Instead of another book, because this is a very special occasion, you get to preview a yet unpublished short story written mostly by your very own baby girl. The first page or so is from a published story. Our assignment was to take it from that point, without reading the “real” one. I’ll tell you the exact point she ends and I pick up on the back of this letter, but you mustn’t read the back until you’re through reading the story. Do keep in mind, however, that it is my first short story.
Haven’t’ heard from you for a while. Trust everything’s going well. How’s acting class? Wish I could come to your first play. Hey, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it? You get to read my first story and I could see your first, shall we say, scheduled performance! I know. Have Kathy in the audience video-taping it.
Hope you like all enclosures. Have a real good time on your birthday!
Love,
Suzy
Aftermath
A few hours after my mother died, a friend of hers named Molly showed up in our living room and quickly turned her head left and right, taking in the plastic-covered furniture, the dustless parquet floors, the Wedgwood and Waterford carefully arranged inside the breakfront. “I’ll say one thing for your mother,” Molly announced to my brother and me, “she certainly kept a nice clean house.”
I looked at my brother, whose eyes were drowsy with grief, and hoped that he would tell her to go home, but Stephen only stared at the floor and slumped father into his seat on the couch.
“No one knows the right thing to say at a time like this,” whispered his wife, Annie.
“How do you know?” I said. “Why do you always have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt? You’re just like my mother,” I said, annoyed at them both, but mostly my mother for her unfaltering goodness.
I was almost twenty-five, and I still believed that my mother had loved me more than anyone ever would. Now there was only my father, who was what my grandmother called “peculiar”—a man who could get angry over anything and harbored grudges almost tenderly, every so often disowning another person from his life until there was only a handful of relatives left he was still speaking to. He knew nothing about the benefit of the doubt.
But most of the family came to the funeral anyway, for they must have known that my mother had shrugged off y father’s misanthropy, and they came to pay homage to her. They were also determined to help us through our loss.
“That family without Libby…” Alexandra, my father’s sister-in-law, shook her head at the enormity of it.
“We’ll follow them home and give them the comfort of our presence.” Never wasting an opportunity to direct the next scene, she had approached the twenty or so family members individually during that awkward period before the service began, while the rest of us played our roles in the present, giving and receiving condolences.
When my father learned of her intention and overhead her words, he said, “The comfort of their presence! To meddle’s more like it. I won’t put up with it.”
Until now, he had tolerated Alexandra’s lifework of arranging the lives of those around her because it had never interfered with his own, but now that it promised to, she too had earned his permanent disapprobation. And true to his words, when the service was over and the caravan arrived back at the house. My father took off. No one seemed surprised. No one even remarked about it, probably because it conformed to his familiar anti-social behavior. But I was angry.
“The least he could do in Mother’s memory is suffer the tedium of all this with the rest of us.”
Stephen looked unwilling to commit himself, so I continued.
“She was only his wife who for thirty years treated him like the god he thinks he is.”
But when Stephen still didn’t answer me, and instead looked around for Annie, I stomped away in disgust and sequestered myself in the downstairs bathroom. I was enraged. Everyone was betraying my mother. I gripped the rim of the white porcelain sink and stared at the quilted, red plaid skirt of the Scottish doll dressing the Kleenex box on the tank of the toilet.
“Stephen’s not standing up for you, Mother. Dad’s left the assemblage to go off to God only knows where, and Stephen won’t even be angry at him about it. But I am. You deserve better.”
I could see her standing in front of the kitchen sink, a slender figure in tailored yellow slacks and white blouse, washing the dishes after yet another meal of roast, new potatoes, carrots, and pie. Many years earlier Mother had bough Diet for a Small Planet, excited at the idea of cooking vegetarian, but my father had immediately put his foot down and demanded his daily pound of flesh.
She wore the faded but clean orange gingham apron that Stephen had given her two years ago for Mother’s Day that had printed across the front, “A Kitchen without a Mother Is like a Day without Sunshine.” Mother said she thought it was lovely, but as far as I was concerned, that was just another instance of Stephen’s emulating my father’s chauvinism, and at Mom’s expense.
“What about a father in a kitchen?” I had asked m brother after Mother had unwrapped the apron and was trying it on. “Is that not sunshiny enough for you?”
“But dads never some into the kitchen,” my brother responded, winking at Mother and glancing across the room at dad with a smile.
My father lowered the newspaper long enough to peer at me from above his glasses. Our eyes locked for a moment. Reluctantly, but feeling the superior person for doing it, I dropped my eyes and the subject so he wouldn’t get angry at my defiance and ruin Mother’s party.
“Dad was always so inconsiderate and domineering, Mom. I mean, reading at your party. Insisting only topics of his choosing be discussed. I’ll never understand why you let him get away with it.”
I stood still for a moment, trying to imagine her response. I pulled some toilet tissue off the roll, so I wouldn’t disarrange the doll, and wiped my eyes and nose.
She looked over her shoulder at me as she stacked the plate with the others in the drying rack.
She would have said what she always said when I criticized Dad or her or their relationship or her life.
“But, Honey, I’ve got what I want. I’m content with my life.”
He tone would be patient, never angry, never even sad. How she had infuriated me with her serenity and virtue!
I’d scream at her back, trying to force her to face me (and face the facts, as I saw them).
I’d die before I’d put up with such a life!”
Tears welled up in my eyes again. I took another yank at the toilet paper, but I was st5ill in the kitchen in the early evening after supper with Mom.
I’d say something just like that, wouldn’t I, Mom, but that was just a manner of speaking.”
She stepped to her left, picked up the roasting pan and cover and plopped them in the suds.
“Of course, it was, Margo. I know that. Don’t worry about every little thing. You’ll turn as grey as me before you’re twenty-five.”
I’d gladly be grey if I could only look as elegant as you.
I truly believed my mother was almost perfect, and that her one flaw was her complacency. Again and again I’d try to prove to her she shouldn’t be happy. My tirades were as constant as my father’s rudeness. Every night after he had finished the pie and coffee my mother served him, he would scoot his chair back from the table, and, without a word to anyone, head for the living room where he’d watch Channel 2 News and read the Chronicle. And I with religious fervor, would play my ordained role. Following his ritual, I’d recite my litany to Mother.
“Some husband. He never helps. He never even says thanks. He doesn’t appreciate you!”
If she saw I was especially upset by what I perceived as The great Injustice, Mother would take the dishtowel and dry her hands, and come over to me. If I let her, she’d push my long, stringy hair back behind my shoulders, cup my face in her hands, and smile.
“Just as I know you kids love and respect me, I know your dad…”
“No, Mom, that’s what I’m saying! You aren’t’ treated with respect. And you don’t even realize it. You’ve been thoroughly brainwashed to accept this shit, and you go even further and you think it smells sweet!”
Suddenly I felt a hot blush spread over my face and neck, and I looked in the mirror. I looked into my eyes, though them, and beyond. Now Mother was in the backyard, on her hands and knees, planting bulbs for the spring.
“But, Margo, you love me, don’t you”
“Of course I do, Mom.”
“And I know you respect me, even if you’re confused about it right now.” She molded the black soil around the flowers-to-be.
I stood there without saying anything. Again she was right. I was confused. She was so deserving of respect and admiration ad yet she didn’t get it, and she still stayed with him!
“Won’t these daffodils be pretty next year?”
“I refused to get sidetracked into talking about flowers. I didn’t answer her.
She wiped the dirty off the spade onto the flower bed, and again patted down the soil with her bare hands. She liked to feel the earth. “I’m from peasant stock, you know,” she’d say.
Sitting down in the dirty right where she was, she said, “Okay, you win.”
She untied the knot of her blue bandana from around her neck, and wiped her hands on it.
“We’ll talk about your subject.”
I watched her as she brought her denim-covered legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around him. I was trying to determine if she was just condescending to humor me. But when she looked u and smiled and said, “Sit with me,” I was pretty sure she wasn’t, so I squatted across from her.
“You’re an idealist, Honey, and I love you for it. You’re always trying to figure out what’s right and fair, and when you reach your conclusions, I know you’ll never abandon them. But, Margo, your truths aren’t necessarily the next person’s. Do you know what I mean?”
I gazed into her bright, almost black brown eyes as she looked tenderly at me, waiting for me to acknowledge what she’d said.
“Margo?”
Startled into the present, I found myself staring into the mirror. My face was blotched and glistening. The tissue in my hands was a wet glob.
“It’s Annie. Can I get you anything?”
I struggled to get control of my voice so she wouldn’t’ know.
“No, I’m all right. I just got lost in thought. I’ll be right out.” I waited till I heard her walk away before I turned o the cold-water faucet and rinsed my ace.
So she wouldn’t know! How ridiculous. My mother dies and I don’t want her to know I cried in private.
“H, what a fool.” I looked scornfully at my reflection.
The towel felt soft as I dried my face.
I waited a few minutes until my complexion returned to its normal consistent paleness. My eyes were rimmed in red, but there was nothing I could do about that.
When I returned to the den-kitchen area where everyone was mingling, I no longer was angry that they were there. It didn’t matter. I looked about the room. My glance was met with what others thought were sorrowful expressions; what did they know? I responded to as many as I could, and then I kept my eyes lowered to avoid the necessity. But my downcast eyes deterred no one from approaching me, and the drone of platitudes intoned anew.
Your mother will be missed by us all…”
“A dear woman.”
“She was devoted to you”
“A wonderful mother and wife…”
“Such a kind, generous woman.”
When Alexandra saw the swarm hovering around me, she ran over and, waving her arms, began shooing everyone away.
“Give the child some space, now.” She nodded to me. On her cue, I extricated myself and walked over to Stephen and Annie. Annie smiled reassuringly. I tied to smile back, but couldn’t’.
Mom.
I took Stephen’s arm, and learned against his shoulder.