CoffeeCake

It's early. 37 minutes more before we open for the day. I am in the staff kitchen, silently cursing my stupidity as I visualize the unintended whereabouts of my carefully prepared lunchbox of tuna salad, Ritz crackers, yogurt cup and apple slices. I am hoping the day will be a quiet one, hoping plans and preparations for the approaching holiday occupy most of our regulars.

Moira, white, attractive and slender, arrives a few minutes behind me. Eight months in and I still don't know precisely what Moira does or what her title is, just that she's one of the full-timers here who moves like she runs the place. She is bearing several cardboard boxes and a large square pan. She places them all carefully on the table close to the center, and invites me to help myself. The boxes contain small wrapped sub sandwiches, saran-wrapped pickles spears, and little individual condiment and plastic-ware packets. The pan is a chocolate chip coffeecake Moira proudly announces she made herself. She pulls paper plates from the shelf over the sink and generously offers me one of the thick pre-cut squares, along with my choice of sandwich and pickle.

I accept immediately, grateful for the lunch solution. The coffeecake looks amazing, the darkly glistening, half-buried chocolate chips dotting nearly the entire surface. I shouldn't, my sugar intake has been off the charts lately... I wolf it down. I am going to have a raging headache within the hour but it is totally worth it. The cake is dense and sweet; it is effing delicious.

I enjoy it so much that I wait a few minutes as Moira busies herself making coffee, then sneak back into the kitchen when I think she's gone to take another piece--maybe two--for later. She walks in and catches me at it. A blink-and-you've-missed-it side-eye as she serenely pulls down coffee cups.

"As long as there's enough for my team," she cautions politely and I am immediately chastened. I decide to keep the piece I've already wrapped in foil and stored in the fridge alongside my sandwich but abandon the idea of taking any more. I am embarrassed at my greed and Moira's observation of it. Annoyed too, faintly. Something about her demeanor--that super-polite tone with the hint of cool disapproval underneath it--suddenly reminds me of Molly. Molly with the delicate fine-boned face and tiny, ballerina waist. Is there a secret club all white women of a certain age belong to? For a moment, I hate Moira Conner and her precious homemade chocolate chip coffeecake and wish we'd never encountered each other. Maybe I should return that second piece, along the with the deli sandwich and the pickle. I can buy my own damn lunch.

It is later. I sit at my desk, munching the last of the pickle, stewing about Moira, I mean Molly, I mean Moira.

I mean Molly.

Actually not so much Molly as all of them, the whole Mulvaney clan, remembering them and Mom and me some 20 years ago, around the time of Molly's engagement to James. Remembering how afraid my mother was.

Here were these strangers, her in-laws-to-be, affluent, educated, attractive--the youthful Mulvaney women especially--and brimming with confidence and social ease. Their elder daughter, a University of Chicago law student, was living with her son in a Hyde Park apartment somewhere off Cornell. Jamie was waiting tables at that pizza place on Kenwood. What did he see in her? And why a white girl? A girl from a family so different from his own? If he was trying to make his mother feel insecure and off-balance he couldn't have come up with a better choice. I watched Mom try to be happy for Jay but I could see that... well, she had her doubts. Put it that way.

Miranda Mulvaney was happily married to the father of her four grown children. She had a thriving career of her own, was slim as her daughters, drove her own car, and was friendly and outgoing. My mother, a billing manager for a tire company, had none of these things. The Mulvaneys celebrated everything and there was a lot to celebrate: the sale of Mike's company upon his decision to retire, Peter's promotion and posting to London, the publication of Danny's new novel, Kelly's acceptance to Barnard. Whenever my mother found herself in the company of this family of accomplished, globetrotting go-getters she was reminded of everything her family wasn't, everything she wasn't, I knew.

So she kept me close. I was moral support. Maybe also a shield of sorts. From the first I felt this. But listen, I had my own insecurities and didn't liked to be chained to my mother every time she faced a gathering of the Mighty Mulvaneys.

Did I ever tell you this story..? The Joy Luck Club story? Yeah, well.

In the fall of '93, some weeks before the wedding, Miranda Mulvaney decided it would be nice if she and her girls and Maude and her daughter could do something together, just the women. There was this new movie she and the girls had been wanting to see, and she thought--why didn't we all meet at the theater and see it together? And have dinner afterward, her treat? I will never know with what degree of enthusiasm or reluctance my mother accepted this invitation. But she did and then she called to tell me. I was immediately wary. What movie?

What movie, Mom?

Well (long pause) it's based on that book by Amy Tan.

Amy Tan? What book? Which book? (Oh no...)

It--oh, what's it called--it talks about the lives of these Chinese America women and their daughters.

Uh-huh. (Oh shit... Oh no.)

I was aghast. Seriously? This was the way Miranda Mulvaney thought we should begin to get to know one another? The five of us passing popcorn back and forth through a 2 and 1/2 hour angst fest exploring the whys and wherefores of mothers and daughters who don't understand each other? And then, what, spending another hour or so dissecting it over dinner? I cringed at the very thought.

You have to understand: nearly all of my life my feelings for my mom have been this complicated, love-hate thing. I couldn't summon one iota of enthusiasm at the prospect of spending hours in the dark next to her, watching this of all films and then talking about the meaning of it all with three women who were near strangers to me.

I did my best to get out of going but my mother would have none of it. She half-bullied, half-begged me to cooperate. It would not have been nice to decline Miranda Mulvaney's invitation, it would not have been polite--these two would be mothers-in-law soon and grandmothers eventually, after all--and she was goddamned if she was going to face these suburban superwomen alone. (And besides, if Miranda Mulvaney's invite was the only way to get me to a movie my mother had been hoping we'd go see together anyway, so be it. Every time Mom saw a TV advertisement for The Joy Luck Club she nudged me.)

Honey, it's one evening out of your life.

What could I do? I swallowed my resentment and misgivings and I went. And... I don't know. It was chilly, but I don't remember what I wore. We ate somewhere close to the theater, but I don't remember where or what I ordered. I don't remember the post-movie conversation. Just the awkwardness and the super-politeness and the strain in my mother's voice. Or maybe it was my voice. Whatever, I couldn't wait to get away. From all of them, Mom included. I felt guilty for feeling that way and then angry about the guilt. The old conundrum.

I wonder if, after my mother dies, I will continue to write words like this. Will the remainders of love and guilt prevent any more of these conflicted ruminations about her and me? Or will her absence make the musings easier? I can't even hazard a guess.

It's late. Time to go.