About My Mother

by Peggy Rowe

  I looked at my mother in great anticipation, knowing that Cousin Jimmy stood a better chance of being served an appetizer of fried tarantula than he did of getting a glass of wine in our house. The mere presence of alcohol in the pantry would be a corrupting influence on two innocent children.

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy,” Mom said. “We don’t keep alcohol in the house.”

  “Why don’t you just turn your water into wine?” I was using the flippant tone I had adopted when addressing him. Again, no credit for a biblical reference, although there was a hint of a smile on Dad’s lips.

  Then Jimmy said something shocking.

  “I saw you riding your bicycle, Peggy. I’ve never ridden a bike. Is it fun?”

  This confirmed what I had suspected all along: my cousin had been raised in a jungle by chimpanzees. Naturally, I didn’t voice my thoughts; I didn’t have a death wish. Instead, I said, “But . . . everybody knows how to ride a bike.”

  “Carl and Peggy would love to teach you,” my mother said, while I gagged on my beef.

  For the next two afternoons, Dad and I ran alongside my wobbling bike like we were Secret Service agents protecting the president. Just when it looked like he might be getting the hang of it, he ran straight into the gutter that ran in front of our house and flipped over the handlebars.

  “Riding a bicycle is too dangerous for an adult,” he said, picking himself up. And that was that. So, with a touch of cruelty, I told him that my father loved nothing better than taking a spin along Leslie Avenue on my bicycle in the evening.

  I envied Janet. “Just ignore him,” she’d tell me. “Be polite, and pretend he isn’t even here.” That was easy for her to say. She’d soon be leaving for college, and I’d be stuck sitting across the dinner table from a honking hypochondriac.

  Halfway through the summer, Jimmy was hired by the Board of Education. If I thought he had enjoyed a privileged status in our house before, his position now could only be described as exalted. While I was picturing my cousin entertaining a class of junior high-school students with his barnyard impersonations, my mother was holding him up to me as a model of success.

  “See what an education can accomplish?” And then, just as boys graduated from knickers into grown-up long pants, Cousin Jimmy graduated to a grown-up name.

  “It’s time we started calling him, Jim,” Mom decided. “It’s more befitting than Jimmy for someone of his position.”

  My father took Jim car shopping and gave him driving lessons. Thanks to his patience, Dad was everybody’s driving instructor of choice. Jim’s 1950 chartreuse convertible with leopard skin seat covers stood out in our dull, middle-class neighborhood like a belly dancer at an Amish funeral.

  The day he finally got his license—after the third try—Jim put the top down and corralled our family for a victory lap. Janet and I sank low in the backseat alongside Mom, and Dad tried to look calm as Jim barreled toward stop signs laughing like a hyena.

  It was at one such stop that I would feel a rare, close bond with my sister. Janet was always sweet and kind to me, but we shared little besides a bedroom. She was popular and active in normal teenage pursuits while I ran the streets impersonating a juvenile delinquent. As my mother held onto the strap by the window, my ladylike sister put her lips to my ear and whispered, “He thinks he’s hot shit!”

  I jerked my head around and gave her a wicked grin. If she was looking for an accomplice to help her kill him in his sleep, she needed to look no further.

  Mom’s comment was more diplomatic when we returned to the curb with thumping hearts and Phyllis Diller hairdos.

  “Well, you don’t lack confidence, Jim. I’ll give you that.”

  I looked at Janet hopefully in case there were other insights she wished to share, but that was the extent of her disdain.

  At about this time, I had two close calls that put an end to my crime spree. One evening when Dad was at Lions Club, my mother sent me around to Baker’s Store for a loaf of bread. On the way, I rang some doorbells, jumped over the railings, and scampered off like a common criminal. Coming home, I gathered handfuls of pebbles and threw them onto our neighbors’ roofs, then lurked in the shadows as porch lights flickered on. When I opened our kitchen door, my mother was on the telephone.

  “No, Mrs. Smith, we haven’t had any problems with the neighborhood children. Well, I’m sure you’re mistaken. Peggy wouldn’t do anything like that, but I’ll ask her if she knows who did.”

  Without looking at me, she took the bread, the receipt, and her change.

  “Mrs. Smith says somebody has been throwing stones at her house again. She thought it might be you.”

  I shook my head no and frowned at the very thought.

  “I told her she was mistaken.” And then my mother looked deep into my eyes. “Because it would hurt your father to hear that you had done something like that. And I know you wouldn’t want to hurt your father.”

  Saying nothing, I ran up the stairs where I fell onto my bed crying. Everything was wrong. I longed for Chico and Maresy Doats, to brush their coats and feel the warmth of their breath on my cheek and to canter around the field. And now, the thought of hurting my father was too much to bear. As usual, my mother had seen right through me and forced me to take a look at myself. What I saw wasn’t pretty. When I remembered the trash can I had overturned in the street minutes earlier, I felt a new shame.

  One thing I was sure of: I had thrown my last stone, rung my last doorbell, and dumped my last trash can. I had already thrown my last tomato at a car the night I hit my target, and a man slammed on his breaks and chased me down the dark alley. He was quick as lightning, but I knew the neighborhood like the back of my hand and lost him when I skirted a barbecue pit and jumped a fence on Linhigh Avenue. Still, I had lain awake all night with my eyes wide open.

  In the days that followed, I took Janet’s advice and tried to ignore Jim’s flamboyance behind the wheel dressed in a ridiculous black turtleneck and jaunty beret. I even forgave him for invading my territory, stealing our record player, and monopolizing the bathroom. But when he stole my most treasured possession, it was impossible to look the other way.

  Topper and I were the Lassie and Timmy of Leslie Avenue. When he wasn’t racing beside my bike or hiding behind bushes with me during nightly games of Redline, he was stretched out on the floor at my side while I struggled with arithmetic.

  Jim had coveted my sleek whippet from the day he arrived, calling him a noble beast and saying, “Topper has the demeanor of a royal palace dog.”

  “Hey,” I said running down the stairs one afternoon. “Jimmy just put my dog in his car and drove off with him! He can’t do that!”

  My mother wasn’t worried. “Jim thinks a lot of Topper. He’ll take care of him.”

  I didn’t blame Topper. As far as he was concerned, riding in a car beside an open window was right up there with raiding neighbors’ garbage cans after dark and slinking onto soft, upholstered furniture when my mother wasn’t around.

  Before long, Jim began enticing Topper to his room and subjecting him to the likes of Bizet or Olivier’s Hamlet.

  “He’s holding my dog captive!” I grumbled. “Topper’s probably on his bed right now eating cookies!”

  “Don’t be silly,” my mother said. “Jim knows the rules.” What she meant, of course, was, “Jim is a responsible schoolteacher; he doesn’t break rules.”

  That very evening while my parents were figuring estimates and typing bills at the dining room table, I was struggling with square roots alone on the floor and thinking how unfair life was. Suddenly, a blood-curdling shriek sent us flying up the stairs to my old room.

  My parents stood gasping in the doorway. “What in the world?” my mother asked.

  “Is everything okay?” asked Dad, fanning the air. I arrived in time to see Topper leaping from the bed, having heaved the contents of the Smith’s garbage can onto Mom’s cherished heirloom spread—not that you could appreciate the colorful embr
oidered flowers at that point. Blaring from my record player in the corner were the dramatic strains of Ravel’s “Bolero.” As my parents forced open the windows, Jim pushed me aside, gagged, and flew down the hall.

  I tried not to gloat when I joined my mother at the kitchen table for a cup of hot cocoa before bed. Seeing the uppity schoolteacher get his comeuppance was going to be delicious.

  “I don’t believe I ever told you about Jim’s father,” Mom began as she stirred her drink. She looked tired from the massive cleanup, as Jimmy had not quite made it into the bathroom before losing his supper. Her expression was sad, and I was afraid she was going to tell me something that would make me sympathetic toward the peculiar relative who had made my life miserable.

  I heard a story about an abusive, alcoholic husband and father. A father who had beat his sickly son for falling into a well. When the father died young, the son was raised by his overprotective mother and spinster aunt. It must have pained my mother to speak of relatives in such a way.

  I would understand later that this was an explanation for the tolerance my mother had shown a nephew who was a little peculiar.

  I was twelve the year I learned tolerance for a fellow misfit, a relative who was still finding his way. It was the year my mother learned that teachers are human. Of course, I already knew that.

  Mom had been right about Jim bringing us culture. He introduced me to my favorite new song, Ravel’s “Bolero.”

  Paradise Found

  Sashaying around the neighborhood in a provocative fishnet blouse like a prostitute on the prowl was out of character for me. Yet it’s exactly what I did. Who could believe that such promiscuous behavior would have such astonishing results?

  At thirteen, Laverne and I weren’t as close as we’d been as kids, but we had maintained a friendly relationship of sorts—despite the fact that I had convinced her that piano lessons were great fun (kind of like Tom Sawyer had persuaded his friends that whitewashing a fence was fun). She didn’t hold it against me since her mother wasn’t as steeped in culture as mine and allowed her to stop the lessons when she’d had enough. By the same token, I didn’t resent Laverne because my mother had always held her up as a model, saying things like, “Peggy, you could look as pretty as Laverne if you used your hair brush.” I heard this as she was wrestling my hair into braids, comparing my hair to Brer Rabbit’s briar patch.

  Polite and ladylike, Laverne was still the gold standard as far as Mom was concerned. A month earlier, she had practically forced me to accompany my old friend to the new community teen center. For two hours, I stood awkwardly on the sidelines like a scarecrow in a cornfield while Laverne made easy conversation with boys. I watched her dance to the music of Patti Page and Nat King Cole, her curly blonde ponytail swaying back and forth like the metronome on Mrs. Schiffler’s piano. It was my first and last visit to the teen center.

  “Hey, Peggy, let’s take a walk to the five-and-dime,” Laverne called to me from her front porch one day. You-know-who was thrilled and gave me an advance on my allowance. At Woolworth, we were mesmerized by a window display of flashy, seductive shirts. Perhaps it was the colorful elasticized tube top that caught my attention or maybe it was the overlay of what looked like the netting my Uncle Charles used for catching menhaden fish. It was my first experience clothes shopping, and I felt quite grown up as I plunked down my allowance beside Laverne’s.

  I was pretty sure my sophisticated sister wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a sexy fishnet blouse, but she had just left for college in Virginia, so I wouldn’t have to answer to her. At thirteen, I had become an only child with a big bedroom all to myself, twice as many chores as ever, and no closer to having a horse.

  “Let’s take a walk around the block after dinner,” Laverne suggested. “We can show off our new tops.”

  Accessorized with my best shorts and my mother’s bright red lipstick, my fetching fishnet blouse and I slipped out the basement door unnoticed. For the next hour, my friend and I strolled the streets hoping to be noticed. I wondered if Laverne was gathering material for the confessional.

  Except for the color, our new blouses were identical, yet I couldn’t help but notice how the tube top on Laverne’s blouse rested comfortably against the natural curves of her body. Being challenged in the natural curves department myself, my tube top plunged to my waist like baggy socks fell around my ankles. I reached under the netting and pulled it up repeatedly, finally resorting to holding it in place. I knew for certain that the car horns and wolf whistles were not directed at me.

  My parents were working at the dining room table when I sneaked through the front door and up the stairs. Mom had her back to me, but the expression on my father’s face was one I hadn’t seen since the evening Topper left the steaming puddle on my mother’s embroidered bedspread.

  “What in the world was that get-up?” I heard him ask, which was odd, because Dad didn’t notice things like clothes. A couple of days later he did something odd. He invited me to accompany him on his rounds.

  Going on jobs with Dad was a rare treat since Mom didn’t approve.

  “It’s no environment for a young lady! The men can be crude,” she’d say.

  A day away from “the slave driver” was a day without Tchaikovsky and housework. After checking on a couple of jobs, Dad and I came upon a field with horses.

  “Look!” I shouted. But Dad had already pulled to the curb and shut off the engine.

  “This is Bill’s place,” he said, lighting a cigarette and holding it out the window.

  “You didn’t tell me you knew somebody with horses—and so close to home!”

  “I knew Bill when we were boys. At one time, his family owned all of this land around here. Hundreds of acres,” he said, gesturing to the neighborhood of new, cookie-cutter duplex houses.

  Two horses were leaning across a wire fence, straining to nibble tufts of pale green grass by the curb. The gray gelding had long shaggy fetlocks and abundant manure stains on his rump and shoulders. He had rubbed the top of his tail against a tree trunk or other object until the stubbly hairs looked like a porcupine’s. The other horse was a lovely reddish bay mare with a thick, unruly black mane. Her dusty coat said that she had just rolled in the dirt.

  They weren’t classy Thoroughbreds like Maresy Doats, but they were beautiful all the same. At the edge of the pasture, stood a ramshackle stable constructed from scraps of wood and corrugated metal. At first glance, it reminded me of Grandma’s quilts. One of the pieces of siding was a weathered wooden yellow sign with the word “DETOUR” printed upside down in faded black letters. The patchwork building was dwarfed by the mountain of manure piled alongside.

  “Bill lives with his mother and has never worked a day in his life, as far as I know. He’s eccentric.” My father spoke in a matter-of-fact, nonjudgmental tone.

  “He devotes his life to animals.”

  In all, there were six horses. One of them drank from a dented metal trash can by the fence. The green hose coming from the can trailed up the hill to a small white bungalow.

  When a blue convertible with bales of hay jutting from the gaping trunk roared into the driveway, the horses lifted their heads and trotted to the stable whinnying. Dad checked his watch.

  A man with orangey-red hair emerged from the car wearing riding britches and boots while a menagerie of dogs and cats appeared from nowhere, panting and barking and rubbing against his legs. The door to the little white house opened, and a black and white sheepdog with three legs hobbled down the hill, his tail wagging.

  I looked at Dad, who flicked away his cigarette, grinned, and pulled into the driveway behind the convertible.

  I liked Bill from the beginning. He was the real thing.

  “I volunteer with the Humane Society,” he said, reaching down and picking up a scruffy black cat named Judy. “All of these animals were abused or neglected before they were rescued.”

  He took dog biscuits from his pocket as horses whinnied by the stab
le door. Bill shared his philosophy in three simple statements.

  “Most people can’t be trusted to care for animals. No matter how good their intentions, they’ll let the animal down in the end. I’ve never sold an animal in my life, and I never will!”

  He had a friendly smile, and I admired his fierce sense of devotion.

  “Your father tells me you like horses.”

  “Does Mom know Bill?” I asked on the way home, knowing that future visits depended on her approval. “Has she seen his—uh—farm?”

  “Not yet, but she will.”

  As sure as the sun comes up, my mother would be vetting Bill and his farm, just as she had stood at the fence and watched the proceedings at Triangle Farm.

  With optimism, I reminded myself that she had accepted a peculiar nephew. Maybe she would accept an eccentric horseman.

  As I’d expected, my mother insisted on driving me for my next visit. The expression on her face as we drove up to the dilapidated stable said that we had stumbled upon some Third World slum.

  I introduced her to Bill and then to the horses, especially Jet—the shaggy, half-broken, three-year-old gray gelding I had fallen head over heels in love with on my first brief visit.

  Mom took one look at his ragged mane and tail, long shaggy fetlocks, and abundant manure stains, and lifted her eyebrows.

  “He looks wild!”

  “He’s young and hasn’t been handled much,” I said.

  “Hmmm . . . he’d be at home in front of a plow.”

  “He’s part Percheron. That’s a draft breed. His coat will turn lighter as he matures.” I had read about the breed after my first visit.

  My mother, who had been polite to Bill’s face, seemed distracted on the drive home.

  “Bill reminds me of Dr. Doolittle. Remember those stories you used to read to me?” She nodded but didn’t respond.

  In desperation, I said, “Did you notice that Bill smells like horses and not beer?” But she was far away, beyond my reach.