And then the funeral happened and a cream-colored envelope appeared on the kitchen counter and my brother asked me to account for it.
So I did.
THE QUESTION OF GUILT
I should say something about guilt, because guilt was part of why the invoice worked as a strategy, even briefly.
The family narrative of “Claire has the comfortable arrangement” worked partly because I had some guilt in me about having the comfortable parts. The house was not a bad place to live. I was not outdoors. The part-time work gave me flexibility I would not have had in a regular job, which sometimes felt like freedom and sometimes felt like confinement but was not nothing. My mother was not always a burden — she was often good company, funny and interested and full of opinions. There were seasons when it was not hard.
Having guilt about the comfortable parts meant that when someone pointed to those parts and called them a free ride, something in me responded. Not with agreement, but with the urge to minimize. To say, well, there’s truth to it. To give ground in order to seem fair.
That instinct — to give ground in order to seem fair — is one I have been examining since October. It is not the same as actually being fair. It is the performance of fairness under pressure, and it benefits the person applying the pressure, not the person who is actually owed something.
Daniel had an incomplete story. I could have spent years trying to make him feel okay about that, or I could correct the record.