Her Story
by Melodie Corrigall
Art by Sofie Rosalien Deen
Having made the announcement and asked for advice, Catherine leapt up to answer her cell phone. With apologies to Laura over her shoulder, the young woman headed out of the restaurant and hunkered down against the wall.
Gasping in disbelief, her mother-in-law scrambled to find some sage reply to the surprising news. She watched the young woman’s animated conversation out the restaurant window. Catherine was obviously intent on finding some solution to the recent crises in her company. Laura knew that the problem would enervate not worry her daughter-in-law who gloried in every workplace challenge. Laura had never met anyone who so loved her job. Maybe ballet dancers or football players, who also had spent years aspiring to success, felt that glow. She, herself, had briefly experienced it as a young competitive swimmer. She certainly hadn’t since leaving her country.
While the revelation was overwhelming, the question was serious and she would be expected to give a reaction and advice. The situation was complicated: Laura’s son, underemployed for years, had finally been offered a job he considered worthy, and was keen to take it on. It meant that he and Catherine would have to move to another country and live in a small town (not the city they enjoyed now) for a minimum two-year period. Catherine, now happily employed, would have to give up her job and, in all likelihood, be stuck at home wondering what had hit her. There was no way she could get work in the new place and unlikely she could return home after two years to find a position similar to the one she held now.
Catherine probably saw some similarity to her mother-in-law’s choice. Laura had left another country, her own country. Left the city, one of the most exciting in the world even in its devastation, a city that in recent years had rebounded to be prosperous and exhilarating.
That decision, made without consultation, without knowing what she was going for, had defined her life. And once it was made all future choices were restricted. Widowed by war with a babe in arms, she had felt helpless and frightened by an uncertain future. A man had come to the door offering food. When he returned with wood for the fireplace and more food, she had invited him in. He had seemed harmless and would have been had she not been seduced by the idea of a protector who knew how to get supplies and offered a way for her and her baby to escape the devastation.
Over the years she had wondered how she had been so naïve. He had married her, true, and taken her back to his country—never hers—to live with his parents who whispered about how their son—who could have been an artist—was now saddled with a foreign woman and child, and forced to work at whatever job he could find. They had lived far from a city in a small fading town, wherever she went people had suffered her accent and shook their heads at why, instead of marrying a clever local girl, her husband had taken on a foreigner.
What had she expected? Without knowing enough of the local language to get a job and discouraged from doing so by a husband who preferred a stay-at-home wife, she never mastered the language or fit in.
Here now was her daughter-in-law, climbing like Jack in the Bean Stock up to the giant’s table in search of the golden goose, to be called back to earth by her husband.
Laura had never admitted how she regretted her decision to marry and follow her husband home. She had pretended gratitude, which she had felt for the first years, but finally like dried straw, it had crumbled.
“You followed your love, so I assume you will say go for it. I know you’re shocked that I don’t want children,” Catherine had said.
She was not shocked the young woman didn’t want children. She had never considered it an option; her children were born before thought was put into it. She loved them, both of them, the one from her old country and the one from the new, but she had always wondered what she might have been or done if she had been able to operate in her own tongue, immersed in her own culture, living in her own bustling, bursting city not dragged from one small village to a larger one and then finally to a city.
Catherine would be back soon, should she be frank? The young woman had always been kind to her, had even asked if she didn’t miss her country of birth, didn’t want to return to what she referred to as Laura’s homeland.
She loved her daughter-in-law and didn’t want to lie to her or encourage her in a decision that might not be in her best interest. Until recently, she had felt that her own decision to marry a foreigner and follow him home had been the worst decision of her life. Recently she had had second thoughts. Maybe it wasn’t the idea of going to another country that was the mistake but in linking her future to someone who she hardly knew and on whom she depended. Finding herself cut off from her friends and her passion—competitive swimming—to become a stay-at-home wife and mother. Had she gotten out, mastered the new language, learned a trade, had a job, she would have had more options. But as he insisted that he was the man of the house, she had stayed home and raised the two children. They, in turn, became proficient in two languages and as condescending as her husband about her accent. “Maybe I could go to night school,” she’d said and her husband scoffed, “We don’t have money to waste on that. You’re alright as you are.”
Glancing out the window Laura watched as Catherine nodded, obviously intent on her message, and then threw back her head and laughed.
Then the young woman tucked her phone in her pocket and headed for the restaurant door. What could Laura say? Whatever she said would probably be shared with her son who would not be best pleased if she suggested Catherine not follow him.
“I apologize for that, having to tie up some ends,” Catherine said. “So what is your advice from your experience? What is your story?”
Her story was not to be told in a 50 second sound bite; it was long and complicated. “You don’t have time to hear my story or my reflections. But you know I love you both and that I am very proud of you for your success.”
“Of course we have time. We never get to have a good talk, always the men on about their jobs or lack of jobs and sports and political bad news. I told my secretary I was at an important meeting and wouldn’t be back any time soon. So tell me, I know it must have been difficult, you left a lot, presumably for good reasons… what were they and were there regrets?”
“Good grief, if I am to tell my story, we’ll be here a long time. We’ll need a glass of wine.”
“Let’s do it right. We’ll need more than a glass. I’ll order a bottle.”
Sofie Rosalien Deen, Where Do You Think You Are Going, photograph
