My mother and I ate dinner at the kitchen counter because that’s where the television was. It was a black-and-white set she had rescued from a curb somewhere, and the screen was no bigger than my palm. The television I’d grown up with was still in the living room, but when turned on, it whined like an air raid siren before displaying a single dot in the center of the screen. On its wood-veneer top was a vase of dried peonies—at some point, my mother stopped changing the water and let them wither. The petals, still pink, were as brittle as flakes of skin. A purple GET WELL SOON ribbon was wrapped around the lip of the vase. When I moved back in, I tried to throw them away, but she stopped me. They cheer me up, she said. Who got them for you? I asked. Oh, she said, I bought them for myself.
One evening, a broadcast-safe Fatal Attraction played. When the characters opened their mouths and screamed out a dubbed-in “Fudge!,” my mother laughed until she coughed and pounded her chest until the laughs resumed. She lined up her pills in front of the television, and for each bad dub, she washed one down. That night, we ate boxed macaroni and cheese. I topped it with fried onions from a can. The fried onions were an afterthought, a pantry discovery. It was a brand I’d never heard of. My mother had always been a fan of failed brands. She stocked her shelves with almost-rans and one-offs, items sold out of shopping carts labeled MARKED TO SELL: Rammell’s tomato paste, Yummy Mummy cereal, Hanover’s Best canned sardines. She had a cube of caffeine-free Diet RC Cola. She was saving it for a special occasion.
“For next your wedding,” she said.
“Don’t start,” I said. Ray and I were separated, I reminded her. But even before I returned to Boise, Ray talked about divorce like it was a new restaurant he wanted to try. I asked him, Can we discuss about this once my mother’s recovered? and he looked at me with the impatience of a man who always knows he’s right. Sure, he said.
On the TV, Glenn Close sprung out at Michael Douglas with a knife. I jumped. My mother scoffed. “Oh, please. She’s doing it all wrong.” She mimed a stabbing. “You waste strength doing that.” She yanked a butcher’s knife out of the block and slipped it into my hand, like she was passing on a secret. She cradled my wrist, pressing her index finger against the back of my hand. Her knuckles were white and wrinkled, and liver spots spread across her skin like oil on water. But her fingers were strong. “It’s all about the wrist,” she said. She guided me through the movements: lazy figure-eights, undulations like a hummingbird’s wing.
“That’s how you do it,” she said. “That’s how you really fuck someone up.”
One evening, a broadcast-safe Fatal Attraction played. When the characters opened their mouths and screamed out a dubbed-in “Fudge!,” my mother laughed until she coughed and pounded her chest until the laughs resumed. She lined up her pills in front of the television, and for each bad dub, she washed one down. That night, we ate boxed macaroni and cheese. I topped it with fried onions from a can. The fried onions were an afterthought, a pantry discovery. It was a brand I’d never heard of. My mother had always been a fan of failed brands. She stocked her shelves with almost-rans and one-offs, items sold out of shopping carts labeled MARKED TO SELL: Rammell’s tomato paste, Yummy Mummy cereal, Hanover’s Best canned sardines. She had a cube of caffeine-free Diet RC Cola. She was saving it for a special occasion.
“For next your wedding,” she said.
“Don’t start,” I said. Ray and I were separated, I reminded her. But even before I returned to Boise, Ray talked about divorce like it was a new restaurant he wanted to try. I asked him, Can we discuss about this once my mother’s recovered? and he looked at me with the impatience of a man who always knows he’s right. Sure, he said.
On the TV, Glenn Close sprung out at Michael Douglas with a knife. I jumped. My mother scoffed. “Oh, please. She’s doing it all wrong.” She mimed a stabbing. “You waste strength doing that.” She yanked a butcher’s knife out of the block and slipped it into my hand, like she was passing on a secret. She cradled my wrist, pressing her index finger against the back of my hand. Her knuckles were white and wrinkled, and liver spots spread across her skin like oil on water. But her fingers were strong. “It’s all about the wrist,” she said. She guided me through the movements: lazy figure-eights, undulations like a hummingbird’s wing.
“That’s how you do it,” she said. “That’s how you really fuck someone up.”
*
As the movie ended, Ray called to announce that, yes, he wanted a divorce. We both saw this coming, he said. It was a matter of time. Glenn Close, having been battered and drowned, was now splayed across the bathroom wall, blood pumping out of her chest. My mother announced that she was thinking about making, for tomorrow night’s dinner, rabbit stew, but all I could think was that maybe Glenn Close should have seen it coming too. She had gotten involved with him knowing his faults and now had a bullet-sized hole in her heart to show for it.
“Everybody has a practice marriage,” my mother said. “Some gals down in oncology are on their third or fourth husband.” She finished her regimen of pills, clutching each one between her fingers as if it were a beetle struggling to crawl away. “We’re thinking of starting a poker tournament and calling it ‘The Full House.’”
Ray called my name, as if I had fainted from his announcement. I covered the mouthpiece. “Do we have to talk about this now?” I whispered to my mother. She was only trying to help, but, God, what a time. I told Ray that it probably was for the best, and that we should make the process as painless as possible. I had only one condition: I wanted him to bring the papers up to Boise to sign in person. If we were done, then we would be done in person.
“Do you know how much it’ll cost to buy a plane ticket on short notice?” he asked.
What’s your rush? I wanted to ask. “You could drive,” I said. “It’s only a five-hour trip.”
“More like six,” he said.
“The way you drive?”
“Taking 84 is such a pain.”
I was past being angry or annoyed. With my free hand, I brushed back my hair.
“Okay,” Ray said. “If I come tomorrow, do you think I could maybe spend the night?”
“You can ask my mother.”
He paused. “Oh, it’s all right,” he said. “I don’t have to spend the night.”
“Everybody has a practice marriage,” my mother said. “Some gals down in oncology are on their third or fourth husband.” She finished her regimen of pills, clutching each one between her fingers as if it were a beetle struggling to crawl away. “We’re thinking of starting a poker tournament and calling it ‘The Full House.’”
Ray called my name, as if I had fainted from his announcement. I covered the mouthpiece. “Do we have to talk about this now?” I whispered to my mother. She was only trying to help, but, God, what a time. I told Ray that it probably was for the best, and that we should make the process as painless as possible. I had only one condition: I wanted him to bring the papers up to Boise to sign in person. If we were done, then we would be done in person.
“Do you know how much it’ll cost to buy a plane ticket on short notice?” he asked.
What’s your rush? I wanted to ask. “You could drive,” I said. “It’s only a five-hour trip.”
“More like six,” he said.
“The way you drive?”
“Taking 84 is such a pain.”
I was past being angry or annoyed. With my free hand, I brushed back my hair.
“Okay,” Ray said. “If I come tomorrow, do you think I could maybe spend the night?”
“You can ask my mother.”
He paused. “Oh, it’s all right,” he said. “I don’t have to spend the night.”
*
I thought about what my mother said about practice marriages. It seemed odd from a woman staunchly opposed to divorce. “But only for me,” she said. “I wouldn’t dream of inflicting my lifestyle on you, dear.” Betty Friedan must have channeled my mother for The Feminine Mystique. When I gave my mother my copy, highlighted and annotated, she waved it aside. “I could have been anything I wanted,” she said. She rubbed the fabric of the sofa, smoothing out the surface. “I happen to like this life.”
Was my mother’s first marriage her practice? I didn’t remember much about Ted. He died when I was four. In their wedding pictures, he squints through horn-rimmed glasses that eat up his eyes, and his ears flap out from his head. His two front teeth stick forward like marchers who have strayed from the line. The colors in the pictures have faded to suggestions: Ted at work, standing over small cardboard models of cities; vacation snapshots of him and my mother in swimming suits; baby pictures of me in her arms and Ted in the background like a bystander. She had married young, while a sophomore at St. Sebastian’s College. No surprise: St. Sebastian’s was where Catholic girls in Idaho went to get their Mrs. degree. Ted was a civil engineer. He had, my mother told me, converted to Catholicism because the Protestants weren’t by the Book enough. She was from Pocatello, the daughter of a night foreman at a food processing plant, and had worked there herself during high school, her long brown hair reined in by a hairnet, a thick rubber apron hanging around her neck.
Ted had my confirmation name—Jude—picked before I was born. When my mother protested that it was a boy’s name, Ted told her that the parish priest had approved it. She pressed further: wasn’t I supposed to pick out my own name after careful contemplation on the saints? But he insisted that sometimes we aren’t allowed to choose our own path. Sometimes, we must follow the one we’ve been given.
“Rebecca Jude Perkins,” my mother said. “What a terrible name.”
This had been in the early 70s, during the height of Second Wave feminism, which, of course, meant nothing to her. Time didn’t pass my mother by as much as it passed around her, like a rock in the middle of a river. Over in West Bench, across Highway I-84 from us, Hewlett-Packard rose up, glass and steel and silicon, a new world amidst the potatoes. My mother’s neighbors sold their bungalows one-by-one, and new neighbors moved in: young couples, couples from India and China. They put up new aluminum siding, replaced roofs, and painted their exteriors in bright, dazzling colors, and my mother’s house stood, with its jagged lawn and worn shingles, as a thumb in the eye of progress.
Mrs. Timmons, who babysat me, often urged my mother to move. With the profits from selling her house, Mrs. Timmons had moved northeast towards inexhaustible acreage: farmhouses and horse pastures all the way south to the river. “All this good fortune won’t last forever,” she said.
“Nope,” my mother said. “It can’t.”
Mrs. Timmons took care of me the day that Ted died. I remember the whinny of sirens, the growl of the fire engine parked in the middle of the street, the buzz of gossip coursing through the crowd gathered on our lawn. Mrs. Timmons took me into her house. Red and blue lights painted her walls.
“Your Daddy had an accident,” she said. “He’s hurt.” She hugged me, and I cried because I was supposed to. A cherry-picker drove down the street, and men carried away our backyard fence slat by slat. Diesel fumes hung over the street, black and choking.
It wasn’t until elementary school that I found out that he had been on the roof replacing shingles when he lost his balance and fell backwards into the oak tree. He impaled himself on the branches and dangled there, bleeding onto our lawn until the men in the cherry-picker brought him down. My teachers treated me with kid gloves. On parent-teacher conference day, my mother, a lit cigarette clamped between her fingers, the smoke from her nostrils rising like chalk dust, nodded as my teachers explained how bright I was. The teachers looked at me as if I was missing out on something important, as if they knew more about me than I did.
There was nothing suspicious about Ted’s death. Nothing at all.
Was my mother’s first marriage her practice? I didn’t remember much about Ted. He died when I was four. In their wedding pictures, he squints through horn-rimmed glasses that eat up his eyes, and his ears flap out from his head. His two front teeth stick forward like marchers who have strayed from the line. The colors in the pictures have faded to suggestions: Ted at work, standing over small cardboard models of cities; vacation snapshots of him and my mother in swimming suits; baby pictures of me in her arms and Ted in the background like a bystander. She had married young, while a sophomore at St. Sebastian’s College. No surprise: St. Sebastian’s was where Catholic girls in Idaho went to get their Mrs. degree. Ted was a civil engineer. He had, my mother told me, converted to Catholicism because the Protestants weren’t by the Book enough. She was from Pocatello, the daughter of a night foreman at a food processing plant, and had worked there herself during high school, her long brown hair reined in by a hairnet, a thick rubber apron hanging around her neck.
Ted had my confirmation name—Jude—picked before I was born. When my mother protested that it was a boy’s name, Ted told her that the parish priest had approved it. She pressed further: wasn’t I supposed to pick out my own name after careful contemplation on the saints? But he insisted that sometimes we aren’t allowed to choose our own path. Sometimes, we must follow the one we’ve been given.
“Rebecca Jude Perkins,” my mother said. “What a terrible name.”
This had been in the early 70s, during the height of Second Wave feminism, which, of course, meant nothing to her. Time didn’t pass my mother by as much as it passed around her, like a rock in the middle of a river. Over in West Bench, across Highway I-84 from us, Hewlett-Packard rose up, glass and steel and silicon, a new world amidst the potatoes. My mother’s neighbors sold their bungalows one-by-one, and new neighbors moved in: young couples, couples from India and China. They put up new aluminum siding, replaced roofs, and painted their exteriors in bright, dazzling colors, and my mother’s house stood, with its jagged lawn and worn shingles, as a thumb in the eye of progress.
Mrs. Timmons, who babysat me, often urged my mother to move. With the profits from selling her house, Mrs. Timmons had moved northeast towards inexhaustible acreage: farmhouses and horse pastures all the way south to the river. “All this good fortune won’t last forever,” she said.
“Nope,” my mother said. “It can’t.”
Mrs. Timmons took care of me the day that Ted died. I remember the whinny of sirens, the growl of the fire engine parked in the middle of the street, the buzz of gossip coursing through the crowd gathered on our lawn. Mrs. Timmons took me into her house. Red and blue lights painted her walls.
“Your Daddy had an accident,” she said. “He’s hurt.” She hugged me, and I cried because I was supposed to. A cherry-picker drove down the street, and men carried away our backyard fence slat by slat. Diesel fumes hung over the street, black and choking.
It wasn’t until elementary school that I found out that he had been on the roof replacing shingles when he lost his balance and fell backwards into the oak tree. He impaled himself on the branches and dangled there, bleeding onto our lawn until the men in the cherry-picker brought him down. My teachers treated me with kid gloves. On parent-teacher conference day, my mother, a lit cigarette clamped between her fingers, the smoke from her nostrils rising like chalk dust, nodded as my teachers explained how bright I was. The teachers looked at me as if I was missing out on something important, as if they knew more about me than I did.
There was nothing suspicious about Ted’s death. Nothing at all.
*
Ray still hadn’t arrived by three in the afternoon the next day. I spent most of the morning in the living room, peering through the sheers—the day seemed wrapped in gauze. My mother joined me on the couch. She was still in her nightdress. The cloth had been laundered so thin I could see her bony body beneath, her skin as translucent as the cloth itself. The flower pattern had faded so that it simply looked stained.
I’d never thought of her as frail or weak before, and I wouldn’t do it now.
“If you want to say something,” I said, “just say it.”
She poured a cup of coffee that had been percolating since nine in the morning and added cream and sugar until it was the color of a manila folder. As a mother and a wife, she had always let things happen, and she flicked off bad luck as easily as tapping ash off the cherry of her Virginia Slims.
“I’m worried,” I said.
“He’s a cockroach,” she replied. “He’ll scurry in when he thinks it’s safe.”
“That’s mean.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.” She wrinkled her nose when she talked about Ray. She said she could smell his cheap aftershave and desperation from a mile away. She blew on the top of her coffee, even though it was lukewarm.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Never better.” The rubber soles of her slippers had worn down to nothing. Her hair was sparse, the auburn and white unraveling like a frayed rope. She patted her stomach. “Getting my uterus out was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Nothing good’s ever come from it.” She propped her legs on mine. She’d lived in Idaho her entire life, and a roadmap of veins spread beneath her skin. “Except you, of course, pumpkin.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.” Some words, once they’ve been uttered, can’t be taken back. They’re scars—permanent evidence of past wounds: I can’t believe I’m related to trailer-trash like you. (Me.) Or: Trust me. This marriage will be the biggest mistake of your life. (Her.) Or: Cancer. Malignant. Very aggressive. Total hysterectomy. (Her doctor.)
In my mother’s logic, her cancer was my fault. After I learned that she hadn’t been to an OB-GYN since her 20s, I hounded her to schedule a breast exam, pelvic exam—the whole works. The results from her Pap smear came back “abnormal,” and, a month later, a biopsy revealed how inadequate the word ‘abnormal’ really is. If she had never known, my mother claimed, everything would have been all right.
We waited for Ray for hours. The light shifted in the window, moving across the living room that I identified instinctually as home. It was a mistake to think that Ray offered something more than what my mother had been through—marriage, childbirth, domestic life. I should have been grateful that Ray walked away first.
“It’s getting dark,” my mother said. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
I’d never thought of her as frail or weak before, and I wouldn’t do it now.
“If you want to say something,” I said, “just say it.”
She poured a cup of coffee that had been percolating since nine in the morning and added cream and sugar until it was the color of a manila folder. As a mother and a wife, she had always let things happen, and she flicked off bad luck as easily as tapping ash off the cherry of her Virginia Slims.
“I’m worried,” I said.
“He’s a cockroach,” she replied. “He’ll scurry in when he thinks it’s safe.”
“That’s mean.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.” She wrinkled her nose when she talked about Ray. She said she could smell his cheap aftershave and desperation from a mile away. She blew on the top of her coffee, even though it was lukewarm.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Never better.” The rubber soles of her slippers had worn down to nothing. Her hair was sparse, the auburn and white unraveling like a frayed rope. She patted her stomach. “Getting my uterus out was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Nothing good’s ever come from it.” She propped her legs on mine. She’d lived in Idaho her entire life, and a roadmap of veins spread beneath her skin. “Except you, of course, pumpkin.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.” Some words, once they’ve been uttered, can’t be taken back. They’re scars—permanent evidence of past wounds: I can’t believe I’m related to trailer-trash like you. (Me.) Or: Trust me. This marriage will be the biggest mistake of your life. (Her.) Or: Cancer. Malignant. Very aggressive. Total hysterectomy. (Her doctor.)
In my mother’s logic, her cancer was my fault. After I learned that she hadn’t been to an OB-GYN since her 20s, I hounded her to schedule a breast exam, pelvic exam—the whole works. The results from her Pap smear came back “abnormal,” and, a month later, a biopsy revealed how inadequate the word ‘abnormal’ really is. If she had never known, my mother claimed, everything would have been all right.
We waited for Ray for hours. The light shifted in the window, moving across the living room that I identified instinctually as home. It was a mistake to think that Ray offered something more than what my mother had been through—marriage, childbirth, domestic life. I should have been grateful that Ray walked away first.
“It’s getting dark,” my mother said. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
*
My mother married Kevin when I was eleven. They signed the certificate before a justice of the peace. No rice-throwing was allowed on the steps of the courthouse. Kevin told me that I needed to be there because I was their witness, and after they mouthed their vows, they shared a closed-lip kiss to seal the deal.
He brought elegance into the house where before there had been none. He filled vases with fresh-cut flowers. He pecked my mother on the neck while she fixed dinner. But my mother kept her distance, as if suspecting things could end at any time. It was as if she’d been born deformed, with a flipper-shaped sense of hope. She pushed away his hand if he tried to hold hers in the grocery store. She walked two steps in front or behind him, never side-by-side. At home, they were all giggles, but outside, she acted like she didn’t know him.
“Always with the touchy-feely,” my mother told him.
“Is it so weird to be with my wife?” he replied.
“No,” she said, “it’s weird that you have to show it off.”
He was the band and choir director at Meridian High School, and he taught me how to play Christmas songs on a recorder. He said I had the makings of a great recorder player, if I tightened my lips around the mouthpiece and didn’t let air out the sides. I played recitals in the living room. Kevin nodded to mark the beat, and my mother dozed on the other side of the couch, her nyloned feet in his lap, cigarette in her left hand.
She told me about his annoying habits to win me to her side. “He takes longer than me to get ready in the morning,” she said. “All those fancy shampoos. Women always get first dibs in the bathroom. Never forget.” But my only complaint was that for Christmas, he gave me a Growin’ Up Skipper doll with the crank-operated breasts when I specifically asked for a Bionic Woman action figure.
Before Kevin, my mother had lived frugally off Ted’s insurance, and it showed. She took me to thrift stores on the far side of Boise so that I wouldn’t buy something that a classmate might have discarded. Her thrift made her proud, and she returned judging stares with a cold fury that shamed and cowed the starer. Once, on our way to the Goodwill at Underkofler’s Corner, I asked why we always had to buy second-hand. “Kevin said he’d buy me brand new clothes,” I said. “The clothes in Goodwill smell funny.” She turned to me. The car sped up. “Don’t ever think you can depend on a man,” she said. “And you know what, your Highness? I will wash those clothes before they touch your precious body.” I sank into the seat, feeling very, very poor.
My mother denied saying that. “Oh, I might have thought it,” she said, “but I never would have said it. What kind of monster do you think I am?”
“But I remember it,” I said.
“What did we buy that day?”
The more I tried to bring that day to mind, the more it slipped away. I could smell the industrial detergent they used to clean clothes.
“A dress?” I ventured.
“Now you’re just making things up,” my mother said.
In any case, Kevin never got the chance to buy me anything. Two years after they married, he slipped on a splotch of expensive shampoo in the shower and cracked his head open on the metal rim of the bathtub.
He brought elegance into the house where before there had been none. He filled vases with fresh-cut flowers. He pecked my mother on the neck while she fixed dinner. But my mother kept her distance, as if suspecting things could end at any time. It was as if she’d been born deformed, with a flipper-shaped sense of hope. She pushed away his hand if he tried to hold hers in the grocery store. She walked two steps in front or behind him, never side-by-side. At home, they were all giggles, but outside, she acted like she didn’t know him.
“Always with the touchy-feely,” my mother told him.
“Is it so weird to be with my wife?” he replied.
“No,” she said, “it’s weird that you have to show it off.”
He was the band and choir director at Meridian High School, and he taught me how to play Christmas songs on a recorder. He said I had the makings of a great recorder player, if I tightened my lips around the mouthpiece and didn’t let air out the sides. I played recitals in the living room. Kevin nodded to mark the beat, and my mother dozed on the other side of the couch, her nyloned feet in his lap, cigarette in her left hand.
She told me about his annoying habits to win me to her side. “He takes longer than me to get ready in the morning,” she said. “All those fancy shampoos. Women always get first dibs in the bathroom. Never forget.” But my only complaint was that for Christmas, he gave me a Growin’ Up Skipper doll with the crank-operated breasts when I specifically asked for a Bionic Woman action figure.
Before Kevin, my mother had lived frugally off Ted’s insurance, and it showed. She took me to thrift stores on the far side of Boise so that I wouldn’t buy something that a classmate might have discarded. Her thrift made her proud, and she returned judging stares with a cold fury that shamed and cowed the starer. Once, on our way to the Goodwill at Underkofler’s Corner, I asked why we always had to buy second-hand. “Kevin said he’d buy me brand new clothes,” I said. “The clothes in Goodwill smell funny.” She turned to me. The car sped up. “Don’t ever think you can depend on a man,” she said. “And you know what, your Highness? I will wash those clothes before they touch your precious body.” I sank into the seat, feeling very, very poor.
My mother denied saying that. “Oh, I might have thought it,” she said, “but I never would have said it. What kind of monster do you think I am?”
“But I remember it,” I said.
“What did we buy that day?”
The more I tried to bring that day to mind, the more it slipped away. I could smell the industrial detergent they used to clean clothes.
“A dress?” I ventured.
“Now you’re just making things up,” my mother said.
In any case, Kevin never got the chance to buy me anything. Two years after they married, he slipped on a splotch of expensive shampoo in the shower and cracked his head open on the metal rim of the bathtub.
*
It was eight in the evening when Ray arrived. My mother and I were in the kitchen boiling water for tea when we heard an engine revving from down the street.
“That had better not be him,” she said.
But it was.
He drove his midlife crisis Camaro into the driveway, and even in the dark, it gleamed like lip gloss. Ray had slicked back his hair. He tried to hug my mother. “How are you feeling, Irene?”
She backed away from his arms. “Weak,” she said. He hopped from foot to foot, kicking his feet. “What in God’s name are you doing?”
“Trying to get some circulation back in my legs,” he said.
“I’ll get you some tea,” my mother said. “For the long drive home.”
“She still hates me?” he asked.
“Mmm,” I said. “Maybe.”
“She’s not going to be too thrilled after tonight, then.”
“Probably not. But why are you worried about it?”
“It was a boring drive,” Ray said. “I had time to think about us.”
“Now you think about us?”
“I guess I could have phrased that better,” he said.
“For God’s sake,” my mother yelled from the living room, “don’t let all of the heat out of the house.”
My mother set the teacups on the living room table. She handed Ray his cup. He took a sip and winced. “It’s bitter,” he said. “What brand is this?”
“It probably just steeped too long,” I said. “I’ll pour you a new cup.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “Some sugar should help.”
“I suppose you want me to go and get it,” my mother said.
“You don’t have to,” he said, but she had already left for the kitchen, muttering. “She’s in quite a mood.”
“She’s never had the luxury of pretending everything’s okay.”
“And you have?”
“For a while,” I said, “I did with you.”
Ray stayed quiet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a mistake.”
I didn’t know if he meant it was a mistake to marry me or to come here that evening.
My mother returned with the sugar bowl.
“No, thank you, Irene,” he said. “I should be going.”
She put the bowl before him so that the spoon clinked against the ceramic. He stirred in a spoonful and gulped the rest of his tea.
“I’m going to turn in,” my mother said. She twisted her body, like she was a ribbon caught in a draft. “I’m gonna take a pill or two. I’m achy all over so. But if you two keep talking loud, I might up it to three.” She looked out the window. “Nice car,” she said.
“Thanks,” replied Ray.
“How fast can that thing go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred? A hundred-twenty?”
My mother whistled. “You OK to drive?” she asked.
Ray nodded.
“If you get tired,” she said, “roll down the window and let the wind wake you up. It always worked for me. When Becca was baby, I’d strap her in the seat of my Pinto and barrel down that long, flat stretch of I-84. Something about the speed soothed her, and she’d nod off. Worked every time.” My mother looked at me as though I had never grown up. “You slept so peaceful that I wanted to keep driving forever. And you wouldn’t think that old Pinto could go so fast, but the world went by so quickly, it felt like we were flying. If I got tired, I’d roll down the window and gun it.” I wrapped my fingers around the teacup, letting the warmth seep in. I thought she’d continue her story, but she moved towards the stairs. “I wish sometimes I could feel like that again,” she said, and with that, Ray and I were alone.
I waited until she was upstairs. I wondered if she was at a heating vent, listening to every word. Letting me learn from my own mistakes.
“I don’t remember her doing that,” I said.
“You were just a baby,” Ray said.
“But it just seems like something I should remember. I don’t even remember us having a Pinto.”
“Are you going to have good memories of us?”
I shrugged. If, in that moment, Ray had asked me to take him back, I probably would have. It was a reflex, like the compulsion to pet puppies or to coo at babies in strollers. I couldn’t recall a single happy time with Ray, but I knew they must have been there, like germs.
We signed the divorce papers, and he kissed me on the forehead. As he walked down the driveway, I knew we’d try to keep in touch for about a year before drifting apart entirely, and farther along, I wouldn’t be able to remember his face at all, just his name, an itch in the center of my back that I couldn’t reach.
He revved his engine down our street, and that was the last time I ever saw him.
I found my mother in her bedroom, watching TV. She had brought the television upstairs and had it in her lap, the dial at arm’s length. It was past midnight, and all she could get were commercials for personal injury lawyers. The screen lit up her face. A chorus of He got me more!; Call the Strong Arm; and We don’t get paid until you get paid! filled the room. I looked at the black-and-white images of car wrecks, crushed chassis stacked atop one another in a junkyard.
“Don’t be sad,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said.
“It’s how you are,” she said. “You have no problem escorting a woman into a clinic while people scream in your face, but if that was you walking into that clinic? You wouldn’t have made it out of the parking lot.”
On the screen, a fistful of dollars thrust itself towards us.
“You need a little guidance, that’s all.”
“Stop,” I said. “Please.” She turned off the TV, and I set it on the floor at the foot of the bed. I unplugged it, coiled the cord around the base, and pushed in the antennae. The Percoset seemed to be taking effect. She pulled the covers to her chest and announced: “The road is full of potholes.”
It sounded like half of a homily. I swept the half Percoset on her bedside table back into the bottle.
“We’re flying away,” she said.
I wondered if her words meant something bad, like the sudden onset of dementia, or a side-effect of her medication, of chemotherapy. But she slept soundly that night and mentioned nothing more the next morning.
“That had better not be him,” she said.
But it was.
He drove his midlife crisis Camaro into the driveway, and even in the dark, it gleamed like lip gloss. Ray had slicked back his hair. He tried to hug my mother. “How are you feeling, Irene?”
She backed away from his arms. “Weak,” she said. He hopped from foot to foot, kicking his feet. “What in God’s name are you doing?”
“Trying to get some circulation back in my legs,” he said.
“I’ll get you some tea,” my mother said. “For the long drive home.”
“She still hates me?” he asked.
“Mmm,” I said. “Maybe.”
“She’s not going to be too thrilled after tonight, then.”
“Probably not. But why are you worried about it?”
“It was a boring drive,” Ray said. “I had time to think about us.”
“Now you think about us?”
“I guess I could have phrased that better,” he said.
“For God’s sake,” my mother yelled from the living room, “don’t let all of the heat out of the house.”
My mother set the teacups on the living room table. She handed Ray his cup. He took a sip and winced. “It’s bitter,” he said. “What brand is this?”
“It probably just steeped too long,” I said. “I’ll pour you a new cup.”
“No, it’s okay,” he said. “Some sugar should help.”
“I suppose you want me to go and get it,” my mother said.
“You don’t have to,” he said, but she had already left for the kitchen, muttering. “She’s in quite a mood.”
“She’s never had the luxury of pretending everything’s okay.”
“And you have?”
“For a while,” I said, “I did with you.”
Ray stayed quiet.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a mistake.”
I didn’t know if he meant it was a mistake to marry me or to come here that evening.
My mother returned with the sugar bowl.
“No, thank you, Irene,” he said. “I should be going.”
She put the bowl before him so that the spoon clinked against the ceramic. He stirred in a spoonful and gulped the rest of his tea.
“I’m going to turn in,” my mother said. She twisted her body, like she was a ribbon caught in a draft. “I’m gonna take a pill or two. I’m achy all over so. But if you two keep talking loud, I might up it to three.” She looked out the window. “Nice car,” she said.
“Thanks,” replied Ray.
“How fast can that thing go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred? A hundred-twenty?”
My mother whistled. “You OK to drive?” she asked.
Ray nodded.
“If you get tired,” she said, “roll down the window and let the wind wake you up. It always worked for me. When Becca was baby, I’d strap her in the seat of my Pinto and barrel down that long, flat stretch of I-84. Something about the speed soothed her, and she’d nod off. Worked every time.” My mother looked at me as though I had never grown up. “You slept so peaceful that I wanted to keep driving forever. And you wouldn’t think that old Pinto could go so fast, but the world went by so quickly, it felt like we were flying. If I got tired, I’d roll down the window and gun it.” I wrapped my fingers around the teacup, letting the warmth seep in. I thought she’d continue her story, but she moved towards the stairs. “I wish sometimes I could feel like that again,” she said, and with that, Ray and I were alone.
I waited until she was upstairs. I wondered if she was at a heating vent, listening to every word. Letting me learn from my own mistakes.
“I don’t remember her doing that,” I said.
“You were just a baby,” Ray said.
“But it just seems like something I should remember. I don’t even remember us having a Pinto.”
“Are you going to have good memories of us?”
I shrugged. If, in that moment, Ray had asked me to take him back, I probably would have. It was a reflex, like the compulsion to pet puppies or to coo at babies in strollers. I couldn’t recall a single happy time with Ray, but I knew they must have been there, like germs.
We signed the divorce papers, and he kissed me on the forehead. As he walked down the driveway, I knew we’d try to keep in touch for about a year before drifting apart entirely, and farther along, I wouldn’t be able to remember his face at all, just his name, an itch in the center of my back that I couldn’t reach.
He revved his engine down our street, and that was the last time I ever saw him.
I found my mother in her bedroom, watching TV. She had brought the television upstairs and had it in her lap, the dial at arm’s length. It was past midnight, and all she could get were commercials for personal injury lawyers. The screen lit up her face. A chorus of He got me more!; Call the Strong Arm; and We don’t get paid until you get paid! filled the room. I looked at the black-and-white images of car wrecks, crushed chassis stacked atop one another in a junkyard.
“Don’t be sad,” she said.
“I’m not,” I said.
“It’s how you are,” she said. “You have no problem escorting a woman into a clinic while people scream in your face, but if that was you walking into that clinic? You wouldn’t have made it out of the parking lot.”
On the screen, a fistful of dollars thrust itself towards us.
“You need a little guidance, that’s all.”
“Stop,” I said. “Please.” She turned off the TV, and I set it on the floor at the foot of the bed. I unplugged it, coiled the cord around the base, and pushed in the antennae. The Percoset seemed to be taking effect. She pulled the covers to her chest and announced: “The road is full of potholes.”
It sounded like half of a homily. I swept the half Percoset on her bedside table back into the bottle.
“We’re flying away,” she said.
I wondered if her words meant something bad, like the sudden onset of dementia, or a side-effect of her medication, of chemotherapy. But she slept soundly that night and mentioned nothing more the next morning.
*
I knew her third husband Dennis the least and hated him the most. I was a sophomore in college when she married him. I remember his voice bellowing for her to get off the phone. I only met him once, during spring break. He was a column of a man, thick and burly. He worked landscaping, and, at fifty, it had given him arms like jackhammers and callused knuckles as hard as marble. He kept a chainsaw padlocked in the back of his pick-up.
Across from each other in the dining room, we attempted small talk while my mother made dinner.
“Women’s studies?” he said. “What kind of major is that?” When I started to explain, he spoke right over me. “I’ve been studying women all my life.” He winked, and I wanted to punch him in the mouth. My mother did something I’ve never seen her do: she kept quiet.
My mother never understood women’s studies either. During one of her chemo sessions, she admitted, “When you told me you wanted to do that feminist thing, I thought you’d lucked out and was a lesbian. But, no, you ended up with a man anyway.”
“That’s not what women’s studies is about,” I told her.
“Not that Ray’s much of a man anyway,” she said. She shielded her eyes from the overhead light. Her head shook slightly, as if she were looking for me. “I’ve been so busy with my own life that I never taught you how to survive.” She sank down in bed.
“You didn’t have to,” I said. I wanted to sound touched, but it came out sounding frustrated.
“You’ve never survived the way I did,” she said.
I met my step-brother, Jay, at Dennis’ funeral. Dennis was a total bastard, Jay said. Left his wife for another woman, then dumped her for my mother. Got paid under the table so that he wouldn’t have to pay child support. When his mother died, Jay lived with Dennis and worked at the landscaping business from age thirteen until he graduated from high school. Dennis refused to pay a cent towards Jay’s college education.
“Not even for vo-tech,” Jay said. “Not one goddamn red dime.”
Jay joined the military and went overseas, where he lost contact with his father. When he returned, his overtures to reconnect were met with indifference.
“And now I’m crying over that son-of-a-bitch,” Jay said. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
At the funeral, my mother was a black lump with crossed arms. The three years she’d spent with Dennis had hollowed her out. I wonder if this was an early warning of cancer: sunken cheeks, spots climbing up her neck, her green eyes faded. The police investigation showed that Dennis had been using chlorodane to keep down grasshoppers even though the FDA had banned it. The toxins built up in his liver until it had grown multiple lesions, each one a kiss of death. He died in their bed, late at night, the muscles in his jaw still twitching when the paramedics arrived. When I suggested that my mother buy a new mattress, she shrugged. Later that week, after the funeral, she turned the mattress over.
“See?” she said. “Good as new.”
Across from each other in the dining room, we attempted small talk while my mother made dinner.
“Women’s studies?” he said. “What kind of major is that?” When I started to explain, he spoke right over me. “I’ve been studying women all my life.” He winked, and I wanted to punch him in the mouth. My mother did something I’ve never seen her do: she kept quiet.
My mother never understood women’s studies either. During one of her chemo sessions, she admitted, “When you told me you wanted to do that feminist thing, I thought you’d lucked out and was a lesbian. But, no, you ended up with a man anyway.”
“That’s not what women’s studies is about,” I told her.
“Not that Ray’s much of a man anyway,” she said. She shielded her eyes from the overhead light. Her head shook slightly, as if she were looking for me. “I’ve been so busy with my own life that I never taught you how to survive.” She sank down in bed.
“You didn’t have to,” I said. I wanted to sound touched, but it came out sounding frustrated.
“You’ve never survived the way I did,” she said.
I met my step-brother, Jay, at Dennis’ funeral. Dennis was a total bastard, Jay said. Left his wife for another woman, then dumped her for my mother. Got paid under the table so that he wouldn’t have to pay child support. When his mother died, Jay lived with Dennis and worked at the landscaping business from age thirteen until he graduated from high school. Dennis refused to pay a cent towards Jay’s college education.
“Not even for vo-tech,” Jay said. “Not one goddamn red dime.”
Jay joined the military and went overseas, where he lost contact with his father. When he returned, his overtures to reconnect were met with indifference.
“And now I’m crying over that son-of-a-bitch,” Jay said. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
At the funeral, my mother was a black lump with crossed arms. The three years she’d spent with Dennis had hollowed her out. I wonder if this was an early warning of cancer: sunken cheeks, spots climbing up her neck, her green eyes faded. The police investigation showed that Dennis had been using chlorodane to keep down grasshoppers even though the FDA had banned it. The toxins built up in his liver until it had grown multiple lesions, each one a kiss of death. He died in their bed, late at night, the muscles in his jaw still twitching when the paramedics arrived. When I suggested that my mother buy a new mattress, she shrugged. Later that week, after the funeral, she turned the mattress over.
“See?” she said. “Good as new.”
*
When Mom went into the hospital for the final time, I received the first payout from the insurance settlement. The payment had been held up because of the insurance investigators, but they came to the same conclusion as the police: Ray had been going over 95 miles an hour down I-84. He dozed off, went off the road, flipped his Camaro. He hadn’t yet had a chance to take my name off the insurance policy.
This I remember for sure: Mom and I had talked about what we’d do if she couldn’t be awake without having a crippling ache run throughout her or if the cancer spread into her bones, her blood. “I don’t want to die hooked up to machines,” she said. “I want to be at home.”
But now we weren’t at home, and she was too weak to be moved. She lay in her hospital bed, her skin as white as the sheets. Her body had deflated. She had bested three husbands, but here was something she couldn’t beat.
I was the beneficiary for her insurance policy as well, and she had me spread her sleeping pills on the plastic tray in front of her.
“Count them,” she said, and I did.
I held her hand as she began swallowing the Doral. She kept four in her mouth at a time, rolling them around like loose teeth, before taking a sip of water. She leaned the cup against her chest and tilted it. I imagined the pills dissolving on her tongue, the bitterness before it was washed away.
At last, she closed her eyes, and her hand loosened from mine. I leaned over, brought my face close to hers, and whispered: Tell me, Mom. Was it you? Did you do it?
But instead of answering, she grasped my forearm and guided me through the motions: clutching an invisible knife, slicing infinity signs in the air. She was telling me: this is how you do it. This is how you survive anything.
This I remember for sure: Mom and I had talked about what we’d do if she couldn’t be awake without having a crippling ache run throughout her or if the cancer spread into her bones, her blood. “I don’t want to die hooked up to machines,” she said. “I want to be at home.”
But now we weren’t at home, and she was too weak to be moved. She lay in her hospital bed, her skin as white as the sheets. Her body had deflated. She had bested three husbands, but here was something she couldn’t beat.
I was the beneficiary for her insurance policy as well, and she had me spread her sleeping pills on the plastic tray in front of her.
“Count them,” she said, and I did.
I held her hand as she began swallowing the Doral. She kept four in her mouth at a time, rolling them around like loose teeth, before taking a sip of water. She leaned the cup against her chest and tilted it. I imagined the pills dissolving on her tongue, the bitterness before it was washed away.
At last, she closed her eyes, and her hand loosened from mine. I leaned over, brought my face close to hers, and whispered: Tell me, Mom. Was it you? Did you do it?
But instead of answering, she grasped my forearm and guided me through the motions: clutching an invisible knife, slicing infinity signs in the air. She was telling me: this is how you do it. This is how you survive anything.