She sat at a table for two on the patio of the hotel, her daughter joined her and they ordered wine with their lunch. This was the big vacation Joanna had been working towards for her whole life. Her mother had always told her that she'd have to work for everything in life, there was no hand out and the spoon she got was wooden not silver.
As she sat gazing out at the beach and beyond it the turquoise ocean, she generously allowed that although her mother had beaten her with that spoon, both physically and verbally, she had actually done her a favour. Hard work had begotten a little pride in what she had accomplished and a sense of satisfaction.
Her mother had told her that she was born on a Thursday, and many years later she had checked and the old bag wasn't lying -- for once. When she told her mother that it was Friday's child who had to work hard for a living, her mother beat her so badly she missed a week of school.
She disliked her mother, but her mother's dislike of her own daughter ensured that Joanna turned out the complete opposite of her mother, and that was a very good thing. She never turned to alcohol like her mother did and she had never found it necessary to turn tricks like her mother did.
She also grew up disliking men, and that was a bad thing. For all her fantastic work ethic and standards she was not a mate anyone wanted. Shannon's father was a brief affair with a married man, which was her style back then. An affair was easier to end when she'd had enough of him and he could run back to his faithful wife and really - there was no harm, no foul.
A few years into Shannon's life she met the one: the man she was supposed to be with. Everything was perfect; he was single, good looking, taller. Joanna fell, and she fell hard. The marriage ceremony was picture perfect, the marriage was a mess. Before they had celebrated their first anniversary, he had cheated on her and she experienced firsthand what it felt like to be on the receiving end of an adulterous spouse. If Shannon hadn't been there, she would have let it all go then. But the little girl was the light of her life, and because of her, Joanna picked herself up and carried on.
She turned her back on men because she felt that they had turned their collective back on her. She sulked like this for four years before she dared to make a male friend again. The four-year drought was one of introspection, she slowly realised that she would always have problems relating to people and if she wanted to end up alone with ninety cats for company, she was doing very well.
For Joanna, introspection meant forgiving people, a close to impossible task. It meant she had to look back at her mother's life with the benefit of hindsight -- she had to forgive her for being human, for having flaws, for making mistakes. At first Joanna didn't realise she could forgive her mother for certain things and not be liable for not extending forgiveness in other things. It was an all or nothing deal, but her subconscious showed her paths that weren't visible when she was justifying or rationalizing her position of non-compromise.
Joanna was as much of a product of her environment as her mother was of hers, and the chances of her turning out a success story was as good as the chance of snow in July but it was snowing somewhere in July, because she had beaten the odds. She could afford to be generous with her forgiveness, and indeed she had spoken to her mother several times before she died, assuring her that all was well between them.
Forgiving herself was a different kind of animal. She set herself impossible standards and when she failed to reach them, berated herself with a vengeance a masochist would admire. Forgiving herself for being morally corrupt by having affairs with married men.
Forgiving herself for failing Shannon, although Shannon had sworn to Joanna that she had never failed her. She couldn't have asked for a better mother, and she told her mother so, but Joanna thought she was just saying that.
Long after all the forgiveness had gone around, Joanna slowly realised that she had disliked herself as much as her mother did. It occurred to her that she couldn't expect people to like her if she didn't like herself. That was the hardest task of all, accepting that she deserved to be liked, by herself and others.
She mellowed and matured and like a good wine, she had become comfortable with herself, both inside and out. The urgency to impress people and show off the best of her was gone. She was relaxed and as Shannon put it 'chilled'. Over the last few years she had made a number of good friends both men and women, but she was once bitten and twice shy.
She was hesitant to get involved with a man and she never wanted to cross the adultery line again. Shannon was in her second year at college and this vacation had been reserved and paid for a year ago. It was their first and last grand vacation as mother and daughter and they were determined to make every single day of the fortnight count as a special day.
"Mmm... Mom, the fish looks good; I'm going to have the fish."
Joanna was pulled out of her reverie by Shannon's voice; she looked down at her own menu and perused it, deciding on the filleted fish salad. As she and Shannon were talking quietly about swimming later and perhaps sitting on the beach watching the sunset, her attention was drawn to a group of executives at the end of the patio.
Far enough away from them that they could not hear the conversation except for a few remarks made in obvious jest. They were all in a good mood; Joanna suspected they were celebrating a successful deal; her suspicions were deepened by the amount of alcohol being served to them by three scurrying waiters. The traffic to their table never stopped. Joanna smiled and then looked back out at the peaceful ocean.
"I think we should take a walk on the beach after lunch." Joanna suggested.
"I was thinking more along the lines of catching some rays." Shannon said looking at her pale arms in dismay.
"Okay, take a towel for me as well please. I'm going to walk to that enormous rock over there and then I'll join you in ray catching."
The executives' party was beginning to break up and as they ate, the table at the end became quiet.
It was the lack of noise that finally drew her attention and she looked past Shannon's shoulder to the table at the end, it was empty except for one man, he appeared to be reading a contract. Even more noticeable was the long scar from the top of his forehead on the left going to the top of his left eyebrow and continuing down across his left cheek into his neck, there was a second scar from the bottom of his chin that had cut the corner of his mouth and went up to his left ear, the top of the ear was missing. One scar pulled his eyelid down and the other had turned his mouth into a permanent sneer. He glanced up and Joanna spun her head to the right looking at the sea again, hoping that he didn't catch her staring at him.
His face was frightening; she wondered why he hadn't had it fixed in this age of plastic surgery. A good doctor could make those scars practically invisible. Why would anyone want to walk around looking like that? And it was obvious he had the means to have it fixed. Why would he punish himself like that? Surely he was aware that everybody looked at him and then cringed. Perhaps that was what he wanted, she thought, perhaps he wanted to be left alone, to be unapproachable.
Just the look she was aiming for herself, she thought dryly.
As she and Shannon ate their lunch, they discussed all they had seen in the marketplace of the little town in the morning. Since today was their first day there, they had decided to window shop only, they would go back tomorrow and buy a few things.
A few things everyday would become a completely new suitcase to drag home, and by stretching their shopping out over the fortnight, they were sure to enjoy every minute of it.
Joanna glanced up as a tall woman with long blonde hair strode past her to the table at the end of the patio. She was elegantly dressed in what appeared to be a designer dress. A waiter scurried behind her, pulling out a chair for her to sit when she reached the table. Joanna was intrigued and tried to glance at them as much as possible without being seen.
Shannon turned in her chair to see what her mother was looking at and then turned back. She made a face at Joanna and Joanna laughed.
"Why are you interested Mom?"
"Just curious. The man opposite has scars on his face and I'm wondering what the relationship between the two is. Women like her are attracted to money and power and they have the faces and the bodies to get both, but is there anything under the outer shell that would love a man who looked like that?"
"I think I'm going to change my seat, because you're very nosey and I inherited the trait. I want to know as well."
