A Mother's Love (24 page)

I returned to the room with the wounded, the injured, the abused, the battered, the drunk and the broken, my son weeping in my arms. I joined the line for I don't know how long, waiting to reach the intake nurse, who could then give me a number so that I could sit in the room and watch the quiz show. I stood numb, the borders between danger and safety, protection and threats no longer clear, and wondered how the world survived. How did anyone survive? I patted Bobby. “It's all right,” I said. “It will be all right.”

At last, arms aching, I arrived. A woman with a beehive hairdo and painted-on eyebrows, sat at the desk with a sharpened pencil flicking people to the right or the left, as if she herself were judgment, as if she were the one who decided what was to happen to us all. “For you or the baby,” she asked without looking at me.

“The baby,” I said.

“Go to pediatrics.” She waved me away with her pencil, and suddenly I was saved.

Pediatrics. Where was pediatrics? I left behind the room of the wretched and the lost and turned a corner to a wall painted with pandas and cats and elephants and giant flowers. Soft music played. The room was light. A doctor was on hand; a nurse smiled. They took me in right away. So it pays in this world to be little and helpless and small, I thought. It is only when we grow up that indifference or worse sets in.

The doctor, a smiling young resident, touched Bobby's arm, carefully moved it this way and that. “I could X-ray this, but I think I know what the problem is. Nursemaid's elbow. The bones have come out of the socket. If you hold him, I'll pop them back in.”

“You will, just like that. You'll make my son well again.”

He looked at me with sad, understanding eyes. “Yes,” he said, “I think I can do that.”

He held Bobby's arm between his hands and gave it first a pull and then a pop like a cork gun. Bobby's face opened into a startled look; he uttered a piercing scream. And then it was done. The arm moved smoothly again. The doctor and nurse stroked his head. Bobby reached with his injured arm for the animal cracker that was being offered to him. “He's fine,” the doctor said, now patting my head, for I had fallen, sobbing, onto my son's hair. “He's all right. Are you all right?” the kind doctor said. “Are you all right?”

S
OME BOYS are chasing me on their bikes. I did something to one of them, they say, and they're going to give me the dirty-girl treatment, but what I did escapes me. Maybe I took a boy's rabbit's foot or maybe I said something about one of them, but whatever it is, they're going to get me. I think, as I look back on it now, that they liked me. I'm sure of it, in fact. But whatever it was I did, they were chasing me. Maybe they thought I was pretty, with my red hair, as they chased me down the broad streets, calling my name, out onto the open road that leads to the desert.

They chase me for a long time, until my legs get weary and the sweat pours down, but I'm afraid to stop, because I don't know what they'll do if they catch me. So I keep pedaling and pedaling, and I can imagine their faces, leering behind me. I take a
wide turn in order to head back toward town, and that's the last thing I remember about them chasing me. I remember only my bike going out from under me and my hands reaching out in front of me, but for what? What are they trying to grab? The air, the ground. They were beautiful, poised, as if I were diving into water and not the side of the road.

When I come to, my mother is there. She sits in the car, window rolled down, cigarette in her hand. “Get in the car,” she says. “I'm taking you to the doctor. Get in. You're a mess.” She rushes me to the emergency room, where a nurse with cool hands rubs my brow and a doctor removes the gravel and dirt from my legs and arms and face and my mother paces nervously around the emergency room, saying over and over again, “There won't be any scars, Doctor, will there? I don't want her to be scarred.”

Later that night as we tell the story to my father and Sam, I ask my mother, “Why didn't you get out of the car? Why didn't you help me and get out of the car?”

And my mother looks at me as if I'm insane. “What are you talking about?” she says. “Of course I helped you. Of course I got out of the car. How do you think your bike got into the trunk? You didn't put it there.”

That night, wrapped in bandages from head to toe, I sit up until my mother comes into the room
to say good night. The window is open and a breeze blows in through the curtains, which rise and fall like ghosts. “I don't remember you getting out of the car,” I tell her again.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, amazed. “I rushed right to you. I picked you up in my arms.”

So why don't I remember this, even now? Why do I always see my mother sitting in that car, the window rolled down? What difference does it make if she got out or didn't? What matters is that I remember that she didn't.

I rose the next day to a snap in the weather. A heavy fog had settled in; I had always thought of the city as being immune to natural phenomena. Tidal waves could not strike our shores, earthquakes could not shatter our streets. Hurricanes would never break our glass. Of course it was ridiculous. None of us was immune.

Walking down my street with Bobby on the way to the store, I spotted a man rummaging through the garbage across the way. He was a large white man with a big beer belly, and he was collecting cans in a shopping cart. He appeared to be somebody down on his luck—somebody who had perhaps just lost a job. But what drew my attention to him more was that he had two small children with him, very close in age, perhaps four and five, and he was shouting at them as he dug
into the garbage. “I told you not to do that, didn't I? Didn't I tell you to do what I said?” He handed the little girl several cans. “Don't you do that again,” and as she was dropping them into the shopping cart, he struck her with his open palm across the side of her head. The little girl shrieked and he struck her again.

“I told you,” he said. “You'd better do what I say. You'd better not mess around or you're really going to get it.” He raised his hand again, and both the girl and her brother pleaded with him.

I had stopped, my hands on Bobby's stroller. In the fog and gray, it was not that easy to see me, but I stood perfectly still. Anger and indignation rose inside me. “If you lay a finger on that child,” I shouted at him, “I will call the police. If you harm that child, I will testify in court against you.”

What if he saw me across the street and came over to beat me up? What would I do then? But he did not see me. He did not know where I was or where the voice had come from. His eyes scanned the buildings and then the skies. Dropping his hand, he looked as if he had heard the voice of God.

M
ARA PHONED at nine o'clock one night. “Listen, Ivy, I have a problem.” She sounded breathless. “I'm at a party in Brooklyn and my baby sitter just called. Jason is locked in the bathroom. He's hysterical. The baby sitter is hysterical. I don't know what to do. I'm getting into a cab now, but can you go over there? Call the landlord. Call a locksmith. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

I heard the terror in her voice, so I wrapped up Bobby and rushed with him across the street. From the elevator, when it reached Mara's floor, I could hear Jason screaming. Oh, my God, I thought, what if he turns on the hot water? What if he scalds himself? The baby sitter, a girl about sixteen, was on her knees by the bathroom door as I came in. Alana was in a corner, sobbing. “It's okay, sweetie,” the baby sitter kept saying. “Mommy will be home soon.”

“What happened?” I shouted. The girl's face was white.

“He just went into the bathroom and shut the door. He locked himself in. I don't know what happened. It was an accident. It wasn't my fault.”

I touched her arm. “I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout.” I handed her Bobby and grabbed a few of Jason's favorite books. “Jason, it's Ivy, Mommy's friend. Sit on the floor, Jason. I'm going to tell you a story. Here, Jason, reach for my fingers under the door. See if you can touch my hand.” His fingers touched mine in the space beneath the door. I told the sitter to get the Yellow Pages while I read to Jason.

The locksmith arrived just as Mara did. Jason was sitting on the floor, his fingers still barely touching mine, as I read to him from a book of fables.

Mara came over the next morning. She carried a large box containing another batch of Jason's things. “I didn't know how to thank you,” she said, “so I brought you the next installment—for next winter.”

I opened the box, which was filled with sweaters, pants, pajamas. “I'm the one who should thank you,” I said.

A look of sadness swept over Mara's face—the kind of look I'd seen only a few times before. “What is it?” I asked. “What's wrong?”

She sighed and was about to speak when I opened the closet where I kept Bobby's things, which was filled with clothing that had been Jason's. She went to the closet and held in her hand what had once been her son's clothes. She touched the fabrics. “Jason wore this his first Easter,” she said, fondling a red suit. “And this he had on the day his father left.” She ran her hands over every item. “I can remember when he wore these.” She touched overalls, shirts, as if all the memories of his babyhood came spilling out of the open closet. “It's all here, isn't it,” she said.

“Mara, what's wrong?” She sat at the kitchen table while I pulled on Bobby's sweatshirt. I handed her a cup of coffee and watched it turn cold in her hands.

“I have to tell you something, Ivy,” she said, “but you won't like it, I'm afraid.”

I sat down across from her. “Tell me, what is it?”

“I'm moving,” she said at last. “I've had my apartment on the market for so long I just forgot about it. I didn't even mention it to you because I just assumed no one wanted it. But someone's made me an offer. One I can't refuse. I need the money. I can't afford the private schools. We're moving upstate to Montrose. It has good public schools, and I'll buy a little house. It's not that far.” She reached across and took my hands. “You can visit on weekends.”

“Weekends?” I was shaken. “I'm used to having you across the street. I don't know what I'll do.”

I wanted to weep, though I couldn't explain it to her. Whose window would I look at? Whose light would I try to see in the night? Who would be there to comfort us? There would be no one to turn to in an emergency, no one to go to in need. Suddenly everything was changed.

“You'll come and visit,” Mara said. “That's what you'll do.”

I looked toward the window where I'd watched her, without knowing her yet knowing her, all these years. “Yes,” I said, “but it won't be the same.”

“We'll make it be the same.”

I squeezed her hands. “We'll always be friends,” I said. “Do you understand? You've clothed my child.” Then I said it more emphatically. “You've clothed my child.”

I
FEEL THEM FADING; the images recede. Just as they came, so they have left, the way I always imagined ghosts would leave, or the lost souls who have at last found their rest. I have been like those people in Madagascar who dance with their ancestral bones. But now I have polished and dressed them, laid them back to rest. Like Bobby, I am learning to sleep through the night. It is as if I am a child again, learning everything from scratch. Even though I sit up with Bobby late into the night, I cannot conjure them. They've gone far away. Spirits who've left the fourth dimension. Ghosts who've moved on to rest. Or, rather, I've given them their leave.

I try to picture my mother and Sam in the various stages of their lives, but like an erotic fantasy in a person who has at last found true love, the images are played out and no longer have the
power to arouse me. I do not picture them in housing tracts or bungalows by the sea. They are not on any coast in any life. When I call to them, they do not come. If they are dead or if they are alive, it does not matter much. They have become the dear departed.

I have come to the place where I must admit that what happens with most people is a mystery to me, and probably to themselves as well. And that there is no reason to try to comprehend. My mother is gone. That is a fact. She left with my sister long ago, and they won't be coming back. Try as I do to make sense of this, to find the answer so that it all comes out clear, I have to acknowledge that there are many unanswerable questions in this world, and my story will be one of them. I thought that it would all somehow become clear—a letter found in a drawer, a confession from my father, a sign, an attempt to elucidate it after all these years, but that is not the case.

I will never know why my mother left or where she went. I will only know what I can know. That there are people in this world who have cared for me and others who have not. A poet once said that our lives are shaped as much by those who refuse to love us as by those who do. I am left wondering why we give so much power to the former, so little to the latter. But I am one whose life has had such a shaping. I have had love in some of its incarnations
and I have a child to take care of. These are the facts. The rest are mysteries to be solved at another time. There will be no simple answers, no sudden revelations, no miracle cures here.

At night now as Bobby sleeps, I find myself up until all hours, painting with a vengeance. And I mean exactly this: as if it will be my revenge. I draw roads I've never seen, places I've never been. I draw detailed sketches of roadside diners where I can taste the grilled cheese and French fries; I can see the waitresses with their bouffant hairdos, practically glued high on their heads. The stuffed antelope on the wall, the six-shooters crossed, framed photographs of the Marlboro man, a Navajo face.