by Webb, Peggy
“You scared me to death,” she says. “What do you mean sneaking up on me like that? You could make me fall and break my neck.”
“Exactly, Mama.” I take hold of her arm to help her down, but she shakes me off.
“I’m not finished up here, yet.”
“What do you want? I’ll get it.”
“You don’t know where it is.” She rumbles around in the cabinet, sending canned vegetables flying. I narrowly miss being beheaded. I can just see the headlines, Mystery Writer Succumbs to Blow from Black-eyed Peas.
“For Pete’s sake, Mama, if you don’t get off that chair I’m going to call the fire department.”
“You and which army?”
Mama’s trying to keep up her spit-fire act, but I can tell she’s tiring. I don’t know how she mustered the energy to get up there in the first place. Sheer determination, I guess. Spit-in-your-face will. Piss and vinegar spirit. I wish I had half of that.
And maybe I do. Maybe it’s the Victoria Lucas in me that says, Yes, you can survive this change, too.
Finally she allows me to help her down, and then leans heavily against my arm as I take her back to her recliner. When I cover her legs with the red lap robe, I notice how her feet are swollen and put the leg rest up.
“Where’s your walker, Mama?”
“I don’t need that old thing.”
“Dr. Holman said you did.”
“Flitter, what does he know? Miserable as a sore-tail cat and won’t do a darned thing about it.”
“How do you know that, Mama?”
“I have my ways.”
She shuts her eyes, which means (a) she’s dismissed me, and (b) whatever she was looking for wasn’t important. Or else, she’s forgotten. Horrible thought - Mama without the razor-sharp mind that knows every move Jean and I make.
In three seconds Mama’s snoring, but I’m afraid to leave her alone, even the few minutes it takes to go to the back yard with Jefferson. There’s no telling what she will do next.
“Hurry,” I tell him, and he does. He’s lived with Mama so long he’s almost human.
She’s still asleep when I get back. If I had my computer and my files I’d sit down, put my hands on the keyboard and see if my muses have all packed their suntan lotion and gone to Miami.
Instead I stay busy doing laundry, but the house feels lonesome the way it felt the year Jean first went to college and Mama decided to take a job.
I was sixteen and thrilled at the prospect of having the house all to myself. While Mama terrorized the rabbit-toothed owner of the weekly newspaper who had hired her to organize his files and didn’t know how to prevent her from trying to organize his life, I wandered around the empty house trying to stretch thirty-minute chores into two hours. I called my friends every fifteen minutes but that couldn’t fill the gap left by Jean and Mama, and so I took up hobbies, even ones I didn’t like. Crocheting and knitting. The results are buried in the backyard, but Mama was too quick for me when I attempted to say last rites over the paintings I did with a beginner’s set of acrylics. My Four Seasons, which all look suspiciously like spring, are still hanging in her dining room.
After six weeks Mama pronounced her boss and his files hopeless, and came back home to take charge.
I won’t think about whether she can ever take charge again. Instead, I turn on the radio for company, then stretch her gown over the ironing board and start pressing just the way she likes, bottom to top, no reversing.
I was with her when she bought this gown, bright blue with a lace-inset, pin-tucked bodice. “It’ll be a good hospital gown, for when I get old,” she said.
“Mama, you will never grow old.”
“You’ve got that right,” she said, and to prove her point she dragged me to the shoe department and bought the highest pair of heels she could find, red shoes, dangerous-looking, the kind that said, watch out, here I come.
“These shoes will make you change your whole attitude,” she told me. “You ought to buy some.”
I never did, partially because Stanley thought shoes of that sort were ridiculous but mainly because a woman constantly behind the wheel needs sensible shoes.
Now, I wish I had. I’d put them on and wait to become a changed woman, somebody scintillating and just a bit wild, somebody who would walk onto the front porch and spit in the eye of the storm Rainman says is heading this way.
“I’ll be you like a woman in sexy shoes,” I tell him. I don’t know why I believe that. Something about his voice. It’s deep and growly, intimate-sounding. I’d like to hear Rainman read Walt Whitman.
“Help!” Mama’s cry shatters my poetic interlude and I race to her bedroom expecting to apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
She’s sitting up in her recliner, trying to lower the foot-rest, rigid with rage.
“What in the world did you put this thing up, for? I can’t get it down, and I’m about to die of thirst.”
I help her get out of the chair, appalled at this new sign of her physical weakness. It’s temporary, I tell myself. Just till she builds her strength back.
She goes into the kitchen, using her walker this time, and while she sits at the table waiting for the glass of iced water with lemon, she says, “You ought to move in with me, Maggie. I’ve got a perfectly good place to stay and it’s paid for.”
Does she know? I wouldn’t put it past Jean to meddle in my defunct marriage, but I don’t believe she’d meddle in my career.
“Besides,” Mama adds, “I might enjoy having a roommate.”
Her instincts are amazing. Trust her to divine the problem before it’s ever mentioned. There’s a delicate balance here between pride and need, both Mama’s and mine. I slice the lemon into perfect, careful wedges while I frame an answer that will save both our faces and prevent this powder-keg topic from exploding.
“We’ll give it a try,” I finally tell her, and she drinks her water, satisfied.
With one simple gesture she turned an agonizing decision into a moment of simple hospitality and pure grace. There’s an art to this. If I’m lucky and the gods of spirits-that-can’t-be-broken smile on me, I’ll have enough time with Mama to learn.
*
Moving is never easy, particularly when you’re doing it in the midst of a thunderstorm. It seemed a sensible plan when I started out: another month’s rent will be due next week and Walter, with his strong back and maroon Dodge mini-van, will be gone.
The first thing I see when I get to my apartment is a letter sticking out of my box, New York postmark. I can’t bear to look, can’t bear the thought of dealing with a sinking career while I’m in the midst of giving up my freedom. I stick the letter in my back pocket, then go through my apartment making split-second decisions about what to take and what to box for storage. Walter’s packing my office, a must-take, while I pack personal belongings into boxes labeled Salvation Army and Mama’s house. Most of the clothing that shrank two sizes just to spite me goes into the first box, but the favorites I can’t bear to part with go into the second. You never know. Cindy Crawford might return the body she stole from me, and I’ll be able to fit into them again.
“I’ve got your computer and files ready to go, Maggie. Why don’t we take a little break?” Walter is sweet-faced and endearing, his jogging shoes and pant legs soaked, his faded blue tee shirt stretching across his belly in a way that says he takes too many meals at fast-food restaurants and never has time to walk on the farm he loves.
I make tea, and while we sit on the sofa I’ve already covered with a sheet for the movers, he thanks me for looking after Jean. And then, with a sincerity that precludes embarrassment, he says, “I know a lot of people who would hire a smart woman like you. If you need my help in that department, let me know.”
“Thanks, Walter, but I can’t give up on a ten-year career. Not yet.”
“Good for you. In the meantime, if you need a little extra cash, all you have to do is tell me how much.”
It takes a
while before I can reply and he sits quietly, knowing why. Lucas pride. A never-give-up attitude. A woman determined to reinvent herself, and do it on her own terms.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I finally say.
“It was nothing,” he says, and I blink hard, twice. It was family and friend and mercy. It was everything.
*
That evening with my belongings crowded among seventy-five years of Mama’s collected memorabilia, I lie in the bedroom of my childhood listening to the sounds of her sleep, snores interspersed with occasional restless moans and mumbling.
Is she dreaming of dancing in her madcap red shoes or is she talking with Saint Peter, making bargains to be transported from this life to the hereafter in splendor and glory? I imagine myself going with her, caught up in the excitement of another grand adventure with Mama, following closely behind so I can fly on her tail winds. Maggie, the daughter who didn’t get left behind.
My forehead damped by sweat, I snap on the lamp and in the soft glow of the rose-colored shade, rummage in a cardboard box filled with my books. Leaves of Grass is a slim volume, leather-bound and beautiful, a birthday gift from Stanley fifteen years ago, back when we still had poetry between us.
“Song of Myself” is marked, and I read aloud.
“All goes onward, and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”
I read Whitman’s words again, letting the word luckier melt on my tongue like strawberry ice cream, savoring the taste of hope.
And with it comes the first stirring of my muse. I rummage in the bedside table, pull out Janice’s letter and read. It’s a clear and fresh look at my proposal, suggestions for changes, an affirmation, really.
Excited now, the words spilling through my mind like a waterfall, I open my laptop and start to type.
______________
Chapter Eight
______________
“A big hello from the folks at WTUP-FM! We’re broadcasting from the courthouse square in beautiful downtown Tup- elooo! The Hog Roasters are here cooking up barbecue and Father’s Day sales are going on all over town. So come on down and join us.
Rainman
Rainman is singing “June is Bustin’ Out All Over” and Mama and I are singing along with him while I drive to Wal- Mart, my Brillo pad hair caught in a pony tail, my slacks getting a little baggy from long walks on the farm with Jefferson, and my spirits high. Something about the farm is settling inside me, filling up the empty spaces. Or maybe it’s Mama with her big spirit and lively ways.
Though I insist she use the walker to ward off falls, she uses it as a stage prop rather than something to lean on. I’m hoping that when we see Dr. Holman again he’ll tell us, We made a huge mistake, Victoria. If I had a heart like yours I’d live to be a hundred and two.
She’s getting stronger every day. The only thing that concerns me is her weight: in spite of Jean’s butter-laden casseroles, it continues to peel off, muscle and sinew vanishing underneath sagging skin to reveal sharp, brave bones.
We’re going to buy her some new clothes. “A temporary wardrobe,” she said, “until I get my Marilyn Monroe figure back.” I wanted to go to downtown for a better selection, but she insisted on Wal-Mart. When I asked why she said, “One stop shopping. You get toilet paper; I’ll get underwear that won’t fall off.”
I park next to the double glass doors and while I get her walker from the back seat, she hops out of the Jeep, feisty and raring to shop.
“For Pete’s sake, Mama, act decrepit. We’ll get arrested for lying about this handicapped sticker.”
“You act old.” She slings her purse over her shoulder. “You might as well put that old thing back in the car. I’m not using it.”
“You have to.”
“I don’t have to do a thing I don’t want to. I’m seventy-five years old.”
“Then why did you tell Dr. Holman you’re fifty?”
“None of your business.” Mama prances off, and while I’m hurrying to catch up, calling for her to wait, she says, “I’m going to get a motorized cart; I can get around faster that way.”
Any faster and she’d be setting Olympic records for geriatrics.
Getting her an electronic cart is one thing; teaching her to drive is another. She puts it in reverse and mows down a rack of Hershey’s bars and an arm-waving, red-faced clerk. She barely misses plowing through the glass doors and into the parking lot before she can stop.
“I thought you were going clear to Alabama before I could stop you, Mama.”
“You tend to your own business and let me tend to mine.” Mama puts the cart in forward gear and roars off, scattering shoppers and scaring little children with her daredevil ways and reckless driving.
I can’t look. Verring in the opposite direction, I end up staring at the covers of mass-market and trade paperback books, none of them mine. This makes me feel unwanted, untalented and unappreciated. In a word, awful.
Is the work I’m doing now any good? Can I really make a comeback? Or am I simply fooling myself into believing I can write with wings?
I race toward house-wares, where I stand squeezing a twelve-pack of Angel Soft. Mama whizzes up in her cart and says, “What are you doing, just standing there? Grab that toilet paper and come on.”
“Where are you going?” She zips past me and around the corner. “Mama, come back here. I’m talking to you.”
People turn to give me funny looks, because clearly I’m talking to myself. I try to catch up with Mama without running. No small feat.
The gods of mother-daughter disputes are with me. When I round the corner I see Mama stalled in the shoe department, rocking the cart back and forth as she jerks the gears from forward to reverse.
“Mama, what are you doing?”
“I can’t get this farty old thing to move.”
I lean over to check the gears, but the cart sits there spinning while Mama fumes. “Turn it off, Mama. I’m going to check it out.”
Well…here I am on my all fours in the middle of Wal- Mart, hoping nobody notices my butt the size of a Texas spread.
There’s a big, fuzzy purple house shoe stuck under the back left wheel, and I give it a tug, expecting it to pop right out. But no. When Mama does a thing, she goes whole hog.
I groan upward and tell her the good/bad news. “I’m going to have to tilt the cart a little,” I tell her.
“I’ll get out and help.”
“You will not.” With Herculean effort I heave the back of the cart upward. While Mama teeters in the air - enjoying herself because she’s the center of another big drama - I kick at the house shoe. It takes three tries before I dislodge it and free the wheel. My back protests as I lower the cart.
“Wonder Woman to the rescue,” I say. “Let’s get some Ben Gay and go home, Mama. I need to turn in my cape.”
“I don’t think she wore one.” Mama peels off for the pharmacy while I creak and lurch along in her wake. When I arrive she’s holding the back rub and announcing to everybody within hearing distance, “This is my daughter, the writer. She’s taking me downtown to get some barbecue.”
Here’s the thing about small Southern towns: it’s common – and even considered polite - to strike up conversations with perfect strangers in the aisles of Wal-Mart and J. C. Penney and around the wash basins of public restrooms.
Here’s the other thing: if you’re a writer, people automatically think you’re rich and famous. And they’re disappointed if you’re not glamorous, too.
Standing there with untamed hair caught back in a rubber band and a big glob on the knee of my pants that looks suspiciously like chewing gum, I nod and try to act the part - I’m not Mama’s daughter for nothing. If I knew the beauty queen wave, I’d do that, too.
Satisfied, Mama puts her cart in forward gear, and finally heads toward the cashier’s stand.
Will this day never end? When we get back into the Jeep, Rainman is still singing, but I don’t
. I don’t even try to talk Mama out of barbecue. If she feels like eating, I’ll crawl in order to get her some food.
While she’s napping – or leaning back thinking up more devilment – I drive along wishing I had my hair pulled back with a pink bow. Something feminine and hopeful.
By the time I park in front of the courthouse, she’s revived and ready to go while I feel as if I’ve been hit by a Green Bay linebacker.
And not in a nice way.
The next time I take Mama to see Dr. Holman I’m going to ask him to put me on the same vitamin he prescribed for her.
A large crowd mills around the hundred-year-old courthouse and the tables that have been set up near the fountain. The delicious aroma of pork roasting slowly on spits perks me up, and I get in line for two plates while Mama waits under the shade of a magnolia tree in a green-striped lawn chair one of the city’s councilmen – Blake Tanner - gave up for her.
By the time I return she’s holding court with Tanner and his pretty wife, Marilyn, as well as Mayor Gibbs and his wife Patty. In addition she’s waving toward one of the WTUP staffers who’s interviewing the crowd.
“Over here,” Mama says, and a tall man with beautiful hands – no ring - and a microphone heads our way.
“Well, folks…” he says. I’d know that voice anywhere. Rainman. “Here’s one of Tupelo’s stately senior citizens, enjoying the best barbecue in the South. Let’s see what she has to say.”
He’s heading our way, and oh lord, St. Peter and all his angels…if I had dreamed him up I couldn’t have found a more perfect man. Not handsome in a pretty-boy sort of way, not even the rugged, outdoor type, but something in between, some amazing combination of square jaw and cleft chin, of well-defined cheekbones and sculpted lips that piques my interest. More than stirs my interest. Lord, I’m stirred in ways I haven’t felt in years.
How embarrassing is that? Here I am looking like something left over from a Hell’s Angels rally when I want to look spectacular. For once in my life, I want to be the kind of woman with tanned legs that reach from here to Texas and a certain flair that makes a man fall down and worship at her feet.
