My Mother the Villain
The life of champagne brunches and Fifth Avenue sprees was gone, and the debutante who once graced magazine covers had become a social pariah. She’d been betrayed by my father, the hero of the story, and her family’s fortune had vanished overnight. A pampered princess who had never worked a day in her life, she had to learn everything from scratch. For me.
1
The nurses told me later that my mother, Genevieve, didn’t even know she was pregnant. She just thought she was getting fat.
The truth hit her the day her family’s bankruptcy was announced. Every credit card was declined, every account frozen. The only cash she had to her name was twenty thousand dollars, tucked away in a savings bond a great-aunt had given her for her sixteenth birthday—a sum she’d once found so laughably small she’d never bothered to touch it.
She was staring at that number on her banking app when the first contraction seized her, a pain so sharp it sent her straight to the hospital. And then, there I was. Even then, in the midst of ruin, she insisted on a private VIP suite, refusing to be wheeled into a standard maternity ward.
Just like that, her balance lost a zero. She had two thousand dollars left.
I arrived without an invitation.
The first time she saw me, she just stared, baffled. A child had never been part of her plan, not even when she was deepest in love with my father. She needed too much love herself, the kind of all-consuming love only he could give, and it was meant for her alone.
They had made a promise as children, a secret whispered between them.
“Ethan’s heart is for Genevieve, and Genevieve alone.”
For a long time, it was true. His love was a fortress built only for her. At eighteen, Ethan told her, “I love you. Only you.” He honored that childhood vow, and to everyone who knew them, Ethan belonged to Genevieve. When she grew possessive, their friends would just laugh it off. “The princess guards her treasures,” they’d tease.
And at eighteen, Ethan found her possessiveness sweet. It felt like a green apple lollipop, a slow, perfect dissolve in his heart. He’d blush, wave goodbye to his friends, and run straight back to her arms, back to his happiness.
But at twenty-four, her possessiveness was a cage. It was like a piece of sour candy that never turned sweet, an acrid lump he couldn’t swallow, filling his mouth with a dull, persistent ache. His friends weren’t teasing anymore; they were mocking him for being whipped. The frantic ring of his phone became a Pavlovian signal, a lead weight dropping in his stomach.
When a repressed heart can’t find a door, it breaks open a window.
So he started an affair. He knew it was a betrayal, a violation of everything they were, so he hid it. At first, the guilt was a heavy counterweight on the scales, but the stolen moments of joy, the secret thrills, began to pile up until the balance tipped irrevocably.
When the lies finally shattered, the explosion was ugly. They screamed, they clawed at each other, turning their pristine Upper East Side apartment into a war zone. They ended it with a vow to never see each other again.
They had just finalized their divorce last month.
As the story’s villain, my mother’s love was a thing of fierce, paranoid obsession. The slightest dip in my father’s affection sent her spiraling. Three scheduled calls a day. Every outfit he wore, she had to approve. Home by seven p.m., no exceptions.
But even with her standing guard, my father slipped through her fingers like a handful of sand, blown into the arms of another woman.
It started with small things. A single strand of auburn hair on his blazer, a color that wasn't hers. A cloyingly sweet perfume clinging to his collar that she didn’t recognize.
The first crack appeared when she confronted him, her voice cold. "You smell." It was a cheap, saccharine scent that made her head ache.
To hide his guilt, he stripped off his jacket, feigning indifference. “I was at a department store. Must have brushed past someone.”
Then it was a delicate silk scarf the housekeeper found in his coat pocket. A scarf that wasn't hers. Then came the way he deliberately turned his back to her in bed, the way his eyes would drift away when they hugged.
Genevieve couldn’t ignore the signs. She hired a private investigator.
The photos arrived in a manila envelope. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. He had cheated on her with the one person she despised most in the world.
Maybe it was a villain’s intuition. From the very first time she’d met this woman, a deep, primal dislike had taken root. She was my mother’s opposite in every way. And now, in these glossy photographs, the man everyone saw as the perfect husband—the man who had sworn he loved only her—was holding this woman’s hand in broad daylight, kissing her on a park bench during his lunch hour. They moved together with an ease that spoke of years, not stolen moments.
Just a year ago, Ethan had laid in bed with her, whispering about how much they both disliked this woman, how she was a professional victim, a master manipulator. Now, in a twist of cruel irony, that same woman was his lover. The third person in their marriage.
My mother, in a desperate attempt to save her marriage, tried to talk to her. The woman refused.
The second time, my mother went to her office building, waiting for hours in the lobby. She finally saw her, coming down in the elevator, tucked securely under my father’s arm. The moment Ethan saw my mother, his first instinct was to shield the other woman behind him.
The sight was so absurd, Genevieve laughed. A hollow, brittle sound. “Ethan,” she said, her voice dangerously calm. “Aren’t you going to offer an explanation?”
He ignored her, whispering something to the girl and sending her away in a cab. Once she was gone, he turned back, trying to take my mother’s hand. He didn’t deny it. He didn’t even try to lie. He just kept repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” over and over, even slapping his own face. Then he sank to his knees on the pavement, begging her not to divorce him.
My mother stared at him for a long time before turning and walking back into their building.
He expected divorce papers the next morning. Instead, she forgave him.
“We can stay married,” she told him, her voice devoid of emotion. “But you have to promise me you will never see her again.”
Then the tables turned. The other woman started showing up, trying to confront my mother, who refused to see her. Finally, she came to our apartment, waiting for Ethan. He saw his lover looking so lost and pathetic, and the sight broke his heart. He took her with him when he left.
He didn't come home for a month.
When he finally returned, a cold, relentless rain was falling. He pushed open the door, bringing the storm in with him. Genevieve thought he was back for good, that he’d finally realized his mistake.
But then he threw a stack of photos at her. The sharp corner of one cut her cheek. The dream shattered. He wasn't here to reconcile. He was here to condemn her.
“God, you’re disgusting, Genevieve,” he spat, his voice dripping with revulsion. “Every day you become more and more pathetic. Just looking at your face makes me sick. How can you be so venomous?”
“You knew how important that charity gala was for Isabella. You knew it, and you still had your friends ice her out. Do you have any idea how many sleepless nights she put into organizing that event?”
“Are you even human? Can’t you stand to see anyone else succeed?”
Genevieve froze. She couldn't comprehend that the man she had loved her entire life was screaming at her like this, for a stranger. In an instant, a dam of grief and betrayal broke inside her.
“Yes! I can’t stand to see her happy!” she shrieked, her voice cracking. “Why should she be? Why does a woman who destroys a family get to have a better life? Why don’t you ask me about my sleepless nights? The nights I spent crying over you? The nights I stayed up helping you build your career?”
“What right does she have? Tell me, Ethan, what right does she have?”
Her roar dissolved into a desperate, wracking sob. She clawed at her own hair, her body doubling over as if in physical pain. The cold rainwater from his coat dripped down her back, extinguishing the last embers of warmth inside her.
Ethan just watched her, his expression cold. He thought, This feels so familiar. There was a time when her tears would have shattered his heart. Now, all he felt was a desperate urge to escape.
“Let’s get a divorce,” he said.
Her mind went blank. She slapped him, hard, across the face.
Ethan was stunned.
“A divorce?” she whispered, her voice trembling with rage. “How dare you say that. We’re in this mess because of you.”
“I don’t understand. When other couples have problems, they work to fix the problem. But you… you decided to fix the problem by getting rid of me! By cheating on me!”
He’d had enough. They had never been good at backing down. He grabbed her arm and dragged her in front of the ornate, full-length mirror in the foyer.
“What about you?” he snarled. “Have you taken a good look at yourself lately?”
They both stared at the reflection. At the woman in the mirror. Her hair was a wild halo, a thin, red line traced a path down her cheek, and her eyes were red-rimmed and vacant, haunted by a grief and fury that twisted her features.
She looked at herself, dazed. She remembered the day they got married, the first time they stood before this very mirror. They were both smiling then. Now, one face was etched with disgust, the other with rage.
Suddenly, fighting for the marriage felt meaningless. The love was gone. And she had never been one to settle for a life without it.
At the lawyer’s office, she stared at the signed divorce agreement for a long time. The paralegal asked if there was a problem.
“After so many years,” she murmured, more to herself than to him, “we should at least say a proper goodbye.”
She gathered the papers, stood up, and spoke with a weariness that seemed to settle in her bones. “I hope we never see each other again.”
A month later, the news broke. The family fortune was gone. Genevieve was broke.
She found out while she was packing up her life. The apartment was co-owned, but there was no reason to stay. When she drove back to her family’s mansion, she found it empty. A hollow shell.
She never imagined that in the midst of losing everything, she would gain a child. She had lost her world, but she had been given me.
I was like a fast-forward button on the VCR of her life, instantly splicing it into two distinct parts: Before, and After. It was sudden, but she accepted it. She accepted me.
Then came the brutal realization that she could barely take care of herself, let alone a newborn. She had no idea a cab from her old penthouse to the hospital cost twelve dollars. She didn’t know that the gourmet meals she used to order on a whim now cost more than she had to her name. She still had the instincts of a rich girl, wanting only the best of everything.
She was forced to learn how to survive. Forced to learn how to be a mother.
She’d never wanted a child, but she seemed to adore me. She held me constantly, nuzzling her cheek against mine, her fingers gently tracing my tiny hands as she whispered to me. When the nurses cared for me, she would watch from the side, awkwardly trying to mimic their movements.
The trashy novels on her phone were replaced with articles on parenting and infant care. More often than not, she’d fall asleep with the phone still in her hand. I loved to watch her sleep. She looked like the climbing roses outside the window, swaying softly in the breeze, peaceful and beautiful. When I slept, she would pat my back gently.
She whispered to the nurse one afternoon, asking what kind of formula was best for a small baby like me. The nurse whispered back, “You could try this one. Your baby is so little. She seems like she didn't get enough nourishment in the womb.”
My mother looked at the price tag, then at me, blowing bubbles in my bassinet. Her face was a canvas of conflict. Finally, she gritted her teeth and bought a whole case.
After that purchase, her bank account lost another zero. She had two hundred dollars left.
I was well cared for at the hospital, but I slept almost constantly. A heaviness in my chest was a constant companion. My mother didn’t notice anything was wrong. She just called me her little pearl, sleeping twenty-four hours a day.
Then the nurses ran a full panel of tests.
The doctor told her I had a congenital heart defect. It was unlikely I would live to see adulthood.
For days after the diagnosis, my mother just held me and cried. She was still recovering from childbirth, and the doctor warned her that the constant crying wasn't good for her. He asked about the baby’s father.
She just wept, unable to answer. Her life had been cleaved in two. The first twenty years were a gilded haze. Then, as if fate had grown tired of her easy life, it had thrown her into motherhood completely unprepared. And as if that wasn't cruel enough, it twisted the knife.
The head nurse was a kind woman who looked at my mother with a mixture of pity and frustration. “What kind of man did this to such a lovely girl?” she’d mutter.
“Some things, you just have to let go,” she told my mother, patting her back. “In the face of life and death, most things don’t matter.”
They even brought in a therapist to screen her for postpartum depression.
The nurse would often sigh when she looked at me. She told my mother later that at first, she’d disliked her, thinking she was a terrible, self-absorbed mother. But then, she pitied her.
“She looked like a new bud on a rosebush,” the nurse said. “So fragile that a single storm could knock her from the branch.” She saw women like my mother every year.
Maybe it was because I was a quiet, cute baby, but the nurse took a special interest in me. She couldn’t bear the thought of me ending up an orphan.
But no amount of pity could pay the mounting medical bills. They were crushing her.
She had once fought desperately for a love she couldn’t save, debasing herself, throwing her family’s money at the problem, humiliating herself by throwing a glass of wine on the other woman at a public event. All she had ever wanted, since she was a little girl, was for someone to pick her up when she fell instead of laughing at her.
And for her whole life, Ethan was the only one who ever had. Her own parents, exhausted by their miserable marriage, had no energy left for a child. So she grew up spoiled, arrogant, and rude, with no one to guide her. People bowed to her status, her money. Without that armor, she was just what the nurse saw: a fragile bud on a branch, about to be snapped by the wind. She knew this, but she didn’t know how to be any different. She had tried to hold onto the one piece of love she’d ever known with a grip so tight, she’d strangled it.
In the end, she was left with nothing.
…
Taking a deep breath, she started calling the people she once thought were her friends. The calls either went straight to voicemail or were answered with a string of curses.
She hesitated for a long time before making the last call.
“Hello?” the voice on the other end answered.
“Lindsey? It’s me.”
“Well, well, if it isn’t Miss Genevieve herself.” The voice was slick with sarcasm. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Are you calling to borrow money? How much do you need?”
My mother named a figure. Before she could finish, a sharp, ugly laugh cut her off.
“You’re the great debutante, aren’t you? A wave of your hand used to be worth millions. Why are you calling a nobody like me for a few thousand dollars?”
“I have the money,” Lindsey continued, her voice dripping with malice. “But I have a hard time believing you’ll be able to pay it back. Tell you what. Bark like a dog for me a few times. Maybe if I’m in a good mood, I’ll lend it to you.”
Laughter erupted in the background. They weren’t just mocking her; they were making a spectacle of her fall.
But this time, my mother didn’t hang up. Her voice was quiet. “Wasn’t I good to you?”
The laughter on the other end stopped cold.
“Yes, you were good to me,” Lindsey said, her voice turning hard and bitter. “But you owed me. You owed me for being born with everything I’ll never have. For years, I prayed for this day. I dreamed of you losing everything.”
“And now that it’s happened, I couldn’t be happier. In fact, my friends and I are celebrating right now. Celebrating that you’ve finally fallen. Welcome to the real world. Welcome to being one of us.”
My mother didn't hear the rest. She let the phone slip from her ear and sat down slowly next to my bassinet, her hand gently stroking my blanket. She thought about the people who used to surround her. Even at her worst, she’d had a court of admirers. Some offered clumsy flattery, others subtle favors. Lindsey had been her favorite.
She had seemed different. She cared, she didn’t just enable. She treated everyone as an equal, scorning the arrogance of the rich and the bitterness of the poor. She had prepared notes for my mother before exams, telling her not to cheat. She would give her a cold look when she did something wrong and patiently try to guide her.
She had felt like family.
But now, without the money and the status, she was just another stranger, another voice in the chorus of mockery and scorn.
My mother finally ended the call. From her meager pile of belongings, she took a designer scarf and tossed it in the trash.
As the payment reminders from the hospital flooded her phone, she finally dialed the number she’d been avoiding.
First, she heard a cacophony of voices, men and women laughing. Then, his voice, familiar and distant. “Hello?”
Before, she would have chirped his name, “Ethan!” Now, she could only manage a stilted, formal reply. “Ethan. It’s me.” Her voice was slow, stiff.
“Can you… can you lend me some money?”
More laughter crackled through the line, then the sound of rustling fabric.
“Hey, stop it, hahaha…” His voice came back to the phone. “What did you say?”
Just that one sentence, and all her courage evaporated. They had ended things so badly, screamed things at each other they could never take back. Ethan had once been a blazing sun in her world. Even if his light couldn't reach the darkest corners of her heart, it had offered a fleeting warmth. She didn't realize that the moment the divorce papers were signed, their entire past would be erased.
With no other choice, she turned to the only person she had left: her mother, my grandmother, who lived in the South.
My grandmother was Genevieve’s birth mother. She had divorced my grandfather when my mother was eighteen. Years of a miserable marriage had turned her hair white and put her on a steady diet of antidepressants. When my mother was a child, my grandmother lived in a single room in their mansion. She never went out, never spoke, just stared for hours at the white curtains.
Once, when my mother was little, she went to see her. She found her trying to swallow a handful of white pills. The pills clogged her throat. The moment she saw my mother, she retched, and the pills scattered across the floor like tiny white seeds.
A maid rushed in. “Ma’am, you can’t take so many of these! If you can’t sleep, I’ll warm you some milk. Maybe that will help.”
My grandmother just stared blankly at the pills on the floor. After a long moment, she shook her head. My mother walked over and took her hand. She was too young to understand depression; she only knew her mommy was sick. My grandmother didn’t seem to notice her, her gaze fixed on something far away.
After that, my mother never opened that door again. Her mother was like a porcelain doll, beautiful and empty. Sometimes she would pause outside the door, but it was always silent inside, as if no one lived there at all.
Then, one day shortly after my mother turned eighteen, the door that had been closed for years finally opened. A woman so pale she was almost translucent emerged. It was her mother. A maid followed with her suitcases.
She was leaving for good. She didn't even look at my mother as she walked out. It was as if she had never given birth to her at all.
And now, this was the only person she could turn to. Her father and stepmother had fled the country as soon as the bankruptcy hit, leaving her behind.
My mother spent the last of her money on a Greyhound bus ticket. She had never been on a bus like this. It was crammed with luggage and trash, making it impossible to move. The seats were worn and the fabric felt greasy.
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