Mothers and Sons
-James Valvis
All night long the argument was about money. My stepfather, who I called Dad since I was two, lifted his glass to a face that was splotched red and grizzled with brackish whiskers, which by luck happened to be his own face, and he swallowed a mouthful of straight rum. Mom sat across the new dining room table, as far from him as possible, and smoked Carlton 100s one after another. The dining room had just been remodeled. Beside the table, there were lots of new shiny chairs. A handmade china cabinet, intricately carved, stood against the far wall. The carpet was spongy and plush and hadn't yet gotten any cigarette burns. Gold in color, the carpet reminded me of an ocean reflecting the sun at dusk, when the beach closes down and the sand beneath your feet grows cold and hard. This scenery cost money. I was nine years old. Sitting in the parlor, adjacent to the dining room, I had no problem seeing and hearing my parents. I drank orange Kool-Aid, my least favorite kind, and I pretended to watch television. It soon rolled past bedtime, but no one said anything. I figured nobody would. Not tonight. I felt lonely. I wished my sister was home, but she'd convinced my mother to let her sleep over her friend's house. My sister prophesized my father's drinking binge. We all did, everyone but him. We didn't so much see it coming as we smelt it coming. It smelt like the new furniture and carpet, unnatural. "All you do is spend," he said. "And a man pays. He pays and pays. Pays through the nose. You'll send me to the damn poorhouse." Mom lifted her Carlton 100 and cocked her head to one side. She looked like Audrey Hepburn when she did this, if Audrey Hepburn ever stood in front of a circus mirror and made a funny face, and then she didn't look like the movie actress at all and instead looked like FDR. "I work, same as you," Mom said. It was the first thing she'd said in a while. Mom didn't talk much when Dad drank. Nobody did but him. "Maybe you're a man too," he said. My father sipped and shook his shoulders like one shakes off a sudden icy hand. Dad wore all black like his hero Johnny Cash, but that's where the resemblance ended. His hair was too thin up top and, though he sometimes tried, he couldn't play the guitar. Dad lifted his glass again. His sips were becoming enormous now. That meant he wasn't tanked but would be soon. "You're no woman, that's for sure." He added, "Give me a cigarette." "No," Mom said. Dad dropped his glass on the table and it wobbled in circles for a long time. When it had stopped moving entirely, my father reached across the expanse of polished wood for my mother's cigarette pack. But Mom was too fast and she snatched it back. After a moment, he dove to grab her ashtray. He missed. Then he started screaming. All his shouts fused together and became a soup of grunts. Mom held silently. They argued a full hour, my father drinking and screaming, my mother smoking and looking alternately like Audrey Hepburn and FDR. Nobody made any headway, nobody could, until Dad, sensing he couldn't win, struggled to his feet, walked into the foyer, and opened the door which led into the hallway. He called for his mother. Grandma lived one floor below us. That got my mother standing. "Don't call her, Robert," she said. "Don't you do it." Dad grinned. He felt he had her now, but after a moment of looking smug he looked poised to vomit. He rested one hand on the door frame to keep himself from falling. "Mama!" he shouted, as if the word itself would steady him. "It's none of her business!" "Mama! Mama!" "Robert, please." "Mama!" And then she was coming. Grandma. I could tell she was coming by the way my parents grew quiet. When I closed my eyes, I could see Grandma setting down her romance novel, inhaling and exhaling, savoring each petition for her attendance. I could see her walking across her apartment on scraggy legs, opening the door with bony fingers, and starting for the stairs. I could see her climbing the stairs slowly, in no hurry, almost soldier-like, her face as calm as ice. I could see it all perfectly, as though it were as fake as a movie, something rehearsed and performed. Mom retreated to where I was sitting. I stared up at her and she looked at me a moment, as if trying to guess what piece of new furniture I was, and then she sat on the sofa to my left. She was a short and fat woman with a chipmunk face. She wore polyester everything, bright purple polyester slacks below a floral pattern polyester blouse. The flowers in the blouse stretched to obscene proportions at the breasts and stomach, turning red into pink and green into lime. When she opened her mouth, a brown stripe of decay gleamed between two of her seven remaining teeth. I lay my head against her side and she began petting my hair. I could hear the workings of my mother's body as she breathed. It was loud and soothing. After they had talked for some time in the hallway, Dad and Grandma walked into the apartment. They looked like Grendel and his mother. Dad had a cigarette in his mouth now, one of Grandma's obviously, and he made a show of smoking it. Grandma was in her late fifties. Her face had grown so pinched over the years it looked carved from a corn husk, but her sharp eyes and hawk nose gave her the appearance of someone who always knew the time of day no matter the season. A hornet's nest of gray hair roosted on her head, twisting into a thin pony tail at the neck. The overall impression was that of a London barrister, a cranky one. Grandma worked at the Maxwell House factory canning coffee for a low hourly wage. Her husband abandoned her twenty-six years ago. She never got over it and she didn't intend to let anyone else get over it either. Looking into our living room, she glared at my mother, then occupied a seat next to my father and his bottle, her back turned to us. My mother pulled me closer. I listened for her breathing again but heard nothing. Now resting comfortably in her seat, Grandma began, "I told you not to marry her, Robby, didn't I? Her and her dirty kids. I told you. You should listen. You should listen to your mother." "I know, Mama." My father's voice was hollow and quiet and full of shame and phlegm and gasoline. Having been away from the bottle several minutes, he'd sobered a bit. He dumped another large glass of straight, no ice, and he had the alcohol to his lips before he finished pouring. "She came walking up the street," Grandma said. "Do you remember, Robby? She came walking high and mighty with those dirty spawn of hers. Kids got no shoes. Faces jellied with goop. Hair looks like they were flying Ben Franklin's kite. And I said to you, Robby, I said, tell me that ain't them. And you said they were. And I said what kind of woman you got yourself mixed up with? And do you remember what you said?" Dad flicked ashes on the carpet. "You said she was poor. That's what kind she was. You said it wasn't any crime to be poor. Lots of people are poor." She raised her hands high in the air, as if such a thing could never have been said to her, and then she lifted the bottle and filled my father's glass. "Well, I'll never forget it, what you said next. I said I understand poor, but what kind of woman has got two dirty kids, no shoes? What kind of harlot has kids like that and no man and no job besides. Do you remember, Robby? And you said, I'll never forget it, you said, Mama, you had three when Papa left you." Mom and I watched the back of her head shake side to side. I wondered if there were really hornets in there and if by shaking her head she could summon them to sting me. Then Grandma finished. "Now I have to listen to you fight night and day and see your life in shambles. We could be living like the royalty, Robby, you and me. What a way to treat your mother." Dad's chin fell to his chest and bobbed there five times. He didn't so much intentionally drop his head as he lacked the strength to hold it upright. Somehow he managed to hold onto his cigarette, which had died in his hand, an ash the length of a matchstick dangling from the filter. "You should be ashamed," Grandma said. My father looked at the ash and then he began to weep. His eyes, already bloodshot, didn't change much when he cried. They just flickered a couple of times. He looked like a bad movie actor trying to summon the right memory to bawl for a climatic scene. I watched a lot of movies when I was nine. "There now, it's all right," Grandma said. She stroked his arm, causing the ash to drop. Dad looked down at the spot where the ash had fallen, seemed poised to try to pick it up, but was stopped by Grandma. She moved in closer to him and regained his attention. With her free hand, she filled the one empty sip in his glass. I believe, if she could have pumped her withered glands full of rum, she'd have offered him her breast. My mother pushed me away and sat me up straight. I got a good look at her face. Her mouth was drawn in and her seven teeth were clenched. A small blue artery stuck out of her temple and pulsed like a worm. "You better get a bag ready," she mumbled, more to Jesus than to me. Her stare was fixed on the back of Grandma's gray head. "It's under my bed, packed," I whispered. "But, Mom, the van…" "What you need to do," Grandma said, "is turn them the way they came. Let her and her ragamuffins crawl back into their holes. Send them out into the cold. A woman like that and her dirty kids living in a nice place like this, it makes no sense." Then, shaking loose the hornets, she added, "You can't save the world. You know, Robby, in a little while that girl you claimed for a daughter will be old enough and she'll be saying you're doing things on her…" "That's it!" my mother yelled, standing. The force of her shout made me knock over my empty Kool-Aid glass. But Grandma merely turned, regarded my mother, and frowned at her like one would frown at a five foot stick of margarine that was going to melt all over the gold carpet. Dad's chin was on his chest again. He looked done, head bobbing like a baby's. Mom took a step towards Grandma and said, "You leave my kids out of it, you lousy, effin…" And then my mother spilled a series of curse words only a girl who'd grown up in the Duncan Projects of Jersey City would know. It was like another language, one spoken before there were cities, domesticated animals, and soap made from lye. When she was finished, she looked at me. "You get your bag. You get it now." "Mama's right," Dad slurred. "You ruined my life." "Kick them out!" Grandma said. "Go now, Peter." I ran into my room, pulled my suitcase from under the bed, grabbed my jacket from the closet, and when I got back into the living room I saw Mom and Grandma fighting over the bottle. My mother had the neck and Grandma was holding onto the body. Mom yanked the bottle side to side, but the old woman held on. "It ain't yours," Grandma screamed. "You leave it alone!" Grandma's body swung back and forth, like a piece of stringy dust dangling on a pendulum, losing more of her grip on the bottle with each sweep. Dad sat in his seat, too drunk to rise. Mom kept cursing, kept swinging the bottle and Grandma with it. My mother was small and fat, but she was strong, and finally she pulled a hand free. With one blow to the ear, Mom sent Grandma stumbling across the room and crashing into the china cabinet. Dishes slipped from their shelves and shattered behind glass. It sounded like cats trying to sing opera. Grandma crumbled to the ground. A teardrop of blood trekked a slow course down her right cheek. "Mama!" Dad said. He tried to stand, couldn't. He tried again and managed to get half upright, but then he tripped over his own feet, sending him screaming to the floor. Down, he tried to grab my mother's foot, but she stepped back and kicked his hand away like one would kick a squashed roach into a corner. Mom spit at nothing in particular and looked around the room. Her eyes focused on the bottle. It was sitting on the table and she reached for it and looked at the label. She smiled some kind of smile I'd never seen before, not on Audrey Hepburn, not on FDR, not on anyone. She laughed, as if to herself, quietly, a kid with a toy. Then she poured the bottle out on the new carpet, slowly, silently. She poured until it was empty, then said, looking at Grandma, "Good to the last drop." "You bitch," Grandma said. When my mother finished laughing, she tossed the rum bottle sideways on the table, then leapt over them and walked to the door. The bottle kept spinning on the table. It looked like that game Spin the Bottle. I waited for it to point at one of us, but it didn't. It pointed at one of the new chairs. Dad began weeping again. Grandma crawled to him, took him in her arms, and cradled his head inside her lap. He kept saying, "Mama, Mama, Mama…" And Grandma said, "Don't worry, Robby. Mama will get you another one. Mama will get you all you want. Don't you worry, Robby. Mama's here. Mama's here." "Let's go," my mother said to me. I stepped over my father's legs and pushed to the door. Looking back, I caught one more glimpse of them, my father and Grandma, entwined together with all that new furniture. Then I was outside. The streets were hauntingly quiet. The moon beamed the only light in the city and overhead the telephone wires glistened with frost. Mom searched her pockets for a Carlton 100, her hands shaking now, but she had left her cigarettes inside. She muttered another curse, which sounded like a one-word prayer, and told me to buckle my jacket. My mother wasn't wearing one. "Mom?" I said. "Where are we going?" "Nanny's." "The van's broken." "We're walking." And so we started. As we walked, I tried to grab hold of Mom's hand. For a moment she almost took it, then she slapped it away. A few paces later I tried to lean against her and she wouldn't let me do that either. I was cold. The night was dark and getting darker. The wind whistled into the shadows like strangers calling each other in a closed alley. Car headlights scanned the barren oak limbs, as if they were hunting small animals. They flashed across our faces and died away. I walked silently and apart from my mother, the city varnished in truck exhaust, each step lonely and frightening, but it felt good to be moving, to be alive and walking. I didn't look at my mother after the first block. Nanny's house was a long way off and to get there I'd have to be a big boy, maybe even a man. |