Glitter and Glue (14 page)

When she turned to look out the window, I could see her profile in a column of twisting smoke. She shivered, and a long tear slid down her cheek, which she caught as it drove toward the corner of her mouth. She slipped her finger under her large plastic sunglasses to stop the next one. For a minute, she made no noise at all, not even a breathing sound, and then her body took over and made her exhale. I had never seen her cry. I wanted to pat her back, but I couldn’t reach.

After the service, on the church steps, I watched Tommy’s widow and my cousins get into a black car. My mother stood nearby, letting people say things to her while she kept one eye on my dad, who was standing in a cluster of his brothers. One of them said something amusing, and they all chuckled. The moment my dad’s laughter reached my mother, she was done.

“Wait here,” she said to me, and headed for him with her open hand leading. “Gimme the keys. I have to get out of here. I can’t stand this another minute.”

My dad’s brothers stepped back, and my dad looked down, same as I did that morning when I got in trouble for using her hairbrush.

The reception was at my aunt Regina’s. I heard my father ask my mom if there was anything he could do, and she said, “All I care about is Mother. Make sure people don’t wear her out. And when it’s time to wind it down, let’s wind it down. The last thing Mother needs is a houseful of people who won’t leave.” I told myself to remember that instead of watching TV upstairs with my cousins.

There was so much food at Tommy’s house. More than I’d ever seen there. My mom didn’t touch it. She stood near the foyer on a red Oriental carpet, greeting mourners. She kept her heels and earrings on the whole time and did the thing that is always the hardest for her: She made small talk.

Everyone asked about Regina and Libby, and my mom said, “They’re tired. It’s been a long, hard road.”

“Cancer is so awful. I can’t imagine my child …” they said.

“God help us,” she replied, looking over at me.

We hung around all evening, until the last person left. After the table was cleared and wiped clean, we went to Libby’s house. My mom trudged up the stairs, and I followed behind her. I tried to say something kind, but all I could think of was “Do you want a glass of water?”

She shook her head and sat down at the top of the stairs on a strange antique chair that looked like a royal commode. “Say a prayer for your cousins.”

“I will.”

The next morning, my brothers and I were up and out without any squabbling. We rode home to Philly without saying much, all in our own thoughts. Eventually, I fell asleep in the way-back, hugging my mother’s pillow that smelled just like her, a heady mix of face powder, Final Net, and hand cream, understanding that my mom had lost someone she loved so much, someone important, and that made her different in an essential way from my father, who could still circle up outside a church, all his brothers in a line, and have a good long gab about nothing much.

I wake up the next morning feeling energetic, you might even say hale, so I decide to leave the car at home and pick up the kids on foot.

“We’re
walking
home?” Martin asks in total disbelief, like the house was in Perth.

“Yes.”

He stares at me. “Why didn’t you come in the car?”

“I thought it would be fun to be outside on a nice day. I brought money to buy juices.” I hold out a fiver.

“We’re walking all the way to the market?” We’re not even off school property yet.

“Come on, Martin, it’s fun!” Milly says, aggravating him with her smarmy encouragement.

“No. It. Is. Not!” Martin says, stomping his feet in time to his protest.

“Don’t be a baby!” she shoots back.

“I’ve got this, Milly,” I say, eager to eliminate compounding elements. It’s a minefield, this kid stuff.

“Why for, Keely?” Martin whines.

Thanks to my dumb idea about strolling home in the fresh air and sunshine, I am suddenly face-to-face with a deeply unsympathetic side of my only fan.

“Because it’s good for you.”

“Not for me it isn’t good,” he says to the sidewalk.

I could give him a piggyback, he’s easy to carry—Milly’s too big for anyone except John—but I should be firm, let him hate me for a few more minutes, show him who’s steering this ship. That’s what a real mother would do. That’s what my mother would do.

“I like walking!” Milly says, practically skipping. She likes walking when her brother doesn’t,
that’s
what she likes. She likes being the Easy One for once. Even though her motive is obvious, I feel a surge of affection for her, along with an irrational hope that, from here on out, she will take my coaching, say thank you, allow me to console her. It’s easy to love kids who make you feel competent. God help the ones who lock themselves in their rooms, who let go first, who make you pine for some sign of validation and then hate yourself for chasing the affections of a child.

Twenty-eight minutes into a walk that took me ten, we still have a hundred yards until we get to 3 Lewiston Street and I’m mad—mad that my good idea isn’t working, mad that Martin has turned against me, madder still that I didn’t understand this was inevitable. Of course he was going to turn on me, and over any little thing. I’m only as good as my last shark throw or grilled PB&J.

Finally, we reach the porch. Martin climbs the steps like a dying Bedouin. “Why did you do that?” he asks.

“All right already, God, Martin! We’re home, okay?” I snap.

“Hey,” Evan calls from the driveway. “Everybody okay?”

“Ev!” Martin runs to Evan.
Runs
.

“Yeah, it’s just— It was a long walk home,” I explain.

Evan loops an arm around Martin. “Come on, mate, help me clean out my tent.”

“And do roly-poly bugs!” he squeals, invigorated. Martin is back.

“Yeah, we’ll find a few in there.”

“Roly-poly, roly-poly!” Martin chirps, instantly made whole by someone shiny and new. It’s easy to make a kid love you if you give him whatever he wants. What was I supposed to do? Let Martin whine his way out of a short walk on a nice day? Hail a taxi?

Something about this strikes me as a key to the story of my mother and me. She often said that I was a different person for my father, that I’d do anything for him, without an ounce of backtalk, as upbeat as a Miss America contestant, and that by the time he got home at night all the fighting was over, so he never knew what it took to get me to turn off the TV or take out the trash.

She also said,
Lemme tell you something, Kelly, you changed me a lot more than I changed you
. I didn’t know adults could be changed. I thought they were finished pieces, baked through and kilndried. I never understood that when we fought my mother was having actual emotional reactions. I assumed her behavior was a front—a calculated show—designed to yield the best and safest possible kid.

After a couple of months’ suffering at Milly’s mercy, still smarting from today’s rejection by Martin, I see that, sturdy though my mother was, she must have been
gutted
by the sound and sight and sheer vibration of her rabid daughter roaring,
I HATE YOU! I HATE YOUR GUTS! I HATE YOU FOREVER!
I had thought a good mother would not elicit such comments, but now I see that a good mother is required to somehow absorb all this ugliness and find a way to fall back in love with her child the next day.

The Tanner beach house is north of Sydney by a hundred kilometers. I packed my navy cotton swing dress from Britches (a piece of clothing my mother considers
divine
, since it
covers-all touches-nothing
), but now that I see the trailers spread out in front of me, I realize I’ll be in Booker’s Roanoke lacrosse shorts the whole weekend.

We drive in past the barbecue area, and John gives some folks a neighborly wave. The double-wide is mostly yellow and white inside. There’s a tiny sink and a plastic fridge like the one Tracy and I used in college to chill our Milwaukee’s Best. Above the kitchenette is a compartment with a mattress where John tosses his bag. The kids take a tiny room with bunk beds, and I apparently have the sofa, which opens into a bed.

“There’s a privacy screen on tracks,” John says, showing me how to cordon myself off when the time comes.

The kids are eager to get to the beach. Milly stuffs her shovels, rakes, and molds into a mesh bag. Martin dons his sun hat; two flaps bounce around off the back like rubber splash guards on truck tires.

“I can stay and sort out dinner,” I offer, assuming John would like some time with the kids.

“No, come along,” he says.

“Oh, okay.”

I scoop up the inflatable floaties, and we head out single file, through the caravan park and onto a sand path.

“Can we go round to the jetty?” Martin asks, popping a raisin in his mouth.

“Great idea. Just a five-minute walk, Kelly,” John says, throwing me with uncharacteristic eye contact.

“There’s pelicans!” Martin tells me.

“Pel-i-cans,” I say like Captain Kangaroo, “their beaks hold more than their bellies can!”

Martin likes that one.

“And farther round a bit, there’s a lookout,” Milly adds.

“We used to come here quite a lot,” John says, explaining their expertise.

“Tell her about the surfers,” Martin prompts.

“The girl surfers,” Milly amends.

John explains, “When we first started coming, there were only blokes. But then, over the years, we started to notice some sheilas out there.”

“And Mummy said,
Girls can do anything boys can do
.”

“That’s right,” John and I say at the same time. I look down, embarrassed to have been caught moralizing to the kids when their father is right here and able to do it himself. “They absolutely can,” John finishes.

When we get to the end of the path and the ocean opens up before us, Milly draws John to the waterline, and Martin asks me if I know that “twenty-eight percent of the ocean is abyssing.”

“I heard something like that. I think it might even be eighty-two percent—”

“That’s right! Eighty-two percent!” Martin runs toward the water, turning back to see where I am. “Come, Keely!”

“Yes, come,” John insists. The three of them stand in a row, alone on their special beach, waiting for me. “We’ll show you the kite-flying stretch.”

Now they need me. Now I’m useful.

I’m not here to make bad sandwiches, to paint their nails or heal their chapped lips. That doesn’t matter. They need someone to listen to the story of Before—how good it was to swim with Mummy, to bike and collect shells, to jump in the water holding hands off that platform right there. That’s what I can do. I can justify the reminiscing. I can take them in, learn their history, witness their suffering and their slow but indisputable survival.

The beach is part of my mother’s narrative, too. Her friend Betty Moran had a house on Thirty-fourth Street in Avalon. The Pigeons took over for a week every summer. I tagged along because Mrs. Moran’s daughter, Poopsie, and I kept each other occupied making drip castles and playing under the deck with frogs that we’d name and marry off. As we got older, we listened to eight-track tapes and did dance routines for the ladies, with tennis balls stuffed in the tops of our bathing suits.

By the time we became teenagers, Poopsie and I had stopped doing shows and spent the week shadowing our mothers, setting up beach chairs, covering ourselves in Bain de Soleil, playing backgammon. We followed the ladies as they came in from the beach, dragging their monogrammed towels and L.L. Bean totes, showering outside and changing into bright Lilly Pulitzer skirts. The ladies made short drinks with cracked ice and curls of lemon hanging off the rims, and under every glass was a cocktail napkin that said
MONEY ISN’T EVERYTHING, BUT IT SURE KEEPS THE KIDS IN TOUCH
. Everyone smoked and played cards. Poopsie and I drank grape Fantas, and nobody asked us how many we’d had or told us to slow down.

My mom loved playing gin and could win all night. No one could beat her except Mrs. Maroney, who, I learned that summer, used to go on dates with my dad. “A hundred years ago,” Mrs. Maroney said. “Another lifetime.”