by Anne Lamott
Harry was having problems in school. His grades were only part of it. His homework came home wadded up, as if he had given up before he’d even started. His homework said, I hate this! He said out loud, “I hate this!” too, and he fought with Mattie. Forty minutes of homework took him two hours. Mattie called the teacher and left protest messages on the machine: “When are these children supposed to have their childhoods? My kid only weighs fifty pounds,” she said in despair. Sometimes Mattie had to iron his papers before they could be handed in. It seemed to hurt him physically to write, but there was no money for a tutor.
Nicky started coming over twice a week to help with homework. He sat with Harry in the kitchen and worked on math and spelling, and she listened from the living room to Harry’s endless excuses. “The teacher is sexist, she hates all the boys.” He preyed on his parents’ ambivalence toward so much homework. Still, they made him do it, and Mattie was amazed that Nicky kept at it. He stayed till their bedtime to snuggle with his children and read them to sleep, and one night, after a particularly rough bout with Harry, he straggled into the living room and collapsed in a chair across from Mattie.
“What do we do?” he asked her, massaging his neck.
Mattie shook her head. “I don’t know. Thanks for being in it with me.” Nicky shrugged. “He’s starting to learn the material. I want to save him, and I want to smack him. You want a drink?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure. Let me do the honors.”
He sat down across from Mattie. She swirled her scotch like it was brandy, or dice. When she finally looked up, he was rubbing his eyes. He leaned his forehead against his hand, and appeared to fall asleep. After a while, he lifted the bottom of his faded black T-shirt and wiped his glasses clean. She caught a glimpse of his stomach, soft and brown. He set his glasses on the coffee table and looked at her. She looked back. “He’s such a sweet boy,” he said. His gaze was heavy-lidded and sustained. Mattie could have looked into her lap and shielded herself, but she saw something like a rueful smirk forming on his lips, and felt it on her own.
• • •
Getting back into bed with Nicky again after all that time both relieved the anxieties that it was not related to, and created new ones. She was momentarily released from her worries about Isa, and about whether or not Harry would pass second grade. He did, thanks largely to Nicky’s help. On the last day of school, Harry tore through the front door shouting for Mattie, holding his report card up like the Olympic flame.
• • •
Isa had improved physically by the beginning of summer. Her face grew lightly tanned and rosy from her daily walks beside the salt marsh with Lewis, and she was steadier on her feet. She ate a healthy diet, watched the nightly news, went swimming with Mattie and the children at the community pool; but she called too often now, and then did not remember having called even an hour before. She began referring to Katherine as Kathleen or Caroline. It occurred to Mattie that this might be hostility rather than forgetfulness.
Sometimes she was fine, almost her old self. One hot afternoon, she and Mattie drove out to the woods near Samuel P. Taylor Park, and went for a short walk in the sun, beneath hills that looked like animals, big old beasts. The light was crisp and dry, casting hard shadows because there was no moisture in the air, and Isa was clear as a bell. They walked more slowly than they would have a year before, but steadily, as if they had chosen to slow down so they might enjoy the time. They talked about the old times and old movies as they walked. When they found a redwood grove, they stepped into its shade. Mattie got the canteen of water out of her knapsack, and Isa, tipping it back to take a swig, looked positively Austrian with rude good health. It was dark and moist under the redwoods, it was a cathedral.
Two days later when Mattie stopped by Isa’s with groceries, she found her mother on all fours in her bedroom, trying to pick up the shadows of leaves from her rug.
The roses in Mattie’s garden were in full bloom, the purple hibiscus was thriving, but many of the flowers were dead. The bulbs were long gone, and all the plants that had shot out of the earth like rockets in spring had spluttered, were dead and played out. The light at dusk was discreet.
• • •
Harry enjoyed Isa’s company, their long talks about science programs they watched together on TV, her interest in his friends, his opinions. And Isa adored him, reviving in his presence. It was clear that she preferred his company to Ella’s. She cuddled with Ella, and drew, and played fairies with her on the couch, but Harry was full of questions and theories and comments, while Ella remained so quiet. Besides, Isa had always preferred the company of men, especially handsome men, and Harry was growing quite handsome. His permanent teeth were in, the same huge, slightly buck ones—so big his mouth could hardly contain them—that Mattie and Al had inherited from Alfred. He too would need braces one day.
Harry’s love for Isa touched Mattie deeply. A new creation had emerged from the woman Isa had been when Mattie was little, the damaged, betrayed woman who did such good works in the world: manic and wronged, trying not to sulk, because if she did, Alfred might leave. Mattie could still sense the coiled wire inside Isa, the terror and rage that tried to push their way out of her chest. Mattie had spent her childhood trying to help Isa feel good about the coils—They’re so pretty! So shiny! But Harry had a knack for getting her to do things she loved, that benefited him at the same time: bake cookies, sew clothing for the puppets he made with Popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners, tell stories about how naughty Al had been when he was a little boy.
Isa doted on Harry, and to a lesser degree, on Ella, and in the early fall, the doting turned into a fierce dotage.
Dr. Brodkey could find nothing wrong. “She’s just getting old,” she told Mattie.
“But so quickly,” Mattie protested.
“Believe me, there’s still a lot of life in the old girl.”
However, when Isa got sick with a virulent stomach flu and had to spend a week in the medical center at The Sequoias, she did not rebound. Lewis spent all day every day in the chair beside her bed, reading the newspaper to her, watching whatever she liked on TV, napping in his seat when she napped. Mattie arranged nursing care for Isa when she was released to her apartment, using Isa’s meager savings. It was that, or have her come stay with them, which Mattie nearly decided to do. Al talked her out of it. Isa had lost ten pounds and several inches in height over just six months. She had been as tall as Mattie; now Mattie towered over her.
Harry made drawings and clay figurines for Isa, and visited when Mattie could bring him over. One afternoon they found Isa hooked up to an IV of saline and vitamins. She looked as if she were dying, but a light went on when she saw her grandson.
That night at dinner, when he would not eat, Mattie asked Harry if he was worried about Isa, because she looked so sick and old.
He nodded. “At first I thought it was a sick other woman,” he said.
“How did that make you feel?”
“Well, I felt great after I could see that it was her.”
“How come you felt so great?”
“Because I got to be with Isa.”
• • •
One day while fidgeting with the paint-can key and worrying about Isa’s condition, Al had an inspiration. He and Mattie had tried, unsuccessfully, to look up Abby’s and Yvonne’s numbers in the West Marin phone book, but now Al wondered whether the Cove, where Neil had lived, was just far enough north past Marshall to be included in the Petaluma listings. And indeed, when he looked in the phone book, he found Abby listed.
When they called, the phone just rang and rang. Mattie began phoning obsessively, at various hours, early in the morning, late at night, but no one answered. She and Al considered driving to the Cove for the day, to look around, ask questions. Everybody had known Neil. Someone would know something that would lead to something else. He had been famous in these parts for his parties, his looks, the poets and painters he counted as friends: Allen Gin
sberg, Wendell Berry, W. S. Merwin.
But Mattie and Al had a hard time finding a day when they were both free. The children grew like weeds, Isa was holding her own, the days passed in a flash. When Mattie went to write checks she was shocked that it was October. It should have been March 23.
One night Mattie came across a photograph of Abby she’d never seen, in an album of Isa’s that was jammed into a section of cookbooks on her shelf. She and Al and Katherine and the children had brought Isa a dinner of roasted chicken. Lewis, whose stomach was acting up, stopped by briefly to say hello, and to ask the children over after dinner. Al and Katherine prepared plates for everyone in the kitchen, while Isa and Mattie looked through the photo album. Mattie found it impossible to imagine her mother as the young beauty in the photographs, long and leggy, her handsome husband’s arm around her shoulders in so many photos, both inevitably smoking, her children on her knees, Isa in the latest fashions, bright Asian silk blouses with butterfly clasps, Guatemalan blouses over dungarees, crisp floral blouses with capri pants. In one photo, Isa and Alfred sat on the beach in Inverness near tar-daubed pilings. An egret stood in the surf almost out of the frame, a bottle of wine rested in a hole in the sand, surrounded by pebbles and keyhole limpets as if by ice in a silver bucket. And there, a little ways away in the sand, building a sand castle with Mattie and Al, was Abby Grann.
All three of the children were topless, surrounded in the sand by constellations of shells, Abby a girl by Fra Angelico, porcelain skin and delicate features except for long wide lips, her hair streaming loose down her back, crowned by sunlight. Mattie glanced sideways at Isa, who looked stricken, and Mattie felt a rush. Maybe the answers to all her questions could be gotten the easy way, right here.
“Look at Abby,” Mattie said.
“I don’t want a picture of Abby in with my things!” Isa cried.
“But why not? I thought you liked Neil.”
“I loathed him. All the Granns. Especially that awful Abby. Jesus.”
“God, Mom. She was just a little girl.”
“You don’t know anything.” Isa turned her head away.
“Tell me, then,” Mattie said softly. The air was charged with their held breath, and Mattie felt meanness flicker inside her. It shocked her, this cold sense of pleasure in making Isa squirm. She reached for Isa’s hand—Mommy, Mommy!—but by then it was too late. Isa shook her off. She peeled back the sheet of plastic that clung to the photographs, grabbed the picture of Abby, and tore it in half. Mattie protested, and Isa tore it again.
“It’s my picture,” Isa cried. “Mine! And I don’t want it anymore.” She got up and stalked to the kitchen, stopping to throw the pieces of the picture into a metal can painted with cheerful gold pears.
• • •
Mattie sat stiffly on the couch, holding something invisible in her lap, a potted plant of shame. Why couldn’t you even ask your mother questions without feeling like one of the Weathermen? These photos were of people Mattie had grown up with. She and Al had smoked their first cigarettes with Abby. Abby had brought Mattie Kotex when Mattie started her first period, when she’d been trapped out at Neil’s for the weekend with only their fathers. Abby had given Mattie clean underpants to put on after a shower, had thrown out the bloody pair in a paper bag.
Mattie went to the kitchen. Isa turned away. Mattie felt deeply contrite. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” she wailed. Isa looked past her, and Al shot Mattie sympathetic looks.
After ten icy minutes and a glass of wine, Isa began to soften. “Would you please not foist pictures of my enemies at me?” she said to Mattie. “Neil was a playboy,” Isa said, “everyone knew it. And Abby was a slut and everyone knew that too.” Mattie hung her head to show her surrender and contrition. Harry and Ella lifted their faces to Isa’s dark light, grimacing with the hope that she would forgive their mother. They were the children of the bad person. Isa inhaled deeply, and smiled on the exhale. She held her head high and looked back and forth between the young children as if trying to decide between two desserts. Finally she leaned sideways so that Mattie could kiss her on the cheek. She patted her daughter like the queen’s naughty dog. A great passing of plates commenced, a bucket brigade of salad, chicken, and rice. The fire had been extinguished. When the children were excused from the table, they ran down the hall to find Lewis.
• • •
Harry was drawing at Lewis’s table when Mattie went to retrieve the children. Ella was asleep on the couch, covered with a faded afghan. Lewis’s old dog, Precious, snored beside her. His studio was clean, except for an easy chair of beige velour with stained armrests and a cushion that seemed to have had a stroke.
Mattie knew life had been strained for Lewis’s family. One of his sons had done time in Leavenworth, and no one knew where one of his daughters had ended up. A niece was raising his grandchildren; his wife had died at fifty. Isa was supposed to have been some kind of solution: late love. But what a mess. Maybe this was why he kept his temple so clean. The kitchen area was filled with cleaning utensils, brooms, dustpan, mop. Even Precious looked like a duster of some sort. Clean clothes hung on hangers on the walls. There were photographs in cheap-looking frames on every available surface—his wife and parents, his wedding, him in his welder’s gear from his days at Marin Ship during the war, his sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, and babies everywhere, dark little faces shining in bassinets and studio holiday props from Sears.
Mattie kissed Lewis and crossed to the table to admire the children’s artwork. Ella had drawn cats in dresses and tiaras, Harry was just finishing a battle scene, with knights and swords and bleeding soldiers and dragons with pointy teeth. Mattie looked around at all the lamps, all of them on, fighting against the darkness of Lewis’s failing sight. There were ornamental plates on the walls, painted with the faces of Coretta Scott King and JFK; grandchildren’s handprints in clay.
“How does my mom seem to you, Lewis?” Mattie asked.
“Not so good.” He looked toward his window. “She’s getting so old, so quickly.”
Mattie sat beside him. She searched his aged face, dark and sprayed with those tiny moles, the face of an old baby. “Her mind is going,” he said. “It’s muddied, and she’s afraid. She’s standing on a ledge that has gotten too small for her. It’s breaking my heart. She walks around trying to remember what she’s walking around looking for.”
“We all do it, Lewis. I do it all the time.”
“Well, oh my gosh, me too. But when Isa does it, she’s lost.” His eyes had filled with tears, and he dabbed at his nose. “She gets lost and then truly worried, like she’s hearing a siren in the night.” Mattie felt strangely relieved that someone besides her and Al felt so sad about Isa. Lewis made her less afraid, less hard and dry, with his tears and watered words.
• • •
“Mom?” She was on the phone to Isa the next day. “It’s me.”
“Hi, Me. How are you?”
“Good. Dr. Brodkey just called. She said your phone has been busy, so she left a message with me to let you know you have an appointment next Tuesday. At nine-thirty. I’ll pick you up at nine.” This was not quite true. Mattie had approached Dr. Brodkey: Please look at my mother. Help us figure out what to do.
There was a long silence. Mattie could hear Isa’s grandfather clock chime.
“Then do I get to drive again?” Isa demanded. “Answer me, Mattie. You know, you’re not in charge of me.”
• • •
Dr. Brodkey gave Isa a thorough exam, and another mini-mental, which she aced again. The doctor rather apologetically pronounced her healthy as a horse.
“Then can I drive again?” Isa asked.
“Your children are worried, because you may be having little strokes.”
“The children are not in charge of me,” Isa cried.
“Would you agree not to drive until our next appointment?”
Isa sulked coquettishly, arms crossed, but she nodded.
• • •
Mattie felt that time was playing with her; whole weeks passed like stones skipping over water. The vigor and weirdness of Halloween gave birth to November, stately and ponderous, the dramatic darkening in the days. She rested, and tried to dig a deep hole for herself, pull in her soul’s cloak around her. The light of December was pinched, and it hung down, glowering and tight, and then rushed toward the winter solstice. The surface tension broke. January had a wonderful sloppiness, trees in bloom, daffodils and tulips, lush intensity. I’ll tease you with the light, said the days: Chicken alert!
An early spring arrived, with skies of faded-workshirt blue. Ella would be five, amazingly. She would start kindergarten in the fall. Harry would be nine. Some days it was so beautiful outside: nature had lured the ants and the birds and the bears, blinking their eyes in the sunlight. But then the barbed wind returned, and everyone froze and huddled and crawled into bed.
Thoughts of Daniel were like a salt lick where Mattie comforted herself. He always called when she most needed a friend, called to ask her if she wanted work as a carpenter’s apprentice when he had some to offer. He called to point out stories in the paper, he called with words of wisdom.
“Tell me the secret of life,” she asked him one day over the phone.
He thought for a moment. “Take Ella to the park.”
“And then I’ll be all well?”
“Yep.”
Daniel invited her to go to the movies with him and Pauline that night.
You should ditch her, Mattie wanted to say, her sad-sack, bad-mood, big-butt self. And just you and me go to the movies, to cuddle.
“That sounds great,” she said. She cradled her head in her hands after she hung up the phone, and prayed. Please help me stop coveting Daniel. Please help me love Pauline. Can’t you send me someone of my own? And then she heard the sound of soft footsteps padding toward the kitchen. Ella stepped in, bleary from sleep, her hair in a feathery white-blond knot on top of her head, so fair and moonlit that she might start speaking in Norwegian.