by Mona Simpson
I couldn’t talk at first. My lip was flickering.
“I’m going to have an accident.” Her voice sounded make-believe and serious at the same time.
“Why, Mom?” That was all I could choke out. I looked around the room, the empty walls, the dark windows.
“You don’t love me and so I—”
I whimpered. “Mo-om, I do, I love you.”
“No, you really don’t, Ann. I know. And I’ve tried, believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve done all I can do. And I can’t help you anymore. You’ll be better off without me. You’re strong, you’re stronger than you think. I know you. I tried to get us a Christmas tree, I got this huge, big beautiful tree. It was expensive, but I thought, Well, this once we’ll really have something nice. At least I can do that for her. Don’t you think I’ve felt bad that I couldn’t have furniture for you and give you clothes and money like other parents give their kids? But I couldn’t, Annie. I was all alone. I didn’t have any man to help me. And I said to them at the lot, I said, Tie it on tight, because I’ve got a long way to drive. And they said, Yeah, yeah, sure they would. Sure. Well, they didn’t. Here I’m driving on the freeway and it falls off. This big beautiful tree bounces on the road and it splintered into a million pieces. And that’s where it is, all over the highway. A million smithereens. I paid my last money for it. That tree was forty dollars. I couldn’t even do that for you. I couldn’t even get you a Christmas. I’m giving up. I’m driving up the coast and off the cliffs at Big Sur. It’s supposed to be pretty there. Remember I always wanted to see them? I’m just going to have an accident.”
“Mom, please, don’t. Please come home. I need you.” My voice wasn’t the same either. I’d never heard it before. I sounded like her.
“You’re just scared,” she said. “You don’t know what you’ll do without me. That’s why you think you love me now, but you really don’t, you’re just scared to be alone.”
That stopped me for a second. It seemed true. Then I lost some grip and it started again. I sounded like a baby. “Mom, please, no, no, come home, I’ll be good, whatever you want, just please—”
She hung up.
I opened the freezer and grabbed dates from the bags, the biggest, most expensive kind, medjools.
I paced the apartment, eating, watching the phone. I expected her to call again. Ticks of the minute hand followed me, pinpricks on my back. Then I sat on the floor and dialed the highway patrol. I waited a long time for them to answer. A man told me he couldn’t say anything for twenty-four hours. “You call the hospitals, they’ll tell you the same thing,” he said. “But if she ends up there, in Emergency, they generally call you.”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
“No, huh?”
“But she should be home by now. Usually.” I obeyed what she said. I didn’t tell him she’d called.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “’Course a lot of them they can’t identify right away. You say a white Continental? What does the driver look like?”
“Oh, well, she has …” My voice went dry. It was very hard, all of a sudden, for me to talk. “Blond hair. Freckles. Blue eyes. She’s, I don’t know, small. And pretty. She’s real pretty.” I felt like I was giving him what he needed to take her away from me.
There was an awful pause. “I heard about a Continental and something like that on 1 tonight, but I think it was a redhead. You’re just going to have to sit tight and wait. Don’t worry, if something’s wrong, they’ll call you.”
I climbed upstairs and took off my new pantsuit. I pulled on a nightgown and crawled into bed, but I couldn’t get warm. The alarm clock sat on the floor next to me. It was almost seven and Ronnie was coming to pick me up for the movie at seven. I just waited in bed. I didn’t know what would happen.
At seven, I went to the window in my mother’s room and looked out over the front door. All the lights were off. I was wearing my nightgown and knee socks and my running shoes. I knelt by the window, listening for the Lincoln. Then I heard a door slam and I knew it was Ronnie’s. I would have recognized the sound of ours.
I watched him walk up to the door. He was wearing boots that seemed to bind his legs and turn his feet out. He stood there on our doormat, and with both his hands, he rubbed down his hair; for a moment I felt elated; he liked me. But then the bell echoed through the wall and I ducked down under the window ledge. I didn’t move, as if I could be caught.
There was a long silence, but I didn’t hear footsteps. It was excruciating. He still stood there at the door. I thought in a panic if the door was locked; it was, I’d checked. He would just stand there and then he would leave. He would have to leave.
I felt like we were breathing together, on opposite sides of the wall. He didn’t move, I didn’t move. I didn’t dare peek out anymore. The doorbell rang again, a long ring, making me shudder.
Then something horrible happened. I heard my mother’s car screeching to a halt on the street. I knew it was ours. Suddenly, I felt absolutely furious at the way she drove; she never could learn to use a brake. She’d careen along, looking at everything but the road, and then, a second before a collision, she’d say, “Whoops,” and smash on the brakes.
I heard the quick nervous clatter of her heels on the pavement and I crawled fast, galloping on the carpet, to my room to put my clothes back on. My hair was a mess, there wouldn’t be time for makeup. I flipped the light on and opened my algebra book. I was zipping up my jeans when I heard the key turning in the door downstairs.
“Uh, Ann. Ann? Where are you, Honey?”
“I’m up here, Mom.” I tried to make my voice sound cheerful. I brushed my hair furiously. Then I bent down to buckle my shoe. I went downstairs holding my open book in one hand, I must have looked about as casual as Hamlet. Then I stopped, halfway down, and said, “Oh, um hi, Ronnie.”
He jammed his hands in his parka pockets and smiled up at me. He really is cute, I was thinking to myself, and just then I remembered that the entire apartment was empty. I’d thought of that before, this morning, which seemed like years ago now. I’d planned to meet him at the door, dressed and ready, smiling, sailing out with one line, like “We just moved in and our furniture’s not delivered yet. Such a pain.” But here we were, looking down at the expanse of beige carpet. No furniture, with the exception of Ted’s big radio. And that was a danger, too. I could sense my mother veering towards it. I thought I’d die if she turned it on to her easy-listening station, I’d truly die. “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” with orchestration, or “The Impossible Dream.” This night was already way too weird for Ronnie. And his parents owned a rock ‘n’ roll record company.
He was looking around at the bare walls. “Did you hear me, Ann? I rang the doorbell.”
“No,” I said. “Just now?”
“Yeah. I rang it twice.”
“I don’t know, I was studying.”
My mother smiled, radiant. “You must have just nodded off for a second. Well.” She clapped her hands together. From a life of working with children, my mother believed in applause. “You kids won’t believe the tree I’ve got.” She winked at me. “It’s more gorgeous than the first one even. But I think I’m going to need some help getting her in.”
It felt good to be told what to do. We followed her outside. It was cold, a clear black night, with a few rare stars. I stood on one side of the car and Ronnie leaned on the other. We started untying the ropes. I was just following along. The air seemed tender. I felt so, I don’t know, grateful. Like Ronnie and I were still just kids.
“Isn’t she a beaut?” my mother said, and looked at me, smiling.
I shrugged and looked down. “It’s tied to the fender, too.”
My mother sighed. “Gee, I wish I had something in the house. Some hot chocolate or cider.” She clapped again. “Say. We could all go out and get a little something. I’ll take you kids out for some dessert.”
“We’re going to a movie, Mom.”
“Oh, all rig
ht.” She rubbed her hands together. “I just thought it would be a nice night for a little something hot. Brrr.”
“Actually, I think we missed the movie,” Ronnie said, lifting his sweater and looking at a watch. “It’s starting now.”
The three of us lifted the tree onto our shoulders. We stood it up next to the glass doors. The branches trembled and then fell into place. It was a huge, beautiful tree.
“So, what do you say? Should we go out and grab a bite to eat? I could go for a little something. It’s up to you kids. Whatever you want.”
Ronnie and I looked at each other.
“Okay with me,” Ronnie said, his hands jammed in his pockets again.
I said, “Sure.”
“Let me just change my clothes and we’ll go.” My mother ran up the stairs, clapping.
We both leaned against the car door, shuffling our feet on the curb. Ronnie’s Porsche was down the block. It gleamed under the streetlamp.
“I’m sorry about tonight,” I said.
His lip lifted in one place, as if pulled by a string. It was a kind look. “Is something the matter?”
“My dog died,” I said. I didn’t have one. “His name was Danny. He got run over.”
“You should have told me,” Ronnie said.
I bit my lip and my cheeks started shaking. I felt it starting. He stepped closer and rubbed my hair behind my ears.
Then my mother called. “I’m coming.”
We climbed into our car, the three of us in the front seat.
“Should we have a little music?” my mother said, her hand on the knob.
“No!” I shouted, much too loud. I tried to laugh. “I mean, not now.”
Ronnie looked out the window. His face seemed chiseled, set. I knew I’d blown it for being his girl friend. This whole night was too weird. It would be even worse, when he was home, away from us.
But right then, driving, the dark glass on three sides of us, I leaned my head back on the leather seat, it was one of those times I felt like driving all night. A clear sky, stars, the three of us could drive to Michigan or Canada maybe. Somewhere it would be cold.
12
A BACKHOUSE ON NORTH PALM DRIVE
Not too long after Christmas, we ran out of money and moved. My mother quit her job during the fall teachers’ strike and took work as a maid for an entertainment lawyer. We moved on a week Josh Spritzer was away, skiing in Colorado with his children, and we managed to keep the same phone number, so for a while Josh didn’t know. We would be working for the Keller family, who lived on North Palm Drive, and we moved into their backhouse, behind the tennis courts.
My mother knew the Kellers because of me. Peter was a boy in my high school, a year younger, who asked me over a lot. Sometimes, his mother offered my mother mineral water when she picked me up, and that gave my mother a chance to talk about Josh. In a way, Nan Keller had been in on my mother’s romance with Josh Spritzer from the beginning. The first time she dropped me off at Peter Keller’s, we were all standing in the hallway and my mother had said, “Do you think I should have braces put on her? What do you think, Nan, aesthetically. You’re the artist.” I’d stood there like a horse while the two women pulled at my jaw and examined my teeth and gums. Nan Keller had decided we definitely should.
During the teachers’ strike, I told Peter my mother was worried about her job, and that if she was laid off we’d have to move back to Wisconsin. In school the next day he said I could eat dinner at their house whenever I wanted. As if that would help our finances.
I suppose along the same idea, Peter called me up and invited me to his house for Thanksgiving. I said I didn’t know, I’d have to ask my mother. When I walked into her bathroom, she was sitting on the rug, polishing her toenails, a magazine propped open against the tub. She clapped her hands when I told her. “He did? Great! Definitely we’ll go. What do you mean, say no? We haven’t got anything else to do.” Josh Spritzer planned to take his children skiing, that time in Canada, Lake Louise.
“I don’t know. He didn’t mention you.” That was hard to say.
But my mother didn’t seem to mind. “Oh, well, she must expect me, too. She knows we wouldn’t separate on a holiday.”
I called back and asked Peter if he meant my mom, too. He said he didn’t think so. I yelled upstairs. Now she was running water for a bath.
“Well, tell Peter you’d like to, very much, say, but that you don’t think you can because you wouldn’t want to be without your mom on Thanksgiving. So you’ll have to go with her somewhere else she was invited. Say that.”
“Did you hear?” I said.
Peter ran to ask. “Okay,” he said, when he came back, breathless. “It’s okay. Your mother can come, too.”
It was always like that with the Kellers.
The afternoon of Thanksgiving, my mother and I arrived and stood in front of the huge door, checking each other over before we dropped the knocker. “You look really great,” she mouthed to me. We both pulled up our pantyhose, still standing there on the porch, hoping none of the other guests would come and see us. Then my mother took a deep breath and knocked.
A maid in a short black dress led us to the drink room, a room entirely paneled in salmon suede. About a dozen people stood eating scampi out of little white ramikins. Only Peter walked over to us. He offered to take my coat.
“Should I give Peter your coat, Mom?” I whispered.
She pulled it over her shoulders. “No, Honey, I think I’ll keep it.”
Peter’s grandmother lounged in the corner, talking about grilles on Rolls-Royces between the years of 1957 and 1970. She had a habit of marrying millionaires, who then died. She’d lost the last one recently, so she was wearing red. Peter told me she always wore red when she was in mourning. She wore black when she planned to leave a man. She believed Rolls-Royces hadn’t been the same since 1970. She had three of them, each belonging to a dead husband. She herself drove a Bentley Silvercloud.
Peter also told me that she disapproved of Mr. Keller for being a lawyer, and for being a Russian instead of a Viennese Jew. Not that she herself admitted to being any kind of Jew. Whenever the Kellers fought, Peter’s grandmother offered her daughter immediate and lavish refuge in her house, three blocks away on Elevado.
A famous movie star leaned on the salmon-colored wall as Nan Keller talked to him about mineral water.
Mrs. Keller had once been a painter. She sometimes spoke, romantically, of San Francisco, and the Art Students’ League. It seemed she remembered painting on the sidewalks near Ghirardelli Square. But her mother, not Bert Keller, had come to fetch her home. Through the suede drink room’s archway, we could see several of her recent paintings, standing in the living room. She painted with acrylics on clear huge stretched pieces of lucite, so the paintings served as room dividers as well. They seemed mostly abstract. She favored colors in the family of red. What was recognizable tended to be bloody.
“We bottle our own from a little island we found off of Panama,” she was saying to the movie star. “Tell me what you think, Tony. It’s not too bubbly. We like it clear.” Tony Camden was the movie star’s name.
“I’m in speech pathology,” I heard my mother say next to me at the table. I noticed she was staring at the movie star, four people removed on the other side. Before I could stop her, she leaned forward, almost knocking over Mrs. Keller’s centerpiece, made of bones, goat skulls, orchids and tall, burning beeswax candles.
“May I ask you a question?” she said to the movie star. “Your skin is so wonderful. Is there anything you do for it?”
But the movie star seemed pleased. He looked down at his young wife and she smiled back, lifting a piece of her hair behind an ear. “We have a little secret in our house,” he said. “Every morning, Jan squeezes our own fresh orange juice. And we drink it with a tablespoon of cod liver oil and a tablespoon of wheat germ oil.”
“Really,” my mother marveled. She fumbled in her beaded purse, an heirloom. T
hen she had a piece of paper.
Mrs. Keller engaged the movie star’s young wife in a discussion of tennis, how no one could ever be good unless they’d learned their form when they were seven years old and that’s why she told Peter, every day, he should be out there with the machine, hitting balls, he’d be sorry later, he’d grow out of those political tracts he stayed inside reading and then he’d wish he’d learned tennis.
“Excuse me, would you mind saying that again,” my mother asked. “I’d like to write it down. Now, it was one tablespoon of wheat germ oil, one of cod liver oil and that’s in the orange juice? I see, mixed in the orange juice.”
“As Winston Churchill said, anyone who isn’t a Democrat before thirty hasn’t got a heart. And anyone who’s a Democrat after thirty doesn’t have a brain.”
Mr. Keller, a dark, lean man with a prominent Adam’s apple, was roaming around his living room. He had a hard time sitting still at meals, so he tended to roam, with his pipe, through the house. Odd lamps pointed out at weird angles in the living room, highlighting some object or another as if it were a sort of store window.
“Oh, Isabelle,” the movie star’s young wife said. “She’s not sure if she’s a girl or not.”
Mrs. Keller shrugged. “I don’t know why, she looks great as a girl.” Mrs. Keller kept a crystal bell next to her water glass, which she rang to call the maid. “Do you like pumpkin pie?” she asked, suddenly, after the maid had been told to bring out dessert and to corral Mr. Keller back to the table. It was the first question she’d asked my mother all evening.
“Oh, yes, I love it!” my mother cried, believing, as she had all her life, that in situations of some awkwardness, it was best to be enthusiastic.
“Do you,” Mrs. Keller said, as the maid wheeled the dessert cart beside her. “Thank you, Marie. Because we honestly don’t. All three of us just hate it. And we don’t like mince either. Can’t stand it. So, I found this recipe for a Portuguese ginger pudding that we serve with a hard sauce. Please tell Marie how much sauce you’d like.” She turned up to the maid and spoke to her in Spanish.
