by Homes, A. M.
“Damn,” my mother says.
“What?”
“I really like the chicken and pasta, it has lemon and broccoli, and I get one of the girls from the kitchen to slip me some olives and capers. It’s almost like real food.”
“I brought dessert,” Ashley says holding up the cookie tin. “Homemade.”
“Fine,” she says, “we’ll go.” And up she gets, and as she leads us down the hall I notice she’s walking with a certain jounce or bounce in her step.
“Mom, you’re walking really well,” I say.
“It’s the dancing,” she says. “If you think of dancing, then you can walk; it’s just like stroke patients who sing in order to talk.”
“Fantastic,” I say.
“I was always a very physical person,” my mother says. “I’m not sure your father knew that.”
When we get to the door of the dining room, she signals to one of the aides as though he’s a maître d’ in a fancy restaurant. “Table for three,” she says.
“Anywhere you see a vacancy,” he says.
“Do you want iced green tea or bug juice?” my mother asks Ashley.
“Bug juice?”
“Fruity punch,” my mother says, “only here it’s laced with vitamin C and Metamucil.”
“Just water,” Ashley says. “Is the water plain?”
“As far as I know,” my mother says, and then she gazes into Ashley’s eyes and says, “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Me too, Grandma,” Ashley says.
“How’s college?”
“I’m in fifth grade, Grandma,” Ashley says.
“Well, don’t be discouraged,” my mother says.
“So where’s your friend?” I ask, unsure what exactly to call him.
“What do you mean where—he’s right there across the room, with his people. That’s why I didn’t want to come to lunch. Didn’t you see them glare at us?”
“I missed it.”
“You’re a moron,” she says to me.
“Did you two have a falling out?” I ask.
“Of course not,” she says, defensive.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“His people hate me, they actually ignore me. If we’re sitting next to each other, they speak only to him, never to me.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” I say.
“Are you saying I’m lying? That’s why I never tell you anything, because you never think I’m telling the truth. I never should have married you.”
“Ma, it’s me, Harold, not Dad.”
“Well, then, you’re just like your father.”
“Grandma, what was Pop-Pop like? When did he die? Did I ever know him?”
“Why are you trying to distract me with all this talk about the past when what I care about is that my man, my living and breathing man, is being kept from me by his ungrateful little bitches?”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Those are his daughters,” she says.
“Should I go over and break the ice?” I ask.
“Between him and me there is no ice. We knew each other before.”
“Before what?” Ashley says.
“We went to the same junior high,” my mother says. “I was friendly with his sister, a lovely woman, who died on a cruise ship. She was thrown overboard and eaten by sharks, and they never figured out who did it.”
“Her husband?” I suggest.
“She never married,” my mother says.
As the dishes are cleared, Ashley pulls out the cookie tin and is wrestling the top open when nursing-home staff surround us. “You can’t open that here—no outside food,” they say.
“It has no nuts or seeds,” Ashley says.
“It was made at home with love,” one of the attendants says.
“Yes,” Ashley says.
“Can’t allow it—everyone here has to be treated the same. We can’t have people who have no visitors getting depressed just because your mama has someone who cares about her.”
“How about if we share?” Ashley says.
“How many cookies you got?” the worker asks skeptically.
“How many patients do you have?” Ashley asks.
The worker checks with another aide. “The lunch census is thirty-eight, and that doesn’t include folks eating in their rooms.”
Ashley puts the cookie tin down and starts dutifully counting. “I have forty cookies.”
“You go, girl,” the worker says.
Ashley goes from table to table, person to person, offering her cookies. Some people don’t want any, others try to take two, and Ashley has to stop them: “One per customer,” she says.
After the cookies are distributed, I urge my mother to go and say hello to her boyfriend and his family.
“No,” she says, shaking her head and making a face. “They don’t like me.”
“Well, I’m going to introduce myself; if he’s someone you care about, we should be polite.”
“I’ll stay here with Grandma,” Ashley says, and then she whispers to my mother, “They wouldn’t let him have a cookie.”
His family is not polite.
“I thought I would just say hello,” I say, extending a hand. Only the man in question reaches for my hand.
“Nice to see you, son,” he says.
We exchange small talk until one of the daughters pulls me aside.
“We’re not happy,” she says.
“Why not?”
“Your mother is a nursing-home slut. She persuaded him to cheat on our mother, who took care of him night and day for fifty-three years.”
“I didn’t realize,” I say.
“Of course you ‘didn’t realize.’ We know who you are…. I repeat, your mother seduced our father. We heard that happens in places like this—so few men, so many women.”
“I think my mother knew your father from before,” I venture.
“She tried to steal my father from my mother,” the girl says.
“That was in junior high,” my mother calls across the room. “These new hearing aids are really good. At the time I didn’t think their relationship was so serious—excuse me, it was junior high.”
“If I may ask, where is your mother now?”
“She’s at Mount Sinai—that’s what landed him here. They went out for dinner, she fell, knocked him down—he broke a hip, she hit her head. She’s been in a coma, and we’re trying to make some decisions.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Do us all a favor—keep your hooker mother away from our father.”
“Look,” I say, “I don’t think name calling is useful here.”
“There you go, being all ‘reasonable,’” his daughter says. “What part of ‘stay the fuck away’ are you not hearing?” she shouts at me.
“I think everyone has heard you now,” one of the aides says, shooting the daughter a look.
I excuse myself and go back to my mother and Ashley. “Did you know his wife is still alive?”
“Of course,” my mother says. “I know her from before also—we used to play pinochle. He talks about her constantly. He tries to call the hospital. I dial the phone for him. She’s a vegetable,” my mother says. “The nurse holds the phone to her ear, or at least says that’s what she does, and he talks to her. He tells her stories about what they used to do. He remembers what they ate on their honeymoon.” She shrugs. “And then, when he hangs up, he sobs, he just wants to go home. And those girls, they’re the worst—you’d think they’d take him in, take care of him, take him to see his wife. Selfish little bitches they are, but I don’t say that to him, no, I tell him they have lives of their own, they must be so busy.” She shakes her head. “But look at you, you make time to see me. That’s the way it goes—if you were doing well, you’d have no time for your mother. You’re a shlep, you show up, you can be counted on—but you’re so boring.”
“He’s actually very nice,” Ashley says, coming to my defense.
“It�
�s fine,” I tell Ashley. “We’ve always had a complicated relationship.”
“Grandma, could we take you out sometime?” Ashley asks. “Take you out somewhere?”
“Like where?” my mother wants to know.
“I don’t know, like maybe to our house for dinner?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve been to your house before—the food is lousy.”
“Well,” Ashley says, not the least bit fazed, “I’ve been doing a lot of cooking; my whole science class is about the kitchen as a laboratory.”
“Why don’t you come see me again sometime, sweetie,” my mother says. She stands up, blows us each a kiss, and heads off down the hall.
Ashley and I just look at each other. “Our family isn’t like others,” Ashley says.
“None of them are quite what they seem,” I say.
We drive back to the house quietly, then take the dog for a long walk and talk about what we might make for dinner.
“I’m thinking pizza,” she says.
“There’s a pretty good place that delivers.”
She shakes her head. “We’ll make it ourselves.”
“From what?”
“Dough, sauce, cheese,” she says.
“You really do like to cook,” I say.
“I guess,” she says. “Miss Renee and I made dinner almost every night.”
“You didn’t eat with the others?”
She shakes her head. “We made dinner and watched TV,” she says. “After I did my homework.”
I nod.
“She said she loved me,” Ashley says, in a multilayered tone—both defending and questioning.
“I’m sure she did.” There’s a pause. “Can I ask you, were the trinkets from Williamsburg for her?”
“Yes,” she says. “That’s why they had to be good.”
“Right,” I say. And then we don’t say anything more until we’ve fed the animals and are mixing up some pizza dough.
“She kissed me,” Ashley says, looking at me for a response. I give her a recently rehearsed blank face. “So I kissed her back. It was soft, and I don’t know how to describe it.”
“You don’t have to,” I say, and then regret having said it—I don’t mean to cut her off.
“It felt good. It was comforting—like Mom,” she says, and then she just wails. “She said I could sleep in her bed,” she says through her tears. “And you know how they, like, say, don’t get in strangers’ cars, don’t ‘friend’ someone you don’t know in reality and all that—it was Miss Renee, I’ve known her for years.”
“Ash, it’s not you, you did nothing wrong,” I say as her tears literally fall into the pizza dough. We both notice and can’t help but laugh. “Salt,” I say. “Adds flavor.”
“When I was little, I always used to sneeze into the pancake batter,” she says. “Not on purpose, but, like, by accident. I’d be helping Mom stir it and I guess maybe a little bit went up my nose and I’d always sneeze right into the bowl.” She sniffles.
“Do you know who outed you?”
She looks perplexed.
“Who told on you?”
“Britney,” she says, without missing a beat. “Britney got jealous because she has a crush on Miss Renee, which I think is because Britney’s mom thinks Miss Renee is so great. Anyway, she started snooping—she’s got nothing better to do—I think her father is some kind of spy who works for the government. So one night she asked Miss Renee if she could come over after dinner, and so she did, and I was there doing my homework, and she said she needed to talk with both of us, and she laid out her evidence—which was some pictures and a videotape she made by hiding a camera on Miss Renee’s windowsill. She offered to forget it all if we could have a ménage à trois—which I didn’t even know what that meant and still don’t really. Miss Renee got very pale and said to both of us, ‘This is very serious.’ Britney repeated the ménage-à-trois idea a few more times, but my French sucks, so all I could think of was, like, the play The Glass Menagerie, which I saw last spring. I’m still not sure I get it. And when Miss Renee said she was going to have to call ‘the authorities,’ Britney freaked out and went back to her room and took an overdose of some kind of medicine, or really a combination of medicines, because it turns out she has a weird problem where whenever she goes to someone’s house for a weekend she steals drugs from everyone’s medicine cabinets. She actually has a prescription bottle for sleeping pills that belonged to George Bush—her father stole that one for her, it says ‘Bush, George’ and then has the name of the medicine and how often to take it for sleep. Apparently, a lot of people knew she has this ‘habit’; that’s why no one invites her anywhere anymore. I guess she’s stolen other stuff too, and then the girls have gotten blamed for it. And so she took, like, every pill she had and then ended up passing out in the bathroom after throwing up everywhere—and the cats found her.…”
“What cats?”
“Are you kidding? All of the houses have cats, on account of all the mice that are there, on account of the crumbs, on account of how all of us are always nibbling on something in our rooms at night. It’s like that book—If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.”
“I’m not familiar with it. So is Britney still at school?”
She nods. “Her mother is an alum and is also on the board.” She pauses. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Did you do it with my mom?”
I don’t say anything.
“Nate says you did.”
I am still not sure how to proceed.
“You said we all need to be honest with each other.”
I nod. “It’s true we need to be honest. I just don’t really feel comfortable talking about my relationship with your mother.”
“I didn’t ask you to talk about it—I just asked if you did it.” She crosses her arms in front of her chest.
“Yes,” I say, and I start sweating profusely.
“Did you love my mom?”
I nod.
“I’m asking because when you’re a kid it’s really hard to know anything. Maybe I don’t even know what I’m talking about—I feel so weird…” She trails off.
“Do you need to see the doctor while you’re home—maybe we should just make an appointment with the pediatrician?”
“This is so beyond Dr. Faustus.”
“You know, it’s normal to have feelings for other girls.”
“It was so gross,” she says, catching me off guard.
I worry what will come next…. I am imagining Miss Renee making Ash go down on her. I am thinking of how terrifying I personally find putting my head down there and can only imagine what it’s like to a kid—a kid who only likes plain pasta.
“She would just lie there playing with my hair, and then she’d kiss me and ask me to lie on top of her.”
“And did you?”
“Yes,” Ashley says, as though it’s obvious and she shouldn’t have to come out and say it.
“Did you kiss anywhere besides on the mouth?”
“Yes,” she says, like, again, I am so dumb.
“Where?”
“On the arm to the elbow—we played that game, except that instead of tickling her I’d kiss her.”
I shake my head; I have no idea what she’s talking about.
Ashley takes my arm and I’m terrified she’s going to kiss it, fearing that this is exactly how trauma begets trauma begets trauma, how the seduced becomes the seductress. I yank my arm away. Overreactive?
“Arm,” Ashley says, firmly.
I return my arm to the table and lay it out.
“Close your eyes.”
“Don’t kiss me,” I say.
“I’m not going to kiss you. Why would I kiss you? That’s creepy.”
Thank God.
She tickles my arm with her fingers. “Tell me when I get to your elbow,” she says. Her fingers dance up and down my arm, teasing; the thin hairs stand on edge, my skin turns t
o gooseflesh—it’s tickly and weird, and quickly I have no idea where my elbow is, but after a few minutes, just wanting to put it to an end, I call out “ELBOW” and open my eyes.
“We call it ‘spider,’” she says. “Didn’t you ever play that game with anyone?”
“No,” I say.
The phone rings, splitting the air, terrifying me. The machine picks up; the caller waits and hangs up only after the beep. I am sure it’s her, Ms. A&P.
Ashley looks at me suspiciously.
“Who?” she asks.
I shrug.
“I think you have a friend,” she says. “The person you keep texting is trying to call you.”
“What makes you think it’s the same person?”
She says nothing, then offers, “It’s okay to have a friend—it’s not like you have to hide her.”
“Thanks,” I say.
We play Monopoly. The phone rings again and again, no message.
“Just so you know: The person I text is a friend. The person who keeps calling I’m not so sure about.”
On Sunday afternoon I take Ashley back to school. We bring Tessie along for the ride—Ashley wants to bring the kitten too, but I tell her it would be hard on the kitten’s mama. I give her a new watch that I found in the “gift” section of George and Jane’s closet. We talk about cutting back on watching television and reading more; I make some suggestions of books that might replace her television habit—Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës.
“All men,” Ashley says.
I shake my head no. “George Eliot was a woman, as was Austen, and the Brontës.” I promise to send her some. “I think you’ll like them; they’re classics, and a lot like soap operas—in fact, that’s where the soap-opera writers get their ideas from.”
“Don’t push it,” she says.
“Look at Shakespeare, look at Romeo and Juliet, it’s all right there…” I tell her.
She takes her bag and gets out of the car, planting a foggy kiss on the closed window. I beep and wave.
Two days later, the missing girl is found in a garbage bag.
Dead.
I vomit.
The newscaster pronounces “a tragic end to this story.”
I know it is not about me, but I feel guilty; perhaps it is my feelings about Jane, about Claire, my Internet escapades, and the woman from the A&P, who may or may not be the dead girl. It may not be logical, but the depth to which I see myself as criminal, despite my recent best efforts to rehabilitate myself, is real. It is only a matter of time before the cops are at my door. Hours pass. Days. If I had no other responsibilities, I would consider suicide. This may strike you as an overreaction, but what I am trying to say is that I feel guilt, shame, and responsibility on a profound level. Clearly it’s not just about the dead girl. I am aware of the damage to everyone—it’s as though this girl and Nate and Ashley weren’t real, as though nothing was real—except the stirrings below—until all this—until I got to know them. Before this I was detached. The depth to which I now feel everything, when it is not paralyzing, is terrifying. Again, I vomit.