Chapter 60

Cindy's turn:

I was in the office. MY office, which was actually a corner of, you guessed it, Dan's office. I heard the front door open, footsteps, and then Maddie.

"May I help you?" Maddie asked.

And the unmistakable voice. "I'm Donna Smith. I'm looking for my daughter Cindy."

Feelings going up and down in me. I knew Mom was a spectrum. I knew her in her slutty mode, on the prowl. And I knew that she could comport herself decently as well. I rounded the corner hoping against hope.

Mom. At her best. Understated dress that didn't show either cleavage or tattoos. Hose. Shoes with modest heels. Her hair was neat, conservative, and pretty close to the auburn that was her natural color. I only knew it from occasional looks at her roots. She used to try staying blonde, mostly, but not this time. Conservative. Right down to her nails that this time didn't look like they were designed in the ghetto.

"Hi, Mom," I said, stepping toward her.

Her move. She opened her arms for a hug. I hugged.

"Baby, you look so GOOD!"

I couldn't see it, really. I'm wearing what everybody calls my 'Cindy uniform –winter version' which is jeans and an Auburn Engineering sweatshirt. Still no makeup. Still the same haircut and still the same sort of cross-trainer shoes.

"Oh, thank you, Mom, you look good, too. You just met Maddie. Maddie's one of us."

"Hey, Mizz Smith," Maddie said. "Happy to meet you."

Of course by this time, Dan's right behind me.

"Hi, Donna," Dan said.

"Hello, Dan. Cindy's done well."

"Nope, Dan's done well. He's got Cindy. Cindy's a rockstar."

Mom smiled at him. "I can totally understand, Dan."

"This is another Dan, Mom," I said. "Dan Granger, my mom, Donna Smith. This Dan's an engineer, too. Dan, where's Nikki?"

"Took the cat to the vet," he said. "She'll be along later."

"Let's see," I said. "Jason 'n' Susan and Tina have classes this morning." I hollered "Alan!"

"Just a second," he said. "I'm closing this file." And he was in the hall.

Mom was smiling and it wasn't the predatory thing that she does sometimes and I'm both wary and confused.

"Hi! I'm Alan Addison. Did I hear your name? Donna?"

"Donna Smith," Mom said.

"Pleased to meet you. Always wondered where Cindy came from."

Mom smiled. "I'm half of it," she said.

"Tina's Alan's wife. They should be in around lunchtime."

I heard a door open in the back of the building, then two garrulous young girls coming up the hall under the 'shhhhh!' from Beck.

Curiosity dragged them right into the crowd.

"These are the house elves," I said. "This one is Terri, and this one is Rachel and this is Rachel's mom Beck. This is my mom, Donna Smith."

Beck stepped forward to gently shake hands.

"Hello, Mizz Donna," Terri said, echoed by Rachel.

"Beck's husband is a professor at Auburn."

"Of course he is," Mom said. "I would expect no less. And you, my surprising daughter, you're a college graduate. And I'm the dumbest one in the room."

Terri stepped in. "No ma'am. You're not dumb. You showed up here. That means you're something special. We all find that out."

Mom was never, in my knowledge, much of a 'little kid' person, but right there she squatted to Terri's level. "Sweetie, if you say so."

Terri looked at me for affirmation, then just hugged Mom. "Of course. Didn't Cindy tell you?"

"Maybe she did. Maybe I didn't listen too good."

I took Mom by the hand, wondering why I was feeling like an elementary school kid dragging a parent around for parent-teacher night. "Come on. Let me show you the place."

I looked at Dan. He raised an eyebrow in question. We communicate sometimes and I swear it's telepathy, and I was telling him to let me take the lead on this one. As I took her through the offices and out the back, I gave her the short version of 'show and tell'.

We exited into the back parking lot. You can see the whole apartment building from there.

"That's it!" I said. "Our apartments. Six of 'em. We have one. Dan 'n' Nikki have one. Tina and Alan and Terri have one. Jason and Susan have one. Beck and Sim and Rachel have one. Maddie, Anita and Kara have one. We have room for two more units. Might be adding them in the summer."

"Nice place."

"Not even two years old. This building's ours. That's the Desai's restaurant at the end. Wonderful Indian food."

We walked across the yard, me babbling and I don't know why. I bleeped my iPhone and the front door unlocked.

"Nikki and I rewrote a program for those locks to make 'em more secure. Bluetooth."

"And I never bought you a computer, baby ... Cindy, I..."

"Let's go inside, Mom. We can talk."

I pushed the door open. "And this is my first apartment."

"Where'd you live before this?"

"Dan and I lived in his trailer when we first got married," I said. Mom didn't know the exact timeline. I told her that Dan and I married in one of those unanswered letters, hardly getting an acknowledgement. No sense in her knowing the details, at least not now.

"That trailer of his? At the park?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Don't you think that getting married at fourteen was a little, I dunno, strange?"

"There's a lot of strange things about me and Dan, Mom, but the strangest is that I absolutely belong with him and he belongs with me."

"Cindy, darlin'," Mom started.

"Sit down, Mom," I said. "You want a Coke or some coffee?"

"A Coke would be nice," she said.

I headed to the kitchen with her following me. Her head swiveled. "This is a NICE kitchen, baby."

"Me 'n' Dan. Wanted a good kitchen to cook in. I'm the worst cook in the bunch, but I'm learning." I got her a glass of ice from the fridge door and poured her a Coke, then fixed myself one.

She slid into a chair in our breakfast nook.

"Damn, Cindy, this place is NICE!"

"Dan's very good at what he does. One of the best. We started a business with our friends. It makes money. Hard work. Money."

"It never worked like that for me, baby," she said. "Cindy..."

"Mom." I tried to decipher her eyes. Ran through my inventory of Mom's looks. Okay, they're dimmed a little bit. This is the first time I've seen her in almost three years.

"Cindy, I don't know exactly how to say this, but I know I have to say it."

"What, Mom?"

"Cindy, I screwed up with you. It's a wonder you made it to the age of ten. I was a horrible mother."

I started to protest.

"Don't even start, baby. The truth is what it is. About the only thing I didn't do was sell your body off."

"Mom..."

Okay, this is new. I've seen Mom cry a time or two, usually over some loser disappearing up the highway, but this was different. I'm sure she could fake crying, but I wasn't sure she was up to faking tears. When she looked at me, there were tears.

"I screwed up. You. Bad. Turned my back on my own kid and left you."

"Mizz Helen's a wonderful person."

"I know she is. Told me how the cow ate the cabbage, too. Sort of pushed me into leaving you with 'er, you know, and me, stupid, starry-eyed me, I was going to go to Vegas and live the good life." Her shoulders heaved. A sob. It was a sob.

"I guess in my train wreck of a life, that was the best move I made, leaving you with somebody who gave a shit. I just sort of hoped, whenever I thought about it, which wasn't much, that you'd turn out better than I ended up. Boy, did you ever!"

"Mom, life is what it is. You don't get to go back. Sometimes you just have to go with what you have."

"Forgive me, Cindy."

"Oh, gosh, Mom. Don't ask me that! It's not a matter of me forgiving you."

"It is, Cindy. It is."

"Dan says that sometimes it's hard for people to see the path they're on. We talked about you when Dan was just a friend. He probably understood better than I did. I guess I got mad and I got hurt, but Mom, that's way behind me."

I got up out of my chair and went to hers and hugged her. If they were fake sobs, they were done really well, and I probably need to stop being cynical about this.

I hugged her. Something missing. No cigarette stench. And the perfume. Maybe she lost the roller she used to use. Stop it, Cindy. You're bigger than this catty crap.

"Mom, I forgive you."

Okay, now two of us are crying.

Finally I said, "Drink your Coke. The ice is melting."

She caught a sob, broke into a little bit of a smile. "You're still a piece of work. I never could get a handle on you, you know."

"I don't know, Mom."

"I do."

"Your last letter. You're REALLY a college grad?"

"Yes ma'am," I said. "Working on a master's degree and working in the business."

"I don't know how to be that proud. Even if I should be proud. Like I had anything to do with this at all."

"You're my mom," I said. "It's your right to be proud. Dan's proud. Mizz Helen and Mister Charlie are proud. I'd love for YOU to be proud. I didn't know what to do when I was your daughter. What you wanted."

"I wanted the wrong things, baby. I didn't know what to want for you."

"It's over, Mom. That's all in the past. So what's it look like for the future?"

"I'm pretty much out of the bargirl business, baby. Dead-end path. If you can't make it as a bargirl in Vegas, then that's not your thing. Me getting close to forty, with all those young things out there, I wasn't gonna do what it took to keep up. Time to use my brain."

"Your brain?"

"I have two semesters of community college in business administration. I thought I'd get a part-time job, try and get my degree, maybe work into something a bit better."

"Men?"

"Ho, baby ... I know how I was. I look back at some of the ... No. If I could find a decent one. But decent isn't a pair of tight jeans and a new truck and ... I gave up cigarettes and I'm sure you know about the drugs. Them too. I'm clean and I'm sober." She scratched her shoulder. "I wish I hadn't been so stupid as to get all this crap on me, either."

Sobs again.

"Cindy, I want to be respectable."

"Mom, you LOOK respectable. That's one thing. You ACT respectable. That's the second. You THINK respectable. And bingo! You ARE..."

"All my past..."

The tears are back.

"Oh, Mom..." Here I am, mothering my mom. I did what moms have been doing since they were hairy beasts (If you buy into that sort of idea) on the African continent. I hugged her and patted her on the back gently and said, "It'll be okay. It'll get better."

I grabbed a napkin off the table napkin holder. She dabbed her eye. In years past, there would have been a disaster area of running mascara and streaked makeup. The new and improved Mom seemed to have back-pedaled in that area as well.

"Stupid, Cindy. It was stupid of me. I missed out on some pretty spectacular things in my daughter's life."

'Spectacular'? In Mom's vocabulary?!?

She continued. "Married. I should've been there. High school. College."

"If you're around in May, you will be at my college graduation ceremony. I am going to walk onto the dais and get my official diploma."