A Mother's Love

by Mary Morris

  She hailed a cab and we tumbled in. “I don’t want to go home,” I said.

  “I don’t especially either. Let’s go to the Statue of Liberty. Let’s ride a buggy around Central Park.”

  “We’d better go,” I said, reluctantly. “We’ll do this again.”

  She closed her eyes once the cab started; it was cozy and warm. A bulletproof shield protected the driver from us or us from the driver as the case may be and we rode in silence. Mara’s head rested against my shoulder, and I ached to tell her who I really was, about my mother and Sam and what my life had been, but perhaps she would never forgive me for my lie.

  I let my head rest against hers as we raced up Eighth Avenue, through Times Square, past Lincoln Center. The streets were empty for Manhattan, and we made all the green lights, heading uptown.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THREATS. They are everywhere. I stopped slipping ice cubes into Bobby’s mouth after Mara told me not to. (“But they melt,” I’d protested. “Not before you’re dead,” she replied.) She instructed me how to cut hot dogs, which Bobby would be eating in a few months. In half lengthwise, then in smaller pieces. The number one cause of accidental death in children between the ages of one and two is from hot dogs. Lethal. Everything around me has become a danger. Nothing is immune. The obvious ones—fish bones, muggers, Alar—are not of much concern. Now it is electric outlets, cotton balls, mobiles over cribs. A million ways to choke or suffocate present themselves, things I’d never contemplated before.

  The night before Bobby was born I had taken a baby safety class. I sat, huge, already in labor, though I didn’t know it at the time, amidst terrified couples holding hands. “What do you do if your child is plugged into an electric outlet?” Mrs. Volkan had droned on in her Austrian accent. “What do you do if your baby is on fire?” For the latter you throw a blanket over him and beat down the flames. For the former, get a broom and sweep him away.

  Even though Bobby has a few months before he begins to crawl, I baby-proof everything. Plastic plugs into sockets, latches on doors. I move the Drāno (I’ve heard terrible stories) and the Ajax to the top shelf. People—perfect strangers—regale me with stories of what happens if you drink Joy. I look at the boxes of jewels I keep around the house for repair. The worst-case scenarios present themselves. Bobby pulling himself up to swallow a diamond. A gold band. I move these to top drawers. I study the apartment. Corners of tables become enemies. I tape them smooth. I hide the plastic bags. The bars of the crib can choke. A mobile, the kind with plastic animals that go around, can kill. There are a million stories of the horrible deaths of children, not from violence, but from the basic tools of living. The world is full of weapons. We all suddenly are under siege.

  And this is only what happens at home. It says nothing of the world outside, where random violence, disease, the fortuitous abound. An unemployed actor, walking by a building under construction, is struck dead by a steel beam. A child asleep in his bed in the projects is shot by a stray bullet. Pictures of missing children take on new meaning. These are not the faces of the abused, the neglected, the ignored. This is a child who was taken to a circus or went camping with his dad, never to be seen again.

  In the supermarket one day I leave Bobby in the carriage with the checkout girl. I know her well and I am too tired to carry the baby as I shop. When I return, the manager scolds me. “If her back was turned, you know how easy it would be for someone to walk out of here with that kid?” Though I resist them, I read the stories of the things that can happen. A wind blows in the window of a cafeteria where children eat sandwiches and sip chocolate milk; a dozen of them are crushed. A man puts his pregnant lover on a plane from England, and everyone, including many college students returning home for Christmas, are blown away. One mother writes to the New York Times that her life is over. A father holds a hospital staff at bay with a gun while he pulls the plug on his fifteen-month-old son who has lived as a vegetable since swallowing a balloon. A balloon.

  Anything becomes possible. The world is a threat. The ingredients on packages. (What is sodium chloride? What is BHT?) What are the additives? What do they spray the plants with? Will my son have bone cancer in two decades because of what I’m feeding him now? Will he get on the wrong plane? Stories that were other people’s problems now become mine. I weep as I read of a school bus that bursts into flames. And then there are drugs. And of course war. He could be drafted. I find myself praying as I never have for peace.

  There are other cities, countries, where we could live. But Los Angeles had 137 days of ozone alert last year, and it has over two thousand gangs. DC has the most murders, but New York has more random crimes. There are street children in Seattle, ghetto crimes in Chicago. San Francisco seemed a nice place to live until the expressway collapsed.

  I ponder how to protect this child. What can I do to keep him safe? I find myself, night after night, weighing the odds.

  TWENTY-SIX

  ONE SATURDAY afternoon in May, Mara took all the kids to the park so that I could stay home and paint. She had taken Bobby and Jason in a double stroller with Alana walking beside. I was to meet them for dinner. I sat at my work table, the sun streaming in. The sun felt good on my face and I was happy to have the time to myself. I was working on a photorealist desert-scape—an empty road leading to a vanishing point. But set against the mountains, coming naturally out of their shapes, was the face. In the strong light the face looked clearer than it had in the past, and I felt myself on the brink of discovery. It was at the moment when everything seemed to come together that Matthew phoned. But I was not surprised. He seemed to have a sixth sense about me. He must have felt me slipping away.

  The machine was on and I let it answer. When I heard his voice, I did not move. His message was simple. He wanted to see his son. “Ivy,” I heard him say, “it’s me, Matt. I know it’s been awhile; I hope it’s long enough now. Maybe you’re home screening your calls, but whenever you listen to this, I just want to tell you that I’ve been thinking and I miss you and Bobby a great deal. I know this may sound strange, but Bobby’s been on my mind lately. I feel that he should know me in some capacity. I am, after all, his father, whether I wanted this or not; it seems to me that I ought to have some kind of relationship with him.”

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about Matthew, though it was weeks since we’d spoken. More and more as I held Bobby, I could see Matthew’s eyes, his hair. When I looked at Bobby naked, I saw Matthew’s long waist, his foreshortened limbs. More and more Bobby’s features defined themselves by his father’s. And beyond this, in my own body a longing had set in. At night my body trembled with desire and I wanted what I had not had in so long. If I closed my eyes, I could almost feel Matthew’s hands as they traveled down my back. But just as I had begun to put him in the same place where, I suppose, I had long ago tucked my mother and Sam, Matthew was calling.

  He talked to the machine for a while, and I still did not answer the phone. It was odd, because at that moment, listening to Matthew’s disembodied voice, I wanted him more than I ever had. I wanted to feel his hands on my body, his mouth against my mouth. I wanted him in a way that was strange and desperate. When he stopped talking and the machine clicked off, I resolved not to phone him back.

  But a week later he phoned again, and my machine wasn’t on. When I picked up the receiver, he said, “Ivy, it’s me. I want to talk to you.”

  “Please,” I said, “please leave us alone.”

  “Look, I miss you. I want to see you and I want to see the baby.”

  “You should have thought of that months ago,” I told him. “You’ve had plenty of time to think about that.”

  “Will you meet me? Please? I just want to talk. Couldn’t we just meet and discuss this?”

  We agreed to go two nights later to an Italian restaurant on the West Side, a place we used to drop in for a bottle of Chianti and pasta. Viviana had agreed to stay late and watch Bobby. I told her I needed to speak with his fat
her and I wanted to do so alone. But I was looking forward to the occasion. I thought about what I would wear, how I wanted to look. I put on a gray jacket with shoulder pads that Matthew had admired, a green shirt underneath—my color, he always said—and the jeans that I could just get into. When Matthew appeared, it was clear that he too had made an effort to look good for the occasion. He wore a clean blue workshirt, relatively clean chinos, and a stylish black Italian jacket. It was as if this were our first date and we had gone to some trouble to look properly single, elegantly casual. We wanted to impress each other. The moment I saw him I thought that maybe now, with the time that had elapsed, we would find the way to work this out.

  “Ivy”—he kissed me on the lips—“I’ve missed you.”

  And I had missed him. It was all a misunderstanding. Bad timing and missed opportunity. I saw him now as I had seen him so many years ago when we first met. Youthful, his smile a bit on the crooked side, his eyes warm, friendly, inviting. I was not going to stop loving this man. Not for a long time. Maybe never. Perhaps my life would simply be tied up in loving him, whether we were together or not in some cruel, pointless destiny. It occurred to me when Matthew walked in as if nothing bad had ever happened between us, that this meeting after all these months was simply a natural outcome of everything that had gone before.

  “I’ve missed you too,” I said, “more than I knew.”

  “You look well. It’s good to see you.”

  “Yes, it’s good to see you.” As I finished getting ready, Matthew went over to the crib, and looked down at Bobby, who was asleep. Viviana hovered nearby and I frowned at her. She gave me a fiery stare.

  “I won’t be late,” I said as we walked out the door.

  “That’s good,” she told me. “I’ve got to get home.”

  “She seems kind of gruff,” Matthew said once we were on the street.

  “Actually, she’s very nice. She’s just a little odd.”

  He shrugged. “So, how have you been? Are you doing all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Busy, working. And you? How’s your work? How have things been?” I wondered how long we would dance around each other with these formalities.

  “Oh, good in fact. I’ve got some interest from the Walker. And I have a new commercial account. I’m doing some work for Bloomingdale’s, if you can imagine.”

  I could imagine. “What’s the Walker interested in?”

  “Oh, the Hall of Fame series, only enhanced. Maybe a show of Americana. I’d have a room to myself. If they go ahead with the exhibit.”

  “Well, that is exciting.” Who, I wondered would accompany Matthew to the opening of his show at the Walker. I could see us, arm in arm, Bobby toddling between us.

  “Yes, and you?”

  “Oh, I’m painting. Most of those abstracts with the faces. I’m doing a desert series.” He had always been interested in this side of my life. “New objects seem to be entering the work. A baby bottle for one,” I said with a laugh. “Spilt Milk, I call that painting. I keep thinking I should make new slides.”

  “I’ll do that for you. I’d be happy to help you make new slides.”

  “Well,” I said, shying away from this burst of enthusiasm, “we’ll see.”

  I ordered spaghetti primavera from the light menu and Matthew ordered a fettucini with sun-dried tomatoes and wild fungi, the kind of dish I might have ordered before I had a child. I could have eaten anything before I had Bobby and never gained an ounce, but now I seemed to have pounds sitting around my waist. It felt as if old age had abruptly settled in. I was exercising less.

  “So,” I said, “are you seeing anyone?”

  Matthew rolled his eyes. “Ivy, please. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know. I just assumed you’d be seeing someone by now.”

  My pasta had arrived, but I was merely picking at it. I’d ordered a glass of milk, remembering a woman in the maternity ward, her back in a brace, her body broken, because her child had taken all her calcium away. But the food was tasteless to me. I seemed to eat without eating. Meanwhile Matthew ate heartily, using a piece of bread to wipe up his sauce, washing it down with great gulps of wine.

  “Why did you want to see me?” I asked.

  “Why?” He looked at me incredulously. “Why? Because I miss you. I wanted to see if we couldn’t normalize relations and see where it might take us. And because of Bobby. I want to see my son.”

  “And what … what are you willing to do?”

  “To do? I don’t know. Why don’t we spend time together and see? It’s not a rational thing, you know. But one day at a time, I’d like to try it out. Spending time with the both of you.”

  “What about Bobby? What if six months, a year from now, things don’t work out with us again? What will your relationship be to your son? Will you still see him on a regular basis? Will you help me to provide for him?”

  “You’re asking me to make decisions about my feelings. I don’t know. I can’t say for sure. I need to think this through.”

  “It’s the child I’m thinking about, Matthew. Not us.”

  He was silent. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

  “I want you to legalize your relationship to him.”

  “I know you want that.” Matthew looked up at me. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll take care of it yourself?”

  He nodded solemnly. “I’ll take care of it.”

  When he walked me home, he wanted to come inside, but I said no. Not yet. At the outside door I kissed him on the cheek. “We’ll talk,” I said. “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”

  “Can’t I come in?”

  “Another time. Not now.”

  Upstairs, I found Viviana getting ready to leave. She looked at me and shook her head. “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s none of my business,” she said.

  “Well, you’re making it your business. Tell me. What are you thinking?”

  “He didn’t touch the baby.”

  “Bobby was asleep.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “He didn’t touch him.” She was putting on her shirtwaist and floral skirt. “Just be careful,” she told me. “See you Monday.” And she was out the door.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ONCE, a few years after my mother left and we’d moved back to California, my father having taken “the cure” for his gambling and Dottie devoting herself to our care, I thought I saw my mother on Venice Boulevard. She was wearing a blue cotton dress and carrying groceries in a brown paper bag. Her skin was still pale, her black hair short, and her bearing elegant. I had hoped someday to see her disheveled, a crazy woman wandering the streets, drugged and wasted. Instead, she had a matching bag and shoes.

  I was on the other side of the street and traffic was heavy, but I called to her. “It’s me!” I shouted. “It’s Ivy.” She must have heard, because she paused and cocked her head, like a robin listening for a worm. Then she quickened her pace, tossed her groceries into a waiting car, and, before I could cross the street, was gone.

  I stood perfectly still, as if the slightest movement would break the spell, and a flood of warm memories washed over me. I saw my mother holding a spoon with an egg, about to dip it into dye. I felt her take my hand as we walked through the Desert Sands trailer park. I saw the lights she strung up at holidays, despite my father’s protestations that he was a Jew. I could see her face when my father told her a joke that made her laugh; the way all the harshness fell off and she was smooth and sweet as an almond.

  While I stood dreaming, the woman who may have been my mother was gone from view. Maybe it wasn’t she. Maybe she hadn’t seen me. Or recognized me. But as I stood on Venice Boulevard, something occurred to me that I had not considered before. I’d always thought that in taking Sam and leaving me behind, my mother had made a difficult choice. Something she had struggled with over months, maybe years. But seeing her there, looking
so trim and neatly dressed, made me think differently. There was not the look of anguish I’d expected to see on her face. I decided that she had left me with my father not because she thought that was fairer to all of us, but because she hadn’t wanted me at all.

  It was a long time since I’d given much thought to her. After she left, I used to write letters to her, but then I stopped. I’d written them as if I actually had a place to send them. I’d put her name and Sam’s on the envelope with a stamp, assuming that eventually I’d know where they should go. In the letters I answered all the unanswered questions. I completed all the half-finished thoughts. I said the things I’d been about to say when she would get up, as she always did when I spoke, and wander into another room.

  I told her how we were doing. At first I told her the truth. How life was difficult without her. How I was tired of fried chicken and Salisbury steak TV dinners. How the house was a mess. About the hours I kept. About how lonely I was from dusk, when my father went on his shift, until dawn, when he returned.

  But then I remembered that my mother never wanted to hear anything bad. If I told her that So-and-So’s parents were getting divorced or somebody was sick, she’d say, “Oh, Ivy, you always tell me such sad things. Say something happy. Make me laugh.”

  So I began to make up things. “Dear Mom,” I wrote, “guess what? We’re moving from the trailer into a three-bedroom house, a room for each of us, a house with a real lawn. Dad’s been working regular hours and putting money away. No more crazy late-night shifts. I’m doing great in school. Mostly A’s and B’s.”