by Lisa Samson
When my mother died, I sat in my room after the paramedics had taken her away, and wished I had never been born. And I told myself I’d never do that to a child. Have them, nurture and love them until they thought they really must have hung the moon, then up and leave for good like that. That’s a lousy thing to do to a kid. I know she didn’t do it on purpose, but I was left in the same position notwithstanding.
I always pretended with Sean. Oh yeah, pant pant pant, kids are for me! Wonderful things, aren’t they? Don’t you just love them? I even came to think little dresses and sailor suits were the cutest things imaginable.
Now I’m getting a little too old to think about having kids. And that’s just fine with me. Sean, if he wants me that badly, will have to lay some of those dreams aside. Whether or not he is willing remains to be seen.
Hello, Sean! Good to see you after all these years. Wanna get back together? Sure? Here I am, an unmaternal drunk. Let’s renew our vows right away, but first, a vasectomy, please, and a promise never to mention kids again.
You should have divorced me, Sean. If you had a brain in your head, you would have seen we were destined never to make it work. I honestly don’t know why you were even attracted to me in the first place. Talent can only take a relationship so far. If anywhere.
Here are the lyrics to the first song I ever wrote:
When you hear the crackling of the fireplace
You will know that Christmas is near
When you see the gifts beneath the Christmas tree
You will know that Christmas is here
I wrote that the last Christmas Mom was alive, and she loved it so much she made a little jazz recording of it and slid it in my stocking. The following Christmas, Dad and I found ourselves at the Ten O’Clock Club with a group of musicians gathered around the long table, actually about five tables strung together, straight down the middle of the club. There’s something rather tired and frayed about a nightclub during the day, the house lights up, the dark romanticism exposed to the naked eye in all its shabby exhaustion: the sticky floors, the dusty corners, the peeling paint.
I sat and cried the entire time, and Dad said nothing, only ate with his head bowed, lifting the fork and setting it down in a perfect one-two rhythm. There was something so pitiful in his posture that I clipped off a little corner of my heart and gave it to him that day because, you see, he just couldn’t muster up the brave face he’d been using since the April day she died. He still smiled for the camera and acted so big and booming, barreling through life just like he did before her passing. But that day, the strength was gone.
Christmas is the hardest day to pretend.
Yes, I’ve got issues. No, I didn’t really know him. But I loved him anyway, like a girl loves a movie star even though he does stupid things like fawn all over a younger woman, or leave a perfectly good wife behind for some hypersexy costar.
I think I’ve progressed beyond “the crackling of the fireplace.” But how do I know? And it doesn’t matter anyway
Mom loved to hear me tap out tunes. She’d sit and listen with her eyes closed, hands folded across her lap. Then again, Mom used any excuse she could get to “rest her eyes.”
I never asked my dad how long my mother was actually sick. For all I know, she was battling the disease for years and only shared the pain when it became too great to hide. They did things like that back then.
Fairly
I rang Solo today and got an earful.
Why I’m prolonging my stay in Lexington baffles me somewhat. Uncle G seems a bit sad these days. I’m thinking all his activism has sucked the life right out of him. He needs to take a break for heavens sake. But saying so would be like telling someone on a ventilator he needs to breathe on his own for a while.
“So is everything okay then, Solo?”
“Well, Fairly, that Braden fellow is up to some terrible tricks, and I do not mind telling you.”
“Yes?”
“I think he was over here last night.”
Oh dear. “Why?”
“I found a used … what do you call them … on the floor by the sofa … oh, very embarrassing.”
“Never mind. I understand.”
“He is a very bad young man. Very bad. You can do better than this scoundrel.”
“You said it.”
“You gonna break up with him, then?”
Oh, Solo, you are my good friend.
“You think I should?”
“Who wouldn’t? I mean, really, Fairly, the man disrespects you most terribly. And you, a widow. It’s shocking.”
“You’re right, Solo, as usual.”
“Yes. Solo knows these things.”
So I called down to the security desk and confirmed that, yes, Braden had ventured upstairs with a woman he said was my sister. I read the riot act and found myself in a stew, and not one of Uncle G’s lovely lamb curries either.
It’s not as if I was completely attached to Braden. It’s not as if I was even somewhat attached to Braden. But cheating on me in my own apartment? What did I ever do to him to deserve that sort of spite?
Or maybe he’s simply the mealy-mouthed little gold digger I’ve been suspecting him to be.
I dialed his number.
“Baby doll!”
“Get everything out of my apartment by the time Solo leaves this afternoon.”
And I pressed the button.
There. Done.
How very, very nice.
Yes, actually. Hoo! Relief.
I called Solo back. “Braden will be over sometime this afternoon to get his things.”
“I’ll put them together myself. I’ll take them down to the front desk so he does not darken this door again.”
I called Braden back and told him not to darken my door again. His belongings would be at the desk.
I slipped on my shoes and took a walk toward the university, and kept walking, milling among the UK summer-session students, some of them earnest and glad to be at university, backpacks hanging like Santa’s pack off of their burdened shoulders, others there only because college is expected and they look trendy and cute. I sat on benches too, here and there, enjoying the sun on my single-woman face, Braden being gone.
Perhaps I need to go back to school.
Maybe I should learn about volcanoes. I do love volcanoes.
Georgia
Fairly and I sit with UG at his old Formica kitchen table. Tomorrow I move into my new apartment. I love it. New appliances and white paint, old yet decidedly not creepy. The back wall, almost entirely windowed, looks out over the rooftops of Lexington. I felt like singing “Chim chiminey, chim chiminey” as I gazed upon a wide-open world.
Maybe I just needed a fresh start.
We’ve been waxing sentimental as family members who haven’t seen one another in eons do. UG is talking about his sisters. My mom, being the oldest, gets first description.
He looks into his cup of tea, then points at me. “Polly Bishop was the kind of woman who turned heads wherever she went. She always wore dresses and high heels and had a sparkle in her brown eyes that said, ‘I’m ready for anything you can dish out.’ ”
“That sounds like Mom.”
“How did she and Uncle Gaylen meet?” Fairly.
“The practice studios at the University of Maryland. Gaylen walked by and heard her playing. He loved music back then. He played piano too. When he was younger.”
Fairly lifts up her coffee cup. “No wonder you’re as talented as you are, Georgie. Sad, though, because never once in all the times he visited me while I was at design school did we ever go hear music.”
“Visited you?” Me.
“Oh yeah. He used to visit all the time when I was in college. After Mom and Dad were killed. I mean, he moved to New York and all, right?”
He visited Fairly?
UG. “Polly played the piano like a man, although you know I’m not sexist. But she had strong fingers and purposeful meanderings over the keyboard
. Oh, but when she skittered across the keys so light, she worked magic. Whereas Georgia doesn’t realize the scope of her talent, Fairly, Polly knew exactly how good she was. She played all over the East Coast before Georgia was born and even recorded several albums.”
UG takes a sip. He’s smoking like a country ham house too.
He points at me again. “Georgia has always lived in her mother’s shadow. A benign shadow, surely. Polly made it no secret that she’d cut off her fingers for either Georgia or Gaylen. That much passion is a tough act to follow.”
“Wow.” Fairly pours herself another cup of coffee. “We have some sort of family, don’t we?”
UG raises his mug in a toast. “You’re not kidding.”
Let’s see. A jazz pianist and a reporter. A social worker and an artist. And a free-thinking, liberal, free-wheeling, social-justice-seeking lawyer.
A ditz and a drunk.
Oh great.
I raise my cup as well. “You poor, poor man.”
Fairly snorts her coffee, coughing, sputtering as the liquid sprays us all.
Count Basie’s mother helped to oversee his musical progress. His dad did grounds work and maintenance for several families; his mom took in laundry. He left his home in New Jersey for Harlem in the 1920s. And he became a great man. I’m not sure when his mother died, but I’ll bet he was older than twelve.
Fairly
Georgie excused herself around midnight, went into the bathroom, and started throwing up.
I didn’t realize she’d been slipping a little Irish or something into her coffee. Come to think of it, she seemed to be excusing herself a little too often.
Uncle G helped her to her feet in the bathroom, and she pushed him off with a scathing “Do-gooder” scraping from between her lips, and the sneer uglied her up two hundred percent.
He must be used to that sort of thing, because he acted like he didn’t even hear it, and believe me, she kept going with it. Whispering soothing words I couldn’t hear, he simply put his arm around her back and walked her to her bedroom.
I followed them in, and there it was, right on her nightstand, a bottle of vodka. Cheap vodka to boot. And the signs are adding up now.
I had no idea she drank like this. But couple tonight with the night some stranger brought her home practically passed out from the Dame, I’m beginning to wonder about her. The signs sure are there. No job. No friends. No purpose. And it’s not like this runs in our family. You can say what you want about Uncle Gaylen, but he always kept a clear head. Tonic and lime, his drink.
What is her problem? Yes, her parents are dead. So are mine. Her husband is gone. So is mine.
I mean, we both loathe the cards dealt to us, but you don’t find me passed out, do you? She has entered the realm of beyond excuse.
Uncle G returned to the living room with a cardboard box in his hands. He set it on the coffee table—one of those high-gloss, tree-stump-looking affairs. “Here. I saved these.”
I flipped up the flap. “My goodness! I thought they’d gotten thrown out with Mom and Dad’s other stuff.”
“Nyet. I managed to salvage a few things you missed.” He raised his brows. “You did miss these, right?”
I held up my hand. “Gospel truth. I certainly did.”
“Because I wouldn’t put it past you, my dear, to throw these away simply because they fail to fit your image.”
I feel the heat rise to my face.
Uncle G gets down on his haunches in front of me. He takes my hand. “At least have the decency not to pretend with me, Fairly. I don’t buy this artsy persona you’ve crafted over the years. I know you.”
“And you love me anyway?”
He squeezes my hand, leans forward, and kisses me on the cheek. “Next to your parents and the nurses, I was the first person to hold you after you were born. Even then, it was obvious you had something unique within you.”
All the pictures are nestled inside. All the memories my parents and I made. Mom was a shutterbug, one of those delightful people who posed everyone at the smallest provocation. First time eating steamed crabs? Let me grab the camera. Getting together for a special lunch at Haussner’s? She riffles through her purse, and oh, I put that thing in here somewhere. A visit from long-lost friends? Let’s line you all up there on the sofa.
But I look up at the gibbous moon now, the house silent and filled with that hulking wonder other people’s things possess in the dark, and I hold a picture of a young couple in my hand. And in the woman’s arms a baby rests. And the woman sits on a threadbare couch, and the man sits on the arm of the couch beside her. And my heavens, the way they look at the little baby, you’d think she was destined to save the world.
The baby is warm and safe and has no idea the sacrifice they made just to bring her into their family.
Georgia
We sit on the front porch in the pink of morning. Fairly still sleeps, and UG and I rock in the early coolness.
“Feels good out here,” I say.
“Yes. Your head hurt? You were really in a bad state last night.”
“Yeah. I did manage to get up around four and take some aspirin. Had some crazy dreams about human flowers.”
I can hear his thoughts, but I close my ears. Na na na na na.
“When are you leaving for your trip, UG?”
“Day after tomorrow. To eastern Kentucky. Want to come?”
“Sure. Why not?”
He sits up straight. “Really? We’ll be gone for three days.”
“Why not? Anyone else going?”
“Maybe Fairly.”
I snort. “Yeah, right. Eastern Kentucky is hardly a fabulous hot spot.”
He sits back, smiles. “There’s a lot more to Fairly than you think, Georgie. But then again, that might just be a loving uncle speaking. You two have never been close.”
We rock some more in our chairs, the traffic thickening with each quarter hour that passes.
“So is Sean still in Lexington?” There, I asked. And it didn’t take two hits of vodka to do it.
“He wants to see you.”
“I can’t yet. It’s too sudden, you know?”
“Sure. But you can’t put it off forever.”
“How about after the trip?”
“Okay. I’ll call him and let him know.”
The world heats up a few more degrees, lights up even as Uncle Geoffrey does the same. I know I’ve been around bars way too often, but even so, cigarette smoke and a hangover are about as compatible as consommé and a double-chocolate, peanut butter milk shake.
“What’s he going to do in the meantime?”
“I think he’ll probably look for a job.”
“Really?”
“Sounds like he’s pretty serious about reconciling with you.”
Good night. Just when I thought I was going to finally get my life back together, paint in some shadows and highlights, somebody comes along and replaces it with another picture altogether.
Who am I kidding? I knew this day had to come sooner or later. I stand to my feet and stretch. “Well, I’d better get a move on. Big day.”
“Excited about your new place?”
I kiss him atop the head. “Nope.”
“Didn’t think so.”
Clarissa
After the little girl jumps off the bus from first grade, she stops by the crab apple tree. The father’s clothes litter the front lawn. There’s the red plaid shirt. The workpants. The Fruit of the Looms, and she wishes the fruit guys on the TV ads were real, especially right then, for maybe they’d make her laugh even as the mother screams a string of words the little girl cannot understand.
She especially likes the purple grape guy.
More briefs, undershirts, and creamy sport shirts flutter like doves down onto the overgrown lawn.
Pretty doves.
Pretty father. He was so nice. When he was home, anyway.
She stands, the patterns of fabric swirling like a kaleidoscope.
>
Paisleys, plaids, polka dots. Pajamas—soft pajamas.
The mother grabs her by the arm.
“Oh!”
“We’re going away for a few days. I have your clothes.”
The cousin follows behind, tears striping his cheeks.
“I hate you, Clarissa. It’s all your fault. We were happy before you came.”
The little girl turns to the mother. “Can I just go stay next-door? Please?”
The mother sighs. “Oh, all right. Run on over and see if it’s okay.”
Fairly
If I ever have children, the names I’d pick are these: for a girl, Marcella or Georgia; for a boy, Inigo or Winston.
The strange thing is, I’d pretty much written off the idea of children. I’d love to get married again. Someday, maybe.
Can you imagine the children Braden might have envisioned? Children with names like Spencer or Harper who we’d give over to a nanny so we could pursue our individual desires because fulfilled parents are better parents. Happy parents have happy children! And we’d run them in our shining black foreign imports to five different extracurricular activities each week including some language lessons in Japanese or Russian so that we could feel so good about ourselves because they make us proud.
Jonah, the refugee minister and restaurant owner, dropped by for a cup of coffee this morning and told me the special at his restaurant this afternoon. Ribs. Mmm, mmm.
So here’s a new theory: perhaps children don’t need to be experts at anything other than how to be kids. Wouldn’t that be a lovely thing?
Jonah agreed with me. And I called Solo, and he did too.
These men are brilliant.
Clarissa
The little girl steps on the thermometer by mistake. She picks it up off the kitchen floor, and the silver spills onto the palm of her hand.
Pretty shiny balls. Skipping and moving. Swallowing each other up. Scattering.
Pretty shiny balls.
She runs next door and raps on the screen door. “Hello? Hello?”
TV Mom answers. “Hi, Clarissa. Come on in. We’re just about to leave.”
“Where you going?”
“Just to church. Wanna come?”
