by Ethan Hawke
By the time I got back to my apartment in the Mercury, I felt certain I knew where I had hidden the drugs: inside my guitar case. It was near midnight when I came through the door, so I was sure everyone would be fast asleep. I would find the baggie, flush it down the toilet, get on my knees, ask the theater gods for forgiveness, and go to sleep.
As soon as I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong. The lights were on dimly and romantically. Willie Nelson’s “Stardust Memories” was playing, and the place smelled of banana bread. The entire apartment was immaculate, warm, and brimming with a kind of Norman Rockwell peace. My books, which had been spread over the floor in boxes, were alphabetized neatly on the shelves. My records, my papers, my clothes, and the kids’ watercolors, army men, Lego—everything was clean and orderly. Still awake with an apron tied around her waist, my mother was busy bustling around the kitchen, doing about seven things simultaneously. My daughter’s puppy was sleeping on the leather couch.
I watched her move for a full minute, absorbing just how beautiful the apartment looked. Then I noticed that my guitar was out, nonchalantly placed on top of the piano. It looked good up there, but where was the case?
My mother turned around when she felt my presence.
“Hi, honey, how was the show? Everything’s great here. I did some cleaning, as you can see. Hope that’s OK? It’s just that the little ones conked out so easily and so early. There are only so many emails a person can write in a night before they need to do something productive with their hands, you know?” She smiled at me gently and without needing an answer to any of her questions. She calmly turned around and got back to work.
“Anyway, I made you some vegetarian chili and put it in the fridge so you will always have something healthy and ready to eat. And I made that bean dip you love and some banana bread for the kids. I think that will come in quite handy.”
My mother is a beautiful woman. She’s only seventeen years older than me and was still in the last days of her forties. People would always tell me how young she looked and I would answer, “She doesn’t look young, she is young.”
Tonight, however, she looked younger than usual. There was a scarf around her head hiding the bruising from a face-lift she had about two weeks prior. I found my mother’s facial surgery harrowing. It seemed to contradict everything she had ever taught me. She’d spent the last eight years of her life working for the Peace Corps stationed in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She was managing the largest orphanage in that city and had been successful in enrolling more than three thousand previously unregistered children in school. She was here in New York on a three-pronged mission: (a) to let her scars heal without the kids in Haiti asking too many questions; (b) to fundraise; and (c) to check on me.
I couldn’t understand why a woman who was on her way to winning some serious Eleanor Roosevelt–type humanitarian awards would have facial surgery. And while she was still young no less. It floored me. Her skin was so tight, it physically hurt to look at her. Also, there is something about one’s mother struggling desperately to hold on to youth that is particularly frightening to the child. You want to believe that aging is going to be OK, that you will handle growing and maturing into adulthood with grace, but when you see your mommy looking like she cut her face in half and stretched it around her ears, it becomes difficult. There was also something “off” about her manic cooking and cleaning. Then the penny dropped.
“Mom,” I said, staring at her, “are you on coke?”
She froze. Then slowly, with the canary feathers hanging from her lips, she smiled at me. “I don’t know why you’re standing there all priest-like. It’s your blow,” she said, winking. Then she turned and went back to the business at hand, pulling the banana bread out of the oven.
“I feel the same about cocaine as I do about eating meat,” she said. “It’s vile and ultimately morally reprehensible, but as long as I don’t pay for it—I find it quite enjoyable.”
I sat down in a large leather chair that faces the kitchen and sunk my head into my hands. No wonder I’d become an actor.
“I can’t believe you, Mom,” I said. “Do you understand what’s happening here?” I could barely move. “I let you watch the kids. For the first time in your life you are completely responsible for your grandchildren and I come home and you’ve got a pound of coke up your nose.”
“God, you are impossible! You really are. If you are so above reproach, why don’t you try not carrying cocaine around in your guitar case like you’re Keith Richards or something?” There was a long silence while my mother washed a bowl. The puppy finally noticed me, woke up, and leapt around the room barking.
“Look, let’s move on, OK?” my mother offered brightly. “Can we both just admit, perhaps, that we could have been more responsible; give thanks that everything is actually indeed all right; and talk? Because I’ve been thinking about you and I don’t know why you are acting so torn up about all this divorce nonsense. I don’t know why you and Mary are both so upset. This divorce is a wonderful thing. I wrote Mary a letter and told her that, you know? I hope that’s OK?”
“What did you say?”
“I explained to her what she doesn’t understand: that you are, quite simply, exactly like your father.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Look, don’t be so hostile,” she shouted from the kitchen. “You have such an edge to your voice. I did a tiny bit of your cocaine. Which, by the way, you are an absolute royal ass for having in the house. I would not put it past Mary to hire a private detective and smear your name all over kingdom come to make sure she gets custody. She’s smart and she’s tough, so don’t pussyfoot around. You have to pull yourself together.” She smiled. “I found your illegal drugs and was going to flush the little baggie down the toilet, but then I thought, HEY, I’m almost fifty…I haven’t done any cocaine since 1987, so I’m going to try it. So I did, and I have been having the best night I’ve had in a long time and I refuse to let you ruin it. I had a glorious experience cleaning your apartment.” She flashed a huge grin as she put the sugar back in the cupboard. “What I did not anticipate was that my thirty-two-year-old, drug-hoarding, depressed, divorcé son was going to get his knickers in such a twist. You’ll be glad to know that I finished it. You shouldn’t have any anyway—you have to get up early with the small people.”
“I don’t want any, Mom.” I sat, stupefied. “I was going to throw it away.”
“Well, good.” My mother took off her apron and came out towards me. “Listen, I love you more than anything in the world. You are a wonderful son, but let’s face it…Mary should crack the champagne. She doesn’t need you or any man. You do need a woman. You need a partner and a wife—and that partner is not going to be an internationally touring rock star!” My mother sat down across from me, took some cigarettes out of my jacket pocket, and began looking for matches. “I understand Mary. She’s blessed. I realize she doesn’t see that she’s blessed right now, but she is. She can support herself and doesn’t have to spend her life picking up some man’s sweaty socks. Do you know how fortunate that is?” My mother found the matches and lit a cigarette, taking tiny little girlish puffs.
“Mary is in an absolutely minuscule percentage of women across this planet who don’t have to kiss a man’s ass to do the things she wants to do in this life. Mary is a brilliant performer and people respect her. She has a huge gift and if she uses her brain, she can wield that respect, talent, and money to effect real change in this world. Most of us can’t move the current, you know? The river just pushes us along and we bounce idly through our lives, but she can push back. If I had her money, I would never bother with a man at all.” She patted me on the knee, ashed her cigarette, and leaned back on the couch. “I know my face-lift upsets you. But what you don’t understand is I don’t give a shit what I look like.”
I smirked incredulously.
&
nbsp; “I don’t, but men do. And I need their attention. Do you know what it’s like to sit at a fundraising meeting and watch these rich white guys drift away into their BlackBerries, playing some stupid game, because they are so listless and bored by a fifty-year-old woman talking about how twenty percent of the world consumes eighty percent of the world’s resources? That millions of children don’t have enough food to eat but then”—she paused for dramatic effect—“when a beautiful young woman walks into the room, Uh huh hurumph hurumph…How can I help, darling? Gee, we must find a creative solution. Let’s pull together for the big WIN! Do you see? I don’t want to be ‘pretty.’ I want to be relevant! It’s a superficial world and I’m coping with it.” She took a long pause and collected herself. “Just so you know, my face-lift was free. I would never have wasted good money on it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The Haitian Doctor is a big fan of your ex-wife. He has all her CDs and thought that when she sees my great face-lift, she will ask who the doctor is…You get it? He worked on me as an investment!” She smiled a big, mischievous smile. “He also happens to respect the work I do.”
“What did you mean about me being like my father?” I asked.
She wouldn’t answer.
She continued, “You’ve always done this…created a running narrative out of every event in your life. No sooner did something happen to you than you began telling a ‘story’ about it. And I see you doing that now…trying to write the ‘story’ of your divorce so that you get to be the good guy. But it’s not like that…Technically, in my relationship with your father, I was the ‘Bad Guy.’ But look at this coke-snorting bad guy; at least I’m putting my money where my mouth is. I’m getting kids off the street. Putting them in school and saving them from a life of prostitution and crime. One hundred hours a week, I work to end poverty. You work four hours a day, get your picture taken, everyone tells you you’re gorgeous, they give you a standing ovation at the end of the night, and all you did is recite a couple hundred rhyming couplets without falling on your ass.”
“We didn’t get a standing ovation.”
“Bad house?” she asked sweetly.
“Terrible.”
“I wish I could’ve been there. Wait till you’re fifty years old and nobody wants to hire you ’cause your eyelids hang down over your baby blues. If you weren’t so handsome you’d have less than half the friends you have now…It’s true. You’re not that interesting! You’ll find a way to sneak your ass into the back of the surgery clinic. Believe me, you’ll be getting the hair plugs neatly inserted. You won’t be so quick to throw stones then. It’s tough to grow old. Deterioration is not for the meek. My mother’s dead. My father’s dead. It goes so fast. You won’t believe it. My mother, my divorce with your father, that’s all ancient history to you. To me, it was yesterday. In five seconds, your daughter will be a grown woman with kids holding your hand, taking you to my funeral. I shit you not, Son.”
She patted the couch, trying to encourage me to sit next to her. I couldn’t do it. The puppy jumped up and cuddled against her.
“Someday you will miss this moment right now. You will miss the night you came home to a clean house, banana bread, and a ‘coked-up’ mom. You will think it’s beautiful and funny. And you will see that the days of that marriage to Mary were nothing to mourn for! They were the painful period. You were deeply uncomfortable. You were twisted up like a pretzel and wondering why your arms hurt. I say, ‘Congratulations, my son, you are refusing to live a quiet life of pretzel-like desperation.’ Now your kids will know you better and be able to absorb the best from both their mother and their father.” My mother smiled. I sat down next to the puppy, and stared out the window at the lights of New York City. There is so much movement, even at 1:00 a.m. My mother stood up, put out her cigarette, walked behind me, and started scratching my back.
“Sometimes don’t you just look forward to being dead?” she asked.
“What kind of pep talk is that?”
“Why is looking forward to death not encouraging? I imagine death is wonderful.”
She continued scratching, using her nails like she did when I was a kid. “See, for you, death is scary because in death all the ‘specialness’ of your life will evaporate. Once you’re dead, the movies, the magazine covers, the money, the art, the curtain calls—all these things won’t matter any more than a fireworks display in 1956. Fun while it lasted, ya know, kid? You enjoy the delusion that you’re special and the world supports that delusion, and I understand that would make death frightening. But, you see, I know that you and I are special only in the way that every living thing that fears harm is special.”
My mother stopped scratching my back, kissed me on top of the head, and went back into the kitchen to continue cleaning up.
“It’s so bizarre,” she said, “over all these years and fighting with your dad and hating him and bickering about money and visits and Thanksgiving, and then to watch the thing I love most—you—turn into the thing that has given me the most pain—him! Someday, you will be talking to your daughter and realize that those are Mary’s eyes inside her head. See, it’s all still happening. Nothing’s over. It’s all still happen-ing.” She stepped forward and leaned on the doorway that separated the living room from the kitchen. “I could have ended things better with your father, I guess,” my mother said. “Been more mature. That is my only advice: End things well. Be polite and respectful.” She stepped back and started washing her hands.
* * *
—
My parents split up around my ninth birthday. My mother and I were living in the suburbs of Atlanta. My father had driven out from Houston to visit, and to try one last time to reconcile. It was the best birthday in the world. At that time, my dad had a wicked-cool ’64 convertible Plymouth Barracuda. It was a gorgeous October day in Atlanta—a little chilly, but my dad ripped the top down anyway and took my four best friends and me to John’s Pizza House and to the movies. An old revival house in Buckhead was playing his favorite movie, The Man Who Would Be King.
It was fun to see an old movie and my buddies liked it. The film was about these two best friends that lose their friendship through this bizarre grand adventure in foreign lands. At the end of the story, one of them has been captured and is trapped on a rope bridge and the other guy, Peachy, who is safe, knows it was all his fault. Peachy shouts out to his pal, “Can you ever forgive me for being so bloody stupid and so bleedin’ arrogant?” And his friend, who is about to be killed, says, “Peachy, that I can, and that I do!” He smiles, letting his buddy know that he’s understood. We’re all imperfect. We all screw up. And then boom, the rope gets cut, and the friend falls and dies.
I’d never seen a movie with such a bitter, sad ending before and couldn’t stop crying. All my friends were looking at me. We were walking through the parking lot towards the Barracuda and one of my friends started teasing me about the snot dripping down my nose. “You really are a mama’s boy!” he said.
My dad announced simply, “He’s not a mama’s boy. If you’re not crying, it means you didn’t really watch the movie.”
My friends shut up.
We drove away and my dad revved the engine at stoplights. He cranked up the music so loud that it annoyed strangers. We got ice cream. We laughed so hard our stomachs cramped. “You boys ever done donuts?” We all shook our heads.
He immediately popped the Plymouth up over the curb and crashed onto the fields by a high school. He started spinning the car round and round at what felt like light speed. The shock absorbers busted into high alert, as all of us began bouncing around the car. We could not believe it. We were terrified and exhilarated. It was the most egregious rule breaking I had ever been a part of. It felt like a bank heist. We didn’t even have seat belts. Next he drove fast, bumping and popping and banging all the way across two fields and right up to one o
f the pitcher’s mounds, yanked the wheel hard, and gunned the engine. The car spun in circles. Dirt was flying. We all were howling with joy and fear. We landed back at my mom’s, dusty like a band of outlaws. My friends left one by one, all telling me that I had the coolest dad.
He was cool, twenty-seven, with long hair and John Lennon glasses.
His birthday present to me was a slot-car racetrack, and we built it in my room and raced our Formula 1’s until it was time for bed. Then we said goodbye. He was driving back to Texas that night, “unless your mom lets me spend the night.” He winked hopefully. My mom had an old upright piano and he played Scott Joplin rags, because he knew they were my favorite. As soon as he walked out the front door, I was weeping again. My mom came in to kiss me good night and I told her to leave me alone, and please not tell my dad I was upset. But before I knew it my dad came back into my room—and in the dark, while scratching my back, he said a bunch of tender words designed to make me feel better.
Once I heard the car pull away, I walked out to the living room and asked my mom, “Did you tell him I was crying? Did you? Is that why he came back in to talk to me?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“You suck,” I said and walked back to my room.
I lay in bed for what felt like hours. Eventually, I heard the Barracuda’s cranky old engine return out in front of the house again. I crawled up in bed and saw my dad get out of the car and begin hammering a pair of high-heeled shoes and some lingerie to an old maple tree in our front yard. I opened my window and turned on the light. My dad looked at me across our front yard. Even in the dark, our eyes found each other easily.