Waiting at the Curb

My mother drove me to school that day.  I am going to St. Edward Catholic High School and at the time, I think I am a sophomore.  I hate this school.  I hate this school and I hate these kids and I hate dressing up and wearing these goddamn cloth neckties every day.  I don't look right in these clothes and I don't say too much about it to my parents, but I hate it more than anything else I can think of.  And the kids make fun of me.  But there is something I hate more than the clothes. 

These fuckers. 

I hate these fuckers. 

She pulls up and it is just me because my brother is still at the junior high school.  She sits there for a minute and I go to grab the handle and get out, and she says my name. 

She never says my name when I get out of the car. 

She just lets me go. 

She always just lets me go. 

I look at her and she asks me how I would feel if she were to leave her husband, my step-father.  She tells me she has been thinking about it for some time now, that she is not happy, and that Lisa, my step-sister, is old enough now to understand divorce.  

I just look at her.  

I've been through this before, although I was pretty young and don't remember all of the details of my mom and dad divorcing.  It was a good number of years ago.  I look at her still, not really believing that she is saying this to me, that Lisa is old enough to understand divorce. 

Understand divorce? 

Really? 

What's there to understand? 

That you're not willing to try anymore?  That you're actually willing to take that risk to allow your children with only one parent, when everything tells you that two is better than one; when you know for a fact, without a shadow of a doubt, that one and one is two?  

But maybe, I tell myself, maybe I am wrong.  Maybe I am wrong to want my parents to stay together if they just don't love each other anymore.  Of course!  For fuck's sake! Of course!

I look at her still and I know she is waiting for an answer.  Her face is wrinkled, deep lines like a crumpled piece of paper run over her cheeks, make creases at the corners of her eyes. 

Crow's Feet. 

They call them Crow's Feet. 

She looks old to me and I do not answer her, only shake my head and leave her there at the curb, watching me go and I remember that this is not the first time I left her waiting.  Back in freshman year, waiting at the front door and leaning forward to grab a kiss goodbye.  

Only I couldn't.  

The carpool had just pulled up and Becky and Joey D. were in there with Becky's mom and I could just hear the shit I would get if they knew I still kissed my mother goodbye.  Is this where it started?  

Is this the point, the crucial point where she began to pull away from me?  

Would she really think it was me pulling away? 

Shouldn't she know that this is only teenage stuff? 

That what she really needs to do at this point is hang on and never let go?

Force me to talk to her?

Force my brother and I to get along no matter how much we told her we hated each other? 

Force this goddamned family back together again? 

Couldn't she make that happen? 

Couldn't she?

Coupla' Days, Pt. III

It is night. Micki took the kids to her mom's house for a couple of days. It’s funny to me how she calls her mother "mom," while mine I call "mother." Seems impersonal, uncaring.

She sits across me from in our small but comfortable kitchen. I have made coffee, but only because I plan on having some. Though she drinks a mug of it, I do not make it for her. 
I hope she knows that. 
It's not something I can actually tell her without sounding like an idiot, though. "I didn't make this for you, you know. I'm not doing anything for you, you know." Yeah, that would sound real good. Not at all immature.

While the kids were here, my mother pretended to be asleep the whole time. 
"It must be hard, raising girls," she says now. 
Her voice is soft and gravelly, barely more than a whisper. I do not wish to engage in this conversation. I will not allow her to continue.

"I love them, mother. I guess you wouldn't know about that." I look her straight in the eye and I speak each word slowly, with conviction. I regret them almost as soon as they are out, as a tear spills to her lap and her face drops.

No, I will not allow myself this feeling. I have no right to feel pity for this woman. She's the one who did the crummy job raising me, the one who decided to move away when the going got tough, when she had made more mistakes than she knew what to do with. She cannot possibly provide me anything I don't already have in abundance. I will simply let her stay until I can figure out where else she can go.

Her head slowly rises from its defeated position. The tears have dried up, and I can hear her shallow breathing. We sit and stare at each other. Her eyes are glossy and she is far away. I wonder what she thinks, but do not ask. There is an impressive display of pill bottles set up next to her on a TV tray that I set up for her because I didn't want her wheeling around the kitchen, taking up everyone's space and making a nuisance of herself. Not that she could actually wheel herself.

And how did we get to this point anyway? When I glance up and look at her, and she's looking at me like this is the place for her, like this is what all kids should do for their dying and aging parents, I have to quite literally hold myself back from jumping up and wheeling her out to the curb.

No one else in the family could take her. That's what I'm supposed to believe. They actually said that to me, that I was the one who should take ma because I was the oldest, and they would do it too, had they the extreme misfortune of being born first. 
Lovely. 
What a prize for being first. I always thought it was supposed to be a trophy, a big ass-kicking, shiny, gold plated trophy with my name engraved on the front name plate, and the word "WINNER," in great big, shiny gold letters. 
Gee, I won. 
Yeah.

________________________________________________________________________

In the morning, I get up to leave for work and the phone rings. It's grandma.

"Well, how does she look?"

"Not so good, gran. All she does is sit in her wheelchair and look around the place or sleep. Wanna talk to her?" I honestly don't believe she will want to talk with her only daughter, but she surprises me. It is to be a morning of surprises, regardless of what I might have to say about it.

"Yeah, sure. Put her on." Rustling on the other end of the line, gran's poodle yapping away, grandma breathing her smoker's breath. Carlton Reds. I remember them well.

I bring the phone into my mother, who sits at the TV and stares at a blank picture tube. She looks up at me but I'm not sure she knows I'm there. I hand her the phone and go into the kitchen. I can barely hear her as she speaks to grandma.

"Ma? Yeah, pretty good. You? No, Ma, I don't want you to come over. I don't need anything. Yeah, kids are great. Such angels they turned out to be, huh? No, look, no, Ma, I really should hang up. I really shouldn't get into this with you."

She hits the off button on the cordless. For a moment I don't hear anything. I make another half pot of coffee and head to the door for the paper. 
A cold hand reaches out to touch me as I walk past. It feels like rubber, like a cold, rubber hand; a prank hand you'd buy at the novelty shop. 
I don't want to turn around. 
I don't want to see the tears well up in her eyes, sit and listen like a good son to her sorrows and all the things she regrets. 
I don't want to sit and listen to how much she missed me while I was growing up, how much she wished she hadn't made the choices she made, and how damn much she wants to be a good grandma. 
I don't want to hear. 
I won't listen to it.

Lowering my gaze, I note that her eyes are dry. Her lips, too. Her hand, the one on my arm, barely touches me, but fights to maintain some type of a grip.

"Johnny, when I go…” That is all I hear. I am outside for my paper before she gets the chance to finish.

At work later that day I think about ma. I think about how I walked out of the room on her, not a word of comfort from my mouth, not a word at all. She is dying and it's not like I didn't know that this was the inevitable end for her. For any of us, for that matter. But it was a different feeling, a feeling that it would go on forever, that she would live with us indefinitely, that maybe we would even talk peaceably. Maybe the girls would come to know their grandma, listen to stories from her childhood, laugh when they heard baby stories about me, like the time when I smeared poop on the wall next to my crib. I thought a lot about what could happen. I have dreams on many nights; forever it seems, about what it would be like to have a mother, a grandmother for my girls, a mother-in-law for my wife. Everything in its place, a place for everything.

________________________________________________________________________

The girls are still at Micki's mom's house. They called today to say they would be staying on a coupla' days longer. I sit here with a beer in one hand and a cigarette dangling from the fingers of the other. Billowy gray plumes of smoke drift up to the ceiling and linger there awhile, then disintegrate. Carlton Reds. The dark living room becomes sinister, obscure. If Micki came home now, she would probably think she had the wrong apartment because I don't smoke, only on occasions. I’m glad she won’t bring the kids home to this.

Mom died sometime during the day. I found her still sitting in the same position I had left her in this morning. Her head is covered. She wore the hat to conceal her head, bald from cancer. Her shriveled hands lie still in her lap, the urine bag and catheter lie on the floor next to one big wheel of her chair. I unhooked the dreaded contraption for her when I got home.

I take a drag from the cigarette, inhale deeply. I think about the smoke and how it rages through my lungs, looking for a place to hide, a place to sleep for awhile, the cancer soon to follow, claim my life, too. I think I'll sleep for a coupla' days, dream about my Mom and how it should have been, dream about the perfect place to scatter her remains. I try and remember why I had become so bitter, and realize that I cannot.

I'm glad the girls aren't here right now to see their grown daddy cry. My littlest angel always used to tell me she wanted to see my cry. She didn't think boys knew how. And to tell you the truth, I didn't think I would remember how. Certainly not over my Mother, anyway.

There is something so final about death. All the possibilities in life are taken away, all the chances you wanted to take, all the things you wanted to say, the people you could have comforted. I don't regret much about the way I have lived my life, about how unforgiving I may have been, how unwilling to take chances, give people chances. But looking at my Mother, her lifeless body slumped in her wheelchair, I think that maybe that part about my life has changed. I'll have to think on that one for a coupla' days.

Coupla' Days, Pt. II

The airport. 

Shiny, chalk white. 

Almost too white.

I feel like I am in a hospital waiting to be seen by a doctor. I don't like it one bit. 

And then I see her. Only what I’m seeing is not her; it can’t be her. 

It's a skeleton and I'm back in my room at the house on Chester Street. The skeleton moves slowly yet certainly and I know I will not be able to do a damn thing except lay there under the covers and wait until the vision fades. It comes across the floor and it jangles its bones. They clank together as they swing toward me and I begin to feel a wet spot between my legs where I have just pissed myself. 

And here is my mother as I am thrown back into reality. 

And I am repulsed.

She is wheeled across the shiny linoleum of the airport lobby area. 

The stewardess looks at me. 

And I don't move. 

I only stare.

Yes, she is my mother I want to tell the stewardess, only I don't want her. I smile at her. The stewardess, that is. She is pretty and I would rather take her home instead. Think of the fun we could have, you and me, I think. Dinner, movies, the beach, trips to foreign countries.

My mother motions to me. The stewardess turns and disappears, heading back up the tunnel to the plane.

Mother’s eyes are an uncertain color. Oily, dark, sunken into her head. Black rings engulf them, and the glasses upon her nose can serve no imaginable purpose. Her hands are shriveled, crippled, and there is a tube leading out from under her hospital smock. It leads to a bag under the wheelchair and as I watch, it fills some of the way up and still she motions for me to come closer.

I take large steps and quickly I am behind the chair, pushing her to my car, not wanting to speak to her. I only want to get her home before anyone sees me with her and I have to identify this hideous woman as my mother. If this sounds illogical, it probably is. It's not like I would run into anyone I know at the airport in the middle of the night on a weekday. Only I don't care, I am so damned ashamed of this woman.

We do not speak on the car ride back to the apartment. 

A one hour drive from the airport. 

I had no idea the silence could be so thick. 

It is rich and syrupy and I love it because I have no intentions of speaking with her. 

What would she have me say?

Once in the apartment, I sit and stare at her until light breaks through the living room shades. Micki doesn't ask why I did not come to bed the night before, and she keeps the kids away from me for most of the next day. I love them, I miss them, but I need time to process this thing that has just happened.

The phone rings.

"Johnny boy." An old childhood name only my brother can get away with, except I don't think it is all that funny at the moment.

"Lee, what do you want?" My mother sleeps across from me in her wheelchair. I don't know if she would have been more comfortable somewhere else for the night, but I didn't care enough to ask. It is 7a.m. and Lee is talking to me as if nothing has happened. Maybe in his life nothing has, but mine is a whole different story.

"John, what's ma doing?"

"I don't know."

"What? She's in a wheelchair, for God's sake; it’s not like she went out for the night. What time did you get in, anyway?"

"I don't know. Listen, can we talk about this some other time? Mick wants to go out today, some outlet mall. Will you be around later? I'll call you back." Anything I can do to get him off the phone.

"Yeah, sure. 

Listen, Johnny, you're a good son to take her in, man. 

You should know that."

I hang the phone back in its cradle and look at my mother. Her eyes are closed and her glasses rest in one hand. I have a sudden urge to snatch them from her and smash them under my foot. Elsie, my youngest daughter, creeps into the living room and sits next to me on the couch.

"Daddy, is that grandma?" She whispers this so close to my ear that I can feel her breath and my ear tickles and I love her so much that I don't want her to get wrapped up in all this... this crap, but I don't know what else to do. I nod my head. It doesn’t require much effort.

"What's that?" She points to the urine bag that is still only filled as much as it was when we came in last night. And then she notices her hat. "Why does she sleep with her hat on, Daddy?"

"Cancer, honey. She lost her hair."

"Does it hurt?"

"No, honey, it doesn't hurt." 

I wish it did, though, I want to add. 

I don't. 

Coupla' Days, Pt. 1

When my brother called to tell me my mother was dying, I didn't know how to respond.

Anger?

Frustration?

Pain?

Memories of ma came in waves, hitting me hard. It wasn't fair. What did he want me to do? See her? Call her? 

I hadn't seen her in all of ten years. You make life choices, you know? I mean, everyone has to decide where his or her own life is headed. And mine? Well, mine was headed nowhere fast and it was all because, at the time, she was in it. 

And then she left. 

Just left, one day when things got a little weird. Not to be seen nor heard from in ten whole years. 

And now this.

Coming from my brother, things didn't sound all that bad. Really, that's the way with him. I mean, his wife will go out and cheat on him, he’ll call me up the next day and say, "Johnny, she cheated on me. What do I do?" And that's it. No tears, no emotion, just a question. And he doesn't even take my advice, that's the real let-down with the whole deal. I told him I would kill her if it were me dealing with my wife, but what that means in the language of brothers is to find the guy, mess him up a little, and don't talk to her for a week or two. That should set them both straight.

He lets her off the hook with a couple of nights in the sack, and it's over. Man, I don't know how he could do it. Sleep in the same bed with her, I mean. That stuff is pretty hard to take, if you ask me. I don't deal with things all too well.

My mother is mean. She says one thing and means the other. 

My grandmother, her own mother, doesn't even like her.

"Your ma, Johnny, she's a rare bird, she is. What's the matter with her, doesn't even call me on my birthday? I tell you what, she's outta the will if I don't hear from her in the next coupla' days." 

My grandmother's a bit crackers herself, if you ask me. Always taking people out of the will, then putting them back in if they do something nice for her. Piss her off, though? You're out of the will. Nothing to it. Just like that with my grandmother. It kind of makes you wonder when she's going to kick the bucket, just to see if there really is a will. 

Sort of mean, I know, but look where I get it.

Anyway, my mother is baby-sitting one night - my wife and I, we hardly ever get a night to ourselves - and she brings a bottle of vodka with her. This wouldn't be so bad if my kids were older. But they're not. A one year old and a five year old can't take care of themselves all too well. So I tell her not to drink in front of them and maybe take it easy until we get home, we won't be too late. She passes out cold on the living room floor with the kids still up. I mean, they're climbing on her, my oldest daughter screaming in her ear, "Are you dead, Nana, are you dead, Nana?"

When I spoke with her the next morning, she was actually surprised that I would point the finger at her for being drunk and irresponsible. Accused me of being a bad son, that's how far she takes it. I haven't seen her since that night. And now this. 

Hate it Here

Her room is dark, an old pull-down shade hangs haphazardly from the curtain rod, clothes are scattered in multiple piles throughout the room, falling off of the rocking chair in the corner, lying in puddles on her dresser, her bed, her floor.  

And there is a stench.  

It is a strong, sour smell… something rancid.  

And there is the alcohol.  Jack Daniels.  

You hate it here.

She sits up in bed and motions you over.  She is smoking, and it is clear to you that she has been drinking for some time.  You are not sure how long you had been in your room, only that it had to have been for some length of time; it is deathly dark out.  The entire house is quiet and you wonder if your brother has fallen asleep.  You wonder if he is in his room, under his bed, the usual hiding spot when things don’t feel quite right.

You get as close as you dare, trying to stay out of her reach.  She wants you closer, tells you she’s not feeling all that well and that she’s not fucking around.  You move to the side of her bed.  There is a bottle or something shiny poking out from under the sheets, you can see that now.  You can also smell that the rancid stench in the air is coming from her.  As your vision adjusts to the dark, you also think one of her eyes is swollen shut, but you can’t be sure.   

-What did you do to today, Jordan. 

It is a statement, not a question, and you know that she knows about your dad moving and what you told him, but you play it safe.  Maybe she’s just drunk.

-Went to a movie.

-What else did you do, Jordan.

You don’t answer.  Scratch your nose.

-Went for some pizza, but Ben said he felt sick so we came home instead.

-So you know your father is moving.

Again, this is not a question.  She takes a drag on her cigarette - a long, deep drag that invades her lungs.  She exhales a great plume of smoke directly into your face.  It rolls out of her mouth, a dirty factory belching smoke into the polluted sky. 

-Yes, I know he is moving. 

-You also know that he doesn’t love you.  Or Ben.

You don’t answer.  You want to scream at her, tell her to shut up, that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. 

You don’t.

You stand there, frozen, not able to feel your legs.  You have the sensation that you may fall over, right onto the floor, spilling right onto the floor next to her and then what would she do?  Would she panic?  Would she leave you there?  Would she laugh?

-Jordan.

You hate her.

-Jordan.

Her words slur and the liquid from the bottle, you can see now, has spilled out and left a deep, dark stain on the bed sheet.

She has a hold on your arm.  Not tight, but she has you. 

You are not scared, but have an overwhelming feeling of sadness, of regret.

Regret for what?  What did you do?  It is not clear what you should be feeling, all of these things running around in your head, but it is definitely regret. 

Of that much you are sure.

Maybe because you don’t feel anything at all. 

Maybe it is regret that you don’t feel anything at all. 

Not even love. 

She lets your arm drop and does not speak another word.  The cigarette has gone out and is lying limp between two fingers.  You take it from her and place it in the overflowing ashtray next to the bed.  It topples onto the floor, the bedside table already full of whiskey and pill bottles, a mirror with a razor blade, cut up pieces of a drinking straw – the bendy kind -  and little specks of white covering everything;  you are not sure if it is the white of ash or of cocaine.  You are pretty sure, however, that it is not ash from her cigarettes.  

Another Untitled Piece

Your sorrow is too much to bear.  You look around the apartment, devoid of feeling.  You stare at rich colors of the paintings hanging on otherwise pale walls, finger the knick-knacks on the mantel of the fireplace.  You listen, wait, hoping for the thing that will make this right.  It does not come.  Of course it does not.

Only days before, you were out watering your garden, meticulously kept by you and only you, and envied by mother and all of the ladies she gathers with for brunch and whom she calls friends.  Your garden has been featured in numerous magazines, hailed as a “masterpiece of vegetative splendor.”  Your mother is jealous and no longer comes to see you.  This is how you would have it. 

Your thoughts turn back to him.  You are certain you loved him, at one point, at one critical juncture in your life.  Was it the point at which you realized you were pregnant for the first time?  For surely there could be no purer love than the love a man gives upon the birth of this, his first child.  Was it the time he brought home a bouquet of freshly picked flowers, yellows and pinks and oranges, all right out of Mrs. Pingree’s flower garden?  For surely no man in his right mind would risk being shot at while pilfering from the old lady’s precious beds. 

And there.  You have said it.  No man in his right mind.  Of course he wasn’t.  Couldn’t you see that?  Maybe you couldn’t.  Maybe it was you too blind to see the truth, that this one was incapable of love.  Or so you thought.

You walk to the kitchen, the counters are bare.  In the sink are dishes from the breakfast you ate by yourself and in the bathroom, towels still wet from the shower you took just fifteen minutes ago.  They hang over the shower curtain, pink and blue towels with little angels embroidered onto them, all in gold with silver lining.  And your bed, unmade, untouched, really, for you haven’t slept in two nights.  At least not here.

Untitled #1

He takes big swallows of hot coffee that she has made for him, opens his throat wide, his knobby Adam’s Apple barely moving.  The hot liquid does not seem to bother him so much, nor the fact that he drools as much of the liquid onto the floorboards as makes it down his throat.  The cut to his mouth has caused this, and although she has helped to suppress the bleeding, he still has not much use out of the mouth’s left corner. 

It is night - a great, big dark night with a piss-yellow moon hanging in the sky and not much in the way of stars that he can see.  He is on a porch that is not his, but that of the woman sitting next to him, a woman he met two days ago and has not said more than fifteen words to since she let him stay with her upon seeing his sad and broken face.  

And he knows he should probably say more to her, make her feel that he appreciates her generosity and kindness for making him a couple of meals and letting him use her shower, although he has not taken her up on that just yet.  He is not much for talking, though, and so he just sits with her and lets the night wash over them.  

It has been a couple of days and the really sad thing, the most horrible thing about this all, is that he really wishes he could go back and do things over.  Not that it would do any good.  Wishing to do things over requires that people wish to do things differently and he just could not see that happening.  She would still piss him off and he would still feel like killing her, and that was where any difference would end.  Right there with the whole killing part and he tells himself that he would not do it this time, would not plunge the knife into her heart and watch her sink to the ground and watch her look up at him with pleading eyes for the first time ever, and he tells himself that he would not be thinking it is a little too late for that honey.  That’s all I ever wanted from you was to look at me with eyes that were pleading - soft, sensitive eyes that do not lie and cheat and steal a man’s soul from the depths of his being.  No, things would be different were he given the chance to do it all over again.  He just didn’t know how and he was smart enough to know that this second chance would not come to pass.  There just are no second chances for men like him.

He looks at the woman sitting next to him and wonders what her name is, if she has any children or a drunk-ass husband who would come home any day now and stagger past them sitting on the front porch together and not so much as look at the two of them, and he would smell like beer and puke and sex and she would watch him stumble up the steps and normally go after him and scream at him about where he had been and all the time knowing that he would lie to her, but she would do it anyway.  

Except that this time would be different.  This time, she was sitting on the font porch with another man, and she didn’t know his name and he hadn’t asked her to sleep with him yet but she would if he did ask, just as soon as that drunkard husband fell flat-faced asleep on the kitchen floor. 

He wonders all of this as they sit here together.

Yet nobody comes home.  Not this night, or the next morning either.  They sit side-by-side in old wicker rocking chairs that creak like it is cicada season and stare out at the day growing new and don’t say a word to one another.  At one point he wants to reach out and grab her hand and see what she would do and what it would feel like but he doesn’t know her name yet and even men like him know to abide by certain rules of dating and just being with women in general. 

Eventually they go to the kitchen and rinse their mugs out with slow running water from a kitchen sink still full from breakfast lunch and dinner things from the last two days.  It is light out, morning now, and the sun is hazy and shaded and the day looks like it will never come to full light.  

He looks at her and wonders will she ask him to her bed or should he just rent some space on the living room floor, cold as it is on the bare floorboards and dirty too with filth plenty of days old he is sure.  He looks at her and wants to tell her how he is sorry for having to put her into this mess and realizing as well that it is not his fault entirely, as she is the one who chose to let him stay.  No matter.  She’s full grown, after all.  A woman can make up her own mind about a man.

He wonders does she have a phone, looks around the dingy kitchen where they stand, and realizes he hasn’t heard the annoying trill in the two days, now three, since they have lived together if you could even call this living.  He doesn’t ask her, only looks around some, and thinks that this type of woman probably has no use for a phone anyway if even she has electricity at all.  He trods heavily over to a sofa with a pattern of faded roses and doesn’t look back at her in the kitchen but knows she is there watching him, wondering about him.  He falls to the sofa in a dead heap.  Dust rises angrily and then settles back into crevices and onto surfaces, carefully covering everything, a soft blanket of dead skin and fragments of earth.

He dreams of the woman that night, alone in her bed, only it is not her.  And she is not, he can see as he creeps silently closer, alone.

When he wakes it is night again and he doesn’t know how long he has slept and he doesn’t know where the woman is.  He wonders what the townsfolk are doing, wonders if the discovery has been made yet, why no one has been to find him.  How long would it take?  Surely, it was only a matter of time.