“I wish the weather would make up its mind,” she said.
“Why?” Amanda asked. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Well, I have a date tonight, but that isn’t—”
“I thought you might be rushing off somewhere,” Amanda said.
“No. No.”
The room was silent again.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about you, Kate,” Amanda said.
“Oh? Really?”
“Yes.” Amanda nodded. “What do you plan to do in the fall, daughter?” she said.
The word sounded strange to Kate’s ear, the word “daughter” delivered in such a curiously cold way. She didn’t answer for a moment.
Then she said, “Well, we’ve already talked about this, Mom.”
“Yes, I know we have. But it wouldn’t hurt to—”
“I’m going to get a job somewhere,” Kate said.
“And then what?”
“Then I’ll see about going to college.”
“You should go to college, Kate.”
“Maybe I will. I’m just not sure yet.”
“You should go,” Amanda repeated.
“Mom, I’m not sure I want to go. Maybe all I want to do is get married and have children and—”
“I shouldn’t have agreed to this European trip,” Amanda said. “You haven’t had time to think of anything else. Agnes has been accepted by three colleges, do you know that?”
“Well, Mom, she knows what she wants to do. I just don’t.”
“You should know by now. You’re almost eighteen, daughter.”
The word “daughter” again, curiously rankling, and a sudden wall between them, so that Kate felt they weren’t really talking to each other, they were simply hurling words and sentences that neither understood nor cared to understand. In that instant, she decided she should leave the living room. She began to rise, but Amanda’s words stopped her.
“What do you expect to do, daughter?” she asked. “With your life?”
“I’m getting a job in the fall. I already told you...”
“I see.”
“I thought you knew that.”
“Yes, I knew.”
“Well... that’s what my plans are. For now.”
She frowned, confused. She didn’t wish to seem solicitous, and yet she suddenly felt that perhaps she’d overestimated her mother’s intelligence. Perhaps her mother hadn’t really understood the first time they’d discussed all this. “When I get back from Europe, I’ll begin looking,” she said.
“Yes, I understand,” Amanda said.
“Well,” Kate said, and she shrugged, but the frown remained on her forehead. She sat in silence and thought, Why do I have to know what I’m going to do with my life? I’m going to take a job. Isn’t that enough for now?
“What kind of job do you want, Kate?”
“You know,” Kate shrugged.
“No, I don’t know.”
“Receptionist. Something like that.”
“I see. In New York?”
“Yes. Mom, we’ve already—”
“I see.”
The room was silent. Amanda kept staring at the piano.
“Kate,” she said, “I want you to go to college.”
“Well, maybe I will. After I—”
“I want you to go this fall. When you return from abroad.”
“I don’t think I want to do that, Mom.”
“I don’t think this is a question of what you want to do,” Amanda said. “This is a question of what’s best for you.”
“Well, I think it’s best for me to get a job and—”
“Yes, and what makes you think that’ll be enough?” Amanda asked, leaning toward her. “What do you hope to be, Kate? A wife, Kate? A mother, Kate?”
Again, she felt a rage inside her, a rage at the way her mother was using her name, Kate, Kate, like a battering ram, Kate, Kate. “Well... well, wh... what’s wrong with that?” she asked.
“You’re a beautiful girl, Kate, and bright, and it’s wonderful for a young girl to be going abroad, but if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m being perfectly honest with you, I think you’re going to need more than a husband and a houseful of children.”
“Well, I’m... I’m not getting married right this... this minute. I mean, I’m only seven—”
“Yes, but it seems wasteful to me, Kate... oh, not that working in New York wouldn’t have a certain amount of glamour and value, I suppose... but I’d hate to see you wasting six months of your life, perhaps a year, when you could be preparing for something important in that time. You could go to school right here in Talmadge, you know. There wouldn’t be any real reason for leaving Talmadge. Your grades are good, Kate. I’m sure if you applied even now—”
“Yes, but that’s not what I want,” Kate said, somewhat dazed. “I may go to college later, but right now I want to find a job.”
“Yes, I understand, dear,” Amanda said.
“Well, that’s all there is to it then.”
“I think you should ask yourself, Kate, what you want to become.”
“I...”
“You’re old enough now to be thinking of the future, daughter.”
Kate nodded and said nothing.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Amanda asked.
“Yes,” Kate answered. There was an edge of sharpness to her voice. Amanda’s eyes suddenly moved from the piano and rested on her daughter.
“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you understand.”
“Yes,” Kate said. “I understand.”
They stared at each other, and Kate thought suddenly and for the first time since she could remember, She’s not my real mother. My real mother wouldn’t be saying these things to me.
“I want to be myself,” Kate said. “That’s good enough for me.”
“Yes, but—”
“I want to be myself!” Kate said fiercely.
Her heart had begun to beat against her chest. She rose swiftly and started out of the living room. Behind her, Amanda said, “Kate?” and she turned.
“I didn’t mean—” Amanda started, and then closed her mouth and simply shook her head. Kate waited for her to continue. But she was silent now, and it did not seem she would speak again.
Quickly, Kate went upstairs to dress.
She heard the station wagon starting in the driveway outside just as she was putting on her skirt. The sound of the engine annoyed her because she’d planned to use the wagon herself, and now her mother was obviously tooling off in it someplace, and she would have to walk. Where was everyone rushing to all of a sudden, everyone leaving the house as if it were too small to contain the separate lives inside it, everyone getting out and away from each other. She buttoned her skirt angrily. She did not want to be alone in this house. She did not understand her mother. And again she thought, She’s not my real mother, and again the image of some isolated soul drifted back to her, a woman with staring eyes and a scissors in her hand, back, back through long narrow corridors, stop it.
Stop it, she told herself.
But her hand trembled as she put on her lipstick.
The blond hair falling to the scatter rug, the women fighting for the scissors, their shadows huge and grotesque on the wall, the taste of hair, and the taste of fear, and...
Stop!
Please, oh please stop.
She rushed out of the room and down the long flight of stairs. The house was empty, and it creaked with strange sounds she had never heard before. Frightened, she passed the empty living room with the piano at the far end, silent, and rushed out of the house. It was chilly outside. There was a strong wind, and the sky was falling apart. She suddenly thought of Chicken Little. Someone had read it to her a long time ago, Minnesota, an old house, organ notes coming from a nearby church, Mother, she thought, Mother, the sky was falling apart.