It was a warm and sunny afternoon this past week, but there was nothing either warm or sunny about the mother and daughter duo who came slamming through the doors of the Whole Foods store in Bethesda. The girl was almost 15. She wore black lipstick, a miniskirt, combat boots, and she bristled with spiky black and silver jewelry. The mother was dressed in the ubiquitous yoga togs of the middle-aged suburban female.
Other shoppers looked up as the two stalked in; the girl could feel their eyes following her as she went past heaps of flowers.
“Where do you think you are going?” the mother snapped at the teenager’s retreating back.
The girl spun around, her eyes narrowed with hostility: “I’m getting a drink, Mom.”
The mother exhaled irritably. “Well, hurry up, then,” she said.
“Yah,” the girl shot back. “I will.”
The mother thought: I can’t believe this is happening.
The daughter thought: This is so not happening.
The two moved through the store, still going at each other. The girl pouted and whined, in apparently full bratty rebellion. The mother hissed and snapped, the very picture of angry incoherent denial.
It looked like the worst sort of Central Casting parent-teen relationship, the kind that everyone has heard of: fascinating to watch in the movies and dreadful to contemplate real life.
This is not happening, the woman told herself. I am not this kind of mother. She felt ashamed. She felt like bursting into tears.
I can’t believe I’m being so mean to my mom, the daughter said to herself. I’m not this kind of girl. She felt sick.
As the vitriolic pair moved through the checkout row, still bickering, they were both painfully aware of the effect they were having on the people around them. Their cashier had a face filled with pity and dismay; she didn’t meet the mother’s eyes. Other shoppers couldn’t bear to watch but couldn’t bear to look away.
Finally the ordeal was over, all of four minutes after the pair had entered the store. As the exit doors swished open, they walked out and gently collapsed against each other.
“That was horrible,” said one.
“I am so sorry,” said the other.
“You didn’t mean it.”
“Of course not. Neither did you.”
The truth is, the whole thing had been an act. En route to a friend’s house to shoot a video for class, the girl had asked her mother to role-play with her in public. The idea was to help her get into an on-screen persona that matched her costume. The mother had agreed, and promised not to break character.
Both of them were shaken by the experience. Neither had had any idea how upsetting, even how corrosive it would feel to use such unfeeling language with each other. Both regretted exposing other people to their experiment.
Like most mothers and daughters, these two have had their tricky moments. But I wonder if they won’t find the next few months rather more harmonious, now that they’ve been through what the mother said was “like aversion therapy, only worse.”
###
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
