Wendy blew out a breath. “Fine. It’s just…” Anything she said, her mother would take as a criticism. There was probably no way around that. “You’re alone in the kitchen for less than five minutes and you start cooking?”
Her mother arched a disdainful brow. “Someone has to feed everyone. You know Mema isn’t going to want to go out to eat. God only knows what the food is like up here.”
Wendy laughed in disbelief. “Trust me. There are plenty of restaurants in Palo Alto that are just fine. Even by your standards. And we’re a thirty-minute drive to San Francisco, where they have some of the best restaurants in the world. I think on the food front, we’re okay. And if Mema doesn’t want to go out, there are probably two dozen restaurants that would deliver.”
Naturally, having food delivered wasn’t something that would have occurred to her mother. Back in Texas, all of the Morgans lived within a few miles of each other, in various houses spread over the old Morgan homestead, deep in the big piney woods of East Texas. Sure you could have food catered out there, but not delivered. As a kid, Wendy used to bribe the pizza delivery guys with hundred-dollar tips, but that only worked on slow nights.
Her mom sighed. “I’ve already—”
“Right. You’ve already started defrosting the chicken.” Here her mother was, making chicken and dumplings. Wendy could barely identify the fridge, given that it was paneled to match the cabinetry. She walked down the island, so she stood just opposite her mother. “Give me a knife and I’ll get started on the carrots.”
Her mother crossed to a drawer, pulled out a vegetable peeler and knife, then pulled a cutting board from a lower cabinet. A few seconds of silence later and Wendy was at work across from her mom.
Her mother had always been a curious mix of homespun Texas farmwife and old oil money. Wendy’s maternal grandparents had been hardscrabble farmers before striking oil on their land in the sixties. Having lived through the dustbowl of the fifties, and despite marrying into a family of old money and big oil, her mother had never quite shaken off the farm dirt. It was one of the things Wendy loved best about her mom.
“You used to love to help me in the kitchen,” her mother said suddenly.
Wendy couldn’t tell if there was more than nostalgia in her voice. “You used to let me,” she reminded her mother. She paused for a second, considering the carrot under her knife. “But you never really needed me there. I stopped wanting to help when I realized that whatever I did wasn’t going to be good enough.”
Her mother’s hand stilled and she looked up. “Is that what you think?”
Wendy continued slicing the carrots for a few minutes in silence, enjoying the way the knife slid through the fibrous vegetable. As she chopped, she felt some of her anger dissipating. Maybe there was something to this cooking-when-you’re-upset thing.
“Momma, nothing I’ve ever done has been good enough for this family.” She gave a satisfying slice to a carrot. “Not my lack of interest in social climbing. Not my unfocused college education.” She chopped another carrot to bits. “And certainly not my job at FMJ.”
“Well,” her mother said, wiping her hands on the towel. “Now that you’ve landed Jonathon—”
“No, Momma.” Wendy slammed the knife down. “My job at FMJ had nothing to do with landing a husband. If all I wanted was a rich husband, you could have arranged that for me as soon as I was of age.” Picking the knife back up, she sliced through a carrot with a smooth, even motion. Keep it smooth. Keep it calm. “I work at FMJ because it’s a company I believe in. And because I enjoy my work. That’s enough for me. And for once in my life, I’d like for it to be enough for you and Daddy.”
“Honey, if it seems like I’ve been trying to fix you your entire life, it’s because I know how hard it is to not quite fit in with this family. I know how hard this world of wealth and privilege can be to people who are different. I didn’t want that for you.”
“Momma, I’m never going to fit into this world. I’m just not. Your constant browbeating has never done anything except make me feel worse about it.”
Her mother blanched and turned away to dab delicately at her eyes, all the while making unmistakable sniffling noises. “I had no idea.”
Wendy had seen her mother bury emotions often enough to recognize this for the show it so obviously was.
“Oh, Momma.” Wendy rolled her eyes. “Of course you did. You just figured you were stronger than I was and that eventually you’d win. You never counted on me being just as strong willed as you are.”
After a few minutes of silence, she said softly, “I’m sorry,
Mom.”
Her mother didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Apology accepted.”
“I really do wish you’d been here for the wedding. I guess I should have made sure you knew that.”
Her mom slapped the knife down onto the counter. “You guess?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, putting a little more force into the chopping. “I guess I should have.”
“I am your mother. Is it so wrong for me to wish you’d wanted me here enough to—”
“Oh, this is so typical,” she said. “Why should I have to beg you to come to my wedding? I’ve lived in California for over five years. When I first moved here, I invited y’all out to visit all the time. You never came. No one in the family has shown any interest in my life or my work until now. But now that baby Peyton is here, you’ve descended like a plague of locusts and—”
“My land,” her mother said, cutting her off, her hands going to her hips. “And you wonder why we didn’t want to come before now, when you talk about us like that.”
Wendy just shook her head. Once again, she’d managed to offend and horrify her mother. Somehow, her mother always ended up as the bridge between Wendy and the rest of the Morgans. The mediator pulled in both directions, satisfying no one.
“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. Obviously I don’t think you’re a locust. Or a plague.”
“Well, then, how did you mean it?”
“It’s just—” Bracing her hands on either side of the cutting board, she let her head drop while she collected her thoughts. She stared at the neat little carrot circles. They were nearly all uniform. Only a few slices stood out. The bits too bumpy or misshapen. The pieces that didn’t fit.
All her life, she’d felt like that. The imperfect bit that no one wanted and no one knew what to do with. Until she’d gone to work for FMJ. And there, finally, she’d fit in.
Her mother just shook her head, sweeping up the pile of diced celery and dumping it in the pot. “You’re always so eager to believe the worst of us.”
“That’s not true.”
“It most certainly is. All your life, you’ve been rebellious just for the sake of rebellion. Every choice you’ve made since the day you turned fifteen has been designed to irritate your father and grandmother. And now this.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Remember when you were fifteen and you and Bitsy bought those home-perm kits and gave yourselves home perms four days before picture day at the school?”
She did remember. Of course she did. Bitsy had ended up with nice, bouncy curls. But she’d been bald for months while her hair grew back out. Her father had been so mad his face had turned beet-red and her mother had run off to the bathroom for a dose of his blood-pressure medicine.
That had not been her finest moment.
“Or the time you wanted to go to Mexico with that boyfriend of yours. When we told