Mothers - E. D. James

Maybe it was because she was an only child of a woman whose husband had died young leaving her with the responsibilities of life. Olivia had the impression that there had not been an excess of joy and love in her mothers home. Life had been hard day to day. Maybe it was that she was so beautiful that people set her apart. Men pursued her, including Olivias father, thinking that with her on their arm they would be the envy of their peers. What they found was that they could not possess her, could not penetrate that emotional armor she wore. What was she protecting herself from? Each of these men had given her all the material support she could ever want or need. Each of these men had, at least at the start, been wild in their expressions of affection and love. But none of them had ever penetrated that wall of control.

Olivia had seen it slip only once, briefly. At the wedding of the daughter of a childhood friend. It had been a lovely affair on a sunny spring day. Oyster bar, champagne flowing, a great jazz band laying out swing tunes. Olivia watched from the sidelines as her mother got into dancing with a man she had dated back in high school. As the hour progressed that wall sagged and Olivia could see happiness and joy beginning to radiate from her mother. Then, at the end of a lindy, the man reached out hugged her in a spontaneous moment of affection and there it was, the wall, back again.

What worried Olivia most of all was the fear that maybe it was genetic. That the ability to truly connect in love was just missing her moms makeup and that missing gene had been passed to her and she in turn had passed it to Olivia. Olivia had friends, plenty. She had lovers, plenty. But so far in her thirty two years she had never been touched and felt joined in a relationship. Sometimes hurt, sometimes hurting, but never simply connected. Her mother had died alone finally. Her beauty and her accumulated wealth intact. But alone.