Public Relations

Chapter 29: Mia

My mother picks up the call on the first ring. 

"Hello?" she asks, the confusion in her voice spearing me like a dagger.

It's probably been eight months since we last talked on the phone, or however long ago Christmas was. We text sporadically - I sent her something for Mother's day, and her birthday before that. We send each other nice but meaningless gifts on all events or holidays that warrant them. We update each other after major milestones. But she moved to northern California when I was in high school, and I stayed with my father to not uproot my life. Between college and a demanding career, I haven't seen her in over two years.

"Hey Mom," I breathe. "I missed you."

There's some shuffling on the other end before she says, "Is everything okay?"

I'm sitting in my car in the parking lot of the place I'd just been fired from, following some of the worst work weeks of my career. My name is being slandered relentlessly by money hungry media and teenagers with unlimited cellular data. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow, let alone for the rest of my life.

Nothing is okay.

This would be a great moment to be at peace with things, but I swell with an overwhelming amount of grief hearing my mom's voice on the other line. 

"I miss you," I tell her again, and she laughs lightly.

"I don't think you've ever said that before." She's jovial, but I sense a touch of pain underneath the words.

I sigh, starting my car and reclining my seat. "I owe you an apology, then. For a lot of things. I've always missed you and never known how to say it. And Dad was terrible to you and I'd side with him. And now it turns out he's just terrible."

"Oh, Mia. What's going on?"

I tell her. The conversation is stilted slightly; neither of us have ever assumed our mother/daughter roles we were supposed to as I grew into a young woman. We've never talked boys or work or school. We don't take family vacations together or have girls' weekends. She's fallen victim to my arm's-length mentality, and that is where we were comfortable leaving things.

But when I tell her about Dad's celebrity medium wife and her hatred for me, we're both crying with laughter.

When I confess that I've learned sign language by dating my hot Deaf neighbor, we giggle and I promise to send pictures.

When she invites me to stay with her for a week or several, we both fall silent.

"I'd love that, actually," I say softly. "It's been too long."

"It has."

We agree to talk later, once I'm home and have showered the events of the morning from my skin. But I'm not ready to go home just yet.

Instead, I make a call to Elizabeth, who puts me in touch with Suzanne, who thankfully says yes to grabbing lunch. 

An hour later, we sit in a swanky lunch restaurant with complimentary champagne and finger sandwiches. She rambles off apologies and reassurances that she never said anything to contribute to my job loss. I watch her curiously as she's fingering through her hair with her hands, speaking so quickly she's stumbling on her words. Occasionally she stops for deep, desperate gulps of water. She's frantic, exceedingly so.

I take one of these quiet moments to get a word in, finally. "It's okay," I tell her, punctuating it with a sincere smile. "I'm not upset. And certainly not with you."

"It's okay if you are," she says, then turns to thank the waitress as she deposits our salads in front of us. Neither of us makes a move to eat them yet. "You went through some intense stuff today."