Mother Land

by Paul Theroux

  “I’m here.”

  “I think it might be best if we don’t talk again.”

  So, as she was dictating Charlie’s address to me, and urging me to be in touch with him, she was forbidding me to call her.

  In all farewells I have a glimpse of the past, of an earlier page in the relationship, a time when things were different. Saying goodbye to Mona now in this loveless and perfunctory way, as she dismissed me, I saw her clearly, a slim, straight-haired blonde returning from the ladies’ room to a table in a bar where we sat with some friends. As she sat beside me, she slid close and discreetly put something into my jacket pocket. I reached in and felt the warm damp silk of her panties, then looked into her bright wicked eyes. She stuck her tongue out at me like a teasing child. Now, on the phone, she was saying coldly, “Okay, bye.”

  This was like inhabiting a fiction, events and coincidences and surprises—Mona’s unexpected letter, and then Charlie, a new character popping up out of nowhere, but wholly logical, because he was mentioned as a minor character in an earlier subplot. Charlie seemed unreal, yet here was his full name and address. He was a fact. And he knew all about me.

  I could not think of Charlie without reflecting on my family’s lack of support for Mona and me all those years ago, that I had been blamed as wayward, that this birth had been a horrible secret, the family’s shame. How would I break this news to them?

  Some twisted people love bad news. They yearn to know that someone has been robbed, or lost a valuable thing, or been through a divorce. For a person who feels rejected it is a way of feeling better—and I suppose, given that pathology, a miserable person who lacks a regular stream of such bad news eventually turns to crime, because causing mayhem, bringing violence upon a stable world, can be a way of creating bad news and feeling better. Perhaps murder is the ultimate form of rejection.

  Any biography of Stalin or Mao Zedong was helpful in understanding Mother’s mind. I learned more about Mother from The Private Life of Chairman Mao, by Mao’s personal physician, Dr. Li Zhisui, than from Dr. Spock. I knew from such books how, through banishments and manipulation, the tyrant rewrites history; how inconvenient are the ghosts of the past.

  But this ghost, this lost boy, had been found. He wants to see you. What else did he want? I had no money. I was merely clinging to this rented house in the hope of raising enough cash for another African trip and a possible book.

  All my writing and book publishing existed in another dimension, unrelated to my family. It was “work”—as obscure, unknowable, and negligible as Marvin in his uniform doing security detail at the Cape Cod Mall, or Hubby in his green scrubs at the Hyannis Hospital, or Fred’s “I’m doing some business in China,” or Gilbert in the Emirates, or Franny’s and Rose’s teaching, or Floyd’s professorship in poetry. I had no idea what their work entailed. As for mine, no one knew what I did; no one inquired. I had no idea whether anyone in the family apart from Floyd had read anything I’d written. And so much time had passed in their ignoring it that I really didn’t want any of them to read it, and was annoyed when the subject of my writing came up, usually in the form of, “There’s this guy where I work who asked if I was related to you. He says he reads your stuff.”

  And now there was a new member of the family. Why should he care?

  Instead of calling Charlie, I wrote him a letter. I needed a written record of our exchanges; I also wanted to see his penmanship, which tells so much. In my letter, I explained that I was writing him with trepidation, that I had never expected to know him, that I was frankly confused. I felt that I must somehow apologize to him for having conspired to abandon him all those years ago—that Mona and I had set him adrift, and I saw him in a little bobbing bassinet, floating on the current, like Moses in the bulrushes.

  On a day of low, dark, rain-loaded clouds, with a sinking heart I slipped the letter into a mailbox and thought, Let it come down.

  Great to hear from you, he wrote back. That’s exactly what my mother used to tell me. “We found you, just like Moses. You were our Christmas present.” He went on to say, You don’t have to apologize. I’ve got an awesome family. I’ve had a wonderful upbringing. My life couldn’t have been better. He listed his pleasures as fishing, music, reading, and “family time.” As Mona had surmised, he’d gotten interested in who his birth parents might be—their disposition and health—after the birth of his own child. And look, he wrote in his enthusiastic way, is this amazing or what? After my great upbringing, and all the good things that have happened to me, my father turns out to be you. See how lucky I am? How awesome is that?

  I was not entirely reassured. Anyone’s high spirits always put me on guard; they made me cautious—another family trait. I assumed that enthusiasm was forced or exaggerated, if not faked, the enthusiast trying to pull a fast one by selling me his bright mood. In a family of inward and self-regarding cynics, no one’s elation was altruistic, or even healthy; no one was straight. Happiness was a ploy to distract your attention from their essential ill will. Good cheer did not exist in the family, any more than it existed in a bucket of crabs.

  Yet I trusted Charlie. He’d been raised elsewhere. He’d been spared the struggle that I had endured. He even seemed to speak differently, judging from the tone of his letter—a clear, untroubled voice, eager to be heard. He was a patient listener, too. This simplicity, this promptness, and this gratitude were strange to me.

  I wrote again. I was thankful for his directness. Being close to him meant that Mona, from long ago, would remain no more than a spectral presence. I now feared all families, and did not want her to be part of this discourse, or a probable friendship. I could not imagine the three of us reconstituted as a family. I was wary of Mona’s possible intrusion, for gentle-seeming people could also be unexpectedly fierce. And all I knew of family life was wreckage—a shipwreck that cast forth scavengers and wounded, frightened people, potential cannibals, fighting to survive on the barren shore of Boon Island.

  In his next letter, Charlie answered more of my questions. Yes, he had a sister, also adopted. No, he had not traveled much. His degree from Dartmouth had been in history, not economics or business. I still read a lot of history and biography—anything about Teddy Roosevelt, Civil War battles, the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He enclosed some snapshots of his wife, Julie, his son, Patrick, of himself. In one he was holding up a silvery fish, a plump-bellied striped bass, its wide mouth gaping.

  That last snapshot held my attention. As Mona had said, he did resemble me—the nose, the eyes, the shape of his face, his alertness, the set of his mouth. But that was detail I saw in passing. What I noticed more clearly was that he was standing at the edge of a marsh, by a creek, a bridge behind him, where the creek passed under a country road.

  I knew the marsh, the creek, the bridge, the road. I wrote back: The fish is a beauty, and I know where you caught it—in Scorton Creek, by the bridge on Route 6A at half-tide, when the marsh is clear. The reason I know this is that until ten or so years ago I lived fifty yards away, up that road.

  Too impatient to wait for his reply, I gave him my telephone number. He called a few days later, midmorning, from his office. His voice was as friendly as his letters had been, the tone of excitement and pleasure, the easy good humor I was so unused to in my family.

  “That’s incredible. You actually lived there at the time I was fishing. I used to park on that road all the time!”

  “Maybe you saw me on the creek. I had a wooden rowboat, a kind of dory. It was the only one there.”

  “I saw you! Long sculling oars—spoon blades. I loved that boat. I did some rowing at Dartmouth.”

  “That was me.”

  “I’d be casting from the bank, wishing I could troll from that boat.”

  “Not knowing that the guy rowing the boat was your father.”

  “That’s so awesome.”

  He had been raised about ten miles up the road, in a big house in Barnstable that I knew by sight—that most peop
le knew, because of its elegance and its conspicuous site on a bend of the main road just before the county courthouse. He’d gone to school there, and then to a nearby prep school. His father was a well-known philanthropist who had made his fortune in importing plywood from the Soviet Union at a time when few people did business behind the Iron Curtain. A self-made man who’d devoted himself to his children, Charlie’s father had been suspicious of Mona’s approach, the birth mother seeking her child.

  “When I told my father I was meeting her, he said”—and here Charlie became gruff—“‘Don’t give her any money.’”

  I said, “When can we meet?”

  “I’m coming down to the Cape next week. How about lunch?”

  Seeing Charlie entering Friendly’s Grille in Sagamore, I had the impression of seeing myself as a young man. He was just my height, with a brisk way of moving, looking around, prepared to smile, and when he recognized me, he beamed. I shook his hand, he hugged me, we sat in the booth, and I could not stop smiling.

  He looked like me—he looked like one of the family. But what delighted me was that he had been raised by complete strangers, who had obviously adored him and had withheld nothing from him. In that earlier telephone conversation Charlie said that his father’s sole ambition in life had been to make him happy, and he had repaid this by pleasing his father, studying hard, excelling at sports, making the old man proud. “And my mother is a fabulous woman—she’s good at everything.”

  “Julie wanted to come today, but she has to take Patrick to nursery school. She’s dying to meet you. What about your boys—are they on the Cape?”

  “London—England. I haven’t told them about you. I know they’ll be happy.”

  “I’ve got brothers! I always wanted brothers. Mona said you had a big family.”

  “Very big,” I said, wondering whether to elaborate. “You have no idea.”

  We ordered sandwiches. I let him talk, so that I could look at him, and I realized that I was happier than I’d been in years. He was asking questions, eager for answers.

  “I have a grandmother,” he said. “I bet she’s awesome. What a trip.”

  29

  Birthday Cards

  The birthday card that expressed my true feelings for Mother did not exist, because my feelings were wolfish. I glanced at the cards on the rack at Centerville Pharmacy, to torment myself with the nagging doggerel. A Mother is someone we keep very near, In our hearts and our thoughts each day of the year probably contained a grain of truth, but the next idiot couplet ran, Because we cherish her, Because she’s so dear. “Cherish” was a verb that repelled me. Another card, bound with pink ribbon, had the pretensions of a cocktail menu, listing Mother’s assets: A smile when you’re sad, A hand when you’re down, A word when you’re blue, and ten more, ending with, A friend like no other, Thanks for being that kind of Mother.

  A woman near me jerked her jowly face at my sudden hacking cough of dissent.

  The message I wanted was

  Mother, in your twisted will,

  Greedy for attention still,

  Bitter woman, incomplete,

  Who taught me how to lie and cheat . . .

  When I quoted that to Hubby, he choked in a convulsion of genuine mirth. Then, with unconvincing piety, he said, “Give Ma a break, Jay. She’s going to be ninety. Statute of limitations for being a witch ran out.”

  “Happy birthday, Mother, you maimed me from the start. I carry from your womb a fanatic heart,” I said. “Apologies to W. B. Yeats.”

  “I’m squealing on you!” he said, giggling and scratching his hairy forearm in excitement. I’m squeelun!

  “All the cards have the word ‘cherish’ in them. I’d replace that word with ‘fear.’”

  “Poor old Ma.”

  “Healthier than you, Hubby.” But I was also thinking: birthday cards were not messages, they were merely token gestures—phatic, so to speak.

  “Fuck you, homo.”

  “Eat me.”

  “She’s a living fossil!”

  But Mother did not seem any older than when, on the morning of my return from Mona’s abandoning the child, she had sat stony-faced at the kitchen table and rapped her skinny hand on the surface and said, “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

  She seemed old then, but no older now. And I had not aged at all.

  I had been proud of myself in helping to see Mona through the crisis. But I sat sorrowing for the months of struggle, and for the day I had parted from lonely Mona, who had never stopped grieving for the child.

  I was then a child myself, an angry, humiliated child, and Mother was a fierce, unsatisfied woman. The worst of it was that in the family time had stopped. I was still that boy, and she was still that scolding woman.

  Franny called, about Mother’s ninetieth. I tried one of my satirical poems on her. She said, “I know how you feel,” which was a lie. The calls were constant because of the approaching day. A seemingly impossible event was being planned: a birthday lunch that was supposed to include all of us, including Fred, who was usually in China; Gilbert, who might be in Bahrain; the two working daughters, who’d have to take the day off—it was a weekday; all the spouses, who never felt welcome; and, hardest of all, Floyd, who hated me.

  The last time we’d all been together as a family was seven years earlier, around Father’s deathbed, and then at his funeral.

  We think it’s best to take him off his ventilator.

  But he’ll die without it!

  We should respect her wishes.

  To test Mother, I went to see her and said that I might be traveling on her birthday. “Work-related travel,” I said. She sat leaning slightly forward, her bird-woman profile backlit by the last of the daylight that emphasized her smallness and her ferocity.

  “Oh?”

  I said, “I need to raise some money for a book I want to write.”

  The mention of money always made her pause, like a bird stiffening at the snap of a twig.

  She said, “I remember when I was a lot younger, having to work my fingers to the bone to make ends meet.”

  I had half expected her to offer me a pittance, but not even that.

  “I always managed to set a little time aside for my parents, though,” she said. “In spite of everything.”

  “I’m kind of strapped for cash.”

  I was describing how hard up I was, and how busy, as a way of dramatizing the sacrifice I would be making by attending her birthday party. I was trying to see if she cared. She was not moved by my mention of my dilemma. With a half-smile of serenity that could also have been sadism, she watched me teetering.

  “But I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all I expect.” She folded her arms and in this compact posture seemed like one of her own little carvings.

  “There’s a lot of animosity going around, though,” I said. “Bad feelings.”

  She tightened her features, pointing her beaky face at me, losing the faint traces of her color, and I thought how a plucked bird can look rep-tilian.

  She said, “What do you mean by that?”

  “Your children.”

  “My children?” This uprush of indignation was pure theater.

  “Some of them hate each other.”

  Using her shoulders to convey shock, she said, “That’s not true. You know damn well that’s not true. Are you trying to upset me?”

  “Floyd hates me.”

  “No one hates you.” She regarded me with contempt, her nose lengthening and lizard-like. “Do you really think you’re so damned important?”

  That “damned” meant she was genuinely angry, and that she was in the wrong. Just as she was about to speak, the phone rang. She picked up the receiver, exaggerating its heaviness with the gesture. The thing squawked.

  “Hello . . . Oh, fine . . . Yes, of course I am.” She sounded unconvincing and wounded. “I’ll have to call you back later.”

  When she hung up I stared at the phone in puzzle
ment.

  “Franny,” Mother said. She rolled her eyes. “She thinks I’m an invalid.”

  She had not told Franny I was there. But I had known for many years how she kept her children separate. And this dig at Franny meant that when she spoke to Franny she would disparage me.

  “And Fred hates Floyd,” I said, picking up the thread of the conversation.

  “Fred is a kind and generous boy,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me in sympathy. “Poor kid, he’s always working. He hardly gets a wink of sleep. All that traveling.”

  “I travel.”

  “To China?” She smiled, playing this trump card. “And he has school-age children.”

  I left Mother that afternoon, as so many times before, feeling defeated, undercut, belittled, doubted. And I knew from the way she had answered the phone that all she’d remember of my visit was that I had upset her, not the news that I had canceled my plans to be at her birthday party.

  The call came that night from Rose, harsh, hectoring, not to be interrupted.

  “What the fuck is your problem? It’s Ma’s birthday in two weeks and you go all the way over there to upset her. You are such an asshole.”

  I allowed a pause. I said, “She told you that?”

  “She told Franny, who told Fred.”

  “I thought you were on the outs with Fred.”

  “We’re supposed to be planning a family party, you dork.”

  “Whisper, whisper.”

  “We’re lucky that Ma is still with us.”

  “You’re lucky she gave you a house. I helped pay for that house. And your ass and your husband’s ass are parked in it.”

  But the drone on the line told me that Rose had hung up.

  Hubby called too, and left a message on my answering machine.

  “Ass-hat.”

  “I don’t think you realize how sensitive Ma is,” Gilbert told me, on a crackling line from Qatar. “She was really hurt by what you said.”