A Mother's Love

by Mary Morris

  They belong to Temple of God, the one where women fly across the cathedral dome, dressed as angels in gossamer gowns. Perhaps she has been convinced that her father was an evil man who led a dissolute life and I was the dark one, just like him. I used to think—and my father had this checked out—that my mother had whisked Sam off to some religious sect where they worshipped who knows what on a mountain top and promised to drink pernicious brews in the face of certain calamities. But now I see for her a more normal life—white carpets, a wine rack, the generic family dog.

  When I am especially tired and Bobby has kept me up until all hours, I think I’ve got it wrong. She has a house in Venice. She’s a would-be actress, waitressing on the side, unashamed of her birthmark; she wears her hair pulled back, off her face, and has a strange, haunting look, like nothing anyone has ever seen. She wears her flaw proudly, like a flag.

  At other times I picture something between these two ways of life. She’s a social worker or a teacher of third grade. Two cats that her boyfriend is allergic to. Or a flight attendant, though who’d have her as a flight attendant with the birthmark? But there is something about Sam—probably the way she left me—that makes me see her disappearing into the clouds.

  NINE

  THERE IS A GHOST in Coal Mine Canyon and once my mother took me there. She said she had a special trip planned only for me, one that would take two days. Once again she dropped Sam off at Dottie’s. It was the last time she would take me with her on one of her excursions into the desert, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. I always felt—as I feel even now—that there would be one more outing, one more foray with my mother into the unknown.

  This wasn’t like our other excursions, when we seemed to amble along without a clear destination. This time my mother knew where she was going. It was dusk as we turned off into Hopiland, heading to the canyon where she promised that we’d see the ghost with the rising of the full moon. She had packed a picnic of store-bought fried chicken, potato chips, and pickles, and she drove to the rim of the canyon, where we ate our dinner. She poked me to stay awake.

  For a long time we sat in the darkness. Then the full moon rose and the ghost’s face appeared on the spectral rocks. At first she was elusive, but as the moon rose higher, she became clear. A woman, bent into herself and pensive, tears sliding down her cheeks, was etched in stone. She had flung herself off the canyon rim, where we sat, onto the rocks below. My mother told me to be quiet so that we could hear her crying. She had killed herself, my mother said, because of unrequited love or the death of her firstborn. No one knew for sure. But with the full moon, the light of her spirit shone through the rocks.

  I must have fallen asleep near the canyon because it was morning when I woke in the car and we were on the road again. We crossed a desert that was drier and stranger than any I’d seen before—completely barren, with nothing growing. I drifted in and out of sleep, wondering where she was taking me. When I woke, it was late and we were in a deserted mining town. And there on a derelict strip of road was the house of junk.

  It was shingled in broken glass, bottle caps, and street signs that read YIELD, BOMBING AREA: PREPARE TO EVACUATE, BLIND PEOPLE CROSSING, CURB YOUR DOG, and WOMEN ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. The house itself consisted of a shack and a trailer, joined by a patio. The patio was shaded with an old circus tent, supported by cacti and barber poles. It was illuminated with blinking lights and magic lanterns. Coconuts and Christmas ornaments dangled from the cacti. Silken birds perched in their branches and plastic pythons twisted around their trunks. A leaking overhead pipe formed a waterfall that tumbled over giant plastic fish and toads in a culvert where waterlilies grew. Streamers made from fliptops, eyelash curlers, hair rollers, and colored rubber bands were draped overhead. Old railroad lights flashed on and off.

  “What is this place?” I asked, amazed. “How did you find it?”

  She tossed her head back the way she did when she was pleased with herself. “Oh, I just came on it in my travels,” as if she had seen the world and this was one of her many stops along the way.

  A weathered man with bloodshot eyes and a beer belly hardly covered by a plaid workshirt emerged from the trailer. He grimaced in the light of the day as we walked toward him. Shading his eyes with one hand, he tried to determine who we were.

  “Don’t you remember me?” my mother said with a coy laugh. “I’ve been here before.”

  The man looked her up and down and smiled. “Yes.” He nodded. “I do.”

  “This is my girl Ivy.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “We’re just passing through and wondered if you could put us up for the night.”

  He said it would be no problem. He seemed to like my mother, and he didn’t mind me. He made us a very good dinner—huge plates of rice and beans and shredded beef—and afterward showed us to the guest room. The guest room consisted of a box spring and doublebed mattress on the flat roof of the trailer. Actually there were three such beds, in case he had several visitors. I looked up when he pointed to our room, startled, unable to believe that I would actually spend a night on his roof beneath the great expanse of western sky. Together, in the dark, my mother and I climbed up.

  We pulled back the covers and curled up in cool sheets. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky that night, and we lay together, heads resting on soft pillows under the stars. My mother held me to her. As I huddled in her arms, she pointed out the planets and constellations she knew. “That’s Mars,” she said with a laugh, pointing to a red planet. “I’ve been there. And there’s the Archer; he looks like a teapot …”

  She told me about a hunter who went off to shoot the big bear and about the scorpion that would bite your heel if you didn’t walk swiftly in the dark. Of the winged horse that could carry you away if you catch his mane. And then she found Hercules, the Immortal Child. As I tried to follow her hand moving against the sky, she told me about a goddess who wanted to rule the world but found a baby left by the side of the road. The goddess picked him up and took pity on the adorable child. She nursed him, but Hercules clamped down so hard that she shrieked with pain and flung him off. Her milk splattered across the sky, making the Milky Way, but it was too late. Hercules was immortal.

  Everything has a story, my mother told me that night. But how she came to know the stories of the ghosts who lived in canyons or the creatures of the sky I’ll never know. Maybe someone had told them to her one night when she was a girl.

  She seemed content as she talked, happy to be with me. Her palms were rough against my face, cracked as an alkali flat, but she smelled fresh, as if a storm had just passed through. She held me so tight that I could scarcely breathe. I thought that I could just stay there forever under the stars. If she asks me now, I thought to myself, whether I want to keep going, I’ll say yes. I knew that night I’d have no trouble saying yes.

  TEN

  THE DAY IN APRIL when Matthew called, it was snowing—a last, sad burst of winter. I was sitting at the window, working on a tedious piece—a medieval collar—from the Brooklyn Museum. Outside, large, unseasonable clumps of snow fell, covering the forsythia already blooming beneath my window, the sprouting daffodils and tulips that the woman across the way had planted the summer before her husband left. I watched her go downstairs, trying to brush the snow away.

  The collar was slow, exacting work and I was having trouble with it. Also, I wanted to be working on a collage that had preoccupied me of late. It was to be a dark image, a desert at night, with an open road, an illegible street sign, Day-Glo stars, and, of course, buried in the background, the face. I had merely sketched it out and I wanted to begin applying color, but Bobby had had a bad night.

  He seemed to be having a bout of stomach flu; he’d been vomiting and had hardly slept, which meant that I had hardly slept. Nor had I been able to paint. My eyes were sore and I wanted to lie down and nap when he did, but I needed to get some work done. I was contemplating taking him to the pediatrician, but a simple visit for a doctor to s
ay he needed to rest and take fluids would cost me fifty dollars, and besides I didn’t think I should take him out in the snow. I figured, if I was lucky, I had two hours before he woke.

  When the phone rang, I grabbed it before it could wake Bobby. “Hello,” I said.

  “Ivy,” a voice said, “it’s me.”

  The phone trembled in my hand. “What is it?” I said. “What do you want?”

  The last I had seen or talked with Matthew was two days after Bobby was born. I had asked him to go to the Office of Birth Records and sign the affidavit, legalizing his paternity. Matthew had balked, so I told him not to call me again unless he changed his mind. The day I was going home, I signed my son’s birth certificate by myself, sobbing—the space for the father’s name left blank. I had grabbed a name out of the air—Robert Ethan Slovak. The nurse stood there, holding out her hand, waiting. She patted me on the shoulder. “You’ll feel better,” she said, “when your husband gets here.” Instead, Dottie and my father, who’d come from their retirement home in Arizona, took me home from the hospital. Now I wanted to put the receiver down, but I was so tired. It was as if I didn’t have the strength. “What do you want?”

  “I want to see you,” he said.

  “There’s no reason to see me unless you want to do things differently.”

  “I’ve been thinking”—he spoke hesitantly—“I’ve been thinking maybe I do.” Then he added, “I miss you. It’s not the same.”

  “It hasn’t been the same for a long time.” I spoke softly. “I miss you, too, but I don’t want to hear from you.”

  “Look, could I see you? I haven’t seen you since Bobby was born. Could I come over?”

  I sighed. “If you have something different to say or if you’d like to sign the papers for Bobby, you can come over.”

  “You drive a hard bargain. You didn’t used to be this way.”

  I thought about that. It was true. I had been easier once, but then my life had been easier. “I’ve learned to make hard choices.”

  “Are you all right? Are you making out?”

  “I’m all right,” I said, wondering how to answer his questions. “I’m very tired; I didn’t think I could be this tired.”

  “Maybe I could help you out a little?” he said. “Could I come by? Just once?”

  “Was it you?” I asked. “Did you call me at night and hang up?”

  There was silence on the other end. “I called once or twice,” he said, “but I was afraid to say anything.”

  When we got off the phone, it was still snowing. The last time it snowed was a couple of months ago, the night Bobby was born. Babies come in snowstorms, I’d heard. It has to do with changes in pressure, the tug on the earth. That afternoon I’d gone to the park, lain on my back, made snow angels. But I hadn’t felt right. My muscles ached; my limbs were inexplicably heavy.

  The night he was born was the third night in a row that I hadn’t slept. When I told that to Dottie, phoning from Tucson, her voice cracked and gravelly across the miles, she said, “The baby’s coming now.” It wasn’t possible, I told her. “It’s coming,” she said. It was nearly a month early, but my water broke that night, and I wasn’t prepared. I sat at the edge of the bed and wept bitter tears. I had nothing for this eventuality—no crib, no bottles, no clothes. I’d been planning to do everything in the last few weeks.

  As I felt my labor worsening, I rose and went to the window. I would have to leave soon. I breathed deeply. It was the middle of the night. Pitch black. A cold city landscape outside with drifts piled high. With great effort I turned and went to the mirror and ran a brush through my curls. My father hadn’t called me Lucky Red for nothing, I thought, as pain clasped me again.

  I took out a small suitcase, the same little green suitcase my father used to have me pack during those endless escapes in my itinerant youth. It was the suitcase I clutched that carried my life’s possessions, such as they were, when we left town for a day, a week, or forever. Though it had been a long time since I’d gone anywhere, I was surprised at the skill that returned as I packed quickly in the middle of the night.

  I did it methodically, running a checklist through my mind. Toothbrush, underwear, nightgown, address book. Comb, brush, change of clothes. A Russian novel I’d planned to read—and now seemed as good a time as any. Jasmine perfume, soft slippers. I could be going to a slumber party or to a weekend tryst, a small business trip, but it was none of the above.

  When I was ready, I gave a deep sigh. I should call somebody. My father. Patricia or an upstairs neighbor. Of course I should call my birth coach, who’d seen me through two Lamaze classes. What about Matthew? I vowed I would not call him. Let the others sleep, I told myself. They’ll need their rest. I picked up the suitcase and headed outside, gripping the railing of the building. Beside me the garbage was overturned, picked through. A shirt nobody wanted, last year’s magazines, scattered scraps of food.

  It was four A.M. and freezing cold as I made my way down the street. I had never been out this late alone and was amazed at how quiet the city was. There was hardly a sound on the deserted streets. Pausing against a streetlamp, I looked up at the darkened windows where for the most part people lived alone in one or two small rooms. Gazing upward, I saw a low layer of clouds, those yellowish-white clouds which bode snow. City lights reflected off them. There were no stars. Somewhere in the distance I heard the sound of shattering glass. A car alarm went off. I hailed a cab, and the driver, on his way home perhaps, pulled over. He stared at the suitcase in my hand. “I’m not going to the airport, lady,” he said.

  “Neither am I,” I replied, getting in.

  I told him where to go. He looked at me oddly, shaking his head. Then he drove slowly through the snowbound streets. The city was all shades and contrasts, a study in black and white, like a Stieglitz. Matthew would have appreciated this observation. I’d never seen snow as a child. I’d never known the way it comes fluttering down. Whenever it snows, I tilt my head back and let the flakes light on my tongue. Once when I was falling in love with Matthew, he told me that in winter he put on his skates to go to the house of his friends. This had seemed part of a fairy tale to me, for in my youth I had walked only the burning roads, and friends were few and far between, scattered in dusty trailer parks.

  The driver grumbled as he drove. “Snow,” he said. “Do you know what it does to my business? Do you know how much money I lose?”

  A plow was ahead of us, blade down. The sound of the scraping was muted. Snow fell in all directions. The driver once again complained. “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m not in a hurry. In fact, I’d prefer it if you’d take your time.” I should have borrowed cross-country skis and sailed to this appointment. I could have dallied in the park. Made a snow fortress. Packed myself in. Or lain on my back again and made snow angels. I felt invincible, a blessed being, as if no harm could come my way.

  Another pain gripped me. As the driver cursed the icy road that made his journey treacherous and slow, I clutched my sides, trying to breathe and wondering what kind of mother I would be. The kind who takes the kid on summer vacations, packing him into a van and off to the national parks. Who takes dozens of snapshots on rope swings, wading in mountain streams, then pastes them into leather-bound albums with gold initials on the outside. Labeling pages on the kitchen table late at night. Jersey Shore, summer. Aged four. Aged eight.

  But perhaps I’d be a different kind of mother. One who drags the kid off to bars or brings in the endless parade of lovers, all called Uncle This or Uncle That, filling the house with strange men so that my child would wake in the morning to someone he’d never seen before, someone sipping coffee at the Formica table, hiding behind newspapers. Never knowing if a man would take him out to play ball or shoo him away.

  At last the cab came to a halt, but I wanted the driver to keep going. To drive through the park again. I had time, I thought. Take me just once more around. Or better yet, drop me off in the middle of a snowy fiel
d. I’ll have my baby there in the open, in the blistering cold. Then I’ll bring him quickly to my warm breast.

  Instead, I grabbed my bag and handed the driver a bill. “I can’t change a twenty,” he said, handing it back to me.

  One more sharp pain went through me. “Keep the change,” I said, shoving it back to him through the bulletproof drawer. Stepping out, I took a deep breath. It would be a long time before I’d stand outside by myself again in the middle of the night like this. Breathing in deeply the night air, I gazed at the yellow sky. It was almost morning. I picked up my suitcase and walked toward the emergency room doors.

  The buzzer rang and I opened the door hesitantly, regretting it even as I did so. Matthew stood in the doorway, dressed in jeans and a green leather jacket, a flannel shirt. I stepped out of the way, motioning for him to come in, not sure whether I wanted him to or not. He stooped, kissing me on the cheek, then on the lips, and walked in. “You look well, Ivy,” he said. “You look very good.”

  “All things considered,” I replied.

  “No, you just look good.”

  “Not sleeping agrees with me,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’m just happy to see you; that’s all.”

  On our way to the restaurant we hardly spoke. We stuck to innocuous topics, walking gingerly around the edges of whatever we had to say. “They’re talking about putting a new water main down my street,” I said at one point. His hand rested on my shoulder as I walked with Bobby in his Snugli. It was one of the first times I’d gone out to dinner since Bobby was born. I’d been to Patricia’s, I’d been out once or twice with friends for pizza and with Dottie and my father when they came just after Bobby was born. Just before Matthew arrived, I’d struggled to get into a pair of pre-Bobby jeans but settled for a loose-fitting skirt. I put on red lipstick.