Her outlet had been academics. She had hoped that medical school would become the perfect Mama-buffer, because up close, Clancy Jane was too colorful, almost painful to the eyes, like peering at psychedelic op art. Even at a distance Clancy could get to her. Like late last night when her phone had rung, and even before Violet could say hello, her mother’s voice had streamed out of the receiver. “So, are you roasting down in Memphis?”
In the background, Violet could hear cats meowing, and Led Zeppelin was singing about a hurting in their heart. Violet thought, It can’t compare to the pain in my ass. “Why aren’t you asleep?” she asked her mother, balancing an anatomy textbook on her knees. It was uncanny how Clancy always called the night before an exam. According to Bitsy’s reports, Clancy Jane was becoming known as Catfucius. Violet politely asked how the felines were doing.
“A lady down the street complained about them,” Clancy Jane was saying. “Well, I tried to be nice, but she started yelling. She threatened to buy a Havahart trap to snare my babies.”
“But you’ll be moving soon,” said Violet.
“Not soon enough for me. Apparently someone pooped in the neighbor lady’s tomato plants.”
“Someone? Or something?”
“She implied it was one of my cats. I don’t see how she could tell. I mean, there’s no way to DNA cat shit. But she screamed at me, Violet. She said, ‘Lady, if I want my vegetables fertilized, I’ll buy Miracle-Gro.’”
“Well, it is good fertilizer,” Violet said, trying to make her mother laugh.
“What can I do but keep them inside?” Clancy Jane cried. “Then Byron just complains about his allergies.”
“Nobody’s pur-rrfect,” said Violet.
“Go on, join the club. Make fun,” Clancy Jane said.
Violet sighed. When her mother got like this, there was nothing else to do but hang on and listen. She held the phone against her ear, thinking her mother was sounding more and more like Aunt Dorothy. They were sisters, after all. People will succumb to genetics, the same way madras will bleed.
Clancy Jane sighed. “I need a break from this horrid town.”
“Yeah, I need to get away, too. George has next weekend off. He’s taking me down to New Orleans for jazz and gumbo.”
“Groovy.”
“Nobody says groovy anymore,” Violet chided.
“I’m not a lemming. I’ll say what I want.” Clancy Jane yawned. “So, how is old George?”
The next Saturday, while Violet was packing for the trip to New Orleans, she glanced out the bedroom window and saw her mother’s car angle into a parking space. As Violet shut her suitcase, she felt something fall inside her chest. She cursed and ran to the front door as Clancy Jane climbed out of the front seat carrying a honey-colored Samsonite suitcase. She was wearing a baggy T-shirt printed with If You Don’t Talk To Your Cat About Catnip, Who Will? When she saw Violet standing in the doorway, she waved. “What a pretty dress you’re wearing,” she called. “You look so good in purple.”
Violet murmured an ungracious thank you and touched her silver earrings—a birthday present from George. Then she smoothed her dark hair. Earlier she’d washed it in beer and let it dry naturally, one of Bitsy’s old beauty tricks. Halfway up the sidewalk, Clancy Jane abruptly stopped. “Is anything wrong?”
Violet shook her head.
“You don’t look real happy to see me.”
“Of course I’m happy.” Violet touched the earrings again. “It’s just…who’s keeping your cats?”
“I bribed Byron. Why?” Clancy Jane looked at her daughter’s earrings and her shiny hair. “You’re hiding something.”
“It’s nothing sinister, Mama. George and I are going to New Orleans this weekend. Remember I told you that when we talked the other day?”
“You never told me.” Clancy Jane’s forehead wrinkled.
“Yes, I did.”
“I’m so sorry. I guess I forgot.” She swung her suitcase back and forth. A piece of blue fabric stuck out the side. “Do you want me to leave? I will. Just say the word and I’ll go.”
“You know you’re always welcome. It might even do you good to get away from Kittyland. I’ll give you an extra key.”
“Thanks. I think.” Clancy Jane walked up to the little porch and hugged her daughter awkwardly, giving off whiffs of chamomile tea and curry powder. Then she stepped into the small apartment, dropping her suitcase on the floor.
“Are there any decent vegetarian restaurants in Memphis? I’m famished.”
“There’s lettuce in the fridge.” Violet gestured at the kitchenette. “I could fix you a salad.”
Clancy Jane sat down on the sofa and crossed her legs. The bones in her knees were visible. “You know what? I should go. I don’t feel welcome.”
“What have I done now?”
“I don’t blame you. I’d be mad, too, if I was leaving for New Orleans and my mother showed up. Do you remember when we lived there, me and you and your daddy?”
Violet crossed her arms but said nothing. She remembered those days all too well.
“I can stay in a motel.” Clancy Jane scrunched up her face. “Can you recommend one?”
“Don’t be silly. You’re perfectly welcome to stay right here.”
“Am I?” She gave her daughter a quizzical stare.
The front door opened and George poked his head inside. “Violet? Ready to go?”
“Almost,” said Violet.
“You must be George,” said Clancy Jane, rising from the sofa.
“Yes, ma’am.” He stepped forward, tilting his head to one side. “And you’re…”
“I’m Clancy Jane, Violet’s mother.”
“Ah.” George nodded, then shook her hand. “You’re much younger than I expected.”
“What’s Violet been telling you?” Clancy Jane laughed. “That I’m Old Mother Hubbard?”
“Oh, no ma’am.” He blushed. “I just assumed it.”
“Well, I did have her when I was quite young.” Clancy Jane sat down on the sofa, curling one leg beneath her. Violet knew that posture; she knew her mother was getting ready to tell George everything about her life, starting with the time she’d jumped into Bayou LaFourche. Then she’d tell about Violet’s father getting blown up in Vietnam, working up to her sojourn in California as a hippie, and continuing all the way up to her marriage to Byron and their upcoming move. Violet wouldn’t put it past her mother to start chatting about virginity—it had been a mistake telling her about George.
Violet lifted a lace shawl from the back of a chair—it was one of Bitsy’s famous thrift store finds. It was too hot to wear it in Memphis, so she wouldn’t possibly need it in New Orleans, but it was so delicate and pretty, she wanted it with her. She threw it around her shoulders and turned to her mother. “I hate to run off, but George and I need to get on the road.”
“Yes, we really should. Good-bye, Mrs. Jones,” said George, his hand touching Violet’s arm. “It was nice meeting you.”
“Actually, it’s Mrs. Falk, Clancy Jane Falk. Violet’s name is Jones, and I used to be one, but I remarried a doctor? He hates my cats. I told him, ‘I thought you liked pussy, Byron.’ Sometimes I think he’d prefer to live in a condo. A catless condo, I might add.”
Violet could see that her mother was getting started. “We really should go.” She nudged George to the door.
“Wait, I’ve hardly talked to—what’s your name again?”
“George.” He glanced nervously at Violet.
“I’m sorry, I’m just so forgetful.” Clancy Jane patted the sofa. “Come here, George. Tell me about yourself. What are you studying?”
George started to move toward the sofa, but Violet grabbed his hand and pulled him back. “He’s going to be an English professor,” she said.
“I’m a teaching assistant at Memphis State,” he put in.
“Violet’s real bright, too. But I guess you already noticed. She scored so high on her MedCat, they couldn’t k
eep her out of medical school. But if you want big money, go into plastic surgery. That’s what Byron always says. Although I expect that Violet could tell you more about the various specialties than me. I don’t care how much or how little Byron makes, but I wish he had more time off. Maybe we could travel. I always loved New Mexico.”
Violet cringed, knowing that the next chapter in her mother’s saga was her years as a hippie.
“Well, you two kids run on,” Clancy Jane said. “And don’t worry about me. I’m tired from all that driving. And I’m a little depressed, too, but I’m not suicidal. Far from it. Although I do get that way from time to time. It runs in the family.”
George turned to Violet and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, Is she always like this?
“’Bye, Mama.” Violet took his hand and pulled him out of the door, into the steamy Delta afternoon. As soon as they reached the sidewalk, they took off running to his car, the lace shawl fluttering behind them.
Clancy Jane
Clancy Jane spent the weekend in her daughter’s apartment thinking about love, trying to understand it. She had been a widow for five years when she and Byron met. This wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t come home for Bitsy and Claude’s wedding and found out about her mother having leukemia. She hadn’t had romance on her mind then. Byron was Miss Gussie’s doctor, and he was married. But then one day he’d stopped by to see his patient, and Clancy had invited him to sit in the kitchen for a cup of tea. He’d wanted to hear all about her so-called wild life in California and New Mexico, so she told him a few things.
She could tell he was fascinated, so she kept on talking. While Miss Gussie slept, helped along by morphine tablets, they drank green tea in the kitchen, their knees touching beneath the old white enamel table. He leaned over, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, a really good kiss. She slid her hands up and down his spine. Still kissing, they stood up and lurched backward to the counter. Her elbow knocked into the cookie jar. It was shaped like a pig and Miss Gussie used to say it might stop them from snacking. The pig didn’t break but Byron pulled her away from the counter and pressed her against the refrigerator, dislodging all the colorful magnets. Then he shucked down his trousers, and lifted her up into his arms.
Sex with Byron had been metaphysical, two people occupying the same exact space at the same time. Still joined, they had danced across the room, colliding with the counter. Clancy Jane’s head had banged against the knotty-pine cabinet, and she remembered crying out, not from pain but from pleasure.
If I could have one wish, she thought as she sat on her daughter’s beat-up sofa, I’d want Violet to find a great love—one that stays alive, without inflicting damage or swallowing her whole. Maybe it will be this polite boy. Maybe it will last forever. She reached for the phone. Byron answered on the fifth ring.
“I’m coming home,” she said. “Keep the porch light on.”
A TAPED MESSAGE TO ROSALYN CARTER
July 15, 1977
Dear Rosalyn,
I have moved back into my childhood home, and I wanted to give you my new address. It hurt to leave my son’s house, but he is only next door. His trash-mouth wife Earlene is tickled to pieces. She pushed me out the door. And all this time I’d been doing her grocery shopping, cooking her meals, vacuuming her floors. I wanted to holler out, You’ll miss all that I did. But I have learned to keep my mouth shut when people disappoint me. You have to let actions speak. Angry words get you nowhere. Silence isn’t being a wimp. It’s being smart. It took me forty-five years, some of which was spent in a mental hospital, to appreciate the power of the understatement.
Anyway, you can address all future correspondence to 214 Dixie Avenue, Crystal Falls, Tennessee. I know why you haven’t been writing: Because that stupid Earlene was throwing away your letters. But that’s just fine. She’ll get hers one day. And all this time I thought you or your people were ignoring my mail—after all, Son of Sam wrote letters, too. But I’m not like that, I’m a sweetheart.
Fondly,
Dorothy McDougal
Clancy Jane and Byron
After the Falks moved into their house, they continued to fight over the decor. Byron wanted his La-Z-Boy recliner, Clancy Jane wanted sisal mats and tasseled pillows. When she set up a shrine to Buddha, Byron was annoyed by the incense. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find a place to relax. He was a man, he kept saying, not a monk.
Clancy Jane turned her back on his complaints and found refuge in her kitchen, baking bread and mixing daiquiris. The room was one wash of cream—marble counters, tile floor, white matchstick blinds. The appliances blended into the cabinetry and walls, which were painted Linen Napkin. The old harvest table stood in front of the windows, but there was no place to sit—she’d left the chairs behind at Dixie Avenue. It was a problem, but she believed that the universe would offer her a solution.
One evening, they decided to drive down to Crystal Falls to see a movie, but before they left the house, they began to argue. Clancy Jane was dying to see Looking for Mr. Goodbar, but Byron said he wasn’t in the mood for anything heavy, and he begged her to see Star Wars. So they just stayed home. Byron went into the living room, piled the cushions onto the floor, and switched on the television. Clancy Jane hung out in the kitchen, making a pitcher of daiquiris and listening to her new Carly Simon album. She carried her drink over to the harvest table, then she got an idea. She found a saw and sawed off the table’s legs. Then she stepped back to admire her handiwork and realized she’d made a mistake.
When Byron found out, his face contorted, the veins stood out on his neck. “Clancy Jane, what did you DO?”
“I’m just decorating,” she said in a small voice.
“No, you’re destroying. I can’t live this way. I’m getting out of here.” Byron left the kitchen and ran upstairs. She thought he was pouting until he came down with a suitcase in each hand and headed out the door. As she ran after him, her shoes kicked up loose gravel, and a dozen cats trailed behind her. She prayed that Byron wouldn’t turn on them, call her the Pie-Eyed Piper or something. But she didn’t have the heart to chase the animals away.
“Byron, wait,” she called. “Wait! What did I do?”
“I loved that table,” he said over his shoulder. “It was the first thing we bought together. How could you chop off its legs?”
“I didn’t chop off yours.”
He cursed and strode past her blue Karmann Ghia to his white MG. As he sped down the driveway, his taillights didn’t blink a single time.
Clancy Jane waited for him to call. She spent hours on the back porch, staring down the long, twisty driveway, hoping she’d glimpse his car. When the cats rubbed against her legs, she poured cream into chipped Pyrex bowls and scooped out stinky cans of Friskies tuna and egg.
The cats were all she had left in the world—they were much more amusing than her human child, and considerably more attentive. Her kitties vied for places on her bed, chased each other through the house at daylight, slept on the dwarf dining room table, and left paw prints on the hood of her car. She gave them weird names—the little half Siamese was called the Prince of Wails, another was dubbed the Prince of Poop, because he was always in the litter box. According to Clancy Jane, her old Persian, Pitty Pat, was the ambassador for the other cats. In another life, Pitty must have been a demigod. Every morning at daylight, the other cats would gather in the downstairs hall then they would send the ambassador upstairs to Clancy Jane’s bedroom, where he meowed until she got up. As she padded down the steps, Pitty Pat called to the others. They lined up by the kitchen door, tails crooked, waiting for Clancy Jane to open it. When Pitty trotted down the steps, into the grass, the others followed in his wake.
As Clancy Jane told this story—it was during a late-night long-distance call to Violet—she knew how crazy she sounded, and she began to worry. Cats didn’t have ambassadors; they didn’t manipulate human beings that way. Perhaps there was no such thing as reincarnation. What if she
had emptied her life for no reason? She suspected that she might have slipped into a mild sort of insanity, the middle-age crazies—didn’t it run in her family?
Now that Byron was gone, she understood the problem. He didn’t hate her cats, he was jealous of them. Well, she had put them first. And while she demanded antiseptic conditions at the café, at home, if grapes spilled to the floor, she’d squat down and eat them. If one of the cats had diarrhea, and developed mats on its hind end, Clancy Jane would set the animal on the kitchen counter and press warm paper towels to its behind. Then she would patiently pick off the bulk of the offensive matter and finally trim the area with manicure scissors. “That’s so gross,” Byron used to say. “We prepare food on this counter.” “I prepare the food, not you,” Clancy Jane had told him without looking up from the cat’s anus. “Anyway, it’s not unsanitary. I worm my cats on a regular basis.”
Once she was alone in the house, it did seem yucky, and she was prepared to admit it to Byron but she didn’t hear a peep from him. Another week passed, and she began playing her old albums. She knew she was in trouble when she listened to “The Pusher” and counted how many times Steppenwolf said goddamn. In the bathroom cabinet, she found Byron’s toothbrush and a half-used bottle of Lavoris, and sank to the tile floor. She actually missed him. The bastard had abandoned her, and here she was, crying over his damn toothbrush.
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