A month later she took to wearing a blue knit stocking cap.
For almost two years she fought without ever remitting. Cancer wasn’t content to take her all at once; it wanted her in pieces. It took her left breast, then her right. It turned her skin to parchment. She grew so frail and reedy that I was afraid to squeeze her. And yet, if it were possible to die gracefully of cancer, my mother achieved that. It could cut her to ribbons and take her hair, but it couldn’t make her ugly.
Her final months were an exercise in endurance. She spent untold hours in the fog with Barney Miller and Fred Sanford. The sandman was never more than a slow drip away. But I remember her voice in those lucid moments when the fog burned off, and how it didn’t seem to come out of her body, but out of the past. And I remember a certain pride in being spoken to like an adult.
“Do you remember when you were just a baby, William?”
“Not really.”
She smiled. “I suppose not. But somehow I thought you might, somehow you were different. Like you already knew something, William, like you brought something into this world with you. Do you ever feel that?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know what it means.”
“You never acted much like a baby. Not like Ross and Doug.”
In my seven-and-three-quarter-year-old mind, there was something inherently ignoble about the condition of infancy, thus I took my mother’s observation as high praise. I see it differently, now.
“You were a very serious baby. You hardly fussed. Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night to check on you, and I’d find you lying awake in your crib, quite content, staring up at the colored fish.”
How well I remember the colored fish, and the promise of a material world moving slowly counterclockwise with no surprises.
“You were not a needy baby, William. Although I’m afraid I was a needy mother. Because I couldn’t let you lie there on your back being content, I just couldn’t. I had to pick you up and hold you, every time. You were so holdable, William. And you never fussed, bless you.”
My jaw aches when I think what that must have felt like, to be coddled like something precious, to be absorbed finally and completely by another’s affection. But for whatever reason, that feeling is not built to travel.
“Why do we forget?” I asked her.
“I don’t think we ever forget, darling. I think we just have a hard time remembering.”
Not me. I remember it all. Every detail has been preserved with cruel fidelity. So if there’s anything I like less than gyms, anything I find more abhorrent than paining and gaining, it’s hospitals, and those big colored Legos in the waiting room, and the pop-up books, and the fish tanks, and the cafeteria food, and the clipboards and the smocks and the chemical smell that hangs in the dead air. These things I carry with me always.
My mother’s death was more of a coronation, really. A parade of cards and flowers and casseroles followed. The cards piled higher, the flowers wilted, and the four of us sat goggle-eyed around the kitchen table night after night, the only sound the sickly buzz of the overhead light.
“When are we going to have something besides stupid casserole?”
“Yeah, other people’s food is gross. Everything’s got mushroomy gunk inside. When are we going to have our own food again?”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Why aren’t we having juice? We used to always have juice.”
“We’re out,” I said. “So just be quiet and drink milk.”
Big Bill didn’t say much during those first weeks. He was like a wounded elephant. You got the feeling he wished he could be small, but he was just too damn big, and too damn clumsy in his grief. All he could do to fight it was to make himself even bigger.
Six days a week we were all packed off to the gym, where Big Bill pained and gained until you could see the blood pumping through his ropy veins. The twins fell all over each other like puppies, lifting and flexing and posing in front of the mirrored walls, always under the watchful gaze of one hulking “uncle” or another—whoever happened to be between sets. I was less like a puppy and more like a lamp. I stuck to the corner and waited out the interminable hours, thankful on those occasions that I had homework to occupy myself.
On the seventh day, Big Bill rested. And that was the hardest day for all of us, because Big Bill’s grief set him to wandering absentmindedly all over the house, looking for things until he forgot what he was looking for, turning on every television, burning toast, vacuuming in unlikely places. Then, one night, the geography of our family abruptly began to shift, and never stopped. I awoke in the middle of the night to find the twins standing in the hallway in matching footed jammies, rubbing their eyes and looking a little bewildered. All the lights were on. I could hear Big Bill bumping about in the twins’ room, dragging something across the carpeted floor. Peeking in, I found him dismantling the bunk bed.
“What are you doing?”
He looked back over his shoulder, grinning like a wax statue. “Changing things up a little, Tiger. You wanna give me a hand with that corner post there?”
“Now? Can’t you do it in the morning?”
“Why wait?”
Within forty minutes, Big Bill had moved out of the bedroom and into the twins’ room. The twins moved into the office across the hall. And by three in the morning everybody was settled. But within a week, Big Bill relocated again, this time downstairs to the couch, where he slept in the flickering light of the television. The twins seized the opportunity to move back into their old room, vacating the office, which Big Bill soon claimed for himself, though he still spent most nights on the couch. When the twins reinhabited their original room, they switched bunks, so that Doug slept on the top bunk, and Ross slept on the bottom bunk.
As for yours truly, I stayed in the only room I’d ever stayed in, and I stayed there more than ever. And only once do I remember Big Bill coming to me there, though I know that he came more often—he must have. I was on my bed, lying on my back, watching the shadows of the lemon tree play across the foot of the bed. He came in and, not knowing what to do with his wounded-elephant self, stood at the foot of the bed, where the lemon tree shadows played across his legs.
“You all right, Tiger?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. That’s real good.” His gaze wandered about the room. Even his vision didn’t seem to know what to do with itself anymore. He picked up a Hot Wheels car from the dresser and spun it between his fingers, then set it down again.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t feel like maybe you want to talk to someone?”
“We are talking.”
“I mean somebody besides me. I have a friend, a counselor. She’s nice. You might like talking to her.”
“No, thanks.”
He looked like he wanted to sit down, but couldn’t make up his mind where. Finally, he squatted where he stood. “Well, if you ever change your mind . . .”
“Yeah, okay.”
Now that he was squatting, he seemed more restless than ever, like he wanted to stand again.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
“Of course, Tiger. Don’t you worry about me. I can take care of myself.” Then, I swear, my father flexed his right bicep, as though the strength to endure grief actually resided somewhere in there. “Don’t you worry about your old dad.”
There is a family picture that was taken at Christmas, about nine months after my mother died. Big Bill bought everybody matching blue poly-fiber sweat suits with three white stripes running down the arms and legs, and little white zippers on the pant legs. He bought us matching tennis shoes, like Adidas but with four stripes. We’re all wearing our new uniforms in the picture. Big Bill is doing a front double bicep pose with a twin dangling from each bicep. He’s got a fake tan and he’s fle
xing his smile, so that he looks slightly adenoidal. The twins are grinning like chimps as they swing on Big Bill’s arms, impervious, it appears, to any imbalance in the universe. As for me, I’m standing off to the side; at least, I think it’s me—a cheerless spectator with bad posture.
I’m not saying that Big Bill rejected me; it might have been that I rejected him. I’m just saying we didn’t have much in common. He was a lamb shank, and I was fashioned of an entirely different stuff: powdered mashed potatoes. The twins, on the other hand, were carved from the very same meat as Big Bill, and in this way they managed to remain within his sphere of influence. But while Doug and Ross were playing with dumbbells and posing in their underwear in front of mirrors, I was living inside of myself; that is, my world was inside out. I had senses, but they were all on the inside. The sense that something was missing. The sense that this missing thing would forever elude me. The sense that forever as a measure of time no longer existed. The sense that I was not being watched, and not being followed. And finally, a sense that the universe had forsaken me, not out of malice, but as an oversight. And so I built my own universe, and I populated it with things remembered and things that never happened, like the smell of my mother’s bathrobe, and the twin brother I didn’t have.
And something strange happened to my voice. It became scratchy and frayed at the edges, like a prayer flag. I was a roaring mouse, afraid to open my mouth lest my big scratchy voice bring the world to its knees trembling. Or worse, laughing. My third grade teacher found my voice so disconcerting that she recommended to Big Bill that I have my throat looked into, to see if there was not some treatable abnormality: an obstruction, a lymphoma, a hole in the lung. Maybe I was possessed; maybe I’d swallowed Billy Barty.
And so it transpired that a swarthy man with an unpronounceable name who smelled of alfalfa and hot apple cider poked and prodded and generally violated my cranial orifices with lights and swabs and mirrors and tongue depressors, prattling on all the while about great big trucks, and tractors as big as dinosaurs, small talk fit for a boy half my age.
When the ordeal was over three days later, after the cultures were cultured and the X-rays inspected, the copper-faced doctor called us back into his office and explained to my father that he could find no abnormalities.
“The boy is unique. This is a blessing. With a little luck, he might one day grow into this big scratchy voice of his.”
Big Bill wanted to know if meat would help.
“I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”
“Tell him,” demanded Big Bill. “Explain to my son, the eight-year-old vegetarian, that meat is good for you, that you have to eat meat to grow. How do you think cows got so big?”
The doctor explained that, while he was not a nutritionist, he himself was a vegetarian and what amounted to a weekend Hindu, and that cows, too, were vegetarians, a fact that seemed to impress Big Bill. He proceeded to enlighten my father regarding some cutting-edge research, which suggested that meat was very high in cholesterol and saturated fat, and might in fact increase the risk of thrombosis and heart disease. Big Bill was stymied. But how can that be, when the heart is made of meat?
And as ridiculous as it all sounds, Big Bill may have been right about meat. I wore the same school pants for nearly a year and a half after my mother died, and they never became high waters. Even my hair stopped growing. If my voice had changed again, I wouldn’t have known it, because I kept it locked tight inside my chest. And I wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. I wanted only to grow backwards into something I used to be.
The twins’ progress was unimpeded; they grew like prize zucchinis. Nearly three years my junior, they had already outsized me by my ninth birthday. They were giants, a full head taller than anyone else in kindergarten. Their brains couldn’t keep up. I’m not going to say they were dull, maybe just unconcerned. They barreled through the buffet of life grabbing drumsticks and fistfuls of Jell-O, shouting and laughing and making friends without even trying to.
We commemorated my ninth birthday with a family dinner party at The Captain’s Table, a queasily lit buffet of Homeric proportions across the street from the Howard Johnson’s. Despite the nautical theme, there was plenty of real meat at The Captain’s Table: impossibly big meat—mutant drumsticks, sausages as thick as beer cans, roasts as big as camels.
Mostly About Lulu
To see Big Bill carrying on in a party hat, waving a drumstick about like a ping-pong paddle, even if it was for my benefit, was an indignity to my mother’s memory. Thus, I was snake-eyed and sullen on my ninth birthday, and I did my best to make the party a joyless occasion. And that’s how I remember it: just the four of us and my dad’s old training partner Uncle Cliff, a few months before he drove his car off an overpass. He wasn’t really my uncle, of course, more of a stranger, really. According to Big Bill he’d once had the biggest chest in the world. But something was wrong with him. His cheeks were hollow. He looked small inside his hooded sweatshirt.
Cliff never went to the buffet, not even for firsts, which left the two of us alone at the table for most of my ninth birthday party—he with his empty coffee cup and me with my watermelon rinds—while Big Bill and the twins made continuous trips to the meat bar, the salad bar, and the potato bar, in addition to trips to the bathroom between feedings.
Cliff wasn’t much of a talker either, which was fine by me. We were kindred spirits that way. He nodded knowingly now and again throughout the evening, as if to say: Pfff. Birthday parties. Tell me about it. I hate buffets. The cluster of colored balloons tied to the post nearest his seat kept hectoring him. He’d push them away, but as soon as somebody passed down the aisle, they’d drift back over and bonk him on the head, and cling to the side of his face.
“Balls,” he said, at one point. And I’m pretty sure that’s the last thing, and maybe the only thing, I ever heard him say.
Among the gifts I received upon the occasion of my ninth birthday were a set of dumbbells, a Joe Weider powdered vitamin supplement, an obscenely large vacuum-packed summer sausage from Vienna, and, from Uncle Cliff, a World Gym shirt with a cartoon gorilla holding the world above his head like he wanted to throw it.
My life began again the moment I met Louisa Trudeau. Without Lulu, I might never have existed again, might never have known the smell of a gauze bandage or felt the delicate winking of an eyelash against my cheek.
Arriving home slump-shouldered beneath the weight of my book bag one afternoon in February, I discovered her roosting in the breakfast nook in a swath of golden sunlight, as though she’d been delivered to me.
“Your dad’s in the garage with my mom,” she observed. There were a half dozen books spread out in front of her. “I’m Lulu. But don’t call me Louisa. My grammy in Vermont calls me that, and I absolutely despise it. When’s your birthday, anyway?”
I was afraid to unleash the voice. All I wanted to do was look at her. She was Mr. Potato Head beautiful. Nothing fit right. But somehow this girl in the yellow socks, with the small nose and the big ears and the gap-toothed smile, achieved a certain harmony, a beauty greater than the sum of its parts.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Your dad already told me. That you’re shy, I mean. He said that you say about twelve words a day. Is that true?”
I nodded.
“That must be hard,” she said. “I say at least twelve words every thirty seconds, I’ll bet. Maybe even more. Sometimes my mom tells me, honey, you don’t have to say every single thing that comes into your head. But I don’t, really. I mean, say everything that comes into my head. Not even close.”
She fell silent and turned her attention back to the book directly in front of her. “Don’t you think unicorns are stupid?” she said.
I shrugged.
“Well, I sure do. They don’t even make sense. And besides, there are so many incredibly diverse kinds of animals, why would you want to m
ake one up?”
I could understand quite easily wanting to make things up, but I didn’t say as much.
“Sandhill cranes are my favorite animal,” she pursued. “Do you know about sandhill cranes?”
I shook my head.
“That’s okay, not everybody does. In fact, most people don’t, actually. They’re very large birds with very long necks. They do beautiful dances and sing beautiful songs to each other. I might be an ornithologist when I grow up. That’s a bird studier. I’m not going to get married until I’m at least thirty-two. And first I’m going to travel around the world at least three times.” She went back to her book for a fleeting moment. “If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?”
All I could think to say was “back.” So I didn’t say anything.
She looked at me kindly. “It’s okay if you don’t talk. I don’t mind. Actually, I kind of like it. That’s what my mom does for a job, doesn’t talk. She’s a grief counselor. People come to her office and talk about the horrible things that happen to them. Like when their wife dies or their daughter d—” Stopping herself, Lulu cast her eyes down and retreated into a very real silence for the first time. “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to look at me. “I wasn’t thinking about . . . I forgot that . . .”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Really, I mean it, it’s okay.”
When she heard my voice she looked me right in the eye, and I was frozen in the power of her gaze. “I’m sorry about what happened to your mom.”
“That’s okay.”
“Do you want to sit down and I’ll figure out your astrological chart?”
I swung my book bag onto the counter and took a seat across from her, a little jelly-legged. I stared unabashedly at her wild blue eyes as they scanned the pages, and her fast little fingers as they rifled through her astrology books. Never had I been so completely and unexpectedly disarmed by a stranger.
All About Lulu Page 2