A Quiche Before Dying

nearly forty, she told herself, you ought to be over it by now.
    Maybe Shelley was right. Having mothers visit wasn’t easy or natural. That thought took her back to Mrs. General Pryce. Just imagine having a mother like that turn up on your doorstep with her suitcases. It was the stuff of which nightmares were made.
    Jane sat looking at the pile of manuscripts, thinking guiltily that she ought to be participating in the class if she was going to take it. But she didn’t want to write an autobiography. Her own life, while certainly not ordinary, had no dramatic high points—except a few that were much too personal to share with strangers.
    So if she wasn’t going to write her own life, that didn’t mean she couldn’t participate in some way. Just for the fun of it, she decided to invent a person to write about.
    She sat thinking for a moment, then pulled a legal pad and pencil from the kitchen “everything“ drawer and started writing:
    “They say I was born in London to the woman I learned to call Mother, but when I was seventeen I learned that my origins were quite different. The woman who actually gave birth to me—in the rude colonial town of Boston—would not have dared darken the doors of the mansion I grew up calling home.”
    Jane sat back and reread this, smiling. “Where in the world did that come from?“ she asked herself aloud. It was funny—and a little bit scary, how easily that had gone onto the paper. She hadn’t really thought it out until she was actually writing it.
    An image of a person was forming in her mind. She bent over the paper again.
    Priscilla.
     

3
     
    Cecily Grant arrived at three in a cab. Jane was writing at the kitchen table, where she could see the driveway, and rushed out to help bring her mother’s luggage in, but there was only one medium-sized suitcase. Jane should have realized. Her mother always, of necessity, traveled light. During the whole of her married life, Cecily Grant had never had an actual home, only a long series of residences supplied by the State Department. A few were hovels and glorified tents, most were luxurious houses, a couple had been modest castles.
    Jane’s father was a cultured, handsome man who had an uncanny gift for languages, being able to pick up the most obscure dialects in a matter of days. Sometimes he used these languages overtly in helping arrange treaties and trade agreements. More often he was sent in to look decorative and mildly perplexed, all the time eavesdropping like mad. Neither his wife nor his children had acquired a smidgen of this language gift, so they made a terrific cover for his more covert activities. In fact, it wasn’t until Jane was an adult that she understood what her father’s job really was and how important it was.
    “Mother! I’m so glad to see you!“ Jane said, embracing the older woman. Now that Cecily was actually here, it was true. Cecily carried with her an enveloping air of competence. People in her presence sensed that nothing could go wrong that she couldn’t cope with. It was very comforting, even when nothing was wrong.
    Cecily held her daughter at arm’s length, appraisingly. “Jane, you look wonderful. Your hair’s longer. It’s very flattering!“
    “You look terrific, too.“ Cecily always looked great. She had naturally curly hair that she kept short and fluffy. She never had it set and had let it go gray so that she didn’t have to worry about having roots touched up in odd corners of the globe where such amenities might not be available. Her figure was still slim and faintly athletic. She used no makeup but lipstick, and—thanks to an expert plastic surgeon in London whom she visited at regular five-year intervals—she had no unsightly wrinkles or sags in her face or neck. Every time she saw her mother, Jane found herself offering up silent prayers that she would hold up against age as well as Cecily. Unfortunately, Jane’s genes didn’t run to curls, nor her budget to cosmetic surgery.
    “I wish you’d let me pick you up at the airport,“ Jane said, taking the one suitcase into the house.
    “Oh, Jane, you know I just get shoved onto whatever plane has an empty spot. I’d feel awful if I thought you were camped out at a dreary old airport waiting for me. How are the children? Is Todd enjoying his trip with his other grandmother?“ She said it brightly, but there was the slightest hint of jealousy. A tiny chink in the perfect armor, Jane was glad to