Motherish

by Laura Rock

  She slides in; he shifts away. He’s not interested in her revelation. He’s not her witness. They were going to stay another night and return to the city tomorrow, but that’s impossible. He just has to get through one more meal at home—the avid questions from his mother and sister as they appraise Kara; the vague disapproval beneath his father’s grunts and nods—and then the relationship will collapse.

  He fortifies himself against the crashing music, against stale ritual and predictable commentary in the vestibule after Mass is over. It is over, for him. Why has he been going to church all these years? Inertia. And what a mistake it was, dragging Kara here. From now on, he’ll spend Sunday mornings like the rest of the world: sleeping in, making love, biking with friends, whatever freedom offers: he is free.

  Up in the choir loft, Mary-Pat hangs on. She can make it to 11:00, God willing. She frowns, thinking of the congregation applauding a few minutes ago. That wasn’t right. It’s nice to be appreciated, but clapping is too much. She doesn’t go in for dog-and-phony shows.

  She turns at last to the recessional hymn: sprightly, yes, let’s. But the notes stick to her fingers like leeches in a muddy river, and she’s pulled beneath the surface. Panic fills her, then numbness. She scarcely feels the keys carving indentations in her cheek; or sees stricken Martin working his cell phone to summon help; or hears the discordant notes that wail without end from her instrument. She rests, semi-conscious, on the keyboard.

  A white light blinds her—not the peaceful light of acceptance she’s read about, more like driving through dense fog on a winding road as cars whip around to pass her. She darn well likes to see where she’s going. But just in time a gift of grace arrives. She grasps the brilliance of God’s plan: a painless, happy death, what everyone hopes for, and here at the organ, how fitting. She doesn’t mind that her hat is crushed and her dress sweat-soaked. She doesn’t worry about the next song. She dribbles spit on the keys and feels no shame for what she’s powerless to change. Martin hovers nearby, saying her name, prompting an uncharitable thought—he won’t be sorry—before she remembers the need to keep her soul stainless at this critical stage. She’s done her best—hasn’t she? All she can do is ask to be forgiven.

  She has no idea how much time passes before she regains the powers of movement and music. As she lifts her head from the keyboard and the smashed notes die, just one truth rings clear: she’s still here.

  If Mary-Pat had been promoted to angel, she wouldn’t need a flyover to know what’s happening at St. Cecilia’s this morning. She’d feel the Mass suspended on a sound that calls to mind an oncoming freight train, everyone gaping at the choir loft except Father Dan, who stands, head bowed, straining to hear a message in the din. She’d understand why Chevy bolts through the side door onto the street while Mark pounds up the stairs to reach her, and Kara distracts Justin by leading him to the statue of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, where they kneel together and read about the Little Flower’s life. Mary-Pat, more than anyone, would enjoy seeing Justin push Kara’s change into the coin box, choose an extra-large votive candle, and light it, but, not being an angel yet, she can’t.

  At the Track

  The summer of 1975, my grandfather’s friends wore leisure suits in turquoise and moss and mulberry with patterned shirts left open a few buttons to reveal an overgrowth of chest hair, but Grandpa refused to update his tailored black suits and cufflinked shirts. One night, the night I was taken to Monticello Raceway for the first time, Grandma challenged the men.

  Why you wanna upstage the ladies? She patted her platinum up-do. I’m the colourful one. They raised a glass to her glory, and she struck a pose: shoulder forward, eyebrow raised, hand on throat, a movie star you could name if you thought about it long enough.

  We watched the races on a monitor in the track lounge, a smoky room filled with patrons seated at round tables. As the horses entered the home stretch, Grandma touched her golden pin, a miniature jade-eyed racehorse and driver with filigree whip unfurled. Everyone leaned forward and then fell back into their chairs, except for Bean. He hooted, opening and closing his legs in triumph.

  Aww, it’s still early, Grandpa said, tearing his ticket in half.

  Bean crossed the hallway to the cashier’s window to claim his prize and then returned to us. Bald and squat, he moved like the wrestler he once was: power under pressure.

  Between races, Bean and the other guys entertained me. Now you see kids everywhere—Atlantic City, Vegas—but back then I was the only one initiated into rituals of chance that drew my grandparents three or four times a week. I knew it was special.

  The fact that my mother had no idea where I was only sweetened the pot. This was around the time my parents split up. My father had cashed in his chips, Grandpa said once, when he thought I wasn’t listening. Dad moved out of state and stayed gone. Mom had just started nursing at the hospital, taking every night shift she could get, so she relied on her parents, much as she hated to do it. From a young age, she’d felt an unnatural burden of responsibility. To hear her tell it, she was the only grown-up, the one who kept order in the house and looked after her younger siblings, while her parents went to clubs and partied until dawn. To her, they were like highly emotional children in need of regulation. Once, scrubbing our countertop furiously, she said, The crumbs in that house. Mouse droppings in the silverware drawer. Junk everywhere. You have no idea, Ann. It felt like an argument, even though I stayed silent. I was the prize in their long-running battle. I was the pawn.

  She’d object, with a tight shake of her head, when Grandpa gave me sips from his wineglass at Sunday dinners filled with cousins and aunts and uncles, all shouting happily that there was no harm in it. It made her miserable to be overruled, when, by maternal rights, she should have had the final say over what I ingested. No one believed Grandma when she promised to enforce early bedtimes for me, those nights my mother worked, and to feed me sensible food and no junk. She’d say anything to keep me away from sitters who weren’t blood relations. Even though their people had been in America for three generations, my grandparents still held old-country values. Paying strangers to babysit wasn’t one of them.

  My mother didn’t get the concept of playing with money. It’s a big con, she often said, referring to the horses, but also the lottery tickets and the card games, all their entertainments. She was the only one of their children to get an education beyond high school and, Grandma once said, darkly, the only one ashamed of where they came from. It might have been education that separated Mom from the family, but I think it was genetics. She was the odd introvert born to a mob of huggers and kissers. There wasn’t a thing she inherited from them except her looks: the dark eyes, long lashes, and curly black hair, exactly like Grandma’s before she went platinum blonde.

  After work, Mom sat with her feet in a bucket of water, tapping her cigarette on the tiled metal ashtray that I made at school for Mother’s Day by cementing one green square after another in wobbly circles. Don’t be fooled, Ann, she told me. They lose as much as they win—more. I wish they’d stop running around with those seedy friends.

  But I liked them: Bean and Rat, with his pockmarked face and whispery voice; Roy and Johnny, brothers who went home for their mother’s baked ziti at lunchtime; and Sam, a lawyer who’d been disbarred, which I thought meant let out of jail.

  They blew smoke rings in a competition, releasing skyward exhalations. Every attempt was followed by an uproar from the table, full of insults and arm-slapping. When Grandpa puffed out a perfect halo, Roy elbowed Bean. Who died? he said. Guy dresses like that, he’s in mourning. Or an undertaker.

  Grandpa stirred his whiskey with his pinkie. He snorted. Peacocks! You look like goddamn peacocks in them swishy getups.

  Vincent, Grandma said. God is listening to every word you say. She turned to me. Do you want another Shirley Temple, Anna? Have another, why not?

  I slurped the last of my drink, s
miling around the straw. No one else called me Anna. This was another way she claimed me, recasting my anglicized given name to draw it closer to hers. Shirley Temple was my favourite: pink fizz, parasol, maraschino. Also, of course, the child star of my grandmother’s youth, her fantasy Hollywood best friend. Grandma prayed for Shirley to be cured of her recent illness—breast cancer, always stage-whispered—and the inner turmoil that caused it. I can still see her performing “On the Good Ship Lollipop,” mimicking Shirley’s babyish singing, shuffling through the dance steps, surprisingly light on her feet. Afterward, she curtsied and blew kisses as the men applauded. Brava, Annamaria! Brava!

  She called the waitress, who came running, wiping her hands on her apron. Ginny will take care of us, she said, and it was true. Ginny knew without being told that we wanted the shrimp scampi, rare steak, and onion rings.

  Dessert win or lose, right? Ginny asked. As she leaned over to collect the empty glasses, Grandpa pinched her rear, causing her to jump. Everyone laughed—even she couldn’t keep a straight face, scolding him. And nothing for you, mister!

  Then it was finger tricks. Watch this, Rat said, sliding his hands together and apart, together, apart, severing his index finger at the first knuckle. Rat had yellow-stained fingertips and nails like claws, which seemed ominously connected to the pale scooped-out spots on his face. A cupping sound came from his hands as they made contact. Isn’t that something? Betcha can’t do that with your finger, girlie.

  I fished the maraschino cherry out of my glass and handed it to him. Show me how to tie the stem with your tongue, I said. Grandpa always did that, tight-lipped while he swallowed the cherry, worked the stem, and finally stuck his tongue out, revealing the knotted filament. Whenever I asked Grandpa to teach me, he said, Nah, that’ll spoil it.

  Rat looked uncomfortable as the others yelled, Oh, the cherry, oh oh!

  He gave it back to me. Geez, don’t think I know that one.

  Bean chortled. Word on the street is he don’t know what to do with that tongue of his. It’s kinda retarded. Anyway, that’s what the ladies say. Johnny pounded the table; Grandpa gasped for breath. But Grandma frowned, and Bean straightened up. Forget that old chestnut, he said. What’s this? He tapped his heels on the floor in rhythm.

  Bean’s zip-up boots rose and fell. I was mesmerized by the vulnerable strip of white, hairless skin just below his pant leg, and at the same time, I wished he would cover it. He slapped his thighs, following the same giddy-up beat. Horses, I said. Hoofbeats. I rolled my eyes.

  Smart cookie there, Bean told Grandma, reaching for my cheek. I saw his pudgy hand and gold rings coming at me but didn’t shy away from the pinch. He passed a five-dollar bill across the table. Trust luck, he said. It’s in your blood.

  Sam clinked my drink with his. He’s right. Good luck skips a generation.

  I folded the money into the palm of my hand and looked at Grandma. She nodded. Go ahead, give it a whirl.

  First, I climbed to the observation deck. High in the open-air stands, I studied the horses warming up—magnificent beasts charging the track until the jockeys pulled them into a walk and turned back for another lap. The precarious grace of those drivers: shirts bright as flags, perched atop careening carts with flashing, clacking wheels. Trotter, jockey, sulky, silks, I chanted. A black horse barrelled past me, nostrils flared. Number ten, and I was ten that summer. My first bet.

  Grandpa never looked at the horses. His system was doodled on the racing form: sires and dams, odds and owners, underlines and check marks. Grandma’s approach was to play her numbers—1, 3, 4—and pray. The Lord’s been good to me all these years, she’d declare, as the men continued stories of deals gone sour, cataloguing the slights, grudges, and feuds in their circle. Time after time, her numbers proved more powerful than Grandpa’s pen. How he loved her.

  The tired clerk sat behind brass bars, slumped on her elbow, reading a movie magazine. She didn’t look up as I approached on tiptoe, until I pushed the five bucks toward her. Her eyes widened. I must have been a sight: a homely, underage customer in a Fonzie t-shirt and pigtails. When I said number ten Joyride, she just smirked and gave me the ticket. She didn’t need to hear my ready lies.

  The bells chimed a warning. The race was about to start. I dropped my ticket on the table. Well! What’s your pick? Grandma scanned my face seriously, as if considering whether or not I had her gift. I told her, and she nodded, satisfied. Here we go, she sang, fanning herself with tickets.

  The announcer called names—my horse somewhere in the middle of the pack. The air was close and hazy, the TV too remote. I wanted to see the race myself. There wasn’t much time—I ran as fast as I could through the stands and stood at the rail, letting the night breeze cool my face, cheering. Hoofbeats thundered. I began jumping up and down. My horse was in the lead as they rounded the final turn, but right away two others came up the inside, and the announcer started yelling. Flashbulbs popped, everyone screamed, and I stood very still.

  IIIIIT’S NIIIIIGHTSHADE by a nose, the announcer boomed. NIIIGHTSHADE. KIIING OF ARABIA. JOOOY-RIIIDE. I gasped, not realizing that I’d been holding my breath until the end. Still not believing that number ten, my own Joyride, could be a loser, I crumpled my ticket.

  At our table, everyone was hugging each other except Grandpa, who was concentrating as he checked and rechecked Grandma’s ticket. I’ll be damned.

  My grandmother landed a loud smooch on his cheek. The fur coat, Vince! You have to say yes now. I’m picking it out tomorrow.

  He opened his hands. How can I argue with this beautiful woman? Why not? Easy come, easy go.

  I nuzzled Grandma’s side. She put her arm around me and took my ticket in one smooth motion. Let’s see … you won, too!

  I shook my head. I lost.

  You bet to Show. Win-Place-Show, see? You’re in the money, honey. Go get your winnings.

  I returned to the lady in her cage and slid my wrinkled ticket under the bars. She beamed, counting out twelve dollars. Beginner’s luck! Come back soon, dear. And I did return, too many times to count. After that first night, I was never again afraid to approach a betting window.

  Back at the table, I touched the cash in my pocket. Later, I’d buy myself a rabbit’s foot and earrings for my mother, who worked hard and deserved a nice surprise. Her face was puzzled as I gave her the box. She asked and asked, dimming the shine of my gift, but I never admitted where the money came from.

  The hoopla went on for some time. Grandma’s numbers beat long odds for the Trifecta, with the payoff more than fifteen thousand, a number I couldn’t comprehend.

  The Lord has been so very good—

  Drink, Annamaria! Drink to victory.

  Round’s on us, Grandpa said, signalling Ginny. He slipped a hundred-dollar bill into the front of her blouse, and she let him. Then he gave Rat the winning ticket, holding Rat’s hand for a moment inside both of his big hands. Find Billy.

  Who’s Billy? I asked.

  Just a guy we know, Grandpa said. He handed me a frosty glass with a striped parasol floating on top.

  A gimp-leg bum, Grandma said. He’ll cash it for us.

  Only chumps tell the taxman. Grandpa pointed at me. Remember that.

  Amen, Bean said. Never tell ‘em a thing.

  Rat soon returned with Billy, a grizzled coat hanger of a man wearing baggy trousers, with one normal shoe and the other built on a thick platform sole. His hands were in his pockets as he limped toward us.

  Billy laid three bricks on the table—fifties wrapped with paper bands. Grandma gave one to Grandpa, who broke it open, peeled off some bills, and handed them to Billy. Thanks, he said. Pleasure doing business again. Billy waited for a second longer, ducking his head at Grandma, and then me, before leaving. Grandpa gave more bills to Rat, who nodded, pushed them into his pocket, and walked away.

  Grandma stuffed the other bricks i
nto her bosom mountain, one on each side. You’d never know unless you saw it go in—the little gold horse glittered just the same, trotting across the same rise and run of her blouse, but now worth a lot more. The boobie bank, my mother liked to call it, in contrast with the real bank where she securely deposited her funds. Grandma gave more cash to Ginny, who squealed and embraced her. I showed everyone my twelve bucks. Like attracts like, Grandma said, throwing a fifty at me.

  We were dipping into the cherry cobbler when Rat came up. Gotta go, he said in his soft rasp. Now. We looked at him, spoons in mid-air.

  What’s up? Johnny said. He and Roy exchanged glances.

  Rat licked his lips. Braganzolo.

  Swankie Frankie Braganzolo, Johnny said, and rose to his feet. Must want to collect from you, Vince, now you’re flush. Wants his loan paid ahead of schedule. Just like that bastard. Sam and Bean nodded. Sam put his sunglasses on.

  Grandpa dropped cash on the table, and Grandma was already tying her chiffon scarf around her neck as she slung her purse over her arm and pulled me up.

  Goddamn bum can’t keep his mouth shut, Grandpa said. That’s the last time we use him.

  What about dessert?

  Another time, dear.

  Who’s Swankie Frankie?

  Just a guy we know, Grandma said.

  Why does he want to get paid?

  Doesn’t everyone? Let’s go, honeybunch.

  Grandma and Grandpa pulled me between them. I turned around and saw the men fanning out behind us, pretend-casual. Bean winked, but he didn’t crack a smile.

  We shouldn’t have brought her, Vince. Grandma’s voice shook. Now what have we done?

  No time for yakking, Grandpa said. Hustle. Do the hustle! He playfully lifted me into the air and then set me down again as we race-walked. I clutched their hands and took three steps for each of theirs.

  Grandma huffed. What are we going to tell her mother?