Page 217 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Madaline, smiling through her stories with a look of wry bemusement, but I

knew she thought unkindly of her. She probably thought Madaline was
flaunting. She probably felt embarrassed for her.
This is what rankles, what pollutes Mamá’s kindness, her rescues and her acts
of courage. The indebtedness that shadows them. The demands, the obligations
she saddles you with. The way she uses these acts as currency, with which she
barters for loyalty and allegiance. I understand now why Madaline left all those
years ago. The rope that pulls you from the flood can become a noose around
your neck. People always disappoint Mamá in the end, me included. They can’t
make good on what they owe, not the way Mamá expects them to. Mamá’s
consolation prize is the grim satisfaction of holding the upper hand, free to pass
verdicts from the perch of strategic advantage, since she is always the one who
has been wronged.

It saddens me because of what it reveals to me about Mamá’s own neediness,
her own anxiety, her fear of loneliness, her dread of being stranded, abandoned.
And what does it say about me that I know this about my mother, that I know
precisely what she needs and yet how deliberately and unswervingly I have
denied her, taking care to keep an ocean, a continent—or, preferably, both—
between us for the better part of three decades?
“They have no sense of irony, the junta,” Madaline was saying, “crushing
people as they do. In Greece! The birthplace of democracy … Ah, there you are!
Well, how was it? What did you two get up to?”

“We played at the beach,” Thalia said.
“Was it fun? Did you have fun?”
“We had a grand time,” Thalia said.
Mamá’s eyes jumped skeptically from me to Thalia and back, but Madaline
beamed and applauded silently. “Good! Now that I don’t have to worry about
you two getting along, Odie and I can spend some time of our own together.

What do you say, Odie? We have so much catching up to do still!”
Mamá smiled gamely and reached for a head of cabbage.

…

From then on, Thalia and I were left to our own devices. We were to
explore the island, play games at the beach, amuse ourselves the way children
are expected to. Mamá would pack us a sandwich each, and we would set off
together after breakfast.