Banana Rose (32 page)

My mother’s ice cream melted on the spoon, poised before her open mouth. None of us moved. The bikers all piled into the bar across the street. We watched until thirty-one motorcycles gleamed black and still like beetles. The last red-bearded man disappeared into the bar with a chain hanging out the back pocket of his jeans.

I took a deep breath and a sip from my Perrier. I looked at my parents. They were in shock, but my father still managed a comment. “And every one of them”—he nodded—“has a mother.”

The waitress came over. “They’re headed for the big bikers’ convention in South Dakota. We see a group of them about once a day.”

“Can we have the check?” my father asked, and then, under his breath, he said, “Let’s get out of here.”

When we were settled in the car, headed back to the Twin Cities, he said, “Boy, this is some place. Hot and humid as the devil, and they accost you with Hell’s Angels when you stop for a cup of coffee. Nell, you can’t be too cautious around here. It looks nice, but they’ve got something up their sleeve.” He lit up a Bering Plaza cigar, and I had to open a window, even though their car was air conditioned.

As we pulled up to the curb in front of our house, Gauguin waved to us from the stoop. He had come home from work early to surprise us. All of a sudden, I realized how hard he was trying to connect. In fact, he had been trying for the last three weeks, but it had been so tense between us, I hadn’t noticed. Out of the blue, I felt an opening in me as I sat in the back seat of my parents’ car. It wasn’t
all
his fault. I
had
been with Tiny, and we
both
had made that stupid agreement about sleeping with other people. We could work it out. After all, weren’t we married? A small voice in me said, “Go ahead, love him again.” And like pressing the shift key on a typewriter, so the carriage raises a quarter inch to make capital letters, I made that small shift, too, and it mattered. Something in me relaxed.

By the time I opened the car door and stepped out, I was different.

“Hi, Gauguin.” I waved cheerily.

When we got up the porch steps, Gauguin said, “Alice just called to apologize. She can’t make it tonight. She’s not feeling too well.”

“What’s the matter?” my mother asked.

“Didn’t say. Alice is real stalwart. No matter how sick she is, she usually ignores it. So I think it’s a good sign. She’s being kinder to herself.”

My mother nodded. I could see what Gauguin said made no sense to her. “Can’t we do anything?

“Naa.” Gauguin waved his hand.

That night when we went to bed, I told him I appreciated his effort while my parents were here. I touched his shoulder in a tender way and we began to make love. I felt the zinnias blooming orange and red under the lilac bushes and all the plum branches fruiting in our yard as I took him into my body. All of summer woke up in me. Basil leaves shone even in the humidity, Bibb lettuce grew full in a row next to the tomatoes all within the length of my torso. My legs hummed and a bird warbled in my head.

The next morning, Gauguin and I sang songs together outside, like in the old days, leaning against the house’s foundation, as the shadow of the duplex next door crossed our outstretched legs.

My father must have heard us singing. He came dancing out the back door, a newspaper on his head. “ ‘When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along.’ ”

We laughed.

“Let’s go out for bagels. An air-conditioned place. Oh, last night your mother accidentally kicked Matthew’s kitten. What’s its name? Red Dog? Peculiar name for a cat. But it’s fine. You know your mother and animals. I’ll go and get ready. Be down in ten minutes. Your mother’s sleeping late.”

After he left, I turned to Gauguin to explain. “My mother doesn’t like dogs—or any animals. She bunches them all together. She has no particular reason. Her parents didn’t like them either. I think it’s a throwback to the ghettos. The Cossacks used dogs when they attacked the Jews.

Gauguin nodded. “Wow.”

When we returned from breakfast, my mother was up, dressed, and packed.

“What’s this?” I asked. “You’re not leaving for three days.”

“Nell, we have to get home,” my mother said.

“How come?” I asked.

“It’s just time. We’re hot—”

“And we’re worried about Grandma and Rita,” my father added. “It’s a long time for them to be without us.”

I rolled my eyes. Here we go again. I didn’t even make an effort to stop them or ask why they hadn’t told me earlier.

My mother hugged me hard on the top step of the stoop. She whispered in my ear, “Nell, give a hundred percent. If he doesn’t do the dishes, you do them. Why, your father hasn’t done anything for thirty-five years. If I waited for him, the house would fall down around our ears.” Then she let go of me. My smile looked like the letter Z turned on its side.

At the end of August, I was invited to exhibit in an eight-woman painting show in downtown Minneapolis. The opening was in December, only three months away, so I frantically rushed to produce some new work before my teaching job started again at the beginning of September.

One late afternoon as I was busily applying red to the surface, it dawned on me: Hey, I never even mentioned painting to my parents the whole time they were here, and they didn’t see any of my work. I shrugged. I’ll send them photos after the show. I can’t think about that now.

I was engaged in the picture before me. I was using canvas now. The paint spread well. After my show at the Riverside, I decided I could splurge more on my materials. I didn’t know where the picture was going. Dusk set in outside, and I turned on the ceiling light.

Just then Gauguin came in. “Nell, I joined a band.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not. The other musicians are nineteen years old, but I don’t care. I want to play.”

“Where are you going to play?” I asked, brush still in hand.

“Oh, they’re kids. They’ll take anything. They have gigs on weekends in small towns in Wisconsin. We’ll even play in high school gyms. When I’m home, I’ll still free-lance for my father.”

I was stunned. “What? You’re quitting your job? You didn’t even discuss it with me.”

“Hey, you got your show. I have to do something.” His face grew tense.

“Oh, so that’s it.” My eyes narrowed.

“What’s it? I want to play.” He slammed the bathroom door.

Five nights later, he came home from his first gig at four in the morning, and I punched him in the arm as hard as I could. He slept on the couch. I hated him as much as I had after the Sherry business. I thought of moving out, but a week later we found out that Alice had cancer.

A
LICE HAD GROWN UP
on Sand Hill Farm outside of Cedar Falls, Iowa. She once told me, “Oh, Lord, it was so lonely there as a young kid, I’d eat dried husks of corn in October, just to hear the sound in my teeth.” Then she gave off a cynical laugh that showed her nicotine-stained teeth. “My own mother had an affair with the hired hand, and my father, who was tired, didn’t bother to notice.”

Now she had to face that loneliness all over again, holed up in her one-bedroom apartment. When I’d visit her, I’d sit at the end of the white couch where she lay. She slowly sipped cherry flavored morphine from a cut crystal glass, her inheritance from her mother who had died of cancer. Wrapped in a white sheet, Alice continued to suck cigarettes, all the while holding the elegant glass of pink liquid. Friends came in and out, bringing flowers and fruit, layer cakes and donuts. But Alice couldn’t eat any of it. She grew thinner and thinner until the only thing she could digest was a bit of rice cream slowly spooned into her mouth. But her blue eyes stayed the color of cornflowers that grew wild in summer at the edges of country roads.

Gauguin quit the band to be home more and help his mother. He went back to work for his father full time and visited Alice’s apartment every day after work. He read aloud to her from
Time
magazine.

One night he came home late. “Nell, I carried my mother to the bathroom and placed her on the toilet. I held her thin body as she sat there. When she was finished, I wiped her and carried her back to the couch. She can hardly even hold down the morphine now. She needs shots.” Then he folded over on our maroon couch and wept until it seemed the earth poured out of him and into his hands.

Later that night, he yelled, “Nell, goddamn it! You put the hangers in the closet the wrong way,” and slammed the closet door shut.

“C’mon, Gauguin. I know you’re having a hard time”—I stepped toward him—“but don’t take it out on me.”

He swung around. “What do you know? Your mother doesn’t have cancer. I didn’t know anything till now. My mother’s dying in front of my face.”

What could I say? I looked at him. His skin was yellow. His eyes were full of fear. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked. I knew there was nothing to be done, but I suggested making some chicken soup, if not for Alice, then for him.

“Nell, you can’t help. No one can.” Then he grabbed his jacket and headed for the front door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ve just got to move. I’m going to walk around the streets,” he said, zipping up.

“Want company?” I asked.

“No, not now.” He opened the door and then called out, “Thanks any way.”

I nodded and bit my lip.

When he got home an hour later, I tried to talk to him again. “Gauguin, don’t you think we should spend some time together?”

“Nell, my mother’s dying—”

“I know.”

“Nothing else matters.” He turned to me. “You can’t ask anything right now. Get it? Nothing.”

“Yeah, sure.” I turned and walked into the kitchen.

That Saturday morning, I went with Gauguin to visit Alice. I hadn’t seen her in a week and I couldn’t believe how thin she was. I reached out to take her hand then, frightened, pulled my hand back. My face flushed with shame. While Gauguin was in her kitchen making juice, she leaned toward me. I thought of our lunch at Tommy’s Grill. She had tried to be considerate since then, even though she hadn’t been sure how. My heart was filled with sadness. This was serious. She was dying. Any differences we had didn’t matter anymore. I leaned closer to her. She wanted to say something.

“Nell, I know you have it hard. Gauguin’s crazy right now. Forgive him. Last night he was here watching television with me, and an old rerun of the Beatles on
The Ed Sullivan Show
was on. He got all upset and said he should have been on there.” Then she put her bony finger to her lips. “He’s coming,” she whispered.

“Hey, what’s going on in here? Looks like a coffee klatsch.” Gauguin walked around the couch, holding a tall glass of cranberry juice.

“Nothing, nothing,” Alice said, and managed to smile at me.

I bit my bottom lip and raised my eyebrows in acknowledgment.

My December art show almost went unnoticed, because it was about that time that an ambulance took Alice to the hospital. She could eat nothing now and couldn’t even swallow her morphine. We followed in our car. The ambulance parked in the oval drive, and two attendants carried her on a stretcher through the large swinging doors of the building. Her eyes were open. I bet this is the last time she will be outside alive, I thought to myself. The sun shone brilliantly that morning. Across the street were three redbrick town houses. In the basement of one of them was a small market with a glass window crisscrossed by metal bars and a thin neon sign spelling ice cream. The E of ice was broken off. I didn’t know how much of this she saw. I looked down at the cracks in the sidewalk and said farewell to them for her.

For the next week Gauguin sat by her bedside, holding her hand and whispering in her ear to her semiconscious mind, “Alice, it’s okay, you can let go.” He’d read about saying that in a book on dying. He didn’t know what else to do and he said it somehow felt right and true.

Mostly Gauguin seemed to want to be alone with Alice, but I went with him one other time. She was tender and wanted me to come close so she could feel the wool sweater I was wearing. I’d never seen someone that close to death before, and I felt a chill run down my spine.

Two days later, Gauguin came home and said, “I wish it was over. The nurses said they never saw anyone hang on so hard. I think she’s scared. Telling her ‘to let go’ suddenly feels like bullshit. Hell, it’s my mother! I don’t want her to die!”

At that, he collapsed on the couch and started to sob. “Mom, don’t go. Alice, please, I love you.” He rolled himself into a ball and rocked himself back and forth.

I ran to get him a box of tissues. I wasn’t sure what else to do. I sat down next to him on the couch and put my arm around him.

At 4:30 the next morning, Alice died. The phone rang twice. Gauguin climbed out of bed to answer. I heard his voice from the living room. “Yes, thank you. I’ll be right there.” He came back to bed and held me. “I have to go to the hospital. I wanted it to happen, and I didn’t want it—now I can’t believe it.”

He held me close for at least a half-hour. He hardly spoke. I could only imagine what ran through his mind.

At one point he did say to me, “You know, she fished real well. When I was seven, we went fishing down on the Blackhawk River.” He paused. “I’d forgotten all about it. It was a long time ago.” Then he was silent again.

Finally he said, “I guess I should dress and go.”

As he pulled away, I started to cry. “Can I come with you?”

He nodded, but when we got to the hospital room, he wanted to go in alone. I understood. I’d known her less than two years, and she’d given him his whole life. Gauguin told me later that Alice’s body had been covered with a white sheet. He pulled down the sheet, bent over her face, and kissed lips that did not kiss back. “I love you, Alice. I’m going to miss you.” Then he didn’t know what else to say. He was facing his dead mother. He couldn’t believe it. He began to cry uncontrollably.

When Gauguin emerged from the room, he was totally exhausted.

We buried her in the warmest January Minnesota had ever seen. A dense fog descended the morning of the funeral, and the grass was almost green. In the distance I could see the dark water of Lake Calhoun. Alice’s one sister, who still lived in Iowa, did not come. She said she was sick. Several of her divorced and single girlfriends clustered near the gravesite. Rip stood by the grave weeping into his hands. Gauguin was speechless. He looked like a ghost. Afterward, we all went back to our house and ate roast beef sandwiches. People tried to be social, but no one seemed to have anything to say, and Gauguin was relieved when everyone left.