The Year My Mother Came Back by Alice Eve Cohen

Jennifer and I sat on the sofa, observing Mom and David’s back and forth debate, as if we were watching a tennis match. Jennifer worshipped me and my teenaged friends. In Jennifer’s eyes, I could do no wrong.
    David sometimes went to outrageous lengths to try to win over my mom.
    â€œMrs. Cohen, I noticed that your floors needed mopping and waxing, so while you were out, I took it upon myself to . . .”
    The floor shone under its slippery coat of wax. My mother was momentarily speechless, stupefied by the deafening clash of gratitude and rage.
    â€œIt was very nice of you to mop the floor, David. Thank you, but it doesn’t change my opinion. Now leave.”
    â€œMrs. Cohen, with all due respect, I know you don’t trust me—”
    â€œYou’re right, I don’t.”
    â€œBut I want you to know that Alice and I are not having sex.”
    â€œI should hope not!”
    Technically speaking, David and I were not having sex. We did other things, but we’d never had intercourse. Mom probably assumed we had, but I was so mad at her, I wouldn’t admit to her that I was a virgin.
    â€œAlice,” Mom scowled at me in the mirror, “I looked through your sketchbook—”
    â€œDon’t look at my sketchbook!”
    â€œâ€”and I saw your drawings of naked couples having sex.”
    â€œThat’s private!”
    â€œAre you having sex?
    â€œThey’re just drawings! Stay out of my stuff.”
    She sighed, stared at me for a full minute, with who knows what thoughts going through her mind, then said, “You’re drawings . . . are excellent.”
    DAD AND I didn’t talk much. It wasn’t his style. Cheerful detachment was his style. He avoided emotional confrontation by keeping himself busy: doing calisthenics every morning when he woke up, working in his office all day, playing piano every night, sailing every weekend. My parents argued about sailing. Mom thought he should spend less time sailing and more time with his family. He was stubborn about doing what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. I wasn’t good at sailing. Neither was Mom or my sisters, so Dad was off limits on weekends when he raced with his expert crew.
    The way to reach Dad was through music. He took me to my clarinet lesson every Thursday evening. We played clarinet-piano sonatas together. It made us both happy. It was the only way I knew how to feel close to him, to get his attention. My playing impressed Grandpa Ben, who proclaimed in his thick Russian accent that I was destined for a world-class concert career (though his considerable hearing loss cast doubt on his assessment of my talent.) The only one in the family who didn’t like my clarinet playing was Amanda. As soon as I started playing, she flattened her ears, ran to the door, scratched on the screen, and meowed pitifully, begging to be let out.
    Music was a reliable way to escape my mother’s weird anger at me. She didn’t yell at me or insult me when I was practicing, so I practiced a lot.
    When I was a little girl, I once threw a block at Sally and chipped her tooth for saying my mom was crazy, but now I wondered whether it was true. My mom was so different from other moms. Over the summer, while I was at camp, Mom gave up stockings. She gave up high heels. She gave up lipstick. She gave up shaving her legs. She gave up dyeing her hair. She gave up acting like other middle-aged suburban moms. She didn’t look or behave like any of the other moms I knew.
    She was a mad woman. Not a madwoman. She was a woman who was mad all the time. She was mostly mad at the trappings of being a suburban wife, so she had jettisoned them, one by one. What would she give up next? From the way she was looking at me, I thought she wanted to give up being my mother.
    At the end of tenth grade, I broke up with David. It was my decision. “I can’t stand having my mother angry with me all the