Chapter Twenty-One
Bryan no longer bothers to ring the doorbell like a proper guest; he has a key and simply appears inside, unannounced and always breathless. I assume it must be his job, which is always compelling, demanding. Exhausting. It keeps him away for days at a time only to spit him out now and then, wild-eyed and panting, always when least expected.
This morning, my son slides open the door and calls my name. Again, he is a surprise.
“Mom,” he calls out, his voice like a song. “The life of the party is here.”
Jewell answers. “We’re on the patio. You’re just in time for coffee.”
“Excellent,” Bryan says, sliding open the patio door. “Just black this morning… I need all the go-go juice I can get.”
He bends down to kiss my cheek. “Hey, Mom… how’s my favorite gal?”
“I wouldn’t know about your favorite gal,” I say. “I, however, am fine.” I throw my head back and strike a movie star pose; I splay my fingers open like a fluttering fan.
“Very cute,” he says, sliding his lips across my cheek. I want to hold his soft mouth endlessly to my searching cheek.
Bryan slides a chair away from the table and folds his long legs easily into its shape. Jewel brings a steaming cup of coffee and a white linen napkin.
“Thanks so much, Jewell,” he says. “Please, join us.”
I look down my eyelids as Jewell flutters briefly and then slides into a chair.
“I like her, you know,” I say. “Very much, in fact. But does a Southern lady allow such familiarity with her woman? I’m just asking.”
“Of course, Mom,” Bryan says, leaning into his coffee. “A Southern woman has all her women sit at the table with her.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Really.” Bryan winks toward Jewell, which abruptly stops me from commenting about Mrs. McKenna who, during my childhood, never allowed her domestic help to “sit table,” as she called it. I assumed it was so the lady’s conversation wasn’t disrupted by either the beauty of their skin or the wisdom in their words.
“In fact, Jewell needs to be part of this conversation because it involves her time,” Bryan states.
“Her time is best spent singing. Wouldn’t you agree, Jewell?” I reach out and pat her arm. The warmth of her skin soothes my fingers.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jewell says, casting a broad smile across the table. “Yes, indeed. More coffee, Bryan?”
He waves away the coffee pot. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’ve found a terrific way for Jewell to have more time for singing.”
“More singing time? Goody!” I clap my hands. “We should sing now. Sing something for Bryan. Go ahead, sing.”
“Maybe later, Mom,” Bryan says. “We’ll sing later. Here, look at this. I brought a brochure for the Golden Years Day Center. They have a great daycare program with various classes for all levels of people. They even have dances and daily luncheons.” He pulls a folded paper from his pocket.
“Now, why would we have my woman go to daycare?” I say. “She’s needed right here. First you bring me a woman that I don’t need and now that I do need her, you want her to go somewhere else?”
“No, Mom. It’s for you. Look, look here at the pictures in the brochure. Doesn’t this look like a nice place?”
Bryan unfolds a glossy advertisement with colorful pictures of people dancing and eating and smiling. “Why ever would I go to such a place? It’s not nice at all. It’s full of… of… old people. Look at them! I don’t eat with old people and I certainly wouldn’t dance with the likes of these people.”
“May I see those pictures?” Jewell asks.
Bryan hands the brochure to her; she turns it over in her hands, looking thoughtfully. “I see what you mean, ma’am. Yes, there are some older people here. Now, here’s what I wonder when I look at the pictures of these nice-looking folks. I wonder if they need a young woman like you to show them how to dance Southern style. I’d bet anything they don’t know how a proper Appalachian woman does a jig.”
Jewell hands the brochure back to Bryan.
“I see what you’re doing,” I say, pulling my eyes into narrow slants. I push myself abruptly from the table. “You’re evil… both of you. Evil! You’re trying to get rid of me so you can have my house and my things and my cat!”
I turn and head for the patio door. My fingers fumble with the screen door latch.
“See here,” I yell. “You’ve already locked me out of my own home. You’ve changed the locks. Help… help me, someone!” I call into the sky and over the backyard fence and into a tree where I see a squirrel running the length of a long branch. “Help me!”
“Mom.” Bryan reaches me in one step. He catches up my wrists at the narrow places where the skin sags away from the bone. He pulls me to him. “Stop this. We’re not trying to take your home. How could you think that?”
YOU SCREAM. You scream into your head and into the air because you don’t recognize the man who, with the web of his large hands, has taken hold of yours like they are tender, fragile birds. You struggle to free yourself. He is a stranger to your eyes and to your heart. You know he has locked you from your home and from your thoughts and he has a woman with him who is in on the dirty deed too. Your eyes scan for escape, but there is none. The man calls you his mother, the woman refers to you as ma’am. You would tell them your true name, your lack of relationship, if only you could remember who and what you are. The man looks at you and his face shatters into a thousand pieces. It’s only then you recognize something familiar about the man—the man—oh, there he is! There’s your son.
“Mom, it’s me… I’m Bryan. Don’t you know me? It’s me.” His face pulls into a tight mask of sorrowful skin, redeemed only by wide blue eyes now filling with tears.
“Bryan!” I smile. “Of course I know you, you silly boy. When did you get here?” I lower my voice into a conspiratorial whisper and pull myself up and into his ear. “There are people trying to take me away from my home,” I say. “You need to stop them.”
“Let’s go in the house. Jewell can make us a nice lunch or something… okay, Mom? Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Bryan cups his hand around my elbow to help me inside. I know we’ve just had an awful moment and my heart feels as if it has split apart, causing a chasm to form deep in my chest; it’s as wide as anything I’ll ever know. I step inside the house, trying to decide on which side of my heart I stand. I hope it’s the safe side that still contains at least a modicum of restraint and good charm, although I can’t figure out why I should feel so ashamed of myself.
Jewell hurries to the kitchen and soon I hear her stirring a lusty song into the soup pot. Bryan settles me in my chair and John Milton the Cat comes from the nether reaches of the house to find my lap. For the time being, my heart has scotch-taped itself into a ragged, yet passable piece of equipment.
By the time Jewell serves lunch, I’m happy with peaceful thoughts. I’ve discovered lately that if I close my eyes around these tiny fragments of peace like I’m wrapping myself beneath the blanket of my eyelids, the posture seems to help me feel safer. I hear Bryan shifting carefully in his chair so not to awaken me.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m still in here.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
My beautiful, dear children,
I’m not certain how to address this delicate issue except to simply come right out with it. You should know that your mother is a fraud, a charlatan, a complete fake. I can envision you as you read this, shaking your heads in disbelief. After all, we’ve been so careful during those delicate times when we’ve needed to hold each other up to the light and peer through one another until we’re satisfied that what we see is the truth of one another. We’ve spent countless times measuring and comparing and filtering through every possible way in which to gauge each other’s weight and worth.
In every way, I suppose I was a good mother—except, perhaps, for the one way that
most mattered: mathematics.
I want you to remember that it was your father who curled his round arm around you at the kitchen table, your faces crumpled around all those math problems that seemed so much larger than your small bodies. It was your father who walked you through mazes of word problems and equations.
It was your father who suffered your tearful wails of I don’t get it, while I offered nothing more than well-timed handfuls of tissues and plates of cookies.
On those days when your father traveled for business, instead of urging your little hands to open your math books, I gave you crayons and coloring books. I gave you scissors and glitter, paper doilies and brightly colored sheets of construction paper. I gave you finger-paints.
Sometimes we heaved the living room furniture aside and set up a tent on the floor. We lined it with blankets and pillows and then crawled inside to eat bowls of ice cream and play flashlight wars. We made up rhymes and stories. We baked little cakes and poured chocolate sprinkles over them. We played dolls and trucks until your eyes turned red with sleep. We took up scissors and clicked and clicked them in our hands until we created scores of paper dolls and winter snowflakes.
We made tea parties.
We did all those lovely things. But never—not once—did we ever sit bravely at the table to spread open books filled with frightening strings of numbers and equations and terribly confusing word problems. It was in that regard that I was a cowardly, diminished woman in front of your innocent souls.
For that I am sorry.
I should have prepared you for life with numbers. I should have held your tiny shoulders and taught you how to measure and count and perform the task of what your MeeMaw and PaaPaw would have called ciphering.
I meant no harm. Still, I went weak when your eyes widened at the thought of working through problems, especially when there were pages to color and cupcakes to devour and tents to crawl inside.
When your father would return from his trips, you would once again sit straight at the dinner table, books open like butterflies, your eyes set doubly hard at your tasks. I would circle the table without coming close enough to be found out for my neglect.
I hope you’ll remember your father’s generous hands around your little shoulders, his earnest eyes as they poured over your problems with you and how his face would light with delight when you got it. Oh, please remember those things when next you need to balance your checkbook or determine the percentage for a proper tip in a restaurant.
It was your father who taught you those things.
Sadly, I played no part.
With great sorrow,
Your mother
I don’t know where to place the regret that seems to be suddenly spilling out of my heart and splashing to the floor of my soul. So much regret, indeed! From where does it all come? And why should a small letter from my own hand turn my face into a grimacing mask of tearfulness?
I refold the letter and place it back with all the other letters that seem now to be nothing more than a collection of all the regrettable parts of my life. I decide I hate them. I want them, each and every one, burnt until they are nothing more than wisps of blackened ash floating into the sky where the wind can carry them off.
I put my letter box away and go to the kitchen where my woman is making some sort of meal. She is working a knife over a carrot, cutting it into round slices, presumably for the dinner salad.
“I need matches,” I say to her. “Now, please. Matches.”
I pace while I wait for her to accommodate me. She continues to finish slicing the carrot, slowly, carefully, and then maddeningly reaches for a stalk of celery. I march to her side and hold out my hand. “Matches!”
A whisper of a smile enters her face. “I meant to get matches for you, ma’am, but the store was all out.”
“I don’t believe you. Do you know to whom you’re speaking?”
“Of course, ma’am.” A smile continues to curl just at the corners of her lips. “You are Lillie Claire Glidden and you want matches.”
“That’s right. You won’t forget that will you?”
“No, ma’am. I’ll not forget it.” My woman turns to me and allows her smile to unfurl, fully and brilliantly, until I’m bedazzled by its wonder.
“Thank you. I’ll be going now,” I say. I return to my room where I stand in front of my dresser mirror and sway gently to the lingering breeze of my woman’s smiling face.
Sometime later I move to my door and place my ear on its cool surface. My woman’s songs spill into the air while she works in the kitchen. I hear running water as she wipes up, then quiet footsteps in rhythm with her song. It sounds like a gospel hymn, but I’m not familiar with the melody. I decide she’s making it up as she goes, much like a prayer. Through the muffle of my bedroom door, it sounds like she’s singing in tongues.
My woman moves through the house, starting the clothes dryer, straightening magazines, completing her dinner preparations. All the time, she sings. She sings.
She sings.
When at last she softly knocks on my door to announce dinner, I am ready for her. I’ve washed my hands and slid my reddest lipstick over my mouth. I’ve put my hair up in pins and straightened my clothes.
Jewell opens my door and smiles at me. “My, but don’t you look beautiful this evening, ma’am,” she says. “That’s a lovely shade of lipstick. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair up like that. Very beautiful, ma’am.”
I pat my hair and smile. “It’s for you. Because I love you.”
“I love you too, ma’am. Dinner is served now.”
Jewell takes me by the arm and leads me to my place at the table. She helps me into my chair and lays a soft cloth napkin across the front of my blouse.
All through dinner and continuing after, when my woman turns on the television for me, I spin out thoughts of love for her. When she readies me for bed, washing my face, urging me to brush my teeth, helping me into my nightgown, I continue to assert my love. I tell her over and over that I love her. I smile into her face. I touch her hands and pull them to my chest.
I love. I love.
I sleep with murmurs of love dripping from one corner of my mouth—it is wet and slides down my chin and onto the sheets.
Through the night, I sleep and dream the tossing dreams of the forgetful. When my woman comes to wake me in the morning, she stands beside my bed with her hands folded into comfort and helpfulness. But when I open my eyes, I’ve forgotten all about the night’s dreamy vows of love for her. I’m once again soiled with anger. Covered with despair.
My head fills with the heat of fire and remembrance for something very different from the love and dreams that had trailed after me all through the previous night.
My woman leans down to unstick me from the tangle of my sheets. “Where are my matches?” I scream into her startled ears. “I need my goddamn matches.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
YOU FUSS. You fuss until your woman and any neighbor within hearing range are well aware of your displeasure. You thump and stomp and sigh with great heaving puffs of breath. No one pays attention. For all your efforts, the sun continues its upward momentum, opening the morning and bringing you closer to your first half-day at the Golden Years Day Center of Greater Sacramento. You push your woman’s hands away. You stiffen and refuse to let your legs slide into your pants. You fight with the sleeves of your blouse. You twist your head back and forth until brushing your hair is impossible. In spite of your moaning protestations, your woman buckles you and your twisted pants and your wildly combed hair into the car. You proclaim victory over the Golden Center of Whatever-It-Is all the way until your woman spins you into a parking space and you realize you’ve been had. You’ll forever think of her as a clever fox who promises with her grinning teeth and sly winking eyes to swim gullible rabbits to the other side of the river.
My woman steers me through the doorway into a large building; it is bustling with people and bu
rsting with the voices of strangers. They smell of gray hair and muscle ointment. They are a pungent people and I’m terrified I’ll be left with them forever. We approach a woman who smiles from behind a large desk. Her teeth are immensely large for her small face. My woman introduces me.
“Good morning, Mrs. Glidden,” the woman says, looking at a clipboard in her hands to confirm my name. I wish she would stop smiling so her teeth would go back into her head. “We’re so glad you could be here today. May I call you Lillie?”
“No, you may not,” I say. “My name is Lillie Claire.”
“Of course… what a lovely name,” the teeth say.
I narrow my eyes toward her. “Are you a swimming fox like my woman?” I ask.
The teeth disappear for a moment, only to reappear again, more pronounced with laughter sharpening their edges. “No. But I am a dancer,” the woman says. “My name is Suzanne. Would you like to see our dance room?”
“What for?” I ask. I realize I’m clutching my woman’s hand with frightening fierceness.
“They would like you to demonstrate how a Southern lady might dance,” Jewell says, her eyes sparkling promises at me. Such foxes. Such wicked, wicked foxes, carrying me into this river of unfamiliar people.
Suzanne of the Terrible Teeth speaks again. “Oh, yes. Please. We really need you to show us. Will you, my dear?”
“Only if you’ll not call me your dear,” I say.
“Well then… that’s wonderful,” Suzanne gushes. “Follow me, then, and I’ll introduce you around.”
Again, my woman steers me as we move down a hallway teeming with more gray-haired people—some toddling behind walkers, some bustling on their own steam. One man sits in a wheelchair with a strap around his chest, presumably so he won’t fall out, but more likely so he won’t run off. The dull oak floor is old and scuffed, like the people who shuffle along its path.
We are a great migration of people; we travel mere blocks away, into the craft rooms and dining halls of senior centers and care homes. We’re dropped off by private cars and designated vans with motorized wheelchair lifts and, once inside, we move along a warren of trails that lead us in, but never take us anywhere.
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