Missing Mom

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Except in one case. Where maybe it would have been better if I’d never seen him a second time.

  “Nikki, thanks! I appreciate this and I know that Hank will, too.”

  Hank? What were we talking about?

  In an excess of drunken gratitude Rob squeezed my hand, hard. For an edgy moment I thought he might kiss me.

  I’d been hoping that Rob would be content with remaining in the kitchen where I could offer him coffee to sober him up, and a slice or two of Royal Apple Bread (I’d baked the day before, from Mom’s recipe), but Rob headed for the dimly lighted living room, whiskey bottle in hand. Before I could invite him, he collapsed with a wheeze on the sofa.

  “Drink, Nikki? Join me.”

  I told him thanks, but—

  “C’mon, Nikki! Party gal like you.”

  Party gal. If there was a term that didn’t apply to me at the moment, party gal was it. In fifteen years of knowing him, I’d never heard Rob Chisholm call anyone gal.

  Rob splashed whiskey into the glasses, and handed one to me.

  “‘Auld lang sign,’ Nikki! You and I go way back, about as far as Clare and me.” Rob lifted his glass in a swishing festive gesture, and drank.

  “I think it’s ‘auld lang syne,’ Rob.”

  “Whatever. Fifteen years is ‘auld.’”

  This was meant to be a joke, but came out sounding wistful.

  I pretended to drink. Damned if I’d let myself get drunk babysitting my sister’s distraught husband.

  Rob said, with maudlin emphasis, “Fifteen years is ‘auld lang whatever.’” His laughter sounded like wet gravel being shoveled.

  Before she’d left Mt. Ephraim, Clare had called to warn me—unless it was a kind of boast, the way she’d used to speak of guys in high school she’d broken up with—that Rob was taking their separation “pretty badly.” I had to wonder how she’d expected him to take it after fifteen years and two children—“pretty nicely”?

  With every day that passed I was becoming more furious with Clare. Everyone in the family seemed to be furious, too. It was fascinating how family members united in fury against one of their own who has behaved badly: relatives who hadn’t spoken with me since the day of Mom’s funeral had been calling all weekend, incensed. I was made to realize that in their zeal to condemn Clare, the formerly “good” sister, they were willing to ally themselves with “bad” Nikki, who’d long disgusted the Eatons by seeing (i.e., sleeping with) a married man.

  “Hey Nikki! You’re looking good.”

  Rob meant to sound genial but this came out like reproach. He hadn’t seen me in weeks, we’d only just talked on the phone when sometimes I’d been emotional if not upset.

  “Well. I’m trying.”

  “‘Trying’?”

  “Not to let missing Mom make me a wreck.”

  Here was a surprise: I wasn’t looking bad, considering. My hair (shades of darkish blond laced with silver) had grown out to fall in loose crimped waves around my face and in several strands I’d braided purple yarn to match a purple-and-heather mohair turtleneck sweater Mom had knitted for me at least ten years ago, I’d rarely worn. My jeans were faded, just snug enough to show my derriere to advantage. I was skinnier than Wally Szalla “preferred” me but I was making an effort to eat more regularly, fret less and not to forget: lipstick!

  Without my rich-luscious-moist-grape mouth, my face seemed to bleach out like overdeveloped film.

  “You’re no wreck, Nikki. I got to hand it to you, you’ve got guts.”

  Guts! About as appropriate, applied to me, as party gal.

  Seeing me wince, Rob said quickly, “I mean, living in this house. Dealing with what happened to your mother…”

  To this remark, I had no reply. I stared smiling at the glass of amber liquid in my hand. I was noticing with a small stab of embarrassment that the rim of the glass was slightly dusty. Rob had found these glasses on a shelf of rarely used “good” glasses and china. I’d slipped into a chair across from Rob on the sofa, a hefty pedestal coffee table between us, feet drawn up beneath me, meaning to be polite, to keep smiling. Though I hadn’t done more than wet my lips with the whiskey, I was feeling suddenly reckless. That old, lethal impulse to match a (male) companion drink for drink…

  “…d’you think? How soon?”

  Rob was circling his true subject, Clare. I thought he must be asking when the house would be ready to list with a realtor. Vaguely I mumbled what might’ve been “soon” but which meant None of your business. This house was left to Clare and me, not you.

  Rob stiffened as if he’d heard all of this. Saying, with an air of detachment, for this wasn’t Rob speaking but Clare, “…upset! Oh, man! Saying you’d removed her Post-its from the furniture, and boxes she’d packed you’d unpacked, you were having some sort of ‘selfish nervous breakdown’ and ‘reverting to childhood.’ But I said to Clare, on the phone Nikki sounds perfectly—I mean, almost perfectly—under the circumstances what you’d call”—Rob lapsed into a wheezing cough and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand—“normal.”

  I laughed. Damned if I’d be provoked into further fury against Clare. “Thanks, Rob! I think you’re ‘almost perfectly normal,’ too.”

  “You do?” Rob peered at me doubtfully.

  I’d told Rob, as soon as he’d arrived, that a friend was coming to the house in about an hour, so I couldn’t speak with him very long, but I had the idea that Rob hadn’t taken in this information, or hadn’t wished to. The “friend”—in theory, at least—was my married-man-lover Wally Szalla, whom Rob knew, and knew of. From Clare, he’d certainly heard a good deal about Wally and me, none of it complimentary.

  I made a mental note to remind Rob, after about thirty minutes, that he’d have to leave soon. I hoped, by that time, Rob was still in a condition to drive.

  In the living room, Rob was glancing about with a look almost of dread. Though he’d been coming to this house, he’d been a guest in this living room, since 1988, he seemed spooked by the place now. He has never been here, never sat on that sofa, without Mom close by. Probably in the kitchen, and in another moment she’ll appear in the doorway…

  My breath was coming quickly. I could almost see the expression on my mother’s face and I could hear what she was saying, her greeting to Rob Chisholm, except at a crucial moment static intervened.

  Rob, too, shivered. He’d almost seen, almost heard, too.

  Though you know better, you don’t somehow “know.” I’d become fairly adjusted to living in Mom’s house without expecting Mom to walk into the room at any moment but now that I had a visitor, and the visitor was Rob Chisholm, who was family, it was very hard to shake the feeling that, at any moment, Mom would appear in the doorway.

  “Oh! God.”

  Rob gave a start. Nearly spilled whiskey onto his wrinkled white shirt. For suddenly there had materialized in the living room doorway what appeared at first glance to be a steel-colored burly rat, but was in fact just Smoky: glaring at the intruder with hostile tawny eyes as if, though Smoky had surely seen and sniffed Rob Chisholm many times in the past, the damned cat had never seen him before.

  Like Dad, Rob Chisholm wasn’t crazy about household pets. Yet he held out his hand as if the stolid little tank of a tomcat might be coaxed into coming to him and leaping on his lap.

  “Smoky? Hey c’mere, kitty. You know me…”

  I assured Rob that Smoky knew him, of course. But Smoky remained wary of most visitors.

  Still Rob called, as if to a small, stubborn child, “Smok-y! Kit-ty! Don’t you know me? You do.”

  Absurdly, Rob sounded hurt. There was something in the big gray cat’s pose, the way his stiff white whiskers bristled with indifference, withheld acknowledgment, that stung my brother-in-law in his weakened state.

  My strategy was to ignore Smoky. Calling a cat with a twitching tail is an exercise in futility. It’s a struggle of wills, you can’t win. You make a fool of yourself begging a cat to come to
you and the cat will simply walk away, when he’s had enough of embarrassing you, as Smoky was doing now.

  Rob was saying, “…the one who ran away? That night? Your mother’s cat? After…”

  I told Rob yes. Mom’s cat. He shouldn’t be offended, Smoky wasn’t friendly with anyone much, any longer.

  Rob fell silent, brooding. His unshaven jaws appeared longer and leaner than I recalled. His graying-brown hair, thin at the crown of his head, glistened with perspiration. His red-veined eyes, too, were glistening with moisture. From time to time, thinking I wasn’t watching, Rob would swipe at his eyes with his fingers. He has never been in this house without Clare. Rarely without his children. Never in this house with just his sister-in-law Nikki.

  I knew, I should ask Rob why he’d come to see me. Obviously the subject was Clare and the “separation.” But out of stubbornness, or a kind of shyness, I could not bring myself to ask.

  “Well, Nikki.” Rob sighed. “I…guess…she’s told you…”

  I wasn’t drinking but lifted the glass to my lips. Wanting to hide behind it.

  “…after all these years, more than sixteen years we’d ‘been together,’ Clare has discovered…we are…‘temperamentally incompatible.’”

  Vaguely I found myself taking a small swallow of whiskey. Though the sweet-fiery taste going down was anything but vague.

  “…‘sexually incompatible’ is what she means. Right?”

  Rob’s hurt mouth twisted in a grimace of lewd despair. I was shaking my head no, avoiding his eyes. All this was utterly new to me.

  “Nikki! No bullshitting. No need to protect your sister, it’s all out in the open like spilled guts.”

  Still I seemed not to know. Not me! I would play this scene inscrutable as Smoky the cat.

  Rob plunged on, miserably, “…she must have confided in you, Nikki. She says it’s been ‘years.’ But I thought she was happy! I mean, I never thought she wasn’t. Now she’s saying she ‘can’t breathe’ in our marriage. ‘Suffocating’ she says and if I try to touch her she throws off my hand like a snake. I mean, like I was the snake. This woman that, how many times, she’d become emotional saying I never touched her which wasn’t true, I swear. Or, if it’s true it was only true sometimes…”

  I didn’t want to hear this! My teeth clicked against the glass, I hadn’t quite realized I’d lifted to my mouth.

  Thinking how expensive liquor is so smooth going down, like liquid fire. The very opposite of yet near-identical to ice cream which when swallowed immediately begins to melt. One is fiery and consoling, the other icy-sweet and consoling.

  Party gal. Well, maybe. Back when my hair was sexy-punk-purple and my satiny-elastic micro-skirts so snugly fitted my crotch. And my naked feet in black platform glitter shoes!

  Rob Chisholm hadn’t ever glimpsed me in quite such a costume. In Mt. Ephraim and vicinity, in the suburban homes of the Eatons and the Kovachs, Nikki’d been pretty well behaved.

  It wasn’t exactly true that a friend was scheduled to drop by that evening. At 10 P.M. I’d turn on “Night Train” to listen to Wally Szalla’s dreamy/sexy voice introducing dreamy/sexy jazz and at midnight when the program ended and the D.J. signed off over the melancholy notes of “Night Train” I would feel a pang of loss, I would wonder where Wally was headed now, to his upscale bachelor quarters in Chautauqua Falls or across town to his upscale family house or (but I didn’t want to wonder this!) another place, unknown to me. I had to wonder though knowing it wouldn’t be Mt. Ephraim, tonight.

  Nikki I’ve been missing you. Give me a call darling.

  Nikki are you angry with me? If it’s about last Friday, having to cancel…

  Lately when I didn’t return Wally’s calls, Wally didn’t keep calling back as he’d once done. Didn’t send flowers as he’d once done. Didn’t show up unexpectedly with a bottle of Italian red wine. Didn’t bring me miniature books of inspiration. By now, Wally had to know that Nikki Eaton had either been inspired or wouldn’t ever be inspired, it was a project beyond his powers.

  “…every flaw in a man, like he’s stripped naked, on one of these afternoon TV talk shows, so humiliated, every time the phone rings it’s ‘Aunt Maude’—‘Aunt Tabitha’—‘Aunt Lorraine’”—Rob’s voice rose to a sudden mock-soprano—“‘Ohhh Rob! What have I been hearing! How can you and Clare be separating! What about the children, how can you do such a thing to your children, can’t you talk sense into Clare, the woman is your wife.’” Rob paused, breathing hard. He’d clawed at his shirt collar, his face glowered with perspiration. His expression had become savage. “The worst is, God-damned ‘Uncle Herman’—‘Uncle Fred’—calling me at the office. ‘Rob, what on earth is happening with you and Clare? A “separation”? For no reason? And your children so young? You must know that such behavior is unacceptable in our family.’ And I’m, like, wanting to say, so shove the family up your ass, ‘Uncle.’ I’m not one of you.”

  Unacceptable. An Eaton expression we’d been hearing all our lives, and had joked about. Even Dad had made a joke of it, sometimes.

  “…funny, Nikki? Glad you think so.”

  I jammed my knuckles against my mouth to keep from breaking into hysterical laughter as Rob stared at me with aggrieved eyes. He was misunderstanding my reaction, that I should seem to be laughing at him when I was only just recalling how unacceptable began for me in ninth grade when suddenly I’d discovered *SEX* or, more accurately, *SEX* discovered me.

  And how powerfully it was coming now, suffused through my body like liquid fire, the old, lethal impulse to drink with a companion.

  Especially a male companion.

  A not-bad-looking rumpled-sexy mistreated husband. A guy whose eyes had been moving on me, over me, in-between the crevices of me, for fifteen years.

  “Nikki, can you? Tell me? I feel as if I’m drowning, I can’t grab hold of anything solid to pull…”

  I set down my glass, that was nearly empty. I hadn’t been conscious of drinking. I was feeling like a Christmas tree warmly lighting up. Especially the lower parts of me. The parts that were lonely for my married-man-lover.

  Fuck you, Wally Szalla. Go back to your precious Isabel, I don’t need you.

  I shook my head to clear it. Shifted my legs out from beneath me, that had begun to ache. Damned if I would seduce my brother-in-law, at such a time. In Mom’s living room!

  I tried to assure Rob, who stared at me with glistening-hungry eyes, that Clare hadn’t said a single word to me that was critical of him, still less a violation of his privacy. Whatever the relatives were telling him, they were exaggerating as usual. “It’s just that, as far as I can understand her, Clare wants to have a career again. She wants to enroll in graduate school, get a master’s degree and—”

  Rob interrupted angrily, “But to leave me? Lilja and me? Our house she’s spent a fortune on? To walk out? Take my son with her? Instead of enrolling at Rochester or Brockport where she could commute, enrolling somewhere in Philadelphia? ‘I have a friend in Philadelphia’—that’s some kind of riddle? All our married life, I’ve been hearing that. Are Clare and this college roommate of hers conspiring? Behind their husbands’ backs? Like Philadelphia is some kind of safe house, Clare can escape to? How can Clare walk away from Mt. Ephraim with all that’s going on here? After what happened to your mother, and what’s happening with you, and the trial coming up in January—she says she isn’t coming back, incidentally—and making up her mind practically overnight, and calling a lawyer before she’d even told me, and drawing up a ‘legal separation,’ and—abandoning me? Nikki, I thought she loved me! I thought she loved our family life! I thought she wanted all that we have!” Rob was speaking in short, choppy fragments as if he’d been running and was out of breath. My heart went out to him, I felt his distress but didn’t want to be drawn in, I was fearful of such raw emotion as I’d have been fearful of a rapidly spreading fire. “She was the one wanting to get married so soon, not me. She was desperate to quit her teac
hing job, hated her job, the school was ‘suffocating’ her, she ‘couldn’t breathe,’ she wanted to ‘start a family,’ wanted babies, wanted to stay in Mt. Ephraim where her parents lived, where she knew everyone and felt important, safe, when I could have worked in California, Texas, even Hawaii!—I had excellent offers from American branch offices in Tokyo, Sydney, Rome—I’d have liked to try the Peace Corps for a couple of years, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, but Clare squelched that fast—‘And come home with some disgusting parasite?—our heads shrunken?’” Rob so perfectly mimicked Clare’s voice of indignation/outrage, I heard myself snort with laughter.

  “And your parents didn’t want us to, either. Especially Gwen, the idea of Clare going to Africa seemed to terrify her.”

  Rob splashed more whiskey into his glass. Swished it, sniffed it, glowered at me, and drank.

  When in doubt, blame Mom.

  The few mouthfuls of whiskey I’d had had gone to my head. Since not-seeing Wally Szalla as often as before, and not-daring to drink when I was alone, I’d become more susceptible to alcohol.

  “Glad I’m so amusing, Nikki. I should be on TV.”

  “Rob, I’m not laughing at you! I’m not laughing—”

  “Maybe it is funny. Women on afternoon TV talk shows, they’d find it hilarious.”

  I tried to speak somberly. Soberly. “I—I think it’s temporary, Rob. The ‘separation.’”

  “You do?”

  “Judging from what Clare has told me. About leaving Mt. Ephraim.”

  I wasn’t sure if this was so. Vaguely I seemed to recall Clare having said—well, something vague.

  Rob asked carefully, “She’s told you—? What?”

  “That she’ll be back. When she gets her degree. I think. And when Foster begins improving in school…”

  “Clare said that? She’d be back?”

  “She has to come back, Rob. She can’t abandon Lilja.”

  “Lilja! What about me?”

  Quickly I said, “I didn’t mean that, Rob. Of course, Clare loves you. She told me, just before she left, ‘I love Rob but I need to be away, for just now. I love you all but…for just right now…’” This wasn’t sounding like my sister, exactly. But Rob, gazing at me with hurt-hungry eyes, seemed to find it plausible.