Who Makes Up These Rules, Anyway?

by Stevi Mittman

  So my mother has lost it again. Well, it is hard to blame her. After all, a thirty-seven-year-old woman goes out to the curb to get the mail and comes back to find her two-year-old on the bottom of the swimming pool, trapped there by his tricycle. Who could expect her to ever be all right again? Even if my baby brother had survived, my mother would never have been the same. But the fact that she had been arguing with a neighbor about the man’s dog relieving himself on the lawn where her children crawled and played, while her son was drowning—and that when she returned to the yard it had simply been too late—pushed her over the edge.

  Sometimes, in my dreams, I still see myself like the Edvard Munch painting The Scream, my hands pressed against my cheeks, my mouth opened wide but silent, as my brother’s little red bike tips and goes tumbling into the water. I’ve been silent in so many dreams that I’m not sure what I really did. What does it matter, anyway? Unlike my mother, whose hospital records stand as a testament to her pain, I’ve gotten over it. And I keep to myself the fact that I firmly (and uncharitably) believe that my mother’s breakdowns have evolved into a case of proving that despite the accident she is a good mother because, thirty-two years later, she is still grieving.

  Until now, my mother’s returns to South Winds have always struck me as just another spin of the revolving door. But with my dreaded thirty-seventh birthday around the corner, with children of my own and my memory beginning to play tricks on me, I am more shaken than usual.

  But my father has enough worries with my mother, so I take a peek in the bags on the counter, tell him how sorry I am, and give his shoulder a little consolation squeeze.

  “What was it this time?” I ask as I begin to unload the groceries. Panini. Truffle oil. The navel oranges from Haifa.

  My father shrugs. “What was it the last time?”

  I have to think. Cousin Janet’s son turning three? The drowning at that community pool on the East End? There is always some specific spark that shorts my mother’s circuits. “I think last time was seeing that David Bayer obituary,” I say.

  My mother had gone into a total tailspin, though the paper clearly said that that David Bayer was eighty-two and survived by five kids and several grandchildren.

  “Well, these things happen,” my father says, though when I ask him if yet another David Bayer has died—which is kind of creepy and makes me glad, for the first time ever, that my name is Teddi—he merely shrugs.

  I suppose we probably seem cavalier. It’s just that my mother’s suicide attempts are so much a part of our lives. Believe me, we weren’t cavalier the first time. As I remember it, my father and I were having a lovely time in the TV room, where he was explaining to me why the Amazing Mets would never actually win the 1969 World Series. Anyway, for my part, I was feigning an interest in the game, probably hoping to keep my place on Daddy’s lap, and, I suppose, in his heart.

  I was apparently enjoying some modicum of success, since, at the very moment Angelina screamed from the upstairs hallway, my father was unscrewing Oreos and letting me lick out the cream. Maybe that’s where my strong affection for those cookies comes from—that last moment of normalcy in a family that since then, despite all the cosmetic touches Bayer Furniture’s profits can buy, still bears all the scars of that day.

  We had no idea, when Angelina shouted and my father half lifted, half pushed me off his lap as he headed for the stairs, that tragedies have long barbed tails they drag behind them. And that, in the case of my baby brother, the tail would come to wag the dog.

  “Some coffee would be nice,” my father says, reaching into one of the bags and pulling out a stiff white box tied with a red-and-white-striped string.

  I reach mechanically for the Braun coffeepot and all the while my mind is trying to go back to the house I grew up in, and I’m fighting it. I don’t want to follow my father up the marble steps, past Angelina, who is standing on the landing calling the paramedics on the ridiculous old speakeasy phone my mother had had rewired. I used to wonder if my mother bought the refurbished phone with her suicide attempt in mind, so that it would make the perfect picture.

  Except, of course, my mother couldn’t watch Angelina using it because she was lying on the floor of her dressing room with one end of my zayda’s tallis (the very prayer shawl that my brother, David, was supposed to wear at his upcoming bar mitzvah) wrapped around her neck, and the other around the light fixture that was lying on the floor beside the overturned little fawn-colored Louis XIV stool.

  “A tallis?” my father had asked, kneeling beside my mother, who was blinking at him and rubbing the side of her head. It must be that my memory is playing tricks on me, because I remembered that not a hair on my mother’s frosted blond head was out of place, not a fleck of mascara had flaked from her lashes, and not a drop of her lipstick was on the lush beige carpet beneath her. Even then everything in my mother’s closet was beige, from the walls and floor to all the clothing that hung there. In fact, everything in her house was beige, a color I still associate with depression.

  “You tried to hang yourself with a freaking tallis?” I can remember my father asking.

  “My father’s tallis,” my mother had said, giving me a weak smile that I remember clearly. “I wanted it to be something symbolic.”

  “You’re crazy,” my father had said. Well, back then he didn’t know the half of it.

  “Of course I’m crazy,” my mother had answered. “Crazy with grief. I’d be crazy not to be, wouldn’t I? What kind of mother would I be if I could go on with my life after I allowed my son to die?”

  It takes my father nudging me to bring me back to safety, to my peach-and-moss-green kitchen, where the coffeepot is making gurgling noises and smelling good. “You okay, kiddo?” he asks.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I say with a nod, still feeling a little dazed as I look into the box of rainbow cookies and mini éclairs. “The kids’ll sure love these.”

  There is something wrong with that, almost as if we are celebrating my mother’s return to South Winds. “Why should they suffer?” my father asks, reading my mind.

  And I feel the swish of that tragedy’s tail and know in my heart that the pain, the fear, the legacy will go on. My little brother’s death has had as much impact on my family’s lives as his life ever could have. Maybe more.

  “It was an accident, June,” my father had said at the time, leaning over my mother as she lay on the carpet in her dressing room, the sirens wailing down the street. “A terrible, tragic accident.”

  My mother—God, I remember this so clearly!—had looked over my father’s shoulder, staring at me and my brother. “And David and Teddi? You’re supposed to trust me to watch over them now?”

  I slam the cup into the saucer and bite at my lip. Is it fair that every damn time my mother goes into the hospital I have to see it all over again, in my mind’s eye, playing out like some melodrama?

  Only the reels are out of synch. Now we’re sitting shiva, black cloths draped over the mirrors, old people sitting on little wooden boxes, tables laden with trays of gefilte fish and cold cuts from Ben’s Delicatessen, pastries from David’s of Great Neck that it seemed no one was supposed to eat. Then the black cloths removed, boxes gone, and the dining room table set for only four.

  A door slams and the memory evaporates as Dana comes into the kitchen with Kimmie. “Is that Grandpa’s car?” she starts to say, but then stops when she sees him and the groceries on the counter. Gently she kisses him on one of his sagging cheeks. “Oh, Grandpa,” she says softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Such a shaineh maidel,” my father says while he shakes his head sadly. “I look at her, I see you, Teddi.”

  Great, I think. And I look at me and see Mom.

  “So you’ll go see her?” my father asks.

  I want to tell him all I have to do is look in the mirror, but I nod. Of course I will.

  CHAPTER 4

  I am in my kitchen, talking to myself, telling myself to breathe. I hear myself dicta
ting each step of making dinner as though that will make everything all right. I am so deep in the abyss that Rio’s voice scares the heck out of me and I drop the container of bread crumbs onto the floor.

  I stare at the mess.

  “And then you drop the bread crumbs,” I say pleasantly while Rio shouts at me.

  “You just forgot to pick him up?” he demands.

  “You will need a broom and a dustpan,” I say while Dana tells him something or other, Jesse rats on me, and Alyssa tries to climb Rio’s leg. Frankly, I don’t much care.

  “How the hell could you forget? So busy with your little friend next door you forget your own son?”

  Like I need this now? After the day I’ve had? “I didn’t forget my son,” I say, turning my back on all of them and throwing things directly from the stove into the sink. “I forgot the time. I was a couple of minutes late.”

  “Mr. Bonino had to take me home,” Jesse tattles. Where is my staunchest defender when I need him? He was my knight in shining armor when that vet bill for the deer came. “And he had an appointment at the dentist and I made him late. I don’t think I should have to go to baseball anymore.” Ah, he is throwing me to the wolves for his own sake.

  “You’re going. And I hope they have to pull all his teeth,” I shout, shoving a glass into the sink while Dana yells at Alyssa for touching only-God-knows-what. “The man couldn’t wait a few extra minutes?”

  “Whoa!” Rio shouts, thinking that his voice alone is going to restore order. Well, no one even notices. So much for Macho Man.

  “Look, Jesse, I told you I was sorry. You want blood?” I demand, ripping off my oven mitts and offering my wrists dramatically. The poor kid mumbles some sort of magic spell, which instead of seeming endearing, irritates the heck out of me. I want to shake him and yell “live in the real world,” only who am I to tell anyone to do that? Apparently I’ve spent most of my life in la-la land.

  “You gotta stop this, Teddi,” Rio says. “You’re scaring the shit out of everyone for no reason.”

  “Hey,” I warn him. “I have a reason. You think Dan Bonino is the only one with a life? I have a life, too, and today it tripped me up.”

  I throw two measuring cups (for good measure?) into the sink before continuing.

  “Look,” I tell Jesse. “You’re home. You’re safe. I told you I was sorry. What more can I say, sweetie?”

  I thrust my hands back into the oven mitts and open the oven door, releasing a stink bomb of smoke. Two hours ago it was the osso buco I promised Rio. Now it’s drek. I shove it on the counter and fan at it for a minute in the hopes that it will respond to artificial resuscitation. Meanwhile, Alyssa tugs at my jeans and says something about Grandma June’s bubbles.

  Great. Exactly what I want Rio to hear, that this whole mess started with my visit to Grandma June. He blames everything that goes wrong in his house on her, anyway, and now, when it is so not her fault, he’ll be off on a tear about his “mad mother-in-law.”

  “Honey, stop pulling on me. And get away from the stove!” I use my hip to push Alyssa away before shoving the hot dish off the counter and smack into the sudsy water in the sink. When the tears I’ve been fighting all day start, I reach for the faucet and turn the water on full force, my back to my family.

  “Come to Daddy, Cupcake,” Rio calls to Lys, like if he doesn’t rescue her, her bad witch of a mother will pop her into the oven for dinner. “Mommy’s gone off the deep end again and she’s not gonna take you with her.”

  Glaring over my shoulder at him, I deliberately push the canister that says flour from the counter straight into the sink. I do this spitefully, though how this will in any way hurt Rio, I don’t know.

  “Don’t cry, Mom,” Dana says, patting my back while Jesse—aka the traitor—tries to hide behind the wallpaper. I can see that I’m scaring the heck out of all of them, but I don’t seem to be able to stop myself. It’s like there’s a Good Teddi hanging above the kitchen, watching, knowing she should be comforting her children, telling them she’s all right like a mother is supposed to do. But’s there’s also a Bad Teddi blowing the good one off, pushing the half-full flour canister into the sink, and reaching for whatever is next to throw in.

  “Mom?” Jesse asks as Dana begins to grab things off the counter before I can toss them into the sink. “It’s really okay about Mr. Bonino. He’s a jerk, anyway. It’s not like you were ever late before….”

  “So, who wants Mickey D’s?” Rio asks, acting like going to McDonald’s will be a grand adventure. I turn and stare at him, my entire body asking what he can be thinking, and see my three precious children looking at their father as if he’s suggested they shoot me and start over.

  How come they get it and he doesn’t? I wonder as the Bad Teddi calmly throws the pile of mail from the counter, one envelope at a time, into the now overflowing sink.

  “Christ!” Rio says, reaching over my shoulder to turn off the water and pull the rest of the mail out of my hands. “Have you lost your freaking mind? You’re scaring the hell out of the kids. And how are we going to pay these?” he asks, lifting a sauce-and-water-soaked bill off the floor. I want to ask him why it is that he can yell “Christ”—and in front of the kids, yet—and if I take what he calls “the Lord’s name” in vain, he is mortally offended?

  But it doesn’t seem like the right time, exactly.

  I am, I think, staring rather vacantly at him. Maybe it’s the Good Teddi who can see this. Bad Teddi doesn’t give a damn. I know it’s Bad Teddi who is thinking this because I never use words like damn.

  Rio is trying to salvage things around me. “Dana, get your mother a mop. And Jesse, take Lys into the den and put that mermaid DVD on for her, will you?”

  “Again?” Jesse asks, but I look at him sternly, as if someone ought to be listening to Rio and I’ve decided it is going to be the traitor.

  “So, you gonna tell me what the hell happened today?” Rio asks me. He is using one of my favorite towels to stop the waterfall.

  One of us (The Bad Teddi? The good one?) doesn’t really want to tell him. There are too many people in my brain. I can’t fight them all and Rio, too. “Okay,” I say, giving in. “It was something my mother told me on Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday your wacko mother told you something, so today you burned my favorite meal, which I was looking forward to all day?”

  “Don’t blame my poor mother,” I say, and I feel myself straighten up as if I’m ready to do battle. Only I’m not. Boy, am I not. One of the Teddis is egging me on, shouting, Tell him! Tell him! So I do. “Because today I found out that maybe she isn’t so crazy. Maybe she isn’t even a little crazy. About this, of course. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes. Only, thank God I didn’t. Ever, I mean.”

  Rio’s head is sticking forward on his neck like a cartoon character’s. “Well, that clears up everything,” he says sarcastically. “You know you’re getting to be as wacked-out as your mom.”

  “Thanks,” I say as sarcastically as he does. Sauce for the goose, someone in my head sings out. “That’s exactly the kind of support I need.”

  He does the fingers-through-his-hair-frustration thing and I wonder how it was that I actually used to find that gesture incredibly sexy. He isn’t shouting, yet. And he isn’t throwing anything or banging doors or threatening to leave me.

  Now, there’s a sobering thought. When he points to the chair, I sit in it.

  “Listen to me, Teddi,” he says in a come-in-from-the-ledge voice. “You’re really scaring me now. I mean, the forgetting things, the overreacting. You know, there might be something to this ‘like mother, like—’”

  “You won’t think I’m so crazy when I tell you what I found out. It seems that all these years, my father and Angelina…” I hesitate.

  One thing about Rio—you can watch his brain work. I see him figuring out what I’m leading up to and he looks…well, he looks amused as I struggle for a way to put such a delicate matter.

  “Yo
u mean to tell me that you didn’t know that Marty was banging Angelina every time the clock struck loon?”

  No, that isn’t the way I’d put it.

  “You really didn’t know that?” he asks, shaking his head at me in obvious disbelief.

  I get up and pick up a sponge to scrub the counter. How embarrassing that he knows what I never even suspected. “Know it?” I ask, scrubbing hard at the sauce dots that cover the counter.

  Rio pries the sponge from my hand. “It’s in the freaking tile,” he tells me, pointing out the dark orange spots all over the ceramic tiles.

  “I told you I should have gotten the Corian,” I tell him, as if a different counter would fix everything. And then I grab the sponge back and scrub some more, anyway, refusing to look at him as I try to decide why I feel ashamed. What have I done to be ashamed of?

  “This is all about Marty and Angelina?” he asks. “And you really didn’t have a clue?”

  “Of course I didn’t know! The man’s my father! The thought of him sleeping with someone—” I shout. How do you think he got to be a father? By visiting the cabbage patch?

  “Christ, your father can’t order a hot dog without making the waitress blush.”

  “Oh, he’s a harmless flirt.” I wait until the Bad Teddi stops snickering to continue. “At least I thought he was. I mean, the man is too old to…isn’t he? A man can’t do it forever, right?”

  Now it’s Rio who’s snickering. “Okay—never mind Marty. What about Angelina? Didn’t you ever kinda wonder about her? Like, you know, did she ever go out on a date?”

  Why didn’t I ever wonder that? Am I so self-centered that I only cared about Angelina in relation to myself?

  “So then, did you think she was some lesbo?”

  “Angelina a lesbian?” I consider the notion quickly and dismissed it. “No,” I say decisively. “I thought she was Mary Poppins. With dreadlocks. She was my other mother. I didn’t think she had private parts or private needs or a private life. And if I had thought about it, I never would have thought she’d satisfy those needs with my father, of all people! I mean, she’s always just been Angelina—not Devilina! And what about my poor mother?”