Monday Shorts

A revision of my first story for Sena:

Things did not go the way she planned them. But, then again, things never did. My mother has always been a woman for whom life was a perpetual problem. Never enough money, never enough time. Life was a blessing and a curse and my mother was a woman always in search of an escape.

She wanted to paint but never made time. All my mother’s paintings and paints and brushes and empty or half finished canvases were locked away in the spare room that was otherwise never used. She never finished any of them. She started and then saw no use in continuing. They never turned out the way she planned. “Kind of like life,” she always said.

She wanted to sing. She always plays music in the evenings. Songs she'll sing and dance to. Songs of lost love, songs of old women selling flowers in run down bars, songs soaked in gin and regret, her voice as light as a promise.

She wanted to travel. She wanted to fly in an airplane; She wanted to cross the Atlantic and hitchhike across Europe. She wanted to pray in Chartes and bathe in the Ganges. She wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a rock star, a veterinarian. She wanted to live in New York because sometimes she has insomnia and that city never sleeps. She wanted to stand in Time’s Square on New Year’s Eve and wait in the frigid air for the ball to drop and wave to the people at home watching her on their T.V. She wanted to live in a house by the ocean; She wanted to drive through the desert and never run out of gas. She wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge and once on the other side, live there forever because it looks pretty on postcards.

“You wanna make God laugh?” she often says, “Tell Him your plans.”

She wanted to marry. She wanted the white dress and the veil and the flowers. She wanted the church bells and the good wishes and her father to give away and approve. She wanted to walk down the aisle and live happily ever after. First, comes love; second comes marriage; then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

But it didn’t go the way she planned it. My father was supposed to take her away like Bluebeard’s brother and give her the life she dreamed of. Instead, he just disappeared. “Long gone and good riddance,” she says now.

It’s hard to imagine my father. There’s a photograph, stained and faded, that I found once—my mother and father sitting on my grandparent’s sofa, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder. It is hard to imagine them then—just a boy, seventeen and a girl, sixteen with their whole lives still ahead of them. Now nothing remains of the life they shared. That is if you don’t count me and the wedding ring my mother still wears.

It’s hard to imagine my father. Even when I look in the mirror and see that I have his hair, his eyes, his nose. Even when I look in the mirror and I look just like that seventeen year old boy in that picture. That boy who’s long gone and good riddance.

They had another child; I had a sister who was still-born. That’s when he started to drink, she says. Though he never missed a day of work and the bills got paid if barely, those five years were hell. My father went when she’d walked the floors one too many times, up at night not knowing where he was or when he was coming home. She claimed she could smell another woman a mile away and she probably could. He never dared show his face without a three day wait—enough time to raise the dead—and something short of an exorcism.

They divorced in 1972. Their life together summed up neatly in cold-worded court documents:
“The Court NOW FINDS that allegations of the Plaintiff’s complaint for Absolute Divorce are true and that the Plaintiff is entitled to an Absolute Divorce from the Defendant. AND THE COURT further finds that the parties were duly married on the 17th day of April, 1967 and lived and cohabited until on or about the 28th day of June, 1972. And THE COURT further finds that as a result of this marriage two children were born.”

I was born on Sunday, June 25, 1967 at precisely 3 AM—two months ahead of schedule. My mother was then sixteen—unschooled and with child. My father was then seventeen and conspicuously missing. My mother gave me his name—the only name she could think of at the time. To this day his name and a photograph are all I have of the man.

My birth was unplanned and my arrival unexpected—two months ahead of schedule. Weighing three pounds, eleven ounces—the world not yet gone metric.

My sister lived and died one week before Christmas, 1968. My father named her Anne, after his mother, fulfilling his father’s wish. She’s buried there next to Grandma Anna. When Grandpa Watson died three years ago, my mother and I and Grandpa’s few living friends were the only ones to attend his burial. My father sent flowers and a note. Grandpa was buried next to Grandma Anna, the stone bearing his name and marking the years of his life—1928-2006—read, “This world is not my home.”

Time passed. Things happened. My mother got a job in a mailroom. It paid the bills. She started paintings she never finished. She sometimes went out dancing with friends, leaving me with Susan Maxx, one of our neighbors. Susan Maxx—who sees all, hears all, knows all and tells all. She claims her house is haunted. That she hears footsteps on the stairs at night. That the piano plays without need of human hands. That the T.V. comes on when she’s in another room.

I don’t believe in ghosts. What’s gone is gone for good. Like my father. Long gone and “Good riddance,” like my mother says.

But what do I know? This house is so old it may be haunted. And Susa Maxx has lived in this house her entire life. And my mother’s entire life too. We live now in my grandfather’s house, across the street from Mrs. Maxx My great-grandfather built the house and he lived and died there just like his son and probably his son’s daughter-in-law will too. My father was meant to take her away. That’s the way she planned it. But wine, women and song mattered more to him.

“He was a good boy,” Mrs. Maxx said, “your father. Always worked hard. Tried to do the right thing.”

“Not according to my mother,” I said.

Mrs. Maxx bowed her head. “After he lost his little girl, things just never were the same. He never was right after that. But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad man.”
“Doesn’t it?”

“We all get through this world the best way we can.”

Something wasn’t right. Something was missing. Something there in that old photograph. Something we lost. They were duly married on the 17th day of April, 1967 and lived and cohabited until on or about the 28th day of June, 1972. As a result of this marriage, two children were born. One died. They were granted divorce on the 23rd day of April, 1973.

Plain and simple. What’s gone is gone for good.

“Let me show something,” Mrs. Maxx said, then she got up and walked down the hall. She came back carrying a small plastic bag. In the bag were photos. “I took these on their wedding day.”

There they were. Just a girl, sixteen and a boy seventeen on a bright spring day standing in the yard in front of our house. There they were exchanging their vows, him putting that ring on her finger. There they were feeding each other wedding cake and dancing out by those trees where Mrs. Maxx’s kids and I used to play hide and seek. There they were and they were happy.

I remember their voices down the hall, down the stairs. Shouting, my mother crying. The sound of things breaking—a glass, a plate, an empty bottle, a window. Sometimes, I can almost see his face. Smell the liquor on his breath when he carried me upstairs to bed. It made me dizzy. I remember the day he left. She packed his things and shut the door behind him and locked it.

“Thank God and Greyhound he’s gone,” she said.

Time passed. Things happened. A broken arm one summer from falling off a bike. Learning to drive and buying my first car, my mother singing “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” from the passenger’s seat.. High school. College. First love one winter and love lost by summertime. The pain, I thought would never end, until if finally did.
“One monkey don’t stop no show,” my mother said.

I moved to Chicago to teach English for a year. I moved to California to write for a magazine. I moved to Seattle for no good reason except that my lover at that time—what was his name?—wanted to live there. I moved back home when Mrs. Maxx called.

“She doesn’t want to say anything yet,” said Mrs. Maxx, “Your mother always was stubborn like that.”

I went home and waited for the time to come. The doctor said six months at best. But it didn’t turn out that way. Winter ended and spring came. We planted flowers. Went for walks when she felt strong enough. She liked to talk to the neighbors. Mrs. Maxx knew everyone’s comings and goings it seemed.

Three, almost four months passed when the end finally came. I sat beside her and slept at night in the chair by her bed. There were rare moments when she was lucid and knew where and who she was. Most of the time she was someplace else. She crossed the Atlantic and hitchhiked across Europe. She prayed in Chartes and bathed in the Ganges. She went to New York and stood in Time’s Square on New Year’s Eve and waited in the frigid air for the ball to drop. She waved to the people at home watching her on their T.V. She lived in a house by the ocean. She drove through the desert and never ran out of gas. She walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and once on the other side, lived there because it looked pretty on postcards.

And then the end finally came. She was buried next to Anne. There with Grandpa and Grandma Watson. I pick the flowers we planted and placed them there for her. She made a good end. But I cannot choose but weep to think that she lay in the cold ground.

I live in the house where we lived. I teach at a school nearby. And now another year has come and gone. One night, while out drinking with friends, I saw a man sitting at the bar. His hair turned gray, his eyes bloodshot from drinking, his voice throaty from smoking. He was telling the bartender about his children and his mother and father. He was telling the bartender about a woman he once loved years ago. He hoped to find her. To tell her he was sorry.

“I know where you’ll find her,” I said standing behind him, his back to me.

He turned to listen at last.

“She’s across town of Washington Street. She’s there with your daughter. And your mother and father.”

He just looked at me.

“They don’t need you anymore,” I continued, “And I don’t need you either. So you can go back where you came from.”

I looked into his bloodshot eyes at last, into that face that used to look like mine.

“You’re just a stranger.”