The Interview

Emily Rinkema

I’m ten minutes late to the interview to be my mother’s daughter. I’m confident, as her actual daughter, her only child, that I’ll have a leg up, but when I enter the lobby of the memory care facility, four other women are waiting. If they are here for the job, three of them have no chance—Too Old, Too Blonde, Too Connecticut–but one makes me question all of my life decisions. She’s slim, athletic, exactly what my mother has always wanted in a daughter. I am not slim, not athletic, so unlike my mother, she used to joke that my father had slept with the mailman. 

    Tom, my mother’s nurse, who I pay to be with her when I cannot, comes down the hallway. He holds a clipboard. “Next,” he says, looking around the room. He seems amused.

   “This is fucking ridiculous,” I say.

   “Oh Sweetie.” He puts his arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry. I think you’ve got a real shot at this.” 

The interview is short. My mother sits with pen in hand, a notebook open on the desk in front of the window. There’s only one chair in the room, so I sit on the bed, which feels unprofessional. She wears a sweater I’ve never seen. 

     She asks: How often will you visit? What will you bring? Are you married? How many kids do you have? Do you own any nice clothes?

     I answer: Almost every day, magazines and muffins, not anymore, you know the answer to that, are you fucking kidding me?

     Tom puts his hand on my shoulder, and I sit back down, breathe, smile.

     She tells me I can go. 

     Tom walks me out. 

     “What’s next?” I can’t wait to leave the parking lot. My pants are too tight. My feet hurt. Fifteen years of therapy, erased in less than an hour. 

     “She’ll be in touch,” he says. 

Tom calls. I’ve made it to the final round, which happens to be on the only day of the week I don’t normally visit. I spend an embarrassing amount of time deciding what to wear. Nothing screams “I’m Actually Your Goddamn Daughter,” so I choose my comfortable jeans and a blouse with tiny blue flowers. Tom tells me I am supposed to bring a presentation, so I upload three photos into a slide show. I stop on my way to get muffins.

     In the facility lobby, I’m surprised to see only one other candidate—the slim, athletic one. She looks a little less catalog-ready today—anxious, tired. She has a briefcase by the leg of her chair and is working on her laptop. Finalizing her presentation, no doubt. There’s a part of me—not as tiny as I would like to admit— that’s rooting for her.

     My mother seems distant in the interview, confused. She asks me why I am there, and I go all in, tell her I’m prepared to be her daughter. That I am honored to have made it this far in the process, that I think I’m a natural. She’s in bed this time, sitting up but reclined slightly. I pull my chair close to her, open my computer, and show her my presentation. 

     She smiles at the first photo—one of us on the steps of my childhood home. I’m maybe three years old, and it’s clear I’ve been crying. Mom is next to me, wearing a green sundress and a floppy hat. She’s laughing and looking at the camera. She touches the screen, and her eyes fill with tears, and I think that maybe I’ve been wrong about everything, maybe she does love me. But when I look closely, I see that she’s touching her own face in the photo. I click to the next one—us at my high school graduation. She shakes her head, doesn’t even look at the third slide.

     She says they are poisoning her food. She grabs my wrist, her nails digging into my skin. Tells me George, my father who’s been dead a decade, is fucking the nurse. That I’ll never get married if I stay this fat. That her handsome son visits every day, and I have to leave because she doesn’t want me there when he arrives. Which would be fine, only she doesn’t have a son, handsome or otherwise. 

     Tom sits outside the door.  He stands when I come out and raises his eyebrows. Like he wants it to have gone well. He rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck. I hadn’t noticed before, but he looks exhausted, and I wonder why he chooses to spend his days with other peoples’ parents. Maybe it’s easier when there aren’t so many layers, when words are just words.

     “How did it go?” He walks me to the door. 

     “I’m hopeful.” Because I’ve got to believe there’s a chance. 

© Variant Literature Inc 2023