The Crossroads

by F. P. Lione

  I stood there staring at her, not sure if I should give her a hug and kiss.

  “Hi,” she said cautiously. “I think that storm is coming early. It’s been snowing since I was on Route 280 in Newark.”

  “Yeah, I thought it wasn’t gonna snow till tomorrow,” I said, staring at her. “You look different—good,” I corrected myself.

  “Thanks,” she chuckled. “Am I early?”

  “No, it’s fine. I just got out of the shower.”

  I noticed she was carrying two shopping bags, and I took them from her. I could hear glass clanging as I carried them over to the kitchen table.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “I cooked,” she said. “I was going to stop at Giardino’s, but I figured you eat enough takeout.”

  She cooked? I couldn’t remember the last time we had a meal together that she cooked.

  “What’d you make? There’s a lot here,” I said.

  “Let’s see, ’scarole (escarole) and beans, garlic bread, but I didn’t cook that yet. There’s stuffed mushrooms, chicken with spinach and prosciutto, rice with peas, and I baked some zucchini bread.” She looked embarrassed.

  “Wow,” I said, “you’ve been busy.”

  I got out the bowls, dishes, glasses, napkins, and silverware while she took off her coat and used the bathroom. I wondered what was up, but I figured I’d let her tell me in her own time. I never know what’s going to set her off, but I didn’t think that was the case tonight. I put the bowl of ’scarole and beans in the microwave and put the rest of the stuff, except for the zucchini bread, in the oven on warm.

  “I guess you’re curious why I’m here,” she said when we sat down to eat. I said a silent thanks for the food and waited for her to tell me.

  “A little,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and said, “I went to rehab.”

  Wasn’t expecting that.

  “When?” I asked, my spoon stalling in midair. “I didn’t hear anything about this.”

  “Last summer. July 20 actually—I stayed there for twenty-eight days,” she said, looking me straight in the eye.

  “Did anyone know about it?” I asked. She had gone just after the Fourth of July massacre, which is what Denise calls the last family gathering my mother was at.

  “Just Aunt Patty,” she said. “And she promised to let me tell my children myself.”

  “I didn’t realize you needed something like that,” I said cautiously.

  “Either did I, at least not until I went.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In Pennsylvania, a place out by Bethany.”

  “What made you go there?”

  “My boss. She didn’t make me go, just made the suggestion, and I took it.”

  “What, she thought you were an alcoholic?” I asked, irritated that someone else besides me thought she was a drunk.

  “I am an alcoholic, Tony. I have been for a long time,” she said with dignity. “Part of my recovery is to make a list of the people that I’ve harmed and be willing to make amends to them all. That’s why I’m here. I’ve harmed both you and Denise, other people too, but mostly you two.” She looked vulnerable, like she thought I was gonna yell at her.

  “You mean you got so drunk you needed to detox?” I asked, still back by the “I went to rehab” statement.

  “No. They send you to the infirmary for withdrawal to detox, but I was only there a couple of hours to make sure I was stable. After that, they let me go to my room to put my stuff away, and then I went to a meeting,” she explained.

  “What was it like?” I asked, curious.

  “It was—” she paused as if trying to find the right words, “exactly what I needed. It was strange, there were about thirty men and maybe eight women. I had a roommate, a girl about Denise’s age who reminded me of her.” She chuckled. “We actually got along pretty well.”

  I nodded.

  “You can’t have any chocolate or caffeine. I’ve cut back on both of them, but I still like my coffee in the morning.” She smiled.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked.

  “My boss got me in; she’d been there. I had just found out that your father and Marie sold the house out from under me, and I was in a bad way. My boss, her name is Dotty, a big Pennsylvania Dutch woman, saw me coming out of the liquor store on Route 209 and stopped by to see me. I really owe her.” My mother stopped to compose herself. “She’s helped me a lot.”

  “What do you do there?” I’ve never been to a rehab. The cops that go to the farm, as we call it, never talk about it.

  “You get up early and make your bed.” She smiled. “I had a basic room, two single beds, one bathroom, a desk, and a dresser. It’s peaceful. You clean your room, go to an AA meeting, and say your prayer for the day. Simple things like that. Then you go down for a cafeteria-style breakfast with the trays of food. The days are full of meetings, group counseling, individual counseling, the dentist, and gym. They make you exercise.” She smiled again. “Since then I’ve kept it up.”

  “You’ve lost a lot of weight,” I said. “You look great.”

  “I feel great. I was pretty shaky for a couple of months, but I feel better than I have in a long time.” She got up and took her bowl to the sink, rinsed it out, and put it in the dishwasher. “You done with that?” She nodded toward my bowl of soup.

  “In a minute,” I said, eating what was left in the bowl. I got up to put it in the sink, but she took it and rinsed it.

  “You said making amends is part of your recovery—what’s the other part?” I asked.

  “Well, there’s steps to it,” she said.

  “What steps?” I asked. I’ve heard of the twelve-step programs, but I never paid any attention to them.

  “Like admit that I have a problem and I’m powerless over alcohol. That my life has been unmanageable due to my drinking. That a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.” She rattled them off like she had them memorized. “That I have to turn the care of my life over to my higher power.”

  “You mean God,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, I mean God. But the program is for all religions, so they make it the person’s individual higher power. I didn’t like referring to God as a higher power.” She shrugged. “It seemed disrespectful.”

  “What else did they teach you?” I urged.

  “That I have to take a moral inventory of my life. I’ve had to admit to myself and another human being the nature of my wrongs.”

  “Is that where you are?” I asked. “Making a list of people you’ve harmed and making amends to them all?”

  “I’ve hurt a lot of people,” she said sadly. “But mostly you and Denise.”

  “What are you sorry for?” I asked.

  “For not being there for you. For abandoning both of you emotionally. For being angry at you for loving your father. I’ve come to understand that it’s okay for you to love him, I was wrong to expect you not to.”

  “I understood why you were so mad at Dad,” I said. “But I never understood why you were so mad at me and Denise but not at Vinny.”

  She smiled. “I’d like to say it’s because he loves everyone the way they are and accepts us for it. The truth of the matter is I think he just tells me and your father what we want to hear. He hates fighting, he always did. I guess he just wants to avoid it.”

  She sounded like Michele.

  “You reminded me of your father,” she continued. “You looked like him; you became a cop like him. I’ve realized over these past few months that you’re nothing like him. He never felt any pain, and you always felt so much.” She looked sad again. That probably shouldn’t have felt like so much of a compliment, but it was. I wasn’t used to seeing anything but anger and bitterness when I looked at my mother, and I felt an unexpected rush of emotion.

  “Why were you so mad at Denise?” I asked, changing the subject. “I never understood it.”

  “Denise was so angry at
me. She thought if I was different, better somehow, that your father wouldn’t have left. She loved him so much. She didn’t want to stay with me. She wanted to go live with him when he left, but he wouldn’t have any of it.” She got up to take the food out of the oven, putting it on our plates and carrying them back to the table. She turned the oven on broil and unwrapped the garlic bread. She let the top brown for a minute and brought it to the table.

  The mushrooms were stuffed with bread crumbs, cheese, and garlic. I wolfed them down and went for the chicken cutlets rolled with prosciutto, mozzerella in a brown sauce, and the rice with peas, onion, and garlic in it.

  “This is delicious,” I said. I had forgotten what a good cook she was.

  “It’s part of my recovery. I do three unselfish acts every day that I get nothing out of. I’m not always sure what to do, so I cook. There’s a girl next door, a young woman whose husband left her with three small kids, and I drop off dinner there a few times a week. A man down the street from me, his wife is sick, so I cook for them too.” She shrugged. “Keeps me from thinking about myself.”

  “How did the drinking get so out of hand?” I asked, then added, “I haven’t drank since last summer either. Actually I had a couple of beers Christmas night, but I don’t have the heart for it anymore.”

  “I know. Vinny told me you quit drinking and found God?” She said it like a question.

  I nodded. “Pretty much. It’s changed my life.”

  “I’ve been going to church too, not a regular church, one that my sponsor goes to.”

  “What do you think of it?” I asked.

  “It’s different than what we grew up on. But Dotty, my sponsor, said if I was going to change my life, why not take a different look at God? She’s a strong woman—I call her a blue book Nazi. The big blue book is from Alcoholics Anonymous. Anyway, I went to church with her a couple of times, and then went by myself. I go twice a week now, Wednesday night and Sunday. And every time I leave there, I feel—” she searched for the right word, “like I’ve learned something important, not that I fulfilled an obligation so God wouldn’t strike me dead.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “I go because I want to, because I love God.”

  She smiled, and something passed between us that said we were both on the same page.

  “Where were we? Oh, how did the drinking get out of hand? Well, you remember growing up, your father and I had company almost every weekend. We drank then, but I guess after the thing with Mrs. Baxter, I started to get out of hand.”

  “Mrs. Baxter from our old block?” I asked, confused. “What about her?”

  “You know, the thing with your father and her,” she said carefully. “I thought you knew about that.” I thought for a second. I remember Mr. and Mrs. Baxter being friends with my parents for a long time, then they weren’t friends anymore and the Baxters moved away. I must have been about twelve at the time. They had two sons, John, who was my age, and Jeremy, who was two years younger. Mrs Baxter was pretty, and she always made us tuna fish sandwiches for lunch with those Rice Krispies treats for dessert.

  “What happened with Dad and Mrs. Baxter?” I asked, guessing the truth.

  “Tony, I’m not here to talk about your father. That was the time that I started drinking more, not just on the weekends, but during the day.”

  “Dad was fooling around with Mrs. Baxter,” I stated. “That’s why they moved.”

  She didn’t try to deny it. She got up and started cleaning off the table, but I took her arm and made her sit back down.

  “I thought the only time he cheated on you was with Marie,” I said.

  She barked out a laugh. “Tony, it’s water under the bridge, and it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m trying to make amends here, and I won’t be able to do that by dredging up the past.”

  “Okay, just one more question, and not about other women. Will you answer it?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “How could you let Dad get half the house?” I asked.

  She sighed. “There was nothing I could do about it. Our agreement was verbal: He took the car and his pension, I got the house.”

  “I know all that,” I said. “But why would you give a verbal agreement and not put it in the papers? It’s not like it’s the first time Dad and Marie screwed you over.”

  “Just stupid I guess,” she shrugged. “I never thought he’d do that.” She chuckled, “Should have seen that one coming.”

  “You’re not kidding,” I said.

  She squared her shoulders and sat up straighter, “And if I think about all the things they’ve done, I’ll just get angry again. I’ve decided to leave them in the past where they belong.” She took a deep breath. “So I want to say that I’m sorry, Tony. For all the anger and resentment, for all the times I was mean to you, and when I wasn’t there when you needed me. I’m asking you to forgive me—you don’t have to answer now,” she said, holding up her hands. “I want you to think about it, take your time. I’d like to be a part of your life, but I won’t push you. After everything I’ve done, you have the right to say no.”

  “You’re my mother, I’m not gonna say no,” I said.

  She was quiet for a minute and said, “Just because you love someone doesn’t mean they’re good for you. I’ve learned that. I thought that because I was married to your father and we had three children together, that we should stay married, but I was wrong. I should have left him long before he left me. I should have had more respect for myself than to let someone treat me that way. And if you need time before you forgive me, I’ll understand. I haven’t been good to you in the past.”

  I found myself telling her about Christmas Eve. I told her how everyone treated Michele and Stevie and that Michele wasn’t sure about us because of my family.

  “She sounds like a smart girl,” she surprised me by saying. “Your grandmother hated me, and she made my life miserable.”

  “Did she?” I asked. I didn’t remember that.

  “Oh yeah. She criticized everything I did. So did your grandfather. I didn’t cook good—”

  “You cook good,” I cut in.

  “Well, they didn’t think so. They didn’t like how I kept house, how I decorated, how I raised my kids—they constantly put me down. We had to spend every Sunday with them. I used to fight with your father about it, but he’d say they were his parents, as if that in itself was an excuse for the way they acted. He never stuck up for me, and I always resented him for it.” She got up again to clear the table. I got up too, rinsing the dishes while she put them in the dishwasher. I put the coffeemaker on while she sliced pieces of zucchini bread.

  “I told Michele the same thing Dad told you, that it’s just the way they are,” I said when we sat down again. “I didn’t let them put her down, but I just let it go because I just wanted things to be peaceful for once. I don’t fight it, not like Denise does.”

  I told her about the fight Denise had with my father and Marie. That she told my father she hated him and threw her keys at Marie.

  “What did Sal say?” she asked. “I bet he got right in front of Denise.”

  “He went back to his ex-wife,” I said.

  “Ouch,” she said, shaking her head. “I liked him,” she chuckled. “He stood up to me when I went at Denise. Is she upset?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe I’ll go see her,” she surprised me by saying.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said. “Denise might not want to see you.”

  “Well, I won’t know unless I try. My daughter’s hurting; I’d like to be her mother for once and help her out with it. If she slams the door in my face, that’s okay. If she doesn’t,” she shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “I guess it can’t hurt to try,” I said.

  We finished our coffee, talking until about 9:30. The snow was falling steadily now, and I could hear the wind whistle as it blew against the window.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t
go over to Denise’s. If you leave any later, you may wind up in the middle of a blizzard,” I said.

  “I’ll be okay. Living in Pennsylvania, you get used to driving in the snow,” she said.

  I looked out the window. “I don’t know, Mom, we’re supposed to get hit with a big storm.”

  “If it gets too bad, I can always get a hotel room,” she said.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. I took my extra key from the drawer next to the refrigerator. “Here.” I handed her the key. “If you get stuck, you can come back and stay here—just don’t give Denise the key. She’d move in while I was at work.”

  “Thanks,” she said, putting the key on her key chain.

  I gave her directions to Denise’s apartment and walked her out to her car.

  She leaned in to hug me. It felt awkward, but I let her do it.

  “I love you, son,” she said.

  “I love you too, Mom,” I said quietly, and walked back inside feeling better than I had since Christmas.

  12

  I turned on the television and put on the weather channel. The nor’easter New York was expecting was working its way up the East Coast. The storm was a huge, comma-shaped swirling mass, 150 miles wide and 500 miles long. The news people love this stuff and looked almost giddy as they predicted that the snow could fall for 24 hours, at one inch per hour. It would be moving up the Atlantic Seaboard through the night and all day tomorrow. It was a powerful storm, the biggest we’ve had since 1996, when we got over two feet of snow.

  Along with the snow, we were due to get strong winds, thunder, lightning, and storm surges, with tides flooding the beach areas. I calculated the distance from the beach to my apartment and figured my truck would be safer up in Mid-town with me.

  I packed some extra clothes and warmed up my truck. The snow was already starting to fall hard, and I figured I’d give myself some extra time to get into the city. I took the Verrazzano Bridge to the Gowanus Expressway. The wind was kicking up good, and the snow was causing a whiteout effect. There wasn’t much traffic on the road, and I followed the taillights of a tow truck on the Gowanus because I couldn’t see the lines on the road anymore. The snow was building up fast on my windshield, and I had the defroster blasting so the windows wouldn’t fog up. I have four-wheel drive on my truck and it can handle the snow, but visibility was nil.