Jump rope was all the rage on my street when I was a kid, and I loved it. Either I didn’t notice that only the girls jumped, or I didn’t mind being the only boy out there. No one teased me about jumping rope, or if they did I don’t remember. It was like a party every day, singing, swinging the rope, jumping, and laughing as things got going faster and faster. I was pretty good, and I made up lots of new rhymes for us to sing.
I remember one summer day in particular, when I was about seven years old. Funny how memories will come back at odd times and just tap you on the shoulder and say, “Hey, look at me! I said look at me. Look at me right now whether you want to or not.”
That day, my mom had sent me out to play while she stayed inside and prayed with the minister. After he’d gone away, she came and sat down on the step to watch us. She smiled and tapped her feet through a few songs. I’d been working out a new one, so I thought I’d go ahead and sing it for her as a solo act, because it wasn’t every day that she came outside and sat her considerable self down to watch me play.
In retrospect I know it would’ve gone better as a chorus. And looking back, I realize I shouldn’t have taken the songwriting credit right up front.
Like I said, memories are the craziest things sometimes. Though I can’t remember anything at all about the French and Indian war, the name of a single President between Jackson and Lincoln, or one certain weekend during college that left me with a small tattoo I’m not going to mention again, I still remember every word to that rhyme I sang my mama when I was about seven years old.
It was a sunny day and she was smiling down at me and everything seemed happy and nice. Two of my girlfriends started swinging the big rope, and I jumped in and sang, real loud and proud. The song went like this:
I don’t want to marry Mary
I’d rather go steady with Stu
Randy might come in handy
Peter would know what to do
No I don’t want to marry Sherry
Though I’d like to hang out with Hugh
I honestly did not know that my mother could move so fast. I’m surprised she didn’t dislocate my shoulder when she pulled me out of that jump rope and up the stairs, slamming the door once she got me inside. I didn’t realize at first that the song had made her mad. I didn’t know what in heaven’s name was going on.
I got a lecture and a whooping that didn’t explain much. She reminded me that I had tried on her lipstick the year before, and had called Donnie Wahlberg from New Kids on the Block handsome, and more things I’d long since forgotten about. Seemed like she’d been holding on to stuff that had made her mad, and she gave it to me all at once.
She prayed over me something fierce, and the only thing I took away from it was that she was angry with me, and that somehow she thought I was dirty. Your mama thinking you’re dirty makes a mighty large impression on you when you’re seven years old. Let me just go ahead and say that, in case you didn’t know.
A long while after the black and blue handprints on my bottom had faded away, I sang that song again. I had the good sense to keep it quiet and hidden, though, and to only sing it to myself. I also added a few lines:
Maybe someday I’ll marry Larry
But never if my mama knew
I have to keep reminding my legs to walk up to her door. I think if it were up to them, they’d turn around and run the other way.
“Armand!” My mother says gruffly after I talk my finger into ringing the bell.
She looks both angry and scared of me—or of something, anyway. She peeks up and down the street before pulling me inside with one large and swift arm. She shuts the door and throws the locks.
“Ma’am,” I say, attempting to hug her. She stands there like a mountain of solid rock and makes a formidable ledge by folding her arms. I give up and look down at the floor. The braided brown rug is a hateful old thing. I spent too much time studying it over the years while my mother glared at me. It’s brow-beaten and shame-colored.
“Reporters were here today, Armand. They knocked on my door! I had to unplug the telephone because there were so many calls.”
She sounds like she thinks I arranged it all myself just to harass her. She stares at the counter and I do too, and indeed there’s an unplugged telephone sitting there.
I have an overwhelming desire to giggle nervously. It’s a terrible coping mechanism; it must be a form of fight or flight or something. I always had the same reaction in church when the topic was fire and brimstone. I paid for it afterward, and it was never worth it. I didn’t want to laugh in the first place; I just couldn’t help it.
I manage to cough the urge to giggle away this time.
“I’m really sorry about the reporters,” I say as I look around. The place is so small. Of course, I’ve gotten used to eight thousand square feet of pure luxury, with soaring ceilings and huge windows in every room. But I don’t remember this apartment ever feeling so much like a shoebox with the lid crammed on too tight.
My mother sits down in her chair. You can tell it’s her chair at a glance, because it has been molded to her body over the years. I kid you not, it shows each ass cheek. I wouldn’t make up such a thing about my own mama.
“Armand, they say you’re deviant.”
“Who says I’m deviant?”
“The new minister was by today. Old Reverend Sugarbaker died last year, remember?” She whispers the last part and I see the pain on her face. I know Reverend Sugarbaker meant a lot to her, though she never cared much for his wife.
I don’t say anything. What in heaven’s name am I supposed to say to deviant? I’m so mad I might let myself go ahead and giggle out loud if I felt like it. I don’t, though.
She points to the sofa and I sit down.
“Tell me that news story is wrong now. I know you’re married, I have this picture to prove it.” She holds out the wedding photo I sent her. “Tell me the story is wrong, Armand.”
I hear some old platitudes in my head, like “you made your bed, you better lie in it,” and “you reap what you sow,” and I know it’s my own fault that my mother believed I was married. None of these thoughts are very helpful right now, though. “Should have thought of that before.” Yes, I should have. I really should have.
I silently practice what I want to say. I know you believe certain crazy, small-minded things that make being my mother hard on you. No, that’s not a good start. I’ve been in the damn closet all this time because you locked me in there with fifty deadbolts like a dangerous lion in a cage, when you know I’m really just a pussycat. No, still not good. I like the metaphor but it won’t help. I am thirty-one years old and it’s high time I start living my own life. I lied to you before and I’m sorry. But I am done lying, ma’am, whether you like it or not. Yes, that’s the one.
“Armand? Tell me the story is wrong.”
Lenny Nelson and I formed a study club in tenth grade. Funny thing was, no matter how much time we spent locked quietly away in his room or mine, our grades both stayed pretty poor. My mom started looking at Lenny funny after a while when she used to say how nice it was that we studied together, because I’d never had much interest in poring over books before I found Lenny. After the second round of report cards came home showing no improvement, she started being a little short with Lenny and didn’t offer him sodas or snacks anymore.
One day when we got home from school and she wasn’t there, Lenny said he was glad because he was starting to be afraid of her. I remember wondering what in heaven’s name had taken him so long; I couldn’t remember a single day in all my life when I hadn’t been afraid of my mother. I said let’s go in my room and study history a little while.
She must have come in real quiet because I didn’t hear a thing. She picked my lock and swooped in so fast we didn’t have time to open our books or put ourselves back together properly.
As big as she was, my mother could not spank a six-foot tall you
ng man even if I was beanpole skinny back then. But that wasn’t her only option, as I well knew. I got myself together and started to run and told Lenny he’d better do the same, but he wasn’t as quick as me. By the time she’d grabbed the broom handle I was almost to the door. She still got several good licks in before I made it out of her reach.
Poor Lenny.
I remember being so scared to come home I almost didn’t. Right now I wish to God I hadn’t.
“Armand? I told you to tell me the story is wrong. Now.”
I look her in the eyes. She is my mother. If your mama doesn’t love you no matter what, then who is gonna? Just tell me that.
“You know the truth already, ma’am. You’ve always known the truth.”
She stares at me until I lower my eyes. This isn’t about a mother’s love to her. I think she believes it’s about my soul. Or hers.
“Then I know the story is wrong,” she says.
Maybe I’m a coward and maybe I’m a pragmatist and maybe I think that broom handle is likely still in its place in the closet. I don’t know why, but I don’t argue. What can I say that would make any difference to her?
I sit there a while and listen to her talk about Gladdy Prinster and the rest of her church lady friends, and about her swollen ankles, as if this were any old visit on any old day. When I think I’ve sat there long enough to do a thousand penances and pay my purgatory in advance, I tell her I’ve got to go.
She says that’s a good idea. For once, we see eye to eye.
Chapter Seven
Gwendolyn
Megan doesn’t say a word as she drives us out of the hospital parking lot. I don’t dare speak or turn on the radio for fear that my sister will slap me. I steal glances, though. She has frown wrinkles all around her mouth like our mother had. I thought the latter’s had come from a lifetime of smoking, but I’ve never once seen Megan light up. One of the many things my sister seems to have inherited from our mother is a horrible propensity to look like she just swilled week-old cold coffee.
Megan is wearing a business suit, though she said she never made it into the office today. She rigidly grips the steering wheel at the ten and two position, staring through the windshield like a fighter pilot under enemy fire. Seeing her tension makes me stretch out my arms and legs in front of me before letting them flop where they may.
She takes her eyes from the road only long enough to glare at me.
The assumption that little girls want to emulate their big sisters is bullshit, at least in my case. I have always tried to do the exact opposite of whatever Megan does. She used to say that I had been dropped off in a basket at the front door as an infant and didn’t really belong with the Golden family. I wanted to believe her because it would have explained so much. I was completely different from my mother and Megan. It would have been nice to imagine a long, lanky mother out there in the world, perhaps missing me. I couldn’t truly believe it, though, because of my dad.
“Have you kept in touch with Smith Walker?” Megan suddenly asks.
“Why would I?” I hear the defensiveness in my voice. I always used to sound this way when the subject of Smith came up. I had to, because my family was always on the offensive.
Megan shrugs like she couldn’t care less either way. I wonder why in the hell she bothered to ask then.
This is truly the weirdest day I have ever had. This morning Stuart Bolder denounced me from my front lawn in Scenic, North Carolina, and now I’m in Michigan, minutes from seeing Smith Walker, my consistent regret in life. I want to know what Smith is like now, if he’s happy. I want to know if he has children, and if he does, if they resemble him. I want to know what his wife is like.
I was surprised when Megan said she has worked with Smith. In school she had acted like he was an inconvenient and unseemly nuisance, like a big wad of gum on the bottom of her shoe. I try to formulate a casual question to ask about him that doesn’t show how much I really want to know, but Megan’s cell phone rings.
She answers the call on speakerphone. “I’m on my way!” she says.
“OK,” her husband Kyle replies. He sounds tired. “How’s Gordy doing?”
“It looks like he’ll be alright.” Megan exhales like she’s been holding her breath all day long.
“Good. I see your sister made it to town?”
“Yup,” Megan says with a sigh.
“Do I have to get the guest room ready?” Kyle asks, sounding like a put-upon housemaid.
“No! Reporters gather around her like flies on garbage. We don’t need that.”
“Where’s she staying?” Kyle asks.
“A hotel, I guess, until she finds a more permanent place… it’s a long story. I’m dropping her off at a realtor to help her find an inexpensive house.”
“She’s with you now?” he asks.
“Hi, Kyle,” I say.
“Oh, hi. Hey, if you’re looking for houses, I heard of one in the Hidden Pines subdivision that’s supposed to be nice. A librarian at the university has to sell it before the bank forecloses.”
“Who?” Megan demands quickly.
“One of the university librarians,” he replies, sounding as defensive as I felt when Megan asked about Smith. I suppose she brings that out in people.
“Do you know the street?” I ask.
“I think she said it was on Hidden Lakes Drive.”
“OK, thanks,” I tell him.
“How much longer before you get here?” Kyle asks.
“Fifteen minutes?” Megan replies.
“Dinner is ready now, but we’ll wait.”
Megan clicks the phone off and I stare at her. For a moment there while she talked to Kyle she looked almost soft, nearly kind. She glares at me, having switched back so fast I didn’t see the transformation, only that she’s got her nasty, rabid bitch face on again.
“What?” she demands.
“Nothing. You said you’ve worked with Smith before?”
“Yes.”
“How is he to work with?” I ask, trying to draw out my words to offset her clipped, one syllable response.
“Unlike most of the realtors I’ve dealt with in this town, he’s at least honest,” she says.
I’m encouraged by that longish, semi-civil answer, but before I can ask another question Megan switches on the radio loudly, with the obvious intention of tuning me out.
I lean my head on the back rest and close my eyes. I try to remember the details of Smith’s face. He was always handsome, but there are lots of handsome guys in the world. Smith had something beyond that, a special quality that set him apart. This probably sounds incredibly cheesy, but I think Smith Walker is innately good. Like good-good. Not saintly, thank goodness, but kind and helpful and truthful good. Even Megan, who is barely human, just said he was honest. When we were growing up, though, she agreed with my parents that he wasn’t worth noticing.
“Do you still spend a lot of time at the club?” I ask Megan as we pass by the grand front entrance of the Riveredge Country Club. I shout the question but she still ignores it.
At the end of my senior year I tried to get my parents and Smith together. I’d gotten my mother’s promise that she would be civil if I asked Smith to dinner at the club. I tried to impress Dad with the fact that Smith had been offered full academic scholarships to several schools, though I knew my father was more impressed by sports than academia. Since I was going to the same university as Smith, my parents agreed it would be wise to get to know him at least a little before we were gone.
I always wanted to get to know Smith’s family, too. Over the years there was invariably an excuse why it wouldn’t work out for me to visit his house. I had met his parents and brothers at awards ceremonies where Smith took top honors. On those occasions he’d presented me rather formally, and I thought it was incredibly sweet. His brothers were cute and his parents seemed very shy. That he never brought me home was another factor that made me
wonder if our relationship meant more to me than to him.
The dinner at Riveredge Country Club was a special send off for graduating seniors and their families. The next morning I was leaving to backpack through Europe with a group of girlfriends, so this would be my last chance to see Smith for months. He was working that afternoon, but said he’d meet us at 6:00 at the club. I waited by the ornate doors until 6:30, but he never arrived.
I left the next morning without having received an apology from Smith. I flirted my way through Europe trying to forget him at first, but it didn’t work. I spent the last few weeks moping and counting the hours until I would be back home. I called Smith right away when I arrived, dreaming of a wonderful reunion. Instead we had a tear-filled thirty-second conversation. He told me he wasn’t going away to school after all. I didn’t wait for him to explain his reasoning. I was hurt and heartbroken and I hung up on him.
I had adored Smith all through middle and high school. His last minute change in college plans was a devastating blow. In an effort to move on, I dated men that ranged from a lot like Smith, to the exact opposite, but I never could get him out of my mind. I called him when I visited home freshman year, but he didn’t want to see me.
Smith Walker has been my model of what a man should be. I’m not saying that has necessarily been a good thing for me. If the first bite of cake I ever tasted was from the best baker in the world who then closed up shop, I’d have to go through a hell of a lot of cakes to come across one half as good. Maybe I’d think it would’ve been better to have tasted mediocre cake first, so I’d have a more realistic comparison.
I did fall in love once after Smith. He was an associate art professor who flattered me where it counted: he said I was one of the most talented young painters he’d ever seen. Jeremy was a philosophical guy with a goatee to prove it. Mostly Jeremy and I stayed in bed when we were alone, but when we were in small groups with other students in a coffee shop or someone’s rental house, he loved to discuss art. I thought he was so wise, cultured, and handsome. We went out for a year before I learned he was married.
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