Mother Daughter Me (11 page)

By the time my mother and I get home, the car loaded with party provisions, our mutual unhappiness poisoning the air between us, I’m determined to find some way of pleasing her. Maybe I haven’t expended
sufficient effort for her birthday. Even though I did give her a watch, I did so by reimbursing her for one she bought online after we failed to find the precise design at Bloomingdale’s. This made the whole thing feel awfully businesslike. So, after dropping my mother off, I run out to buy her an exotic orchid from a specialty orchid store. Then I stop at another store and buy her another birthday card, this one made out of chocolate. I take the orchid home and put it on the kitchen table with the festive chocolate bar propped up against it. My mother comes into the kitchen and walks right past it. I have to point it out to her. She seems a bit confused by the chocolate, but delighted by the orchid.

At the party that night, everyone is taken with my mother, who has dressed up in slacks, a silk scarf tied around her neck with enough flair to impress a Parisian, and handsome black boots. For much of the evening, she’s surrounded by a small clutch of people. “She’s so lovely,” people say to me. As the party is winding down, someone sits down at the Steinway and we all sing “Happy Birthday” to my mother, who looks genuinely pleased. I’m amazed, but I shouldn’t be: To this day, step into any crowded room and my mother’s face is the one you’ll see at the center of the gathering.

———

I
ONCE HAD A CONVERSATION WITH A WOMAN SEATED NEXT TO ME
on an airplane who, it came out, had lost her husband when her child was young, just as I had. She had only one question for me: Did I stay in touch with my in-laws? Hers lived far away, she told me, and she found visits a melancholy chore. Not wanting to paint too rosy a picture for her and make her feel even worse by comparison, I simply told her that, yes, I did visit my in-laws regularly, as I wanted my daughter to stay connected to her grandparents, who loved her very much.

While what I said was true, my desire to remain close to my in-laws runs far deeper. Matt’s parents, Dick and Denny, have been a big part of my life since childhood, and I adore them—always have. I simply love being with them. Beyond that, there’s this: Denny and Dick had four boys and lost two. This is a loss of such unimaginable magnitude that even now I have trouble writing it down. Both Denny and Dick, especially Dick, seldom speak of their dead sons. But I know the pain they must feel, and if there is one small thing I can do to lessen it, I will.
Which is why at least once a year, every year, no matter what, I take Zoë to see them.

The day after my mother’s birthday, Zoë and I are on an early flight to Austin for a visit. When Zoë was born in 1993, Matt and I were living in Austin and having what can only be described as the sweetest time of our lives. Matt worked at the University of Texas; I was a contributing editor for
Newsweek
. Small pleasures sated us, especially anything to do with watching Zoë discover life. Matt’s family had been in Austin, in the lumber business, for several generations, and much of the Lyon clan was now back in town, including Dick and Denny, who had settled in a house they built on a plot of family land out on Lake Travis. Matt and Zoë and I lived just south of the Colorado River in a big yellow house built in the early 1900s by a distant relative of Denny’s, the aptly named Mr. Greathouse. The house had not one but two staircases. Our family gatherings at Dick and Denny’s lake house were frequent, raucous, and happy. Zoë, blond and spirited, was doted on by one and all. Her main memory is of Denny as a Mother Goose figure, cooking and baking for her brood. Mine is of constant laughter. After we moved away, we returned often for holidays. Austin still feels not just familiar but familial. I’ve long since given up on having roots of my own, but I appreciate the deep roots Matt had there and am always happy to take my little native Texan to visit her grandparents.

When we arrive, it’s as if nothing has changed. In mid-October, Austin is no longer scorched by heat. On the cusp of the new season, the city is awaiting that first “blue norther,” the cold snap that ushers in the Texas winter. Both Dick and Denny, now living in a house close to Matt’s brother Alex, are far less mobile than they used to be, especially Dick, who is afflicted with a progressive muscle-wasting disease and seldom leaves the house. But they still slip easily into their old roles. Denny immediately sets herself to the grandmotherly task of making Zoë feel enveloped in love. Dick sits opposite me at the dining table and we discuss the state of the world and the demise of journalism. What Zoë and I have in this home is what we had been hoping for in San Francisco. Denny asks Zoë question after question. She lets Zoë
finish her answer, then latches on to something Zoë has said and uses it to develop the next question—the sign of a true listener.

“How are your teachers?” Denny asks.

“You’d like Jesse,” Zoë says, referring to her history teacher, who is now Zoë’s pal.

“Oh, really? Tell me about Jesse.”

“He’s so funny,” Zoë starts to say, then she’s off on a tangent, the words tumbling out of her. “Denny! Have you seen the Kwanzaa cake video?”

Denny dips her head and looks up at her granddaughter from over the top of her glasses. Her tone is grave but her eyes are twinkling. “The Kwanzaa cake video? No, I have not seen the Kwanzaa cake video.”

Zoë pulls out her iPhone, and for the next three minutes, grandmother and granddaughter are hunched over the two-inch screen, laughing to the point of tears at Sandra Lee’s “Angel Food Harvest Cake for Kwanzaa.” Each insane ingredient announced by the perfectly serious Ms. Lee is cause for a new burst of mirth.

“Is that really canned apple-pie filling she’s pouring into the middle??”

“Wait, are those corn nuts??” asks Denny when Sandra Lee suggests decorating the cake with “acorns.” Now Denny is squinting hard at the screen. “Oh, my. Those
are
corn nuts!”

Their chemistry is something to behold. When Zoë was seven, for some reason she started to call Denny “Pearl.” Denny calls her “Precious.” Every card Denny sends to Zoë begins with “Dear Precious.” As far as Denny is concerned, Zoë is a precious gift—and always has been.

The feeling is mutual, and the evidence of this is ever present. When Zoë is with Denny, her brattiness melts away. She speaks to her grandmother sweetly, respectfully. And on this trip, in particular, sitting in Denny’s warm and familiar kitchen, I’m struck by the contrast between how my child acts toward this grandmother versus the one back in California. I always sleep well at Dick and Denny’s, and this trip is no exception. In San Francisco, I’ve been lying awake late at night, my mind churning, wondering if this experiment in living with my mother will
drive me mad. Every night in Austin, in one of the house’s dark bedrooms, I enjoy a sleep better than any I’ve had in weeks.

On the plane on the way home, Zoë asks, “Why is it just so easy with Denny?” I tell her that what Denny gives her is unconditional love.

SOON AFTER WE RETURN
, my mother’s expensive birthday orchid dies. First it sheds its flowers—which wither, then float to the kitchen floor—before dropping its fat green leaves. Once they lose their purchase on the stem, the leaves fall one by one and hit the floor with pitiful little thwacks. Determined not to read too much symbolism into the demise of the plant, I take it back to the store. The proprietor tells me I’ve probably “shocked” the poor thing by placing it too close to a window. She replaces it with a similar orchid, which I put in the dark living room. About a week later, that one, too, enters the leaf-shedding throes of orchid death. The tragedy goes unaddressed by my mother.

Zoë seems more visibly irritated than ever by my mother’s presence in our lives, especially after spending a few days in Denny’s easy embrace. At dinner one night shortly before Halloween, Zoë and I are discussing how we’ll decorate the house.

“I don’t like Halloween,” declares my mother.

“What?” Zoë asks, clearly dismayed. Zoë has always loved Halloween. She loved not only the trick-or-treating she did with us but the ceremony of giving out candy at the front door. And she and Matt often came up with impressive costumes for her. A few months before he died, Matt was inspired to create a Zoë-sized red bell pepper out of papier-mâché.

“How can you not want to give candy to little kids?” Zoë asks my mother in a tone that implies that there can be no acceptable answer.

“Norm and I would turn out the lights and go upstairs and watch a DVD.”

I know what puts my mother off. It’s not that she wants to disappoint innocent little kids. Her heart isn’t black. Her Scrooge-like attitude toward Halloween is born of fear, fear of the older kids who make
the trick-or-treating rounds long after the cute Pocahontases and mermaids and Batmans have gone to bed. Those big kids come barely dressed up, hold out pillowcases, and all but demand their candy—and sometimes money too. I try to explain this to Zoë, but—preferring the Cruella De Vil interpretation—she isn’t listening. Nor, it seems, is my mother.

“I guess I’m just a disgusting person,” my mother says, and she gets up and goes downstairs. Zoë looks at me, rolls her eyes, and says nothing. I remain silent, too, feeling paralyzed, incapable of altering the destructive pattern my mother and daughter fall into so readily, wondering if we will ever manage to break free. Should I be doing something? Would either of them listen to me if I tried?

Halloween arrives, and Zoë and I buy bags of candy and decorations. We wrap the gate and portico in orange and black streamers and hang a skeleton above the front door. Zoë tells me she has invited three friends to our house to eat candy and watch scary movies on TV, which I think is an excellent plan. For my part, I’m determined to have something resembling a social life, and I make plans to see Bob that night.

Zoë and I are wrapping the last of the streamers around a column when I tell her I’ll be going to a movie with Bob.

“Oh, Mom, that’s great!” she says. I silently rejoice that she seems happy to know I’m going on a date. “What movie?”

“He wants to see the Michael Jackson movie.”

“Oh, yes, you should really see that! I’ve heard it’s great.” She doesn’t ask why a couple of fuddy-duddies would want to see the Michael Jackson movie, and I’m touched that she’s taking such an interest in my evening.

As I’m heading out, at about 7:00
P.M.
, I tell my mother that Zoë will be at home with her friends, watching movies. She seems fine with the plan.

“When will you be back? Around ten?”

“Something like that.”

Just as I’m pulling in to the parking garage near the movie theater, my phone rings. It’s my mother, calling to report that a pipe under the kitchen sink has burst and there is “a flood” on the kitchen floor. The
subtext, of course, is that I need to come home right away to help her mop it up. But I resist. I talk her into calling Dave, the neighbor who is acting as property manager. She sends Zoë across the street, and Zoë soon returns with Dave in tow. I’ve bought myself a couple of hours. When the movie is over, I check my phone and see there are eleven calls from my mother, along with four voice-mail messages, as well as a lone text message from Zoë, tapped out at 8:35
(When are you coming home?)
.
Oh, my
, I think.
What’s happened with the sink now?

My mother wasn’t calling about the sink.

As it turns out, while we were sitting in the movie, a few dozen teenagers were descending on the house. Apparently the news spread like a brushfire, via text messages, that there was an “open house” (code for “alcohol”) at Zoë’s house. Within minutes, the place was aswarm with high schoolers.

By the time I return my mother’s call, the kids are gone, but I can hear Zoë screaming in the background, while my mother is mildly incoherent.

“There’s alcohol in this house, and she shut me in the bathroom,” my mother says.

For a moment, I assume that the alcohol she’s referring to is the port, cognac, sherry, and rum I keep in the high cupboard, and I think,
So what? And the bathroom? What is she talking about? I leave for three hours and they both go insane?

A split second later I realize she’s referring to alcohol that has been brought
into
the house.

One of the kids, a sixteen-year-old with a reputation for heavy partying, had brought a “twelve-pack” of magnum-sized bottles of Bud Light and two large bottles of vodka. The kids had cleared off the kitchen table to set up their “bar” and were just opening for business when Zoë panicked and went downstairs to tell my mother what was happening. My mother came upstairs, screamed at the teenagers, ordered them out of the house, confiscated the alcohol, and decided to get rid of it. With the kitchen sink out of commission, my mother marched into the powder room off the kitchen and started pouring beer down the miniature sink. While Zoë wanted the party over, she saw no reason for my mother to take the alcohol. Furious, Zoë apparently then slammed the door of the
bathroom—with my mother in it. I tell my mother I’ll be home right away.

Before I can even rise from the bench where Bob and I have been sitting, Zoë calls. “Mom, she’s crazy! I can never show my face in school again!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll sort this out as soon as I get home.”

There will be no after-movie drinks with Bob. And from the expression on his face, I’m beginning to wonder if my hopelessly complicated life might be enough to send him back to his spreadsheet to check out the alternatives. Instead, he takes me by surprise. “Would you like me to come with you?” he asks. A moment passes while we both consider this. “Then again,” Bob says, recalling the restaurant fiasco, “maybe not. The last time I met your daughter it didn’t go well.”

This makes me smile. “Yes, that may be a bad idea.” And with that, I hurry to the car.