“What if I bind them down at my sides, like this?” she asked Girl, pushing her breasts below her armpits.
“Well, it makes you look thinner,” Girl said. “Right now your boobs hang by your belly button, and make you look fatter than you really are. If you bind them, they don’t get in the way so much.”
“I love her breasts, I don’t want them removed,” Mother told Girl. Girl had mixed feelings. Stepmother never wore a bra, and when she hugged Girl, her breasts swung out like oranges in a pair of socks and hit Girl around the waist. Girl didn’t like being assaulted by boobs every time she got hugged, but she also wasn’t convinced that Stepmother really wanted body modification surgery. It seemed like something she said to impress Deb.
Soon Stepmother and Deb were inseparable, and Mother saw the warning signs of impending mania. Girl wasn’t convinced it was mania—it seemed more like purely selfish behavior in her opinion. She wasn’t sure it was a break with reality.
Stepmother stopped the car in the middle of the street, ignoring honking horns, and opened the door so she could yell “hello” to Deb as she drove by the barbershop. Stepmother wrote Deb poems. Mother traced her path through the GPS unit in Stepmother’s car, and learned that she was seeing Deb when she said she was with other people.
Mother and Stepmother broke up and got back together again on a nearly weekly basis. Mother called Girl crying, then called back a few days later to announce that they had bought a new house and everything was going to be okay. The next phone call announced that they had broken up again and sold the new house to the next-highest bidder a mere three days after they bought it, losing five thousand dollars in the transaction.
Mother moved back to Rochester and rented a furnished apartment on a month-to-month lease. Stepmother apologized and moved in with her for Thanksgiving.
“This is not my bipolar issue,” she told Girl. “This is your mother’s manic depression.”
“Mother doesn’t have manic depression,” Girl replied.
“I don’t love your mother anymore,” Stepmother said. “I am only with her because she said she would drive her car into the Erie Canal if I left her.”
Mother cried on Girl’s shoulder until both their shirts were wet with tears. She and Stepmother bought another house, this one in Penfield, a suburb of Rochester. Before they closed on it, they broke up again.
Girl talked to Mother nearly every day, and drove to Rochester every chance she could get. Mother came to Cleveland to see Girl at least once a month, too. The weight of Mother pressed down on Girl, but she would do anything she could to help Mother start over.
“I went to leave to come see you, but Stepmother said she was going to follow me,” Mother said over the phone one night when she was scheduled to drive to Cleveland. “I told her I was going to Rochester instead, but I won’t come to Cleveland if I think she is following me. I don’t know what she will do.” Mother sounded terrified.
“Do whatever you have to do to be safe,” Girl said. In the end, Mother’s ruse worked, and Stepmother did not pursue her.
A few weeks later, Mother was talking to Girl on the phone and Stepmother called in on the other line. “I have to go! If I miss her she might not call back!” Mother said and hung up on Girl quickly. It went on like this for nine months.
“Stepmother has control of our joint checking account,” Mother told Girl. “I have to talk to her about repairs to the new house. I can’t afford them on my own.” Mother was living on her Social Security and the rent Girl paid. Stepmother refused to give her any of their joint money.
“I went to a lawyer, and thank God marriage equality passed in New York. If I had switched my residency to Florida, I’d be out of luck. But New York recognizes same-sex marriages, so I am safe. And you damn well better believe that after thirty years I’m going to get half. But Stepmother will be back once she realizes I have a lawyer. Our net worth is one million dollars. Stepmother will never agree to be half a millionaire. Money is too important to her. Once she learns that the law is on my side, she’ll be back.” She wasn’t though. Instead, Stepmother flew Deb down to visit her.
Girl helped Mother set up an online dating account, and within a few weeks, Mother had a new girlfriend. Girl drove up to Rochester with the kids, and Mother had a dinner party to introduce her girlfriend to her existing circle of friends. Girl liked the new woman, with her red hair and snappy clothes. She was ten years younger than Stepmother, just like Deb was ten years younger than Mother. Whenever Mother ran into a friend or acquaintance or even the mail carrier, she told them, “Stepmother traded me in for a younger model.” Girl wasn’t entirely sure that ten years made that big of a difference when you were sixty and fifty. It wasn’t like Deb was a twenty-year-old beauty queen. But for some reason, the age difference hit Mother hard.
“If your mother gets back together with Stepmother, I will not speak to her again. I mean it,” one of Mother’s closest friends confided in Girl. “I cannot stand the way that woman treats your mother. Mother is one of the nicest, smartest people I know. I can’t stand to watch her be abused like that.”
Once Mother got a new girlfriend, something shifted in Stepmother. She began wooing Mother. She sent her flowers and mailed her cards.
“If I can convince myself that this was her
