Thirteen

But the months go by, and they find their rhythms. Spain is a lasting influence -- they find they like to eat late, sometimes nine o'clock, even on school nights. But it's a real meal, cooked fresh and eaten together in the dining room. The woman discovers that just picking up whatever and eating on the run feels wrong. She knows that people do it all the time -- it's the modern condition -- but the lingering sense of dropping the ball infuses her with a subtle depression, which, somehow, is relieved when she cooks a decent meal and sits down to eat it with Thirteen, even if it is nine o'clock on a school night. It makes her feel like a mother taking care of a daughter, not two coyotes scrounging in an alley. Like they're still a family.

Thirteen goes to bed late now, too, as late as she needs to. She knows when she's tired. This is new too -- the woman trusts her daughter to know how she feels. In Spain, both of them took siestas and easily adjusted to the late nights, dinner at midnight, flamenco at two A.M., and now, it seems, Spain is still teaching them what is possible.

Thirteen is frighteningly able, tremendously generous, matter-of-fact in her adaptation to their new life. The woman is grateful, but also worries about relying on this too much. Thirteen can cook for herself if necessary; she can put herself to bed. She does her homework on her own. She uses her spare time to write her monthly 'zine, play the guitar, cut up and refashion her clothing, make collages, or draw her cartoon strip.

But how much time alone is too much time? The woman begins dating. She worries that she is taking advantage of Thirteen's competence, her ability to use her time alone, her lack of concern when her mother goes out. The woman keeps her cell phone on, tries to stay in the neighborhood; she can be home in five minutes. She asks Thirteen, "Is this too much? Would you like me to stay home tonight?" "It's fine, Mom," Thirteen says, with that thirteen-year-old exasperated sigh. But how much faith to put in that?

Both the benefit and the trouble with their new life is that it's all experimental. No one can tell her if this is all right. Neither of them knows how the experiment will turn out. They can do what they want, what works for them both, custom-made and newly minted just for them. On the other hand, the woman worries that what might seem all right now might not be good in the long run. And how can she ever know?

She thinks about her marriage, whether they should have separated earlier. But she knows, deep in her being, that she wouldn't have left him any earlier. She has to admit to herself, she is a coward and a shirker. She knows many women who are raising young children on their own, and doing a fabulous job of it. She considered it -- when Thirteen was two, when she was nine. But if she is honest, she knows she couldn't have done it -- worked full time, kept a roof over their heads, dealt with the discipline and heavy interaction of early childhood, and continued to write serious fiction. Suicide would have looked like an attractive option.

But at thirteen, her daughter has turned a corner. Her bat mitzvah, where she proclaimed, "Today I am an adult," was no big deal to Thirteen.

The woman, however, took it surprisingly to heart. In some fundamental way, she began to see her daughter as having come of age and capacity, more entitled to make decisions for herself, no longer a child. It doesn't seem odd to her in retrospect that this would be the year her husband and she would divorce.

Now that it's just her and Thirteen, it's so comfortable, so casual; she can see how easy it would be to move from a parent/child relationship into a sororal one. Best buddies. They could go shopping together, see movies, hang out, have their hair done, exchange clothing even. Like girlfriends.

But she has seen that kind of mother/daughter interaction at close range, and there seems something brutalizing in it, the mother using a child as a girlfriend instead of truly being a mother. "We do everything together," one such mother says with a giggle. The daughter is a horror -- so angry she cannot follow a request or even eat the food she is served, the terror of birthday parties and school days -- and the mother blames everyone but the child and herself. Now, however, the woman can understand how it happens, how seductive it is -- especially when Thirteen is so deliciously wise and fun. She makes an easy co-conspirator, she can be indoctrinated into the mother's point of view, she's companionable, yet the mother still calls the shots. Such an easy buffer against adult loneliness.

The woman knows she must resist this temptation, the monstrous ease of sliding into "just us girls." Thirteen has friends. She needs a mother. What is appropriate is the separation the woman first saw in Spain. Her job is to support that and encourage it, and remain the parental figure, a fixture with a dignity and weight and a center of gravity from whom Thirteen can push off into the world. The girl needs the woman to stay back and let her emerge into her own space and her own style. But at the same time, she still needs the woman to set boundaries, to know that she is still being held, even when they're making it up as they go along.

This is what the woman senses in the importance of the formality of dinnertime. Even if they could just as easily order a pizza and eat it in front of the TV. It would feed her daughter's body, but would it nourish her spirit, make her feel held? No, it would not.

Next Page: At her age, the woman discovers, the men who date have kids, too

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