Concrete Angel

by Patricia Abbott

  Mother let pass the irony of a woman who did nothing telling her this, saying, “Oh, she can afford it. And we were close in college.” She gave her sister-in-law the evil eye, adding, “And there’s the difference between us, Linda. I have friends who want to cheer me up, not give me a headache.”

  After the delivery, an enervating heat wave moved into southeastern Pennsylvania, and the two women spent much of the day on the porch, staring at each other from pitched outposts: Linda on the aqua glider, Eve in a cushioned wicker chair. They took turns filling their glasses with lemonade and iced tea, both of which Mrs. Murphy kept ready in the fridge. Eve was engrossed in a current work of Harold Robbins. Linda listened to Art Linkletter’s House Party and similar fare, the sound turned low after frequent requests from Eve.

  “You do know that show is also on TV now,” she told Linda repeatedly.

  There was only one air-conditioning unit in the house—and that was in the bedroom. “Your brother’s a tightwad,” Mother told Linda. “Lots of people have air-conditioning throughout their entire house now. My goodness, it’s 1962. They don’t have to make do with a lousy, dripping, belching machine that makes the bedroom dark and dank. Last night I could hardly sleep over its grinding motor. He’s got air-conditioning at the office.”

  “Clients need to be comfortable to conduct business. And there’s only the one window in Hank’s office,” Linda said. “No cross-ventilation. Daddy insisted on air-conditioning when they built the new offices. A delivery man had a stroke in there last year.”

  “You’ve certainly given it some thought.”

  “Father sends me into the office now and then, with papers to sign.”

  “Nice they provide their hourly workers with more comfort than their wives and sisters.”

  “This house isn’t one of those Levittown ranches or bi-levels or a one-story office building. The heat comes from radiators. You’d have to tear the house apart, Eve.” Linda caught her breath. “Anyway sitting on the porch is nice. There’s a certain smell…”

  “If you’re eighty-five years old maybe,” Mother said, looking around for further proof. “I feel like I’m living in the nineteenth century. Sitting on porches, fanning myself, drinking iced tea all day long. I took three showers yesterday. My skin’s going to peel off.” She waved her hand fan vigorously, killing a passing bee midair. “I’m going to go stark-raving mad if I don’t get out of here.” She must’ve realized the meaning of her last words and amended it. “Maybe I need a vacation.”

  “Hank’s too busy for vacations,” Linda said authoritatively, not sensing the subject was winding down. “Trying to line up the Princeton job, and then, maybe Rutgers. It’ll bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next decade.” She drained her latest glass of iced tea. “Maybe in the fall, you can go to the shore for the weekend. Hank might make a reservation at the huge hotel on the boardwalk in Ocean City. Flanders, isn’t it?” She blinked twice. “Anyway, wasn’t The Terraces like a vacation?”

  “Oh, sure. A vacation spot where they jolt you to life when things get a tad dull.”

  “Hank said they never did that—jolted you.”

  Mother looked at her sister-in-law carefully. “You certainly monitor our lives closely, Linda. Maybe it’s you who needs a companion.”

  “I’ve been here several months,” Linda said. “You can’t help but notice things.”

  “Well, keep those “things you notice” to yourself,” Eve told her. “And I’ll do the same.”

  “Why don’t you pay your parents a visit?” Daddy said, when Mother mentioned her need for a vacation.

  “They don’t even have a window unit.”

  It was seven o’clock and the temperature was still in the mid-nineties. The thought of her parent’s tiny row house, with the pathetic box fan propped on the coffee table with a bowl of melting ice cubes in front of it, was appalling. Her father’d be watching the Phillies game or listening to it on the radio, the only program he turned on. Her mother would be darning, inches out of his sight line.

  “Take a taxi into town tomorrow and take in a movie,” her husband suggested. “You’ll get out of the heat for a couple hours. Linda can go along too.”

  The movie showing was A Touch of Mink with Doris Day and Cary Grant. Eve came out of the dark theater into the enervating heat steaming. A Touch of Mink was the story of her life. It was the tale of man who nearly turns a woman into a harlot because she wants some nice things in her life.

  “I wonder if Doris Day is as pleasant as she seems in the movies,” Linda said. “I prefer to see Rock Hudson in the lead though—like in Pillow Talk. It’s easy to imagine them making a life together. Cary Grant always acts kind of fruity. Do you think he’s a homosexual?”

  Mother glanced at Linda in surprise. She wouldn’t have guessed her to know about such things.

  Then Mother got pregnant.

  She left the diaphragm she’d secretly worn for years in the drawer one night and a few weeks later she was throwing up.

  “Aren’t you glad we have Linda here to help you now?” Hank asked once she’d been to the doctor.

  “I’ve already packed her bags,” Eve told him, eating one of the endless apples her new condition dictated. Small, tart apples—the kind nobody else but the horses on the Moran farm liked. “I can’t be made upset by endless quarrels with Linda with the baby coming. It wouldn’t be good for me to be angry all the time.” Hank finally nodded. “When can we start looking for a house in the city? I’ve been looking at the ads for houses in the Society Hill area.”

  “Moving now wouldn’t be a good idea, Honey. I’m sure your doctor agrees. Can’t we wait until the baby comes and we’re back on our feet?”

  “Back on our feet! I’m not falling for that line again. You said I could choose where to live once I was pregnant. We might as well get ourselves into place beforehand. Things will only get more confusing with a baby to care for.”

  “Bucks County’s a lovely area. People can’t wait to get away from the dirty, crime-infested city and live out here. Can you see its beauty?”

  He was rubbing her shoulders, but she squirmed away. Acquiescence to sexual invitations came at a price with my mother.

  “I can’t see anything but animals. Dowdy clothes, diners instead of restaurants, a drive-in-movie with heaters for the cold weather, the church choir instead of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Kiwanis square dances instead of a night club. The whole town smells like manure when it doesn’t smell of skunk. Do you want your son to go to school with farmers?”

  When Hank started to suggest there was nothing wrong with the local schools, she reminded him he hadn’t been a pupil in a rural school.

  “Philly was different in the late forties and early fifties.” He walked over and dug around in his desk, coming over with a pamphlet from The Templeton School, which he handed to her. “I play golf with a fellow who sends his kids here. You know, Pete Weideman?” She shrugged. “Or, if you like, we can move nearer the city when our child reaches school age. Meanwhile he can roam the countryside like a boy should: fish, ice-skate on a pond, run through the woods.”

  She always hated it when he was so well-prepared for her arguments.

  “How about this?” she said to her husband. “Let’s look for a spot between Doylestown and the city. You won’t have such a long commute, and I can be nearer cultural institutions, fine schools, fine restaurants…decent shopping.”

  “And the last shall be first.”

  “What?” She paused. “See there’s a good example of your fine education. I bet you learned that line in school. Shakespeare, the Bible?”

  “Never mind.” He sighed. “Sure, find a suburb you like. I can live with it.” He paused. “Between here and the city though. I don’t want to spend all day on the road with a new baby to bounce on my knee.” He smiled. “Or his mother.”

  Shelterville was ten minutes outside the city limits and only forty-five minutes from Daddy’s office. A
leafy suburb with good schools, it boasted several parks, good city services and a nice shopping area. Unlike Doylestown, chic stores abounded— whereas ones carrying canning supplies, farming equipment, yarn, and sturdy overalls were scarce. Trains traveled from Shelterville to downtown, Philadelphia, New York, and other parts of Pennsylvania on a regular basis.

  My parents needed a bigger house with a baby on the way and found a nineteenth century colonial with a stone façade. Pale blue shutters framed the windows and the door was a royal blue with a fetching stencil of an oak tree. Although it was nearly as old as the house in Doylestown, it’d been modernized in the mid-fifties. It was equipped with central air when such things were uncommon.

  With a baby coming, there was a lot of shopping to do.

  “Maybe you should wait until after the baby showers,” Daddy suggested, looking at the boxes piling up in the nursery and elsewhere. “Mother’s invited everyone in town.”

  Mother winced. “I can imagine the sort of gifts your mother’s friends will buy.” The only smart shop in Doylestown—the one where she’d bought the gloves and handbag—didn’t carry children’s things.

  “My only hope was the Doylestown matrons would send items I could easily return, Christine,” she told me later. “Or order stylish presents from New York or downtown Philadelphia stores.”

  My mother was able to satisfy her immediate need with sterling silver baby cups, plush stuffed toys, darling dresses with smocking and lace trim. She knew it was a girl despite her words to Daddy.

  Daddy probably didn’t mind that the nursery was well outfitted. He clung to the hope motherhood would change his wife, satisfying the restive thing inside her, the part of her needing to be fed by possessions. Though he must have shaken his head when the bills came in, he didn’t say a word.

  My birth was an easy one, but Daddy dutifully paced the floor in a waiting room, the last generation of men to be excluded from the delivery room. If he was disappointed in my sex, he never said so, and in three days, Mother and daughter went home. Mother recovered under the care of a nurse—a gift from her in-laws. I had my own nurse for six weeks longer.

  Instead of a post-partum depression, Mother slipped into a new phase, one no one had seen before. She became a Supermom, keeping the house spotlessly clean with only the occasional help, entertaining Daddy’s associates at home and at the club, pushing the pram to the Curtis Hall park, learning to heat prepared foods. She joined theater groups, bridge groups, golf groups, and a church. Everything was hunky-dory.

  “A nice time, it was,” Aunt Linda said later. “We were certain your mother’s troubles were behind her. Convinced she’d only needed to have a baby to keep her mind off of buying things. Or taking things, Christine. Another theory discussed was that her hormones straightened themselves out after your birth. ‘Course what did we know?’” Aunt Linda paused to catch her breath. “Oh, I’m not saying you didn’t have more dresses than you would have occasion to wear. Or that Eve didn’t shop more often than she should, but compared to what came before… and later…” Aunt Linda shook her head

  If the Jesuits were right, those four Supermom years anchored my fealty solely with my mother. Her presence was like that of the sun, she blocked everything else from my view. She focused on making each day special. I’d wake from a nap to find my stuffed animals seated at the dining room table, ready for a tea party. She let me order any item that caught my fancy on a restaurant menu: the most improbable and expensive dishes—like oysters or vichyssoise were mine.

  “She encouraged you to try new things,” Aunt Linda said, “even if she ended up eating it herself. Even if the entree was left untouched on the plate.” She stared out the window as if summoning back those days. “She was gay, always gay, but we shouldn’t have trusted the manic quality. We should’ve seen the desperation lying beneath.” Aunt Linda blushed. “Anyway, that’s what they said at the hospital when she fell apart.”

  Mother and I dressed in outlandish costumes and paraded down the streets. Bedtime came whenever I liked. In fact, she encouraged me to stay up late, to sleep with her, to take a bubble bath whenever I felt like it, to try on her clothes, her makeup. She did my nails in the most improbable colors—before Goth girls inured us to such things. We bought a dozen pink-iced donuts once and ate them without pause.

  One December, when I told her I missed splashing in my plastic swimming pool, she dragged it out of the garage, blew it up, set it on the kitchen floor, and filled it with water doused with bubble bath.

  We watched old movies, westerns, and Johnny Carson, despite the hour it came on. We indulged in themed shopping days, filled the house with balloons, flowers, bubbles, painted a mural of jungle animals on the dining room wall, covering it with white paint before Daddy saw it. We hung crepe paper from the chandelier, pretending it was a maypole.

  I adored her. No one had such a mother. I was her confidante long before I knew the word. “The bad years are behind me, Christine,” she said repeatedly.

  I smiled hopefully when she said this, but not having the slightest idea of what she meant.

  Where was my father? Working constantly or at least gone from the house. He probably had a mistress. Perhaps a second or third. A manic Eve was not much better than the other ones he’d known. He spent a lot of time with his parents in Bucks County, something Mother never wanted to do. When he was home, he was often poring over bills, watching sports on TV, getting ready to leave. He was glad to have a child, but didn’t find me very interesting. Perhaps later we’d spend more time together, I heard him say. When we could play tennis or golf or ride horses. Perhaps if I ever had something interesting to say, we’d grow close. He’d listen to me.

  If Mother’s behavior during these years sounds like a manic phase of mental illness, well, that’s what it was. There were little peaks and valleys along the way, a day here and there when she didn’t get out of bed; made a quick visit to the local GP for a B12 shot or some Valium; spent a weekend at home with her parents from time to time, but on the whole, it was a good period.

  When I was nearly five, she crashed. Couldn’t get out of her bed, wash, dress, care for me. I went to sleep with the sound of Daddy’s feet pacing the hallway. I’d wake to hear him begging her to get up, pleading with her to try and pull herself together.

  “I can’t pull you out of this hole alone,” he said, his eyes glittering as I huddled with her under the blanket. “Dig yourself in far enough and you’ll have to go away again.”

  Go away again. I didn’t know what he meant. They’d all managed to keep her period at The Terraces from me. If she went away, would I go too? How could I possibly get along without her?

  She couldn’t respond, continued to stare out the window, clutching one of her shiny things, her eyes black holes. I was sure it was my fault. Only yesterday, we’d gone to the circus, the zoo, the ballet. What had I done? Had I twined myself around her too tightly? But still I clung tight. Or did she cling to me?

  Aunt Linda or one of my grandmothers showed up most mornings. They stood outside her bedroom door wringing their hands, softly asking if she’d like some tea, soup, a glass of ginger ale. How about a new book from the library? Maybe the minister should come by? Maybe her GP? The Morans didn’t like Mother much, but they hated to see her like this, hated to think Daddy might be pushed to his limits again. That he might have to spend a fortune to whip her into shape. Grandmother Hobart was still less inclined to interfere, perhaps intuiting the blame for this creature was on her head—perhaps she set Eve on this course.

  Mother refused to see anyone or ask for anything. There was only me, swaddling with her under the covers. Trying to crawl, or perhaps, claw my way inside her again. I had no faith I could exist on my own. Was I was anything at all without her?

  The Terraces had closed its doors during Mother’s period of sanity, the new drug regimen its undoing. It was now a golf club where many of the same people cavorted. Mental institutions had dramatically changed with
the influx of new drugs. Daddy chose a different sort of hospital this time, one which sanctioned both drugs and administering judicious shock therapy to patients no drugs or therapy could reach.

  Mother was one of those patients. They weren’t called residents or guests at this facility. There wasn’t much talking, no large green lawns, no tennis courts or swimming pool. No one strolled the grounds; patients were hardly outside at all. The idea was to get the patient on her feet as quickly as possible, even if she had to be jolted back to a vertical position. No one would attempt to get inside Mother’s head this time; her mind was an unfathomable place—a place only drugs or electricity could reach.

  And the patients looked dazed, according to Daddy.

  “Either they’re recovering from the shocks or the drugs,” Daddy told Aunt Linda wearily. “There’s a kind of murmuring when you walk the hall, a low hum of despair.”

  “You tried the other route,” the doctor told Daddy in defense of their techniques. “Now let’s assume her brain, rather than her mind, needs stimulation.”

  Before Mother was shown to her Spartan room, she had her first dose of electric shock. They shocked her three times a week over the eight weeks she was there. She forgot Daddy’s name for days at a time. Mine too. Once or twice, Aunt Linda handed me the phone and I’d listen to Mother babble and try not to cry.

  She’d forgotten her own name by the third or fourth week. I listened to Daddy tell Grandmother Moran this in the hallway.

  “Shocked senseless—that’s what it means,” she told him. “I never thought of it till now.”

  “What else can I do?” Daddy asked.

  “You don’t have to persuade me.” Taking pity on her son, she added, “You’ve tried everything else.”