by Mona Simpson
She hates you. She hates you more than anything she is and she’s tied until she kills you, it’s that deep in her. She will stay. And you know you have to get up. You want to close your eyes and be dizzy, let this blur dark, tasting the blood in your mouth like a steak, and let her come back to you and touch you softly, lead you to your bed, tuck you in, care for you.
Now, still in the closet, but a million miles away (a hawk flying over a blank western sky), you start sobbing. You hear yourself as if it’s someone sitting in a chair across the room.
I stood up and shuffled past her to the door. She pressed right behind me, breathing.
“It’s me or nothing, kid,” she is saying, her voice laughing and crying. She looks at me, slack, her face sags with an intimate apology.
I slide the door shut and I am outside. We look at each other, stunned, for a moment through the glass. Stunned that I would choose nothing.
I slumped in the alley, next to clean garbage cans, mad at myself because I was so weak. My ears were ringing and they seemed to ring through all the other days. Everything looked sharp, the willow branches over the alley fence so brittle they could cut the sky.
“Come on, get in,” my mother said. She slid over and opened my door. She moved quickly now, dressed and businesslike. She sat in the driver’s seat, the passenger door hung open. Then she got out and stood with her hands on her hips. “They turned off the phone and we have to go down there. So if you want the phone to work, when your kids call, then you better get in.”
We sat in silence while she drove. She waited in the car and I went in with our papers, the bills rumpled from being in my mother’s purse. She counted out the cash she gave me to the dollar, and then she asked me for change. But she was right. I would have stolen from her.
I just went to the people at the desks and gave them everything. I didn’t say a word. My mother would have made excuses, told them our tragic life story, tried to make them like her. But they already knew us, that’s why she stayed in the car. I went in every month. They just did it for me, right away, without questions.
When I slid back in, my mother was sitting sideways on the edge of her seat, looking at her profile in the rearview mirror. She pushed the tip of her nose up with a finger.
“I need a little, too. Just a touch off the tip. Nobody’d even know.” She sighed. “Maybe we’ll both go in.”
My mother finally did call Josh Spritzer’s psychiatrist and he refused to see her. She succeeded, however, with Josh’s son’s psychiatrist. She drove to see him at his office, three afternoons a week, each time dressed as if for a date. After a while, Josh Spritzer stopped calling altogether, but my mother nonetheless remained cheerful. She seemed to be home a lot more.
She spent time on our half-size refrigerator. She polished the glass and the plastic and the chrome and she bought expensive jars of things which she lined up, according to size. Vinegar with herbs floating upside down, mustards, chutney, maple syrup. She pared and peeled carrots, celery, jicoma and green beans for a platter on the second shelf. The parsley was arranged in its own ceramic pitcher. An elaborate fruit bowl, the apples polished and decorated with sprigs of mint, daisies poking out between the oranges, held the prime spot on the top shelf. I caught her rubbing brown eggs on her sweat shirt. And above the glistening eggs, she rested a small Steiff toy chicken.
I took an apple one day after school and lay on the couch, eating. I was happy. I liked having all that food.
Just then I heard my mother’s car outside in the alley. “Honey,” she called. “Come help me, would you?”
The backhouse yard was small enough so we could hear each other from anywhere. In the alley, she bent unloading dark green shopping bags. They were light. I took them all in one hand. Then she stood at her dresser, smiling, concentrating on a small, flat box. She untied the green satin ribbon. She opened the box and held it out to show me. It was a man’s tie, deep red, with tiny blue dots.
I shrugged. “What’s this?”
She kept grinning. It was the middle of the afternoon. She must have been out shopping all day.
“Isn’t it pretty?” She stared down at the folded tie in the palm of her hand. “It’s silk.”
“Who’s it for?”
She sucked in her breath and pulled her chin up. “It’s a present, Ann.”
So that was how it was going to be. I went to my room and closed the door. A few minutes later, she called me again.
She stood in front of the open refrigerator. “Honey, when you take an apple, take it from down here.” She pointed to the produce drawer, crammed full of bagged apples and oranges. “I don’t mind you eating, but I arrange the basket so it looks pretty.”
I didn’t say anything and she kept on.
“Do you understand? Because I’d like to keep it nice. It took me three hours the other day to get this refrigerator decent.”
“So you’re not working anymore.”
“I’m working.”
“When?”
She smiled. She wasn’t going to tell me. I turned to go back to my bedroom. I kept wanting to hit that smile.
“Don’t you worry about that,” she yelled. “That’s my worry. And believe me, everything’s fine. Everything’s finally going to be just fine.” She started humming to herself and I heard glass clinking, jars being moved inside the refrigerator.
Jack Irwin still called. He took us out to dinner in formal, expensive restaurants I’d never heard of and which didn’t seem to require reservations. These restaurants had in common white tablecloths and an extraordinary number of small courses. Everyone in those restaurants seemed old, old waiters in black cotton suits and women in long dresses that showed whole U-shaped sections of their paper-thin, crinkly backs.
Would the young lady like whipped cream on her gâteau, the ancient waiter would ask.
“Yeah, tons,” I’d say, loudly. But no one looked at me.
“Yes, thank you,” Jack would tell him, “the young lady would like a bit of cream.”
The backhouse seemed more tended every day. Like before, when I came home from school, it was usually empty. My mother would rush in an hour or so later, perfectly dressed, with a new haircut or a new blouse or a new color on her nails or a mysterious package which I assumed was another present.
She seemed happier than I’d seen her for a long time, but distracted.
My mother couldn’t keep her secret for long. “It’s going to be wonderful,” she said. She sank down against her car seat after she told me, her chocolate almond cone almost touching her chin. “You’re finally going to have everything. We’ll have a big house and you’ll have all the clothes you want.” She said that she and her psychiatrist, a Dr. Leonard Hawthorne, had fallen in love. Apparently, they were going to get married.
Her eyes half closed and she licked the cone neatly, around in a circle.
“And I’ll get a car?” I said.
“And you’ll get your car,” she said.
I still hadn’t seen Dr. Hawthorne. He didn’t call or come to the backhouse. From what I could tell, the only times they met were their afternoon sessions. But that seemed to be enough for her. She remained happy in a talkative way. She’d be dusting the inside of a cupboard, she’d look up and say, “Aren’t we lucky, Annie-honey? Aren’t you glad something nice happened to your mother after she’s worked so hard all these years?”
Every night, she sat at the dining room table—which was Nan Keller’s old drafting board covered with a new white cloth—and wrote letters. She used red stationery, red envelopes and a quill pen, which she dipped in white ink. She wore a new, floor-length, peach-colored silk robe with cuffs that folded back and a long, round collar.
When she completed a letter to Dr. Hawthorne, she sealed it with beeswax. She’d bought a stamp that said “Joie d’Adele.”
For my birthday, I wanted a car. Every kid in LA who didn’t have one wanted a car.
My mother kept smiling weirdly and humming b
efore the day. “Don’t worry,” she said, in a singsong lilt.
The morning of my birthday, she gave me keys. Her face seemed radiant, spilling. “Yes,” she nodded, “it is,” and watched me fly into happiness.
A few minutes later, after hugs and giggles, I asked where the car was.
“I wanted to get it today for you, but they couldn’t have it till next week. But don’t worry, Puss, it’s on its way.”
“What color?”
She hesitated. “White,” she said, then nodding too much. “Mmhmm, it’s a white one.”
A Tuesday night, she took off her peach-colored robe and dressed again. I thought she wanted an ice cream cone and I got dressed right away, too. I thought she might be coming around to her old habits. I actually missed driving by Josh Spritzer’s houses.
But when we slid into the car, she seemed distracted. She didn’t talk to me or tell me where we were going. It was eleven o’clock and we drove all the way out to Santa Monica. She parked the car across the road from a high-rise apartment building. Outside, the beach palms moved in the wind.
My mother turned to me quickly, for the first time since we’d left the backhouse.
“Do you have a dollar?”
I felt in my pocket, but I already knew what was there. “I have one dollar, but it’s my last money.”
“Give it to me.”
I kept my hand clutched around the soft paper in my pocket. I sweated and the dollar felt damp. “I need it for school tomorrow.”
I knew all the arguments: worked all these years, slaved, she supported, etc. But she didn’t even start. She just stuck out her hand. “Come on. Give it to me.”
She ran to the building across the street in her high heels. I saw her with a man just behind the glass door. Later, she told me she needed my dollar to tip the doorman. Dr. Leonard Hawthorne lived in the penthouse and she wanted her letter delivered by hand.
She looked relieved and looser when she sank back in the car, her hair messy and glamorous from the wind. She rolled down her window. “Oh, smell that air, would you?” She took a deep breath and for a moment, she seemed like herself again. “Should we run and get an ice cream cone? Oh, we don’t have any money, do we? Drat. I could really go for a chocolate almond. Do you think they’d take a check? Why not? Huh? They know us. We’ve been going for years.”
Leslie and I walked, as we did every day during morning recess, down the open plaza of the fourth floor New Building, to buy sweet rolls and coffee in the cafeteria. We’d learned to like coffee. We practiced, drinking it with two packets of powdered cream and four Sweet’n Lows. Every day, we found it delicious again.
During class, I’d rifled through all my pockets and purse, but I had no money. I’d used all my change the week before. I would have to lie.
The sweet rolls smelled warmer and darker that day, they’d just been taken out of the oven, the white sugar frosting melted so they stuck together when the ladies behind the counter lifted them with spatulas from huge tin pans.
“I don’t think I’ll have one today,” I said.
Leslie took two, the heavy rolls flopping on the flimsy paper plates. “Come on, you can’t let me get fat alone.”
I looked down. This was hard but necessary. We stood in the line to pay. Leslie was pouring our coffee. “No, I don’t want anything.”
Leslie opened her leather wallet and took out a five-dollar bill. She paid for both of us. “I’m forcing you,” she said.
We walked back over the fourth floor terrace slowly, careful not to spill, talking quietly, under the eaves where pigeons nested. I kept looking over at her. Sometimes, like at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, people seemed so kind. Then I thought the world would be easy. But thinking that confused me about my mother.
“Oh, my mom’s getting married,” I said. A splash of coffee spilled on my suede shoe.
I lied to people on buses. Dumb lies, only things that didn’t matter. I told a man I came from a family of seven children, my father worked in a bakery. The man nodded, not the least bit surprised.
My mother took me along on one of her sprees. We got up early and looked at linen suits on sale. She found one that was rust-colored and I found a blue.
“Aren’t these too much?” I said, rubbing the cardboard ticket.
“They’ll always be good. They’re a classic cut. Really classic.”
My mother stood in a pool of light from the high arched windows of the store. The brick floors and vaulted ceiling made us feel peaceful. But she hadn’t worked in months. The drawer with our bills wouldn’t open, it was packed so full.
“Do we have the money?” I whispered.
“Mmhmm,” she said. “I think so. For something of this quality, at this buy, yes.”
And I let her walk to the antique bar used as a desk and write a check, for mine, too. On the way out we found purple hats, hundred-dollar purple hats.
“Absolutely adorable,” my mother said, flipping one on me.
We bought those, too.
I thought, with all the money we owed, a couple hundred dollars wouldn’t make a difference. If I tried to be careful, my mother would just spend it anyway, so I’d collect things now while I could. As if you could stock up on purple hats.
When my mother was upset, she turned graceless. She bumped into corners, her elbows jabbed walls. She hurt herself.
“Damn,” I heard her say. It frightened me how much she could pack into that small word.
All her knocks and wandering would end up in my room, but there was nothing I could do except wait. There were no locks on any of our doors. Finally, she came. She wasn’t wearing anything but a dirty gray sweat shirt. She squatted on my carpet, barelegged, rocking.
“I don’t know, I just don’t know. SHE’S the one who had to come to California, SHE was going to be a movie star, and I work and work and slave and it’s high time I get something for ME once instead of you, you, you and more you. And you don’t even like me. I can see the way you look at me.”
She covered her hand with her sleeve before she hit me.
I used everything, hitting hard, loose, not seeing what I was doing. And in a few minutes she fell off the side of my bed. I was getting stronger than she was.
She stood up and walked to my door. She crossed her arms and spit, her saliva arching over the carpet, falling a foot short of the sheet.
My mother didn’t forgive me right away. When I came home from school, she was standing in front of the full-length mirror on her closet door, wearing an unfinished wedding dress. A seamstress knelt pinning the hem. I recognized the ivory beaded satin. It was one of our things from Wisconsin. She’d bought it, years ago, in Egypt.
“What are you doing?” I said.
She wouldn’t look away from the mirror. “We’re busy now, Ann.” I just stood there, watching. The woman crawled around my mother’s feet, taking pins out of her mouth and sliding them into the thick fabric. My mother kept changing the position of her mouth and watching the effect in the mirror.
“Look what she did to me.” She rolled back her left sleeve. Her arms stretched long and thin, light brown. My mother bruised easily. “Look at those marks. She’s like a little animal.”
I sat in the alley. A few gates down, three boys pedaled out on bikes, with baseball bats and mitts in their baskets. They still had high light voices and I watched them ride off, pedaling standing, beautiful boys with careless voices.
An hour later, at dusk, my mother marched out and asked me if I wanted to put on a sweater, so we could go have dinner. She didn’t seem at all surprised to find me slumped in the alley. I sat there a lot of times now. The dressmaker had gone and my mother looked tired. I pulled on an old sweater and she didn’t complain. We both just settled in the car.
“Well, so, what are you thinking?” she said at the restaurant. She propped her face on her fists, tried to smile.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
I shrugged.
She reached over, put her hand on my forehead. “You’re a little warm.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re just tired.” She sighed. “Well, it won’t be long now. Pretty, pretty soon, I think, things will be changing for the better. The much better.”
“Do you still think you’re going to marry Dr. Hawthorne?”
“Mmhmm,” she said, reveling in the adjustment of her smile, all the while studying her nails. “No, I really don’t think, Honey. I know.”
I crossed my arms on the table. “So if you’re going to marry him, why doesn’t he ever call? You never go out on dates.”
“Honey, you don’t understand.” She leaned closer. “It’s all part of the therapy. Remember the first time when I was upset? Well, he was bringing me through my father and all that pain. I’ve suffered a lot, Ann, you really don’t know. And then the next time it was your father and that was a hard one, boy, I can tell you. Then I had to go through Ted Diamond. But I’m through it all now. It’s over. And he’s stopped seeing me, as a patient. It’s like he’s saying, Hey, you’re done. You’re finished. Now we can go ahead and just date.”
“So when do you think you’ll get married?”
“I’d say, oh, about a month. Maybe three weeks, but probably a month.”
“When will he start calling and coming over and stufi?”
“Any day now, Honey. Certainly by the weekend.”
But he didn’t call by the weekend. And the next day, my mother’s red envelope, addressed with white ink, came back in our pile of mail on the washing machine top, Return to Sender scrawled on it with an ordinary ball-point.
“Give me that,” my mother said.
I followed her to her bedroom and watched her slip it in a drawer. I saw a flash of red. “If he’s going to marry you, why did he send your letter back?”
My mother gave me a patient look. She opened the drawer and took the letter out again. There were dozens of red envelopes in there.
“Look-it, Honey. This is addressed to Doctor Leonard Hawthorne. See.” She ran her fingers over the indentations his ballpoint pen had made. “See, he doesn’t want me to write to the doctor. The doctor doesn’t want to see me anymore. He wants to know me as Len Hawthorne the man, not the doctor. And believe you me, so do I!”