When I told him I was leaving, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t beg me to stay. He just looked at me and nodded.”
I said, “Well, two people can’t sit around and dream of being artists, someone had to work so we could eat.”
She tried to smile but I could tell I had hurt her. “You’ve grown up, Julian,” she said. “You’re not my little boy anymore.”
“Dad told me he likes his job,” I said, trying to calm down.
“He never told me that,” she said.
“Maybe you never asked.”
“No, I guess I didn’t.”
“I watched Dad save a man’s life at the grocery store. Maybe he was supposed to be a nurse. Maybe he was supposed to be at that grocery store on that morning so he could do CPR on that old man.”
She stood up and walked outside. When I looked out the window, I could see her sitting there on that little white plastic chair, her legs tucked against her chest. I could see the red-orange tip of her cigarette, like some sort of lightning bug that didn’t move, as if suspended in time.
I wanted to call my father and ask him how he was doing. We’d talked a couple times since I’d been here and he always sounded upbeat, said that Lucky and the birds were fine. The last time we talked he told me my report card had come in the mail. He said that I’d made all B’s, which was what I made every year. But I couldn’t call him. It was after ten and he had to get up early to go to work.
Something told me Tia would be up, so I called her. She answered on the third ring.
“Hey, Chef Tia,” I said.
“Chef Julian,” she said, sounding surprised.
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No,” she said. “I was watching Iron Chef on the Food Network. Bobby Flay vs. Yashimoto.”
“Who’s winning?”
“Flay, of course,” she said. I thought she had a crush on him. She was always talking about Bobby Flay this and Bobby Flay that.
“I miss the Food Network.” It was a stupid thing to say.
“No cable TV?” she asked.
“Mom doesn’t have a TV.”
“My God, you need to get back here right away.” We both laughed.
“I just wanted to say hi, see how you were doing.”
“I miss you, Julian.”
“I miss you too,” I said.
“Good night and good cooking.”
I looked out the window and that orange speck still hovered there. Yes, I felt a little guilty for making my mother feel bad, but I’d said what I had to say.
47
Mom and I continued on for the next few days as if nothing had happened between us. But our relationship had shifted, and I could feel it. She was my mother and I loved her, but she had no right to make Dad out to be a failure when he wasn’t.
One afternoon, on my second Tuesday in Florida, I was sitting out by the pool while Mom was in her room typing away. While I flipped through my cookbook, thinking maybe we would make chicken curry for dinner, three grackles flew down and landed on the birdfeeder I’d set up in a little patch of grass beside the pool.
“Hi.”
I turned as a girl sat in the chair next to me. I sat up a little taller and said hi. She was my age, maybe a year older and had on cut-off jean shorts and a pink bathing suit top. Her legs were muscular and she had an anklet around her right ankle. Her stomach was flat and tanned and her belly-button was pierced.
“Are you on vacation too?”
“No,” I said. “I’m visiting my mom. She runs the motel.”
She stuck her hand out. For a moment I wasn’t sure what to do, so I shook her hand and said, “I’m Julian.”
“Gwen,” she said. “We’re from Ohio. It’s nice here.”
“I live in North Carolina.”
“I’ve never been to North Carolina,” she said.
I told her how North Carolina was pretty nice with the different seasons and the occasional snow. I told her we had both mountains and the ocean, something not too many states could say. I kept talking and talking, rambling on like someone working for the North Carolina tourism bureau.
She nodded patiently and when I finally stopped talking, she said, “Can I kiss you?”
Then I said what I would later, replaying the events in my mind, decided was about the dumbest thing I’d ever said, “Why?”
“Because I told my boyfriend if he didn’t come on vacation with us I would kiss a boy in Florida. Mom even said she would buy him a ticket but he wanted to go to baseball camp. Dumb-ass.” She said the last word as if she were spitting.
It didn’t make sense to me, but then she leaned over and kissed me. It wasn’t the longest or the shortest kiss I’d ever had, but still I sat there stunned, even after she stood up, said thanks and walked off to room number eight.
I looked around for some proof that it had happened, perhaps Cinderella’s flip-flops, but the girl had left nothing behind except for my ragged, beating heart. I closed my eyes and laughed harder than I had in a while, then I dove into the pool to cool off.
While I waited for Mom to finish writing for the day, every few minutes I looked over at Gwen’s closed motel room door. I’m not sure what I expected. I was just some guy Gwen from Ohio had kissed to make her boyfriend jealous. It didn’t matter though. I’d come to Florida and been kissed by a girl with a pierced belly-button and an anklet. These were the sort of things you didn’t question. You just accepted them for what they were, gifts from God.
Then I wondered if I should feel guilty for the kiss. I didn’t think Tia would be happy to hear about it. I know I wouldn’t be happy if we were talking one night and she mentioned some strange guy walked up and kissed her. While we weren’t exactly boyfriend and girlfriend, there was definitely something there, something I wanted to be more than just a couple kids cooking together, something I would have pursued if I had been planning on staying in North Carolina.
Later, that night, as Mom and I cleaned up from dinner, I asked,
“Are you coming back?”
She turned to me. “What do you mean?”
“Back to North Carolina with Dad and me.”
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said.
We headed toward the beach, down Main Street, past shops with lit windows, lined with unbelievably large shark’s teeth. After walking under a row of palm trees, we were on the beach. It was dark already and I couldn’t so much see the ocean as feel and hear it, roaring against the sand beneath my feet. While we had walked on the beach almost every night I’d been here, this particular night felt different. It could have been because I’d kissed a girl today or because I’d finally asked Mom if she was coming back and for the first time she might actually give me an answer.
“You know,” Mom said. “You could come and live with me. We wouldn’t have to stay in the motel. We could get an apartment or house.”
And I thought about how months ago, after she first left, that was what I wanted more than anything. How I would have packed my bags and said, see ya Dad, have a nice life. But not anymore. It was clear to me that Dad needed me in ways she never would. And that
I needed him in ways I never would have imagined.
“I can’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that to Dad.”
She reached over and squeezed my hand and we didn’t say anything for the longest time. We walked further down the beach than we had before. We stopped and sat down in the soft sand.
There were a billion stars in the sky above us.
“They don’t have skies like this in North Carolina,” she said.
“They might.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “About coming home. Julian, do you remember what I told you the other night, about why I left?”
“Yes.”
“It’s true, all of it. But I left something out.”
She paused as if gathering courage for what she was about to say. The scent of saltwater filled my nose and the weight of the water and sea seemed to
suck all the energy out of my body. Suddenly, I was tired, so damn tired and didn’t really want to hear what she was about to tell me.
“I cheated on your father. It was a couple months before I left. It only happened once. He was some guy in one of those creative writing workshops I went to on Saturday nights at the bookstore. He was, I guess, what I thought I needed, someone who was creative in a way your father wasn’t anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew I should be mad at my mother, lash out at her some way, call her all sorts of ugly things, but I just felt numb, surprised but not completely.
“Does Dad know?”
“No. Julian, I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me.”
And while part of me did feel something like hate for my mother at that moment because she’d betrayed my father, and me, another part tried to understand why she might do it. I couldn’t deny that back before she left, I didn’t even really like my father. It was almost as if he were just this man we shared a house with. That didn’t make what she’d done okay, but it was all I could give my mother, the only way I could stop myself from hating her, from running away and leaving her alone on that beach.
“I just don’t understand,” I said. But I did understand my mother, how she did things that benefited her and not us as a family. “You have to tell Dad.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“You have to. If you want to come back, you have to.”
She started crying. “You’re right. I will.”
She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, hugged me. I don’t remember closing my eyes or thinking about anything else that night, only the weight of my mother against me and the night air, scented and heavy with saltwater.
48
I woke to the sound of joggers running by. My first thought was that it was a dream and my father was jogging over to us, but when I opened my eyes, I saw two older women running down the beach in expensive looking running shoes.
The water was only inches from my toes and the sky above an even mix of purple and blue, like some sort of beautiful bruise. I looked over at Mom and she tried to smile at me, but her eyes were still red and puffy from crying. “I could use a cigarette,” she said.
By the time we made it back to the motel, Gwen’s family had left their keys on Mom’s desk. “Let’s go ride some horses,” Mom said.
“But what about the motel?”
For an answer, she turned on the No Vacancy sign. I knew this might take care of new people wanting to check in but what about the half-dozen families here, expecting their sheets changed? My mother didn’t care about them. She could be wonderful and kind and funny at times and stubborn and selfish at others. But she was my Mom and I didn’t think she’d ever change or that I’d ever stop loving her even though I’d discovered she was the one to blame for their marital problems. She was the one who had cheated and left.
We headed out on I-75, toward Sarasota, and passed beaches with sand so white it didn’t look real. We passed palm trees a hundred feet tall and then we were on a dirt road, leaving any semblance of a city behind and heading out into the woods, between uneven rows of pine trees. We stopped in front of a small white house. Behind the house was a fenced-in field of grass and a white barn. An old black horse, stood back by the fence, head down, eating.
I followed Mom up the steps and stood behind her as she knocked. A hammock sat motionless on the front porch. The door opened. It was the man I’d seen on that white horse in downtown Venice. “What can I do for you?” he asked, looking at Mom and then at me.
“We’d like to take some of your horses out for a ride,” Mom said. “They aren’t mine,” he said.
“Come on, it’s a nice day.” Mom was turning on the charm. It was embarrassing. I didn’t want to ride a damn horse if it meant Mom had to act like this, particularly after what she’d confessed the night before. “Andrea sent me.”
He shook his head and smiled. “One hour, hundred dollars each.”
“Deal,” Mom said, sticking her hand out to shake.
“Meet me around back in five minutes.”
As Mom and I walked back there, she explained that Andrea, who helped her clean the motel sometimes, was his girlfriend. She said he isn’t supposed to let people ride the horses, but for a little side cash he would.
I heard a bird that had become familiar to me: a red-winged blackbird. I’d looked it up after seeing it downtown that first day. The bird was common here, like a cardinal or wren call back home— you’d hear it fifty times a day if you were listening. I looked up and spotted a red-tailed hawk overhead, no more than twenty feet off the ground, a black snake hanging from its talons.
Tommy was standing at the back fence, holding the reigns on two white horses. The horses stared at me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ride a horse. I’d only ridden twice before, and while neither of those times had been bad, they hadn’t been great either.
Tommy must have sensed my nervousness because he said,
“Just feed them carrots and they’ll be good to you.” He handed me three carrots, which I stuck out toward the horses and they greedily ate them.
He looked at Mom. “You have to pay before you ride.”
Mom fished the money from the pocket of her jeans.
“Well let’s get you up here,” he said, helping me on one of the horses. The horse shook its head and turned halfway back to me.
“Is he mad?”
Tommy laughed. “Naw, just checking to make sure you don’t have anymore carrots. Her name is Georgia.”
After helping Mom climb up on her horse, he said, “What we’ll do is walk the property line for a little while, until you feel comfortable and then I’ll let you guys go on your own. The hour starts now.”
Mom looked over at me and winked.
Tommy did as promised, holding onto the reins and walking beside me for fifteen minutes or so, long enough that I could start to predict how Georgia was going to move. Every few minutes, I’d look behind me and Mom would smile and wave.
“How do you feel?” Tommy asked. We were at the edge of an empty beach. It seemed strange to me that this stretch of beach was empty, but then I spotted the Private Property signs.
“Pretty good,” I said.
“Think you can handle her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll be fine. Just pull back hard on the reins if she starts going too fast, that’ll stop her. I’ll be close if you need me.”
He let go and stepped back, so I was alone with the horse. For the first time, Mom came up beside me. Our horses looked at each other as if deciding whether or not they wanted to make a run for it, to hell with the fools on their backs.
We started slow. The horses stayed just beyond the water’s edge as if they were afraid of getting wet. As Mom’s horse increased speed, so did mine. It was as if the horses knew they were supposed to stay together. I looked over at Mom. She was beautiful, amazing in her own way, and I knew she would only come back to my father and me, if she ever did, when she was ready.
I wished my father was here with us. I wished she could see him at work, moving around his patients, wiping spit from some old lady’s lips or holding a urinal for a man too weak to do it himself. But neither of my parents could see the other in the ways I’d been lucky enough to.
Just enjoy this day with your mother, I thought, this beach and the horses, things I might not ever get again.
That night, I called Dad to tell him I was coming home. Mom hadn’t mentioned it again, and if she’d used riding these horses as a way of keeping me here, even she knew it hadn’t worked. It had been a good day, but felt more like a trip to a special place than home.
Dad answered on the third ring. He asked if everything was alright and I told him that I was having fun but I was ready to come home. He said he’d call the airlines and get my flight changed.
When I was done talking, Mom took the phone and disappeared into her bedroom. I started dinner, that chicken and
pasta dish Tia and I had made for Dad and Mrs. Brogan. I hoped Mrs. Brogan’s offer still stood. If it didn’t, I hoped Tia would still invite me over to cook with her. I considered calling her, telling her I’d be coming home but thought it would be better to surprise her.
When Mom came out of her bedroom, her eyes were red again.
She drank her whole full glass of wine in one mouthful.
“Did you tell him?”
She nodded.
“What did he say?”
“He hung up but I called him back. He said if I wanted to come back and was ready, then we could make it work.”
We sat down and ate the meal. I didn’t push her on the subject of what else Dad said or if she was going to come back. It had taken a lot for her to confess to him, and at least she’d done that. I only had a few more days here and then I’d be heading home, so I made a promise to enjoy every last minute I had with her.
49
On our last day together, after cleaning all the rooms and going for a walk, Mom said, “What did you want for dinner?”
“What do you have?”
“I thought we’d go out to dinner, anywhere you want to go.”
“I’d rather cook with you,” I said. She smiled and I knew that was the answer she’d been hoping for. Plus, I really did want to cook with my mother. I wasn’t sure when I would see her again.
We’d talked about the possibility of me coming down again for a week or so at the end of the summer.
“How about cashew chicken and brown rice with chopped parsley?”
She smiled. “Sounds like heaven.”
After stopping by the grocery store for the ingredients, we headed back to her motel. Mom stayed outside to smoke a cigarette while I started cooking. I cut up some onions and let them heat up over butter in a pot. Once they browned a little, I added the rice and then instead of using water I used chicken broth, a trick Tia had shown me. She said it makes the rice so much tastier. I cut up a fistful of parsley for later and set it aside.
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