The baby was Dominic, born earlier that year. He was Louie’s son. His father had never laid eyes on him.
It took two cops and a burly paramedic to wrestle my naked mother into a straitjacket while a second medic held the baby. As they secured the straps that would hold her immobile with her crossed arms pinned against her chest, she screeched at them, eyes wild, neck cords straining.
How dare you put your hands on me? I am a direct descendant of George Washington! I come from aristocracy! My ancestors founded this country, and my family built it from the ground up!
That evening, she was committed to the psychiatric ward of the San Francisco General Hospital, and my siblings and I were consigned to the dependent unit of the state of California. Isabella and I were sent to the girls’ unit and our brothers to the boys’. We would remain there for the next several months.
IT WAS AUTUMN before my mother was released and another few weeks before she was allowed to resume custody of us. When we were finally reunited as a family, all of us in the same apartment again, Dominic was gone.
Where’s Baby Dominic? We asked her this question again and again. What happened to Dominic? When is Dominic coming back?
“He’s gone,” my mother told us. “He isn’t coming back.”
Our voices rose in a desolate clamor. Where did he go? What happened to him?
And all our mother would say was: “He was kidnapped.”
“JIM, I CAN’T stop thinking about the day my mother identified Louie’s body,” I told my husband. It was late at night and I couldn’t sleep.
I’d been to see my mother that morning. We’d talked about Louie’s death and its aftermath. Some of it she told me, and some I recalled myself. I remembered her psychotic break and arrest as well as the shame of seeing her outside with no clothes on, screaming as she disappeared into the frightening white cocoon of the straitjacket.
“You know what my mom was yelling, about being a direct descendant of George Washington, about coming from the aristocracy?” I went on. “That’s what she always reverts to, when she’s in the midst of a break.”
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned that.”
“Well, don’t you think it’s bizarre? Why would she say that stuff?”
“Because she’s crazy?”
“Well, sure. But still.”
Jim took a moment to consider this. “Don’t grandiose delusions come along with bipolar disorder? I mean, she has been diagnosed as bipolar. Among other things.”
“Yes,” I said, “but manic people usually claim they’re Christ, or the messiah, or Joan of Arc or someone like that. A martyr or a savior.”
“Okay. And?”
“Well, I mean, you know my mom. She’s a hippie and a Buddhist. What does she care about George Washington, or the aristocracy—why is that her version of grandiosity? Why isn’t she claiming that she’s, like, achieved perfect enlightenment, or she’s some goddess of love or something?”
“Yeah, I see your point,” my husband said. “I don’t know. My guess is she’s sensitive to people thinking she’s white trash. Maybe that’s her way of saying she’s better than they think.”
It came to me then that I’d never asked myself this question before. I’d been too busy surviving my mother to worry about understanding her. I was an adult now, and she was dying, and I was intrigued by her response to Louie’s suicide.
His death affected my mother. This was surprising but undeniable. It flipped a switch in her that I’d thought was broken. She displayed what I’d never seen her reveal in any other situation: guilt. I didn’t think she was capable of guilt.
I was a good mother, she would say. You had everything you needed. I home-schooled all of you.
You never starved, she would tell me. Seaweed is one of the healthiest things you can eat; it’s full of protein and minerals. People in the city paid top dollar for it!
I protected you, she said. My chanting protected you. After that head-on collision, you walked away without a scratch. All of you did.
But when she was faced with the lifeless body of her estranged husband? It’s the only time I can recall when the harm she did was revealed to her, made real to her: irreparable, irreversible. She couldn’t write her own version of it. She could not rationalize or revise it. For once, the truth was immutable: as cold and rigid as the dead man on the motel bed.
Even recalling it must have affected her, because soon afterward my phone rang, and the voice on the line was that of her most inconsolable persona.
“Hello?”
“Stephanie? It’s Agnes.”
It had been years since I’d heard from Agnes, and that was a relief. I didn’t know which persona I dreaded more: Agnes or Flow. As Flow, my mother was hostile, implacable, violent, and dangerous. But as Agnes, she was pathetic, and in a way that was even worse. Agnes always spoke in the whiny, fretful tones of a very young girl, and even a few seconds of this felt like more than I could bear.
“Stephanie?” she said again, a sob in her voice.
“What’s the matter, Mom?” I asked.
She started to cry. “I don’t know if I want to live,” she wept. “I took a bunch of pills but they didn’t work. They didn’t do anything at all!”
“Mom?” I said, alarmed. “When did you take a bunch of pills? Was this today?”
“No, not today.”
“When?”
“Before.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled sharply. “You scared me, Mom.”
“I need you to come over,” she begged.
“Right now? Why?”
“I’m all alone and I’m scared.”
I looked at the clock. It was nine thirty in the evening and I was tired. Jim was home for once, and leaving the house was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I have a lot going on tomorrow, Mom. I wanted to go to bed early tonight.”
She began to shriek. “Stephanie, you have to come! I need you right now! I’m all alone!”
I STOOD FOR a moment just outside my mother’s apartment and peered through the window of her front door. I could see her lying on the living room floor. She was wearing a yellow t-shirt and pink shorts, and she was coloring with crayons. It was almost a minute before I could make myself ring the doorbell.
“Where were you?” she demanded as she opened the door.
“Mom, what do you mean? I came right over after we talked on the phone!”
“I mean, where have you been? Why did you leave me all alone?” She sank down onto her sofa and put both hands on her belly.
“Mom,” I said. “You’re acting like a child.”
“I think I’m pregnant,” she whimpered.
“You’re not pregnant, Mom. You’re seventy-six.”
“Stop calling me Mom,” she whined. “My name is Agnes.”
I sat down beside her. She grabbed my hand and clutched it with all her strength. I felt pity in spite of my irritation.
As gently as I could, I said, “Your name is Florence. Why are you saying it’s Agnes?”
“Agnes means pure one of God.”
I choked back a laugh.
She glared at me. “You don’t believe me, do you? That’s how much you know. I was baptized in the highest Episcopalian church in this country!”
“Okay, Mom. I mean Agnes. It’s okay, take it easy.”
She eyed me fearfully. Without quite planning to, I found myself reaching out and stroking her hair. “I mean it. I’m sorry. It’s okay. You’re safe now.”
She seemed to relax. “Do you want to see my drawing?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She went to the spot on the floor where she’d been lying a few moments ago and retrieved her picture: A smiling blue-eyed girl with sunny yellow hair, standing beneath a rainbow. “Do you like it?” she asked anxiously. “I made it for you.”
IT WAS HOURS before I could make my escape. First I had to brew her a cup of tea with milk and honey, and rub her back while she drank it, and the
n coax her into bed. I had to sit beside her as she drifted off, murmuring to her in the low, gentle tones I used with my own children whenever they were sick, or after they’d woken from a nightmare.
By the time she was asleep, it was past two in the morning and I was exhausted, depleted. For just a moment I wavered over whether to crash on her sofa rather than begin the half-hour drive to my own house. But no. The moment the idea occurred to me, I dismissed it. I would rather drive all night than wake up beneath her roof.
How was I going to get through the next day? It wasn’t until I was finally in my own bed again beside Jim, setting my alarm for just three hours later, that I let myself consider the schedule ahead of me. I had meetings all morning, several student presentations to attend in the afternoon, and an interview with a prospective student at three.
But then at four—at four I would see Owen again. We were meeting to design the bar area in his living room.
The thought of Owen was like a life raft. I reached for it with something like desperation and held on for all I was worth, and in spite of everything, I fell asleep smiling.
Chapter 7
IT WAS TWO full weeks before I could make myself return to my mother’s apartment, and when I finally felt able to face her again, I had to deal with Jim’s resistance along with my own.
“The last time you went to see your mom, she kept you there half the night,” my husband reminded me. “Why are you going back there again?”
“Because I still have so many questions.”
It was six in the morning. Jim was shaving at the bathroom sink, and I was sitting up in bed, holding a cup of coffee and trying to steel myself for the hours ahead.
“It’s been a very peaceful couple of weeks since then,” Jim said, rinsing his razor and splashing aftershave on his face. “No crying jags, no misery, no rage. Taking a break from her was a great idea. Are you sure you don’t want just a little more time away?”
“She has lung cancer, Jim. That’s the problem. We don’t have time.”
“Hey,” Jim said suddenly. He had moved to the doorway of the bathroom and now stood leaning against the jamb. “Hey. Did you cut your hair?”
“Two days ago, yeah.” It was a pretty dramatic cut, in fact. I’d had at least six inches taken off. It now came to just above my shoulders, whereas before it had touched the top of my back.
“It’s nice,” he said. “It’s great. I can’t believe I didn’t notice.”
I can, I thought.
“I won’t stay more than an hour or two this time,” I said, returning to the topic of my mother. “I swear. She’s not going to be needy this time anyway, I can tell. There was no trace of Agnes when we talked last night.”
“What are you going to ask her about?”
“I’ve been having such vivid memories of this family I lived with when I was really little. The best memories of my entire childhood took place in their house, but I don’t even remember their last name.”
OUR FAMILY WAS reunited, minus Dominic, after my mother was released from the psych hospital in 1972. But we weren’t together for long before my mother was arrested for welfare fraud. Because of a clerical error, she had been receiving each check in duplicate for many months. It didn’t occur to her to report this oversight, just as it didn’t occur to her that eventually it would be discovered and she would be guilty of a felony.
In the meantime, she used the surplus income for breast enhancement surgery. Overnight she went from a nearly flat chest to a double-D endowment. But whenever people asked what the procedure had been like, she pretended not to understand the question.
“I never had anything done!” she would say. “The hormones are so different with each pregnancy. My breasts got so swollen when I had Dominic and they just never went back to their old size.”
She said it so often that I half-believed her, right up until the day I saw one of her medical reports, which listed—among literally dozens of other ailments—breast-implant-associated capsular contracture. In any event, she was sentenced to six months in the county jail, and my siblings and I were left with Rick.
I imagine Rick trying to make sense of the idea that he suddenly had sole custody of four kids. Did he ever try to feed us or put us to bed? The answer is almost certainly no. My mother never did those things, so he would have no reason to do them in her absence. Moreover, his every waking hour was focused on scoring whatever drugs he could get. He was wasted on alcohol, heroin, and whatever else was within reach twenty-four hours a day.
I remember being in our car, though, with him at the wheel. I recall being upright one moment and tipped into pandemonium the next. He had tried to take a corner while going seventy miles an hour. The car went onto its side and then upside down and onto its other side and just kept rolling.
It was loud, so loud, as metal met concrete and the windows shattered. But somehow, within that violent tumult, I barely moved. For the second time in my life I was inside a vehicle as it was totaled, and I walked away without a scratch.
When the police showed up in response to the accident, Rick reeked of alcohol and couldn’t talk without slurring his words. He was arrested and had no way to make bail, which left us with no adult in our home.
Isabella was taken in by her second grade teacher. Social workers showed up at my brothers’ school and brought them back to the dependent unit. But the police put me in the back of their squad car and initially drove straight to our home to search it for drugs, which is how I somehow ended up—for a brief and beautiful interlude of my life—in the most wonderful place I had ever been.
MY MOTHER WAS watching Jeopardy! and she didn’t even look up as I let myself into her apartment. I stood for a moment beside the front door, adjusting to the dim interior, and let my own gaze be drawn to the television.
“I’ll take World Capitals for three hundred, Alex,” said a player who looked like a college professor.
The clue appeared on the screen as Alex read it out loud. “The name of this Ethiopian capital means ‘New Flower’ in Amharic, the country’s official language.”
“What is Addis Ababa?” my mother said, just ahead of the contestant.
I turned my head and stared at her.
“That’s correct!” said Alex as the studio audience applauded.
“World capitals for four hundred, please,” the man said next.
“When this city became the capital of the new Mongolian People’s Republic in 1924, its name was changed to honor the ‘Father of Mongolia’s Revolution.’”
“What is Ulan Bator?” said my mother.
I felt my jaw slacken in stupefaction.
“Mom,” I said. “How . . . ?”
“What’s the matter?”
“How do you know these capitals?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“Uh . . . no. No, everyone does not. Most people wouldn’t know any of them. I don’t know any of them.”
“Well, why don’t you? Oh, never mind,” she said dismissively, without waiting for my answer. “You were never anywhere near as smart as me.”
I stood there for a moment absorbing this. It hurt, like almost everything else my mother ever said to me, but then again it wasn’t much to her credit even if it was accurate.
I sat down beside her on the sofa and took her hand. It was skeletal, the blue veins standing out in sharp relief against her translucent skin. Her face looked even gaunter than the last time I’d been here, her cheeks hollowed out like a famine victim.
“Mom,” I said. “How are you feeling? You look so thin.”
She shot me a sidelong malevolent glance. “I can’t say the same about you,” she said. “And why did you cut your hair?”
I touched the feathery ends that now came to just below my ears. “I wanted a change,” I told her. “I haven’t done anything different for a long time.”
“Well, it looks terrible.”
“That’s your opinion,” I said, stung again. “Several peopl
e have told me it looks great.” Including Owen, who’d said so more than once.
“They just didn’t want to hurt your feelings. You took way too many inches off. I’ve told you so many times: A woman’s hair is her glory. It’s her mystique. Her power.”
“My God, Mom,” I said. “Jim was right. I don’t know why I come here.”
“It’s too bad you can’t appreciate my honesty,” she said. “I’m telling you the truth for your own good, so you’ll never make such a terrible mistake again. If your own mother won’t tell you, then who will?”
Another time, I might have walked out. Today I wanted answers about the people I had lived with after the crash.
“Mom, listen,” I said. “I keep thinking of this family I lived with for a while, when I was around five years old. I must have been with them for several months, because I remember it being summer and then winter. I called the mother Mama Bee.”
“Oh, you mean the Bertolinis,” she said. “They were our next door neighbors on Dutton Avenue, in Santa Rosa. When Rick and I were both in the slammer, they offered to take you in. Then they didn’t want to give you back!”
“Just me? I know Isabella was at her teacher’s house, but not the boys?”
“Just you.”
“Why only me, do you think?”
“Who knows? Their house was small. There was no way they could take you all. They probably thought you were shy and sweet and wouldn’t be much trouble.”
THE BERTOLINIS’ HOUSE was cozy and quaint. It was the prettiest house I’d ever seen, though, as my mother said, the family was not wealthy and its dimensions were modest. The kitchen was a sun-splashed yellow and filled with light. There was a cookie jar on the counter that was shaped like an owl. There were colored potholders her children had woven from a loom, hanging on the oven door. Mama Bee kept a blue bowl of lemons on the kitchen table, and she used them for everything.
She made fresh-squeezed lemonade, which she served in a glass pitcher with lemon slices floating on top. She made lemon popsicles and lemon custard and lemon meringue pie. She used lemons for cooking and baking and cleaning and shining the silverware. The sight of lemons has lifted my heart ever since, and I keep a bowl of them on my own kitchen counter for this reason.
American Daughter Page 7