Mothers and Other Strangers

by Gina Sorell

  “It’s okay.” Officer Dixon put his arm around my shoulder. I stiffened at first, but his grip was steady and I crumpled into the side of his body.

  “I am so sorry,” said Vincent.

  “It’s not your fault. How could you have guessed that somebody would do this?”

  “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” He squeezed my hand and left the apartment with Mrs. David.

  I nodded and took a deep breath. I had soaked Officer Dixon’s jacket with my tears and gingerly pulled my face away from his side. I searched in my pockets for a Kleenex and then gave up and used my sleeve to wipe my face and my nose. I couldn’t imagine that there was anything of value to anyone here.

  Officer Dixon pulled up a chair and opened his notebook. His rosy, round cheeks made his face look young at first, but the deep lines at the corners of his eyes gave his years away.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I have to ask, did your mother owe anyone money?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was anybody looking for her?”

  “Yes. I was.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I stood in the middle of my mother’s apartment and tried to make sense of it all. Who would break in and why? Someone had singled out her place. It felt personal. Or was it? Maybe this was a professional criminal who robbed homes of the recently deceased with prestigious addresses? I didn’t know. I lifted my mother’s clothes off the floor and carefully refolded the silky blouses and tunics that she favored, checking the pockets and feeling foolish every time my heart leapt at finding something, only to discover it was a rumpled cough-drop wrapper or bobby pin. I was struck by how small she was. She’d always been a slender woman, but she appeared to have shrunk as she’d gotten older. And as I stacked the fragile, tiny tower of tops into a box marked for charity, I told myself not to cry, and took a deep breath and moved on. The floor of her closet held only a few items: a couple of sweaters, wool pants, several shawls, and a dark down coat and boots that I moved into the box as well. In his fury the intruder had done the hard work for me, spilling my mother’s belongings out in the open, saving me the pain of going through each of her drawers one by one. As shocking as it was to see her things so violently thrown about, it forced me into action. I needed to tidy up this place quickly and get it sold. The real estate agent, Diane, had warned me that apartments took longer to sell in the winter, especially ones that needed work. My mother had downsized from the two-bedroom that I’d grown up in and moved to this small unit long after I’d left. I was shocked to learn that she had taken out a second mortgage and that the bank still owned most of it, even though she’d been there for almost two decades.

  I sat down on the little love seat, smoothing out one of the many afghans hiding cracks in the leather. Looking around the apartment, with its yellowed, incense-stained walls, old wooden coffee table, and threadbare Persian carpets, I tried to see it the way I knew Diane would see it, the way anyone who didn’t know my mother would see it when they walked through the door. When first purchased in the late sixties, the hand-carved wooden furniture, batiked bedspreads, collections of crystals, and pictures of Indian saints and Hindu gods would have made this small space a groovy pad. The lamps draped in silk scarves and the overstuffed throw pillows on the floor next to stacks of books on philosophy, art, and religion would have announced to anyone who entered that this was the home of a new age, forward-thinking hippie, a woman who lived life on her own terms. But now after years of use, with nothing having been replaced or updated, the décor simply announced that the owner’s glory days were behind her. It seemed that every item was covered by a thin, sticky layer of dust that had settled for good, as my mother had lost first her cleaning lady, and then her own interest in cleaning.

  I hadn’t seen anything that I thought warranted a break-in. I began to stack my mother’s books in another one of the empty cardboard boxes that I’d brought. There were coffee-table books on art and sculpture, architecture, and philosophy. I thought of all the times I had seen my mother stretched out in her favorite reading chair, poring over these pages, a notebook and pen at the ready to take notes. I flipped through the pages hoping to find something of my missing past, a love letter from my father, a photograph of him and my mother, anything that could prove that the existence of my father, Leo, had been real, and not some twisted fiction my mother concocted, either to excuse her seemingly easy dismissal of Howard from our lives or to cover an unplanned pregnancy by a stranger. But there was nothing. And then I saw a stack of glossy flyers from every dance company I’d ever worked with, souvenirs of wonderful performances that my mother had never witnessed. She had attended only one of my shows, but I’d kept her on the mailing list just the same, hoping for the day when I might look out into the audience and see her sitting there, beaming with pride. That day never came, and I continued to believe she didn’t care about my dancing career. But if that was true, why had she kept track of it? And why hadn’t she said anything to me? I sorted through the pictures that had been tossed from their broken frames, self-portraits in front of famous monuments, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, Big Ben. Photographs she must have taken on her trips with the Seekers, the strange cult-like group she had joined twenty-five years earlier, but none with any of the members themselves. Why? And where were the pictures I remembered of my mother as a young woman, sitting on the beach and smiling at the camera, or of me as a chubby little toddler resting under a huge tree in our backyard? They were nowhere to be found.

  I picked myself off the worn Persian carpet in the middle of the living room, unfolding my legs and listening to my knees crack like popcorn. My previous incarnation as a dancer had left my joints much older than they should have been, and living in California had made me soft to the cold Canadian winters. I’d become like so many other fair-weather Canadians: I loved my country, but not in the winter. My mother hated the cold too. I asked her once why on earth, if she hated the cold so much, did she pick Canada when we left Africa? She said it was because Canada would take people like us. Ironically enough, she had wanted to live in California.

  My stomach rumbled, and as I placed my hand across my belly, I saw on my watch that it was already six o’clock. I opened the little shuttered doors that concealed a galley kitchen and began rifling through the cupboards. I saw stacks of paper napkins wrapped in rubber bands and Ziploc baggies full of salt and pepper packets. I pushed them aside, knocking over bottles of homeopathic remedies and supplements and neat piles of jams, butter, and sauces that seemed never to expire. I made my way through most of the soup crackers and, with nothing left to eat, removed a packet of blackberry jam, peeled off the seal, and licked it clean. The sugary sweetness of the jam made my mouth water and my stomach lurch.

  I had expected to find her shelves lined with the packages of fine teas, biscuits, and chocolates that she had always favored. But those luxury tins, now empty of their original delicacies, were stuffed with the kind of condiments that could be taken off the counters of coffee shops. Never much of a cook, my mother used to buy her groceries and meals at the fine food shops that were within walking distance. I once saw her spend in a week what the average person would spend in a month. But nothing about my mother was average, and that seemed to be the point that she’d been trying to make her whole life.

  As a child, I loved the fact that my mother was different. With her long hair, designer outfits, and love of philosophy, she wasn’t like any mom I had ever met. We didn’t have set meal times, or even a dining room table. We ate our meals at the coffee table, sitting on cushions on the living room floor, listening to records. There was no list on the fridge that detailed when things ran out and needed to be replaced, no specific day for laundry and cleaning, not even a time to go to bed. She said we should eat what we wanted when we were hungry and sleep when we were tired. She spent her days doing as she pleased and her nights lost in her books. She said it was because she’d rather have her time dictated organically by her desires than
adhere to the rigidity of an artificially imposed structure, a structure that I had to adhere to, as I was in school. A structure that my best friend Arden and her family had.

  Arden Douglas was the first friend I made in Canada. I was six when we met, in a dance class run by her mom. Two years older than me, with long, jet-black hair hanging below her waist and not one but two earrings in her left ear, a stud and a dangling feather, she was the coolest person on the planet, and I followed her everywhere. A gifted dancer, with long limbs and delicate bones, she lit up the stage and wasn’t afraid to share her spotlight with a young girl who had a strange South African accent. Arden had always been one of those dancers who got choreography on the first try, picked up routines easily, and after a full day of dancing still had enough energy to do it all over again. Unlike myself, who over the years would earn every inch of flexibility through hard work and determination, Arden had limbs that seemed made of Plasticine. She flew across the stage effortlessly and gracefully, defying gravity. Dancing wasn’t work for her, it was play, and she infused all her movements with such joy it made you want to dance alongside her. What I struggled to accomplish she was blessed with.

  Arden and I spent all of our time together, her family quickly becoming mine. I had never known parents like the Douglases. Arden’s mother would greet her after school with a hug and a kiss, sit down at their kitchen table with her, and ask her about her day. She’d send her to her room with a snack for when she did her homework, and call her down when dinner was ready, and the whole family would eat together. When I got home from school, I was greeted by an empty apartment in need of cleaning, my mother’s belongings strewn everywhere. I’d pick up after her, do the laundry, and wait for her to return. Sometimes she’d come in with one order of takeout for us to share and a new coffee-table book that we had to read together immediately. And sometimes she came home long after I’d fallen asleep with some of her friends, and they’d turn on all the lights, play records, and pick up in the middle of whatever heated debate they were having. I’d wait as long as I could, hoping they’d leave, until I couldn’t take the noise anymore, and then I’d reluctantly wander out to the living room and remind her that I had to be up early for school. She’d sigh and tell her friends that they’d better go, and I’d feel terrible for breaking up her night, wishing that I was at Arden’s, asleep on the top bunk, just an arm’s length from my best friend. Eventually I just went home with Arden after school, and when dinnertime rolled around, I would take the extra place at the table that Mrs. Douglas had set out for me. She never asked if I wanted to join them or made me feel like I was a guest, and after dinner I’d clean up along with everyone else and hang out in Arden’s room listening to music and doing my homework. On nights when I knew that my mother was around I’d sleep over so that I wouldn’t get in her way, and if she was out I’d go home. I bought groceries with the money she left me, learned to make my own meals, and washed my own clothes. I did my homework when no one asked me to, put myself to bed, and set my alarm to make breakfast and get ready for class. It wasn’t that my mother didn’t care, I told myself; it was just that she didn’t respond to structure.

  I slumped against the counter and decided to call it a day. I had made little progress, and yet I was too exhausted to continue. Exhausted and angry that she’d left me all alone, full of unanswered questions. I left with my trophies for the day’s work: two garbage bags to be dropped down the building’s chute on my way out. I grabbed my parka and messenger bag and shut the apartment up for another day. I locked the door, stood in the hall, and took a deep breath. I heard Mrs. David’s door unlock and started to walk away, dropping one of my garbage bags and thwarting my quick getaway.

  “Need a hand?” She picked up the dropped bag and started walking past me.

  “I’m all right, thanks.” I reached for the bag, but Mrs. David kept going in the direction of the chute, forcing me to keep pace with her.

  “This is garbage, right?”

  “Yes.”

  She opened the garbage chute at the end of the hall, threw the bag down, then took the other one out of my hand and did the same with it.

  “You look tired,” she said, putting her hands into the pockets of her purple double-faced knit cardigan. “Then again, maybe this is just how you look. It’s not as if I have a lot to compare it to. You weren’t around that often.”

  The way she said it was more a statement than a judgment. She stood there staring at me, her blue eyes clear and sharp in her wrinkled, papery face.

  “No. I suppose I wasn’t.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.” She tilted her head to the side, reminding me of a parrot, with her shock of white hair and her sharp, pointed beak. She put her hand on my shoulder for a moment, and then turned and walked back toward her apartment. “Good night,” she called without looking back, and disappeared into her home.

  Can’t say I blame you. Tell that to my dead mother.

  I put on my parka and rode the elevator down nine floors to the lobby. Vincent had left his desk and was standing in the entranceway, staring out the glass doors.

  “Looks like it’s gonna be a bad one, Elsie.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Well, just look at how that snow’s starting to circle up the driveway.”

  “I mean, how can you tell it’s me? You never even looked.” I knew that my reflection couldn’t be detected in the glass all the way from the elevator.

  “I can always tell.” Vincent turned to face me, and for a second a smile crossed his face.

  “Uh-huh.”

  I had known Vincent for over thirty years, or rather he had known me. There was very little that anyone actually knew about the man who had watched the desk of this old, elegant apartment building for nearly five decades. After I left home, I returned for a visit many times over the years but often failed to make it past his concierge desk. I was either too chicken or too angry to go upstairs and see my mother, so I just stayed in the lobby and talked to Vincent instead. His constant presence behind the desk in his uniform of gray wool trousers and navy blazer was comforting, making him seem as much a part of the furniture as the desk itself. I had often tried to imagine a life for him outside of the co-op and couldn’t. He was always working, and it seemed impossible that there were enough hours in the day for him to take care of the needs of all the tenants and himself as well. He was the eyes and ears of Dalewood, and one could only imagine the things he’d seen and the stories he knew. I had asked him once, while avoiding a visit with my mother, what was the strangest thing he had ever witnessed, and he answered by asking me how much time I had. It was funny, but it wasn’t true. Even if I’d had all day, Vincent wouldn’t have revealed a thing. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t his place to say.

  “You should get some rest. You look tired,” he said.

  “So everyone tells me. You don’t look so great yourself.” His hair was thinner than ever, and his brown skin looked slightly yellow. There was even a trace of gray stubble on his face, something I’d never seen before.

  “I’m allowed, I’m old.”

  “Yeah, well my mother died, and someone ransacked her apartment.”

  “Still using that one?”

  We laughed a little before stopping ourselves. There was nothing to laugh at, we both knew that, but we had always shared a morbid sense of humor, and I was more grateful for it than ever. It was always this way with us, an easy exchange between two people who may as well have been invisible to those around them.

  “Don’t forget this—it arrived for your mother, but she hadn’t opened it yet.” He walked over to his desk and came back with a large envelope of forwarded mail.

  “Why she needed a P.O. box in addition to Dalewood is a mystery to me,” I said. Vincent just shrugged as I took the envelope.

  I leaned my head against the glass, closed my eyes, and sighed. I hadn’t had any contact with my mother in years, and yet here I was, cleaning up her mess now that
she was gone. I felt Vincent’s hand on my shoulder and opened my eyes.

  “Night, Elsie. Bundle up.”

  “Night, Vincent.”

  I pulled the synthetic fur-lined hood up over my head and snapped it tight under my chin. I reached into my pockets for my gloves and as usual found only one and put it on. I waved goodbye to Vincent as he held the door open for me, and ran clumsily against the snow that was whipping in the wind. I found my car and gently turned the key in the door. I had already snapped off one key inside the lock and didn’t need to waste another call to roadside assistance. I jumped inside and started the engine, rubbing my bare hand against my jeans as I did so. It had been only fifteen or so steps and my hand was frozen. I blasted the heat on high but quickly turned it off when only cold air came out. I hated the cold, always had. A chance to escape the cold and soak up the California sunshine was a big reason why I had let Ted talk me into moving to Los Angeles with him.

  I hated LA at first. It was the optimism. The relentless, baseless optimism that everything was going to be all right. No matter what that everything was, or what the odds of it working out were, everyone but me seemed to be convinced the universe was unfolding as it should. The universe. How could anyone know what the universe should or shouldn’t be doing? It was too similar a philosophy to my mother’s responsibility-shirking talk about karma, and it drove me nuts. That and all the driving. But even now, ten years later—five more than people had told me it would take for me to really fall in love with Los Angeles—I figured I liked it as much as I was ever going to. On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a six-point-five. And yet when Ted and I divorced, three years ago, I was the one who stayed while he returned to Toronto. I liked to say I stayed for the sunshine, but it was also far away from Dalewood, and my mother. Living in another country allowed me to pretend that it was just physical distance that kept us apart.