A Stranger on the Planet

by Adam Schwartz

  “I canceled,” she said, burning a chain of holes through my name.

  “Canceled! What for? That’s thirty-five dollars!”

  She looked at me for the first time. “Would you please explain this, Alan?”

  “I explained everything in the letter.”

  “Everything? Really? I can think of any number of things you didn’t explain. Why you’re leaving me, for instance. Can you explain that? Am I really that bad of a mother?”

  “I told you I wasn’t rejecting you.”

  “Look, Alan. Let’s agree on one thing. Let’s agree you’re not going to treat me like I’m stupid.” She said this slowly and rhythmically, as if I was the stupid one.

  “Mom, I just don’t want to live here anymore. That’s all.”

  “That’s all? You think it’s that simple?”

  “I explained. I want to live with my father.”

  “Tell me the last time he called.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t call because he’s afraid you’ll sue if he says something you don’t like over the phone.”

  “Oh, I see. Now it’s my fault. I’m to blame because your father has no interest in you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then what are you saying? That I’m a failure as a mother?”

  “No, Mom. You’re not a failure. All right?”

  “Then why? Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Jesus, Mom. I just want to have a normal life.”

  “Normal!” she cried. “What’s not normal about the way we live?” “Everything! The cooking, the cleaning, the shouting. Everything!”

  “Who shouts?”

  “You do. You’re shouting now.”

  “Of course I’m shouting. My son tells me he doesn’t want to live with me anymore. Can’t I shout about that? Isn’t that normal?”

  “Mom, this conversation is retarded. I’m going back to school.”

  “And who asked you to cook and clean?” she shouted after me. “Not me. You love to cook. Or is that another thing to blame me for?”

  “Good-bye, Mom,” I said, walking out the door.

  “Don’t come back, you lousy child! Just see how well you can get along without me!”

  Before I began cooking and cleaning, my clothes always came out of the wash shrunk and discolored, sending me into fits most mornings because I was embarrassed to wear wrinkled shirts to school and my mother refused to iron them.

  “You iron them,” she would say. “They’re your shirts.”

  “But I don’t know how!”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Yes, you do! You’re supposed to know!”

  “I am? Where is it written that I’m supposed to know? Tell me? Where?”

  For supper she usually boiled pouches of frozen food, and even that gave her problems. “Oh, puke!” I’d say, pursing my face and coughing up a mouthful of half-frozen meatloaf.

  Once, on her birthday, I bought her a cookbook and pleaded with her to learn some recipes.

  “Oh, honey, I can’t deal with recipes.”

  “But why?”

  “Because nothing ever turns out the way it’s supposed to for me.”

  I began with simple dishes—baked chicken, broiled lamb chops and rice. Then I moved on to lasagna, curried shrimp, veal scallops with prosciutto, Grand Marnier souffés, and poached peaches with raspberry puree. I prepared some of my most inspired meals when my mother entertained Sidney.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” she would say, anointing herself with perfume as she watched me work in the kitchen.

  “It’s easy, Mom. All you have to do is follow the directions.”

  “Directions,” she replied, “bore me.”

  When my first day of school ended, I returned home as usual to begin dinner. Mrs. Gutman, my mother’s four thirty patient and close friend, was sitting on the couch. She was a stout Romanian woman with a collapsing beehive of rust-colored hair held vaguely together with hundreds of bobby pins. “Hello, darlink,” she greeted me, her accent falling with a thud on the “darlink.” I could tell by the sad cast of her eyes that she knew all about my letter.

  Mrs. Gutman had been seeing my mother longer than any other patient. Her fifty-minute sessions sometimes lasted for two hours and she would call at three and four in the morning when her nightmares frightened her awake. The ringing phone always exploded in my ears. I would sit up in bed, my heart beating violently, as if it were connected to the phone with jumper cables. I couldn’t hear my mother’s words very clearly, but I would lie awake for hours listening to the dim, low murmur of her voice, a sound as comforting as the patter of rain after an electrical storm.

  Mrs. Gutman was the last scheduled patient of the day because her sessions went on so long. Usually I would be preparing dinner when they finished, and Mrs. Gutman would crowd into the tiny kitchen to sample and advise. Pressing her bosom against my rib cage, she stirred, tasted, lifted covers off pots, and inhaled deeply. “No, darlink, you must do like dis one,” she’d say, sprinkling paprika into a stew that I had delicately seasoned and simmered for hours. “Great! Now you’ve ruined it,” I’d say, hurling the wooden spoon into the sink.

  “No, darlink, was too bland. Taste now.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’ve told you my name is Alan.”

  “Yes, Alan, darlink.”

  Later, after Mrs. Gutman had left, my mother would say, “Why do you have to be so mean to her? Because she’s my friend? Is that why?”

  “I’ve told you not to analyze me. I’m not your patient.”

  “You can’t give me credit for my successes, can you? You know how important I am to Mrs. Gutman, but you won’t give me credit for it.”

  “Mom, she’s your patient. She shouldn’t be wandering into the kitchen. It’s unprofessional.”

  “Mrs. Gutman is one of my dearest friends.”

  “Well, she shouldn’t be. You’re her therapist. You’re not supposed to be her best friend too.”

  “Where is it written that I can’t be both? Tell me! If Mrs. Gutman values my friendship, who are you to tell me I’m wrong?”

  That afternoon, Mrs. Gutman stayed only for her scheduled time. When my mother came into the kitchen, I was already eating my dinner, poached turbot. She joined me at the table with peanut butter on stale white bread.

  “That smells delicious,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “Can I have a taste?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m seeing how well I can get along without you.”

  “Oh, really? Who paid for that?”

  I pushed my plate over to her.

  “Look, honey, I’m sorry I said that. The truth is I can’t get along without you either.”

  “Mom, I just want a change.”

  “But you don’t have to leave. I can change. I’ll change. You want me to cook? I’ll learn to cook. I’ll be the best cook in the world. You don’t want me sleeping on the couch? I won’t sleep on the couch. I’ll rent an office in town. How’s that? You’ll never have to see any of my patients again. Just tell me what you don’t like.”

  I was staring down at the table. Without looking up, I replied, “Mom, I’ve decided.”

  She yanked me by the elbow. “You really think some judge is going to send you to live with your father because you say you want a change?”

  “Do you think there are any judges who don’t know about you?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean all the lawyers you’ve spent the night with.”

  She slapped me across the face. She had never hit me before, and she began to cry, holding her hand as if she had burned it on something. “You’re just like everyone else,” she cried. “You’re all the same.” I had hoped my mother would just boot me out, hurling suitcases and insults at me, and when she thought to call me back, to apologize and argue some more, I would already be ensconced at my father’s house, too far
away to hear a thing. But after my father sued, I barely heard her voice. At dinner, she would occasionally glance up from her plate and look at me oddly, as if I were a stranger she had just found sitting at her table. If I attempted conversation, she’d either ignore me or say, “Ask your father.” I felt sure her silence was purely strategic; I felt certain that if I told her I was changing my mind, tears would well up in her eyes, all would be forgiven, and she’d vow to change. Some nights, though, after I was in bed and she called up Mrs. Gutman, her voice sounded extremely faint, more so than usual. I kept changing the position of my head on the pillow, but I couldn’t tune her in, and after a time she faded out like a voice on the radio during a long drive in the middle of the night.

  At the end of September, my mother and I visited her father in Florida. He was a dentist and we saw him twice a year to have our teeth fixed and to be reminded of things we were not supposed to do. I was not supposed to eat sweets because my teeth were low in calcium. My mother was not supposed to “use” cigarettes in public or tell anyone she was divorced. For some reason, he thought it was less embarrassing to introduce her as a widow.

  “Your grandfather doesn’t know about our problems,” she said to me on the plane, “and I don’t plan on telling him.”

  We always went to Florida at the wrong time—either in May or late September, when the air in New Jersey was most delicious, when the perspiration on your face was cooling as a breeze. Usually we stayed only for two or three days, sunning by the pool of his condominium or accompanying him on the golf course for his daily 6:00 a.m. game. My mother didn’t play, but he was adamant she come with us, as if she might get into trouble if she was left alone. By the thirteenth hole she was desperate for a cigarette. She’d quickly light one up as my grandfather was bent over the ball. He’d catch a scent of it and stop his stroke. “Sandra, how many times have I asked you to refrain from doing that in public?” Once the cigarette was lit, she would become calmer, drawing deeper into herself with each drag. “Sandra!” She’d let a long, elegant ash drop to the green.

  “Sorry, Daddy,” she’d say in a bored voice, as she grasped my shoulder for support and twisted the cigarette out against the bottom of her shoe.

  On this visit, we went straight from the airport to his office because a tooth had been bothering her for weeks. My grandfather ushered her into the chair and instructed her to remove her lipstick. She pressed her lips against a tissue, leaving a red O-shaped print, and then she gave it to my grandfather as though she were handing over her mouth. “Sandra,” he said, over the whine of the drill, “have you heard from the Yoskowitzes’ son?” Both his hands were in her mouth and she moved her head from side to side. I sat in the dental assistant’s chair (my grandfather thought he might inspire me to become a dentist), where I had a direct view of the bloody saliva swirling around underneath my mother’s tongue. “No? Maybe he’ll call you when you get back. I gave your number to Jack and Bea to give to him. He lives in Jersey City and sells hospital equipment. They showed me a copy of his tax returns, so I know for certain that he earned $81,000 last year. He thinks you’re a widow so don’t say anything to disappoint him.” Her eyes widened with hurt. I wanted to do something. Unclasp the towel from around her neck, give her back her mouth and tell her, Run, I’ll meet you at the airport. “Let’s just hope,” he continued, “he doesn’t mind that your teeth are so stained with nicotine.”

  She raised her hand for him to stop. “Daddy, I really don’t want to hear this today. My life has been really shitty lately, and I just don’t want to hear this.”

  My grandfather held the drill in the air and looked up, like someone about to begin conducting an orchestra. “Some days,” he sighed, “I’m almost relieved that Rose is gone.” I watched my mother’s eyes brimming with tears. When my grandfather noticed, he reached for a needle and asked her if she needed more novocaine.

  A month before the hearing and two weeks before my bar mitzvah, I went to see a court-appointed psychologist. Florence Fein’s office, in a red Victorian house, was a large room crowded with old furniture, Oriental rugs, stained glass, and antique lamps. She served me lemonade and asked me what I would like to talk about. I told her I couldn’t think of anything.

  “Why do you think you’re here?” she asked.

  “Because I have an appointment?”

  “Perhaps you can tell me why you don’t want to be here.”

  “Because there’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “You don’t have to have something wrong with you to go to a psychologist, Alan. Most people come here just to figure things out.”

  “I don’t have anything to figure out. I know I want to live with my father.”

  “No one is keeping you here. You’re free to leave.”

  “Then you’ll tell the judge I have to live with my mother.”

  “Alan, my job isn’t to penalize you for anything you say. If you really don’t have anything you’d like to discuss with me, I’ll just write in my report that I couldn’t draw any conclusions.”

  I was uncomfortable with Florence Fein because I could never say a bad word about my mother to a stranger.

  “If I go right now, is my mother still going to have to pay for the time?”

  “Yes. How do you feel about that?”

  “Bad. She’s spending a lot of money for nothing.”

  “Do you always feel bad about your mother’s actions?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Do you think that’s going to change if you live with your father?”

  “I don’t know. . . . Don’t you think people can change?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t be in this business if I didn’t think so.”

  I understood then why Florence Fein had a more successful practice than my mother. Florence Fein really did believe people could change. The word didn’t hold the same meaning for my mother. When I thought of her pleading, “I can change! I’ll change!” the words sounded to me like “I’m in pain! I’m in pain!”

  “Alan, you probably know that your parents’ divorce was very bitter.”

  “Yes. So?”

  “Do you think your father has put any subtle pressure on you to come live with him?”

  “Did my mother say that?”

  “Not at all. As a matter of fact, she argued that your father wasn’t all that interested in having you live with him and that you might be deeply hurt once that became a reality for you.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “She said she’s failed at everything she’s ever tried and doesn’t want to fail as a parent.”

  The day before my bar mitzvah, my mother informed me that she planned on coming. I acted surprised, but deep down I had expected it.

  “You’re not religious,” I argued.

  She was driving me to the Port Authority to catch the bus to my father’s town.

  “You know this isn’t about religion. You just don’t want me to come. Admit it.”

  “But you’re always saying my father’s friends are against you. You’ll have to face all of them if you come.”

  “And so why should they be at my son’s bar mitzvah and not me?”

  “Mom, that’s not a reason to go.”

  “Oh, and are your reasons any better? You just want all your father’s friends to think you’re more your father’s son. You want them to think, ‘My, hasn’t he turned out so nice and polite despite his mother.’”

  “I’ve told you not to analyze me. I’m not your goddamned patient!”

  We entered the Lincoln Tunnel, and I was truly afraid she would order me out. We hadn’t talked that way in months. But she didn’t say anything until we pulled up to the terminal. “Talk to your father that way sometime,” she said, “and see how long he lets you live with him.”

  That evening Phyllis fixed a traditional Sabbath meal. My father invited six couples from his synagogue to join us. They were too interested and too familiar with me, as if I were a disfigured child
and they were pretending not to notice. Before we had finished the soup and melon, they asked me which subject I liked the most in school (social studies), whether I was a Yankees or a Mets fan (neither—the Dodgers), whether I, too, planned on becoming a rabbi (no—either a lawyer or a chef). Everyone gave me a pained smile. I was thinking of the last elaborate meal I’d prepared for my mother and Sidney, and how I loved standing in the kitchen with her, minutes before he came to the door. My mother and the pots rattled with expectancy: Would this be the man to stay with her, to adjust our haphazard course? The kitchen smelled rich with promise, as if the scent of her perfume and the odors of my cooking held the power to transform our lives, to transport us from our crowded, chaotic apartment into a large house where we all had our own rooms, where my mother would be calm, secure, loved.

  After we returned from services that evening, I told my father and Phyllis that my mother would be showing up the next morning. They looked at each other.

  “Oh, Alan,” my father sighed. “Couldn’t you have done something?”

  “No, Dad, she wants to come.”

  “Doesn’t she know how uncomfortable this is going to be?” Phyllis added.

  “Mommy, who’s coming?” Leah asked.

  “Nobody, dear. Nobody.”

  The next morning I stepped up to the Torah and saw my mother sitting in a row of empty seats. She waved at me like someone in a lifeboat attempting to fag a distant ship. Everyone’s eyes moved from her to me. I brought my tallis to my lips and began chanting in a language I didn’t understand. After the service, she rushed over to the receiving line and reclaimed me with a long embrace. She had not held me or kissed me for months. Several people waiting to congratulate me formed an uncomfortable semicircle around us. She tightened her hold, as if I were a charm to ward off bad spirits. People began to file away and then we were standing alone, like two people who had wandered into the wrong celebration. Then Phyllis came over to tell me that the photographer was set up for a family portrait. My mother squeezed my elbow.

  “You stay right here, Alan.”