Mother Land

by Paul Theroux

  “Angela’s birthday.” I was glad that Franny had reminded me of this holy day on the family calendar.

  “She would have been fifty-four.”

  In my mind’s eye I saw a big potbellied angel with gray hair, a fat face, and a gown a bit like Franny’s loose shapeless dress, beating her tattered wings, trying to keep aloft.

  That night Rose called me. “Franny’s been on the phone with Ma ever since you left. Will you please stop talking about your tooth problems when you talk to Ma? This is a hard month. Next Monday’s a dark day. Ma’s right, all you think about is yourself.”

  Holidays in a big fragmented family are nightmarish, tests of loyalty and will, occasions of interaction—and in this narrative of family interaction, every gesture seemed provoked by hostility. Being invited to an event was often worse than being excluded. I heard from Fred that Franny and Rose were hosting Mother at Franny’s house for Thanksgiving. Floyd was there, and because he was present, I had to be absent. Fred was invited but he had made other arrangements. Gilbert was in Kuwait that week. Hubby fled to New Hampshire with his wife and daughter because he found holiday dinners stressful. I spent the day, like most days, alone, and ate a solitary meal of microwaved chili and a few beers, Thanksgiving being one of those days when you remember what you ate, especially if it isn’t turkey. Holidays may be hell for families, but they are purgatorial for people on their own.

  Christmas loomed, another reminder of my solitude. Hubby stopped by to ask what my plans were. He also mentioned that he had passed by Mother’s and seen Franny and Rose shoveling slush from her walkway.

  “‘Somebody’s got to do it,’ Rose said.” Hubby’s impersonation of her nagging nasal voice was dead accurate: no one was a better mimic than an angry sibling. “It was her way of telling us we’re lazy. That she and Franny always look after Ma. But I just took all Ma’s trash to the dump. And who fixed the ball cock in her terlet?”

  Terlet was more family mimicry, Mother’s locution.

  “What are you doing for Christmas?” I asked Hubby.

  “Ma and Gil are coming over Christmas Eve. Fred’s having her Christmas day.”

  “What about Floyd?”

  “He’ll be playing pocket pool, as usual.”

  But at the last moment, in what I took to be a deftly timed hostile move, Fred canceled and took his family to Florida. Mother spent Christmas at Franny’s house, and Rose joined them with the twins, Bingo and Benno. Rose’s husband Walter, whom Floyd called “a creature of phenomenal dullness,” remained at his computer; Marvin watched the football game, sipping medicine for his acid reflux. Gilbert took Mother to Franny’s, and to get there the pair of them would have ridden past Hubby’s house, Floyd’s house, and my house. I did not know whether Floyd was invited. No one would tell me, because telling me would have indicated his or her complicity in Floyd’s campaign against me.

  While Dad had been alive, Christmas would have been spent in one of our houses, one of us playing host and everyone pitching in to help, bringing dessert, fruit, or wine. Dad and Mother would have sat in the place of honor while we talked happily, or sang, or served food. We opened presents. A stranger peering through the window would have seen a day of joy and remarked, “What a happy family. This is the meaning of Christmas.”

  But if this stranger had looked closer, he would have seen a room full of rancor—whiners, complainers, and backbiters: the host feeling put-upon by having to buy all the food and accommodate all the people; the host’s spouse ill tempered at the sight of this fractious family and the thought of having to clean up after them; Fred muttering that he could have taken his family to Florida and made business deals at the same time; Franny passing out Swedish meatballs, offended that no one was eating them; Jonty boasting, Bingo grasping her harmonica but not playing it, Benno holding three bean bags but not juggling; Hubby complaining about Floyd, Rose rolling her eyes at Franny, Gilbert sighing that he had to leave for Istanbul early the next morning; and the whispers going round and round, one child belittling another, and at last Floyd proposing a loud and abusive toast to whoever was hosting, saying, “Charge your glasses, and raise them to Fezziwig . . .”

  All of us in the room jostling, wishing each other Merry Christmas and laughing up our sleeves. Hubby was the butt of jokes about overeating, Fred was the butt of jokes about pomposity, and as for Floyd’s wild hair, Gilbert’s fussiness, Franny’s cooking, Rose’s temper, and all the badly behaved children—everything was noticed. I was mocked, of course, but did not know how. That was the torment of the big unruly family: you were never quite sure how you failed to measure up, or what was taken to be your salient weakness.

  Presiding over it all was grateful sentimental Dad and grasping sentimental Mother.

  “Your family!” my first wife, Diana, would say afterward. And later, when she left me and I remarried, my second wife, Heather, would say the same thing, “Your family!” This was the reason why, apart from holidays, I spent my middle years, my productive years, far away from Mother Land.

  For a few years after Father died we tried to keep these Christmases going, but they were failures. We could not all be in one room at the same time. There were too many of us, and we were far too angry. Christmas was something else now. It was Mother and Gilbert at Franny’s, with Rose and her kids. Perhaps Floyd dropped by. I had no way of knowing. No one mentioned Floyd to me anymore.

  21

  Traitors

  I saw clearly now what I had suspected all my life. But I was almost an old man before I was able to put into words what I had felt in my guts since childhood. We were traitors. We were dizzy with the vertigo of unprincipled paranoiacs, knowing that we were betrayers. I had known it without having the precise word for it. In the past when Floyd had hooted, “We’re savages!” I took it as his usual hyperbole. He meant lawless, ruthless, amoral, opportunistic, simple creatures of the mud hut and the bow and arrow; and of course all this was true. But we had been taught a thousand ways to be unfaithful, as well as having drummed into us its underlying reason: give yourself to someone completely, and she or he will let you down, hurt you, disappoint you, destroy you. That’s what came of surrender, of generosity, of love. Far better to hold off and practice treachery. The act of betrayal, the Judas gift, was a sure way of finding an ally.

  As for withholding, not trusting, not committing completely, this was the guarantee that our love affairs never worked and our friendships were failures.

  None of this was put into words. In our oral tradition, we were subtler in our actions than we had ways to describe them—like jungle illiterates, elaborate in the nuance of gestures and facial expressions. As a result we were close observers of human nature, not bookish but intensely social, highly sensitive to other people’s moods, to the quality of their responses, to modes of gratitude and sorts of apologies and the many kinds of laughter, especially the telling tonalities of insincerity. From birth we had been needy—Mother had regaled us for years about how we had screamed as infants—yet we were also untrusting, hard to console, impossible to soothe. These qualities, this powerful recipe for unhappiness, is also, in the right person, a recipe for intense creativity—rebellious vision, boldness of expression, risk taking, artful foolery. The long memory and the violent imagination were the good things—the great things—that were scorched into us by the family, and that made us, each of us in our own way, fanatical.

  Mother’s first lesson, implied rather than spoken plainly, was that our affection for each other was a sign of weakness. Loyalty was dangerous, like an obscure form of cheating. Our love for one another would make us unreliable, for it interfered with our first, our most important, duty: obedience to Mother.

  At her most cunning, using her indirection to confuse us, Mother preached against unkindness. She convinced us of the virtues of disloyalty by telling us the opposite. She taught us betrayal in unusual ways, in a system of pious mottoes. “I want my children to love each other.” “I want harmony in th
e family.” “You must help each other.” “How I hate it when my children fight.” “You have to learn to get along.” “Remember the Golden Rule.”

  But, to rule us, she needed disharmony, and she recognized that, by mastering duplicity, she could exercise control. She made us fight, incited us to quarrel. After speaking with her, Fred called me up and screamed at me. He wept in pleading phone calls to Floyd: “Can’t you see she’s old and frail?” Floyd howled at Hubby: “You greedy bastard, stuffing your face with Ma’s muffins.”

  While maintaining that she wanted peace, and making us listen to her platitudes, she whispered against us, each in turn, until we were so furious with one another that we went to her in the infantile and whining spirit of “He hit me!” and “He started it!”

  Mother blamed us for being hostile to each other while at the same time creating the hostility. And why? Stalin would have known the answer, so would Chairman Mao or Pol Pot—Brother Number One—or Comrade Hoxha of Albania: so that we would obey only her.

  “Don’t fight” meant fight. “Help each other” meant hurt each other. Harmony and peace meant their opposites. And if any one of us took her at her word and helped a brother or sister unselfishly—following Mother’s advice literally—the result was unexpectedly horrible, for we quickly learned that the person we had helped was laughing at us, egged on by Mother, as we labored in vain. You were a sucker for helping. And, Mother reasoned, why were you spending time and money helping one another when your duty was to help her? Effort spent on each other was effort denied to her.

  Were you home dusting shelves?

  Mother said, “I’ve got some shelves that could use a good dusting.”

  Were you making a meal for Hubby?

  Mother said, “He’s got a hollow leg. Where does all that food go? One of these days he’s going to explode.”

  Were you going to Boston with Floyd?

  Mother said, “I haven’t been to Boston for years.”

  Were you giving Gilbert a lift to the Hyannis Airport?

  Mother said, “I don’t know how I’m going to get to my dental appointment next week.”

  Were you serving Franny and Marvin scallops for dinner?

  Mother said, “I love scallops. I don’t remember the last time I had any.”

  All this was in the early days, when we were much younger, when we had just set off to make our lives. It was before I had a clear idea of what we were, before I understood the word “traitor.”

  After Father’s death and my return, Mother tightened her grip. And now, after all those intervening years, I saw what we had become: savages, sneaks, spies, rats.

  Out of habit, for the sake of peace, I tried to please her. In the years after Father died, living on the Cape and single, I frequently visited Mother. The leaf raking and snow shoveling: I performed those chores for Mother too. After Floyd had become my enemy, I realized I could not fight him. I had no allies; it was something I would have to swallow. I had already tried to elicit Mother’s sympathy, or a bit of support for Floyd’s public attack on me. Mother said, “I hate it when my children quarrel,” and the next day she would be at Floyd’s for dinner. Floyd might have been vicious toward me, but he was dutiful where Mother was concerned, even if she seldom acknowledged his generosity.

  But, then, she seldom acknowledged anyone’s generosity. To your face she would equivocate—she might even be profuse in her thanks. But she had no memory for gifts, or the gift grew smaller and smaller, until it was a pathetic shrunken thing that had been forced upon her, that she had never really needed in the first place.

  For Mother to be grateful meant that you mattered, that what you had done was important. She withheld praise. So you had done very little after all, and you would have to keep trying, because you had failed. She did not come out and tell us we had failed. In fact, she might say that she was pleased, but she conveyed the message with a contrived irony that suggested that she was not pleased at all.

  “Are you sure you like it?” I might ask.

  “Of course I am,” Mother would reply, and I knew from her hollow tone that this meant, “No, I am not.”

  In time, we all became adept at translating the looking-glass language of her petty tyranny, so when she alluded to the Golden Rule, or more likely recited it, one skinny finger upraised, we knew in our hearts that what she meant was the opposite.

  As a child I had been bamboozled by Mother. I fumbled and failed until, at last, after high school, I had gone away and more or less stayed away. Years passed. Now I knew exactly what was happening, and though the process appalled me, I was impressed by its complex dynamics and its effectiveness.

  It was not easy to roil a whole family—Mother was constantly stirring—but in her earnest plotting she had managed to divide us. We bickered and whispered: it was her triumph, for all our attention was directed toward her—gifts, flowers, fruit, sympathy, support. Her lessons in the tactics of disloyalty and hypocrisy had been heeded by us. We children disliked each other, we associated selectively, because there were cliques among us. But we all told Mother we loved her.

  Winter passed. Spring came. Easter was an event—another meal at someone’s house, with significant exclusions. Floyd was, in this period, never excluded. He was invited first and it was hoped he would show up, because if he stayed away, he was probably mocking you, as he was relentlessly mocking me.

  Now, five years after Dad’s death, Mother and Floyd were close. Their closeness meant Mother had plenty of information about him. She jeered at him to Fred and Gilbert, though she had nothing to say to Franny or Rose on the subject of Floyd. Fred was the most fearful of Floyd: he patronized him, but he laughed at Floyd to me. Hubby hated Floyd and disliked Fred for being hospitable to him, but Hubby liked hospitality and could not resist Fred’s barbecues. Gilbert, circumspect with Floyd, stayed with Mother when he was on the Cape, so he was able to remain elusive to the rest of us. Hubby badmouthed Fred to me while at the same time eating with him. Franny and Rose disliked Hubby because he was helpful to Mother and to Franny and Rose, though they resented their need of him.

  Fred appeared to be friendly toward me, yet he delighted in my downfall. Gilbert was solicitous, at times genuinely friendly, but far too busy to look closely at anyone’s life. Franny had once seen me as useful, because my name was known. But she had not forgiven me for staying away from Jonty’s wedding. In the spirit of Mother’s indirection, Franny showed her hostility by bringing me masses of inexpensive yet encumbering presents—cheap chocolates, bags of bruised apples, T-shirts from outlet stores, mismatched socks. Rose showed her hostility more directly by not giving me anything, indeed by avoiding me, because she and her children had become close to Floyd.

  “Uncle Floyd put us in his will,” little Benno had said to me on one of their rare visits. Little Bingo agreed: “We’re getting his stuff when he dies.”

  Using your last will and testament to get someone’s attention meant you would command fidelity until your death. This strategy was a page from Mother’s playbook.

  Franny and Rose were careful with me, usually disguising the fact that they were friendly with Floyd. “We don’t see much of him.” I knew differently, and that anything I told them would be used as little gifts: they would report anything they saw or heard at my house to Floyd, to ingratiate themselves. Such gossip was a sort of present, as much to prove their loyalty to him as to prove their disloyalty to me. To throw me off they ridiculed Floyd when they were with me, but gently, subtly, so that I would not have something to hold against them. It is tricky to be a traitor if you also want to have some allies.

  When we were in her presence, Mother, in her judicious way, told us she loved us and was grateful for our attention. But when we were out of sight, she told whoever would listen that we were not very reliable, nor generous, nor helpful. She always praised me when I visited. And afterward Fred or Franny or someone else would report that she said, “Jay upsets me. I don’t know what I’ve done t
o deserve it.”

  Floyd’s attack-dog hatred was now so long-standing that it inspired fear in the others. There was no way I could think of to make peace with Floyd, but as time passed I began to see that I was more fortunate than the others. Because of Floyd’s peculiar disposition and his demands, it was far more oppressive to be Floyd’s friend than his enemy. As his enemy, I had long stretches of time to myself, while his friends and the rest of the family had to deal with him every day. He had done his worst: written his malicious review of my book. But though my book had failed, the review was so bizarre, unhinged, and incoherent, Floyd had attracted attention by making a fool of himself, and unwelcome inquiries and baffled questions began to haunt him.

  As his enemy, I did not have to please him. I was detached and did not have to propitiate him, as the others did, with presents and tribute, something for his collections—Coca-Cola memorabilia, vintage ice cream scoops, and all the rest of it. The others lived in terror of offending him. I was luckier in living beneath his notice.

  I pitied Fred, who would drop off an ivory netsuke at Floyd’s and then visit me and mock Floyd’s acquisitiveness. “He’s compulsive!” It was the twisted loyalty Mother had instilled in us—Fred believing that by mocking Floyd he was pleasing me, when I knew well that after he left my house he got on the phone and mocked me to another sibling. And Fred was not the only one who behaved this way. We all did. I mocked them all behind their backs.

  We were traitors on Mother’s behalf. And, strange to say, it was a success. We were not happy, but Mother was, and that was all that mattered.

  22

  Ten Minutes from Mother

  So this is how you grow old, I sometimes thought, wondering at my passivity, which induced in me an anguish of suffocation, living near the sea in a rented house on a street of blowing sand and misshapen, arthritic-limbed pitch pines shedding their needles. No miracles would befall me now. I lived in a vegetative state of semiretirement, with diminishing funds, and so did most of the family. I feared complete retirement because I needed somewhere to go every morning. But that was only part of the problem: having retired from active employment, we had also retired our dreams and ambitions. We had more time on our hands than ever, and plenty of solitude to recall all our old resentments. We had outgrown our yearnings and our hopes. Whatever had been meant for us, whatever success or happiness, had either already occurred or never would. Destiny was behind me. Fate was irrelevant. Only death was certain. You think: This is it.