“I never said you were ugly, I just said the people at work said you were ugly,” she said, in a deceptively mild tone of voice. “Actually,” she continued, casually stabbing a beet with her fork, “they said you were ‘a dog.’” She popped the beet in her mouth and stared at her future daughter-in-law, waiting for her reaction.The young lady misfortunate enough to be engaged to the woman’s son looked to her betrothed with tears welling in her eyes.
He shrugged and said, “What do you expect? The only time they saw you, you were hung over and wearing a Misfits t-shirt.” He turned his head away from her to listen to his mother once again.
She swallowed her tears along with her pain, something she’d done far too often in her young life, and pondered what, if anything, she should do about her stinging pride.
Her future husband lived with his mother. They worked at the same company, in a position she had secured for him. Every weekday evening, she and her fiancé watched television with her. Every Saturday morning, they took her to breakfast. In fact, her only respite from the tiresome hag was Sunday morning, when she attended church services for a religion the woman and her son both roundly and openly mocked.
But this was “mother’s” birthday, and any scene she made would make her look like the villain. So, she filed the insult away with all the rest and drank another glass of wine to drown her sorrows.
But the evening got worse before it got better. “Let’s watch Ghost!” the crone gleefully suggested.
The girl winced, gritted her teeth, and felt another stab of pain hit her abdomen. Good Lord, that woman had horrible taste in movies. And music. And decorating. And clothes. And men.
“I’ll do the dishes!” the girl announced, desperate to avoid Patrick Swayze. From the kitchen, she could hear the movie playing. She knew both that nauseating film, and “mother’s” other favorite, Dirty Dancing, by heart.
The girl stalled as long as she could, taking care with each and every dish, leisurely wiping the counters, and stopping to feed and pet the cat. She sighed, knowing that by the time she got to the living room, Demi’s hands would be coated in potter’s clay.
She stopped short at the entrance to the living room. Mother and son were slow dancing to the Righteous Brother’s Unchained Melody. She felt her face get hot, her stomach contents rose in her throat, and her ability to ignore the situation dissipated.
She wrenched the ring off her finger, flung it in their direction (it neatly popped “mother” in the head with a sharp “ping”) and screamed, “You people are fucking sick!” She marched out the door and drove home.
Their look of disbelief and outrage was the last she ever saw of them.
