Horsekeeping (14 page)

Franklin was an old-fashioned husband, so Aunt Lid tensed up in that cowed spouse kind of way. Diminutive, with sparse white hair tightly pin-curled, Lillian's quick dark eyes receded in chalky, powdered skin. Her lipstick smudged deep red and her rouged cheeks referenced a robust Edith Piaf. Her voice pitched high and strained. I got the feeling she did not adore cabin life, but as it was buffered by a real house in Elizabeth, she played along. A genuine affection existed amongst us all, my rebellious father included, because he respected Franklin and, though at odds in lifestyle and manners, they shared a love of rifles, rare steaks, and my mother.

Arrivals at the cabin were always nocturnal: Mom, Dad and me half-lost in the kind of darkness that condenses the brain but quickens the heart with the possibility of adventure. Lacking electricity, our hosts would be waiting to wave us in with a heavy-duty flashlight. Dad always carried me on his shoulders up the hill, and Franklin, through the creaking of crickets on moonless nights, would trace the big and little dippers with his bright beam of light. I could never group the constellations, but I pretended to spot Orion's Belt and his hound, Sirius. The house was a double height grayish box with a steeply pitched roof and a tin-tube chimney pipe, set off the ground by stilts to escape the damp. Seven splintered wood stairs on the right side led to the kitchen that boasted a wood stove and a black-handled iron water pump, the shack's only nod toward modernity. Not insulated, it always chilled us a bit, even in the summer.

The kitchen led to a larger main room balanced by a sturdy dining table at one end and unmatched chairs, rockers and end tables scattered over worn braided rugs at the other. Hurricane lamps sat readily at hand against the dark. Along the front long wall stood the heart and soul of the house, an old player piano. Dozens of red and white boxes holding musty, flaking paper piano rolls layered the top of this chipped black warhorse and, as if words competed with the music, hundreds of books
occupied shelves that lined the remaining wall space. It was understood that Franklin had read every one. Opposite the piano and adjacent to the kitchen were two tight rooms cordoned off by strung-up plain brown, floor length curtains. Each squeezed a double bed and served as the guest quarters. An upstairs room was reserved for Uncle Franklin and Aunt Lid, and I never ventured there.

My mother and I shared one of these cubicles, and I always shied at the sight of the flowered ceramic chamber pot peaking out from under the bed. My anxiety about it inevitably induced my urgency in the middle of the night. Try as I might, suffering my mother's frustration, I just couldn't whiz in that little pot, no matter how Victorian-prettified, so with our untied shoes ruffling our nightgowns and with flashlights in hand we'd trek to the outhouse. The grass tickled our ankles in the boisterous dark: blind and unsheltered, our vulnerability reverberated in the deep open space around and above us. Up the hill toward the edge of the woods squatted a miniature version of the boxy house, its door carved with a sickle moon. This stinky two-holer was all of rough planks, even the seats, and a bucket of lime with a scoop squatted beside. Beside the ever-present flies, it sported a flamboyant décor. Fertile womanhood plastered every inch of all four walls and the ceiling: overlapping magazine illustrations and photographs of pin up girls, partially clothed, occasionally tasseled, or completely naked. They waved their bottoms, pushed up their breasts and dared all of mankind to come and get some.

No wonder my feminist mother tried to avoid this room, but to me going pee in a hole in the ground became an escapade to be savored, even more so in the secret hours. Here I trained my handheld spotlight on bodies of all types, fancy women with laughing eyes and bleached blonde hair, pouting red lips, fluttery long, impossibly thick lashes; fat and thin bodies beribboned, bowed and tucked into frilly lingerie, fannies arching above seam-stockinged legs stretching from high heeled shoes. They winked and nodded, or so I imagined. My wide eyes glimpsed intimations of sex, at least the female half, and though my mother hurried me,
I took my time. When I was older and Mom was gone, I'd go by myself and delight in reviewing my favorites, wondering how classy Uncle Franklin could have done such a thing, a delightful paradox.

The Hudsons followed certain personal traditions. On warmer weather mornings we would stroll up the road to sponge off in the stream, returning to a poached egg and thick-cut bacon breakfast. My parents talked endlessly with Franklin and Lid, sitting on folding lawn chairs in the small clearing around the house while I'd explore the hornet's nest at the back corner roof-line and pretend to get lost in the woods. After lunch we would aim rifles and handguns at cans and bottles balanced along a fallen tree trunk. I was a pretty good shot, and Franklin and Dad sang my praises enough so that I felt one of the boys.

“Watch that 45 now, Bean, it's got quite a kick.” The summer sun tanned me brown as a coffee bean, thus my long-standing nickname.

His massive arm reinforced my thin one. I'd brace myself, determined not to land girlishly backwards on my butt. My ears would ring for minutes, my consolation prize for reveling in such grown-up, illicit fun.

Plenty of bourbon moistened the dry heat, and at official cocktail time Aunt Lid produced the appetizer with a flourish—pink and white chunk crabmeat, an expensive canned luxury, tossed generously with mayonnaise and mounded delicately atop saltines. With long tree branches, Franklin and my father would be pushing around a massive, rubbery slab of beef in the stone grill pit half sunk into the ground. The open flames crackled the fat, and sparking smoke curled away into the treetops. Salted, peppered, and thick beyond reason, the steak cooked for hours, and even then, it remained too spicy, rare and animal-like for me.

After dinner, we would stargaze again before settling down around the player piano for a sing along. This was my favorite time, and my mother's, too. With the lyrics printed vertically along the edge of the music rolls, no one could beg off. Between the drink, the comfort of friends and the pressure of custom, everyone sang out, loud and melodious. Being the only child, and as yet unself-conscious, I belted with the best of them.
Always centrally included, Franklin enlisted me to pump the pedals, a job necessitating my full body weight angled toward a vigorous rhythm, and I made my song selections in turn with the rest. Later, when I was ten, and after my mother died, Dad bought and renovated a player piano for me for Christmas. Painted a lacquered, cherry red, it wore a brass plate that read:
Made exclusively for Roxanne, Merry Christmas, December 1969
. An inspired gift, my habitually grand-gesturing father gave me something my mother and I shared to help me remember.

Sing-a-longs continued to stud our family history, through the years of my stepmother and my husband and into my life with my own two children. While my bright red player is long gone, I eventually found and restored a flame stitch mahogany Steinway, made in 1907 when the quality Pianola was king. My son Elliot sings along with the words at ease, and delights in all of my old favorites.

We sing
You Are My Sunshine, Sunrise/Sunset, Bye-Bye Blackbird
and
Take Me Out To The Ballgame,
and dance to
Ballin' The Jack
and
The Hokey Pokey
. My Jane dresses up as a princess and flits all feathers and sequins and plastic high heels in and around the sound, getting us all up on our feet. “Dance, Mommy,
Dance
!” It's corny but fun, and its sweet melancholy connects me to my mother and my children, simultaneously accessing the past, present and future. Even my husband, a player piano
ingénue
, gets the spirit, and we bellow our best, as a duo, to perfect the challenging range of
Danny Boy
.

As a finale to each Hudson farm visit, with serious care we would sign the guest book. A mere signature would not do: Franklin expected
a colorful record of all we did, saw and ate, and amongst this erudite crowd I felt the pressure of eloquence. Our efforts were richly rewarded: we always skimmed over past entries, noting my handwriting and grammar improvements over the years, and relived visits forgotten. I would like to reread that guest book now, but Franklin and Lillian are long gone, and I've lost touch with their children and their keepsakes. After my mother died, my dad, my stepmother Irene and I would revisit the Hudsons' place and try to enjoy our familiar round of activities. Mostly we managed, but my mother's ghost permeated the cabin, the chamber pot, the piano bench, the very air. And, childishly lacking tact and consideration, I always requested her favorite songs on the piano.

“
He walks with me and he talks with me, and tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we're standing there none other has ever known
,” and “
Lav-en-der Blue, Dilly Dilly, Lav-en-der Green, you'll be my king Dilly Dilly, I'll be your queen.
. . .”

We'd still sing, half-heartedly, the adults humming while they wiped their eyes. I took perverse pleasure in summoning her memory, wounding them with every note tearfully sung in a vain attempt to help myself.

 

 

OUR NEW HOUSE IN CLARK was far afield from the Hudson farm in distance and flavor, but the woods across the street at least hinted at that country retreat we savored. The next-door neighbor girl and I spent endless hours in its tangle of trees and vines building forts, racing along the paths and splashing in the slow stream that fed the broadening river down at the falls. Once we tried to erect a tree house. Our attempt to dislodge a heavy trunk from its wedged position sounded good in theory.

“Push it off and run,” Joanne instructed pointing left.

I ran straight and took it square on the top of my head. Not wanting grown-up trouble we went home and quietly applied ice. I prayed I wouldn't die in the night from a concussion, or a cerebral hemorrhage, a term I'd heard my father whisper.

The woods sheltered an abundance of not so wild life, mainly frogs, squirrels, raccoons and skunks. It was enough to tweak our imaginations about a suburban frontier and even my father caught the pioneer spirit. He found some fresh road kill one day, hit by a car but not demolished.

“Bean, let's skin a skunk.” He wielded a kitchen knife.

“What?” I stopped popping wheelies in the driveway.

He walked off. I dropped my bike, all charged up about a real
National Geographic
-type adventure. I regularly poured over that magazine's photographs, but the looking always left me hankering for a piece of the drama captured on those pages.

Skin that beast we did, or
he
did—I watched mesmerized—taking special care not to break the scent gland. Toting the limp black-and-white fur we left the scene of the massacre.

Sniff, sniff.... “Do you smell something?”

Dad had stepped on the edge of the sack kicking the guts into the brush. We threw his shoes away, but it was worth at least that to my mind. We nailed our prized skin across the tree trunk in the front yard. Over weeks the fur fell out in patches and the sun baked the hide into a homemade chamois Dad planned to wash the car with, but some other plundering creature chewed holes in it.

Our new environment trained me to novel physical and psychical experiences spun by my mother's choice of house and her sensibilities toward nature. This pseudo-country life, along with player pianos and literature braided a connection between us that withstood parting. Parented afterward by my wonderful stepmother for thirty-four years, I am still more my mother than anyone else. I understand the tenacity of early imprinting raising my own children, how much of their personalities and inclinations, for better and worse, would come from me even if I died tomorrow. I cannot remember day-to-day interaction with my mother, cannot hear her voice, but I feel her influence and instinctively know that I am like her, even if Dad didn't tell me.

“You are more and more like Marilynne every day. Jesus Christ,
Roxanne, it spooks me sometimes. I swear to God, you look like her, you talk like her. Your smile is hers.”

 

 

SHE DIED IN JUNE, after her cherished tulips nodded their heads and dropped their petals. She and Dad were dressing for her tenth high school reunion. I bounced between the bathroom and bedroom doors excited by these two giants' romantic, sophisticated night out. My mother knew she still had her looks and anticipated the ritual preening among classmates. A Cinderella released from the page, she was transformed before my very eyes for the ball. Hair high and curled, eyeliner, mascara, powder and lipstick expertly applied, enhanced her face concentrating in the mirror, and a long green taffeta dress accentuated her small waist. We were all squeezed in our tiny bathroom when she cried out once and collapsed. My trim, handsome father, who had, according to the doctors' estimates, been anticipating this moment for six cruel months, caught her, and laid her across the bed, now Snow White.

Was I ordered outside or did I run from fate? I shuffled in the grass alongside the driveway, just waiting. I doubted anything too awful could happen to someone so powerful: mothers were always in control. But they whisked her into the ambulance and away, with her full skirt rustling, the siren's dirge crying into the distance, and the fresh green trees swishing in her wake. She died the next day of a “catastrophic cerebral hemorrhage.” I waded through the chaos of days and days of everyone's tears. I attended the wake. I liked the fuss everyone made over me. My father blanketed her casket and the viewing room with hundreds of her favorite gardenias.