The Real Mother

by Judith Michael

“No. Well, now and then, you know, something special’d come up. Not exactly full-time. But when he told me he was coming to Chicago and I told him I had family here, he, you know, offered me this job.”

  “So you knew when you came here that you already had a job?”

  “Nope. I’d been offered one, but I didn’t know I’d take it. I told you, remember? I wanted to look around, get to feel at home again, sort of settle in.”

  “And you decided—?”

  “That real estate was as good as anything. Why not? Maybe I’ve got a great future. Uncertain world, uncertain times, people looking for security, something solid they can hold on to that makes them feel they have some control of the future, even if they don’t know what’s going to happen that afternoon. Sounds good to me.”

  There was a pause. “And you’re already making enough to buy a car for Abby?”

  “Lew gave me an advance. Don’t worry about it, sis; he’s solid and so’s his company and I can move up fast, even go international. It’s all up to me, how hard I work. There’s big money in real estate, sis; I never knew it, never knew anything about it, but, you know, like I said, it’s the wave of the future. Which yours truly is going to ride.”

  And why did she still have doubts? What could she see wrong with his open smile, his bright, warm eyes, his easygoing voice telling her that he was willing to work hard to move up in a real estate company? There’s something wrong with me, Sara thought. I’ve turned sour and suspicious.

  But…the car. The odd hours. The evasiveness. The way Lew Corcoran keeps popping up, first a name on a fax, then a client, now my brother’s employer.

  “What’s the name of the company?”

  “Corcoran Enterprises. Not exactly original, but nobody asked me. We have a Web site if you want to check it out.”

  She nodded. In the silence, Mack refilled his glass. “You haven’t touched yours. Have some. One, anyway, for luck. For Abby’s luck tonight. I’m sorry I won’t be there, but she’s really good, you know. You’ll like it. I mean, I thought it was so trite, shit, another performance of Our Town, which everybody and his uncle and aunt and all his cousins… well, you know. But they make it seem almost new. Good cast. And Abby is fabulous as Emily.”

  “Doug said you didn’t cry.”

  “I never cry.” He held up the bottle, raising his eyebrows.

  “No, thank you.” She struggled not to ask the next question, but it came out anyway. “I thought we talked about your drinking a bottle of wine before dinner.”

  “Oh, sis.” He put his arm around her, then quickly, remembering another time, pulled it away. “Not a full bottle, just a few drinks. Just the right amount. I told you before I can handle it; I always stop one drink away from having too many. By the way, the plumber called; said he’d be here tomorrow with the new showerhead. Which bathroom?”

  “Yours.”

  “Mine? Have I complained?”

  “You used to, and I remembered that and checked it, and it really doesn’t work properly.”

  “You checked it. You went into my room?”

  At his tone, her eyebrows rose. “I went into the bathroom and then out again. Is that a problem?”

  “I don’t like people in my room. An old phobia. One of my many peculiar peculiarities, which I ask you to honor.”

  “Of course,” Sara said easily. “Would you like me to call a carpenter to install a lock on your door?”

  “Sure, if you want to. Why not?”

  They talked about the plumber, the planting of summer flowers, preparing the vegetable garden, having the chimneys cleaned out. By the time Sara put dinner on the table, she felt a new comfort, sharing the maintenance of the house. And yet, she thought after he left, as she drove to the nursing home to pick up Tess, it was not a solid comfort: rippling beneath it was an uneasiness she was beginning to recognize as an accompaniment to every conversation with Mack: a sense of being somehow negligent, leaving much unasked, unsaid, still unsettled between them.

  Whatever that meant.

  They all kept up a steady stream of talk to Tess through dinner while she picked at her food. In most ways, Tess seemed to have returned to the place she had been before her last stroke. Once again she sat all day in her brocade chair, embroidering, reading, watching old movies, greeting the few friends who still came, and welcoming all of her family. All but Mack. Sara had told him not to come, that Tess knew he was there, ensconced in his old room on the third floor, but she made it vehemently clear that she would not see him. The beloved son she had tried to excuse through his teenage years when she never knew whether he would come home drunk or presenting her with bouquets of flowers, when he switched back and forth from cursing her for interfering in his life to thanking her floridly for helping him resolve conflicts with teachers or parents of his friends, when he swung from rage to meekness when asked to do tasks around the house… that son, she had finally acknowledged, was gone, as irrefutably as if he had died. Tess had almost no control over her life, but she made this clear: she would not see him.

  And so whenever Tess came home, Sara made sure Mack was gone before she arrived. There were not many such occasions: Sara knew her mother was uncomfortable there, that as much as she loved her children and longed to be part of their lives, she did not like to leave the nursing home. Away from its familiar corridors, the faces she had come to connect with different times of day, her own room where warm colors enfolded her, she felt more helpless than ever, more adrift. Even worse, when she sat, immobilized, in the house she had furnished and decorated, where she had danced on New Year’s Eve with her husband, surrounded by her laughing, applauding children, she felt more than ever that Tess Hayden had vanished as surely as had her husband; that the woman who had lived in that house existed no more, and would never return.

  Nothing and no one returned, her eyes said: not Fred Hayden who had run off, or his son Mack after him; or Rob Elliott, Sara’s father, who had died so long ago; not the fortune that had grown steadily smaller as Fred Hayden looked for work and kept spending and spending, to prove to himself that their lives really had not changed; nor Tess Hayden herself, whose frozen face and shrunken body bore no resemblance to the glowing beauty and graceful form of the proud mistress of this proud house. Those men, that woman, that fortune, that world had vanished into nothingness.

  “Can Abby drive me places?” Doug asked. The conversation had been mostly about the new car—“A present from Mack, and it wasn’t even my birthday,” Abby said—but that was the only time his name was mentioned. Tess wanted details about the car, but not about Mack. Nothing about Mack.

  “When she has a license,” Sara said.

  “When I’m sixteen,” said Abby. She pushed back her chair, too excited to eat. “Can we go, Sara?”

  “The rest of us are still eating,” Carrie pointed out.

  “You and Doug and Mother take your time,” Sara said. “I’ll drive Abby, and be back in a few minutes. There are brownies in the oven, Carrie, please take them out when the timer goes off, and serve everyone.”

  It was easy to pretend they were a real family, she thought as she drove Abby to school, picturing Doug and Carrie at the table talking animatedly to their mother. And of course they were a real family. If a family is any group of people who love each other, that’s us. I just wish we were more… symmetrical.

  But she even could pretend symmetry when they sat together in the school auditorium, Tess beside her, in her wheelchair at the end of the row, Doug and Carrie on her other side, reading their programs, pointing out Abby’s name—“in big letters,” Doug whispered—and watching the Stage Manager place chairs and tables on each side of the stage as the auditorium lights dimmed and the lights onstage grew bright.

  “So weird,” Doug whispered to Carrie. “No scenery. I mean—”

  “Shhhh!” Carrie said. “He’s talking.”

  The Stage Manager was Abby’s friend Harlan Drakovich, and he was alone on the stage. Leaning against
the right pillar, he said, “This play is called Our Town. It was written by Thornton Wilder and in it you will see Abby Hayden playing Emily—”

  Doug poked Carrie in the ribs with his elbow. “He said her name out loud, like she’s famous!”

  Someone behind them said, “Shush, young man!” and Doug said, “But she’s my sister!” and Sara murmured, “Doug, hold it down until later,” and Doug shrugged impatiently and subsided.

  “Every child born into the world,” said the Stage Manager, “is nature’s attempt to make a perfect human being.”

  Sara and Tess looked at each other and smiled. We do keep trying.

  “People were meant to live two by two,” said the Stage Manager.

  And when that doesn’t happen? We do the best we can, one by one.

  And then came the third act, when Emily dies in childbirth and appears in the cemetery with the dead of her own family and of the town, seeing herself as a young girl, her family absorbed in the tasks of each day, serenely taking their togetherness for granted. “Mama,” Abby-as-Emily pleaded as her mother concentrated on stirring a pot on the stove, “just look at me one minute as though you really saw me… Mama, let’s look at one another.”

  Sara leaned forward. How had Abby learned that painful urgency? Did she really understand how quickly life slips away in little moments of busyness? Or did she feel that no one at home truly listened to her, truly paid attention to her uniqueness and the turmoil of being fifteen-almost-sixteen in a complicated world where it was hard to feel in control of things?

  “It goes so fast,” said Abby-as-Emily, and there was a sob in her voice. “We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize…” Slowly, she sat down in her straight chair, one of many in neat rows representing tombstones in the cemetery. Her low voice trembled. “Goodbye, Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking…and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths…and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you… Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”

  Sara blinked away tears. Around her, people were sniffling and rummaging in purses and pockets for tissues.

  “See?” Doug said. He wiped his eyes. “She makes people cry. All except Mack.”

  We don’t realize it, Sara thought. We don’t realize all of life’s wonders; we’re too busy getting through each day, worrying about the little slights we think we’ve suffered, agonizing over not getting whatever we want that very minute, fighting for our own small space in the sun.

  She leaned over and kissed Doug and, past him, Carrie. “I love you,” she said.

  The Stage Manager was pulling the curtain across the stage. “Goodnight,” he said softly, and slowly, very slowly, closed the curtain while the audience sat in absolute stillness. The auditorium was dark and silent. And then came an explosion of applause. Everyone stood and cheered; the actors’ classmates pumped their arms above their heads.

  Doug cheered, too; freed from orders to be quiet, he scrambled up to stand on his seat, shouting Abby’s name over and over and pounding his hands together high in the air. Once again Sara’s eyes met her mother’s, and both women smiled through their tears in a moment of simple understanding. “Yes,” Sara said quietly, beneath the applause, “she’s wonderful, and the play is timeless. Do you think she’ll remember what it’s really about?”

  Tess made a gesture. “You’re right,” Sara said. “She’ll put it aside as soon as she’s back in her own world. I just hope it surfaces now and then. I hope we all remember what it’s about.” She took her mother’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Abby stood onstage with the rest of the cast, and when they pushed her forward, she stood alone, and bowed deeply, accepting the applause and the cheers, trying not to cry because everything was so wonderful. Everyone loved her. Life was perfect. She saw Doug, standing and waving above all the others, and Sara, smiling at her, and her mother, trying to smile. Everyone was smiling at her. Perfect, she thought again. This is the perfect moment of my life. Nothing ever again will be so perfect.

  But on Monday, after Our Town had finished its three performances, and the cast had celebrated on Sunday night after the final closing curtain (laughing but crying, too, because where was the excitement in life if there were no rehearsals to go to, and no play to look forward to, and no stage fright to make one feel like dying but also more alive than ever?), on Monday morning, at school, everything was still wonderful. It seemed that everyone had seen the play, and everyone, even the teachers, said it was wonderful, that Abby was a real star.

  And when the talk about the play began to flag, Abby added to the glory of the morning by dropping the bombshell of her new car and describing it in envy-creating detail to clusters of friends and onlookers. Mack had been right about her classmates knowing they would have cars in their senior year, but Abby was the first, and for that one shining day, she reigned over the junior class.

  And then, on top of all those wonders, Sean was impressed. He held her hand as they walked from the computer lab to their history class, and he pulled her into an empty room to kiss her quickly. “You are one special lady,” he murmured into her ear. “In all respects, I find you quite irrefutably irresistible.”

  Abby smiled—mysteriously, she hoped—because, whenever Sean turned excessively wordy and gallant, she could not tell how serious he was, and so it was easiest to smile and say nothing. But then his hand went to her breast, and his mouth was on hers again, and she moaned, low in her throat, where only he could hear it. He lifted his head, and made a little scrabbling motion on her buttocks in a playful, proprietary way that she hated. “Please—” she started to say, but at that moment the bell rang, and so it was in dizzying confusion that she ran across the hall, behind Sean, and ducked into their classroom. They were the last to take their seats, and everyone turned to look, some— most of them, it seemed to Abby—suddenly smirking instead of praising her.

  Her underpants were wet and she shifted uncomfortably, in turmoil from the aching urgings of her body and the embarrassment she always felt when Sean fingered her in unpleasant ways. The history lesson buzzed behind her, like bees in Sara’s garden, rising and falling and now and then coming close enough to be noticed. This week they were studying the Irish War of Independence, and usually Abby paid close attention, because it was Sean’s country and he talked about it a lot (once he’d said that her name was the same as the name of the most famous theater in Ireland—“spelled differently, but close enough to make you especially special,” he said; special being his favorite word), claiming in his carelessly contemptuous way that American teachers didn’t understand zip about Ireland; that they always sided with the British even though where would America be today if they hadn’t beat the British… which is exactly what the Irish were trying to do?

  But today she could not pay attention; she could not even focus on enough of the lecture to be able to talk to Sean about it later. Which meant he would do the talking until he’d said all he wanted to say (or listened to himself long enough, Abby would think when she was feeling particularly sharp and objective), and then he would begin to caress her and kiss her and try to get his hands inside her sweater and up her skirt, and Abby’s body would lean into his, strain against his, even as shouldn’t and don’t and never tumbled through her thoughts, mixed up with images of the ideal romance she and Sara sometimes talked about: two people sharing ideas and hopes and fears, and then, at some point, turning to sex because it was the natural next step, sort of flowing from the closeness they’d already built… which, Abby had to admit, she and Sean had not built, were not even close to building.

  “Stupid,” Sean said when Abby pulled back once and told him, haltingly, what she hoped for. “A stupid waste of time. We’re young and full of sexual energy, it’s a special time, and we have to take advantage of it before it drains away. We can always talk. Old people talk; you get to
be forty and that’s all you’ve got: talk talk talk and dried-up bodies. But look at us! Young and full of juices …and you’d throw that away! Not for me, my little lady.”

  “But—” Abby tried to force out the words I won’t go to bed with you, but her throat closed up in fear: Sean would laugh the mocking laugh he used with others, never with her (so far, she thought honestly, and he could; I’m probably not that special… maybe nobody is), and he would leave her and she couldn’t stand that, she’d die.

  I’m not sophisticated enough to handle Sean, she realized, but even though she recognized the shrewdness and accuracy of that assessment, and knew, in moments of such clarity, that she should walk away from him, she could not do it. She could not walk away when she was alone and saw him clearly, and certainly not when his hand was on her breast, or his mouth was opening hers, or his light blue eyes were focused on her as if she were the only person in the world and he adored her and only her, forever. She could not leave him then. She could not leave him at any time. She would die.

  Trying to shut out the buzz of the history lesson, Abby shifted disconsolately in her seat. She could not understand how everything had collapsed so quickly, from the triumph of her curtain calls in Our Town to the misery of uncertainty Sean could create with a flick of his fingers or a twist of his mouth.

  “It’s awful,” Abby said to her mother in the nursing home the next day, a miserable afternoon after Sean had ignored her at lunch, sitting with gorgeous Marjorie Bassett and laughing a lot, and then disappearing right after school, instead of walking Abby home, as he usually did. At times like this, her mother was the only one she could talk to, because (and she admitted this was really terrible, but it was true) her mother couldn’t criticize her. She couldn’t even look really surprised or disgusted; the paralysis on one side of her face made her expressions so ambiguous you could sort of decide for yourself what they were, and however you interpreted them they were always on your side.

  Sometimes her mother wrote a word or two on the pad of paper on the table that swung across her lap, but it was hard for her to control her hand to write, and she hated it, so most of the time she gestured with her hand or pointed until someone got the idea of what she meant. But whether she tried to write or not, her mother always listened to Abby with unwavering attention; she loved her and thought whatever she did was right. Abby could always tell that.