Missing Mom: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Oh, Aunt Nikki—cool!”—a breathless little squeal from my thirteen-year-old niece Lilja, grinning at my hair. And there came Foster, my eight-year-old nephew, a fair-skinned husky boy with endearing chipmunk teeth and a way of mumbling Hi Aunt Nikki that made me feel the futility of trying to be anyone’s aunt.

  In the kitchen, Lilja hovered around me. Plied me with her usual questions. Family occasions at Mom’s house were beginning to be a strain for Lilja as they’d been for me at her age. I knew it annoyed Clare, how Lilja seemed to admire me: I was as far removed from Clare and the mothers of Lilja’s friends as you were likely to encounter in Mt. Ephraim, New York, population 21,000. (Partly because I didn’t any longer live in Mt. Ephraim but in Chautauqua Falls, a larger and more prosperous city about thirty miles due west. There, I worked as a reporter and features writer for the Chautauqua Valley Beacon and led what, to a thirteen-year-old, and possibly to Clare as well, might have seemed like a glamorous life.)

  “Lilja” was a Danish name, chosen by Clare for its musical/mysterious sound. Luckily my niece was turning into the sort of precocious adolescent—very thin, very pretty—who didn’t seem to be fazed by an exotic name.

  “Aunt Nikki, tell us what it was like, interviewing Waylon Syp?”

  Waylon Syp was a local Rochester boy who’d achieved something of a national career as a white-boy rapper in the sulky/sullen mode of Eminem except not so talented as Eminem and, as an interview subject, a dud. His manager had answered most of the questions put to him by local journalists at a press conference in Rochester and I’d written them up, with a professional sort of zest, for a front-page feature in the Beacon. I hadn’t acknowledged how ordinary, how bland, how dull, how not-very-good-looking Syp was close up, and seeing the expectation in Lilja’s face, I wasn’t going to now.

  I saw that even Clare was interested. Even Mom, who couldn’t have known anything about rap music, and would have thought that Eminem was candy.

  “Help Grandma and me set the table, sweetie. And I’ll tell you.”

  Aunt Nikki. Weird!

  I’d always been ambivalent about being an aunt but I was fond of my sister’s children. I guess I was.

  Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I liked anyone, much. How I’d have felt about my own mother, if I’d met her as a stranger.

  Yet my sister’s children had brought Clare and me closer together. Especially when they’d been babies and Clare had been vulnerable and needy for once; not so judgmental about me, in her obsession with judging herself.

  Clare liked me less, now. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her.

  One thing I knew: I didn’t want children of my own. I didn’t want to be married. Maybe because my parents had been so happily married, my mother was such a wonderful mother, I knew that I could never measure up.

  And maybe I don’t want happiness. Not that kind.

  Eleven guests at Mom’s for Mother’s Day dinner!

  When we’d last spoken on the phone, Mom had promised there would be “only” seven or eight guests. Originally, weeks before, Mom had assured Clare and me that there would be “only family.”

  Out of the side of my mouth, into Clare’s ear as we were smiling brightly being introduced to the latest, last arrival who looked like an aging Cher in tumbledown silver-streaked hair, layers of witchy swishing black taffeta and red fishnet stockings and high heels, “Why does Mom do such things,” and Clare never slackened her smile sighing in return, “Because she’s Mom.”

  This exotic guest, Mom’s newest friend from church whom she’d met, it seemed, only last week, spoke heavily accented English and had to repeat her name several times: “Szyszko, Sonja.” Mom introduced her as a “prominent” ballerina who’d performed in Budapest, Hungary, and who had had to leave the country for political reasons, now she lived in Mt. Ephraim and was a housekeeper (house cleaner?) and a seamstress and a singer with a “flawless” soprano voice, who’d just joined the choir at the Mt. Ephraim Christian Life Fellowship Church where Mom was also a member of the choir.

  “Mrs. Aiten, I am so, so sorry! I am lost, driving in this, this roads with so many tvists and end-dead where you cannot get out. I am looking for ‘Deer Creek’ in all the wrong place.”

  Sonja Szyszko fluttered like a flag in the wind, mortified as if she were hours late instead of a half-hour. Mom assured her she wasn’t late, not at all. And how beautiful she looked, like a “radiant young dancer”! (In fact, Sonja Szyszko was a hefty middle-aged woman with an eerily white-powdered face, penciled-in black eyebrows and eyelashes so stiff with mascara they looked like a daddy longlegs’ legs. Her mouth was a shiny lewd crimson and her fluttery hands were so large and big-knuckled, you’d have almost thought she was a man boldly impersonating a woman.)

  Why did Mom do such things? I had an urge, not for the first time since Dad’s death, when Mom’s “hospitality” began to become frantic, to run away.

  But there was Clare watching me. Don’t even think of it, Nikki!

  So I didn’t. The way I shook Sonja Szyszko’s sizable hand, and listened to her chatter about what a “grazious Christian lady” my mother was, you’d have thought there was nowhere else in the world I wanted to be except exactly here.

  Mom’s other guests were: Aunt Tabitha Spancic, one of my father’s older sisters who’d never had much interest in his family, a severe-looking snowy-haired grandma with an ungrandma-like trick of hanging back to avoid helping in the kitchen, before or after a meal; Mom’s oldest “girlfriend” from grade school, a shivery hypochondriac named Alyce Proxmore whom Dad had never been able to stand but who had triumphed over him in death for she seemed to be at 43 Deer Creek Drive every time I returned; the exalted Gilbert Wexley—“Mr. Wexley” as Mom insisted upon calling him—a local pseudo-dignitary with an influential position on the Mt. Ephraim City Council that helped fund the annual Mt. Ephraim Arts and Crafts Festival, with which Mom was involved; and “Sonny” Danto, owner of the ugly red sports car, an ebullient middle-aged man of swarthy good looks with an oily pompadour and sideburns in the mode of the older Elvis Presley, whom Mom had invited just the day before when he’d come to the house on a “life-saving emergency mission.”

  I asked what the emergency was, and Mom said, pressing her hand against the bosom of her lime-green velour top, “Red ants! An invasion! Remember, Nikki, Clare?—how each spring we’d have black ants invading like an army?—those sort of bristly-black things so large if you crushed them under your foot you could feel them snap in two—oh it was awful. But red ants are worse, there are more of them and they’re so small. I thought almost it was red pepper somehow, spilled out onto the kitchen floor and the counter, and in the sink, though I don’t even have red pepper, only black pepper—you know how your father shook pepper on everything, even eggs? But I didn’t know that, I mean I was totally unprepared, yesterday morning I came into the kitchen and there was Smoky mewing and swatting his paws at these columns of red things marching single file right across the floor bold as you please. As if they were challenging Smoky—and me—‘Here we are, ma’am, and here we belong.’ Up out of that furnace vent by the refrigerator, up the table legs and swarming over the table, and on the counters by the sink and inside the drawers, I was so dismayed. It was hopeless to try to spray, the way your father would have done, with the black ants it was a kind of spring custom for Dad, I think almost he looked forward to it, with the aerosol spray, but I hate those spray cans, I’m afraid they will explode, it always says ‘Keep away from heat’ and you wonder what that means exactly, and I’m terrified of poisoning myself, or poor Smoky, and there were so many more of these red ants than there’d been black, just kept coming in a swarm, and they sting. And so I looked for help in the yellow pages, and—”

  “Sonny Danto,” the oily-pompadour man said, gripping my hand with a dramatic flourish, “—‘The Scourge of Bugs.’”

  An exterminator! This was a first.

  These mismatched individuals had been invited to Gw
en Eaton’s house for dinner on Mother’s Day, May 9, 2004, for reasons, near as I could figure, having to do with the fact that they were mothers, like Aunt Tabitha, whose children lived too far away to visit her, or were not mothers, like Alyce Proxmire and Sonja Szyszko, and might be feeling “lonely and left out”; or that they were sons without mothers, like Mr. Wexley whose mother was no longer living, or “Sonny” Danto whose mother was in a retirement village in Orlando, Florida, too far away to visit.

  Why Clare and Nikki were invited was no mystery, at least.

  Dinner at Mom’s was always more complicated than you’d expect. Not just the “dishes” Mom was preparing were complicated, and demanded intense spurts of concentration in the kitchen, in the vicinity of the stove (where at least one burner of four was likely to be malfunctioning); but there had to be “appetizers,” passed about repeatedly in the living room, and these were invariably “special new recipes” that required commentary, praise. On this occasion Mom had prepared celery stalks with curried cream cheese filling, codfish ball pastry-puffs, deviled eggs heavily dusted with paprika, and tiny hot sausage balls. (The sausage balls were an instant hit with the men, Sonny Danto especially.) While the conversation swerved, ebbed, lurched and languished and gamely revived Mom was anxious to keep the platters in continual motion.

  The exalted Mr. Wexley, with the air of a host, jarring to me, who had to wonder exactly what his relationship was with Mom, boasted of having brought “prime” New York State champagne for the occasion. With the self-importance of a small-town politician he lurched to his feet and lifted his glass to propose a toast to my embarrassed mother: “Gwendolyn Eaton! On this special occasion: Mother’s Day! Beloved citizen, neighbor, friend, and, um—mother! Who, I’ve been told”—he winked clownishly, sighting Mom along his long beak of a nose—“as a ver-ry pretty cheerleader at Mt. Ephraim High, Class of ’66, was known to her adoring classmates as ‘Feather.’”

  Everyone joined in the toast. Mom blushed. Sonja Szyszko was smiling broadly, perplexed: “‘Feaz-zer’? As a bird, is it? Bird feaz-zer?”

  Poor Mom. Her cheeks burnt as if she’d been slapped. It was impossible to judge if she was pleased by the attention, or mortified; if her laughter was genuine, or forced. Within the family Mom was always being teased; Dad had often led the teasing, though gently. It had been Dad’s role to be skeptical while Mom’s role had been to be naive, credulous, and ever-surprised.

  As we lifted our glasses, I saw Mom clutch at her glass as if not knowing what it was. I didn’t want to think She’s missing Dad.

  I touched Mom’s arm. “‘Feather’? You know, you’ve never told us why.”

  But Mom only just smiled at me, unhearing.

  Next, Rob Chisholm proposed a toast. His smile was all gums, glistening. He’d been drinking a succession of beers in the living room as well as devouring tiny sausages and his gravelly voice was buoyant as a rising balloon. “To Gwen, the most terrific mother-in-law any man could ask for if he’d have to have any mother-in-law, know what I mean? ‘May the wind be always at your back’—‘watch your back’—whatever it is, that Irish toast. Hail, Mother Eaton!”

  There was a goofy looseness to Rob Chisholm this evening, I’d rarely seen in my brother-in-law and found intriguing. A kind of river-current swirl about him as if, with a little stumble, he’d be swept away. Clare laughed sharply, undecided whether her husband was being folksy-witty, or making a fool of himself.

  Mom said, fumbling at humor, “Oh, dear: ‘Mother Eaton.’ Is that what people call me behind my back? Like some kind of—nun? Isn’t that what a head nun is called, not ‘sister’ but—”

  Aunt Tabitha interrupted, “‘Mother Spancic’ is what my childrens’ spouses call me. What I have requested to be called. I think the generations should be acknowledged. If you are ‘mother’ you are spared being a sibling or a buddy to be called by your first name, but you are not just any ‘mother’—public property like a street vendor, or somebody with a booth in a flea market. No, indeed! You deserve respect, I think. For what you have endured.” Prune-faced old Tabitha spoke with such passion, most of the company at the table laughed, miscomprehending.

  To prevent the Scourge of the Bugs lifting his glass in a champagne toast I jumped in: “Here’s to moms. Without moms, where’d we all be?”

  A few quick swallows of New York State champagne, Nikki was sounding giddy. Party-girl.

  There was something so desperate about this Mother’s Day gathering at 43 Deer Creek Drive, it was either giddy or tearful.

  Everyone drank to my toast except Mom who was still clutching at her wineglass, observing us with a fond, sad smile as if from miles away. And Foster who was in the TV room watching a baseball game, and Lilja who stood elegantly slouched in the doorway observing us with the clinical detachment of an anthropologist.

  Thinking she’ll never get our age. Ages. Oh, never!

  With the benign-bossy air of a teacher bringing a class to its close, whether the close is logical or not, Clare lifted her glass in an aggressive gesture, leaned forward at the hips and said, smiling so hard you’d imagine you heard small bones crunching: “Where’d you be without moms I’ll tell you: cooking for yourselves, cleaning for yourselves and picking up after yourselves, sorting socks for yourselves, complaining to yourselves, moping and bellyaching and—”

  Hearing the edge to her voice, and seeing our startled expressions, Clare broke off with a dazzling smile, “—and being just adorable to yourselves. And nobody to tell you they love you no matter what.”

  Sonny Danto lifted his glass. In a hearty voice he declared, “I will drink to that, ma’am! Truer words were never spoken.”

  Next, Mom was given her Mother’s Day presents.

  Of course, Mom had told us not to bring her anything. Every year Mom insisted no presents, every year we brought her presents, every year she stammered in embarrassment, as sincerely as if for the first time, “Oh, you shouldn’t have. I…”

  The burning blush was in her cheeks, she was blinking tears from her eyes. Glancing about the room at her guests, pressing a hand against her velour top, she gave the impression of being uncertain where she was.

  I prodded Mom, a gentle little nudge on the arm. “C’mon, Mom! Open your presents, we’re dying of curiosity.”

  I meant to be funny. I was the only person who’d given Mom a wrapped present.

  Stiff-backed Aunt Tabitha had brought over a pot of pink mums with tinfoil twisted about its clay pot, which, with a grim smile, she’d presented to Mom in the way of one paying the price of admission—“From Walter, my youngest. In Sausalito, California. He won’t mind these mums going to you, Gwen.”

  “Why, Tabitha! Aren’t these beautiful! Thank you.”

  Mom accepted the pot of mums as if she’d never seen anything so exotic. She leaned over to smell the niggardly little bud-blossoms, though knowing that mums have no scent. Tabitha was complaining of her three children: “Now you’d think, wouldn’t you, but you’d be wrong!—that they would at least check with one another, to see what flowers to send me. Friday morning the delivery boy from Curtis Flowers comes to the house with a pot of mums wired from Wendy, in Toledo; Saturday morning, a second pot of mums wired from Aaron, in Scranton; Saturday afternoon, a pot of mums wired from Walter, in Sausalito. Can you imagine! Two pots of pink mums, and one pot of lavender. And the same identical size, which I happen to know, because I inquired, is the cheapest size for wired flowers, and the same identical note LOVE TO MOTHER ON MOTHER’S DAY, and the same identical delivery boy, I was mortified.”

  “Well,” Mom said. “Mums are very beautiful anyway, Tabitha. You should—”

  Tabitha interrupted sharply, “‘Should’? ‘Should’ what, Gwen? Be grateful as a craven little puppy-dog that my children have remembered me at all?”

  “Well—”

  “It isn’t as if they were actual children, for heaven’s sake. Wendy is forty-four, Aaron is forty-one, and Walter is thirty-eight.
And they did more or less the same thing last year, except it was azaleas they wired.” Tabitha drained her glass of champagne vehemently.

  From Alyce Proxmire’s hands came a cellophane-wrapped pecan-cherry kringle, an elaborately rich Danish pastry in the shape of a horse collar. At Mom’s gatherings, Alyce always brought pastries from a bakery in town, removed from the baker’s box and re-packaged in one of Alyce’s baking pans; Alyce had never outgrown a childish love of sweets, but couldn’t be troubled to bake. She was a plain-faced knobby woman with a fretful air, always ill, or convalescent, or “coming down” with something; shivering today in a baggy brown woollen dress, with a baggy white cardigan buttoned over it; the nails of her long bony fingers purplish-blue. Clare and I could recall our mother’s “oldest girlfriend” regarding us with looks of mild revulsion when we’d been small children urged to call her “Auntie Alyce” which we’d never learned to do convincingly. Alyce had never married of course. Alyce had had a “tragic” romance years ago. Alyce had been urged into early retirement as a public school librarian who’d been unable or unwilling to learn computer skills and who, at the end of her career, had developed a phobia about allowing certain students (germ-laden? destructive?) to check out books, or even to consult them in the library.

  Mom was saying, “Oh, Alyce! You shouldn’t have!”—leaning over to squeeze her friend’s icy hand. “Thanks so much, love. I’ve made peach melba for dessert, now we’ll have kringle, too.”

  Love! Clare and I exchanged a resentful glance.

  Lilja had made a watercolor card—HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY GRANDMA EATON!—that had obviously taken some time, and was embarrassed by our praise. From the rest of the Chisholm family came a comic Mother’s Day card, and a $150 gift certificate from Restoration Hardware in the mall. “Oh, Clare! Rob! Thank you!” Each year, practical-minded Clare gave our mother a gift certificate and each year Mom appeared to be pleasantly surprised.