people—sacrifice their personal lives for a greater good.” Son of a bitch! Am I really defending my mother? Wonders never cease.
“Unlike my mother who sacrificed me for her own good?” Charmaine asked.
“Well, they both did, in the end. But the fact that we were both neglected, in different ways, doesn’t constitute child abuse.” I need a psychiatrist.
“Would you ever do that to your own child?”
“Never.”
His mother, now a full professor at Tulane and a well-known feminist, had never married. “Maybe my mother would have acted differently if I’d been a girl.” Yep, a good psychiatrist.
“Puh-leeze!”
“Really. Sometimes I wonder if my mother likes men at all. Her rage is so bitter about the male species… including me.” I had three beers tonight. Could they be causing this running of the tongue?
“She was rather cool to you when we were married.” Charmaine mused. “I mean, when we were married and living together.”
Raoul felt an odd pleasure at Charmaine’s remembering that they were still married. “Well, cool turned to ice eventually. She totally cut me off when I was arrested for drug dealing. She never once questioned that I was guilty.”
“It’s amazing the impact mothers can have on their children,” she said, a wistful expression on her face.
“Not just on children. My mother’s twisting it to my dad on numerous occasions over the years turned him into a hard, resentful man.”
“You never understood your father,” she claimed.
He ignored her claim, one she’d made before with no explanations. “I suspect there were a number of affairs but never a marriage for him, either.”
Charmaine’s eyes suddenly went wide, as if she’d just thought of something. “Rusty! You said you hadn’t seen your mother in over two years. Don’t tell me. She didn’t come to your trial… or visit you in jail?”
He shrugged. “I was an embarrassment. She was about to get her professorship, and she couldn’t risk the association.” Not that I would have allowed her on my visitor list.
“Bull crap!”
He smiled at Charmaine’s vehemence. “Hey, sweetheart, you didn’t come either,” he pointed out gently. Not that I would have allowed you to come to that sordid place, either.
“That’s the second time you’ve said that to me. I don’t recall you asking me to come.”
“Would you have come if I’d asked?” Pointless question.
“Probably not,” she confessed. “I had just gotten married again.”
He winced, not wanting to be reminded.
“Oh, don’t make that face at me. I imagine you had just as many women in your life these past ten years. You just didn’t marry them.”
“Were you in love with all of them?” I do not want to know. Don’t tell me. Dumb question. One of many in a long line of dumb questions tonight.
“No,” she said flatly, without hesitation.
Maybe it wasn’t such a dumb question. “Any of them?”