Missing Mom (2006)
by Joyce Carol Oates

Hindsight is the cruelest kind of clarity. The cringe of realization that comes with figuring out the answer, the right way, the preventative move, much too late can bring heat to my cheeks with just a flicker of the recollection. I often have to remind myself to be kind to the memory of the younger me, just as I discipline the adolescent behavior of my students one day, but forgive them for it the next.

Nichole "Nikki" Eaton is just feeling this cringe for the first time. At thirty, she has many roles to play in her suburban family. She’s the "cool" aunt to her sister’s son and daughter, a features reporter for a news magazine in a neighboring town, and the still-rebellious daughter. Oates’s newest novel, Missing Mom, begins on Mother’s Day, 2004. Nikki strolls into her childhood home in time for Mother’s Day dinner, prepared by her mother for an eclectic guest list. Immediately, Nikki is on edge, correctly anticipating a negative reaction to her latest purple punk-styled hairstyle from almost everyone present, short of her teenage niece. In typical mom fashion, Mrs. Eaton cheerfully fumbles a "Well! It will always grow back, Nikki!" Clare, Nikki’s older, more responsible sister, doesn’t even have to speak, but her husband, as usual, seems to appreciate Nikki’s sexy new look.

The dinner is made even more awkward by the collection of misfits gathered at the table. These are not close family friends, but what seems to be feeble attempts at filling the emptiness of the role previously occupied by Nikki’s father, a role vacated following his death a few years before. Self-absorbed as usual, Nikki resents what she perceives as yet another attempt of her mother’s to set her up with someone, anyone besides the married man she has been dating.

Cringe.

In the days following the dinner, Nikki and her sister are busy, leaving hurried, harried messages on their mother’s phone, promising to stop by soon. When they finally talk to each other, it becomes evident that no one has actually spoken to Mrs. Eaton. What follows plays out in that painfully, powerlessly predictable way that only a master writer can concoct. Mrs. Eaton, of course, is dead. That’s been evident from the beginning, but the details and the effect on her daughters are mesmerizing.

Oates has the ability to penetrate the most difficult, unlikable characters and make them human and deserving of empathy in a manner that evokes the most complicated familial ties. Nikki embarrasses me. She reminds me of the selfish acts that dragged out my youth well past age eighteen. I can only hope that others remember me with the patience Oates seems to have for her character’s mistakes.

It is Oates’s patience that fills the year following "Feather" Eaton’s death. Readers watch as Nikki and Clare handle the situation very differently, yet rely on each other for support. Their stages of grief are well-documented by Oates, the never-judgmental observer.

For someone my age without children, it is easy to identify with Nikki. Other readers might appreciate Clare’s transition. While Nikki is the focus of the book, the older sister goes through marked changes as well, including her roles within her marriage. It is interesting to note how both Nikki and Clare subconsciously alter their appearances to reflect their growth through mourning. As Nikki’s purple spikes grow out, the gray filters in along with a newly-cultivated maturity. This development is earned via a fresh series of mistakes (including a continued romance with the married man); the difference is that Nikki can’t escape her mother’s eye, now embedded in her mind.

Further changes, more cringes. Nikki moves back into her childhood home, ostensibly to clear out her mother’s belongings so the house can be put on the market, but she finds it difficult to leave. Her mother’s cat needs care, and Nikki steps in, filling this role and others left open by her mother. Oates cultivates images of exhaustion; Nikki’s high-maintenance life fades as she finds it easier to relish simpler relationships with work, romance, and family.

Oates’s Missing Mom is heart-wrenching and haunting, a fragile look at the inner workings of the human mind reeling from tragedy and the pitfalls of established family roles.