“Let me ask you something,” she said. She had to drag her eyes away from looking down at Chloe. “What are you expecting me to do?”
“Well,” I said. I swallowed. I had still been hoping for a few expressions of sympathy, actually. One or two expressions along the line of oh, you poor sweet baby would have been nice. “I’m actually hoping to finish high school up here. There are only a few months left of the school year, and then I was hoping that you could maybe help me a little bit with the tuition, or help me find work in New York. You know a whole lot of creative people, and I thought I could stay with you while I work on . . . you know . . .”
“Hmm,” she said.
“I’m a writer,” I told her grandly. “I know that about myself. I’m the editor of the school newspaper, and all my English teachers agree that I’ve got real talent, and I did great on the verbals of the SATs, and I got into such a great, great school . . . and now Daddy won’t let me go! He didn’t even want me to apply. I had to do it all in secret. He says I have to stay on the farm, and you and I both know it’s only because that’s what he had to do. He’s taking his disappointment in life out on me, and I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it.”
She listened, frowning. “Wow. This seems very hard,” she said.
I stared at her. “Yes! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It is very hard. It’s impossible. I can’t live like this, being on the farm for my whole life. I want to be a writer, I want to be a creative person. I’m like you, Mama. You weren’t able to live there, so I know you know what I’m talking about. I can’t do it.”
We waited, Chloe and I, to see what she would say. Chloe, still nursing, stuck her fingers in Tenaj’s mouth.
“Listen,” I said. “I can help you in the gallery, I can babysit Chloe. I’ll be one of your employees, doing whatever. I just need to be away from home. And he’s grounded me from everything. He’s being totally unreasonable. I even got some scholarship money, but he won’t contribute. He’s been terrible all year long, and now I can’t. I just can’t stay.” My eyes were filling up with tears.
“Honey, I don’t—I can’t . . .”
“Mama, please. You can’t what? You can’t be my mom anymore? You can’t help me? Look at you! You’re doing fine. You have this gallery, you’ve made it. And all I’m asking is to live with you and make some money until I go off to college. For heaven’s sake, Mama!”
“Phronsie, I don’t have room for you. Honey, I live in a really small house, and I—”
“I could sleep on the couch.”
“Nooo,” she said. “That wouldn’t really work. Baby, I—”
“But there were always people sleeping on your couch! That was the whole point of the sixties, right? People helping each other—”
“It’s not like that anymore,” she said quietly. “It’s the eighties. I have a new marriage and a kid . . .”
“Wow. You don’t want to have room for me,” I said. “You know something? You don’t really care about me, do you? It’s like I’m not even connected to you, like I’m not your kid. Just in case you don’t remember, you actually have three kids, not just this one.”
“Honey, you will always be my kid . . .”
“No,” I said. It was like I was putting all this together for the first time. All the absences, all the silences, all the lack of effort. “No, that’s not really true. You threw me away. You let my dad come and pick up Hendrix and me when we were four years old and take us off to New Hampshire, and you didn’t even do anything to keep us. You just let us go. I remember that day. You just said good-bye and that was that. How could you? How did you do that? We were your babies. And you told me we’d be together as soon as you could manage it. And look at you! Look at us! You abandoned me.”
Chloe stopped nursing and stared at me.
My mother took a little bit of time to answer, and then she said in a low voice, “I don’t expect you to understand everything that went on. It didn’t ever seem like my fighting him was going to do any good. Also, I knew you’d have a good life. It was hard saying good-bye to you. It was the most awful thing I’d ever had to do. But I knew Bunny would take care of you and love you, and I knew you’d have stability on the farm with your father. You’d have a community that wasn’t just people smoking pot and taking drugs and hardly making any money. It wasn’t as idyllic as it looked here, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to take care of you. Don’t you see that? And, Phronsie, really. A family farm—what’s more family-oriented than that? And your dad is a good, hardworking man, and he’s strong and he’s earnest, and I knew he would raise you. And—take it however you want to, Phronsie, but I wasn’t sure that I could.”
I sat back on my heels and shook my head. I felt honestly like I might pass out. Like air was blowing through my brain cavity or something.
“But didn’t you even miss us? Who are you? You didn’t even fight for visitation. I had to make that happen. When I was six years old, I was the one who made sure we could come and see you and have the court-ordered visitation. Do you remember that, even?”
She pursed her lips and looked down at Chloe, settled her back against her breast. “I know,” she said. “And I was grateful to you and to Bunny. You don’t realize what I was up against. I didn’t have any money. I wasn’t going to take him to court for visitation. It would have just made things worse.”
“So you say.” I tried to think how long I’d been angry with her without even knowing it. I hated her. In science class one time the teacher passed around a piece of petrified wood; it looked like an ordinary piece of wood, he pointed out, but it had turned to stone. I had a petrified heart. I could feel it turning to stone right as I sat there.
There was a long silence. Then she said, “I love you, Phronsie, whether or not it feels like that to you. This is what love is sometimes: letting the other person go have the life they’re supposed to have. And I want to tell you something. Sure, you got a raw deal. Who didn’t? You didn’t get to grow up with both parents together in a perfect little family. Get over it, okay? Hardly anybody on the planet grows up without some huge lack in their life. Don’t run away from home over this stupid little bump in the road. Your father doesn’t want you to go away to college? So go to college right there. You want to write? So write! What’s stopping you? Do you think I waited for someone to come along and bestow upon me the title of artist? No! I didn’t have any money for supplies, so I made jewelry out of stuff I found along the side of the road. And I worked at it, for years, getting better little by little, and the whole time telling myself that I was going to succeed. And that’s what you’ll have to do, too. You’re going to need to make up your stories out of the raw materials of your life. Suffering won’t kill you. Writing and rewriting and figuring things out as you go along won’t kill you. Not going to NYU won’t even kill you.”
Chloe pulled away from Tenaj’s breast just then and touched her chin, like she could understand. My mother looked down and smiled at her and then nuzzled her baby’s face with her own.
“I baby,” said Chloe, and Tenaj smiled and said, “Yes. You’re the baby.”
No, I wanted to say. I’m the baby!
The bell dinged above the door, and a cluster of customers came in. Tenaj turned to them with a wide smile. “Hi, welcome! Feel free to look around and come to me if you have any questions.”
I got up then, in a sweeping motion. There was no one—no one—to count on but myself. This airiness, this lack of substance, was suddenly exhilarating. It was like the top of my head had a huge opening, and air was circulating all through me. I didn’t even feel sorry for myself. I just felt like my eyes had been opened to a truth that maybe everyone else had known about for a long time, that Tenaj was not to be trusted. She was a fake. I had wanted to be her, I had wanted her to acknowledge me, to be proud of me, to tell me stories, to do artwork with me again, to include me in her world. I wanted her to see that I looked like her, which was something my father always held
against me.
“We saw the story about you in Yankee Magazine,” said a woman with gray hair.
“Oh, did you?” Tenaj’s smile grew larger. She was even simpering at the woman. It was disgusting. She got up and put Chloe back on her hip, adjusted her shirt back to normal. “Yes, that was quite a day I spent with that reporter. I loved the photographs. Did you just love the photographs? He really got my work, the transformative power of the objects.”
“Miraculous,” said the woman’s companion, a man in a tweed suit.
And oh, they went on—the photographs, the beads, the light. Always back to the light. This fucking light. So big deal—there was sunshine through the windows, and white stucco walls. And glass. What did they expect?
I pushed past them. Went outside with my suitcase. I stood on the sidewalk looking up and down the street, thinking what to do next. Feeling the air on my skin, in my eyes.
What do you want to do? That was what the voice in my head said.
I’m hungry. I think I want to eat.
I went next door to the little restaurant where the tourists now seemed to be gathering for lunch. I went in and sat at a table by the window and ordered an egg salad sandwich and a bag of potato chips and stared out at the street. I had no idea what I was going to do next.
When I was halfway finished with my sandwich, Tenaj burst into the place and plopped herself down in front of me. She didn’t have Chloe with her. She reached out and touched my hand. “Baby,” she said. “I have a couple of things to tell you.”
Maybe, I thought, she’s changed her mind. She’s realized what I could be to her.
“Just hear me out,” she said. “I may not be the mother you would have chosen, but hardly anybody gets who they want,” she said. “I can’t offer you daily life and cookies after school—”
“Or even a place to live, apparently.”
“—yes, or even a place to live. But besides all the wonderful artistic genes I passed onto you”—and here she smiled—“I also can tell you that you’re on the right path. But you need to go home. I can read energy, and I can see your life, and you’re not meant to be here. Your life is waiting for you elsewhere, and you’re going to be great, Phronsie. You’re going to find success and love, but it’s not always going to be easy. Do you believe in the unseen realm?”
“No. Absolutely not.” I rolled my eyes.
She smiled. “Well, I do. It’s real, baby. Magic is real.”
“I don’t know why I should listen to you. You said marriage was bad for women, and that the only way women could be happy was to be independent. And now look at you! Married to some random guy who shows up, and with a baby who won’t let you go for one second. You said yourself you can’t even do your art. You told me art was the most important thing. That’s what you said!”
You said . . . you said . . .
She smiled at me and shrugged. “I know. I changed my mind. And I don’t blame you for being angry,” she said. “You’re furious with me for having another child. But I fell in love, Phronsie, and I couldn’t say no to this. You’ll find out someday what this is like, honey. Just one caution: don’t settle for what you don’t want. I mean, I know you want to go to NYU and maybe you can’t do that just yet. But you’ll figure out what that desire really is all about. And you’re going to succeed. I know that.”
I pushed my plate away, filled with fury. I got some money out of my pocket and slammed it on the table, and I grabbed my suitcase. When I got to the door, I turned and said, “And you didn’t even ask about Hendrix. What kind of mother are you, anyway? You should take a good hard look at yourself.”
I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do next, but I felt free and unfettered, fueled by my anger. I wandered around the town and thought how fakey-fake the whole place seemed. Filled with tourists all walking around looking in the shops, not appreciating that it was once supposed to be a real haven for artists, and not even knowing that the artists had sold out and were just pandering to everybody’s idea of what art was. It was all commercial and stupid.
Later that afternoon, I called Judd and told him I now officially hated my mom. He listened to me complain about everything, and he did not once say that I was an idiot for going there. He just said, “Man, your mom is kind of lost, isn’t she? Do you want me to come and get you?”
“No,” I said. That was the last thing I wanted: to come slinking home like a failure. “I’m going to stick around and figure some things out.” Actually, I had no idea what I was going to do: beg for a job somewhere? Enroll in the high school? Maybe, I told him, this is when I could become a writer. This was the kind of experience that might define my life, give me a reason to write.
Then I called Hendrix and told him he’d been right about Tenaj the whole time.
“Let’s not even call her Tenaj,” I said. “From now on, she’s Janet to me.”
He laughed. “Does this mean you’re going to be Frances?” he said.
“Of course not. Phronsie is a beautiful name.” Then I swallowed. “Was everybody really mad when they found out I’d gone?”
“Well, yes,” he said. “Maggie and Dad had a fight about it.”
“So I’m in trouble?”
“I dunno. When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know. I have a notebook, and I think I’m going to start writing a memoir about how awful everything in life is, and how you can’t make a life for yourself until you’re willing to be lonely and bereft.”
“Jesus, Phronsie,” he said. “Does it have to be that bad for you? Can’t you just conform for now, and do what you want later on?”
“No,” I said. “And neither should you.”
Later, when it was almost getting dark, I was sitting in the park, scribbling away, when a car drove up and stopped at the curb. The driver honked the horn, and I looked up in annoyance. I had just gotten to page five, where I was describing the agony of being the rejected daughter of a farmer and a witch.
It was Maggie, of all people. She rolled down the window and leaned out. I tried not to look at her.
“Hey! Would you like to get in?” she said. She didn’t sound mad, just neutral, like this was the most normal thing in the world to happen.
“What are you doing here?” I said after a moment, but I noticed that I had gathered up all my things and I was walking over to the car as I said it. I stood there for a bit, and then I slid into the front seat next to her. There was a funny feeling in my chest—something like relief mixed in with sorrow at my defeat. Heartbroken, and yet strong. I would have to figure out how to get these emotions down on the page, I realized.
Maggie had both hands on the steering wheel, and she turned to me. She didn’t smile, she didn’t make a big deal, she just looked at me.
“I don’t know. I was just passing through, and I thought maybe you might be ready to see somebody from home,” she said.
I stared at her. “You were not just passing through.”
“No,” she said. “That part isn’t true, but the other part is.”
We sat there in the car, and she said this was a cute little town, but it gave her the creeps, all this peace and love shit, when it didn’t add up to anything concrete in the world. It was the first time I’d ever heard her say the word shit. She said that practicality and duty were what built character, not this “airy fairy” stuff. Character came from paying your bills and working your way toward the thing you really wanted in your life. Character was who you were when all the rest was stripped away. It was the you that people could recognize and count on.
Then she told me she was sorry about the way my father had been to me. She said he wasn’t always fair. But she had talked to him, and she’d gotten him to agree that I could go to NYU. But they wanted me to stay home and go to the community college for the first two years. That would allow me to save money, and to grow up a little before leaving home, she said. I could tell she really thought I’d change my mind about New York, but I knew
that I wouldn’t.
“Anyway, that’s the deal. Take it or leave it. We’ll contribute a little money toward tuition. You’ll have to work, of course, but who doesn’t work their way through college? It’s character-building,” she said. “So, what do you think? Want to come back home?”
I nodded and leaned my head against the window.
She started the engine and turned on her turn indicator.
“You’re going to be fine,” she said, and she reached over and patted my knee. “You just need to stop reacting out of drama, you know? Life is what you make it. See yourself as a victim, and that’s how it will always be.”
Outside the car, under the darkening sky, farms unrolled like green velvet paintings, interspersed with pine forests.
A hundred miles later, when we were on the highway, she said, “When I married your father—when I forgave him for what he did to me, to us—it was because I knew that I loved him and I was always going to love him. So I took him back. It’s not perfect. But nothing is perfect. It takes character to live with the imperfect facts of your life and to change the things you can change, and to be willing to live with the things you can’t do anything about. I’ve had to finally realize that I wouldn’t change anything about your father—or you, or Hendrix, even if I could.”
I stared at the road ahead lit up by the headlights, and it hit me for the first time that I might have been wrong about Maggie. Here she had driven five hours to come and rescue me, and she wasn’t talking to me like I was five years old. Or a juvenile delinquent.
“Listen,” she said, after a long time had gone by. She turned and smiled at me, her thin little smile. “You’re a bright young woman, Phronsie, and I’m so proud of you. I shouldn’t tell you this, but even your making this trip, to see your mother—well, that showed character. That’s what I told your dad. You were taking care of yourself. Taking care of your dream, and I like that in a person. And—well, I promise to help you. I’m on your side, you know. I should have probably told you that before now.”
The Magic of Found Objects Page 20
