Mom might die any day. That’s
why I can’t say anything. She has been dying for years. So when she painted a
picture of me in which I looked fat, gross and stupid, all the while raving about how beautiful and spiritual I looked in
the portrait, the best I could do was dump the thing, together with her hatred for me. When she asks, I
tell her of course I still have it.
I mean what do you do when someone tells you how beautiful
you are and shows you that they think it is a lie?
Grandma has Alzheimer’s, so she more
or less gets away with things. Mom did a portrait of her, too, a watercolor. One day
Grandma dumped her spaghetti plate, with sauce, on the portrait, which couldn’t be restored to its original official
beauty afterwards.
So of course Mom holds a grudge, though no one has the nerve to tell exactly where and when it started.
