There was a time when I would have rushed for a broom and dustpan. I would have been immaculate. Now, I’m lucky to notice anything amiss. Some might say I’ve become relaxed, focused instead on things more worthy of my mature status. I know otherwise. I’m, instead, simply incapable of anything more than the most rudimentary tasks. Sweeping fallen crumbs into a dustpan requires a coordinated effort of body and arms I find no longer possible.
I finish the dishes as best I can and move to the living room. There are books and magazines to straighten, although I rarely hold them, much less read them, anymore. It’s not that reading has become a trial of wills between words on a page and a mind that is as unruly as that spider web now hanging in the corner of my bathtub. No. I can still read just fine. Rather, I just don’t seem to have the interest. I keep reading materials on display for appearances. A woman who reads is, after all, a woman worth engaging in topical conversation.
I want to at least seem topical.
I’m nearly done when the doorbell rings. It is Bryan. He holds a pizza box and a six-pack of beer in his hands, a wide grin blazing on his face. “Hey, Mom!” he says, bounding into the living room. “Whatever you’re doing has just been cancelled in favor of the most fabulous artichoke and black olive pizza ever made. And beer… I brought beer too.”
I clap my hands. “Oh goody,” I say. “Pizza and beer with my boy. Life is good to me today. First I meet Mrs. Bird and now here you are!”
Bryan’s face scrambles into brief puzzlement, before widening back into a grin. “Here, let’s get some plates. We can eat in front of the television because if pizza and beer isn’t good enough news, there’s a game starting in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll get the plates,” I offer. “You go wash up and I’ll meet you back here.”
Bryan leaves the pizza and beer on the living room table and heads for the bathroom, while I pull plates and glasses from shelves and carry them into the living room. I’m nearly beside myself with my joyful day.
I’m struggling to figure out how to unfold the TV trays when Bryan comes into the living room. He fills his plate with pizza and pours two beers with a practiced hand.
“Here, let me help you,” he says. In no time, he has the two trays flipped to their correct positions and snapped into place. “Did you know you had a black widow spider in your bathtub? Not to worry, though. I took care of it.”
“What do you mean you took care of it?”
“I killed it, of course. I whacked it with my shoe and washed it down the drain.”
“You what?” I ask, my eyes widening.
“I killed it.” Bryan shrugs his shoulders as if what he has just done is part of one’s every day activities.
“You killed Mrs. Bird?” My voice trembles. “You just killed my only friend in the world.”
“Mother, you can’t be serious. It could have hurt you.”
YOUR VOICE. Your voice becomes a siren. It is a guttural utterance that starts low and then continues up the tonal register until you are nothing but a wide open shrieking mouth, screaming one word over and over. Murderer, you yell. Murderer! You sweep the two full glasses of beer from your table so that they crash to the floor and form great wet puddles on your carpet that will forevermore smell of beer and malevolence. Then you snatch up triangles of pizza and throw them at your wide-eyed son. You hit him squarely with globs of cheese and the force of words. That was Mrs. Bird, you scream into his face. You have made your son afraid of you and you are now insane with grief for a spider.
“Mom, I didn’t know,” Bryan says.
I squint at him, my eyes filled with mistrust and tears.
Bryan softens his voice. “Look.” He sighs. “Okay, let’s fix this. Really.” He looks around at the mess I’ve made. “Let me clean up the carpet and then let’s go out for dinner. Okay, mom?”
“All right. But I’ll not forget this. No I won’t. And from now on, mister, I won’t let you in my bathroom. Not for anything.” I narrow my eyes to slits. “You can’t be trusted anymore. There is blood on your hands now.”
I go into the kitchen and grab the sponge. I walk back into the living room. Bryan is on his knees, picking remnants of pizza from the carpet. I throw the sponge at him. “Next, you’ll probably tell me you helped Mrs. Spencer move away.”
Brian looks up at me.
“You remember Mrs. Spencer from down the street. She gave you a box of sidewalk chalk for your second birthday and you tried to eat it… made you very sick. I should have killed her for that.”
“Mom—”
“My goodness,” I say, brightly. “We’ve turned out to be a murderous lot. Do you suppose they have red wine at the restaurant? I could use a glass of wine now.”
Bryan holds his brow as if he’s not certain it will stay in place any longer. “Sure, Mom. They have wine. They have anything you want,” he says.
Bryan finishes cleaning while I go pay my final respects to poor Mrs. Bird. Poor, poor smacked and flushed Mrs. Bird. She might be the lucky one after all.
Suddenly, I feel the shame of a mother who has deeply wounded her child because of a ridiculous misunderstanding. Of course it’s illogical to reach for friendship tucked into the poisonous folds of a spider. I know this truthful thing deep within the center of my chest. Nevertheless, she was all the morning had to offer.
Bryan must have cleaned her web from the corner of the tub because there is no evidence that anything was ever there. The only thing left is the regret of a screeching mother who misinterpreted her son’s tender deeds.
I go to my dresser where I keep a stack of cards for various occasions in one of the drawers. I select an appropriate card, sign it, and take it to Bryan who is finishing the last of the clean-up. I hand him the envelope with his name carefully printed on its front.
He opens the envelope and pulls out the card. On the front is a lovely pastel drawing of a small outdoor table set with a vase of white lilies and a single empty place setting, all under a sky filled with puffy white clouds. He opens the card to see the inscription printed in flowery lettering. I’m so sorry for your tragic loss, it reads. I have signed it, With deep misery and regret, your mother.
Chapter Twelve
I’ve turned inconsolably sad for no good or apparent reason, and I find my mouth puckering, my chin wavering over the smallest things.
And thus, without any particular cause or specific worrisome event, I begin a glorious crying phase with uncommon gusto. I outdo my former notebook stage by splashing grand and plentiful tears over everything and everyone.
Ma would have tsked her tongue and called me a woman of sackcloth and ashes. She would have said I had no better sense than to beat at my own chest. Pa would have told me to stop my caterwauling and go help Ma with the dishes.
Allison—who still seems barely halfway done with forgiving me for ruining our trip to Hawaii—continues to skirt me with countless excuses and repeated sorries, while skipping our weekly dinners, our daily phone calls. She punctuates her words with pursed lips and little squinchy lines pulled like drawstrings at the corners of her eyes.
Still, Allison checks on me now and then with quick, pithy phone calls. My beautiful La La La Girl. My sweet pony. My tender friend.
It is Bryan, however, with his little-boy-blue eyes, wide with concern upon his thirty (is it five- or six- now?) year-old face, who calls me daily and brings me boxes of tissues and little French chocolates to make me all better. He hands me his offerings and I break into fresh tears for the tenderness of it.
“I’m sorry,” I always say. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why is this happening to me?”
“You’re good, Mom,” he always says. “No worries.” Then he kisses the top of my head because my constant tearfulness renders him incapable of doing anything else.
One day I cry to Bryan, “I don’t know why Allison treats me so poorly. I ask her why and she tells me I know. I don’t know, Bryan. Do you?”
&nb
sp; “You didn’t do anything wrong. What say you and I forget all about sad things and blow this popsicle stand? There’s a new little Italian restaurant on K Street I’ve been dying to try.” Bryan raises one eyebrow in a playful gesture. “I hear they’ve got a bottle of red with your name on it.”
“Really? A bottle of red? With my name on it?”
“No kidding. Go get your shoes on and let’s stuff our faces with meatballs and wine. Maybe we’ll even do a film noir something-or-other at the Crest Theatre.”
I clap my hands in delight and tuck my tears down into my pocket. I slide into my shoes and smile my way into Bryan’s car. Halfway to the restaurant, I see a cat the color of Ma’s old cat, John Milton, dead and flung to the side of the road. I weep loudly for it. Bryan hands me a tissue and speeds a little quicker to our meatballs and wine.
At the restaurant, Bryan waves away his own preference and orders a bottle of Pinot Noir. The wine is lovely and makes my tongue think of ripe strawberries and raspberries and a smoky fire on a cold night. A rare smile comes to my lips.
I look at the bottle label. “You said this was going to have my name on it, but it says, Mi Sueño. Did I… when did I change my name to that?” I ask.
Bryan laughs, deep and hearty, from the bottom of his chest. “That’s just a figure of speech.”
I look again at the label. “Oh, good. I’m glad I’m still who I am. So what does this mean… this Mi Sueño?”
“It’s Spanish and it means ‘my dream.’ Isn’t that nice? A wine for you named My Dream.” Bryan’s voice seems to snag on a nail somewhere deep in his throat.
“Well,” I say, “I’m afraid I’m all out of dreams for myself, but maybe there are still a few good sueños left for you and Allison.” I laugh and then start to cry again.
“Aw, Mom. Here… cheers.” Bryan holds his glass up to touch with mine.
“Cheers,” I say. Cheers. An odd word for a crying woman to utter. Nevertheless, I clink my glass with Bryan’s and say Cheers into his tender eyes.
“How can I fix you?” Bryan asks.
“I’m fine. I’m just… well, I guess I’m really not all that fine, but there’s nothing to be done about it.” I reach over and pat his hand.
Bryan looks deeply at me. I spend a moment wandering across the landscape of possibilities and hopefulness spreading across my son’s face.
“I wish I knew what it’s like for you,” he says after a while.
“You don’t want to know,” I say. I take another sip of wine. I shrug. “It’s hard to describe. Sometimes I feel good and bright like there’s still something in here.” I rap the top of my head with my knuckles. “Knock on wood.”
Bryan raps his head and laughs. “Yeah, knock on wood.”
“Sometimes I remember things, like I have a nice wind at my back, pushing me along.”
“Like now?”
“Mmm… like, right now I’m doing okay. At least, I think I am.” I look across the room. “See that man over there?” I lean closer, lowering my voice. I point in the direction of a man seated a few tables down. “He probably doesn’t know that a single drop of water can travel all the way around the world. I can guarantee he doesn’t know reading poetry could save his life or that his tie is hanging down all crooked.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I still notice things. I still see things. I get inspired and laugh and… obviously I cry. I’m just losing my words to talk about it all. Poof! One minute I could probably recite a soliloquy and the next all those lovely words simply vanish. In a stupid instant, I can’t remember a damned thing. I forget things faster than I even knew them in the first place, if that makes sense. Maybe I’m simply growing backwards.”
“Growing backwards?”
I laugh. “Yes. A magical way of getting younger, but this is just a terrible way to do it. Keep the wrinkles, but lose the memory of how you earned each one.”
“Maybe there’s a different medication, something new or more effective. We could try another doctor, or maybe you could qualify for a trial—”
“No, Bryan. I don’t want… really, I’m fine. Maybe I get a bit soggy these days, but really… there’s not much help for a gummed-up brain. The good thing is that I keep those nice tissue folks happy.” I smile, but Bryan’s face has fallen from the edge of inspiration and helpfulness.
I look down at my menu and frown. “I can’t figure out all these dishes,” I say, my voice now flat as a stone. “Will you help me?”
He brightens—at last and without trying, I’ve given my beautiful son something about me he can fix. Bryan folds his hand over mine and escorts me through the long list of foods. I do my best to concentrate, but I’m stuck on a word that clangs and rings through my head like a loud, noisy gong. It repeats over and over—the same word, banging wildly inside my mind. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Tears slide again across the rounded curve of my eyes until they fall in fat dots onto the menu.
I’m mad at my eyes. I shake them free of their water and pick up my wineglass.
“What’s the name of this wine, again? It’s quite good.”
“You don’t remember? It’s Mi Sueño.”
“Mi Sueño. My, what a pretty name! What does that mean?”
“It means ‘my dream.’”
“Well, cheers to your dreams,” I say. We clink glasses and I find a small moment of peace within the sound of two glasses touching.
By the time Bryan drives me home, I’ve found twelve new things to cry over. He leaves me at the door with apologies, another fresh box of tissues and a generous kiss on my wet and snotty cheek. I stand for a while at the door, waving until his car is gone.
I wander to my closet only because it’s become my place of comfort and because it draws me there, sometimes many times a day. Often, instead of reading about what sort of person I used to be, I just stand in the middle of my closet, allowing my feet to shuffle back and forth.
Tonight I take down my letter box and finger through my letters until I find the perfect piece.
I read out loud and listen carefully to my halting voice. I still read well, but it’s getting harder to decipher my crooked handwriting. Some passages take a few stuttering tries before the meaning is clear enough to move on to the next. Nevertheless, I plod ahead.
My dearest children,
This letter makes my hands tremble before I even set down a word. I don’t know how to approach the subject, except to jump in with both feet, hoping not to make too much of a mess of it.
I believe you should know as much about death as you do about life. There! I said that frightening word. Death—that sharp and specific moment between one’s last breath and the silence of forever gone.
As much as I’d rather celebrate only how your grandparents lived (because to think of anything else makes for a terribly sad day), I suppose you should also know about the way your people died.
On my side, your MeeMaw went first. The doctor said it was heart disease, silent and deadly and that nothing could have been done to prevent its horrid and instant conclusion. Your PaaPaw found her in the garden, curled around her favorite rose bush, clippers still in her hand and a look of astonishment on her face.
When your MeeMaw died, I think your PaaPaw—always a worryingly stoic man—choked back his tears so deeply into the crevices of his lungs that those tears puddled right there, which most certainly started the silent growing of what would soon take him away too. I believe he looked at his wife all laid out at the Dignity Family Funeral Home, her hair softly curled, her lips tinted a soft pink, her best dress hugging the curves of her silent body and, right there and then, he just let his soul slip off to heaven with her. There’s no other explanation, because just six months later, your PaaPaw died of lung cancer.
He never even told me he was sick, but that’s another story for another letter. (I’ll work on that.)
Of course, it’s possible that deat
h isn’t all that bad for the departed, but nevertheless, terrifying for the living. I guess everyone believes in something, though. I know Ma believed in heaven, Pa believed in fishing, and they both believed in love.
On the other side of the family, your father’s parents both died young, reaching for each other (most likely) during the slow motion, frame-by-frame instant when a logger misjudged the angle of a curve on one of our mountain roads. Your dad was only sixteen when his parents, your paternal grandparents, were crushed under the very logs that might have made the sawdust your PaaPaw carried home in the cuffs of his pants.
I think about that coincidence every now and then.
Your father told me his parents would have doted on you, marveling over your first steps, your first words, your first mud pies, your first pencil strokes, your first moments of everything. His father was a millworker like your PaaPaw, but for a different company, his mother a homemaker, very much like your MeeMaw. He had one older brother who died of pneumonia before he was born.
Of course, you know your father died of a heart attack in the prime of his life. I can’t even go on at all about that.
And then there’s me—the one now with the broken brain.
It will cause my death, you know. The good news is that I know how I’ll go and, if there is such a place as heaven, I’ll surely be once more with your father. With Ma and Pa. Maybe even Ma’s old cat, John Milton, will be there. Hah!
Still, I’d rather discuss the way the roses did this year and how their blooms were such a constant delight when I’d bring them in to let their long stems sway over the lip of that cobalt blue vase that I love so much.
I hope I didn’t needlessly upset you with this letter, but still, it’s important for you to know your past and how it might affect your future. It seems you might need to guard your hearts, your lungs, and your hands on the steering wheel. And now, of course, your brains.
We are your kith and kin. Your heritage. Your good or unfortunate health. If there is any sadness in this backward look, I’m sorry for causing it.
All the Dancing Birds Page 9