Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  I went into the kitchen and found her notepad and calculator by the phone. Then I sat down at the kitchen table and did the math. I was twelve when my father died, and nineteen when I left home for college. I’d actually stayed home an extra year thinking I could help her. So 7 years times 365 days. I kept it simple. I figured, roughly, that for 2555 and one nights I had stood by helplessly while she disappeared from my life. I dug the black Sharpie fat tip for marking boxes out of my purse and went back into the den. She was snoring softly; she hadn’t moved a muscle. I pulled up her sweater and pulled down the front of her pants to expose her belly. She’d lost so much weight since the accident, her hipbones were sticking out. She wasn’t wearing her Arthur jeans; she was back in sweats. Using my best production designer graffiti lettering I wrote: Hannah Was Here 2555 & One Nights.

  It needed embellishment. At first I thought of enclosing the message in a heart, but that didn’t feel right. Instead I drew a round head and added two pointy ears, eyes, two soft swoops for a nose, and cat whiskers. I thought of the terrified dog on his mattress and drew a magic carpet under the head. Unlike my grandmother’s rudimentary wood burning, I drew in perspective. I added scrolling designs like Indian henna patterns to the carpet, plus fringe. I surrounded it with swirling stylized clouds. I drew a sun peeking out from behind one hipbone, and a moon rising behind the other. I gave them both eyes that were swiveled down in alarm on the scene below. I got a little carried away. I thought about how lucky she was I didn’t start in on her forehead like a Hindu bride. On second thought, I added swirls to the backs of her hands and down her fingers. Then brusque bands like Victor warrior cuffs around her wrists.

  I sat back on my knees and waited to be sure the ink was dry. I blew on it a little and tested the densest spots with my finger. The mantle clock my father had built from a kit chimed five o’clock. She was right on schedule. It occurred to me that I looked like someone in a psycho killer movie. I pulled up her waistband and put her sweater back in place. Then I backtracked. I turned off the lights and locked the door. I called Eric as I drove away.

  “Mom’s drunk and passed out on the floor of the den.”

  “Oh shit, here we go. Are you still coming down in the morning?”

  “No. I’m headed home.”

  “You’re going to just leave her there?”

  “She left me there 2555 and one nights. She’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, you’re right. We’ll miss seeing you before you leave.”

  “She told Steve about the miscarriage.”

  “Oh Jesus. Well Binky came by her blabbing honestly. Is that why you’re leaving her there?”

  “No, I’m leaving because she invited me for a visit and then didn’t show me the courtesy of staying home.”

  “Drive carefully.”

  “I will,” I said. “Give everyone my love.”

  I turned off my phone again and was home in less than two hours. I had been trying to convince the family to do the Sharpie art on Binky for years. I couldn’t stand the way she always called the next day pretending she hadn’t ruined whatever family event we’d had, and how everyone played along. I wanted her to wake up covered with messages from the family, written while she was in one of her near-death alcohol comas.

  One Christmas all the kids had received fruit-scented markers; I thought they’d be especially good. The more senses the better. Everyone thought it was too mean. I bet they were grossed out by the idea of drawing on her flabby belly.

  I wonder if it would have made a difference. Mom would be contemplating her navel for a few days at least; that ink wasn’t called permanent for nothing.

  I had a good night’s sleep. There’s nothing like drawing a flying cat head in perspective all over your mother’s stomach to make you feel like you’ve gotten some work done.

  Steve called the next morning. I was sure he’d sunk his teeth into the scene and wouldn’t stop calling until he was satisfied with his version of events.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I told him the story, or the part that was any of his business.

  “Are you sure it was mine?”

  “Yes I’m sure.”

  “And you didn’t have an abortion?”

  “Of course not, what a thing to say. Did you hear anything I just said? You can be such an asshole.”

  “I guess I wouldn’t be hearing it from your mother if you had.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her, but I didn’t. I thought you’d be relieved.”

  “We got pretty fucked up, but I wouldn’t be relieved.”

  “What about your lawyer? Talk about complications.”

  “We would have figured something out.”

  “Figured something out about a child? I don’t want to figure out complications before a child is even born. I feel like I’m in a nightmare. What happened to no child of mine will be born outside of marriage? I can’t believe we had a relationship.”

  “We were good.”

  “We were not good. I don’t know why you keep saying that. We were never going to be good.”

  “You thought we were good when I was taking you to Paris.”

  “You think I was sleeping with you for a trip to Paris? You call that good? I introduced you to my family.”

  “I’m not exactly a truck driver.”

  “I never met your family. That would have been awkward if we’d figured out a child.”

  “Who knows? I loved you, Hannah. I thought we could get past the families. Past the other people. I’ll call you.”

  “You loved someone who used you for trips? You’re crazier than I am. Don’t even think about calling. Just blow me one last kiss.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Which part didn’t you get?”

  “That blowing kiss part.”

  “It’s a song. Look it up.”

  I hung up before he could ask me the lyrics, which I so didn’t know. I swam laps until it felt like my lungs would burst. Then I lay on the hot patio stones and took note of the soaking hot sun on my body as wispy chills of cool air tried to sweep it away. That’s all I did. I checked out. I hadn’t dodged a firing squad; I’d dodged an atomic bomb.

  Eric called. Mom hadn’t shown up at church. He couldn’t stand it so he’d driven up to check on her. He found her in the backyard gardening and crying. Arthur was sitting in a patio chair drinking coffee and watching. Neither of them had much to say to Eric. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know the protocol for having your mother fall off the wagon again. He didn’t say anything and neither had they.

  “Was she wearing gardening gloves?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, she was. Why?”

  “Just wondering. So you don’t know if she told Arthur?”

  “No. It was pretty damn strange though. Arthur was watching her with the same look he had when she was beating up on Ted. I figured he knew. What’s with the gloves?”

  “Oh, I got a little carried away.”

  I told him what I’d done.

  “You are fucking kidding me. She’s supposed to go to a luncheon with Aunt Asp and Anna tomorrow.”

  “Well I don’t see that happening unless she reverts to her 1960s look of crisp white gloves. Though I guess she could wear leather, it is winter, but with the bracelets she’d need three-quarter length, not a good look in the middle of the day.”

  “Jesus, have you lost your mind?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. We should have done the same thing to Binky years ago; they might still be alive if we’d stopped hiding from the truth. Everyone thought it was too mean.”

  “Ted would never have stood by while we did that. I don’t think it would have been too mean. Most of the time I wanted to slap her to Jupiter. But can you really imagine us doing that family art project? The kids would be in therapy for the rest of their lives.”

  “Now that you put it that way, I can see that it was a solo exhibit kinda gig.”

  “And b
orderline crazy. Maybe not even borderline.”

  “It sounds like it got Mom’s attention. We don’t know what Ted would have tolerated. We never tried. We never tried anything. We kept saying it was up to him. I think that whole weakest link thing is AA bullshit. She needed all of us to play along and we did.”

  “She didn’t care about any of us.”

  “Yes she did, it just got lost in the wilderness of her misery. She was a good sister when we were young. We had that history. It was important to her. I’m not going to just stand around like I’m twelve anymore.”

  “Obviously. How long do you figure the ink will last?”

  “Depends on how hard she’s willing to scrub. Maybe they’ll discover Arthur is into tattoos with his coochie.”

  “You really are crazy,” he was laughing. “I’ll keep you posted, you do the same.”

  I got the coconut and a hammer and set up shop on a paper bag on the warm patio stones. I was wearing my angel tee shirt. The sun heated the metallic ink so I could feel the outline of the warm wings on my back; my grandmother must have her wood burning tools out. If she really had hated my mother, I imagined her with a rare smile while she drew my wings.

  I went to work tapping all over like I’d seen Jon do. My phone rang in the house. I ignored it. It rang again. It kept up like that, a steady ringing at even intervals. I doubted it was Mom; as Eric said, she was more into machine-gunning it with autodial. I finally got up and looked at caller ID.

  “Please, Jon, stop calling me.”

  “You wouldn’t answer,” he said.

  “Not answering is an answer. Leave a message. I thought we were going to talk when I got back.”

  “I never agreed to that. I plan to talk to you every day.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s a promise.”

  “Oh brother, you sound like a bad gangster movie. I’m not going to call you again at dawn; you don’t need to worry about that. In two weeks I’ll be on a different planet. I’m going to take up with a nice Indian man.”

  “Call any time you want, I’ll be calling you.”

  “So it’s payback?”

  “No. I want to hear your voice.”

  “Really? Haven’t you had enough? You said I never stop talking. You should know my brother just said I’m crazy.”

  “Why are you crazy?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Sure I do,” he said.

  “You’re like talking to a mule,” I said.

  “I know. You might as well just tell me and get it over with.”

  “I found my mother passed out and drew all over her with a black marker. I drew a cat’s head. I did the math. She had passed out on me 2555 and one times. I wrote the number on her belly. I covered her hands like an Indian bride. I gave her Samoan warrior cuffs. It got all feline multi-cultural. I probably should have thrown a little Egyptian something in there. I wanted to draw on my sister for years. I couldn’t think of anything else and it might have saved their lives. My brother says it would have landed the kids in therapy for life.”

  He was silent on the other end. It wasn’t the dead controlling silence Steve could pull off; he was listening with both ears. Why was I even telling him? He felt like the most natural person in the world to tell; at the same time it felt like I was asking to get poked by monkey tree leaves.

  “I need to go,” I said. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  “I can’t think of another person on any planet who would tell me that. I’ve been alone a long time. I love you, Hannah. I should have told you that the night you licked my ear.”

  He hung up. I called him right back.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did you say you love me?”

  “Yep.”

  “What am I supposed to do with that? I didn’t expect this, even from you. I so don’t need this right now. I was starting to breathe.”

  “You can drop the insults anytime now, I’m really not that bad. I’m just telling you I love you. I have no idea what you’re going to do with it.”

  “Are these going to be daily hit and run calls? You don’t even sound like you.”

  “No. I know; I hear it too.”

  “You haven’t been alone. What bullshit, Mr. Refrigerator Door.”

  “How long have you been alone?”

  “I’ve never been alone until now; and it’s fine. It’ll be a long time before I stick a toe in those waters again, I can tell you that.”

  “What about the Indian man?”

  “That will just be a little cultural exchange program,” I said.

  “I don’t want to hear about it. And I didn’t ask how many people you’ve slept with. I hope we never think that conversation is a good idea. I asked how long you’ve been alone.”

  “I’ve slept with men, Jon, not people.”

  “Men, people, goats. I don’t want a head count. How long?”

  I thought about that for a minute. He was listening at the other end. I’d always been alone.

  “A long time, so what?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You were right about the nothing comment by the way; men are assholes. It’s almost true, but it’s still a shitty way to put it. I’ll call you tomorrow, I hope you’ll answer.”

  He hung up again. I called him back.

  “Yes.”

  “Stop hanging up on me,” I said.

  We were both quiet.

  “I can’t let you back in here,” I said.

  “We don’t have a choice, Hannah. We’re in it; we both know it. We need to move along now. I don’t think either one of us is up for all this struggling.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “Yeah you do.”

  “It’s too soon.”

  “Too soon for what? It is what it is.”

  There must be a thousand reasons why it was too soon, but I couldn’t think of one. That was the biggest problem with Jon. He scrambled my brain into thinking I wasn’t wrong about him. I understood him and it drove me crazy.

  “So just like that?” I asked.

  “Yep, just like that. I’ll call you tomorrow. What’s a good time?”

  “After work, seven I guess. Is that good for you?”

  “It’s fine. Any time is fine. Have a good night.”

  “Why do you tap the coconut all over?”

  “I was just trying to wake you up gently. I used to do the same thing with Chana when she was a baby. She hated waking up.”

  “I don’t hate waking up.”

  “Okay, now I know to just pound on the door.”

  “Jon.”

  “Yeah, not now, it’s good. We’re okay. Tomorrow. I’m not hanging up by the way, I’m just signing off.”

  I went back to my coconut and gave it my normal big fat smack. It broke open and the milk ran across the stones and into the pool. Oops, I forgot about that part. I dug out the meat and munched while I used the shell to scoop water and rinse off the flagstones. Tick tock, tick tock.

  I felt a tad manic with the surge of relief energy. Jon had sounded a little crazy too. I wondered if the next thing I’d find out was that he’s completely nuts. I hadn’t picked up on that at all, but people find their own water level, and my family thought I was nuts. Where had he come from? I knew he’d say Santa Barbara. All I could think of was the cosmic soup. The wild animal was humming while a little voice kept screaming at me to wake up!

  I still hadn’t heard from Mom. I called her and Arthur answered.

  “Hi, Hannah, your mother’s in the shower.”

  I couldn’t help it. The relief after talking to Jon mixed with the vision of her scrubbing struck me so sideways; I started laughing out of control. Arthur hung on as long as he could, but then he started in too. We were both choking; I had tears streaming down my face.

  “Oh Arthur, how’s she doing?”

  “It will take some time. That ink is on pretty thick. I think she got the message.”
/>   “I’m surprised she showed you.”

  “I was supposed to have breakfast with you all. She was sitting on the bed in her underwear crying when I got here. She wouldn’t have been able to hide it for too long. We’re past that point. I would have seen her hands anyway. The cat really bothered her.”

  “It just came to me. She’s always telling me I’m not a kitten anymore.”

  “I know. And it may sound out-of-line coming from me, but cats are more fun.”

  “Thanks for that, Arthur. What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. She’s fine for now. I’m taking her to a meeting tonight. She won’t go out to dinner with her hands like that. It’s not easy to get sober after Bettina and Amber, but she has a good sponsor.”

  He’d tell her I called, but he had no idea when she would call me back. I liked Arthur; he was a straight twelve-stepper. I’d met some real whack jobs at Alanon. People can really complicate a simple spiritual path with crazy shit. If anyone could survive Mom with equanimity it was Arthur.

  I hummed around in the sun, eating coconut and scooping leaves out of the pool. It was 4:00 in the afternoon and my entire cosmos of people was out there somewhere besides with me. There was no one to turn to and just talk, no one to answer my phone when I was in the shower, no one under my roof, or in my time zone. Jon, who I guessed was in my cosmos now, was living at 2:00 p.m. It was 4:30 a.m. tomorrow in India, not a time to call anybody about anything. I knew Karin and Oscar were struggling in their own time zone. I was afraid to ask her what she thought, she might not be having one of her philosophical days and she’d point out how nuts I was. I felt like I was coming down off a sugar high. I called Jon. I could hear surf in the background.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m lonesome. Where are you?”

  “I’m sitting in front of the house reading. I’m headed in to work in a few minutes.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Which part?”

  “I don’t know if I can be out there alone, but I can’t just give up my career. I need to think about the future. It scares me to think about being left alone. I don’t trust this. My mother had to start from scratch with kids. They didn’t see it coming.”