Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away

by Alice Anderson

  John Buffalo Mailer: the man I was about to fall in love with.

  Damn it. Liam had been a fluke with me. I’d dated girls my whole life, and I wasn’t about to make that mistake again. But in the back of my mind, I also knew this: You’ve got an ongoing custody battle in Mississippi. No girls allowed. Not yet.

  It was fucked-up logic. But I was living under the fear of the great state of Mississippi.

  Buffalo took my hand in his, kissed it, and said, “Lovely to meet you.”

  “Charmed, I’m sure.”

  “Dad, did you hear that? I think I just died.”

  “You’re in trouble, son.”

  I laughed, added, “I think you’re both in trouble if I’m the only ‘real’ writer Frank could come up with for dinner companionship.”

  “What’s worse,” Norman added, “he’s counting himself as the other real writer!”

  Everyone laughed, even Frank, while Norman assured him he was kidding. Then Norman looked me in the eye and said, “I hear you’re a fine, fine poet, Alice.”

  “Yes, I did read your hearing was failing.”

  Buffalo and Norman laughed and told Frank, “You picked a good one.”

  This was the most fun I’d had in approximately ten years—other than the Pajamaramas at Sonic.

  The conversation flowed easily all night. Frank pressed me to tell the story about how I’d used Norman to get out of trouble as a girl, and I did.

  Once, as a sassy sixth grader, my papa was being a drunk ass when my friend was over, and I called him a motherfucker. Well, that snapped him out of his drunkenness pretty quick, and he chased us down the hall where we quickly locked ourselves in his office while he banged on the door, threatening to beat our smart-ass asses. After about twenty minutes of this banging, it came to me.

  I yelled out, “Papa, I was being funny! I didn’t say you were a motherfucker; I said you were a muggafugga like in Norman Mailer’s book!” Well, Papa thought that was the funniest thing he ever heard, and we came out of the office and he made us Coke and rums (Cokes with a splash of rum).

  The second half of dinner was mostly Frank and Norman reminiscing about New York days and Norman’s run for mayor, while Buffalo and I fell into an easy, intimate conversation. It was obvious neither of us wanted it to end. But when Norman tired out and wanted to go back to his room (he had a big talk at the Crest Theatre as part of Sacramento Lectures the next day), Buffalo got up to take him. Norman’s age and fragile state meant he needed someone on the road with him. With his wife of many years, Norris, sick with cancer, Buffalo, his youngest child, was in Sacramento to help. In the hall, when Buffalo embraced me to say goodbye, he whispered, “Wait out front for me; I’ll come back down.”

  I got my car from the valet and sat with the door open, watching the stars pass slowly over the state capitol dome while cars left ribbons of light down L Street on a busy Saturday night.

  Eventually, Buffalo appeared.

  He was tall, rugged, handsome, with bright blue eyes, chiseled jaw, strong shoulders, wearing Levi’s and boots and a T-shirt and leather jacket. He had soft lips and a heavy brow. I had no idea how old he was, but I was sure he was too young for me. His voice was low and had that East Coast prep school clip to it. He was a Mailer. I was some girl from Mississippi with three kids and a disastrous life and a book of poems from a zillion years ago. He leaned on the open door to my car and said, “Well, hey there, stranger.”

  From him, it didn’t sound like a line.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t be interested in me.”

  “Oh, I can’t? And why not?”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure I’m way too old for you. I’m into girls. You live in New York, and I have a terribly messy life the likes of which you don’t even want to begin to know about.”

  “I don’t care about age. I don’t care about distance. And I like messy. I can fix things.”

  I laughed. He had to be kidding, right?

  “Just give me your number, okay?”

  I sighed. “Okay, but this is not happening. I mean, you’re incredibly handsome and seemingly brilliant, and you smell like a forest and, well, you’re tall. But yeah, not happening.”

  I wrote my number on a scrap of paper from my car and handed it to him.

  He laughed.

  “What?”

  “You could have texted it to me.”

  “I don’t text.”

  “Oh, my God, I think I’m falling in love.”

  “Shut up,” I said, laughing. I shut the door and drove home.

  When I came home, the phone was ringing. Mama was walking out the door and the babies were sound asleep. I picked up, not imagining who would be calling so late.

  “You gave me your landline?” said a familiar low voice.

  “Why are you calling me already?”

  “I’ve been calling you; I thought you weren’t picking up your cell.”

  “You are insane.”

  “I’m persistent.”

  “Aren’t you waking up your daddy?”

  “I don’t call him Daddy, and no, I’m lying on a table out in the hallway.”

  “Isn’t that uncomfortable?”

  “Why, yes, it is. Should I just come over?”

  “Oh, God, no!”

  “Seriously, can I?”

  “No! I have children here!”

  “But they’re sleeping.”

  “They could wake up. They don’t need any strange men in the house.”

  “Seriously, stop saying things that make me fall in love with you.”

  “Put your daddy on the phone, please.”

  “Stop. Are you coming to his talk tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t planned on it. I already got a babysitter tonight. And this morning while I was teaching.”

  “Teaching?”

  “I teach community college.”

  “I wonder if they sell engagement rings in the lobby.”

  I had to laugh. It felt good to laugh. It felt good to talk to someone who was interested in me. Who found the things I loved to do—write, teach—admirable and not a threat. But Buffalo was so disarming and, yes, charming, that we ended up talking for four hours more, into the early morning hours. And I did go to Norman’s talk the next day. And I went backstage for just a few minutes and kissed John Buffalo Mailer, and from that day on we talked every single day and e-mailed, and we started, slowly at first, then all at once, to fall in love.

  When Addison called to say the court had agreed that Liam could come visit the children in California for six days as long as he brought his parents with him and did not drive them, I agreed to go to New York to see Buffalo.

  He sent me sweet texts on my BlackBerry several times a day, trying to get me to text him back. The day before I left, he texted: out getting a present for you.

  I texted back, my first text: in this world / love has no color / yet how deeply / my body is stained / by yours.

  It was an Izumi Shikibu poem. Buffalo texted back: perfect. you’ll see. i love you. you are my angel.

  The next day, he met me at the gate at LaGuardia with a dozen roses and my “present”: he’d tattooed my name on his arm. After only one kiss.

  Truth be told, I was terrified to sleep with him. Terrified. Because as much as he’d said about age not mattering, I was thirteen years older than he was. I had had three children, including one C-section. I’d had major trauma surgery, and my body was crossed over by scars. Thankfully, we went straight from the airport to his parents’ storied loft in Prospect Park. I’d already been befriended by Norris by e-mail, and we’d become fast friends. Southerners, models, writers: hell’s belles. It was like coming home to a family that I belonged to. Not that I don’t love my own family with all my heart and soul, but here was another family who first thing asked me about my poetry. Norman had already bought and read my book, even. I was starving for them.


  And now I was seen.

  We went back to Buffalo’s place and the night was long and we made love and I could imagine a life here. A life of literature and love and no cruelty. I could write a thousand journals and line every wall with them if I wanted.

  I spent six idyllic days in New York, making love and going to dinners out every night, meeting Norris and Norman’s friends, shopping with Norris, visiting Buffalo’s grandma, lazy mornings in bed with Buffalo. The Mailer family propped me up when I was sick with worry. Which was every day. They bought me presents for the three little birds. They talked about them like they were already part of the family. Norris bought them three white stuffed buffalos. Buffalo always had me put them on speaker when I spoke to them, so he could hear their voices. The time flew, even when we weren’t doing much at all. There were hours on end of reading quietly, side by side. I wondered why I’d lived a life with anyone who didn’t let me be who I’d always meant to be. Even far away, I felt like the kids and I were all being folded into this great family and that here we were safe. That we belonged. And that someday, I would bring them back with me. And then, just like that, it was time to be home at last.

  I flew in to Sacramento, picked up my car, and went to pick up the kids at the Hyatt, the same hotel where I’d met Buffalo not too long before. They were happy to see me, but quiet. When we got home, Grayson wanted to take a bath.

  Our house was an early-twenties two-story with a long, tiled bath that took a long time to fill. Grayson was a slight boy, with shoulder blades like sharp wings protruding from his pale back. He climbed in while the warm water still ran. He pushed a little bright green tugboat back and forth, silent.

  “How was your week, sweet pea?”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you do anything fun?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you ride the train?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you see any movies?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How were Grandma and Big Poppa? Were they happy to see you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I let him sit in silence then for a while, playing with the tugboat. He’d steer it near the running water, let go. It would float in the tide back to him. He’d steer it into the wake, let go, it’d float back again.

  “Mama?”

  “Yeah, sweetie?”

  “Daddy hurt me.”

  Suddenly, Grayson threw up in the water, the whole bathtub turning a kind of muddy orange pink, the color of Thousand Island dressing

  “Oh, baby, oh, baby,” I said, pulling him out, wrapping him up in a big white towel. “What happened?”

  His little body racked in sobs, he leaned over and threw up again into the tub.

  “Daddy h-h-h-hurt me. He lock me out.”

  “Locked you out?”

  He started crying again. I held him close to me, rocking him back and forth, trying to soothe him, saying, “It’s okay, you’re okay, baby, you’re okay, it’s okay, you’re home safe now, you’re safe, just take a deep breath. Everything’s okay. Mama’s here. It’s okay.”

  When his breathing evened out, I wrapped him in another clean, dry towel. “You wanna get dressed?” He nodded and went off to his room. I waited near the door. He came out in little yellow SpongeBob pajamas. I picked him up, carried him downstairs and to the couch.

  He sat down next to me and told me what happened.

  “Me and Avery were sleeping by each other, and Aidan slept with Daddy. Avery kept touching me and bugging me, and I told her to stop and then she told me to stop and then I told her to stop and we was supposed to be sleeping, and then Daddy got mad. So he got out of the bed and he take me by the ear and he pull me out of bed and he drag me across the floor. Then he open the door and he kick me out and he lock me out.”

  “He locked you out of the room? Like in the hallway?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Cried and screamed and banged on the door.”

  “What did he do? What did the kids do?”

  “He wouldn’t let me in. The kids try to let me in, but he yell at them and wouldn’t let them. Somebody finally let me in.”

  “So then it was over.”

  “Then we went to bed and we try to tell Daddy why we was fighting, and he got mad again so this time he throw me on the floor then he kick me right here on my ribs and he open the door and he kick me again real hard and I out in the hallway locked out again. It late at night.”

  “Oh, my gosh, baby. I’m so sorry. So sorry. What did you do?”

  “I cried, but this time I decide not to bang on the door. I just walk down the hallway.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “I was going to the elevator. I was going to go down to the lobby and ask for a key.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, Daddy open the door and run down the hallway and grab me and throw me hard back in bed and tell me to shut up and go to sleep.”

  “I’m so sorry, baby. You know that’s not right. Daddy should never do that to you. Never.”

  “Mama?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When I was in the hallway?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was only wearing my red underpants.”

  I called CPS the next day, who did an investigation. Of course, Liam’s parents were supposed to have been supervising the visit, but it turns out that not only did they have their own room, but it wasn’t even on the same floor. And all the things Grayson said turned out to be true. Liam was put on supervised visitation through the California courts immediately, and we had temporary jurisdiction for one year in California.

  I felt a deep, soul-torn sadness that Grayson (and Avery and Aidan, too) had experienced such trauma. But surely now, in the California courts, things would go my way, and they’d be spared future trauma at the hands of their father. I often felt a wretched guilt that I had escaped from Liam’s wrath, but now instead I simply put my children in his path alone—without my protection. I still e-mailed and called Dr. Colette sometimes, and she told me that having me in the picture would raise the stakes and the danger quotient exponentially and that what I was doing was the best option, but I still felt like I was throwing them into the fire while I ran and jumped into the cool lake of relief.

  Visitation was changed to limited, supervised visits with Liam, and we would go on with our lives. And we were happy. We ate out, we laughed uproariously on our walks in the park, we got a puppy we named Coconut, we went on day trips. I was wildly in love with Buffalo. On some days, it seemed we might even live happily ever after.

  Buffalo came to see us in Sacramento and met the kids. He brought them the stuffed buffalos Norris had bought and told them we were the Buffalo family and that someday very, very soon, everything would be very different. We walked to McKinley Park and walked around the path around the lake full of ducks and geese and two slightly evil swans, and he hoisted Aidan on his shoulders and Avery and Grayson held each of his hands and Aidan raised his fat little hands into the cherry blossoms and petals rained down on us all like a blessing.

  Then I swore them to secrecy.

  All we need do was keep fighting, all we need do was make it through the still-looming final trial, all we need do was make sure none of us was hurt in the meantime.

  All we need do was stay alive.

  “FAMILY” COURT

  The thing about family court in the United States that anyone who has been through it knows is that it makes no sense. For example, if a father beats his first-grade son, locks him in his underwear in a hotel room hallway in the middle of the night, all while enraged and intoxicated, and is given supervised visitation, one would assume he would have to jump through some pretty high hoops to get unsupervised visitation back, right? Especially if he has a history of severe domestic violence (documented in the courts) against the child’s mother as well as repeated DUIs and driving the minor children without a licen
se, making false allegations, and losing custody of the minor children. That would seem a pretty steep hill to climb, wouldn’t it?

  The truth is, the minute that father has a CPS case opened and is ordered by the court to be supervised during his visitation, the entire goal of the court becomes not to protect the minor children but to “reunite and reunify” the minor children and the father. The goal is to “remedy” the “breach” as swiftly as possibly. The children are immediately put into counseling with the parent who has just abused them, whether they want to or not. Pity the mother who resists or protests. The abuser is also put into counseling, often with the same person who is supervising the visitations. And the supervised visitations? They are not conducted in a staid counseling office somewhere. No, the supervisor comes out on Saturday outings to the fair or the park or the zoo, all while the abuser buys the supervisor lunch or dinner or admission to the attractions. And after several weeks or months of this, the supervisor writes a recommendation to the courts. The children are observed and the supervisor comments on their “fear level.” Well, what would your children’s “fear level” look like at a public fair when they have a supervisor with them at all times? When they know that at 4:00 P.M. they get to go home with their mother? When they know they get to go home long before their abusive father starts in on his nightly drinking binge and the rage that soon follows? This is how abusers can go from an abusive incident to supervised visitation to unsupervised visitation in a matter of months.

  I fought Liam hard in the California courts. I presented all of it. The original court documents from Liam choking me, stabbing me. Avery’s testimony. Dr. Colette V. Colette’s report on Liam’s likelihood to abuse the children. Liam’s false allegations that I abused Avery. Liam’s driving the children unlicensed. The kidnapping attempt. The stalking and papering of my car. The police reports. His multiple DUIs. His mental health records in which he professed the uncontrollable urge to kill me. The CPS records from the most recent case.

  The court ordered that supervised visitation be lifted, commenting that all my evidence was neither “recent nor relevant” to be a concern. The court actually admonished me for interfering between the relationship between the minor children and their father.