“There are plenty of women living with endometriosis who didn’t do what Nicky did.”
“So you’re blaming her?” her mother countered. “How can you talk about your sister this way? If you want to blame something, blame the androcentric medical field. What have I been telling you all these years?”
“I do not need lessons about the patriarchy from you! Only one of us is married to the fucking patriarchy and it’s not me!”
Avery was losing her cool, a feeling she hated more than anything. Her mother curled her lip into something between a snarl and a smile.
“I’m not blaming her,” Avery continued before she lost the thread of her argument completely. “She was suffering. And none of us knew how to help her. We have to talk about this stuff or it’s going to keep killing us one by one.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes.
“You never used to be this histrionic. Is it Chiti who tells you this?”
Her mother had always been suspicious of therapists, a class of professionals she lumped with psychics and healers as created to exploit the desperate and foolish. Avery suspected she was afraid of her children seeing one because she thought the therapist would fault her for whatever was wrong with Avery and her sisters. I don’t blame my mother for how I turned out. Why should you get to? Avery suspected that her choice to marry a therapist was regarded by her mother as not merely a betrayal of common sense, but of her mother too.
Every part of her wanted to scream, but with the greatest largesse imaginable, she decided to ignore this jab at her wife and try a softer approach.
“Can you at least acknowledge that he drinks a little too much?” she asked.
Her mother cast tensely around the room as if looking for a trap, then conceded with a slight drop of her shoulders.
“Yes, I can admit that.”
“Thank you. I’m not trying to criticize you and Dad. I’m just worried. It’s worrying that he should need to be in treatment for so long.”
“I appreciate that.”
Her voice was wary, but there was a relaxing of her jaw. Avery proceeded with caution.
“Have you thought about ever going to an Al-Anon meeting?”
Wrong move. Her mother’s voice shot up half an octave.
“And sit around listening to a gaggle of sad saps who blame everyone else for their problems tell me I should leave my husband? I’m quite all right, thank you!”
Avery folded her hands on the table and placed her forehead on them in defeat. How had she ended up here again? No matter what line of reasoning she chose, she ended up in the same futile place. If this was a case, she would have dropped it long ago. She wasn’t going to change her mother, not now, not ever.
“That’s not what it’s like,” she said in an exhausted voice.
“Don’t tell me what it’s like. I’ve been.”
Avery lifted her face from her hands. This was new.
“You went? When?”
“They judged me, Avery. Those women judged me. They told me to keep coming back. Sanctimonious twats.”
Avery almost laughed.
“That’s just a slogan. They say that to everyone who’s new.”
“I don’t need to be treated like some naughty schoolchild. I’m a grown woman with four grown children. I don’t need to be told to keep doing anything.”
“Three.”
“What?”
“You have three grown children.”
Her mother twisted the dishcloth in her hands. When she spoke her voice was cold, devoid of whatever emotion was roiling within her.
“I’m sure this streak of pedantry is put to good use in your chosen profession, but it is quite irritating in general conversation, Avery.”
Avery scowled.
“But why couldn’t you?” she asked.
“Why couldn’t I what?”
“Keep coming back?”
“I just told you—”
“Not for you, for us. Who was going to teach us how to be okay if you and Dad didn’t? How else were we meant to learn?”
Her mother looked at her in surprise.
“But look at you. You are okay. Better than okay! You’ve got a great career. A huge house, from what I hear. A beautiful wife. Bonnie was a world champion, for Christ’s sake. Lucky’s been on billboards all over the world. And Nicky was loved by those kids before…” She stopped herself. “How bad of a job could we have done if this is how you all ended up?”
