Season of the Witch

by James Leo Herlihy

  This morning—after lying awake half the night wondering what it would be like between us from now on—Mother and I struck a bargain. The miraculous thing is that no words were exchanged.

  I went in to see her while she was having breakfast in bed. Maude was still busy raising blinds and arranging magazines and Mother was chattering. I didn’t try to follow what she was saying. It was obvious she was just producing a lot of ladylike noise and stuffing up holes in the morning with it. ” . . . I just told Maude if you spill coffee on crêpe de Chine you might as well drown yourself and it’s the same at Bergdorf as it is at J. L. Hudson because what’s money good for anyway if you can’t get first class accommodations but I’m sure they sank the Ile de France didn’t they not that anyone cares after all a hijacker couldn’t care less about my comfort so let them put on security guards it’s very simple everything is I know because I saw it explained on television it’s just a matter of getting your pan good and hot and then. . . .”

  I wasn’t doing a very good job of listening, but I was seeing plenty. The bandages made her face look like a mask, and suddenly I saw her as a primitive woman, someone who had deliberately submitted to mutilation for the sake of adornment. I saw witch doctors slashing open her flesh and rearranging its form, and then sewing her up again with the guts of animals—or whatever it is they use for making stitches. There was something horrifying about it and deeply moving all at the same time. It was a tremendous insight to have, because it made me feel what it really meant to be the child of such a woman. Once a long time ago she had spread her legs and screamed with pain to give birth to me. I saw her life, and mine, too—and everyone else’s, I suppose—as a long series of profoundly real animal events. We eat, we sleep, we make love, we give birth, we laugh, we cry, we hurt and sing and scream and dance and feel good and one day we die. I’m tempted to rattle on here about how civilization is a costume we wear, a sort of false face to keep us from seeing what we’re doing. But I haven’t thought about it enough yet to make any real sense of it. Besides I don’t want to lose my thread.

  Finally the dangerous moment arrived. Maude sailed out of the room, leaving us alone together. And Mother ran out of words.

  The silence only lasted around five seconds at the most but that’s all we needed for saying what we had to say—and words would never have achieved such a breathtakingly simple pact; we agreed to give up on each other. That’s all there was to it. She was going to go right on doing her living in the style of her choice, because she had to, she simply had to. And so was I, because I simply had to. And we were going to stop influencing each other. No more judgments were to be passed, no more fighting. We were going to allow each other to be.

  Once that was settled, I went over and kissed her. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and we had what Mother always calls a good old-fashioned gab fest. She’s fascinated by controversies like whether or not women over thirty-five can get away with wearing red, and I was surprised to discover that since I’d stopped passing judgments against her for being superficial, it was great fun to prattle like that. My dreadful seriousness as a child must have been an awful pain in the ass to her all those years, the poor darling.

  IN MOTHER’S ROOM, BELLE WOODS, NOVEMBER 11, 1969

  Delano said last night that maturity arrives at the moment you stop trying to guess what will happen next. You just know that whatever it is, you’ll get through it somehow. I’m not sure he’s right, but it’s worth making a note of.

  I’m writing this at Mother’s dressing table. She’s reclining on her chaise, queen-style.

  Now that Maude’s gone, I’m doing the lady-in-waiting bit. What surprises me is that I’m grooving on it so much. I’ve always known I was the mother and she was the daughter, but now we’ve really gotten down to living it out. For instance she asks me whether or not I think she should go out and take a walk in the yard. And I say, “Well, Mother, you must feel up to it or the idea wouldn’t have occurred to you. Why don’t you try it? If it’s tiring or too cold, you can always come back in.” Then I remind her to bundle up good.

  But I make sure the decisions are hers. I don’t want her developing a dependency on me.

  Delano wants me to go to work on the U.S. Times. I could have a column of my own and put anything I want to in it. I haven’t said yes but it’s fun to think about.

  Maybe I could interview Fred Random and get his inside views on Black Power.

  Interruption:

  I guess I smiled or something. Mother just asked me what was so amusing. I started to lie, but caught myself in time. Instead I told her it was such a far-out thought I’d never be able to convey the humor of it to her.

  Telling the truth is getting to be like some fabulous sport. I’m really digging it. So far I haven’t lied to her once since I got here. Not even this morning when she asked me about Hank.

  Interesting scene.

  I brought in the breakfast tray (same as usual—scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, toast, marmalade, coffee with half-and-half) and sat it on the little table next to her bed.

  She said, “God, what if I get fat waiting for this damn face to heal?”

  And Little Mother Gloria responded, “Don’t worry about it. You’re young and healthy. If you gain a few pounds, you can always take them off.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “I am young. I keep forgetting that. D’you know, when I was a little girl in Corktown, we had this old woman living next door to us. I think she came from the hills of Ireland somewhere. She was fat and she didn’t have a tooth in her head and she always went around in dime-store dresses spilling soup all over sick people. An absolute mess! But the point is everybody called her Gramaw because she was so old. Gloria, do you know how old that woman was? She was thirty-four! I nearly died when I found out.” And without even pausing for a breath, she said, “Sweetheart, you haven’t told me about Hank Glyczwycz. Did you find him in New York?”

  If I were pressed to the wall with a bayonet pointed at my heart and they told me I had to explain how my mother’s head works or else, it’d have to be or else. Maybe that’s lucky. If I’d known in advance which question was on the way, I might have blown it. But coming at me out of left field like that, all I did was say yes.

  “You’ve seen him!”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Why haven’t you told me before?”

  “You haven’t asked.”

  “Well, I never dreamed,” she said. “Tell me about it, for heaven sake.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know everything, naturally. What’s become of him, what’s happened to him? You know what I want to hear. Don’t be maddening!”

  So I sat on the end of the bed and filled her in on the bare facts. Teaching in Manhattan. Living in Staten Island. Wife, kids, separated, etc.

  “What did you think of him?”

  “I could see why you were attracted to him. I was, too. If he hadn’t been my father, I’d have gone to bed with him.”

  Her mouth and eyes opened wide. Then she said, “Gloria!” as if I’d just announced I was taking up prostitution.

  “You asked me what I thought of him. Didn’t you want to know?”

  “Yes, but what a perfectly tasteless . . . “

  At that moment she stopped talking. I don’t think she realized it though. Something truly captivating was going on inside of her and it was taking all of her attention. I wished she could share it with me, but I knew she couldn’t. Even so, I said, “What are you thinking about, Mother?” But it didn’t do any good.

  Sometimes I feel Mother doesn’t really have a voice. Her mind does of course, it chatters on and on, but she doesn’t. Her real being is mute. I don’t know why that is, or why I feel that way. But I truly believe reality is some kind of a wildcat to her, and it has her up a tree, too terrified to utter a sound.

  IN MY ROOM, BELLE WOODS, NOVEMBER 13, 1969

  I’ve got the Rotary Connection playing on the stereo. It�
��s John’s favorite, the one where they sing Amen Amen Amen about a hundred times.

  Delano asked me to pass out leaflets with him at the Grosse Pointe shopping mall on Saturday. He says the revolution’s coming faster than anybody anticipates. I asked him if he meant bang bang, death in the streets, etc. He does.

  Mother won’t be needing my company today. She’s spending the afternoon on the phone with a lawyer, discussing her favorite subject, private property. Which means she’s beginning to be herself again. Maude Dangerfield agrees. Maude stopped by last night and on her way out she said, “I think we’ll have our little girl in dancing shoes and on stage again before you can say Jack Sprat.”

  There have been lots of signs. This morning she was trying on wigs over her bandages and working hell out of every mirror in the place.

  When I first went into her room she was wearing a Rita Hayworth number and singing:

  “I’m gonna change my way o’ livin’

  And if that ain’t enough

  I’m gonna change the way I strut my stuff.”

  Then she got into a blond one and did a Lana Turner scene for me. I couldn’t tell whether or not she knew the cameras were turning. Maybe she was just living the part. She stood in front of her dressing room mirror, hands on hips, looking herself over. It was obvious she liked what she saw. But there was something faintly creepy about it, as if she was having herself with her eyes. Then all of a sudden she said, “To hell with him.”

  I said, “Who, Mother?”

  No answer. These old-timey stars know how to concentrate. She went right on with the scene.

  “I’m getting a settlement,” she said, still connecting with the mirror. “Oh boy oh boy oh boy, am I getting a settlement. Am I getting a settlement!” Then she winked at herself and changed into another wig.

  A few minutes later, resting on her chaise between takes, so to speak, she said, “Gloria, don’t you ever get the urge to doll up and knock people’s eyes out?” And before I could answer, she said, “You know, I’d just love to know what goes through that mind of yours. What sort of thing do you think about anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The same things everyone thinks about, I suppose.”

  “Yes, but what mostly?” She moved over a little and made a place for me. “Come sit.”

  I got the feeling she was really ready to talk, so I sat next to her and looked at her.

  “What do I think about?”

  “Mm. But don’t tell me if you think I’m prying. Because I’m not.” She was being careful to speak without too much lip work, still cautious about the incisions in her scalp.

  “I wonder a lot about what my life will be like,” I said, “and what sort of people I’ll be meeting. Also, I think a lot about how scary the world is. Every night I pray for a leader to come along to save us and—”

  “For a leader to come?”

  “Yes, a leader. You know, a great president or someone. Only he doesn’t have to be political, he could even be from somewhere unexpected.”

  “I won’t interrupt again,” she said. “Go on.”

  “With what?”

  “What else you think about.”

  “Oh. Okay. I think about the police and the government and the Army, and all the people getting killed. You know, in Vietnam and places like that. And all the ones in jails and prisons. And I worry about pollution, too, and the famine that’s coming—”

  “Famine! Did you say famine? I’m not interrupting. I just want to be sure I’m getting all these words.”

  “Yes, famine. Mass starvation everywhere. I worry about that. And the revolution that’s coming, too, and all the suffering there’ll be. And whether or not in the end it’ll all get together. Also there’s a—”

  “Gloria, I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m trying terribly hard to listen with an open mind. But we’ve got to be perfectly frank with each other. Aren’t you being just a teensy bit pretentious?”

  What I liked best about this moment was that I didn’t get angry. Not at all. I just said, “I don’t think so, Mother. Does it sound pretentious to you?”

  “No, of course not, I don’t mean pretentious at all. So please don’t take offense. I don’t have your wonderful flair for words. But sweetheart! After all! Famines and revolutions! You simply must listen to yourself! Is this normal thinking for a lovely young girl who has every advantage in the world? Let me tell you what I think, may I? And I’m not being some kind of mother either, I swear. This is just person to person.”

  I said, “I know. And I’d really like to hear.”

  It was true, too. She wasn’t just hassling me. She was truly concerned.

  “Now listen hard, honey, the way I just did. Will you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She took my hand and held it tight. Her voice was soft and reasonable and full of affection. “Mother has an imagination, too,” she said. “She knows what fun it is to have all these wonderfully dramatic notions and to talk about them with your young friends. And I adore your earnestness, honestly I do. That serious little face just breaks my heart. But please, honey, trust me when I tell you it’s not healthy. Don’t go on like this, I beg you.”

  Then she squeezed my hand hard and leaned in toward me, whispering for greater emphasis, “I just know it’s not going to make you a happy person.”

  BELLE WOODS, NOVEMBER 14, 1969

  Beautiful afternoon. I’m out in the yard, sitting on the teeter-totter, feeling very young and very old, remembering some of the high dudes that used to sit on the other end of it, and wondering what will happen to us all.

  The time has come for me to move along. I don’t know when and I don’t know where, but it’ll be soon and it’ll be somewhere. I can tell.

  I just saw a squirrel I used to know, but I’m not sure he recognized me.