A month later, Emmy and I sit nervously in a waiting area at the North Carolina School of the Arts with other parents and their teenage sons and daughters. For days Emmy has worked on her monologues with me and the drama teacher from Kaleidoscope. One of the monologues comes from the play Proof, and the other comes from my favorite, Medea. I played Medea myself when I was a teenager. I slid easily into the persona of that crazy, vengeful murderess, and even today I sometimes channel her when the need arises.
A beautiful woman with short dark brown hair and bright brown eyes sits across from us with an equally beautiful daughter. Something about the two of them radiates confidence and kindness. So Emmy and I sit up a little straighter in an attempt to look a little sharper ourselves.
I try not to put any stock into anything at all today. We’re just here with no expectations. Don’t make any friendships, I’m telling myself. Don’t picture Emmy strolling across campus. Emmy has adopted the same attitude. We refuse to admit that she wants this.
The brown-eyed woman and I strike up a casual conversation, but we can barely breathe. She’s nervous, too. It hurts so much to see that our girls might not get something they really want. Emmy and the girl quickly learn they have a mutual friend from Emmy’s school. Don’t make friends, I’m thinking. We’re just passing through.
Then it’s Emmy’s turn to go in. We’ve been here all day what with one meeting or another, nervously chatting with other parents and students, sizing up the competition. This is the final audition. Emmy is not quite the last one but almost. Will she make it? Will she spend her senior year of high school on a college campus, attending what is arguably the best arts school in the country? It depends on which Emmy goes in there—the knock-your-socksoff Emmy or the lose-your-backpack-and-total-your-mother’s-car Emmy.
Fifteen minutes later and it’s over. We won’t know anything for a few weeks. Neither of us has much to say, but I have this sick feeling in my stomach like I’ve been on a small boat in ten-foot waves. My gut is saying “bad news.” I take Emmy to Greensboro to stay with a friend and to get a closer look at the state college there.
After I’ve dropped her off, I drive back to the Interstate for the hour-and-forty-minute drive home. The sick feeling has not gone away. It has only turned into a deeper feeling of dread. As I pull into the seventy-mile-an-hour traffic, I have an epiphany. I realize I am not feeling sick because Emmy is not going to get into that school. I’m sick because I suddenly know that she will.
When she gets the acceptance letter a couple of weeks later, she screams so loudly that her friend a few houses down calls to find out what happened.
A woman at my Religious Science church who has just lost her mother tells me how lucky I am to still have mine. She’s right. And yet, I am so unhappy. I have no life. I feel like I’m somehow back in prison. I pray to that ineffable something. I ask for guidance. I know there’s got to be a way that I can be a good, loving daughter and yet still have something left over for myself. I keep looking for someone who might need a place to live and who might be willing to stay in my mother’s extra bedroom in exchange for taking some of the load off my shoulders. There must be someone who needs a place to sleep and is not psychotic and wouldn’t mind fixing scrambled eggs each morning.
When a longtime friend calls me one morning to complain because she’s broken her wrist and has no one to help her, I simply respond, “This, too, shall pass.”
“I don’t need platitudes,” she says angrily. I hang up the phone and decide to let go of this friendship of twenty-something years. I cannot add anyone or anything to this cart that I am toting. It’s a year before that rift is repaired.
Help comes from places I’d never expect. Sylvia, who has been assisting Mother with her chorus at the Landings, was a nurse in her former life. She’s one of those saints who loves to help others. She’s self-effacing and kind. She offers to take off my mother’s compression socks at night and sometimes even puts them on for her in the mornings. Thank God I can sleep in once in a while!
I realize I’ve got to do something or this love I have for my mother will fester into something rotten. My brother Jo comes down and stays with her for a few days in May while I go to a conference in New York. Emmy has come with me and as a birthday present, I buy two tickets to Wicked, a damned pricey show. On my nineteenth or twentieth birthday, my mother took me to New York and we saw the American Ballet Theater at Lincoln Center. I don’t remember which ballet they performed, just that I felt glamorous and excited to be in that beautiful place with those beautiful people. And I remember thinking that I was so lucky to have a mother sophisticated enough to give me such a wonderful gift.
Emmy brings up some clothes that she made (a prom dress and a pair of patchwork pants) and shows them to a friend of my brother’s who works at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and before we know it she’s scheduled to take some fashion design classes in New York this summer. I decide I will escape from my life and join her for a few days. No work, just fun.
So after Kaleidoscope Camp this year, I hire some helpers for my mother and take a trip to be with Emmy in New York—just the two of us. Except that it’s not really just the two of us. There’s my brother and his girlfriend and other family members who live there and several of Emmy’s friends (from Charlotte and Florida) who all decide that this would be a great time to go to New York. Her best friend from Charlotte is there when I arrive.
So here I am, two days into my visit, with two teenage girls and not a whole lot of money. What recreation we choose will have to be easy. And fun. And different. Then I find the ideal thing in the Village Voice: the Siren Music Festival, free, on Coney Island. In all my trips to New York, I’ve never been to Coney Island, and Emmy hasn’t even heard of it.
“It’s famous,” I tell her. “There’s a hot dog named after it.”
It’s not hard to convince the girls. The previous year Emmy and I and her friend Evan went to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee. By the time we left, I’d lost so much water I looked like a mummy. It was devastatingly hot, especially for a menopausal woman; it didn’t help that I was in Rottweiler mode so that two sixteen-year-old girls could enjoy the music unmolested. No one bothered them much in the daytime, so I let them wander around while I hunkered down in the shade of the smaller field, digging on Buddy Guy or Ziggy Marley and observing the mating rituals of the species. But at night I kept a tight rein. When we wandered the fringes of the main concert, more than one valiant young drunkard spotted my two wards, advanced, and then backed off quickly, saying, “Oh, wow. And this is your mom. What a cool mom.” When they started hitting on me, we knew it was time to listen to the music from the comfort of our lounge chairs at the tent.
But Bonnaroo had been worth it, worth the seven-hour drive, the heat, the money, the horrible macaroni I had tried to make on a borrowed Coleman stove, the moments of panic when the cell phones wouldn’t work and I was standing in a heaving throng of eighty thousand half-naked, totally drunk or stoned partiers, clueless as to where the girls were. It was worth suffering through Death Cab for Cutie so that Emmy could hear Conor Oberst, and so she’d have some bragging rights like I did (and still do) from seeing Jimi Hendrix play at the Atlanta Pop Festival in Byron, Georgia, on July 4, 1971, when I was fourteen years old. I had, in fact, been trying to relive those halcyon days with this journey—minus the purple microdot, of course. But it hadn’t been the same. Not at all. I wanted that sense of peace and blissed-out freedom that I’d gotten a taste of when I was fourteen. I didn’t find it at Bonnaroo.
But today I get more than a taste of it. For this one day my mystic thirst is quenched.
It starts out with breakfast at a sidewalk cafe by Union Square: eggs Florentine for me and French toast for the girls. Then we head to the subway station. The swaying motion of the train lulls us as if we are newborn babies. We chug out of the dark underground world into the warm light. Other people dressed in beach attire join us on the way. Then at
some point the train stops and we figure this must be our stop.
The ocean, a bright azure beacon, calls. Soon we are crossing the wide yellow beach, making our way through a maze of blankets like a giant patchwork quilt. Children splash in the meager waves. The water looks inviting. I take off my flip-flops and stick my feet in the water. At this point the screeching violins from Hitchcock’s Psycho suddenly erupt in my brain and I leap out of the freezing water.
“Refreshing,” I say to the girls. “Now where’s the festival?”
Following a thread of bass beats, we work our way through the boardwalk area and along a fenced-off street. A stage has been set up at the end of the street nearest the boardwalk. We listen to a band called White Rabbit, and I love them. I can hear a little Island influence, and a breeze seems to have floated up from the Caribbean, darting in and out to cool off the swaying crowd. A crystal-blue sky shimmers above us.
In between bands we stroll through the sleazy carnival atmosphere. I don’t know if it’s the music, the seductive weather, or the fact that I am 643 miles from my mother and my husband, but I can barely keep from levitating as I partake of the communal moment.
The last act we see before we leave is Lavender Diamond. Becky Stark comes flouncing out in a 1950s dress with her thick straight hair hanging down her shoulders, pulled back from her face with a wide headband. She is wholesomely quirky.
“Woo hoo,” she yells, “let’s hear it for world peace!”
Emmy and I lock eyes.
“I love her,” Emmy says.
“Me, too,” I say.
Any more perfection and we’d dissolve. Somehow all the good feelings of a past era are resurrected inside me. And this time I can be high as a puffy white cloud without having to ingest anything other than my dollar bottle of cold water. The odd thing is that the ubiquitous blanket of sweet smoke combined with the smell of spilled beer is absent here. I wonder if everyone is as happy as I am.
The mystics tell us that we’re all filled with the same light. Most of the time, I’m blind to it. Sometimes I can barely muster contempt for my fellow humans. But today, with Becky Stark singing like ambrosia, the sun heaving a sigh of contentment above us, and my laughing daughter and her friend dancing around me, I can feel those invisible connecting threads thrumming with life.
If only I could hold onto this, lock it into my heart forever. But I cannot.
TEN
FALL 2007
Hank and I drive Emmy to her new school. We stock her room with a microwave and bags of snacks. We linger, not wanting to leave. Hank was vociferously against this idea last summer, but now he has become reconciled to it.
The dreaded “gone child grief” doesn’t attack me like I thought it would. My mother needs more care than ever, and I’m excited about the Isha Yoga class I’m going to take in late September. Excited and worried. The class is seven days long and in Atlanta, and I don’t know how my mother is going to survive without me, but Cheryl keeps pushing me. If I take the class in September, then I can take the next class with Sadhguru himself in October. I will finally get to meet a real-life realized being. I’ve been waiting my whole life for that experience.
I was curious about the world beyond my senses from a young age. When I was five years old, we lived in a small brick house in Jacksonville. One afternoon there was a terrible thunderstorm, a Wizard of Oz-type wind with cows and bicycles flying by. The entire Atlantic Ocean had been sucked up into the clouds and was now falling down on us.
I’d had enough, so I went outside with my little twirling baton, stood on the porch waving the baton, and called out in my booming child’s voice: “Oh, wind! Oh, rain! I command you to stop. Stop! Stop now!” Nothing happened, so I commanded once again, “Stop, rain! Right this instant!”
The rain continued to tumble down. The wind laughed at me, wrapped my hair around my face, and sloshed a bucketful of water all over me. Drenched, I went back inside and turned on Let’s Make a Deal. I had thought I was God until that day.
And yet life so often seemed to have a magical quality. It was as if there were a constant whisper that I could almost hear but not quite. I suppose that I was searching for that magic when I started taking drugs at the age of fourteen. Those adventures took me to another realm. But what at first seemed like heaven fairly quickly turned into hell. Even so, I was amazed at the way we junkies could connect with each other with that extra sense we had that kept us out of jail up until it didn’t.
I guess I always figured that, in jail, I’d read the Bible and finally discover that peace which passeth all understanding. That didn’t happen. The Bible part anyway. Instead I read literature and found God was there, of all places—incognito, of course. But I could discern Him or Her or It, whatever you want to call it, in Dostoyevsky’s words and Grass’s images, even hiding in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. And then, one Easter Sunday, the choir members got to take a field trip to a church in Ocala, Florida. The congregation held our hands, and the preacher called on Jesus and something happened. I’m sure scientists could come along and offer some chemical explanation, but that something was like the big bang right in my own body. Drugs could never replicate this feeling. I’d been ruined.
After that I was on the prowl. I wanted Nirvana, Samadhi, Heaven, Godhead. But no matter what books I read or how much I meditated, I only got tiny moments of grace. Slowly I began to slough off lifetimes of pain. And still there was more. More sadness, more judgment, more unforgiveness.
In preparation for the yoga program, I watch videos of Sadhguru on YouTube, and am hypnotized by his laughter. I want to see him for myself; I want to see if I can see in his eyes what I once felt. I can’t let the chance pass me by.
So in September I go to Atlanta, leaving my mother in Sylvia’s care. I’ve hired a caregiver to come in the mornings, and the girl who lives next door to us to visit her a couple of times.
In Atlanta I stay with an Indian family. I go to the local library and work on my computer during the day. I go to the class every night. I learn the practice, called Shambhavi Maha Mudra, that the teacher says comes from an ancient science. It entails some breathing, chanting, and exercises. One day they feed us a banquet of raw foods. The other participants and I gobble it down. We have homework, we watch videos of Sadhguru, we sit crosslegged, our backs aching, and listen. One day we play games like a bunch of kids. I’m not a great athlete, but an odd thing happens during a game of dodgeball. I have the sudden sure sense that I am going to win the game. I will be the last one in the circle. It’s like I’m invincible. And that’s exactly what happens.
A week or so after the first program, I leave home again for three days to take another more advanced program at the ashram in Tennessee. Whenever possible I sit right up front and stare at the Master as he speaks. He laughs, he cries, he is certainly brilliant. Is he enlightened? I cannot say. All I know for sure is that I’ve found an adventure that I’ve been waiting for, for a long time. And I’ve gained a spiritual practice that will be helpful in the face of the brutal days that are charging fast at me like a pack of rabid dogs.
We have to miss Parents’ Weekend at Emmy’s school because we are going to California for the weekend. Beth’s cancer has moved into her brain. And Hank’s dad also has a brain tumor. Jean is not sure Beth will be around for Thanksgiving so there is no time to lose.
In the airport we sit together, Emmy between Hank and me. I’m explaining to Emmy the meaning of the word zeitgeist when Hank says to her, “Babe, that woman’s pants are so tight, I bet her farts have to squeeze out the bottom like cockroaches under the kitchen door.” Hank is a connoisseur of fart lore, and of course, there’s someone sitting right behind us who can hear him; Emmy and I are mortified and laughing in embarrassment at the same time.
“Sir, please don’t talk to my daughter,” I lean over and say in a loud voice. He laughs his wicked little-boy laugh.
On the airplane, a man sitting in the row in front of us has a snore like a buzz
saw, and Hank periodically jolts the man’s seat to get him to stop, giggling maniacally every time he does it. Again, Emmy and I can’t help but laugh when he does. It’s viral.
When we get to Hank’s parents’ house, Jean is waiting for us as she always is. But she has been diminished by half. Taking care of her dying daughter and her sick husband has carved up her soul. Her strength in the face of this adversity makes me feel like a welterweight. I know antidepressants are helping her deal with it all, but for God’s sake, she’s eighty years old, and she’s got rheumatoid arthritis. Yet, she’s ever stalwart.
“One time we were at the hospital to see about Beth, and I turned around and Hank Senior had passed out,” she says to me. “They had to check him in right then and there. So there I was with both of them in the hospital, running from one floor to the other.”
“How do you do it?” I ask.
“I don’t have a choice, Pat,” she says. “What else can I do?”
She could turn into a raving lunatic, I think. But she doesn’t. She finds whatever helps her, whether it’s the serenity prayer or a bridge game with friends, and she copes.
Fortunately, Hank’s brother Steve has been there to help her. He reconnoiters with us at the house, and we pile into his Blazer to visit Beth. Beth is tall and gaunt. She hugs us fiercely. I’ve noticed that the dying tend to express love with reckless abandon. Hank is aghast at the sight of his bald sister with a black line of stitches across her skull.
“Ya look like Beetlejuice,” he says.
Hank’s family is not renowned for tenderness, but they’re a loyal bunch. Steve has shown his true mettle, captaining the ship of this beleaguered family. Generous and handsome, with a big laugh almost as infectious as Hank’s, Steve is now figuring out the next step for Beth. He thinks she’s ready to come home, and he’s also found a hospice down the street from his parents’ house for that inevitable step.
Wait Until Tomorrow Page 13
