They
met at Arbor Bay Car Wash in 1969. My
mother was barely out of high school.
Maybe they had good sex or thought his ’62 Chevy would carry them into
the future. They smoked, found love
during the hate of Vietnam and desperately wanted to be teens forever. They married the following year, and I still
have the pictures to prove it.
Now
she’s far away and living with a convict, still loveless and searching for
something he doesn’t know how to give.
She called last week, wanted to die, again. I guess she thought I could make her broken oven, overheated car
and two days of rain go away.
I
was nineteen when I found out I was just like my Dad. We shared manhood like we shared my mother and were confused
about what that meant. We were cleaning
out the drawers of his bedside table when I pulled out an unsealed red envelope
addressed “To my wonderful husband.” He
panicked like a twelve-year-old caught jacking off.
My
hands started to sweat; I recognized that writing. It was our first man-to-man; I hoped it would connect us.
I
was angry about not being able to choose my father, and there was always that
space between us that neither of us was able to close. We didn’t talk about contraception, the
perks of a V-8 engine, or the divorcée down the street. Instead it was silent
exchange about my mother. He grabbed
the envelope from my hand, read through it and shoved it back into a box of
photos. I don’t know what it said, but I wanted to know why he kept it for
twenty years and why he reopened it now.
He
used to talk about their last concert together. New Years Eve, 1976.
Elvis Presley, fourth row. Dad
would walk around the house singing “Funny How Time Slips Away.” He didn’t talk about much her, but I knew
what he meant when he sang.
*
My
mother drove with a cigarette perched between her two fingers, and I can’t
remember a time when she didn’t. It
rested so eloquently that it became as much a part of her as the press-on
nails. She smoked frantically, and blew wisps that rivaled Marlene Dietrich. Those cigarettes were long and seemed to
last longer than any of her relationships.
Her lipstick was bright pink, and she always had shoes to match, high
heels with pointy toes that she bitched about when breaking them in. Her skirts were short and her hair was as
fluorescent as a white light bulb.
Teased, too, the way girls did in junior high.
She
had a fox coat that she wore to cover her red or jade shimmery silk
blouses. The same outfit she wore to
parents’ night at each of my five elementary schools. “Embarrassed” led me to win the sixth-grade spelling bee. I didn’t need to use it in a sentence. I’d sit in a booth and drink Shirley
Temples and anticipate the Hardy boys’ next adventure while she enchanted
everyone at the bar.
There
were always women at our house; they talked about men and dating and how they
longed to find love, but they were happy being single. Charlene read from a journal she so called
“You Can Have Him and Other Stories of Love.”
I listened from a room down the hall as she read the dating events of
her week. Full of girl talk, advice for
bad hair and recipes for frozen drinks she’d picked up from somewhere between
the kitchen and the sheets.
They
compared polish on fake nails and when their roots needed touch-ups. They cooked and drank cocktails. They smelled of Giorgio perfume and Virginia
Slim cigarettes and wore designer clothes they bought on sale, plucked their
eyebrows every two days and extended their lips with deep red gloss. I wanted them to be as much my mothers as I
wanted to let go of my own.
My
mother and I moved from one man to another.
We changed men and addresses so fast I couldn’t recall one I liked—man
or address—and they went from bad to worse.
She lived with one and did another’s laundry. She cooked for one and spent long weekends with another. They
listened to hard rock music and spent nights in bars while I sank into Billie
Holiday and Diana Ross and Patsy Cline.
Not because their music soothed me but because we shared the same stories
– disappointment when love didn’t pay the bills.
She
left her records in a box in the attic, reminders of times when everything fell
through and more slipped away than stayed.
*
She
hated Christmas, cold weather and milk, all the things I loved. She filled in the gaps with nights out. There never seemed to be enough room. She always had too much stuff or an oven
that didn’t cook right. Closets jammed
with clothes she needed to give away but didn’t have the patience to, souvenirs
of thinner, younger days. Her drawers
were full of jewelry and tube tops and short shorts stuffed in between blouse
after blouse. She was never satisfied. She pulled out her hair, and mine too, when
things didn’t go her way like when I hiccupped too much or cracked my gum. She left nothing unsaid, except what she
really wanted. She was all I had. I had to love and hate her as my mother, as
a person.
There
were holes in our walls and booze in the cabinet. I was afraid to think that I couldn’t make my mother happy. I knew how to hang pictures over the holes
in the wall to cover up what was happening.
I was smacked around as much as she was. I was thirty-five in a seven-year-old body. My wardrobe didn’t include many short sleeve
shirts. If a bruise showed through, I’d
conjure the quickest lie I could to avoid getting her in trouble. Usually it
involved a diving board or the edge of the bed. Usually I could get away fast enough when verbal turned
physical.
“Son
of a bitch,” was the last words of the last argument. I heard shoving and a thud outside my bedroom. The next morning I
found a black hole in the white bathroom door, and the glass was shattered out
of the hall light.
“The
light was broken last night,” she said in a muffled voice with a sleep mask on
her forehead.
We
never talked about it again.
We
tried to protect each other but we didn’t have the skills and I shouldn’t have
needed any. I didn’t talk back or
raise my voice. I didn’t swear or smoke pot or leave my wet towel on the floor. I didn’t leave the toilet seat up or forget
my dirty dishes in the sink. I never played the radio too loud or went out on a
school night.
Anything
could set her—or the boyfriend—off. I
didn’t dare have the hiccups, crack my gum or bite my nails in front of her. I
was afraid. I wouldn’t know what to say when my father asked. I couldn’t fill in the story with believable
details.
So
I clung to the things I knew best, my mother, her mother and the woman my dad
now called his wife. I lived with my grandparents periodically after my
parents’ divorce. She had run off with
a man twice her age who’d had a twenty-year affair with whiskey and a gun. There were times I didn’t see her for
weeks. I went through the awkwardness
of meeting man after unavailable man, knowing their future meant one year. Her arguments often involved another woman
and her own version of “You can have him.”
They were all alcoholics, divorced and had no interest in raising a
six-year-old. But they welcomed me,
though I was good at judging who wanted me there, and who didn’t.
I
was well behaved because I didn’t think she could handle it if I weren’t. Living with my mother left me with long
nights reading with the flashlight under the sheets hoping the squeaking bed
would stop. The Hardy Boys drowned out
yelling, profanity, breaking dishes and banging headboards. It made me feel like I shouldn’t be there
and I hungered for attention anyway I could get it. So I hung my own pictures on the fridge.
For
a time we lived in the basement of a trailer we shared with Richard, a man she
met on a girls’ weekend away. He knew
everyone in our town and lived up to his nickname. I’d see him, usually late at night and always when he was
stumbling or falling into a wall. Slurs
and “oops” punctuated my mother’s two AM introduction. His mouth gleamed yellow teeth. He moved in not long after, but his laundry
appeared weeks before his face.
He
blew his brains out at a Fourth of July picnic a few years later. I never knew he was a father to four other
children ‘til I read his obituary ten years later. I thought about his children for a while, wondered how they
survived a life with or without him.
I
was six when I learned to use a microwave.
Ten the first time I ran away and seventeen when I never went back.
My
father took me to a therapist to save me.
Dr. Sparen was old and had thick eyebrows and nose hairs. I didn’t trust him or any man. And I was afraid of him, of the truth and of
sharing anything about myself. I never
unzipped my jacket or made direct eye contact.
I was small and cold in his huge leather chair. This was not my world. He’d listen intently with glasses slid down
his nose as I talked. I was fifteen and
had no idea what I wanted. He mostly
asked questions that started with “How do you feel when...” How was I supposed to know?
My
father asked what we talked about after he spent forty-five minutes outside the
door praying this would all go away. We
had made a deal, one we couldn’t break.
Neither of us wanted to say what we really thought. We shared old songs, mostly ones about
disastrous love.
I
spent years clinging to females, eluding intimacy with men, fearing they would
leave scars on my arms and holes in my walls. Feeling left behind was a
treasure; it was all I knew. She wanted to escape as much as I wanted her to
stay. I hate red lipstick, Fourth of July picnics and fur coats. I love milk,
though, and Christmas and Northside winters, things that close the space
between Dad and me. And ones that make it greater with my mother.