“Hi,” he says, to someone behind me. I turn around and it’s Mae.
“Surprise!” she says. “Oh, it actually worked. You’re surprised.”
Mae! “I am!”
I’m so happy to see her. She looks so good. She’s wearing a blue silk caftan and a veil. Her beautiful eyes are exposed, outlined with kohl and blinking like gray buttons. Her eyebrows are painted on. Perfect arches.
“I thought you were only coming next week for LACMA.”
“I lied about the dates,” she says. The part of the scarf that covers her mouth is damp, a darker blue. “Hugh and I conspired.” She steps back. “God, you are incredibly pregnant. Let me get a picture, please—”
Her assistant, Paul, hands her a camera and she photographs my enormous stomach.
“It feels like I’m carrying around a pot of stew,” I say.
One of Hugh’s friends, a woman named Agnes, is clinking on a glass, making an announcement about the baby shower games she has organized.
“Each jar has a pureed fruit,” she is saying. “Taste the baby food, write down your guess as to what it is on the attached notecard, initial it, and pass it along.”
I couldn’t possibly think of anything I would rather do less.
“I’m going to show Mae the nursery,” I say as everyone else is sitting down. I pull Mae into what used to be the guest room and shut the door.
“Please take it off,” I say, pointing to her veil. “It’s too hot and I miss your face.”
Hugh painted the walls pale gray recently and the smell has lingered. I slide open the window. The parts for the crib Rose got us are leaning against the closet door. We haven’t gotten around yet to putting it together.
Mae sits on the edge of the bed and reaches inside her gauzy veil to loosen the inside ties.
“The room looks nice.” She pushes the veil up and flips it over her head. And there’s her shy face. Red and uneven, but still hers. I can’t help myself. I descend on her with kisses, smudging her eyeliner. I try to fix it by rubbing it with my thumb. “Remember when Mom got annoyed if we kissed her too much?”
“No,” Mae says, laughing. “I don’t remember trying to kiss her.”
“She’d say: Let me kiss you. You don’t need to kiss me back.” I take her hand and put it on my belly. “God. I can’t believe you’re here. I’m so happy to see you.”
We sit like that for a minute, quietly. I can hear people laughing in the other room.
“What’s with the geode?” she asks, pointing to the huge crystal on the bedside table.
“Hugh bought it at a prop sale after going to a workshop on energy,” I say. “Touch it.”
I know she doesn’t believe in this stuff, but she puts her free hand on it next to mine.
“It’s feels like a rock,” she says.
“Right…” I say. “That’s because it’s a rock!”
We both giggle.
“I like it, I guess,” she says.
I pat her bumpy cheek. I wasn’t sure until now if I was going to do this: “There’s something I want to show you,” I say.
“Okay.”
I go over to the bookshelf and squat down.
“Hugh’s brother seems like he’s drunk already,” Mae says, getting up to go look out the window.
“Jack? Of course he’s drunk. He’s a drunk.” Hugh’s brother is a compartment I prefer to keep closed.
“Are those parrots?” she asks, looking out at the lemon tree.
I reach my hand behind Goodnight Moon and grope around. I could’ve sworn I hid it on this shelf.
“Probably. There’s a flock of wild parrots that flies around.”
Oh, found it. The Iowa Review, Spring 2010.
“Can I read you a poem?” I ask her.
She drops the slats of the blinds back into place with a clink. Squints at the lit mag in my hands. Notices the broken spine, no doubt. “Since when do you read poetry?” I know what she’s asking me. Why haven’t you moved on?
“Just, can I read it?”
She nods. “Sure.” She sits back down on the bed, puts her hand on the geode. I scoot back on the floor to lean against the wall, clear my throat.
in my life before, i’d stood with my
face pressed to a wall, plaster to eye,
i did not know that i could turn my head
& there’d be space, light & air. when I wed
the wall, white gown & all, i did not know
there was a room behind me—with rugs & a window,
high ceilings, tables, chairs, a door.
I feel triumphant, finally hearing it out loud. “Tell me you don’t think this sounds like her,” I say. But when I look at Mae, her face looks blank. She thinks I’m crazy.
“It just seems a little random,” she says carefully, petting the geode like it’s a cat. “Who does it say wrote it?”
“Ruth Day. But I think that’s a pen name. The bio is blank.” I flip to the back of the magazine to show her the blank space.
“What makes you think it’s her? It sounds like it could be any angsty housewife.”
It just is. It’s her. “It’s not capitalized and she uses those ampersands.”
“That seems a little thin…” She takes out her phone and types something in, then shows me a Google image search for “Ruth Day.” A stream of apple-cheeked women. Like she thinks I haven’t done that already. “It could be any of these Ruths,” she says.
“Wait. There’s more,” I say. “That was just the opening. The poem talks about living on a farm and tigers and beekeeping and all this stuff. Anyway, listen to this part. This is how it ends:
before there was no day,
just night.
driving & pacing. insomniac light—
the color of puss trickling out of an ear.
swimmer’s ear—
my older got it twice a year.
did she even know how to swim?
i’m not sure.
my younger was scared of the water.
my younger was scared of me.
i gave her every reason to be.
do i think about my daughters now?
rarely.
i avoid raspberries too.
they remind me too much (of you two)
arms thorn-torn, shirts baskets, mouths rushes
of rubies.
Her eyes are closed. She opens them and stares at me.
“I don’t know, Edie.” She does too know! “All kids get ear infections and eat raspberries.”
She’s only arguing with me because that’s her role.
“I wrote the magazine to try to get in touch with her, but it hasn’t gotten me anywhere.”
“Honey, are you ready for the surprise? Everyone’s waiting…” Hugh leans in through the doorway. I slide the magazine out of view and Mae quickly flips her veil back down over her face. “Oh…” He seems flustered at the sight of Mae exposed.
“Can you give us a minute?” I ask.
“Of course.” He hesitates, turns around, but doesn’t leave.
I haven’t told Hugh about the poems. Until I know for certain, I don’t really want his input. It’s not that he wouldn’t be supportive, he would. Too supportive. Pitying. I don’t like to open my mother up to other people’s judgments, even if those judgments aren’t inaccurate.
“So, do you think it’s her?” I ask Mae. She stands, straightens out her dress, tightens her veil.
“I’ve thought I’ve seen her places too. I think that’s pretty natural. Walking on the street. Or going by in a car. I was actually thinking about doing a piece about this…” she trails off.
This is not really what I’m talking about.
“Does it help you to believe it’s her?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say quickly. “It does.”
Hugh leans in through the door again. “I don’t want to give away too much,” he says, “but this surprise is time-sensitive.”
“Okay.” I smile at him an
d he helps me up.
Out on the deck our hippie neighbor, Seagull Carl, is playing a tiny organ. There is a large object on the table. A centerpiece covered with a sheet. Even if it’s a pile of old shoes under there, I’d be happy. But it won’t be. Knowing Hugh, it will be something amazing.
“Tada!” Hugh says, and with a flourish and flick of his wrist he pulls off the sheet and exposes… What exactly?
A jewel? No, better. A block of ice he carved into a sculpture of me holding a baby. We’re posed like a Madonna and child. Inside the ice is something pink and yellow. Frozen flowers. Pink carnations and yellow daffodils.
“Amazing.” I lean in so that me and ice-me are nose to nose. My head is full of flowers mid-float. I kiss the ice-baby on the cheek. Everyone is distorted through the ice, oohing and aahing.
Mae gets up and takes a picture. Paul hands her a different lens.
“Ice,” Jack mutters. “What an appropriate medium for our Edith.” And when nobody responds he repeats it again, a little louder but with the same studiedly casual intonation.
Hugh ignores his brother. Instead, he tells the story how right after we met, he went on a trip to India to visit Swami Ishwarananda. Sobriety was new to him and his future felt too big. The Swami told him to go down to the Ganges River and pray. “That river is the embodiment of the Shakti,” Hugh says, “the primordial cosmic energy, because it’s both sacred and destructive. People bathe in it and give birth in it and scatter their dead’s ashes in it. I sat by the water and meditated for three days, watched people pray and make offerings, flowers mostly, and by the end of it I knew what I wanted. As soon as I got back into town I called Edie and asked her out on a date. And, well, the rest is history.” He quit drinking years ago, but he’s never gotten out of the habit of making toasts. Everyone cheers. I go over and sit on his lap, my belly pressing into the edge of the table. I remember that date. Naked piggyback rides through the house, fucking, swimming in the ocean, more fucking, eating tacos. It lasted two days and ended only when he needed to go to a Meeting.
I go back and sit next to Mae. Tillie, sweet Tillie, passes out cupcakes that she and Maria baked for dessert.
“Is that Tillie Holloway?” One of Hugh’s friends whispers.
“Is Tillie Holloway your mother??” Agnes asks me.
“No,” I say. She just played her in a movie, but I don’t feel like explaining this. “She’s my boss. I help run her foundation.”
“It’s like a king cake,” Tillie is saying over the whispers. “One lucky one has a little plastic baby inside of it.”
Mae’s breathing flutters the scarf over her mouth. She sticks the cupcake under her veil and eats it in several greedy bites.
“You could too swim,” she says, apropos to nothing, her mouth full of cake.
So, she does believe me about the poem then. “I could.”
“What kind of mother doesn’t know this about her child?” Mae turns to Agnes. “Can you imagine not knowing if your kid could swim?”
“We haven’t started swim lessons yet,” Agnes says defensively. “I know people say the younger the better, but the chlorine in the pool is so harsh on their skin.”
“You’re about to have a baby.” Mae pokes me in the stomach. “Tell me, you could imagine doing to it what Mom did to us?”
I look down at the hump. “Which part?”
“Any of it. Any of the parts.”
Everyone is looking down the table at Mae.
“Of course not,” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”
“You won’t,” Mae says dismissively, and takes another cupcake.
I wish I could be so sure. I look down at the high rises in the distance. They’re outlined in a light smog. Or maybe just fog. I can feel the baby trying to swim inside me but it has run out of room. Can you imagine every time you try to swim being stopped by someone else’s organs? The conversation around us has moved on to the coyotes. Tillie has spotted one up the mountain, watching us from a distance.
“How do you know it’s not a dog?” Mae’s assistant asks.
“The pointy ears.”
Hugh is telling the story of how last week a coyote stood eyeing me through the glass doors, and he’d had to spray it with a fire extinguisher to get it to leave.
“It’s because of the drought, I guess,” Tillie says. “They’re starving and they have nothing to lose.”
Maria shyly tells the story of how she saw one the other day, carrying a cat in its mouth. “It was so sad,” she says.
Jack coughs, coughs, finally spits something out into his hand, holds it up for everyone to admire. A half-chewed plastic king cake baby.
“Oh dear,” Tillie says. She and Maria shuffle over to me. “We should head out.”
“I’ll see you in court tomorrow,” I say. Maria will be testifying against her pimp. He threw her off a balcony and now one of her legs is shorter than the other one.
“You can’t do wrong by doing right,” Tillie says. It was a line from her movie that she now uses in real life. It’s a nice sentiment. Who knows if it’s true.
“You can’t do wrong by doing right.” I say it back to her.
MAE
There’s a lull in the conversation. Several people have left already. And then… Odd. The subway, rumbling underneath us, except there is no subway. A lemon falls out of the bowl on the table and rolls in an arc at my feet. The neighborhood dogs are barking. One’s whining sounds so much like a baby crying that it makes Edie’s milk leak. She stands up and laughs, dabs at her dress with a paper towel as the earth shakes under us. And then, just as suddenly, it stops.
An earthquake.
“It’s good luck, like rain on a wedding day,” Edie says to her tall husband and kisses him wetly.
Paul looks very pale. “Was that an earthquake?” he asks.
“Don’t worry,” Edie tells him. “That was a 2.0 at most. It’s nothing. It’s kind of fun!”
I laugh. Her kind of fun. Not Paul’s kind of fun.
“What about the aftershock?” Paul asks me nervously. He doesn’t believe in leaving New York. This is confirming all his suspicions.
“What about it? Oh, look, the power’s out,” Edie says.
It’s true. The porch light is off, but because we’re outside, I hadn’t noticed. The sky is dimming. What’s the word, gloaming?
Edie leans over the side of the deck to yell down the mountain. “Yoohoo! Blackout! Come get your candles! We have extra! 474 Glen Albyn Place.
“How exciting,” she says, turning back to us, all a-sparkle.
“How exciting,” the drunk mimics quietly.
The other guests are dispersing, saying their goodbyes.
Behind them, Hugh is trying to open the fuse box while holding the flashlight in his teeth. I offer to hold it.
“Thank you,” Hugh says. He wipes the handle on his shirt before passing it to me.
I tilt the flashlight left then right to look at how the shadows fall on his face. He has a very nice profile.
He puts his hand on mine and brings the flashlight level with the circuit breaker.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was looking at the sculptural possibilities of your face.”
He grins at me. “Ha,” he says. “Everything is possible.” I don’t know what this means, but I like the sentiment.
He flips the switches one by one. “Let there be light!” he announces dramatically before flipping the last switch.
I hear my laugh. It escapes before I can grab it by its tail and pull it back.
“Dang,” he says. “Guess not. Must be out in the whole neighborhood.” His smile is clean and pure—the smile clearly designated for his wife’s sister. He is a domesticated dog through and through.
What would it be like, I wonder, to have a husband like that and a fuse box and a lemon tree? And now a baby too. I’d always assumed it would be stifling, “a face to the wall,” or however Mom put it. But maybe it wouldn’t have to be. Maybe this i
s something I’ve internalized without questioning. A shard of her left in me that I could pull out.
When Hugh is out of earshot, gone to give an elderly neighbor some candles, the drunk reaches for the ice sculpture and breaks off Edie’s ear. He drops it in his glass and stirs it with his finger.
“What?” he says to the table, pleased with his own outrageousness. “It’s just gonna melt!”
As if this is their cue, the remaining guests scatter to the wind.
Jack licks his finger and says to me: “Your sister and I used to be in love before she met my brother.”
The earth shakes again, but barely, just enough to once more set off the dogs. I look over at Edie.
“It’s true.” She shrugs.
“Remember when we stole the horses?”
He tries to grab Edie’s hand, but she twists out of reach, stacks the dishes on the table. “Yes,” she says. “I remember.”
I haven’t heard this story. “What happened?” I ask him.
“One night, we broke into the stables in Griffith Park and stole two horses. We rode them all the way up to the observatory.”
“I fell off the horse. I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck,” she says.
“It helps to be drunk.” The drunk says this very earnestly. “It does. Your body is looser. You don’t resist.”
“I think that’s just for car accidents.” I don’t know why I’m arguing this point. “With whiplash.”
“Don’t engage him,” Edie says. “Don’t get him started.”
His eyes are shiny. “You looked so beautiful lying there in the moonlight. I should have bashed your head in with a rock then and there.”
“Hey!” I say, surprised. I realize he’s weeping.
“Jesus Christ,” Edie says. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“Okay,” I say to Paul. “We’ll be back. Will you be all right?”
Paul blinks several times, looks at the weeping Jack, nods.
We walk up the hill. Edie holds her lower back like she’s pushing herself forward. I look down between the houses at the darkening city below. The only lights are from cars and fire trucks. The air feels charged. I hear the parrots from the tree take off, circle around, and come back, cawing in confusion.
The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish Page 23