Mother(fucker)-in-Law

Heart falling out of ass. 
It's the only way I know how to describe the feeling I get when something unpleasant takes me completely by surprise.  One second I'm fine, and the next second, my heart has plummeted from my chest, and threatens to fall right out of my ass. 

If you read regularly, you'll know that my husband and I are estranged from our mothers.  With good reason.  So I don't need to go over that again. 

Last weekend a phone call, at nearly midnight, led us to think someone must be dead, and so rather than ignoring it as usual, my husband answered it.  His mother claimed her phone was blinking his name, as if he had called.  (An obvious lie, since our flip-closed cellphones are physically incapable of "butt dialing.") 
She talked as if nothing had happened between us.  As if she hadn't been banished to Shitty-Mother Island, and as if she hadn't been told to "never darken our doorway again", after the disgusting things she said to my husband...
She asked about coming up to visit, "if I stay in a hotel," and my husband told her that we would just have to see how things go, since his schedule is weird.  

I shrugged it off, hoping that it was a way for him to blow her off, hoping he would ignore any further communication from her, and hoping that neither I, our children, or my precious husband would have to endure the black cloud she always carries with her...the chaos and darkness she will inevitably spread thru our house with her bitter comments, her racism, homophobia, and her general nasty disposition...
And sort of knowing that my husband is torn. 

Then, nothing.  No more calls, no emails or letters, just the ever-present nagging sense of her presence, somewhere deep in my brain. 

And today, in a "heart-falling-out-of-ass" moment, we receive this email:

"(Your grandmother) and I are going to come up to see the kids and you guys sometime before they go back to school.  When do they start back?"

The fuck?  Did she just invite herself back into our home?  Did she just tell me that they are arriving, and ignore the fact that she's forbidden to show her face on our property?  Talk about balls.  She definitely has a pair of big fat hairy ones. 


My immediate reaction is to call my husband, and say something along the lines of "guess who's coming to dinner," and hope he freaks out as badly as I do, so we can agree as a unit not to allow her back.  But I don't.  I stare at the message, instead, and panic. 
If my husband wants to see her, I won't stop him. 
I don't want to see her.  Ever, at all.   She's wretched.  She's miserable, and only finds happiness in making others miserable, too.  And the bitch was hateful to my children.  That alone is grounds for immediate and permanent dismissal. 

But I also know how many times I have given my own disgusting mother a "second chance."  Lots.  Of course she's a sociopathic lunatic,  and she blows it every single time, without fail.  So I am familiar with the cycle of forgiveness and heartbreak.  He is not.  After a lifetime of abuse, his first and only confrontation with his mother resulted in two years of not speaking to her. 

My fear is that this will drive a wedge between us.  That she will drive a wedge between us.  She has before.  Even going so far as to tell my husband "next time, you'd better marry for looks!"  I want her to go away, take her miserable cloud with her, and stay away. 

And now, she's just declared that she will come.  "You have no say in the matter, and I will be there.  Kindly go fuck yourself in preparation for my descent." 

                                      

  I want to move.  I want to hide.  I want to run away.  I want to escape the chaos she brings, simply by being.  I want to tell her that if she shows up at our door, I'll meet her with swear words and a fist to the teeth.  I want to shove her in a box with my own mother, and ship them off to Abu Dhabi, Garfield style. 

I want to be supportive of the needs and wishes of my husband.  And I'm sorely afraid that this will be an instance where I come out looking like a huge dickhead. 

Fuck.