by Storm Large
Angry and smug again I plopped into bed with my sleeping boyfriend, and tried to relax enough to sleep. Somewhere after three-thirty in the morning my phone starts ringing.
I walked through the dark to get the phone.
“Hey, Storm, I’m sorry.” It was my brother Henry. “. . . but, how close to death should she be?”
Gotcha.
Mom had an aneurism. She was in surgery for seven out of the ten hours it took me to get from San Francisco to Boston. She barely made it through the operation and was in a very delicate state when she came out. I couldn’t see her until the following morning.
Dad told me that the surgeon had to go pretty deep to get to the aneurism that threatened to stop Mom’s heart, and they had to cut one or two major cables to get to it. According to Mom’s doctor, she was now paralyzed from the waist down. She would never walk again.
I didn’t know what to expect as I pulled up to the hospital. The news that morning was that Mom was recovering. She was still very delicate, drifting in and out of consciousness, but they were allowing family to visit.
Mom finally had something wrong with her, for real. Not terribly glamorous or exotic; paralysis brought on by a blood clot. Rather common for someone written up in a medical journal for winning the multiple personality lottery.
But this was real. I wondered if she would be happy about being paralyzed, then quickly cursed the thought from my head
She will never walk again, you asshole. She will never be able to skip down a beach or get up to hug someone and she will now, really, have to deal with something fucking difficult and sad, mostly on her own . . . with and without an audience.
Then I saw her.
The small hospital bed she was in looked like an extra small bed for kids, but it still dwarfed her. She seemed so flat and weightless, like the mummified remains of a twelve-year-old boy. Her toothless mouth hung slightly open, her dry lips drooped in over her gums. Her cheeks and eyes deeply sunken around her baby skull. Her skin looked powdered . . . a talc-dusted mummy doll stuck in a hospital bed to play “Operation.”
“Where are your teeth?” I asked the tiny creature that was supposed to be my mom. She didn’t answer. She was out cold.
I pulled a chair next to the side of the bed. There was a painful-looking I.V. needle stuck into the tissue-thin meat of her hand. An ugly bruise spread out from under the white tape that held it in place. After years of drugs, smoking, and inactivity, my mom, at fifty-seven, had the flesh of an eighty-year-old, with the stringy veins that come with it. I imagined there had been a ton of poking before the big needle hit pay dirt, so her hand looked beat to shit, lying on the blanket, purple and defeated. I slid my palm under her tiny mangled paw . . . it was cool.
“Mom?” Her lids fluttered but her face stayed stone.
I thought she’d be dead when I got there, so when she wasn’t, I couldn’t help but puke up thirty years of random anger and hurt that had shook in my head the whole way to this moment. She was unconscious, but I let her have it.
“I don’t hate you, Mom. I never did. All I ever wanted was for you to be okay, so I could have a mom, I needed a mother, but ended up with a sick kid. You, you were the child. You made me feel like I could not only never love you enough, but I was why you were in so much pain, that it was me making you sick. Do you have any idea how much that hurts? To love someone, to fucking miss you so much, more than you could possibly imagine, and feeling like it’s me making you sick? That it’s my fault you’re gone? Meanwhile you’re telling everyone around you how much we all hate you, and hurt you? That is fucked up, Mom. You’re not sick. You’re sad. I have no idea how to love anybody, least of all myself. And no one can ever love me, either, because they know I’m broken, they can smell it on me, the sick and sad you gave me. But I am not you and I am never going to be. I refuse to end up like this, like you. I won’t be the mess you made.
“I realize you’re in a coma or something and can’t . . . you probably can’t even hear me . . . but . . . I don’t hate you, I never did. God knows, I tried to, and I’m sure it made being miserable a lot easier believing I did, but the truth is, I love you, Mom. I have always loved you. It just was never enough.”
Somewhere along my rant her hand moved. “He-ll-o-oh . . . darling . . .”
Her voice was a painful dry creak. Her eyes opened slightly. Normally, in moments like these, I would roll my eyes at her shtick of grim, hanging-by-a-thread-I’m-so-terribly-ill . . . but I just sobbed.
“Mom, what has happened to you?”
She was so weak it took her awhile to articulate anything. The doctors had pushed a breathing tube into her trachea during the seven-hour surgery. It was out now, but her throat had been scraped raw. “I’m sorry for hurting you and the boys,” she said. “I don’t know why . . . sorry.” She drifted out again as I sat with her a while longer.
Was that real?
She was so heavily medicated that she might have been incoherently babbling. But my heart hoped that it took that much sedation and trauma to strip away all the bullshit and get some real out of her.
“I’m sorry, too, Mom . . . I love you.” I kissed her forehead. It was so dry under my lips, like the back of your hand after washing several times with a harsh chemical soap. She was out cold, again, so I whispered goodbye to her, promising to come back.
That evening, having a post-dinner beer with my dad at his house, I told him about the exchange. I asked him if he thought she had meant it. He took a drag off his smoke.
“Sweetie, all that matters is you got to say everything to her. That’s all I cared about. I’m sure she heard it . . . it doesn’t matter if she got it or not.”
“I think she did, Pop. She must have. Something is really wrong with her this time.” He just smoked and nodded without actually agreeing.
Mom had a heavy round of tests most of the next day and was exhausted, so I didn’t get to see her again until late the following afternoon. She was doing much better, though. She had been moved out of the ICU and into a private room.
I ran into one of her doctors as he was coming out and I was headed in. He nodded a hello at me, but looked grim. After introducing myself and thanking him for taking care of her, he looked down and shook his head. “She’s never going to walk again. I swear we did everything we could.”
“Hey, it’s all right, we know you tried . . . wait . . . did you just tell her she’s paralyzed . . . for the first time . . . just now?”
“No, but she’s been so sedated that I wasn’t sure she had really heard it. We offer counseling and rehabilitation here and elsewhere, but I had to wait for your mother to be fully conscious before discussing all of that with her.”
“How did she take all that?”
“Your mom took it surprisingly well. I’m more upset than she is, really. She smiled and seemed more concerned with my feelings than her own situation . . . incredible.”
I thanked the doctor again, and wished him well as he left. I took a deep breath and steeled myself.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that she might not know what happened from the surgery. I was too hell bent on unburdening myself of all my sadness onto my shrunken, near comatose mother. I stood at the door of her room and cursed myself for being so selfish.
Grow up, Storm. If Mom is just hearing that she’s paralyzed right now, she might be in shock . . . or desperate. Go in and be strong for her, for a change. She might be freaking out. She might try to kill herself, for real this time, save up her pain meds and . . . then I heard her laughing.
Mom had this musical, girlie laugh, but her throat was still ragged so it was more of a throaty chuckle, but still, somehow, bubbly and light, like lemon soda.
I pushed the door open and peeked in. Mom was propped up in her hospital bed and was chatting on the phone. She saw me and smiled, held up the pointer finger of her free hand in an “I’ll just be a minute, darling” gesture. I walked in and sat in a
chair facing her while she gabbed.
Her room was sunny and bright. There were a collection of flower bouquets and a few get-well balloons by her bed. Get-well cards stood open like colorful tents on her dresser along with a box of chocolate-covered cherries. The room was sweetened by her lily-of-the-valley perfume. Someone must have brought that to her along with her teeth, because her face wasn’t a sunken-eyed voodoo mask anymore. She even had a little more color in her cheeks as she talked excitedly to whoever it was on the phone.
It seemed the doctor was right, she was lucid and alert, even downright chipper. I was trying to decide how to give her my present of Clarins face cream, a fancy brand that I was sure would pull an excited Oooh! from her.
I sat in the chair, my hand in my purse, holding onto her gift, and waited. Then I tuned in to what she was gabbing on about.
“It’s really remarkable, I know. Well, I’m not getting one of those sad old lady wheelchairs, I’m a very strong woman and I will roll that sucker myself. I’ve done it before . . . yes, with my knee surgery, it’s not that bad, really, well, oh, nooo, it’s easy. We paraplegics have a much more heightened sense of balance. All of the senses, really.”
We paraplegics? She was . . . bragging?
“The doctor could tell that I’m incredibly strong, he even said so . . . and he’d never seen a recovery go so well from such an intense surgery . . . I know . . . poor thing . . . he’s a lovely man.”
She was downright ebullient over her situation, her brand-new badge of sadness. This one people will see! I will cruise around in my shiny new wheelchair, and roll that sucker over all their sore and soggy hearts. Everyone everywhere will feel sooo baaad! I felt an old animal prick its ears up in me. I heard her say “we paraplegics” at least two more times before I realized I was crushing the box that held her present.
I got up so quickly it startled my mom off the bragging train for a moment. I put the cream next to the phone by her bed. She looked at it, then mouthed “Oooh!” at me, and continued her chat.
“Goodbye, Mom.” I kissed her papery forehead. “I love you.”
“I’m almost done,” she silently mouthed again.
“Me, too.” We looked at each other for a moment, I felt tears coming, but also an urge to rip the phone out of her hand and smash it through her sunny, private window.
“You will never see me again,” I said quietly.
She air-talked a “Wha . . . ?” to me, midsentence, without skipping a note.
“Goodbye.” I left, trying not to run from the room, the hospital, and the planet.
She got me, though, the newly crowned Queen of Paraplegia . . . I had to admit, she got me good.
To keep Mom as dead to me as possible, I threw myself into my work. My band had label interest, a big, New York–based management company was courting us, and I had an investor. Kat, a gorgeous, marathon-running mom of four, die-hard philanthropist and supporter of the arts, paid for our album and put us on tour.
It was 2000, and the world hadn’t ended, much to the embarrassment of doomsday prophets and those Y2K douche bags. But, just as things seemed to be going well for me, at last, the world blew up. I guess it had to.
We were recording “The Calm Years” and it was going well, the songs and the performances were strong, but my relationship with my band was growing tired. And damn near dead were the feelings between my boyfriend, Michael, and I. Michael had been my guitar player, collaborator, and musical partner for seven years. I still loved him, but we had become like brother and, well, brother. We called each other Dude and felt like band mates who lived together and slept naked in the same bed.
It all imploded when my substitute mom, Rose, died.
Annie Leavitt was number one, Rose was my number two momstitute. She was my rock ’n’ roll mom for a few years. She was a painter, a dark and swirly gypsy woman with big soft hips and a dirty laugh. When she got a fat tumor pulled out of her neck, the doctors found it had leeched into and body-snatched an entire vertebra in her upper spine. Thankfully, the surgery was a success and she suffered no nerve damage; she had to wear a neck brace and get about six weeks of aggressive radiation series. But, after her last treatment, she cackled, “Ya-hoo! Gimme a damn cigarette!” It was a new beginning.
Then around Christmas she developed a nasty cough and could only stand up for about five minutes at a time. We talked about taking a road trip somewhere warm. She had relatives in Arizona and I had a big fat van with a bed in the back. We would go after New Year’s, when I was done recording “The Calm Years,” we decided.
The call came while I was in the studio. Rose was back in the hospital, with pneumonia, they thought. The cancer in her neck had snuck away from the burn of the radiation to make a wet, black nest in her lungs. She didn’t even bother with chemo or any other medical option.
I was one of only a few women she wanted with her at the end. I’d record all day in San Rafael, then go back to Sonoma every night, to help out any way I could.
The morphine was a pink liquid Rose dubbed Marilyn. “Time for a little more Marilyn, Stormy!” We let her have as much as she wanted, but it wasn’t enough to keep her back from locking into spasms in the middle of the night. Her lungs were so packed with cancer, that there was barely a teacup’s worth of room in there for her to breathe with. We all took turns sleeping in bed with her, so when a lightning cramp would split her from sleep, we’d be there to rub her back.
About four days before she died, it was my turn to keep the massage vigil. She woke up with a sleepy and miserable sob and I went to work on the knot. She moaned a grateful sound, likely for the company as well as my gentle kneading, and then settled back down.
The room was quiet except for the whir of the oxygen machine and her clotted little breaths. I kept rubbing her back gently, and started to cry. I whispered into her hair “God, Rose . . . I wish there was something I could say. I talk so fucking much but I can’t think of even a few words that even begin to describe what your believing in me has done . . . Something you can take with you so you know how magical . . .”
“Aww, fer fuck sake, I’m not dead yet!” she croaked into the stillness.
“You bitch! I was totally having a moment.”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to sleep.” She mustered a laugh out of the one cancer-free bit of her lung, I chuckled and held her close. “Stormy. You’re bigger than what you’re doing. Your band, your boyfriend, Michael. They’re great, but you’re just bigger.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a little biased, lady, go to sleep.”
“I’m a dying woman and what I say is gospel.” More struggled laughing. “You’re bigger.”
“I love you, Mom.”
“Love you, too, honey.”
Right after she died, I drove from Sonoma back to San Francisco, and broke up with Michael. I started couch surfing at friends’ houses, my van, and wherever I could between tours. While on a break in Los Angeles, I ran into a friend in a successful band out of Portland, Oregon. He was playing at the Universal Amphitheater and would I want to come to the gig, then party with them at the Mondrian Hotel on the strip afterward?
Sure. I was homeless anyway. Why not be homeless in a swanky Hollywood hotel for a few days, eating room service, playing rock star? My band split back to San Francisco, I stayed. Then it happened.
I had met the man before and there was no connection, but all of a sudden, the air, the temperature, what I had eaten or drunk that day, the pot brownie he ate, the white on white on white linens in the room . . . who knows. All I can say, at some point during the night my heart and all the meat, fat, and gristle around her, went boom.
Mr. Whoopass.
I fell hard, harder than ever before. End-of-the-world, teenaged I-would-die-for-you, Prince, “Purple Rain” hard. I wanted to kill him, eat him, set his bones on fire, and fuck his ashes.
We didn’t have sex, though. He was married. He told me that he and his wife w
ere unhappy and separating. Yes, it’s an old song, not just sung by touring musicians. However, I wanted so badly for his line to be true, I swallowed it whole. And then some.
But, separated or not, I wasn’t going to fuck a married man. Not at the Mondrian, anyway. Not where everyone who’s anyone cheats on their special someone with some wannabe nobody. No. I didn’t want to cheapen what I felt to be the kind of life-changing love I was falling into with this man. I was classier than that, so I didn’t fuck him until a few months later, at the much classier Four Seasons in La Jolla.
If you’re going to go ho, go full-on bag, I guess.
We fucked in a mad fever for three days. Afterward, he had to go to Nevada and I had to get back to San Francisco. My band was headed to the East Coast to do a showcase for the big management company in New York.
When we said goodbye in San Diego, we agreed that we shouldn’t talk until a clear decision was made about his marriage. Should they decide to split, give me a call, should they manage to work it out, we’ll always have La Jolla, and see ya. My body was bitten and bruised, looking like I had passed out naked in bear country covered in potato chips. During the string of shows in Boston, New York, New Jersey, and Philly, the bruises had faded, but I started to feel funny.
My band got back from the East Coast in August, and by that time I was really feeling tired and, just, off, and I was late.
No way.
It happens sometimes when you’re on the road, not eating or sleeping properly. I bought a pee stick. The little pink plus sign in the pee stick window said yes.
Fuck.
I made an appointment for an official pregnancy test at the Women’s Needs Center, and decided to not tell anyone. But, after a band meeting, I went to Michael’s apartment, the same apartment we had shared for years, for a cup of coffee.
“Dude, are you pregnant?” he said, out of nowhere.
“What? Ha-ha. No. God! Why would you even ask me that?” I had tried to avoid people I knew for fear of giving away my condition. Involuntary tears sprang from my face instantly, each one screaming like a cracked-out cartoon character, “Ye-es! She’s pregnant! She’s preg-naaant!”