"I'm so happy for you, sweetie! I can't even tell you how much this means to all of us. Everyone here is very excited. We are so eager to see what's to come from this. Big, big, things! I can't wait for you to come up here and see what we've been doing already. You are just going to die, you're gonna love it so much!" She spoke a mile a minute. "How do you feel?"
Oh look, I made the afterthought.
"Angry," I told her truthfully.
"Angry?" her voice fell.
"We aren't engaged or pregnant. He's lying," I explained.
Beat.
"Are you sure?"
The stupidity of that question left me speechless for a moment.
"Yeah, mom, I'm sure."
"Well, why is he saying that then?" Her tone was accusatory.
"He probably wants it to be true."
"But you don't want it to be true?"
I almost laughed in frustration. How could she even ask me this?
"Mother, how could you even ask me that? When have I ever said anything nice about him? I never wanted any of this, where have you been?"
She didn't hesitate in her response.
"I've been here, caring for our city with your future husband's generous donation. Sometimes you have to think of others too, Sweetface."
I ignored the hypocrisy of that last bit, choosing instead to focus on the part about his money.
"Donation? What donation?"
"He gave $10,000 to our city for community outreach programs. Our 4-H coordinators are having a field day," she said smugly, as if she had won our argument with just that statement alone.
Huh. Ten thousand dollars. It wasn't a lot to him but it wasn't a little either. If anything, it was an appetizer. A sample of what came next, if I allowed it.
"When did he do this?"
"A few days ago. Thursday, maybe?"
The day I called, no doubt. He was sinking his teeth deep into my life and any push back from me would only make him bite harder. The people in my hometown were undoubtably hungry for more, ecstatic that we were securing funding from an international brewing company. This was just the beginning, in their eyes.
The reasons I couldn't marry him rolled up into pills and Miss Politesse covered my mouth until I swallowed them.
"You may not love him, but you'll love what he's doing for us. You're bringing around a lot of good here by making a life with him."
I was shocked by the transparency of this statement. That was about as close to accountability as she got, yet she still made it seem like this was my choice. She could dress it up all she wanted, but the meaning remained the same: you have to stay with him, for us.
My throat felt dry. My brain felt dry. I tried to form my argument but I didn't know where to start. If I said I didn't want this, she would accuse me of being self-centered. If I told her how awful he was, she'd do everything in her power to convince me otherwise. She'd fight tooth and nail to keep her, him, and I in the best light possible. At my expense, of course.
So what choice did I have? Everything I did for myself was just something I wasn't doing for them. The veins in my temples throbbed. The City was asking for my blood.
