“That seat is for my mother,” she shouted, pointing her finger at me as if I were a naughty child. “You sit over there next to the kitchen in case we need anything served.”
The eyes of her friends pierced right through me. Some looked down, embarrassed. Others smiled with that silent cruelty that only women know. Matt, my son, my own flesh and blood, stood next to Jessica with his mouth open, but without words, without a single word to defend me.
To understand how I ended up kicking my own family out of my house, I need to take you back three years, to the day Matt arrived with a smile I had not seen on his face since he was a teenager.
“Mom, I met someone.”
He told me that April afternoon, his eyes shining like carnival lights. I was in the backyard pruning my rose bushes. I took off my gardening gloves and looked at him. My son was thirty-four years old and had just come out of two difficult relationships. Seeing him like this, so excited, filled me with hope.
“Her name is Jessica. She’s incredible, Mom, smart, educated, ambitious. She works in digital marketing. I met her at a business conference in Chicago.”
Two weeks later, Jessica appeared at my door with a bouquet of white lilies and a perfect smile. She wore a burgundy dress, elegant but not exaggerated. Her brown hair was pulled back in a flawless ponytail. Discreet makeup. She smelled of expensive perfume.
“Mrs. Catherine,” she said with a sweet voice, “Matt has told me so much about you. It is an honor to meet the woman who raised such a wonderful man.”
All the right words, the right tone, the right attitude.
I welcomed her into my living room. I served her fresh coffee with the cinnamon rolls I had baked that morning. Jessica asked about the photos on the wall. She praised my plants. She listened attentively when I told her how Henry and I paid for this house dollar by dollar, working double shifts for five years.
