My mother summoned me to the mansion the next day. She didn’t want to see the kids, or Andrew – just me.
As most of you know from reading this blog, my mother and I have had a difficult relationship. The fact that we pretty much look alike (except that I’ve inherited the Plumbs’ English-rose complexion) has not helped. Don’t get me wrong, I actually do love my mother. She is my mother, after all, I did come out of her. But as I’ve gotten older (and adopted children of my own) I’ve realized that she is a product of a different time and place, and has behaved accordingly. And for that reason, I’ve begun to cut her a bit of slack. In truth, I actually feel sympathy for my mother.
I’ve known for awhile that she has been harboring secrets about her heritage – and, in turn, mine and Sebastian’s. For as much as I am my father’s daughter, I am too also hers. I’ve known for awhile that these secrets have caused her great pain, and these are things that she didn’t even tell my father – and I’m still not sure she has told him.
I know that my mother is an intellectually brilliant woman and that I have miles to go before I catch up to her mentally, if I ever do. My father has said as much, that the main reason he was attracted to her was her mind, and that she reminded him of his mother, also highly intelligent. I know that my mother has only told me bits and pieces of the truth – that her mother was cruel to her and her father disappeared when she was quite young, leaving her subjected to her mother’s capricious whims. All I know of my maternal grandparents is that my grandmother was a short-order cook and my grandfather was a jack-of-all-trades sort who traveled, painted, wrote, and gardened. Oh, and did I mention he dabbled in inventing?
“I summoned you here because I know I am soon to go with the Reaper, and I cannot let the truth go with me.”
“Remember that story that your Aunt Margaret told you about when you were still in my stomach, how I went into the cemetery at night to fish?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s true.” My mother was frank. “I’m the cause you do what you do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Savannah, I’m an ambrosial. And so are you.”
“Ambrosial? What do you mean?”
“Before he disappeared, my father had been doing research on ambrosials and he left behind specific instructions for becoming one. My mother sought to hide these instructions from me but I found them anyway. As soon as I was old enough I followed them to the letter. Thus, I am an ambrosial, which simply means that I am able to cook a special recipe called ambrosia, that consists of life fruit and death fish. And you can only go into the cemetery late at night between the hours of 12 am and 5 pm to catch them. Hence, my late night trips.”
“My mother passed away just before I turned teen, and her death was regarded by the police as suspicious. Apparently, when they found my mother, she was lying in a pool of water, next to a television and some oddly placed sprinkler heads. I was asked all kinds of questions. To this day they still don’t know what happened to her. At any rate, with both of my biological parents gone, I went to live with a family friend, Edmund Browning, who helped me with my instruction in music and art.”
“I met your father when we were both trying out for the Sunset Valley Orchestra. I’d just gotten here with my two older daughters, and I was simply looking forward to something to do. I was certain that he was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but he wasn’t as confident, and neither was your Aunt Margaret, especially given that I am older than he is. People thought your father was ‘weird’ and ‘spacey,’ but I was especially intrigued when he’d told me that he’d once entertained the Grim Reaper himself.
“I did two things when I got pregnant. The first thing was, since your father wanted a daughter so badly, I ate three watermelons in succession, as I’d learned that eating them increased the chances for a girl child. And then, since I didn’t want to be an old lady training a toddler, I called upon my prior knowledge of herbs and fish to go to the cemetery and cook the recipe. The recipe has the power to temporarily reverse aging. I also made enough for your father, as well as your Aunt Margaret. Without it she would not have lived to see you grow up.”
“So yes, I am the cause you are the way you are. I am the reason for your interest in the paranormal. I should not have been surprised when you got this job, but I was. I didn’t think you’d actually follow through on it, for some reason. I think on some level I didn’t want you to end up like me or like your grandfather. I’m the one that slipped that death flower into your knapsack just before you went on that trip to Egypt.
“I got pregnant again for the sole purpose of bringing forth another ambrosial – and I chose your father as the sire. In my mind’s eye, he was perfect – blond hair, blue eyes, toned physique – he looked to me like a Norse god, yet he claims not to have any Scandinavian heritage.” She laughed. “Falling in love with him, actually, was not part of the plan. But I did. I fell madly, completely, truly in love with him, and everything about him, even (and especially) his quirks. That’s why I was as willing as I was to wait for him to commit. I realized that men like your father don’t come along very often. Sure, he is eccentric and he’d be the first one to say it, and his eccentricity is a by-product of being prodigiously talented. But deep down, he is a good man, a decent man, who means well. And he thinks the world of you. I saw the same thing in Andrew, and hoped that you would marry him – and lo and behold, you did. I hope, for your sake and his, that you married him because you are madly, truly, completely in love with him, not because I wanted you to be settled.”
My mother handed me, perhaps, the ultimate wedding gift. No, not the ambrosial book she’d studied as a girl – which she did give me, by the way – but the truth.
Even if it hurts.
It is this complicated heritage – my mother’s as well as my father’s – that I pass on to my children. I can only hope that they absorb these lessons a lot better than I did.
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