And, Mama, I raised them right. I poured all my energy into being not like you (no offense). I was there to sing to them and read them stories and help bury their goldfish at sea (flush) and make them pancakes shaped like bears (Bonnie’s choice) and ducks (Beau’s). I was there to make dozens of snowmen with them and color in dozens of coloring books, and too many times to count, I pretended I was the customer when they played store or school or airplane.
When they got a little older, I bought them the same kind of clothes all the other kids were wearing, sat with them while they did their homework (well, sat with Beau; Bonnie liked to do hers alone in her room), and made hot chocolate and toast for them when they wanted to talk.
How I loved those times at the kitchen counter, Mama, when Bonnie would tell me why she liked a certain boy and, even though she knew he had a girlfriend, “he’ll like me because I’m so much more interesting than Molly Dodge!” and Beau would tell me what it felt like when he was on the high bars whirling around—“Like a cat, Mama. Not like someone’s pet, but like a big cat—a lion or a tiger or a cougar when they’re running really fast and all of a sudden they make a jump through the air and all their muscles are straining and pulling and they feel so powerful.”
Mama, I was there to make them dinner every night and make sure they had clean sheets and that they wore their retainers.
I did a good job, Mama. Beau even wrote in this year’s Mother’s Day card, “I couldn’t imagine a better mother.” Can you believe it? I spent my entire childhood imagining a better mother!
A memory jumps into my head—I was twelve years old, and after hearing snotty Tayla Gordon brag at school how she and her mother were going out for tea at the Fordham Hotel on Mother’s Day, I thought, I’m gonna take my mama to tea too! I labored for hours making a fancy invitation, and when I gave it to you you laughed and said, “My land, I’ve never been to a tea before. I feel just like Queen Elizabeth!”
I bought all the ingredients I needed with money I’d made from cashing in bottles and baby-sitting and spent all morning baking a spice cake and making fancy little sandwiches whose recipe I found in the Betty Crocker cookbook I checked out of the library. I picked a bunch of lilacs and set the table with place mats I’d made out of construction paper in the shape of daisies. I was so excited sitting at that table waiting for you, but then three o’clock rolled around, and then three-thirty, and then four o’clock, and by the time it was five, I was resigned that you weren’t going to show up, and I ate my cucumber and tomato sandwiches and sliced myself a piece of cake. By the time you stumbled in after midnight, crying, “Oh, baby, I forgot all about our little date,” I had hardened my heart to a little stone.
“Faithy, please forgive me,” you said, flopping down on my bed, your breath a stink of beer and smoke. “See, I remembered, but then I got—“
“Don’t even bother,” I said, holding my hand up. “I don’t need to hear your excuses. Happy Mother’s Day.”
The scorn in my voice made the words sound as if I were wishing you anything but, and your face fell, and I liked that it did.
Any tea party my kids invited me to, any athletic meet, any spelling bee, you can bet I showed up.
And today Beau and Bonnie marched past me in their blue gowns on the way to somewhere I won’t be going to. What’ll I do, Mama? I have spent eighteen years perfecting the role of mother, and now the whole play’s changed and I’ve gone from the lead actor to making the occasional cameo. So who am I supposed to be now?
I’m sorry,
Faith
June 1986
HOST: SLIP
BOOK: Out on a Limb by Shirley MacLaine
REASON CHOSEN: “I got it for a dollar at a garage sale.”
“Slip,” my brother Fred said over the phone, “I’ve decided I’m going on a peace march.”
“Good for you,” I said. I had heard any number of plans and schemes (most of them lame-brained and cockamamie) from my brother in the collect calls he made to me every month or so, and I had often toyed with the idea of telling the operator, “No, I don’t accept the charges,” because inevitably the phone calls would exhaust or depress me.
Fred had stayed in Detroit, working whatever job he could hang on to between his drinking jags. But Lady Luck had the grace to pay a visit to my brother, in the guise of another veteran who happened to be working in the same restaurant at which Fred bused tables. This man led him into an AA group composed almost entirely of veterans, and for Fred, it was a lifeline he could finally grab on to. The phone calls began to be more hopeful; I began to hear the old Fred more and more, and I began to think: Maybe my brother did survive Vietnam.
“What kind of peace march is it?” I asked.
“It’s for global nuclear disarmament.”
“I’m all for that. Where is it?”
“Well, it starts in L.A. and it ends in Washington, D.C.”
The phone receiver slipped from its perch under my chin.
“Come again?”
Fred laughed, a dear laugh with no traces of hysteria. “From L.A. to Washington, D.C. They think it’ll take about nine months.”
“Nine months?” I said, envisioning the pull-down map in my seventh-grade geography class and its multicolored span of states. “You’re going to walk from L.A. to Washington, D.C., in nine months?”
Fred laughed again. “Yup. I’m going to follow the example my sister has set for me lo these many years and become, and I quote, ‘an active participant for change.’ ”
We kept track of his route on a map pinned to the kitchen bulletin board, and when the red line cut into Iowa, I called Jerry, who was in Seattle for a week teaching a seminar.
“Jerry, I’m thinking of putting a couple days’ mileage in on that peace march.”
“Sounds good,” said my husband, who’d support me if I told him I was joining the Hare Krishnas. “Don’t forget the mosquito repellent.”
The look on my brother Fred’s face when he saw me walking through a field of tents was the same one he’d worn when he’d won the city spelling bee in the seventh grade, and I told him so.
He laughed, his arms still around me in a hug. “That was such a fluke victory—I got all the easy words. I didn’t know how to spell any of the words my opponents got.” He hugged me again. “So how long are you here for?”
“Just a couple days. Jerry’s away at a seminar, and Gil’s in the Boundary Waters for a month.”
Fred hugged me a third time. “God, I am so happy to see you, Slip. Let me show you around.”
In less than a half hour I’d been introduced to at least twenty people and toured the day care and school buses, the mail truck, the food prep truck, and the porta-potties.
I was impressed. “It’s a movable city.”
“Peace City,” said Fred. “We’ve even got a mayor.”
After being served dinner (watery chili and a salad) by a sunburned crew from the food truck, Fred and I sat on a hill by his tent in the velvety summer night air, listening to two guitarists play dueling Dylan. The country sky was throwing the kind of party it can’t in the city; stars from all over showed up, and not one a wallflower.
“I could get used to this,” I said.
“It’s not a bad life,” said Fred. “Except for the damn chiggers.” He scratched his leg. “And it beats a picket line around City Hall.”
“So how do you think it’s doing? It’s not getting much press.”
“You know how it goes, Slip—things move inch by inch, step by step. You just hope you’re heading in the right direction.”
At dawn, a group of singers strolled around the camp, imploring everyone to wake up.
“Oof, I’m stiff,” I said, sitting up and rubbing my lower back. “Thanks for giving me the side of the tent that was on top of granite, Fred.”
“Quit your bitchin’ and get dressed. You roll up the sleeping bags and I’ll take the tent down. Then we’ll load everything up on the gear truck.”
“After the hour massage and facial,” said Fred. “Now move your butt, private.”
It was a fine sunny day with cows ambling over to watch the parade that was happening beyond their fences, and I exchanged greetings with teenagers Fred introduced me to as Serenity and Zeus.
“Don’t you wish Ma and the old man had used a little more imagination when it came to our names?” Fred asked after they’d passed. “Although Slip’s pretty imaginative, as far as nicknames go.”
“And don’t forget our Indian names,” I said. “We were the only kids I knew who had Indian names.”
“Except for Indians,” said Fred.
“Yeah, but we didn’t know any, Laughing Spaniel.”
Fred had shaved his red cloud of a beard off, allowing his smile to be fully seen. It was the kind of smile that made you want to smile back at it, and I did. A middle-aged woman said hello, her head bobbing to music from her headphones. Fred explained the march would group together when entering into big cities but often was stretched out so far that you could walk with a distance of a city block or two between you and the next marcher.
“I was so scared I was never going to see Laughing Spaniel again.”
“Me too,” said Fred. “But he’s back. Sometimes he doesn’t stay very long, but I don’t worry that I’ll never see him again.”
“Keep it moving, Fred,” said a white-haired man as he sidled up next to us. “If we all moved like you, we’d never get anywhere.”
“Aw, shut up, old man,” said Fred, and for a second I was ready to jump in and apologize for my horribly rude brother, but then Fred’s smile broke out. “Slip, meet Stan. Stan, this is my sister, Slip.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Stan, tapping the brim of his visor. “Any sister of Fred’s is a friend of mine.”
“You want to walk with us a ways?” asked Fred.
“Let me take a rain check,” said Stan. “I’m trying to catch up to that cute gal from New Zealand.”
He power-walked ahead of us, as bowlegged as a cowboy.
“What’s he do in real life?” I asked, “ride the range?”
“He broke both his legs in World War II,” said Fred. “He was a POW on Bataan.”
“Good heavens,” I whispered.
“I love to walk with him and I hate to walk with him,” said Fred. “Because when you walk all day with someone, they tell you their stories, and believe me, his stories are as bad as mine.” He shook his head. “And his was supposed to be the good war.”
The sun was high in the Iowa sky, but I felt as though a cloud had passed over.
“Then why do you love to walk with him?” I asked.
“The same reason I love doing the work I do,” said Fred, taking my hand. “Because I know how much I can help someone by listening to him, just like I know how much being listened to has helped me.”
“Will you go back to counseling when you’re done with the march?”
“Yeah. It’s really saved my life, Slip. Isn’t that funny? Only by trying to help someone else save their life could I save my own. I’m just so grateful I figured it out. I know a lot of people who didn’t.”
A pickup truck sped by and a shirtless man in the back cab yelled, “Get a job!”
Fred gave him the peace sign.
“Fuck you!”
Fred laughed. “There’s something about the peace sign that seems to bring out aggression in certain people.”
“Yeah,” said a marcher who was passing us. “Like macho jerks and world leaders.”
She put down her book to add, “One and the same.”
“How can she read while she walks?” I asked. “Look at all the scenery she’s missing.”
“True,” said Fred, scanning the tasseled greenery that rose from each side of the road. “But it’s not like this is the first cornfield we’ve walked by, Slip. Remember, we already walked through the whole state of Nebraska.” He squinted, watching the woman ahead of us. “Speaking of books, Slip, how’re the Angry Housewives doing?”
“Great,” I said. “We just read Out on a Limb by Shirley MacLaine, and after we took a vote as to whether or not we believed in reincarnation—the vote was four to one, by the way, with only Faith dissenting—Audrey told me I probably had a past life as a robber baron, screwing the people blind, which would explain why I was such a guilt-ridden proletarian now. Then I told her she was probably Caligula . . . or maybe Machiavelli.”
Fred laughed. “So what do you guys say to insult one another?”
“That’s the beauty of our friendship, I guess. We can insult one another. Although Faith got pretty mad when I said she could have been Houdini, the master of illusion.”
“What did you mean by that?”
“Well, according to Faith, more than I had intended. Really, I thought I was flattering her. I mean, you should see her house—it’s gorgeous. She thinks of colors and fabrics no one else would ever use and it looks great, and she whips together these book club meetings with inspired themes. Anyway, she got all huffy and asked if I was calling her a big phony, and I said of course not, and then all of a sudden she’s out the door.”
“Guess you touched some kind of nerve.”
“I know, but I can’t imagine what. There is an element of reserve about Faith, but I don’t know . . . maybe you don’t talk about your problems when you don’t really have any.”
“Maybe,” said Fred. “Or maybe she is hiding something. Maybe she’s a nymphomaniac with a raging mescaline habit.”
I laughed. “Nymphomania’s Audrey’s thing. But mescaline? Hmmm. Could be. I did see her digging up a bunch of mushrooms last spring. . . .”
We had already eaten the packed lunch (peanut butter sandwiches on brown bread as dense as insulation, and a vegetable called a jicama that tasted like a cross between an apple and a potato), but when we reached town, we decided to stop in the café for a little dessert.
“Fuckin’ peacenik.”
The words were like a semaphore, stopping me in my tracks.
“What’d you say?” I asked the two men who stood leaning against the wall of an establishment whose sign read Fast and Lu’s Tavern.
“Leave it alone, Slip,” advised Fred out of the side of his mouth.
“No, I don’t think I will.” I regarded the skinny, balding man closest to me. “Did you just call me a ‘fuckin’ peacenik’?”
“No, man, he did.” He jerked his head toward his friend, who had about fifty pounds on him and twice the hair.
I gave him a pleasant smile. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“Slip, let’s go get that pie.” Fred nodded at the men. “Good day, gentlemen.”
“No, really,” I persisted. “Do you think you’re insulting me by calling me a peacenik?”
The burly guy sneered. “Hell, yeah.”
“So you don’t believe in peace?”
“He don’t give a shit about peace,” said the skinny guy, “unless it’s a piece of ass.”
“That’s funny,” I said.
The burly guy sneered again. Maybe it was his only expression.
“I don’t believe in peace, and I don’t believe in hippies and draft dodgers like you.”
Fred stepped forward. “Did you serve in ’Nam?”
“Sure did and I got a fuckin’ Purple Heart to prove it.”
“Me too, man,” said Fred and suddenly the burly guy was all over my brother, patting his shoulder and asking if he could buy him a drink.
“Slip?” asked Fred, but I shook my head. “I’ll just go get some coffee at the café. I’ll meet you in—say an hour?”
Exactly an hour later, after I had enjoyed my coffee and a piece of the best banana cream pie I’d ever eaten and was sitting on a bench outside the café, Fred sat next to me.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“Well, the first thing he said was, ‘Is that tiny little spitfire always so ready to pick
a fight?’ ”
“Tiny little spitfire,” I muttered.
“And I said, ‘Yeah, she pretty much always is.’ ” Fred smiled, but it was the kind of smile that had more sadness than joy in it. “Guy had two tours there. He’s pretty messed up.”
“You mean you didn’t recruit him to join the march? Fred, what’s happened to your powers of persuasion?”
A couple marchers approached, asking if the food in the café was good.
“Try the pie,” I said. “The pie’s out of this world.”
I turned back to my brother.
“Fred! What’s the matter?”
He was sitting with his arms crossed, chin tucked into his chest in the I’m-ready-to-cry pose he’d had since he was a child.
“Steve—that’s his name,” he said, his head shaking back and forth. “Man, the guy’s been through the wringer. Can’t hold a job, been married and divorced twice, and says that every day when he wakes up he wonders if this is the day he’s gonna lose it and go completely nuts.
“ ‘How’ve you held it together?’ he asked me, and I told him it was only recently that I had.
“ ‘And you know what’s really helping me?’ I said, and he looked at me all eager like I was about to give him the secret answer to all his problems.
“ ‘What? What is it?’ he said, and I said, ‘Well, war didn’t work for me, so now—just like the Beatles song—I’m trying to give peace a chance. Maybe it’d help you too.’ ”
Fred impatiently wiped a tear that leaked out of the corner of his eye.
“You should have seen the look that swept across his face, Slip. Saddest look I’ve ever seen.
“ ‘I couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘It would make everything else I did seem . . . pointless.’ ”
Fred expelled a blast of air.
“Isn’t that sad, Slip? I mean, I know it’s not so simple, but wouldn’t you think that if you were in a trap, rather than gnawing off your foot, you just might reach for any key?”
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