Happy Family

by Tracy Barone

  Inside smells of stale smoke, must, and dirty diaper. Mail litters the floor. A faucet drips. The refrigerator door is open. Something inside is making the dirty-diaper smell. “Hello?” Slashed limes rot on the counter along with empty bottles of gin, dead plants, and vases with desiccated flowers still with the sympathy cards on sticks. She swallows her disgust—this is not the time to be thinking about her daughter’s piggery. Empty chairs and stillness. Has someone broken in? Is she going to find her daughter bleeding? “Cheri, I am here,” she calls. She remembers that movie with the knife and the shower curtain. She rushes up the stairs. No harm can come. Not to Cheri. Please, not to her.

  The bedroom door is ajar. In the slate light, she can make out a lump on the bed. Has she taken too many sleeping pills, wanting to join Michael? Why didn’t Cici think of this and come sooner? The telltale lump. She recalls all the years of pulling back the covers above exactly such a lump, saying, “Wake up, sleepy-toes.” She will never forgive herself if she came too late. She puts her hand on her daughter’s back.

  Cheri wakes with a start. She rolls over and sits up quickly when she sees Cici standing over her. “What the fuck?” Cheri says, pushing away her mother’s arms and murmurs of gratitude. “What are you doing here?”

  “Are you sick? Is this why you are not answering the phone?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I thought something had happened to you. You scare everybody.”

  “Sorry I scared you. You came, you saw…now go away.” Cheri flops back down on her back and pulls the blanket over her head. Cici opens the shade and, in the light, can now survey the full extent of the chaos: paper cups half filled with water and cigarette butts, cans of half-eaten food, files, books, clothes belching out of the closet.

  “Close the fucking shade! I’m fine, now turn around and go home.”

  “Fine?” Cici picks up liquor bottles that have overflowed from the garbage can. “This is no fine. You are a drunk. It is one in the afternoon.”

  “Says the person who pops champagne for breakfast.”

  “I am not the one living like this, leaving her door open for the world to walk in. I am not a drunk.”

  “First of all, I am not drunk. You can give me a Breathalyzer. I’m not on drugs. I’ll even piss in a cup, if you can find a clean one. Second, you can’t just barge in here and tell me what to do. I’m not a kid. I’m asking you nicely to get out of here.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Not going to keep saying it nicely.”

  “Please do not tell me you are pregnant and drinking like this.”

  “I am not pregnant, Cici. I am not sick.” Cheri rolls over. “I’m going back to sleep now so shhhh.”

  “Okay, okay. You sleep.”

  “No longer listening.”

  “I will sit and wait for you to wake up.”

  All Cici wants to do is get a giant can of disinfectant and some rubber gloves and start to pick up the garbage that surrounds Cheri’s bed. She can’t even find a place to perch in the bedroom. There’s clutter upon clutter. When she finds a chair, it’s beneath clothes. She’s got to throw everything on the floor, which she cannot bear to do, so she sits with it all in a ball on her lap. This is the wreckage of her daughter’s life. She feels a pain that emanates from beneath her ribs where she draws breath. A specific pain that comes from knowing that her love—no matter how unconditional and strong—cannot solve everything for her child. “Put the seashell to your ear, cara, and wherever you are, you will hear my voice.” All those years moving from house to house along the seashore, Cici never doubted her mother’s words. She wishes she had the power to reach Cheri.

  “I can feel you staring. You’re like a dog.”

  “You said not to talk. I need to close my eyes as well?”

  “Oh, fuck it. I’m up now,” Cheri says, tossing back the covers. She rests her forehead in the palm of one hand. “Can you pass me the lighter, it’s on the table.” Cici goes to the bedside table, moves a filled ashtray on top of papers and bills, rifles through them. “Oh, for God’s sake, Cici.”

  “What you doing with this?” Cici has found the package of razor blades underneath a bra on the table.

  “Give me that.” Cheri stands, reaches over to take the box. The sudden rise to vertical makes her see spots before her eyes. “If I was going to kill myself, that’s the last way I’d do it.”

  “Sit down. You are very pale,” Cici says, touching her arm. “You will fall.”

  “I’m always pale. Please, just get off me.”

  “You need help.”

  “I’m fine, I can stand on my own.” Cheri turns away from Cici but has to steady herself against the wall.

  “You need help. I am here to help.”

  “What do you know about what I need? You live in your own little bubble completely removed from reality, never worked a day in your life. What’s your daily drama? The shoes you ordered are too tight or the pug’s shits are too loose—now it’s, ‘Oooh, Cheri’s sleeping in the afternoon, and she’s in her T-shirt and ratty old underwear,’ and yup, I stink. Welcome to the den of iniquity, Mother! Go complain about it to Cookie or your friends who are only your friends because you employ them, but don’t you dare show up here and judge me—”

  “Do not talk to me about judging. I am sick of how you look at me, always with the hard eyes. Saying I am a stupid woman who sees nothing, hears nothing. How dare you! I have lived a life. You think I have had no suffering? There are many things you do not know about me. My life is not so full of cherries. I know what it is to lose. I lost my family. I lost my husband—”

  “The great man that Sol was, yeah, I know. Spare me.” Cheri turns her back to Cici, who grabs Cheri by the arm and wheels her around, a primordial anger rising.

  “You think you are the only one with the right to anger? Plenty of things I have spared you.” Cici allows the words to spill out. “Your father, he was not perfect to you, but he cheated on me. He had another woman. You think this does not cause me pain? Some things are so painful we must look away to go on. But when we turn back, we can be surprised. In the end, I was able to forgive. You think I am such a weak woman. Well, I am stronger than you think.” Cici is puffed up like a lizard; she has stunned Cheri into silence.

  Cheri sits on the bed. After a moment, she quietly speaks. “When did you know?”

  “You were in college…it was over long ago,” Cici says, wanting to suck her words back in.

  “So you knew. And…you didn’t do anything.” Cheri is looking at her with hard eyes, and it makes her angry all over again.

  “Nothing is so simple between men and women. Was it so simple with you and Michael? You had not seemed so happy together. In a marriage, who is happy always? In the end I let happiness back in and if that makes me the fool, then I am the fool,” Cici says, talking to her daughter like she should have spoken to her when she was a teenager. “I do not care if you like it or no like it. I am here to help you. I am going to run a shower. You will get in it and get clean. Then we have a coffee. That is where we start.” Cheri stands stiffly, but her eyes are softer. “You hear me,” Cici says. It is not a question.

  Cheri hears the water running. She’s surprised she can make it to the bathroom without passing out. Her head feels like aliens are drilling a hole in it. The bathroom is steamy and humid. She wipes off a corner of the mirror with her fist. Her left breast is hanging out of the side of her tank top. She can’t believe Cici knew. Then again, of course she can; it’s all part of her fucked-up-family bullshit. She thinks about saying, Thanks for telling me what I already knew. But Cheri doesn’t know exactly how much Cici knows about Sol’s other life. Does she know about the house in Rye? About his son? She’s not about to open that can of worms. As if her own life isn’t caving in, now she needs this? “Fuck,” she says, stripping off her clothes. She steps into the shower and lets the hot water sluice down her back. Barely able to stand, she puts one hand on the tile wall.
All she wants is to crawl back in her hole and be left alone. She thinks she still has some of her Sudafed-pain-pill powder. Just like in her twenties, she’s too in control to go over the edge and become a full-blown addict.

  When she’s clean and wrapped in a towel back in her room, Cheri assesses what’s left of her depleted stash. She decides that she’ll do just one snort now and chase it with a swig of cough syrup. Her hand is shaking and she doesn’t want to waste any of her product; she struggles to tip a small amount of powder from one of Michael’s empty pill bottles onto the back of her hand. The last time she was like this, she cold-turkeyed her way back through sheer grit. The thought of doing that now makes her feel sick. And then there’s Cici banging around downstairs, doing her infernal cleaning.

  Cheri walks into the kitchen wearing the same tank top and underwear, her hair still wet. There are two full garbage bags lined up next to the front door. Cici is pouring espresso into two cups Cheri has never seen. Did Cici bring her own cups along with her damned espresso pot? Cheri was fortified enough to get down the stairs, but the smell of the cleaning products Cici was using mingling with coffee makes her want to retch.

  “Sit and have an espresso,” Cici says, bringing the cups over to the table that’s now cleared. There’s a box of biscotti on the table; Cici’s taken a few out and put them on a plate. “I can put more sugar in if you want.”

  “This is your idea of help? Flying halfway across the country to make espresso and compare my marriage to your fucked-up marriage? Playing who is the biggest martyr?”

  “That is not what I try to do, Cheri. The point I make is that I suffered too. I have felt as you are feeling now—”

  “So let’s stop everything and immortalize your grief about Sol,” Cheri says, grabbing the box of biscotti and shoving it in Cici’s bag.

  “That is not what I am saying; you twist my words,” Cici protests. Cheri fixates on the counter, where a pile of Cici’s things has already accumulated. She starts scooping up whatever she thinks might have come from Cici.

  “What are you doing? Stop.” Cici is by her side, trying to take the coffee grinder out of her hand. Cheri turns around to avoid her and slams her leg into a trash can.

  “Fuck!” Cheri’s shin throbs; she’s gnashing her teeth, and her mother is looking at her like she’s the one who’s batshit crazy. “Damn it, don’t go moving things,” she says, trying to push the trash can with her hip. It’s full and heavier than she thinks. Or she’s weaker.

  “You cannot keep up like this. You hurt yourself. Let me have that,” Cici says, taking the coffee grinder from Cheri’s hand.

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you are not fine,” Cici says forcefully. “Nothing is fine. You are in the depression; this is normal when someone dies. But it is not normal to shut yourself away from everybody for so long, to be hurting yourself, wearing the same clothes for days, drinking yourself sick.”

  “You really want to compare normal?” Cheri stares at Cici, who claps her hands together and waves them up and down in an effort to stop herself from saying the first thing that occurs to her.

  “You want me to bite; I do not want to bite. Cara mia, when someone you love dies, nothing feels the same. A part of your heart is gone and never comes back.”

  “I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that.”

  “Everything is always more complicated. And also always more the same,” Cici says.

  Cheri turns away and when she turns back Cici has put the coffee grinder and other things in her tote. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t explain it myself,” Cheri says. How could she describe to Cici that her pain was about more than Michael’s death? That she’d lost him in the marriage and then, just as she saw him again, she lost him and everything else she cared about permanently. “I can’t feel anything, and when I do, it’s all too much.”

  “I have been in the shoes you are in,” Cici says, sitting down at the table. “I shut myself away like you do. I could not get out of the bed. I had no reason to move forward. I wanted to hurt myself…” There’s not a trace of the puffed-up lizard left in Cici. She looks all too human.

  “You lost a husband too, I know…”

  “I am not talking about Solomon.” Cici takes a deep breath and pauses. “I lost a baby.” The plainness and weight of the statement levels Cheri.

  “You had a child?” Cheri asks, sitting down.

  “I was pregnant before you.” Cici’s voice sounds distant. “There was an emergency. The doctors had to make an operation so I would not die and they got the baby out. But he was so small and so sick. He lived only a few hours. I could not have children after that.”

  “You had a hysterectomy? You could have told me,” Cheri says, remembering the trip to Italy when she found out that she was adopted. Nobody told her anything in her family, but when she did hear something, it was dropped on her out of the blue. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Cheri asks.

  “Maybe I should have told you. But it caused too much pain to look back. Your father and I never spoke of it. But losing a child is something you can never forget.” Cheri thinks of Karen, the funeral and the baby in the tiny coffin. For the first time, she thinks of her mother as a young woman, bereaved, emptied. Had there been a funeral for Cici’s baby? Cheri’s head is spinning and she doesn’t feel at all well. Her mother is looking at her with concern.

  “Enough talk of sad things. Sit. I make you something to eat.”

  Although Cheri wasn’t hungry, she ate a few bites of the risotto that Cici miraculously threw together from the seemingly empty pantry. She drank water and napped, and when she woke up, Cici came into her bedroom and said, “I am going to help you pack up Michael’s clothes. It is not good to sit with them there for so long. You are ready?”

  Is she ready? To let the memories in, the images she’d kept at bay by sinking into the mound of overarching despair? Cici opens Michael’s closet, takes something off a hanger, and approaches Cheri with it. Is she ready to feel the softness of Michael’s favorite shirt, the one that made his eyes the color of blueberries in summer? He had this shirt when they first met and there was a time she would wear it when he was away, feeling protected and attached. Cheri has never been particularly sentimental, but she knows she’s not ready to let that shirt go. Cici is sitting on a corner of the bed, looking at her expectantly.

  And suddenly, moments that were commonplace float up in Cheri’s mind. How he’d throw off his boots and then later ask, “Have you seen my other boot?” The boots with the caulking splatter from when he decided to put up shelves and made such big holes in the wall that they had to call the handyman to redo it. How he would run his hands over his face when he was tired. The day she caught him listening to mariachi music and actually liking it. She sits, clutching the shirt to her chest, until she feels her mother’s hands on her shoulders. Instead of withdrawing, she allows herself to lean back. “We will keep this one for you,” Cici says, gently taking the shirt. Cheri gets up and moves like a cluster fly, pausing in front of his closet, then circling to his chest of drawers, not knowing where to start. His clothing is stained with food and accidents that smell of indignity. She is looking at the remains of his last days and thinks she should have taken care of them better. The struggle to feed and be fed, worn on his sleeves. She can hear her mother exclaiming, “Che schifo!” Where to start?

  Without uttering another word, Cici swoops in and picks up Michael’s things from wherever they met their inglorious end weeks ago. Cici sorts and folds, making neat piles of clothes to be donated or thrown out. “We decide this one later,” Cici says when Cheri gets stuck, which is more often than she would have thought. Is she ready? There is much more letting go to do, she knows, and not just of objects.

  After all of Michael’s clothes have been sorted, Cheri and Cici sit in silence on the edge of the bed. Cici puts her hand on top of Cheri’s. They sit like this for a few minutes, until Cici says, “I will stay in a
hotel. But you must promise me that you will not hurt yourself. No razor blades. No pills.”

  “I promise,” Cheri says.

  “I want you to remember that God is always here for you. I know you do not believe as I do, that you think I am simple…but this is what helps me. I know your father and my baby are in heaven. And so is Michael.” Cheri quells her impulse to say, Do you actually believe in this? Cici continues. “Going to church, talking to Father Joseph—this helped me with my loss, with all my problems. When you make the confession, you put all your sin and sorrow at the feet of God. His forgiveness and love are so big, it makes your troubles feel smaller.”

  As soon as her mother leaves, Cheri regrets not asking her to stay. She wanted to be alone because she’s jonesing and there’s the last bit of chopped-up Sudafed-pain-pill powder to consume. But as soon as she cuts her last lines and inhales, she knows it’s an empty gesture, like sex with someone you once loved but now can’t stand. She wanders through the house. It feels too big. Like she’s lost weight and it hangs off her. Who knows, maybe Cici and the millions of believers out there are right. Maybe Michael and Sol have reconciled in the Great Beyond. They’re at the seaside chasing waves with Cici’s baby boy and numerous vestal virgins, laughing. Maybe she’ll just pop the last pain pill and take a bath.

  The world might collapse, but as long as there is running water, Cheri will survive. She adjusts the water temperature. The yellow washcloth draped over the side of the tub smells of her mother’s tea-rose perfume. She feels a deep longing; for what, she’s unsure. The kind of painful sweetness that makes her want to call and wake her mother up and say, I’m sorry, come back, please come back. But it’s one o’clock in the morning. First thing tomorrow, she promises herself, I’ll get up and do things differently. Start small: Put on pants. Work my way up to being kind.