Ma belle-fille m’a tendu une serpillière sale devant huit invités en disant : « Nettoie le sol et après tu pourras manger dessus comme le chien que tu es. » Mon fils a ajouté : « Tu manges gratuitement tous les jours, alors arrête de te servir de ton âge comme excuse. » Ce soir-là, j’ai fait ma valise et j’ai disparu ; ce que j’ai fait le lendemain matin les a terrifiés.

« Maman, de combien d’argent as-tu besoin ? Cinq mille ? Dix mille ? Je te promets qu’on te remboursera dès que… »

« Daniel, arrête. »

« Vingt mille ? Peu importe. Dites-moi simplement combien cela vous coûte de revenir et de remettre les choses en ordre. »

« Aucune somme d’argent ne peut acheter cela. »

« Pourquoi pas ? Tu as toujours dit que la famille était ce qu’il y avait de plus important. »

Je me suis levé de table et j’ai posé de l’argent pour payer mon petit-déjeuner.

« Tu as raison. La famille est ce qu’il y a de plus important. C’est pourquoi je vais en fonder une nouvelle. »

« Tu ne peux pas partir. Je suis ton seul fils. »

“And I was your only mother. But that didn’t stop you when you decided it was acceptable to humiliate me.”

Daniel followed me to the café door.

“Mom, please. I promise things will change.”

I turned toward him.

“How are things going to change, Daniel? Is Samantha going to start treating me with respect? Are you going to defend me when she disrespects me? Are you going to invite me to dinner with you instead of having me serve the food? Are you going to ask me how my day was?”

“Yes. Yes. All of that. Whatever it takes.”

“You don’t even believe yourself, son.”

“Mom, you are destroying our family.”

“No, Daniel. Our family was destroyed last Friday when you decided it was appropriate to treat me like a servant. I’m just saving myself from the wreckage.”

That afternoon, from my hotel room, I called my cousin Helen in Phoenix. Helen and I had been very close when we were young. But after I married Robert and we moved to Dallas, we had lost touch.

“Beatatrice, my goodness, I can’t believe it’s you. How are you, cousin?”

“Hello, Helen. I’m starting over.”

“What do you mean?”

I told her the whole story. Helen listened without interrupting, and when I finished, there was a long silence.

“Beatatrice,” she finally said, “come to Phoenix right now.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I have a big house. I’ve been living alone since Frank died, and I’d love to have company. Plus, there’s a great community of people our age here. You could start over, Bea. I don’t want you to be a burden.”

“A burden?”

“Beatatrice, you’re 65, not 95. You have money, health, and a whole life ahead of you. Besides, you owe me about 20 years of catching up.”

That night, I booked a plane ticket for the following Monday.

On Friday morning, Daniel showed up at the hotel again. This time, he brought Samantha with him. I watched them from my room window, arguing in the parking lot. Samantha was gesturing dramatically, clearly upset. Daniel had that defeated posture he had developed during his marriage.

When they knocked on the door, I let them knock for ten minutes before opening it.

“Beatatrice,” Samantha said immediately, with tears in her eyes, “I need to apologize to you.”

“All right,” I replied, keeping the door barely ajar.

“I made a terrible mistake on Friday. I was nervous about the dinner. I’d had a little to drink and I said horrible things that I didn’t seriously mean.”

“What things didn’t you seriously mean, Samantha? When you handed me the dirty mop? When you told me to eat off the floor like a dog? Or when you said I was a moocher living for free?”

Samantha blushed.

“All of that. None of that was true.”

“It wasn’t true that you handed me the mop? Because I remember it very clearly.”

“No, I mean… yes, it happened, but I didn’t mean to be cruel. I was just—”

“You were just what?”

“I was just frustrated.”

“Frustrated about what?”

Samantha looked at Daniel for help, but he avoided her gaze.

“Well, sometimes I feel like… like we don’t have privacy in our own house.”

“Privacy? How so?”

“Like you’re always here, and—”

“Samantha,” I interrupted her, “that house has four bedrooms. I live in one of them. You have the rest of the house for your privacy.”

“Yes, but… but besides that—”

“Besides that, I cook, I clean, I do the laundry, I maintain the yard, and I pay the mortgage. Is that what bothers you?”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

Samantha started to cry.

“It’s just that sometimes I feel like Daniel loves you more than me.”

And there was the truth.

“Samantha,” I said calmly, “I am his mother. A mother’s love doesn’t compete with a wife’s love. They are different.”

“But he always talks about you. He always says I have to be more like you.”

“And that’s why you humiliated me?”

“I… I just wanted you to see that I’m important in this family, too.”

“Samantha, you made me clean the floor with a dirty mop and told me to eat like a dog. Do you really think that’s the way to show you’re important?”

“No. I… I felt threatened.”

“Threatened by a 65-year-old woman who only wanted to help her son?”

Daniel finally spoke.

“Mom, please. Samantha apologized. Can’t we just forget this and move on?”

“Forget?”

“Yes, forgive and forget like we’ve always done in our family.”

“Like we’ve always done? Daniel, how many times in your childhood did your father and I humiliate you in front of other people?”

“Never.”

“And how many times did we treat you like you were less than an animal?”

“None. But Mom—”

“Then no, son. It’s not something we’ve always done. It’s something you both did to me, and I’m not going to forget it.”

I closed the door and didn’t open it again, no matter how long they kept knocking.

On Sunday morning, my last day in Dallas, I was packing my few belongings when my phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize.

“Hello, Mrs. Peterson. This is Mark Johnson. I’m a lawyer. Your son Daniel hired me to talk to you about a family situation.”

I stopped folding my clothes and sat on the bed.

“A lawyer?”

“Yes, ma’am. Your son is very worried about you. He tells me you’ve been acting irrationally and are putting the family’s welfare at risk.”

“Irrationally?”

“Yes, ma’am. I understand you’re upset about some misunderstanding, but cutting off financial support so abruptly is causing serious problems. Your son could lose his house.”

I laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“Mr. Johnson, did Daniel tell you why I’m upset?”

“He mentioned there was an argument during a dinner. Something about household chores. But ma’am, family problems are solved by talking, not by cutting off financial support.”

“Household chores? Yes, that’s what he told you, Mr. Johnson. Did Daniel tell you that his wife made me clean the floor with a dirty mop in front of eight guests and then told me to eat crumbs off the floor like a dog?”

There was a long pause.

“No, ma’am, he did not mention those specific details.”

“Did he tell you that for three years I have been paying the mortgage on his house, all the utilities, the repairs, and practically all their living expenses while they treated me like an unpaid domestic employee?”

“Mrs. Peterson, I understand you are upset, but—”

“No, Mr. Johnson, you don’t understand anything. My son is paying you to pressure me to return to a situation of abuse, but he is lying to you about the facts.”

“Ma’am, perhaps we could arrange family mediation—”

“There is nothing to mediate. I gave them three years of my life, my money, and my dignity. In return, I received humiliation and contempt. I am not going to pay for the privilege of being mistreated.”

“But ma’am, your son says you have a moral obligation—”

“Moral obligation? What is a son’s moral obligation to his mother? Doesn’t it include basic respect?”

“Mrs. Peterson, please consider—”

“Mr. Johnson, I am going to tell you something. Tomorrow I am leaving Dallas. If Daniel wants to keep his house, he can get a second job, sell the new car I helped him pay for, or take out a loan. But he is no longer going to use my money to finance a life where I’m treated like trash.”

I hung up the phone and turned it off.

An hour later, someone knocked on my room door so hard I thought they were going to break it.

“Beatrice, open the door. I know you’re in there.”

It was Samantha, but her voice sounded different. There were no more tears or apologies. She sounded furious.

“Open the damn door. We need to talk.”

I opened the door slowly. Samantha stood there with disheveled hair, red eyes—not from sadness anymore, but from rage.

“What do you want, Samantha?”

“I want you to stop acting like a victim and come home.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. I’m tired of this drama. I made a mistake. I apologized. But you keep acting like it’s the end of the world.”

“Samantha, you humiliated me in front of strangers.”

“It was one night. One damn night. And for that, you’re going to destroy our lives?”

“I am not destroying anything. I’m just stopping financing your life.”

“It’s the same thing. Without your money, we’re going to lose everything.”

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

Samantha moved closer, her voice turning venomous.

“You know what I think? I think you’re jealous.”

“Jealous?”

“Yes. Jealous that Daniel loves me and not you. Jealous that we have a happy life without needing you to control everything.”

“Samantha, you just admitted that you need my money to maintain that happy life.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It’s exactly what you meant.”

“You know what? You’re a bitter old woman who can’t accept that her son doesn’t need her anymore.”

“If Daniel doesn’t need me, then there’s no problem with me leaving.”

“But we need your money.”

There it was—the truth, again.

Samantha realized what she had said and tried to fix it.

“No, I meant—”

“You said exactly what you thought. You don’t need me. You just need my money.”

“Beatatrice, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Samantha, for three years, I lived in that house feeling like I was in the way, like I was a burden, like you had to put up with me out of charity. But it turns out it was the other way around. You were the ones living off my charity.”

“That’s not true.”