Missing Mom: A Novel

by Joyce Carol Oates

  As Mom had naively observed, you’d almost think that Clare didn’t much like her family, wouldn’t you?

  “C’mon, Nikki. You’re on.”

  Clare was the one who was on. Stylish in her nubby black trouser suit that fitted her snugly, almost sensuously you might say, at her generous hips and stomach. Her face was a startling glowing-creamy cosmetic mask that obscured, at least at a respectful distance, the sharp vertical lines between her eyebrows. Her eyebrows flared provocatively and her lipstick was Revlon Fire Engine Red, she’d been wearing since high school. Beside Clare, I was looking like a disco casualty. Not-new but still serviceable black “silk” (i.e., silk-seeming) trousers with flaring cuffs, a three-quarter-sleeved smoke-colored see-through designer shirt designed (of course) to be worn over naked breasts but, in this case, worn over a tight black T-shirt top with no pretensions other than sexy. Nikki’s signature smear of purple lipstick but no makeup otherwise. I’d tamped down my hair so that it lay almost flat on my head, a punk chicken with wetted feathers.

  On my bare luridly white feet, smoke-colored leather-and-Plexiglas platform shoes with a hint of glitter.

  Clare’s swift assessing gaze took me in, wetted-head to shoes, pitilessly. However I looked, I was on.

  “Oh, Clare. I just don’t think…”

  “Then don’t! Don’t think. Like me.”

  After a funeral service, after a cemetery trip on a bright windy chilly spring morning, mourners are naturally hungry. Food is their reward, and they deserve it. Still I was stunned by the quantity of food on Clare’s beautifully decorated dining room table. Mom’s baked things were a small part of it, really. The caterer had set out lavish platters of smoked salmon, cold sliced meats, deviled eggs, stuffed mushrooms; there was creamed chicken to be served over biscuits; there were rice, pasta, vegetable salads. There was even a huge bowl of Waldorf salad, prepared from Gwen’s recipe. And there were desserts. Many.

  Always set out more desserts than you think your guests can eat, Mom used to say. So that they leave a few behind, and can feel good about their diets.

  I’d never seen Clare’s house so crowded. Dining room, living room, glassed-in family room, vestibule. The showy cathedral ceiling seemed appropriate, as in a hotel lobby. “Oh, Nikki! Oh.” There came Alyce Proxmire lurching in my direction to embrace me in an unexpected hug, her rail-thin arms surprisingly strong, her breath hot and anxious in my face, so stricken with grief at losing her oldest friend she’d been suffering from insomnia, migraine, irritable bowel, and her white blood cells had “plummeted” leaving her vulnerable to infections. There came Aunt Tabitha in a black rayon dress with a drooping bosom, watery-eyed, sniffing loudly, suddenly looking old, befuddled: “Poor Gwen! Of all people! Hadn’t I told her and told her! Oh, hadn’t I told her! Not to become so involved, not with people outside the family, oh I told her! You and Clare know! And she wouldn’t listen! Oh, she listened, she pretended to listen, you know Gwen, you know that sly way of hers, that little smile of hers, if a cat could smile it would smile in that way—‘Yes yes I agree! but I intend to do just what I want to do.’ That’s what a cat would say, and that’s what Gwen was thinking! Oh, Jon’s sweet little wife, he married so young, Gwen never grew up, somehow. Oh, what a tragedy! Oh, Nikki, all our lives are in danger! Oh, I wish I hadn’t been so critical of your mother, Gwen did the best she could, oh that dear woman did the very best she could which is more than most people can say for themselves. Oh, and Gwen was so—good.”

  There was the exalted Gilbert Wexley frowning and somber as he piled food onto his plate, speaking in a high-pitched voice of his plan for Gwen’s memorial service: “I know just the place for it. Not that church, the new Arts Council building. I will organize it! I have the staff! We at the Arts Council are so very grateful to Gwen for all she’s done for us, the bake sale, the crafts festival, fund-raising, her committee work, what a dear friend, what a lovely woman, there should be a plaque in Gwen’s honor, I will direct my staff to look into it.”

  There was “Sonny” Danto in a dark suede sport coat, sharp-creased black trousers, a necktie that appeared to be made of black leather, vigorously shaking hands with Rob Chisholm as if they were old friends, offering him condolences in a rush of words: “Mrs. Eaton was the grandest lady, the nicest and most wonderful lady, you are so lucky to have a mother-in-law like Mrs. Eaton not like some, I can tell you, oh man can I tell you,” shaking his head and grinning as if, in fact, he couldn’t have told Rob, or anyway Rob would not have believed him. And there was Sonya Szyszko waiting her turn with my brother-in-law, in swishing black velvet with a plunging V-neckline, crimson-mouthed, wiping at her elaborately made-up eyes and blinking nearsightedly as if grief were a performance, she’d prepared for its public display and was eager to begin. There were Eaton relatives I hadn’t seen since Dad’s funeral, and there were Kovach relatives I’d have sworn I hadn’t seen before in my life. There was Aunt Maude, there was Uncle Fred, there were my cousins Jill, Barbara, Tom. There were middle-aged men speaking wistfully of “Feather” even as they heaped their plates with food. There were my high school girlfriends Sylvie, Janet, Annette, Noreen and there were my high school boyfriends Vic, Marty, Steve, Sonny, and Davy Petko you’d think would not dare to show up, that bastard. And there was my ex-fiancé Dick Gurski who grabbed me and held me so tight, I felt the hot throbbing length of him as if it was high school again: “Nikki, Christ. What a shitty thing. Your mom was tops.” Another of my ex-fiancés Lannie Bishop came to embrace me, his wife closely behind him regarding us with anxious eyes. “Nikki, darling. I couldn’t believe when I heard the news. Gwen wanted us to go through with it, why’d you back out?” I laughed nervously pushing away from Lannie: “We were too young, for heaven’s sake. We were just crazy in love and it would never have lasted.” Lannie squeezed my arm so hard it hurt: “It would have! We’d have had kids, for Christ’s sake. We’d hang in there like everybody else.”

  There came Sylvie LaPorte frantic to hug me, and pull me along the hallway into the guest bathroom where she offered me a swallow, in fact more than one swallow, from the pint bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label she’d produced out of her handbag. I’d heard that Sylvie had a drinking problem since her divorce, in fact she’d been a drinker in high school. Sylvie hugged me hard, planted a wet, hot kiss near my mouth saying she’d freaked when she heard the news on TV, I would never get over losing my mom who was the nicest, kindest, most generous person she’d ever met, not that that was saying so much considering certain members of her family and guys in Mt. Ephraim but Gwen Eaton had been a saint, I would never get over the loss of her: “When I heard, Nikki, I just started screaming. I mean, I started breaking things. This meth-head murderer, he’s got to be given the death sentence. I’ll jam in the needle myself.”

  The look in Sylvie’s tear-brimming eyes, I could believe her.

  After Sylvie, I blundered into the Scourge of the Bugs with a plate of food, chewing deviled egg and staring at me with melting eyes: “Nicole! Please accept my heartfelt condolences for your loss. Your mother was a grand, gracious lady. May I call you? This week?” And there came Sonja Szyszko in chill rustling black taffeta and jasmine perfume, to grip me against her foamy bosom: “Your poor momma! How could such a terrible thing happen! In Mt. Ephraim where everybody is so friendly! Mrs. Aiten was my dear friend, I will never have another friend like Mrs. Aiten again.” Sonja was so shaken, I ended up having to comfort her.

  Overhearing a two-hundred-pound cousin of my mother’s, Lucille Kovach, a woman with a flushed moon face and an appetite for pastries, speaking vehemently to another wide-beamed Kovach relation: “I loved Gwen. We were girls together on Spalding Street, she had a hard life. All this bullshit of the Reverend’s, like Gwen was some kind of angel, she was not.”

  In the front hall, Rob was trying to calm Clare who stood at the door barring the way to an astonished-looking Reverend Bewley and his wife: “Reverend, we don’t want you in this house. You br
ought that murderer into my mother’s life. You are responsible for my mother’s death.” As Bewley opened his mouth to protest, Clare spoke in a shriller voice: “You! Call yourself a Christian! You are Judas.”

  I pushed through a knot of guests in the hall, escaped into the kitchen where the caterer’s assistants were busily working. A young woman asked if she could help me and I said thanks, no. My hands were trembling as I poured wine from an opened bottle into a glass, and swallowed thirstily. Tart white wine, stinging my mouth in a way I liked. (Clare hadn’t wanted to serve alcohol at the funeral luncheon, only just sparkling water, sodas, coffee and decaf. Certain of the Kovach relatives, we knew from past experience, weren’t to be trusted with an open bar.) I had time to admire my sister’s custom-designed “country kitchen” that was twice the size of Mom’s and bore the approximate relationship to my kitchen in Chautauqua Falls that a football field bears to a Ping-Pong table: state-of-the-art appliances, gleaming Mexican tiles and copper pans hanging from hooks, that looked as if they’d never been used. Here and there amid the glossy color-coordinated surfaces were poignant remnants of Mom: a glazed pot with a lid marked COOKIES, a russet-red plaster-of-Paris rooster, terry-cloth dish towels. Beyond the kitchen door was the dining room, and an alarming tide of voices. So loud, so alive. I couldn’t help but wait to hear Gwen Eaton’s voice among them. It terrified me to realize I would not hear that voice again.

  “Ma’am? Would you like—?”

  “I’m family. I’m the sister of Mrs. Chisholm, who hired you.”

  I poured a second glass of wine, left the bottle on the counter and went outside, onto the flagstone patio. Impressive: a built-in barbecue, hefty redwood lawn furniture, Martha Stewart–style waterproof cushions in a bright floral pattern. Unlike our mother, Clare hadn’t time or patience for gardening, even small flower beds. Her lawn was solid, sodded grass without a dandelion in sight and like most of the professionally landscaped lawns in Fox Hunt Acres, its showplace center was a swimming pool.

  More people! More people! If I can’t be happy myself I can make them happy.

  I’d been thinking a lot, about these words. What Mom had said to me in her kitchen, after the Mother’s Day dinner.

  Since seeing Mom in the canoe-coffin, I was having difficulty recalling her as she’d been in life. Kept seeing her in that ridiculous thing, only her head exposed. The putty-face that wasn’t exactly Gwen Eaton’s face, the marcelled silvery hair that wasn’t exactly Gwen Eaton’s hair. Rouge, glossy shell-pink lipstick, ruffled scarf hiding her throat.

  “‘Your mother’s cadaver.’”

  I laughed. My face seemed to crack, I could feel fissures in my cheeks.

  Through the kitchen window, the caterer’s assistants were probably watching me. Maybe some of Clare’s guests were watching me, too. I decided not to care. I swallowed down the last of the wine, left the glass on a table, and walked away.

  I would leave my things upstairs in Clare’s guest room. On the bedside table was my broken wristwatch, the delicate little watch inscribed To Elise, somehow in the night stumbling to the bathroom I’d stepped on it where it had fallen to the floor, don’t ask how. I would leave without saying goodbye to family, friends. I would leave and neglect to call Clare for several times to apologize or even to explain, I would fail to return Clare’s numerous messages on my answering machine. I saw that my car, the sturdy Saab that Wally Szalla had helped me acquire, was hopelessly blocked in the Chisholms’ driveway but this didn’t deter me for I could walk: I could walk into Mt. Ephraim, and call a taxi. Not thinking I could call Wally, of course there is Wally even as I saw, a half-block away on Mockingbird Drive, a car idling at the curb, spewing exhaust like a smoker: a chunky Buick the color of tarnished brass, I’d recognized at once. The owner of that car had been criticized for being a man who hurt others, who was selfish, careless, “evil.” Yet this man had had the sensitivity not to attend my mother’s funeral, and not to show up at my sister’s house.

  Clare would accuse me on the phone of having gotten drunk in her kitchen but that wasn’t so, I was excited and anxious but not at all drunk in my glittery black platform shoes fleeing out the Chisholms’ crowded driveway and into the street. I was breathless, muttering to myself. A gust of wind like a prank dislodged my wetted-down punk-purple hair. The tarnished-brass car had leapt into motion, pulling up beside me now as the smiling driver leaned out his window. In a blur of tears I saw that the side of the Buick was lightly splattered with mud like the finest lace.

  “Darling Nikki! Climb in.”

  “other woman”

  1.

  How quickly your life can change. A day, an hour.

  Damn!—I was thirty-five minutes late for the interview with Wallace “Wally” Szalla. I was breathless, anxious and hopeful. I was prepared to apologize lavishly. But before I could ring the doorbell beside the hand-printed card SZALLA, W. the door flew open and a furious sloe-eyed boy of about sixteen in Snoop Dogg T-shirt, grungy khaki shorts, soiled Nikes (without socks, fashionably unlaced) charged past me. If I hadn’t stepped aside, he would have run me down.

  “Troy! Come back here!”

  In the boy’s wake a middle-aged man, heated in the face and despairing about the eyes, came shambling like a bear on its hind legs. He shot me a startled look in passing, but clearly had no time for me. The quarrel between father and son seemed to have exploded the door open propelling them outside onto the lawn like an antic scene on TV.

  The boy was protesting, “I told you, Dad—I am going to the concert with the guys exactly as planned,” and the man was protesting, “Troy, your mother expects you home. You promised, she’ll be upset—” and the boy cried, “Who promised? You promised? Make your own fucking promises, Dad!” and the man said, hotly, “Don’t you use language like that with me, young man. This is a public place, young man, what have I told you,” and the boy said, “Her upset, what about me upset? Always it’s her, or it’s you, fuck what about me for a change?” and the man said, “Your mother is under the impression you’ll be back with her tonight, she’s sure that you promised her,” and the boy said, disgusted, “I promised her?—fuck I did not. You promised her. The only way to get out of the fucking house is to promise Mom some pathetic fucking thing nobody has any intention of doing—jeez.” Tears glistened in the boy’s stricken eyes. He had the preening public style of an MTV rock star. In his Snoop Dogg T-shirt trampling the heat-wilted lawn as his father followed after him, trying to reason with him. Here was my interview subject, a prominent Chautauqua Falls resident, something of a public figure, losing a quarrel with his teenaged son. His thinning gray-brown hair was disheveled, his white shirt was rumpled and stained with perspiration across his broad back like folded wings.

  I would have slipped away and escaped but my car was parked at the curb, on the far side of the disputing father and son.

  The outburst resembled TV except, unlike TV, it wasn’t scripted. It was a true family quarrel limping and lumbering and careening on like a train wreck in slow motion. It reminded me of quarrels I’d had, not with my parents, no one in my family, but men whom I had misunderstood or who’d misunderstood me, the fury of wounded pride, the need to wound another. When Szalla tried to touch his son’s arm in a restraining gesture, the boy threw off his hand as you’d throw off a cobra: “This sucks, Dad! This totally sucks! All this summer has sucked, Mom acting crazy on account of you, and you living in this dump, but tonight is different, I’m going to Rochester with the guys, I’m not giving up that ticket.” The resemblance between the boy and his father was striking: what was sharply chiseled in the young, brattish, good-looking face was thickened and creased and apologetic in the middle-aged face. Both son and father were of the same height, about five feet ten, but the boy was trim and lean as a weasel and the man was at least thirty pounds overweight, his bulk concentrated in his midriff. Like an aging athlete, he was panting and left behind, outmaneuvered by his opponent who suddenly changed directions a
nd rushed past his father, back into the apartment building. It was an unexpected move, as in a hotly contested basketball game when the star player rushes away with the ball.

  Panting, protesting, Szalla clambered after the boy. “Troy? Troy—”

  It was late afternoon, August 8, 2001. Not an auspicious day in my life, I wouldn’t have thought. My much-anticipated interview with Wallace “Wally” Szalla had already been postponed twice, by his snotty assistant. I was a novice “features” reporter, aged twenty-eight, for the Chautauqua Valley Beacon. I was eager to do well, for I was in need of steadily paying employment. I was unmarried, unattached. (Until fifteen days ago I’d been “involved” with a man in Rochester whom I’d known intermittently for several years but this past year gotten to know too well. The involvement had ended abruptly and would not be renewed.) I was style-conscious, maybe just slightly preening myself, wearing, for this interview a very short tight white cord skirt and a lacy red top with boxy shoulder pads, Italian wedge-heeled sandals, a lavish assortment of rings, bracelets and ear-studs, plum-black lipstick and matching finger- and toenail polish. At the time I was blond, dark-streaked blond looking as if someone with a wicked sense of humor had sprayed acid on my hair and teased and air-blown it into a frizzy halo. At the Beacon, where everyone was white, middle-aged, and paunchy, Nikki Eaton was known as the “new girl.” I’d overheard fellow staffers refer to me without irony as the paper’s “voice of the new generation.” (Which generation? Had these folks observed our local mall-cruising teenagers lately?) You’d expect that most of the Beacon staff would cordially dislike me but actually they seemed fond of me, as a kind of exotic mascot. Probably it was an open secret, how modest my salary was.