Where Echoes Live

by Marcia Muller

“It’s one of those events that pales as it approaches. Just as Ma’s visit was a more pleasant prospect in the anticipatory stages than in the countdown. I’m looking to survive it, that’s all.”

  Thirteen

  “Your friend must be a mountain goat to live in a place with so many steps,” Ma grumbled.

  I set my teeth and climbed doggedly, ignoring her and clutching the bag containing the wine and Elena’s Double-to-die-for.

  “How do old people like me get to their apartments? Or don’t they let seniors in here?”

  “Old people who live on Russian Hill stay in shape because of all the climbing they have to do.”

  “Humpfh” was Ma’s only comment. Actually, her complaints about the steps leading to George’s building—thirty-six in all; I’d counted them one day while we were hauling up a heavy load of groceries— were the first she’d uttered since I’d picked her up in front of the Greyhound station. She’d been unusually quiet as I drove her to my house, got her settled in the guest room, and introduced her to Ralphie and Allie—behavior that put me more on my guard than if she’d carped about the fact I was five minutes late fetching her.

  We reached the top of the wide stairway, and Ma stopped, surveying the courtyard. Set atop a reinforced concrete wall high above Green Street, the white Mediterranean-style building had an elegant and faintly decadent atmosphere that was straight out of the 1920s. Its fountain was vintage mosaic tile; the planters looked like marble funerary urns; the balconies and Moorish arches were overhung with gnarled wisteria vines. Late at night when the foghorns bellowed outside the Gate and the courtyard was shrouded in mist, one expected to see sinister figures gliding through the faint light from the wrought-iron lanterns, or lovers entwined in the hurried embraces of assignations.

  Ma was seeing nothing so romantic, though. She said, “I hope he lives on the first floor.”

  “Second.” I nudged her toward the private staircase to George’s flat.

  My mother gave a martyred sigh as she began climbing again.

  Her complaints, I knew, were mere ritual, totally lacking in substance. At sixty-two, Ma is as spry as I am and equally healthy. We have the same body type—medium height and slender—and except for the gray streaks in her red hair, anyone following us upstairs could have taken us for sisters. But Ma considers it her God-given right to complain about any number of things at any time, and in a way I suppose she’s entitled. After all, she’s raised five troublesome McCones, tended to numerous grandchildren, and put up with my father’s many idiosyncracies for more than forty years.

  George came to the door wearing a blue-and-white-striped apron that I’d given him as a joke present for his birthday last August. As always, I felt a rush of pleasure at the sight of his tall, trim body and handsome rough-hewn face, which was now flushed from the heat of the kitchen. An unruly lock of gray-frosted hair hung over his forehead. He hugged me clumsily because of the asbestos mitt he wore, removing it before shaking hands with my mother. Wonderful smells came from inside.

  “What’s that?” I asked as we stepped into the hallway.

  “That stew—you know, with all the spices and the biscuits baked on top.”

  Ma looked impressed. I smiled knowingly. George’s harried domestic appearance was all show to get Ma on his side; the stew came frozen from a little bistro down on Hyde Street; you heated it, then opened a roll of refrigerated buttermilk biscuits and browned them on top. I hoped George had thought to throw the wrappings down the garbage chute, in case Ma decided to snoop through his kitchen.

  He added, “Why don’t you take your mother into the living room? I’ll be along with champagne.”

  “Champagne,” Ma said. “Huh.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but decided to not ask and led her down the hall to the front of the flat, where the windows looked toward the bay over the roofs of the facing buildings. Ma set her purse on a side table and gave the room a good once-over. George’s taste in furnishings ran to modern, but conservative modern; apparently she couldn’t find fault with the sand-colored walls and deeply cushioned brown sofa and chairs, but she did look askance at a chaotic abstract painting over the fireplace and a bent-wire sculpture on the coffee table. There was a plate of pâté and crackers next to the sculpture; Ma, who hates liver and never even made us eat it as kids, sat down as far as she could get from it.

  George came in with a cheese platter, set it down, and went back for the champagne. Ma moved a little closer to the cheese. When he returned, he made a big production of opening the champagne, pouring, and toasting “the two lovely McCone ladies.” I winced inwardly, afraid he was laying it on too thick, but to my surprise, Ma actually blushed.

  Maybe the evening was off to a good start after all.

  “What time did your plane get in?” George asked her.

  “I came by bus. I don’t go up in the air or cross water, if I can help it.”

  “Makes sense to me, given the airlines’ safety records these days.”

  “It’s also less expensive.” She gave him a severe look. “I don’t suppose that matters to you, though. Sharon tells me you’re quite wealthy.”

  My champagne went down the wrong way and I started to cough. George came over and patted me on the back, his hazel eyes dancing in amusement.

  “Yes,” he said over my head, “that’s true. I wish I could say I’d earned it, but it’s only inherited.”

  “Money,” Ma told him, “is fine, so long as you don’t let it rule you. I myself have a high respect for the value of a dollar, and I’ve tried to pass that along to my children.”

  I stared at her in amazement. The importance of money had been de-emphasized in our household, largely because no one remotely connected with the McCones ever had the ability to attract it.

  “I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable about your inheritance if I were you,” Ma added. “After all, you work. Stanford is a very good university.”

  George went back to his chair. “My father raised me to believe that regardless of how well off they are, adults should do some sort of useful work.”

  Ma nodded and relented so much as to smear a dab of pâté on a cracker. “Your father was right. Andy—that’s Sharon’s father—and I tried to instill that attitude in our children. Unfortunately, they all resisted it except Sharon. But they are very independent, very much their own persons.”

  Now my mouth fell open. My older brothers, John and Joey, have spent most of their adult lives moving in and out of my parents’ big rambling house in San Diego. Charlene lived there during each of her six pregnancies. Patsy never goes home, but she’s managed to cadge a substantial amount of money from our folks over the years. And Ma has always viewed my independent ways as evidence of some major character flaw.

  George refilled my mother’s empty champagne glass. I frowned. Ma had never been much of a drinker. She smeared another dab of pâté on a cracker, wolfed it down with apparent enjoyment, and leaned forward confidingly.

  “Are you Catholic, George?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  She waited.

  “I was raised Methodist.”

  “Well, then you believe in something.” Ma took a swig of champagne and proceeded to rewrite family history.

  Misrepresentation: She and Andy were very devout.

  Fact: Ma hasn’t been to mass in at least ten years, and my father spends his Sunday mornings puttering in the garage while singing dirty folk songs.

  Misrepresentation: We children were raised in the church and had good Catholic educations.

  Fact: John and Joey attended Catholic school, but were expelled for too-frequent fighting and other disgraceful episodes that to this day nobody will talk about. Being the family’s only white sheep, I made it through catechism, but Charlene was dismissed as incorrigible, and Patsy flatly refused to go at all.

  Misrepresentation: Our solid Catholic values had continued to stand us in good stead and guide us once we were out in the world.


  Fact: John is divorced. Joey lives in sin off and on. I gave up going to both confession and mass the summer I was sixteen and had sex for the first time. The size of Charlene’s family has nothing to do with papal dictate and everything to do with the fact that until she got her tubes tied she never quite got the hang of any form of birth control. And Patsy’s three children were born out of wedlock, each to a different father.

  History revised, Ma now got around to raising the issue I’d been dreading. I refilled my glass and braced myself.

  “You’re recently divorced, George?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Not because of my daughter here, I hope.”

  “Uh, no. My marriage was over long before I met Sharon.”

  “You’d grown apart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Felt stifled?”

  “That, too.”

  “Decided to cut your losses while both of you were still young?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, in spite of being Catholic, I’ve always felt that was the sensible approach. Life is too short to be ruined by vows made when you were too young to know what was what. Even if they were made in the sight of God.”

  Suddenly I knew what people meant when they said, “You could have knocked me over with a feather.” In our household, divorce was lamented as if there had been a death in the family. It was the “d” word—as unspeakable as the one that began with “f.”

  “I appreciate your understanding,” George said. Then he flashed me a bemused look and went to toss the salad.

  “A very nice man,” Ma said when he was out of earshot. “Sensible. Mature. Of course, the good looks and money are pluses, too.” She waved a hand at the archway to the dining room, through which a well-set table, including candles and cut flowers, could be seen. “I like a man who works at making a nice home for himself.”

  All day I’d been praying that she’d approve of George, but now I had to bite my tongue to keep from revealing that the table-setting and last-minute straightening-up had been done by his cleaning woman.

  Dinner went splendidly. The stew was perfect, and George had even remembered to transfer it from the telltale oven- and microwave-safe container to a casserole. While we ate I chatted about my trip to Tufa Lake, omitting the part about the murder, which would only have unsettled both of them and wasn’t proper dinner-table conversation, anyway. Then George explained to Ma about his forthcoming book: a self-help manual utilizing a behavioral model derived from various classical and modern schools of thought. Ma seemed fascinated; she kept asking which of “those little circles that you fit people into” she was. When George told her he suspected she belonged to a group he labeled as leaders, she seemed gratified. I had to stuff a piece of biscuit into my mouth to keep from blurting out that some of the category’s less desirable attributes were ruthlessness, tyranny, and megalomania.

  After dinner we took coffee and dessert into the living room. Ma had grown a little quiet again, but I assumed it was because she’d gotten the answers she wanted to the questions she’d come prepared to ask. She excused herself and went down the hall to the powder room, but was back so fast I knew she hadn’t even troubled to snoop through the master bedroom and bath for the toothbrush and robe I kept there. And as we wound down the evening, she posed no embarrassing questions about George’s intentions toward me. At the door she kissed him on the cheek, told him he could call her Katie from now on, and took the lead down the staircase—never once complaining about her poor old joints. It wasn’t until we were halfway to my house that I remembered I’d forgotten to thank George for the yellow rose he’d had delivered to my office that morning.

  When we arrived home, Ma seemed disinclined to go to bed, so I lit a fire and asked her if she’d like some tea or more coffee.

  “Do you have brandy?” she asked.

  I wasn’t sure she should have any more alcohol, but somehow it’s difficult to eighty-six one’s own mother, so I brought her a snifter and a small glass of wine for myself. Ma sat in the rocker near the fireplace with Allie curled into a calico ball on her lap.

  “So,” I said, feeling an unreasonable- desire to needle her, “do you think I should move in with George?”

  “You could do worse. He’s a good man, and that’s a very nice condominium.” She looked around my seldom-used front parlor. “But I wouldn’t sell this house if I were you. It must be worth quite a bit by now. You’ve done well for yourself, Sharon.”

  This was not—could not be—my mother speaking. In her canon of wicked institutions, live-in relationships ranked right up there with divorce.

  “I suppose your approval is a ploy to get me to marry him,” I said.

  Ma sighed, stroking the cat. “Sharon, you sound like a ten-year-old. It’s no ploy. I just want you to be aware that when it comes to marriage, you should be very, very careful.”

  Now I knew an alien had taken up residence in my mother’s body. For years she’d deplored my single state, practically begged me to marry every reasonably presentable man who had come along. If arranged marriages had still been the thing, she’d have visited a matchmaker as soon as she brought me home from the hospital.

  I asked, “What do you mean—be careful?”

  “Just that.” She took a sip of brandy and set the glass on the table next to her. “And now that we’re on the subject, I’d better tell you why I’m making this pilgrimage to see all my children. It’s to break the news in person. Sharon, I have left your father.”

  It was one of those pronouncements that rendered a person speechless. Senseless, too: my mind went blank; I simply couldn’t think.

  After what seemed like a long time, Ma added, “I’ve already spoken with John and Charlene and made them promise not to discuss it with anyone until all of you children know. I expect you to do the same, until after I’ve seen Patsy and Joey.”

  Words finally came. “Ma—why?”

  She was silent.

  “What did he do to you?”

  Now she looked amused. “Andy? Do something to me?”

  “Well, he must have. You don’t leave a man you’ve been married to for over forty years for no reason.”

  Again she was silent, reaching down to pet Ralphie, who was brushing jealously against her legs and leaving yellow hairs on her black pantsuit. Finally she said, “Sharon, for those forty-some years I haven’t had a life. I’ve been a wife to Andy, a mother to you children, a mother-in-law, and a grandmother.”

  “That wasn’t enough?”

  “Would it be enough for you?”

  “No, but you’re … different.”

  “You mean I’m your mother and I’m not supposed to want anything more. But I do. I have—for a long time.”

  “And you think you’ll find it by leaving Pa?”

  “I don’t know, but I need to try. Whatever comes of leaving him will at least be different from the way it would have been if I’d stayed. I am sixty-two years old. I want something for myself before I die.”

  “What does Pa think about all this?”

  “Naturally he’s not too thrilled about the idea. But you can’t expect a man who’s hidden out in the garage for fifteen years to be terribly upset.”

  She had a point there, although surely she exaggerated how long it had been going on. In recent years Pa had seemed more absent than present. Often he slept all night in his workshop on a cot that he claimed was only for naps. I thought of what my mother’s days must be like now that her children were scattered along the West Coast from San Diego to Portland: she had less to do, but few outside interests because she’d never had time to develop any. What friends she had came in couples, but my father had grown less and less inclined to socialize, so she went through the motions— cleaning and shopping and washing, making largely unappreciated meals and caring for the occasional grandchild.

  But didn’t that happen to other women of her age? What did they do? They took up hobbies, went to cl
asses, joined clubs. Instead of leaving my father, why for God’s sake couldn’t my mother take up quilting?

  And then I realized that there was more to this than she was telling.

  “Ma,” I said, “is there … ?”

  She watched me, expression unreadable in the firelight.

  “I mean, do you … ?”

  She smiled. Dammit, she was enjoying watching me struggle to ask if she had a lover!

  Finally she relented. “There is a gentleman, yes. He takes me places and talks to me and treats me like a lady. He gives me champagne and cooks me dinner like your friend George does for you. And of course we also enjoy other things—”

  I held up my hand in an “I don’t want to know about those things” gesture. “Ma,” I said, “who is this man? Where did you meet him?”

  “His name is Melvin Hunt. He’s fifty-seven.” She grinned wickedly. “A younger man, and quite well off. I met him at the Laundromat where I have been going every week for three years because your father can’t be bothered to fix my washer and won’t pay for a repairman.”

  “He can’t be that well off if he hangs out at the Laundromat.”

  Ma gave me a withering look. “Melvin owns the entire chain.”

  “Oh. Well, do you plan to marry this man?”

  “No, I don’t. But as soon as I get back to San Diego, I’m moving in with him.”

  Now I understood her tolerance of me moving in will George; it had been a ploy, to get me to accept her live-in relationship with … what’s-his-name. And I also under- stood the other things that had puzzled me during the evening. Her rewriting of family history was an attempt to reassure herself that she had done well by her children and now deserved to enjoy a new life. Her sudden approval of money and tolerance of divorce were mental adjustments made to justify her future plans.

  “Ma,” I said, “how long have you been seeing this man?’

  “He has a name, Sharon. And I’ve been seeing Melvin for a year now.”

  An entire year. Through all those phone calls and last Thanksgiving dinner and my brief visit in May she’d been hiding the existence of this … person from me. From all of us. Stunned, I stood up.