Flying Shoes (27 page)

“Because I need to be honest with myself.”

“Okay, that’s
yourself
,” Mary Byrd cried. “You don’t have to
tell
every true thing that you feel, do you?” She thought she knew where this was coming from. If her mother thought that her higher power meant for her to take twelve steps into a vat of boiling monkey vomit, she’d do it. She wondered if her mom went to some church-basement meeting, everybody proudly confessing their worst shit to each other, the air thick with affirmation
and cigarette smoke. “Don’t you think there are just some things that are better left unsaid?”

“Stevie created so many problems with Pop,” her mother went on. “I resented the fact that Pop favored him over you and Nick. And over
me.
”

“Mom, Pop was a widower with a three-year-old,” Mary Byrd protested. “Of
course
he favored Stevie over me and Nick. Even back then, we got that.”

“Well, maybe it’s just this mean streak that my sisters and I all have.” She shrugged, pulling at her bun.

Maybe what her mother wanted was the melodrama, or to be upbraided for having
low self-esteem
, or some other pop psych garbage. Mary Byrd wasn’t taking the bait. Her mother’s self-esteem was fine.

“Maybe Pop was just trying to protect Stevie from us. Nick and I tortured him so much.” Had they? Maybe they’d teased him a little too relentlessly, but it had seemed like normal sibling abuse at the time. She and Nick had done far more sadistic things to each other than the teasing they had subjected Stevie to.

“Oh, Pop knew how I felt,” her mother said. “Those terrible rages when he was drunk.”

“Well, I never saw it from you. I mean, that Pop favored Stevie and resented us, I saw. But I never saw any mean stuff from you.”

“I was good at hiding things,” she said. “Like my drinking. Anyway, that’s how I felt. It was very hard for me having Stevie in the family. I did try. I went to a therapist for a long time.”

“
Uhhh
,” Mary Byrd moaned. “God, Mama. I hope you didn’t say anything like that to that woman.”

She looked Mary Byrd in the eye. “I only said that we each had our own issues to deal with about what happened.” She tossed the hairpiece on the table, where it lay like an arctic gerbil.

Mary Byrd scrubbed at her eyes with her fingers, dislodging a contact. “Well, will you please not bring this up with the detective? It has nothing to do with the case.” She popped out the other contact, absently wiping them both into her napkin. “It can’t help anything.”

“Okay,” her mother said, shrugging. “I just thought you should know.”

Her mother’s revelation made the squirrel executions seem charming and warm-hearted. Mary Byrd couldn’t hear anymore. “Okay. I’ve got to go to sleep. See you in the morning.” Mary Byrd gathered her socks and boots and duffel, heading for the guest room. At the kitchen door, she turned abruptly, went to her mother, and kissed the brown cheek that was offered. There was nothing else to say, and nothing to be done until Monday.

“’Night, darling. I’m glad you’re here. I love you,” her mother said pleasantly, as if they’d just been sitting around watching
Seinfeld
or the Animal Channel.

“’Night, Ma. Luvyatoo,” she said, but thought, ’Night, you scary mother.

In the guest room, Mary Byrd popped half a Xanax, even though being at her mother’s usually made her sleepy and she always slept well, even on the thin, shifty mattress and even when there was disturbing stuff in the air, like tonight. She wasn’t sure why she slept so well here; at home it was lightly and fitfully. Maybe the relief from responsibility: this was her mother’s domain and all problems here were hers to deal with. Or maybe it was the lack of annoying disturbances like a husband, children, and pets. Her mom had the cats, but they had “emotional problems” and hid out when anyone was around, so they wouldn’t be scrabbling at her door or patting her face in the morning like Iggy and Irene did. Maybe it was just because here she was always a child, and always would be, even if she was doddering around at seventy-five and her mother a ninety-three-year-old crone in a wheelchair. Better to be on the safe side with the seepy-seep pill than to toss and turn all night, worrying. Or dreaming, god forbid. She suddenly sneezed three times.

The guest bed looked prissy and crisp and so inviting. She started to undress, but she caught the smell of cigarette smoke, exhaust, greasy food, dirty hair, and sharp, anxiety sweat coming off her and realized she’d have to take a shower. She could never sleep when she smelled bad or felt gross, even with a pill.

After scalding herself, washing her hair, and breathing deep breaths of clean, steamy air, she felt somewhat better. How had women ever endured life without hot running water? Imagine the chronic funk. She knew the pill would kick in any minute and neutralize the adrenaline her mother had stirred up, so she allowed herself to think about her. Had she made her disturbing confession to her brothers as well? She doubted it. Those special hollow-tipped bullets were saved for Mary Byrd alone, and her mother liked to fire them when Mary Byrd was least expecting them, or least needed to hear them. Was it possible her mom was nuts, and maybe had hardening of the arteries or something? No, it couldn’t be that—she was whip-smart in all kinds of ways—it must just be that she was old enough that some of the filters had rusted or loosened, or fallen away. Old people flaunting their vast superior life experience and not giving a shit about saying or doing whatever; they’d be dead soon and they’d earned the right to terrorize, and to exercise their last chances to set the world straight.

There was a list Mary Byrd had kept over the years, for fun, really; she’d intended to show it to her brothers someday and they’d all have a good laugh. It was a list of all the stuff her mother had said, mostly while visiting Mary Byrd and Charles and the children. As Eliza once had complained, “Nana walks around the house and tries to control stuff.” And Mary Byrd had seen her mom and Evagreen conferring disdainfully about laundry, shower curtains, cat and dog hair, et cetera, et cetera. There was no choice but to laugh about it.

If you don’t get that ivy off that dogwood it’ll die.

It smells too much like feet in here.

If you don’t hurry up the ice cream will be all melted.

Why do you let them do that?

You have to prepare the soil.

It doesn’t look like you had many daffodils this year.

I think that happened to me, too, when I was taking Lipitor.

The grits are a little bland.

If you get tan enough those age spots won’t show.

You get that from me.

You get that from your father.

Are the shrimp and grits spicy? I don’t like spicy things.

I’ve got a stiff neck, too.

Why do you let him do that?

You’d better get that ivy off the house.

This pillow has slobber stains. Guests don’t like that.

Go to the bathroom before we drive home.

You should clean off your grocery cart with the wipey things.

This is not fresh.

You boiled the eggs too long; they’re gray.

That
stove
.

Don’t eat regular mayo, eat fat-free.

Was he drunk?

Don’t use whole wheat bread crumbs in the stuffing; it gives it an ugly taste.

You need to mulch.

She must have been drunk.

These need water.

You’re turning her into a princess.

You probably pruned too late.

It’s freezing, can you turn down the AC?

We need some air back here!

I can see your butt in that skirt.

He’s gay, isn’t he?

Wow. At home these are only five dollars.

That
shower
.

They must be gay.

This pillow smells like men’s heads.

Why do you let them just run off like that?

This thing is so rusty it can’t be operated properly.

Your skirt is hanging down too low.

That’s because you won’t take calcium.

That’s because you don’t know anything about investing.

You’ve parked way out in the street.

That light is
yellow
, not green.

You
love
animal prints.

Water this. It’s going to die.

You’re not supposed to put olive oil in the pasta water, you know.

Her mother terrified her sometimes—the power she wielded over them all. Her potent ability to wound or frustrate. But her mother was a good person. Mary Byrd loved her and knew that so much of who or what she herself was—good and bad—she’d taken from her mom. Meanness? Jeez. She hoped not. Mary Byrd could be plenty mean, but with small, furry animals or helpless stepchildren? Was Eliza going to inherit that? From her mother she’d also learned tons of stuff about plants and flowers and cooking and fossils; a love for cats and antiques and reading; her sense of humor; and, in spite of her mother’s occasional politically incorrect remarks, the importance of rooting for the underdog. Unless the underdog was a squirrel.

She guessed everybody pretty much felt this confusion about their mothers, more or less. But why
was
the relationship women had with their mothers so often the most complicated relationship they ever had? With your mother and your mother only, you shared the strongest, simplest, and most intimate bonds that two human beings can share. You’ve shared blood, you’ve shared flesh, you’ve been as much a part of your mother’s body as her liver or her heart. You’ve shared the awful abattoir scenario of birth, and after that her fluids sustain you. But with a girl and her mother, the tension and competitiveness. Of course she knew that that was exactly why it was so complicated: it was a lifelong struggle for both of you to separate and become two distinct women, and to gain male attention in the family. Duh, duh, duh. She could see it with Eliza already: Eliza desperately needed her mother but often wished her dead, Mary Byrd knew, and she remembered having the same feeling. With Charles, Eliza was relaxed and happy, even a little flirtatious. Charles could do no wrong in Eliza’s eyes. Well, almost, she thought, thinking of the Mann-kiss joke. And if he did do something wrong, it was going to be Mary Byrd’s fault. Why are so many little cruelties built into us?

Mary Byrd wanted to believe that her mother hadn’t really been glad that Stevie had died. Surely she had just felt more intensely what Mary Byrd and Nick also had felt: a certain relief that the friction and fights between their mother and stepfather had stopped. They’d stopped all right. But there was no possible way that any of them could have been relieved about
why
they’d stopped.

She sneezed again. She wished she were back at home, at the birthday party. The loud drone of Foote’s truck was still in her head and she tuned to that frequency and fell asleep quickly and slept, as they say, the sleep of the dead.

Eliot Nelson had brought Mary Byrd home in a rain shower that was brief but came down heavily; the bottom seemed to have fallen out of the night sky. She felt a twinge of melancholy as she often did on Sunday evenings. Undone homework. School in the morning, and for four more mornings. And Sunday was tense; a family day. But it would only be another month before school was out for the summer and she’d be free from the stupid junior high, and algebra, forever. There would be end-of-the-year dances and parties. She and Eliot would have more nights like this one and they would have them all summer long. She hoped.

They cruised slowly in the convertible through the cherry tree–lined neighborhood. The blossoms lay thick on Cherry Glen Lane, like snow. It seemed a shame to be driving over them, crushing them into a gray mess.

Mary Byrd could see a lot of cars parked in the middle of the block in front of her family’s white brick house. The Nicholsons, the big family that lived across the street, must be having a Mother’s Day party, she thought before realizing that the cars were Richmond police cars, and her grandparents’ pale pink Cadillac, and her aunt and uncle’s woody station wagon. A large rescue truck, what her cousins Kath and Susan called a “glamour truck” because of all the lights and loudspeakers and crap they had on them, was parked farther down the street, and now she heard loud static and walkie-talkie conversations. A few neighbors stood around in their yards and a policeman was talking to Big Nana, the scary next-door neighbor. Mary Byrd looked at her boyfriend, who looked horrified. She wanted to say “Go!” and keep driving and driving and pretend she hadn’t seen anything, but instead, without a word, she jumped out of the car and ran up the driveway, running a hand down her dress to be sure all her buttons were done, and into the
open front door. The small living room was full of standing men. Her mother sat on the sofa between her own sister and mother. Had she been crying? Mary Byrd couldn’t tell; the only time she’d seen her mother cry was when Kennedy died. Her mother wore the dumb turquoise housedress that she’d gotten when she married Pop. Her housewife costume.