Issues

"I had not noticed."

My step-mother was 19 when my father started dating her. He was 36. She was still in college. Their first date was at a dive bar where she and her fellow students never got carded. She may have moved in with him before she graduated. I don’t remember. All I know is that she became a fixture in my life.

She loved my little brother. Thought he was a comic genius. Me she had trouble with. She was competitive with me. I was seven. I had no clue. I thought she was cool and sophisticated and beautiful. She wore makeup and shopped at fancy department stores. My Mom didn’t wear makeup and she bought our clothes at the Sears outlet.

One day, my stepmother took me up to the roof of the building where she and my Dad lived, on the corner of Newbury and Exeter.

“This is where I like to come to think,” she said.

The city spread around us, the noises of the street drifted up. I wanted to stand and look out at everything, the towers above us, the people walking below, but she was there to talk. We sat across from each other on chairs that had been dragged up there, maybe, or ledges.

“You’ve probably noticed that we have some issues with each,” she said.

I had not noticed.

She then talked about some things I didn’t understand, using a combination of therapy talk and phrases she’d learned in est. Then she looked me deep in the eyes and said, “It’s just that there are things in you that remind me of things in me that I don’t like about myself.”

She waited for me to respond.

I know now that she wasn’t really a grownup, but she was trying to act like a grownup. At the time, I thought she was a grownup. I knew in my gut that she was saying she didn’t like me, but I doubted myself. I wanted to be a grownup like her, so I tried take in what she said like one.

I immediately wondered what the things were in me that reminded her of things she didn’t like about herself. I wanted to change them, expunge them. I don’t remember if I asked what they were. I do know that she wouldn't get into specifics.

In retrospect, maybe she thought she was letting me off the hook by basically saying that it was all about her issues. She was taking responsibility for her feelings and all that. Except was she really did was dump all her feelings onto a kid and expect me to handle that.

I was already uncomfortable at my Dad’s, always trying to be on my best behavior. He’d moved out of the house two years before, and only saw me every other week for a few hours. I was constantly terrified that if I didn’t conform to his standards I would lose him altogether.

Now here was this person, this woman, that he preferred to my mother, that he wanted to be with all the time and share a home with, and she didn’t like me. Her only connection with me was that I shared the qualities she loathed in herself.

I had no idea how to rid myself of these qualities, because I had no idea what they were. I just knew they were dangerous. If she didn’t like me, then my father might not either. If she was trying to get rid of these qualities in herself to be with him, then I probably needed to, too.

Except that she got away with everything. He was completely devoted to her, swooning and obsessed. She could storm off and be rude and yell and he would excuse it every time. He would tell me that I just needed to understand how vulnerable and damaged she was. Now I had even more rules I needed to follow.

If I wanted a popsicle, I had to ask her first. She’d get really angry if I took food from the fridge as if I lived there. When I did ask, she’d get annoyed that I wanted more food. If I left the stick on the table next to me while watching a movie with Dad, she’d get upset that I was making a mess. If I got up to throw it away, Dad would get upset that I was interrupting the movie. Then they’d both get upset that I was nervous and twitchy.

I wonder now if maybe it would have been better for me to not spend time with my father.

He expected me to be independent while making her more and more dependent. I grew up while in many ways she stayed a child.

She never learned how to write a check or what bills they paid. She never had kids herself, and only worked outside the home after my Dad retired and all those bills started catching up to them.

When he died, fairly young, he left her in mind-boggling debt. She sold everything, took all the money out of the trust my father had left for me and my brother, and moved out west to live near her guru.

Whatever qualities I had when I was kid that she hated I probably still have. I buy my own popsicles and eat them when I want. Sometimes I leave the stick on the table while I watch something, sometimes I pause things to throw it out. I learned how to put on makeup. I have shopped at fancy department stores, but mostly I buy my clothes at Uniqlo and TJ Maxx.

I no longer want to be like her.