Page 9 of Good Bad Girl

“Well then you won’t like the alternatives because this is one of the better options. I thought I could keep paying the fees by seeing extra clients, but I’m quite far behind now and—”

“So let me live at home again. It’smyhouse,” Edith interrupts.

“You know you can’t. You fell over and nobody knew for days, remember? And you kept forgetting to take your heart medication—”

“Poppycock. There’s nothing wrong with my heart.”

“Because you don’t have one.”

“Pardon?”

“Maybe you know better than all the doctors who said you need to take the pills. After all, you know better than everyone.”

“Don’t speak to me as though I’m a child.”

“It’s hard not to when you keep behaving like one. What about the time when you left the gas stove on? Nearly blew up the whole street. And let’s not forget the time when—”

“Then let me live with you. In the pink house.” Edith’s voicetrembles and she hates herself for being so weak, so vulnerable, so needy. She’s never needed anyone her whole life. It’s as though their roles have been reversed. She used to make all the difficult decisions for them both, but now her daughter has become the parent in the relationship and Edith doesn’t like it. Not one little bit. Nobody does what she wants them to these days. Nobody listens. Clio shakes her head and Edith knows what that means. She shouldn’t have had to beg her own child to do the right the thing, shouldn’t have had to ask at all. She wishes she hadn’t.

“You’re looking a little red and bloated, dear. Are you feeling quite all right?” Edith asks.

“I’m fine, thank you—”

“It’s probably the menopause. Your grandmother puffed up like a balloon and lost her looks too when it happened to her. I was lucky, it must have skipped a generation.”

Her daughter sighs and shakes her head. “I found this in a box of your things.”

“What is it? I’m surprised you didn’t sell it like everything else.”

“I thought you might like to have it here,” her daughter says, taking something heavy-looking from her faux leather bag. Even her accessories pretend to be something they are not. Edith doesn’t recognize the object in her hand at first. But then the metal statue of a magnifying glass triggers a flood of memories, none of them good. The wordsHappy Retirement!are engraved on the chunky bronze plinth it is welded to.

“Why did you bring this?” Edith asks with a face full of disdain. She begrudgingly takes the statue, stares at it, then puts it on the dressing table as far away from her as she can. “Are youtryingto hurt me?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Then why remind me of things I want to forget? And why can’t I live with you?”

“We tried that. You living with me, remember? It didn’t work,” the woman wholookslike her daughter says. She wonders where her real daughter went. The one who did what she was told and didn’t answer back.

Edith feels dizzy. “Stop asking me if I remember things. Being old doesn’t mean I am senile. I. Do. Not. Belong. In. A. Home.”

Her daughter stares at her. One moment she looks like a little girl again, the next she looks like thiswoman. Astranger. “Do you have a vase somewhere?” the woman asks. “Something I can put these flowers in?” She looks around the room, then heads toward the bathroom where Dickens is hidden.

“There’s nothing in there,” Edith says, raising her voice more than she intended to.

The woman puts the flowers on the bed instead. “I’m sorry, Mum.”

“No, you’re not. And after everything I did for you.”

“Ha! That’s a good one.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Edith asks.

“‘How are you, Clio? How’s work? How are you feeling? Tell me what you’ve been up to.’ That’s the sort of thing most mothers might ask their children when they haven’t seen them for a while. You have zero interest in me, or my life. All you’ve done for years is criticize me and keep me at arm’s length. Like a stranger. But now you want to live with me?”

“I don’t know what I did to deserve such an ungrateful, spiteful, selfish child.”

“Yes, you do.”

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