Christmas party, don’t you think? Did you enjoy it?” Remo asked.
Alessa looked over at him and curbed the impulse to scream, “No, it was not nice! Your mother is a bitch who goes out of her way to make me feel like I don’t exist!” Instead, she said quietly, “Yeah, sure, it was nice.”
Remo recognized that familiar tone right away. Something had obviously upset Alessa. He himself had enjoyed the day and didn’t want to ruin it by stirring up drama, but he needed to resolve whatever was bothering her so she wouldn’t be agitated for days. “What happened?” he asked. “Did I miss something?”
Alessa sighed deeply. She didn’t feel like starting this conversation but thought it was important for her to get it out and into the open. “Remo, it doesn’t really matter,” she sighed.
“What doesn’t really matter, Alessa?” he retorted abruptly. “Why can’t we ever go to my parents and have a good time? Why do we always have to deal with this crap after we leave?”
Alessa was fuming by now. “Because,” she enunciated clearly, “your mother treats me and Lucy like shit. That’s why!”
She saw his grip tighten on the steering wheel.
“What did she do?” he finally asked.
“Well, let’s see,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Did you happen to notice that Lucy and I weren’t in the ‘family’ photo? Did that strike you as odd at all? Or did you hear how she bragged to her stupid friends about you taking care of homeless people? It’s as if I don’t even exist. I even overheard her telling one of her friends that you and that particular friend’s daughter had made such a cute couple, and she wondered why that didn’t work out. What the hell, Remo? How much more shit do I have to eat?”
Having heard her out and recognizing the anguish in her voice, Remo realized how Alessa was feeling.
“You’re right,” he said sympathetically. “You and Lucy should have been in the family photo. As for that girl I dated, she was a warthog. She was stuffy and boring. I went out with her twice. I never had sex with her. So I can’t figure out why my mom said that to her friend.”
“I don’t really care if you had sex with the girl or not,” Alessa told him. “You know that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is how your mother goes out of her way to make me feel like I’m not good enough. I’m annoyed, and since I promised you that I’d take the high road, I feel like I’ve had to put up with her bullying me in silence. So now, she gets to lay it on me as thick as she wants to, and I have to suck it up. I don’t know if I can keep doing it much longer, Remo. Not only does Hannah treat me worse than ever, she has now begun to humiliate me in front of others. I have to keep eating shit, which makes me look like a stupid idiot who doesn’t have the guts to stand up for herself. Since when did it all become my problem to keep the peace?”
Alessa cried, her tears coursing down her cheeks as she sat next to Remo. She was already exhausted from the daylong mental torture she had endured, and now, to make matters worse, she and her husband were fighting over his mother.
“Why are you crying, Alessa?” Remo pleaded, dismayed to see how upset she was.
Her face was expressionless, as she stared out the car window. “Because God hates me.”
Remo pulled the car over to the side. “Come here, you big baby,” he said. “Of course God doesn’t hate you. I know how my mom is, and she’s proud of the things that I’ve done. She doesn’t mean to be hurtful. She can’t see that I can love you both at the same time. She’s a stupid idiot.”
Alessa burst out laughing and clung to him as if he were a life raft.
“Look, Alessa, I’ll make you a deal,” he said gently. “From now on, if you don’t want to come with me to see my parents, you don’t have to, all right? If it makes you feel this bad, you shouldn’t put yourself through it. I want you to be happy, and I certainly don’t want Lucy growing up thinking she isn’t a part of my family. Because both of you are my family. Understand?”
Alessa sat back against the car seat. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way. That’s all. Your dad seems to like me, though.”
Remo laughed. “My dad loves you and Lucy,” he said. “So does my mom. She doesn’t know how to express her feelings.”
The objection to his last statement bubbled up within her, but Alessa left well enough alone. It had been a long day with a less than great ending.
As they drove the rest of the way home in silence, Remo thought about his mother. He wondered why Hannah was being so vicious to his wife. Whatever explanation he might have tried to pacify Alessa with, deep inside, he knew his mother was being a mean person. He was torn, as he remembered how loving she had been to him as a child. They had done everything together. She was a real June Cleaver, and now she had turned into Mommie Dearest with the one person he loved most in the world. He didn’t know how to reconcile the two startlingly different personas anymore. He was seeing how unfair it was to Alessa that she was expected to tolerate his mother’s behavior but couldn’t dish it back out, fearing she would hurt his feelings. Remo decided he would talk to his dad about it in the morning. Maybe Patrick would have an idea about tackling the problem.
