The Real Mother

by Judith Michael

  I was only twenty-four. So did I.

  But, suddenly, she realized that was why he had come home. Of course it was; what else could it be? He’d had his fling; now he wanted a family. He’d known that Tess had had a stroke soon after he left—“I heard it from a friend,” he’d said vaguely—and he wanted to make amends for that, too. He was ready to come back to them, to get a job and help support them while she went back to school.

  It’s not too late, she thought; I can do it. Even if I have to repeat some courses to get back to where I was…I can do that. I can do anything.

  That was why he’d come back: to reclaim his family. He’d had over three years—three and a half, really—of freedom, or whatever he’d call it, and he was lonely and maybe guilty over walking out and leaving Sara to take care of everything, and now he wanted to make it up to her, to all of them.

  Her excitement was building. This was April; she could take courses in the summer and begin a regular school year in the fall. And she could start studying right away; all of her textbooks were here, stored in the attic.

  I’m sorry I wasn’t very nice at dinner, she said silently to Mack. I was confused, and you didn’t seem—

  He had not seemed warm. Or loving. Or brotherly.

  Or guilty.

  But we were all so surprised. And he was probably as confused as we were, so many adjustments to make, all at once. Tomorrow will be better. We’ll all get a good night’s sleep, and then, it’s the weekend, I’ll be home; we’ll get to know each other, and make plans.

  But Mack was asleep when Sara awoke the next morning, and he still had not come downstairs when the four of them had finished breakfast. “I have rehearsal,” Abby said. “The play opens in two weeks and I absolutely have to be there. Could you call me if something happens? I’ll keep my phone on.”

  “I don’t think anything will happen,” said Sara, “but of course I’ll call if anything does. When will you be home?”

  “Four o’clock? Five? Something like that. Thanks, Sara,” she called, already on her way out. “Love you.”

  “Can’t we wake him up?” asked Doug. “Oliver’s mom said she’d drive us to a movie if you said it was okay, but—”

  “We have to wake him up,” Carrie said. “I’m supposed to go to a movie with Fran and Debbie, lunch and everything, but I have to at least say hello, it’s his first day. So please wake him up.”

  “He was exhausted last night,” said Sara. “Let him sleep. There’s plenty of time for us to get acquainted, and today Mack and I need to talk. You go on, both of you. We’ll all be together at dinner.”

  Torn between attractions, they perched on the edge of their chairs. Carrie sighed. “Life is so hard, figuring out what’s best to do.”

  “Isn’t it,” Sara said drily. Then she laughed. “I’ve made the decision for you. Let’s clean up the kitchen, then you’ll go. Are your beds made?”

  Carrie nodded. Doug’s shoulders slumped. “I meant to; I forgot. I’ll do it later. Mack used to say only nerds make—” He shot a glance at Sara. “I mean, it’s sort of stupid, you know; I’m only going to mess it up again tonight.”

  “Neatness is a virtue,” said Carrie.

  “So is not wasting your energy on dumb things.”

  “Neatness wins,” Sara said. She kissed them both, and kissed them again as they were leaving, thinking how much fun they were, wishing they were enough to fill her life, and then wishing she could stop thinking that way. Right now, today, they were her life. Tomorrow, with Mack here, she would have more. But for now, it was enough that they were wonderful, and that she loved them.

  Upstairs, before she went into her office, she walked the length of the hallway, and climbed the narrow back stairway to the third floor, where Mack had reclaimed his old room. The door was open, and on the wide bed Mack had kicked off the blanket and sheet and lay sprawled sideways, face buried in his pillow, wearing only his shorts. His arms were spread-eagled, fists clenched. The window was wide open and a breeze lifted the burlap curtains he had hung when he was ten (“It’s his back-to-earth stage,” Sara’s mother had said), but still a faint sweetish smell that Sara recognized hovered in the room.

  Oh, yes, we do need to talk, she thought, and went back downstairs to her office. This was her space. She had made her mother’s large corner bedroom her own when Tess had been settled in the nursing home, but she had kept the furnishings her mother had collected with such care: nineteenth-century French bureaus, dressing table, chaise, and a huge four-poster bed so high from the floor it came with its own step stool. She had changed only the colors, replacing her mother’s pale pastels with vivid shades of blue and ivory, and hanging three portraits by Vanessa Bell, their bold colors and slashing strokes giving her special pleasure on those days when she felt most sharply the constrictions of her new life.

  Her mother’s adjoining dressing room had become her office. A large window centered in one wall overlooked their backyard with its towering oak tree, tulips and hyacinths struggling for sunshine beneath the canopy of leaves, and a row of lilac bushes along the back fence and the side of the garage that jutted into the yard. Beyond, the view was of the backs of houses that faced the next street over, all three stories high, some of painted wood, most of red brick or Gothic stone blocks like her own. All the houses had garages opening onto the alley, as hers did, and backyards enclosed by fences like her own, shaded by bushes and trees that blended in with her own, and back porches like her own. Whenever she was at her desk Sara caught glimpses of other lives on those porches: moments of laughter and tension, affection and conflict, now and then a family moving in on the heels of the one moving out. A drama in every house, she thought, making her own story seem dull and plodding.

  Isolated from it all, the office was her retreat, furnished with a couch she had retrieved from the attic and reupholstered in cranberry-red suede, an armchair striped in red and brown, a Turkish rug of startling reds, browns, and golds, and an eighteenth-century table found in an antique-filled barn in Iowa. Her computer and printer sat on the table like a joke, amusing anachronisms, but Sara liked that: it was comforting to be reminded that things that didn’t seem to belong were really necessary. People, too, she thought. We never really know what, or whom, we can’t do without…until we can’t do without them.

  She had finished her notes on her meetings with the Corcorans and Reuben Lister, and was answering e-mail when Mack appeared in the doorway, two mugs in one hand, a thermos in the other. “I made coffee,” he said. “I hope it’s okay.”

  “Of course it is.” Sara was unnerved by the thought that he had risen and gone downstairs, passing the open door of her bedroom, brewed coffee and walked upstairs again, and she had not heard him. Sneaking around, she thought, and then was ashamed. “Come in and sit down. I see you found your old bathrobe.”

  He grinned. “Feels fine. Coffee?”

  “Thank you.”

  He put the mugs on the desk and filled them. “A fine robe finely made that feels fine. A little big, though.”

  “It wasn’t always.”

  “I know. I’ve lost weight.”

  There was a silence. Sara watched him as he looked around the room. His lips were full and oddly sensuous in his gaunt face; his blond hair fell limply to his shoulders; but everything else about him seemed tense and watchful, from the sharp lines of his cheekbones to the taut muscles in his neck. Watching for what? she wondered. Waiting for what?

  “This is terrific,” he said, turning back from his scrutiny of the room. “You’d never know it was Ma’s.”

  “It isn’t,” Sara said shortly. “She’s been gone almost as long as you have.”

  “Which is three years and six months, as Doug pointedly pointed out, pointing his finger.” He took a long drink. “Good coffee; you buy the best. You’re good at everything, you know? Dinner last night was terrific. The veal stew was—”

  “The best. Thank you. Mack—”

  “And you’re
as beautiful as ever, Sara. More. The kids have changed a lot—God, have they grown up—but you are just the same. I kept seeing you, all of you—well, but you know, it was funny, I couldn’t really see you; every time I tried to focus on your faces they were all sort of foggy—blurs of blurriness—it kept reminding me how far away you were, far, farther, farthest. I could picture every room in the house, even the way the light looked mornings and afternoons. But I couldn’t see you. It made me sad. I missed you.”

  “We missed you,” Sara said.

  “But, fuck it, Sara, you are really the most beautiful—”

  “Mack, I don’t want you talking like that in this house.”

  “Saying you’re beautiful?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yeah, but what’s the problem? It’s the way I talk, sis; it’s the way everybody talks. It’s no big deal, you know. Anyway, it’s how I like to talk; those are some of my favorite words.”

  “I’m sure of that,” Sara said lightly. “Mack, I know a lot of people talk like that as casually as they button their shirts; I even know that the world has a lot more serious problems than this one. But I’ve been trying to convince the children, especially Abby, that it’s not a lovely way to talk, in fact, that it’s crude and offensive, and that it mostly reveals ignorance. So you’ll have to understand that I won’t have it in this house.”

  “Well, but, look— Oh, what the hell, this is getting too fucking heavy.” He sprang from his chair, and, encircling Sara’s waist, lifted her off the floor. “Lighten up, little Sara. Life can be fun.”

  Furious, she pushed against his chest with a strength that took him by surprise, and he almost dropped her. She backed away, shaking as she sat down again, her hands gripping the edge of the desk. “You are never to touch me again.”

  “God, where did you get that cold voice? No, I know where. I recognize it. That was Ma when she didn’t like my friends, or what I was doing, which after a while was most of the time. But, Sara, sweet Sara, I’m your bro! Bros hug sisters all the time. Sisters like to be hugged.”

  “If I want you to touch me, I’ll tell you.”

  There was a pause. “Right. Okay. I’m sorry I upset you. God, I really am sorry. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I’m just so happy to be home. I love you.”

  Sara took deep breaths, amazed by her fury. Of course she had been surprised, but it was far more than that. She had felt violated. Because, she thought abruptly, she didn’t trust him. After all the excitement she had allowed herself to feel last night, in the cool gray light of a cloudy April morning, watching the changing expressions on Mack’s face, she did not trust him.

  “Mack,” she said, “we have a lot to talk about.”

  “Right. Right, I know, but…this minute? Don’t you think it’s nice just being…easy? Just being here. I mean, it’s like I walked in and nothing had changed, you know, I could reach into my closet without looking, or around the kitchen when I was making coffee, and everything was just where it was supposed to be, my hand just got to it, like it was waiting for me. It’s like walking into a photograph, a sepia photograph—”

  “Meaning old-fashioned.”

  “Well. Could be. Yeah, right—good for you—that is the way I see it. All this old furniture, kind of musty and past, not part of now. And the house—shit, sis, when I walked up the front walk last night I couldn’t believe it, all that gray stone piled up into a dark castle some giant made, like he scooped out a front porch and windows and put on a tile roof, stacking the tiles like a kid with blocks, and I thought—”

  “Did you make that up?”

  “What?”

  “The giant. The scooping out. The kid with blocks.”

  Mack hesitated, then grinned widely. “Actually, no. Last night, Carrie was telling me about a story she’s writing about this house, and a girl who makes friends with elves, and they have a party in the backyard… she said it gets pretty complicated, but she didn’t go into that part. She’s good, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “She says she writes lots of stories.”

  “She does, about everything, wonderful, fanciful stories, sometimes about people she knows but most often about people and places she makes up. She loves it, and the more she experiments with different ideas the better she gets.”

  “You’re proud of her. You should be. They’re all terrific, Sara, you’ve done a hell of a job. Big sister Sara… who would have believed it? You were so fierce about going off and being a famous doctor doctoring the world, saving everybody, and here you are, right where you started: the most amazing mother. I’m proud of you.”

  Sara felt her anger rise, and waited until she could push it down. Finally, she said evenly, “And now that you’re back we’ll pick up the pieces. We’ll each go to school part-time and work part-time, just as we planned. We’ll finally be able to do all the things we’ve wanted to do.”

  “Of course we will.” He refilled his mug. “More?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He sipped the hot coffee, blew on it, sipped some more. “Tell me about your job.”

  “Mack, I want to go back to school.”

  He nodded again. “I know you do.” He rolled the mug slowly between his palms. “I know you do. We’ll figure it out. Believe me. But tell me about your job.”

  “Not now. We have more important things to talk about.”

  “No, we don’t. Sara, the most important thing in the world to me right now is learning about my family. The kids told me a lot last night, but I have so much catching up to do. That’s what I want to do for the next few weeks: get to know my family, my neighborhood, look up a few people, play tourist in Chicago. I’ve never done that. Time I got to know my own city.”

  “Weeks?”

  “A few weeks. Not a lifetime, just a few weeks. Sara, Sara, what’s more important than family? Who knows that better than you?” Mack’s face began to twist; tears were in his eyes. “You’ve been walking through all these rooms, being part of them, and I’ve been walking down strange streets, a stranger strangely strange, not part of anything. I need to feel part of these rooms, part of this house. And part of you. We’ll take long walks, you and I, talk long talks about the world, get to know each other. And I’ll go places with the kids, museums, whatever.” He leaned toward her, his body a long angle tensed with anguish. “What could be more important than that? Getting acquainted. Belonging.”

  Instinctively Sara leaned back. She watched him roll the mug back and forth as if he were washing his hands, watched the first tear roll down his unshaven cheek. He brushed it away. “Shit, I forgot to shave. Sorry; hell of a way to greet my big sister my first morning home.”

  Confused, Sara was silent, trying to understand him. She pitied his aloneness and his anguish; she wanted to ease the pain that was etched in his face and respond to the pleading in the angle of his body. And wasn’t he right? Wasn’t family more important than anything?

  But for three and a half years he didn’t care about family at all.

  “Why did you leave?” she asked abruptly.

  “What?” He frowned. “I wanted to.”

  “What happened that made you want to?”

  “Nothing happened. I was seventeen years old and itching to see the world. I didn’t like our little patch of it—too small, too comfortable, too organized—so I took off. Happens all the time in nice middle-class families.”

  “All the time? I doubt it. But something did happen here. Your father disappeared.”

  “That was four months earlier. I never thought about him. Never thought about a thoughtless man. Never heard from him, never looked for him, never cared.”

  “Really? Never cared?”

  “No, why should I? The son of a bitch walked out on us. He threw us away. I threw him away. We were even.”

  Sara waited while the vehemence of the words stirred the air, then faded. “You left on your seventeenth birthday,” she said then. “Yo
u told us your friends were giving you a party, so we put off our own celebration until the next day. But of course there was no party. So what was it? Your father? Your birthday?”

  “It wasn’t anything. Damn it, sis, I just wanted out. How many seventeen-year-old guys want out?”

  “Maybe a lot of them. But how many actually leave?”

  “Hey, if other guys are scared, is that my fault? Sis, I was seventeen. I itched. I left. What difference does it make now? I’m home, where I belong. And I intend to take a few weeks to settle down here. It’s my home, too, you know. It’s not just yours, it’s mine, too.”

  Sara’s eyes narrowed. “Who do you think you are, telling me this is your home, and what you intend to do in it? What have you done to take care of it for the past three and a half years? Or help the people whose home it really is? People make a home by living in it; they don’t wander in and out like an itching hotel guest and then whine, ‘It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine.’ ”

  Mack had both hands spread in front of his face; he peered at Sara through his fingers. “What did I do? All I said was, I want to live here; I feel like I’m home. God, Sara, you make me feel criminally criminal. I left; I’m home. What’s so awful? Am I the only one who ever did it? Maybe it was a mistake, leaving, and I’m sorry Ma fell apart after that, but are you sure that was my fault? Maybe it was the old man taking off, leaving her in an empty bed. What the fuck, Sara, it’s all the past. I can’t undo it now. I could call this home, though, if you’d let me.”

  Sara told herself it was better to remain silent when she was angry.

  “I’ll tell you what is awful”—Mack lowered his hands and smiled tremulously—“is that I do feel like a stranger here, in my own house. I need time to settle in, to feel that I truly belong. That I’m welcome. There’s nothing worse, you know, than feeling like a stranger in your own house.”

  “A stranger,” Sara echoed. “You said you were a stranger on all those strange streets, but here you reach into your closet or around the kitchen without looking, and everything is just where it’s supposed to be.”