Page 22 of Latte Girl
“You knew what your mother suffered. You knew exactly what kind of upheaval you would throw her into when you decided to toss aside everything we ever gave you to for the sake of some inane whim. If you ever want to have even the chance of seeing her again, you will do exactly as I tell you from thismomenton.”
He’s won. He’s got me in a chokehold now and heknowsit.
All my life, I’ve been told that my mother is fragile. My father inherited a corporate dynasty from his family; my mother got dangerously high blood pressurefromhers.
I knew the meaning of the word ‘aneurysm’ by the time I was eight years old. Some of my earliest memories are of being told to stop crying because it would disturb her and make her feel worse. Every slip up, every instance of misbehaviour I ever showed, was always punished with a reminder that when I did something bad, I made my mother stressed. When she was stressed, shegotsick.
I let my father use her as an excuse for everything he made me do, until after twenty-four years I got tired of being manipulated. I called his bluff. I turned my back on the job he gave me at the company and sent my application off to design school. For eight months, my motherwasfine.
Then I got the call. She’d had astroke.
Standing a few feet from my father, I drop my eyes and nodmyhead.
“Your mother needs stability,” he intones, his voice rising as the words issue out of him like thunder. “You will give her that by following the plan she and I set out for you. You will move back to this city. You will live where I tell you to. You will drive the car I tell you to. You will do the job I give you in my company, and you will do it as well as my son and the holder of an MBA I personally financed can be expectedtodo.”
I continue to nod as the ground seems to crumble away from under my feet, leaving me in a bottomlessfreefall.
“If you are successful enough, and if by some miracle your mother’s health recovers from the damage you have done, then, and only then, will I allow you to see her again. Do youunderstand?”
I think of my mother, of her frail shoulders that were always wrapped in satin or silk. She floated through my childhood, more of a fairy godmother to me than a living, breathing parent who did ordinary things like feed me or pick out my clothes. To me she was the soft whisper of a kiss on my cheek, the patter of slippers disappearing up the stairs. She was light and shadow and a sweet cloud of perfume still clinging to the air onceshe’dgone.
“Yes,” I tell my father. “Iunderstand.”
He heads across the vast living room, towards the stairs that lead to the secondfloor.
“I expect you to leave by this evening and start arranging your move. Your new address will bereadysoon.”
He disappears up the stairs, and I take a few shaky steps towards the panorama windows. The colours of the sunset have deepened now. The sky looks like it’sbleeding.
