Sea Swallow Me and Other Stories

by Craig L Gidney

  He should’ve been afraid, very afraid. He had visions of being a house painter or an art instructor for senior citizens. But it was much worse. He was to interview for a position as an artist at a greeting card company. He declined politely. But she kept harping on it for a week, about how much an opportunity it was. You had to start somewhere, didn’t you? “Oh, come on Howard. You’ve done nothing but sit around the house since you came back from the Cracker Factory.”

  The guilt had finally gotten to him. He went to the interview with his mainstream portfolio in hand. Something in the pit of his stomach said “no.” He ended up getting the job. It paid well, and was mindless. For fifteen years it had distracted him from higher ambitions. In a way, it was Zen to lose yourself in simple strokes and daubs of paint. The drawback? The finished product was a fuzzy animal or an Easter egg nestled in a grassy hiding place. Flowers and fairies, that sort of thing. And he’d have to letter the inscription with things like Happy Birthday or We Offer Our Condolences For You Loss.

  Stone was tapped on the shoulder. People rose to view the body. He stood stiffly. People patted, hugged and kissed him. When all of the people in the church had left, and he was alone, Stone knelt beside his mother. He leaned to kiss her, but stopped at the feeling of intimacy so strong it burned. To do this, to kiss her, would be a sign of weakness, an admission of vulnerability. Stone left his mother’s corpse and told the pastor that he was ready to go to the gravesite. Pall-bearers closed the coffin lid. There was a cross etched on the pine. He told the four men that he’d like a few minutes alone after all. They nodded in mute sympathy.

  Stone stared at the carved cross until it blurred. A lifetime’s work, to be buried and rot in the ground!

  His masterpiece and his failure had been an artistic interpretation of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, done as a mixed media work. He’d spent years of painstaking research, forgone relationships, traveled to Ireland, and sacrificed everything for this epic work. After consulting Joycean scholars at Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and in DC’s Georgetown University and his trip to Dublin, he’d drawn hundreds, if not thousands of pictures, each representing words in the language Joyce had created. The end result was a giant Celtic cross made of polished blond wood, about eight feet tall. Within the interlaces were panels depicting scenes from the novel. Modern Dublin (of the ‘20s) competed with Irish mythology (kelpies, goddesses, and heroes). Permutations of Christianity, allusions to Eliot’s Wasteland. To have all that work destroyed by the sniping of critics, their reviews unanimous in denouncement. “An ambitious, ill-fated fiasco”. “Stone’s work… attempts to Greatness with a hubris not often seen… only succeeds in confusing.” And the worst: “Stone shoots for the Whitney but ends up in the Utah Museum of Crafts.” In rage he’d destroyed the second piece he’d been working on.

  The pastor interrupted his reverie. Stone found his fists clenched, and he was sweating.

  “Don’t worry, son,” said the octogenarian pastor, “when a loved one leaves us, they are always with us in our hearts. Your mother isn’t gone. In a way, she will never leave you.”

  Blah, blah, blah. If you only knew how I really felt. For a moment Stone feared that the pastor, like all of the cloth, could read the depths of his soul with a telepathic sense. He left the church, somewhere between guilt and honest anguish. But anguish over what? That he was guilty?

  - - -

  Stone closed the door behind him. It creaked as always. But now that creak had a different meaning, now that she was gone. Everything did. Even her smell—talcum, and alcoholic, flowery perfume—had faded. He sauntered over to the couch and passed by the mirror. There he was, pushing forty, with graying brown hair, salt-and-pepper mustache and glasses. He slicked back his hair and adjusted his silk tie—he’d have to be ready for the guests that would be arriving, bringing their food and sympathy. He gasped—that shocking, garish photograph of his mother’s face was opposite the mirror. She leered at him from a Sears sky-blue background and a thicket of plastic flowers. A parody of a daguerreotype, colorized like an old Shirley Temple movie, and instead of some elegant subject, say Evelyn Nesbitt or Sarah Bernhardt, there was just her. Stone shuddered. She was macabre—evil and ridiculous at once. A Grand Guignol character, a Judy puppet. Stone smiled, remembering.

  He had to convince her to go to the Corcoran all those years ago. Subterfuge had been the order of the day. He had to outfox her. Ignorant and obstinate, she had an almost supernaturally-tinged sense of suspicion. So he told her that he wanted to be an interior designer, something she could understand and appreciate, even if she was sorely in need of the services of one herself.

  “The capitol is overrun by the colored folks,” she’d said one night, cracking open peanuts. She would eat them, then root around her mouth with a cocktail toothpick. He tried not to look disgusted as the green cellophane frill skimmed a cigarette stained tooth.

  “They shoot and kill each other and destroy property. You sure you wanna go there? We got plenty of good schools down here, where it’s safe.”

  He had played her game. “Oh, I’ll move to the suburbs.” He’d no intention of doing so.

  “An interior designer, eh?” She’d grinned. “One of your Uncle Beau’s things was a designer. You sure you’re not funny?”

  Stone smiled politely at that one. In spite of her contempt for Uncle Beau’s—how would she put it? His lifestyle—she had genuine love for her brother. He remembered one summer as a small boy, the three of them sitting on the porch. Stone was smashing flies and mosquitoes against his legs. A bottle of grape Nehi rested next to him; Uncle Beau and his mother sat in wicker chairs with glasses of Electric Lemonade, getting drunk and giggling. The two of them compared the imagined prowess and carnal abilities of various ethnicities. They sent him away when the conversation grew too raunchy and vulgar.

  “No, Mom, I’m not like Uncle Beau.”

  She gazed at him skeptically. “Well, it sure breaks my heart, to see you go.”

  “Thank you,” Stone said, woodenly hugging her frame. He knew that she would appreciate this; scenes like these were supposed to end in hugs, like in the movies. The summer before leaving for DC had been one of the best. Her more vicious tendencies had been curbed, perhaps by the knowledge that he was leaving. He was floating on Cloud Nine, dreaming of future adventures. They had Moments, many of them. Like the Dale Evans and Roy Rogers Festival on TV, where she wore a cowboy hat and waved a toy gun at the cathode-ray screen. It was silly and endearing. He would never see it again; he was determined not to. So her annoying ticks had become quaint eccentricities.

  That’s right. Just remember the good times.

  But he just couldn’t. The lies about where he was living—“Mom, Rockville is just too far from the school; I had to take an apartment on Q Street… Yes, its a safe neighborhood. Yes, there are plenty of white people here. Did I say plenty? I meant the entire block is white.”—had haunted his existence. Never mind that he was living in the area where the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance once held their living room courts. The ghosts of Hurston, Bontemps, Toomer and Hughes didn’t linger there; the ghoulish doppleganger of his mother did with the constant threat of appearing unannounced. Which she did one time.

  The doorbell rang.

  Howard glanced at her grinning, frozen face on the wall. “You have exactly two hours; make the most of it. Afterwards you’ll be replaced by a Kahlo or an O’Keefe.” He laughed. But he felt eyes burning the nape of his neck as he headed toward the door.

  - - -

  The boxes were unexpectedly heavy even though they were filled with paperbacks and magazines. Stone was sweating by the time he had moved several from the basement to the back of his station wagon. The contents of these boxes were more appropriate souvenirs of Martha Stone’s essence than anything else. Lurid romance novels with busty heroines embraced by bronzed, shirtless men. Tabloids that had large-eyed, pale aliens, has-been movie actresses and fad diets. These would go straight to G
oodwill. With each trip outside her portrait appraised him. He’d yet to take the picture down. On the fifth trip from the basement he rested, looking at his mother.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered. “It’s my goddamned house now.”

  There was no response. The way it should’ve been all along.

  On the seventh trip upstairs he stumbled. Books spilled onto the carpet. Stone swore, and began placing them back into the box. One of the covers showed an Anglicized “Indian” princess. The Passion of a Cheyenne Heart. Then he recalled with shame the time he’d bought Kamela back from school for Thanksgiving. She was from India. Her skin had the sheen of oil and her lacquered black hair was woven into a thick, heavy braid. A classmate from the Corcoran, she was also his first girlfriend. The sight of her unbound hair flowing around her shoulders, like some sorceress’, still made him weak. When his mother had answered the door, he saw the pursed, frosted lips, the scowling eyes behind their cat-eye lenses. Howard, I thought you was going to bring home a nice white girl. Instead, you bought home this. But her initial hostility dampened. After all, Martha Stone was Southern and charm was the South’s stock and trade. Mint juleps and refrigerator cookies were passed around. Stone ignored his mother’s inane chatter. The rise and fall of Kamela’s breasts beneath her turtleneck mesmerized him; he’d held them last night. He thought of her form beneath, then on top of his. Her hair lashing wildly. The elegance of her British delivery, like an NPR announcer’s.

  Then came the crashing blow, the moment that Stone was sure his mother was waiting for.

  “What exactly is your—uh—ethnicity?” Martha Stone had the ubiquitous cellophane toothpick poised in her fingers. Her fingernails, her press-on claws, were painted pink to match her lipstick.

  “I’m Indian—”

  His mother raised her palm and held it perpendicular to her body. “How!” And she laughed maniacally.

  Kamela began to giggle, out of politeness. “Actually, I’m from just outside New Delhi.”

  Stone had buried his face in his hands.

  Later, Martha Stone had explained, “Oh, Howard, she did said she was an Indian.”

  He apologized to Kamela for his mother’s display of ignorance. Kamela insisted she wasn’t offended. “She’s charming, really.” But he knew she’d been insulted. Afterwards, he couldn’t face her again and broke it off.

  Stone sat on the living room floor, the coarse carpet making him itch, his lower left leg asleep from the angle in which it was resting. He was slightly flushed from remembering Kamela’s beauty. You took that away from me. He could’ve had two beautiful brown children with shining agate eyes and hair; and a wife who now worked in the Asian Art Department of the Smithsonian. But, like his art, that was gone. No thanks to his mother.

  Stone brought up another one box. The Wiles of a Vixen peeked up at him. A Victorian governess in a scarlet mantle ran through a forest of bare silver birch, grinning, pursued by her brooding gypsy lover.

  Stone’s second lover, Ned, had insisted, “Your mother’s a scream.” Ned was pale and thin, and had some mysterious aristocratic past. Stone imagined that Ned’s father was the patriarch of an industrialist family. Ned had done something to offend them, whether his homosexuality or past experiences with drugs, or perhaps a combination of both. Stone thought this because Ned’s mother would whisper into the phone when she called. As if she was afraid she’d be caught. His father never called. Whatever the offense was, it wasn’t great enough to stop sending the boy to the Corcoran with a nice living stipend.

  Ned could’ve been an albino, he was so pale. He didn’t have blood, he had ichor. Except in really cold weather, when a curious, teacup-shaped spot of bright red appeared on just his right cheek. If he wasn’t one of the Beautiful People, he was a distant relation. During Stone’s junior year, they shared an apartment on Capitol Hill, near Eastern Market. A townhouse basement with milky-blue walls, a kitchenette, and a queen-sized bed with mounds of fluffy pillows. Ned’s unseen mother provided the rent and all the furniture. Both Stone’s nascent sculptures and Ned’s charcoal sketches—self-described as “a cross between Erte and Dr. Seuss”—adorned the walls and, in some cases, the floors of their nest. Stone blushed, recalling the afternoons spent exploring Ned’s marble icon of a body. But even that Martha Stone had taken from him.

  The day that began the end of his relationship with Ned started so excellent. Stone awoke to streaks of golden sunlight hitting the bowl of fruit he was going to use as a still-life model. Ned awakened next to him, his white-blond hair tousled, silver-gray eyes reflecting an image of him, and murmuring “Howie.” After sex they ate sourdough pancakes with real maple syrup (a gallon had magically appeared, via UPS, the day before. “The fairy’s godmother again,” Ned had said). Someone knocked on the door.

  “Expecting someone, Howie?”

  Both of them were bare-chested and in their pajama bottoms. Ned stood and walked toward the door. Stone had a horrible premonition. His Aunt Thelma lived in Norfolk, Virginia, a good two hours from DC; his mother had spoken to him last week about driving up to visit her and her nephew the Klansman. What if, on a lark, she decided—

  “Ned, don’t!”

  “Calm down, Howie. Both of us are comely; let’s give ‘em a dose of good old queer domescity.” And he opened the door.

  Like the slowed-down scene of a grade B horror film, the door swung back. The camera panned back, revealing layers of pleated, floral printed polyester, a carnival wig of maraschino cherry-red curls, and like a dollop of whipped cream, a Jackie O pillbox hat. Without a word, Ned turned to Stone with a wide grin splitting his face. Stone hated him from that moment onward.

  “You must be Mrs. Stone.” Ned bent down gallantly, inviting her in. “I’m Ned Meniscus, Howie’s—Howard’s roommate. Welcome to our humble—very humble abode.”

  The witch stepped in with a “How nice you are.”

  A speechless Stone sat staring. She walked over and hugged him (he’d forgotten to stand until the last moment). After an inspection littered with niceties and small talk, Martha Stone settled down to business: the criticism of her son’s life.

  “This is what you do?” she asked, looking at an abstract sculpture that he’d labored on.

  “Yes. Why don’t you have a seat? Can I offer you some water?”

  “Oh, yes, dear, of course. Just look at Ed’s artwork, though; it’s as cute as the Dickens. I know plenty of folks who’d want that sorta stuff, those peculiar lookin’ people in colorful outfits.” Ned beamed. “But this. This just looks like a rock with some sort of a stick peeking out of it. What in tarnation is it?”

  “It’s an abstract sculpture, Mrs. Stone, and it’s the latest rage. I hear of several stars—Lee Majors and Suzanne Sommers—who collect them. They just can’t get enough of them.” Did Ned have to be so queeny? And it was one thing if he were condescending to his mother.

  “Really,” came his mother’s incredulous reply.

  The conversation turned to other things. “You fellas share a single bed. Don’t you think that’s a little, uh, you know?”

  Ned improvised while Stone looked horrified: “Well, Howie’s, I mean Howard’s bed has seen better days. One day, it just collapsed. I told him to buy a new bed-frame, not that monstrosity from the church bazaar. But he wouldn’t listen to me. It’s a temporary arrangement, this bed-sharing.”

  She’d been eager to suck up that lie. As the two of them chatted about this and that, Stone felt left out and disgusted at the both of them. When his mother bought up the issue of blacks and crime in the city, Ned had obliged her, like indulging a sweet-natured, but dim-witted child. As evening fell, Stone and his mother went to dinner together.

  “I want some real food, none of this hoity-toity city food. Something down-home and simple.”

  He took her to the Florida Avenue Grill, a tight, narrow greasy-spoon that specialized in Southern Soul Food. The two of them sat at the Formica counter and ate crispy fri
ed chicken iridescent with oil, cornbread sweet as cake, greens swimming in pot liquor and macaroni and cheese.

  Martha said, “As Beau and me often said, colored folks can do a few things right, and cooking is one of ‘em.”

  “Shhh,” hissed Stone.

  He glanced around at the clientele, mostly blacks and white college students, to see if they’d overheard. His mother blushed slightly. It was a form of Tourette’s Syndrome, really, her habit of blurting out ignorant things. She had no control.

  She told him about her trip to Aunt Thelma’s and her tour of the Navy yards. As they were getting ready to leave, she said, “Tell me the truth, Howard. That Ned is a funny boy.”

  “He’s nice—” Stone blurted out.

  “Oh, I’m sure. But sleeping in the same bed with him—he hasn’t tried anything, has he? Here.” She pressed a wad of bills into his palm as they left the restaurant. “Get yourself a new bed as soon as you can.”

  She left him at the door to his home. He waved her off. Then he went into the house, steaming mad. He was greeted by a half-naked Ned, thoughtfully chewing on a kumquat.

  “Your mother’s a scream! She’s like a John Waters character—”

  “What do you mean?” Howard’s voice had been low.

  “I mean, she’s endearing, kind of like a drag—”

  “Listen to me, Ned. My mother is not some camp belle. She’s a monster.”

  “Oh, come on, Howie. She’s not that bad; when you consider where and when she’s grown up—”

  “Enough! You of all people…” Howard glared at Ned. Traitor. For the next week he wouldn’t speak to Ned. How could he like his mother so much? At the end of the week, he came home from the class he T.A.’d, and found his belongings—a trunk full of clothing, a suitcase of art supplies—sitting outside. Ned opened the door. He looked ravishing in a black turtleneck and dark jeans. He was a Beat Angel.

  Before Stone could open his mouth, Ned said, “I sent your artwork over to the school; I don’t know if they got it or not. I’d like the key back.”