Her Mother's Daughter

Candice's P.O.V.

On the afternoon following my birthday the house was silent in that stilted manner it adopts when they are all faking that the war is not breathing down their necks.

Mantovani and Sanna were cogitating in the study, with Conti and two capos, over the scheme against the brother of the sheriff at my new school at L.A. I had been there hours but at length justified myself--too much testosterone and cigarette smoke.

Of all places I found Mom in the sunroom.

She sat in the window bench looking out of the garden, with her knees drawn up, and gazing upon the white lilies, which had now opened again. On the sill next her a cup of tea had grown cold. She was smaller than I expected--her hair is loose and she has no makeup on and is wearing a plain linen dress like she wants to melt into the cushions.

I hesitated in the doorway.

She sensed me anyway. "Come in, sweetheart."

Her voice was soft, almost shy. Not like the harsh performative tone with which she had spoken during months.

I made my way across the room and sat upon the other side of the window sill, with a foot of room between us.

We had stood there a long minute listening to the fountain outside.

I used to sit here when we first moved in I said. "Before you arrived. I said to myself that this was the new beginning that we needed. Money, security, a man who could offer it all that your father failed to offer you. She laughed bitterly a little. I was so proud of myself that I landed it all.

I stayed quiet.

She glanced around at me--glanced. Eyes red-rimmed but dry now.

So many of the things I thought about, Candice, were wrong. I figured that, by dressing you up, changing you into the proper rooms, concealing the ugly bits, you would be safe. Happy, even." Her hands rolled up in her laps. I did not see that I was erasing you to do it.

My throat tightened.

I saw you that night at the clubhouse, I said to her. "Not just... what I walked in on. I watched you in the midst of fire when you had a rifle in your hands and it did not fuss you. How the men used to stare at you--as though you were their queen. She swallowed. And I knew I know nothing about my daughter.

I shifted closer. "You know me, Mom. You simply did not like the one that did not suit your scheme.

A tear slipped down her cheek. "I was scared. I still am. Whenever I shut my eyes I can imagine you there on that piano lid, or in the courtyard with the blood on your feet, or-- I am horrified that I have lost you for good.

I extended my hand gradually, grabbed her hand. It was cold.

"You haven't lost me," I said. But you can not get the old Candice back. The smiling pretty one who played along. It is that girl who grew up the night she decided to stand beside the man she loves in a war which she did not initiate.

Mom searched my face. "Do you love him? Truly? Or is it the danger, the intensity--"

"I love him," I cut in gently. The way he gazes on me as though I were the only thing he needed to fight. The way he lets me fight too. The manner in which he embraced me the night before and called my name as a prayer. I squeezed her fingers. "But I love you too. And I'm tired of choosing."

She then began to cry,--sobs, tremulous, without any effort to suppress them.

I crossed over and grabbed her in my arms as though I were the parent. She hung herself on me, head in my shoulder, the way she used to do when I was a girl and had nightmares.

I am very sorry," she said, and touched my shirt against her. "For pushing you away. For choosing things over you. Because you have not seen how powerful you were already.

I held her tighter. "I'm sorry too. To make you look at me turn into somebody that you did not know. For not letting you in sooner."

We remained in that position till she got her breath even.

As she eventually pulled away she wiped her face and smiled waterily at me.

"Tell me about him," she said. "The real him. And not the heir, not the president. The man who makes my daughter look like you do when you mention his name.

So I did.

I explained to her that one night he has blanketed me with a blanket as I feigned to sleep. Concerning the manner in which he reads poems when he feels nobody is watching. Of the way he shudder upon mention of the word therapy by anybody, and yet allows Conti to haul him to office. Of the little broken boy within the frightening man who used to say to me, I have no idea how to be loved and spoil it.

Mom was a good listener with no interruptions. I took a long time to get finished, and she said nothing.

He is not what I expected: he is not, she said. But then you are not either.

She touched me, pushed a strand of hair aside my face.

I can never say that I will be at home in this world, I said. "But I promise I'll try. For you. I'll sit at that dinner table. I'll learn their names. I will,-- she said, twitching her lips,--let him go to New York and meet your father without calling the police.

I laughed with her bursting tears. "One step at a time."

She drew me into another embrace, violent this time.

"I love you, Candice. My brave, impossible girl. I like the woman you are turning out to be--even though she frightens the devil out of me.

I embraced her as much as I could.

The lilies were dancing in the wind.

Within, a mother and daughter were beginning to re-assemble what the war had practically ruined.

A sheriff still had to be brought down.

But now we had one more reason to win.