Missing Mom: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Gladys began to cry. I held her, and comforted her, and managed not to cry. Not just then.

  “sorting through”

  Next morning, Clare was at the house when I arrived.

  It was 8:20 A.M. The front door had been opened wide, as if to welcome me. Radio music was playing inside, loud. Cardboard boxes and cartons had been stacked just inside the vestibule. There was an air of bustle and excitement as my sister swept at me, hugging me in a rib-bruising embrace even as, in virtually the same gesture, she pushed me away, laughing: “Sweetie, you look like a ghost. For heaven’s sake, this place isn’t haunted.”

  It wasn’t like my sister to be so effusive greeting me. The quick little hug was in mimicry of our mother’s hug but neither of us seemed to know how to perform it, without Mom.

  Clare was looking herself. Nothing like a ghost. Her fleshy moon-face had been made up to appear poreless and of no age unless you peered closely, which of course you would not. Her mouth was a moist red wound. Her eyes glared like reflectors. For our day of scruffy work sorting through Mom’s things she was wearing a crisply ironed white cotton shirt tucked into belted trousers. The trousers were herringbone, with a sharp crease. All that was missing was a perky little Ann Taylor matching jacket.

  “Well, come on. I’ve been wondering when you’d get here.”

  Clare grabbed my hand, unexpectedly, and pulled me toward the back of the house. This was Mommy-Clare, as she’d been with her children when they were younger. I had a vague jangled impression that furniture in the living room had been pulled out from the walls and slightly rearranged. The bulky carpet had been partly rolled up, exposing bare floorboards. In the TV room it looked as if cushions had been removed from the leather sofa and Dad’s well-worn recliner chair and then carelessly replaced. In the center of the dusty TV screen was a glaring yellow Post-it.

  “I’ve been tagging things. I’ve been clearing out closets. As soon as I arrived, I threw open every door and window to freshen the air. In Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom—well, you can see! I’ve been laying out things for us to decide what to do with: what one of us might want to keep, what we can sell to a thrift shop, and what to give to Good Will Charities for their resale store.”

  Clare spoke energetically, hands on her hips. I was disturbed to see our mother’s clothes in a heap on the bed. Mom’s familiar “outfits,” some of which she’d sewed herself. And underfoot, wire hangers Clare must have dropped without noticing.

  “What’s this, Clare?”

  It was a creased photo of Dad as a young man in his early thirties. I almost wouldn’t have recognized him: his hair was thick and dark and grew in startling sideburns on his cheeks. His smile was faint, as if about to be sucked back into his cheeks. His eyes were quizzical, bemused. Who are you, what do you want of me? he seemed to be asking.

  On the back, MARCH 1972 had been noted in pencil.

  “I found it beneath Mom’s pillow, Nikki. I wonder how long she’d kept it there.”

  Beneath Mom’s pillow! Oh.

  I turned my attention to the clothes heaped on the bed. I was blinking tears from my eyes. Our parents had never seemed to be sentimental about wedding anniversaries, or about each other, at least not in our presence. Dad would not have wished it.

  A refrain of Dad’s when we were growing up was Now don’t make too much of things!

  I said, “Why Good Will, Clare? Shouldn’t Mom’s things be donated to her church?”

  “No.”

  “‘No’? Just—‘no’?”

  Clare was being stubborn, I knew that bulldog set to her face.

  “But you know she’d want that, Clare. She was always giving the Christian Fellowship things.”

  “I don’t care what Mom might want. She was deceived by those people, you know how credulous she was. I will have nothing to do with that charlatan ‘reverend’ of that charlatan ‘church.’ Kindly do not mention that man’s name, or the name of that church, in my presence ever again.”

  It would only have provoked my furious sister to point out that I hadn’t spoken Reverend Bewley’s name or the name of the Mt. Ephraim Christian Life Fellowship Church.

  “He’s lucky that I haven’t sued him. If it wasn’t for you and Rob, I would.”

  Clare had me drag more cardboard boxes into our parents’ bedroom. Underfoot were plastic garbage bags looking hungry to be filled as boa constrictors. Smaller boxes, some of them containing Mom’s jewelry, were on the bureau; this was an “heirloom” bureau, solid carved mahogany that had once belonged to our father’s parents.

  Briskly Clare said, “We’ll divide the jewelry. Mom had only a few good things, most of it was costume jewelry, and ‘crafts.’ She didn’t itemize anything in her will. You have your favorite pieces, and I have mine, and they’re not likely to be identical.”

  “Lilja will want something of her grandma’s, too.”

  “Oh, Lilja! Of course. I can pick out something for her, I suppose.”

  Everywhere were Clare’s Post-its. On the bureau mirror, a yellow Post-it. Another on the headboard of the bed. On the shade of a not-new bedside lamp, a green Post-it. “Red means good enough for one of us to keep, yellow means ‘sell!’ and green means ‘donate-to-charity.’ I’d appreciate it if you didn’t switch the Post-its around, Nikki, any more than you have to.”

  Mom had been one to use Post-its in her attempt to organize the chaos of domestic life, but Clare, even as a child, had soon surpassed her. By the age of eleven, my sister had become obsessive about keeping lists—tasks, homework, favorite friends, clothes-to-be-worn-in-rotation-at-school—which she kept posted on the walls in her room.

  Some of the Post-its Clare was handing me now looked as if they’d been pre-used, and replaced in the pads. Several had even been written on and the words neatly crossed out.

  Meaning that Clare was so frugal, she saved old Post-its. Dad, who’d saved “lightly used” tissues and paper napkins, would have been pleased.

  “Be sure to tag everything, Nikki. Don’t just toss things into a box. I know, there’s so much! You have to just narrow your eyes, like looking through a rifle scope, and proceed! I have about fifteen boxes here, I’ll get more if we need them. Rob says, ‘Remember, you can’t save everything.’ He’s right, we don’t have room. And you don’t have room. Beautiful old things like this mahogany bureau—we have to be merciless, and sell them. In Mom’s will she left us everything fifty-fifty but really, Nikki, you can take as much as you want of these ‘personal belongings.’ We’ll sell the car, assuming you don’t need it, now you seem to be driving a decent car and not that rust-bucket Datsun, and we’ll split the money, whatever it is. Rob says he’ll make arrangements with the Honda dealer. I thought this morning we’d start with easy things, lighter things like clothes, bed linens, Mom’s arts-and-crafts, and later we’ll get to the furniture and appliances. Mostly everything will go, I think. Not that Dad’s and Mom’s things aren’t attractive, in their way, but, well—they wouldn’t fit in my house.”

  I heard a faint prideful emphasis to my house. Often I’d noticed this curiosity in my sister’s speech: my house, my children, my life. As if Rob Chisholm wasn’t really involved, essentially.

  So too Wally said of his marriage: he’d become the man-who-pays-the-bills. All-purpose smiling Daddy.

  “Nikki, come help! Don’t just stand there.”

  Clare spoke briskly, shoving boxes out of the way, carrying another armload of clothes out of a closet to let fall onto the bed. I’d been turning in my hand a tortoiseshell hand mirror Mom had kept on the bureau, so old its glass had become spotted, that had once belonged to Grandma Kovach who’d died before I was born. Now I turned to stare at Mom’s lime-green velour top, slipping off a hanger on the bed. It was the one she’d worn on Mother’s Day: the last time I had seen her alive.

  And there, the stylish linen suit Mom had bought to wear to my cousin Judy’s wedding a few years ago. There was a straw hat to go with it, festooned with iv
ory-colored flowers.

  On the floor, about to be tangled in Clare’s feet, a poppy-colored silk scarf I’d given Mom as a birthday present, back in high school.

  Clare said, scolding, “Put that leprous mirror in the trash, Nikki. There are more shoes in the closet and here’s the ‘old shoes’ box. Don’t bother tagging the worst of these, just dump them. Oh, so much dust! Mom would be mortified. I never realized how she’d been keeping so much, and Dad was just as bad. I’m terrified of the attic, what we’ll find there. It’s like an archeological dig. Can you believe, Dad’s horrible old scuff-moccasins were still in his closet? It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. And those pointy-toed high heels of Mom’s, that must date back to the 1970s. Sweetie, no. Don’t put this stuff in the green-tag box, I’d be ashamed to take it to Good Will. Just put it in the garbage bag, for trash.”

  “All of it? These shoes—”

  A pair of “pumps.” Medium heel, black patent leather just slightly cracked. Except the pumps were size four, and except I never wore patent leather, they’d have been perfect for me.

  Clare laughed as if she’d only just thought of something.

  “A close call, Nikki! When I pulled into the driveway about an hour ago there was Miriam Pedersen putting out the trash, and gaping at me. I hope I wasn’t rude but I practically ran into the house pretending I didn’t see her. The last thing we need this morning is nosey neighbors barging in to ask ‘Can I help?’”

  I hadn’t told Clare about Gladys Higham. I would shield her from the knowledge that our mother might not have died, if Gladys had been a little nosier.

  After Gladys Higham, I’d gone home the day before.

  I’d walked the sobbing woman across the street to her house and driven back to Chautauqua Falls, exhausted.

  Gladys of course it isn’t your fault, don’t think any more of it Gladys please! You know what Mom would say.

  Of the messages on my answering machine Clare’s had been the longest and most agitated. I listened to it several times, fascinated.

  “—crisis week for Lilja. I can’t sleep past dawn anyway. These bright sunny mornings my brain just clicks on. June is a crazed month, anyone with children will tell you. I get up at dawn, I make my lists for the day. I had every intention of getting over to the house, believe me. I make breakfast for my family not that anyone eats at the same time and not the same breakfast certainly. A crisis for Lilja is a crisis for her mother believe me. All very trivial you’re thinking but if you’re thirteen nothing is trivial so please don’t ask me! I promise, I’ll be at the house tomorrow. I’ll get there early and get things started. I hope you’re not angry with me, Nikki, because I can’t take that right now. I’d have called you on your cell phone but you neglected to give me the number. Look, I’m sorry! We’ll make up for lost time tomorrow. Rob says, the sooner we get the house on the market the better, what with mortgage interest rates—”

  I hadn’t seen Clare since the court hearing. Most of our telephone calls were messages now. I couldn’t determine, listening to this disjointed message, if Clare was somehow angry at me, or just sounded that way.

  Lately I’d been having the thought: without Mom and Dad, what were Clare and I to each other, really?

  You couldn’t say we were friends. If we’d have been cousins, neither of us would have been the other’s favorite cousin. If we’d been in the same class at school…

  I was still bristling at the flippant way in which Clare had referred to Wally Szalla as a “type.” When I’d asked her what she meant, she’d only just laughed evasively.

  I was a little vain about Wally, I guess. His prominent family, his reputation as a well-to-do civic leader in Chautauqua Falls. Other men I’d gone out with, whom Clare had met, had been more my age and more my “type” but Wally Szalla was special.

  This was obvious! A few minutes in Wally’s company, you were utterly charmed. It infuriated me, Clare was reluctant to acknowledge the fact.

  When we’re married, you won’t need to see us. Maybe I won’t invite you and Rob to the wedding, you’ll be spared the embarrassment of declining.

  “Nikki, wake up. You look like a zombie.”

  Clare laughed, exasperated. Nudging me in the small of the back as she’d done when we were girls, to rouse me.

  It was nearly noon. We’d been working for hours. My eyes burned and my hands were covered in grime and my knees ached like hell, from squatting so much. I’d been falling into an open-eyed trance as Clare puffed, panted, grunted, shoved, and charged about with her Post-its, sticking them on helpless stationary objects. I halfway expected to see a green Post-it on my forehead: “donate to charity.”

  I resented the way Clare was consigning most of our parents’ clothing to “sell” or “donate” or “trash”—the way, if I seemed to be hesitating, she snatched an item from my hands and dealt with it herself—yet I knew, of course I knew, that Clare was right. In our history together, Clare was always right.

  It was only logical. We had to clear out the house. To whom could we give, for example, Dad’s old sport coats, his “dress” shirts, his black-watch-plaid flannel pajamas? To whom, Dad’s many socks? (All neatly paired by Mom, of course.) No relative, including Rob Chisholm, would have cared for Jonathan Eaton’s navy blue suit with the wide lapels or his spiffy royal blue bathrobe with the gold-tassel belt, nor would anyone have coveted the handsome “hunter green” mohair sweater Mom had knitted for him, now riddled with moth holes. (In fact, Dad had rarely worn this sweater. A massive project for Mom, who’d knitted it in secret for his birthday. But Dad had a chronic “itchy skin,” he preferred cheap Orlon or cotton-knit sweaters, better yet no sweaters at all. When Aunt Tabitha chided Mom for going to so much trouble, for such a fussy man, Mom had protested, “But people can change. If they try.”) There were well-worn belts of Dad’s, with jagged holes. There were dozens of neckties on racks: wide, narrow, dark, “cheery,” silky and woollen and “braided.” We’d given Dad many neckties over the years and each necktie had represented some sort of hope or gesture but most had been consigned to the nether regions of his closet for he’d worn only a few of them, which resembled one another. (I’d have selected some of the ties I’d given to Dad, to pass on to Wally, except I dreaded a catty remark of Clare’s.) I did keep out for myself Dad’s silver cuff links, initialed JWE, and two nice tie clips, since Clare didn’t want them.

  “Isn’t it strange, Nikki! Mom kept all this. You have to wonder why.”

  I didn’t have to wonder why.

  Hard as it was for me to dispose of Dad’s clothes, it was much harder to dispose of Mom’s. Especially those she’d sewed or knitted herself. There were “outfits” here dating back to when I’d been in middle school, at least. Each had been an occasion, and each had seemed very special at the time. If Clare wasn’t vigilant, I retrieved items from boxes to reexamine. If I stuck red Post-its on something Clare protested: “Nikki! That isn’t your taste at all. Lavender? ‘Pretty pink pastel’? You with your pierced ears and punk hair, you’ve got to be kidding.” Or, meanly: “Sweetie, you can’t seriously think that could ever fit you. Mom was a petite size two, practically a midget beside you.”

  I resented Clare’s tone. Midget!

  Clare was just jealous, those hips of hers. The last time she’d fitted into a petite size two, she’d been eleven years old.

  “All right, Clare. Not dresses, and not skirts. But shirts are different. Mom and I were almost the same size except in the bust. And sweaters. Especially a cardigan, like this. Isn’t it beautiful? And it has a belt. The one Mom knitted for me in this style, its belt has been lost for years. Look at the fine stitching, something I could never do.”

  Clare laughed as if I’d said something witty.

  “Nikki, I wouldn’t think so. Knitting and crocheting are hardly your talent.”

  I resented Clare’s superior tone. “Are they yours?”

  “Well, I was knitting for a while. In middle school. M
om tried to teach me, but it didn’t turn out. I was supposed to be knitting a sweater and it kept getting bigger and baggier, it would’ve fit Aunt Tabitha if I’d finished it. Such a pretty shade of purple, though.”

  I protested, “Clare, that was my sweater. I knitted that baggy thing. Remember, you all teased me about it? Mom tried to help me but finally we gave up. I was so frustrated.”

  “Nikki, that wasn’t you. Don’t be ridiculous, you’d never have had the patience to knit a sweater.”

  “Actually, Clare, you never had the patience. I liked to help Mom out around the house, for years. Mom taught me to knit but she never taught you.”

  “That’s just wrong. She did.”

  “Maybe for a day. Maybe for an hour. Then you lost patience, you’d get angry when you couldn’t do something perfectly.”

  “That was never an issue for you, Nikki: doing something perfectly.”

  We were laughing, but the air between us had grown tense. How smug Clare was, how complacent and mistaken! I happened to know that she was wrong about the sweater. I was the one who’d labored at knitting the purple-baggy-sweater-for-Aunt-Tabitha, for weeks when I’d been in sixth grade. Clearly I remembered choosing the yarn, with Mom, at a little store called the Sewing Box: a beautiful heather-purple shade. Except somehow I’d tugged at the needles, and stretched the yarn, and finally I’d thrown away what I’d knitted in disgust.

  Clare said quietly, stubbornly, “Mom told me not to be discouraged, we could try again. But I gave up, I guess. I was in eighth grade and getting involved in school politics.”

  School politics! She’d run for class secretary and had won by a handful of votes.

  “Clare, it wasn’t you. Really, it was me.”

  “Mom would remember.”

  “Absolutely, yes. Mom would remember.”

  The impulse was to call for Mom, since we were here in Mom’s house.

  In fact, in Mom’s bedroom. Why?