She Got Up Off the Couch (20 page)

I sat back. It was mentioned that the husband, Mr. Antrobus, was busy inventing the wheel and also the alphabet and numbers.

“What about those dinosaurs, I’m wondering?”

“Shhhh.”

I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the Antrobuses, who had been married five thousand years, as they battled the glacier in the first act, the flood in the second (wherein Mr. Antrobus also became President of the Ancient and Honorable Order of Mammals, Subdivision Humans). I didn’t understand the third act, after the unnamed war, and the people wandering around in the back with big clocks, quoting, at nine o’clock, someone called Spinoza, at ten o’clock, Plato, and at the end, Aristotle. But I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe. Everyone seemed so giddy, so optimistic, even when in the second act the black circles began to appear, the first for a regular storm, the second for a hurricane, the third for a flood, the fourth for the end of the world. It was as if the world were about to end
all the time,
every time the Antrobuses turned around, and yet they loaded the animals two by two, and eventually there they were, back in their little house in their little town, 216 Cedar Street, Excelsior, New Jersey. George Antrobus did as he wished: he invented the wheel, the alphabet, the numbers — he even rejoiced in having the hundred after hundred after hundred, as if he’d gone out and made it so, the way my own dad might build a chicken coop. I was dizzy. I wanted it to never end. I loved the dinosaurs.

After the play Mom took me to Arby’s Restaurant, where I had never been. It was just a tiny place not far from Ball State, a counter, really, where you ordered food and sat at one of three tables. There were two exquisite things about Arby’s: one was that the floor was inlaid with mosaic tiles that formed the face of a longhorn steer, and the other was that they had potato cakes in place of french fries. Also something called a Jamocha Shake, which tasted unlike anything I’d ever had in my life. We sat at our little table with our roast beef sandwiches and potato cakes and I knew I was a brand-new person.

“What did you think of the play?” Mom asked, as if I were a grown-up with an opinion.

I shrugged. “It was all right.”

“Did you understand it?”

“Nope.”

Mom took a drink of her shake, pushed her glasses up her nose. I had no memory of her ever talking to me in quite this way. “Do you know the word ‘catastrophe’?” she asked.

I thought about it. I did, actually, because in school someone had only recently mispronounced it while reading aloud as “cat-astrofe.”“It means…it’s something like disaster.”

“Yes, it’s like disaster, only bigger. A catastrophe is something that changes your life forever. Sometimes they happen in the world, like in nature.”

“The way there was a glacier and a flood.”

“Right. And sometimes it happens at home,” Mom said, looking at me intently.

I swallowed my potato cake, stared at the floor. I said, “Like the way the maid is going to steal the husband and the family will be over.”

Mom sat back, smiled at me. “You did too understand it.”

“Did not. Also it was just silly, those dinosaurs and animals and people speaking different languages and Gladys popping up out of the floor, that was just about retarded.”

We finished eating and headed out into the black, cold night.

“I’m freezing to death,” I said, as Mom pulled out of the Arby’s parking lot.

“It’ll warm up.”

We had the highway to ourselves and I could think of nothing but the play, the way George Antrobus kept repeating that they had survived the Depression by the skin of their teeth; one more tight squeeze like that and where would they be? I saw Debby Shively’s eyes glazed with tears, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. It was a sad and sinking winter night, and yet I’d never seen the stars so hard in the sky, shining as if they could harm us, but would spare us one more night. Mom leaned forward, pressed the Volkswagen home.

Mother always said she was a size 7 woman she kept wrapped in fat to prevent bruising. When she started at Ball State she weighed 268 pounds, so the Thin Mom inside was abundantly safe. But by the end of her second full school year, she had lost a hundred pounds, or
an entire other Thin Mom.
She still had long hair she hated and wore in a bun — Dad wouldn’t let her cut it — and she was still missing some of her teeth, but there was no denying she had changed.

It wasn’t until I stopped and looked back that I saw what she had done: she had taken the CLEP test and leapfrogged over an acre of requirements. She had finagled rides with seventeen different people over her first year. She had found Sabrina and redeemed her with advertising. Her too solid flesh had melted; she had gone to the theater; she had written a play that had been performed as a staged reading; she had taken me to the big campus and made me feel comfortable there, the way birds make their babies fly farther and farther afield, all the while saying, “See? It’s just the world, you know the world.” What I hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t recognized, were the course overloads, the punishing summer schedule, the arguments with advisers who told her no. (She handed to me, in those years, one of her greatest gifts: the ability to say with a smile, “Tell me who will say yes, and then direct me to his office.”)

She had done all these things and she was going to graduate summa cum laude, which meant Good But Loud, from the Honors College, and she had done it all in twenty-three months. It takes some people more time to hang a curtain.

Two things happened ten days before graduation: one was that she received a letter from the university president, Dr. Pruis. She opened it on an evening Melinda and Rick were visiting with Josh, and Dad just happened to be home.

“What is it?” Melinda asked. In Jarvis Land an official letter was almost always guaranteed to be a threat of garnished wages or Interrupted Service.

Mom scanned the thick paper. “Dr. Pruis says he’s proud of me. He’s invited me to come in and see him before graduation.”

I whistled. Melinda said, “The president?”

Not moving his eyes from the television Dad said, “It’s a form letter.”

“No, it isn’t,” Melinda said, in a tone of voice that would have caused Dad to
go straight up and scatter,
as Mom called it, in the days before Melinda was married, in the days before there was a husband-person sitting there making sure it didn’t happen. “He probably knows her story, knows she’s graduating with honors and is proud of her.”

“It’s a form letter,” Dad said, lighting a cigarette.

“How do
you
—” Melinda began, her voice rising.

“Lin,” Mom said, folding the letter and slipping it back in the envelope. “I’ll just make an appointment and find out. How about that?”

“Yes, do that.” Melinda reached down and picked up Josh’s diaper bag.

“Yes, do that,” Dad said, still not looking at any of us.

The next morning Mom walked down to the pay phone at the Newmans’ Marathon station; our telephone had been disconnected, although Dad claimed to have paid the bill. She used the coins I hadn’t already stolen from her purse to buy Mountain Dews and dialed the number on the Ball State letterhead.

“Office of the President,” a woman said, in a special Office of the President voice: ground glass in honey.

“May I speak to Dr. Pruis, please?”

“This is his secretary. What is the nature of your business?”

Mom was perhaps nervous. “Ah, is this an animal, vegetable, or mineral question?”

“What is the nature of your business, madam?” The honey cooled, hardened.

“I received a letter from him,” Mom said, clearing her throat, “and he wants me to come in and see him.”

“Your name?”

“My name?”

“What is your name, ma’am?”

“Oh. Yes. Delonda Jarvis.”

“Hold please.” The Office of the President left Mother hanging without benefit of music, then returned. “I handle all of his correspondence and I have no record of such a letter.”

Then tell me who will say yes.
“It’s personal.”

O. of P. took her time sighing. “You may see him Tuesday at two.”

Mother remembered her own elegant voice. “That will be satisfactory. Thank you.” She made the slight, distracted sound of a woman squeezing an obligation into a frightfully busy day, then hung up the pay phone, which reeked of axle grease and gasoline.

Back in the house she contemplated her wardrobe, which did not exist. Her three pairs of black polyester pants no longer fit, and her stunning cherry red pantsuit, which she claimed could cause retinal damage in direct sunlight, was big enough for two or three unbruised mothers. She sat down at her Singer sewing machine, the machine on which she had made all of our clothes (except for Dad’s, which were store-bought and fashionable), and the dolls Melinda and I had loved to pieces: Samantha Pollyanna, Rebecca Mathilda, and Suzy Sleepyhead, not to mention Gladly, my Cross-Eyed Bear. She took up the sides of the cherry red pants, did her best with the sprung elastic waistband. She would leave the top as it was and belt it. The problem was that the crotch of the pants now hit her in the knees, so she put them on and practiced taking very small steps. I came downstairs just in time for this runway move and Mom asked me how she looked. I studied her a moment and said, “You look like a radioactive potato.”

“Hmmm,” Mom said, nodding her head. “That’s not so bad.” She picked out a wig to wear on the special day, too, a style and color she considered “subtle” and which I thought said “Pekingese.”

The second thing that happened in those last ten days involved her professor of Interpersonal Communication, Dr. Reiss. After class on Tuesday — the very Tuesday she was to meet President Pruis — Dr. Reiss asked Mother to step into her office for a moment.

“Could we — is this very —” Mom asked, glancing at the clock in the hallway.

“Just a moment, please.”

Dr. Reiss was a tiny woman, but she had a long, manly stride, and she reached her office nearly a full minute before Mother did. “Are you all right, Mrs. Jarvis?” she asked, studying Mom’s new gait.

“Fine, fine,” Mom said, carefree. “I’m simply trying to slow down and enjoy life more.”

Professor Reiss offered Mom a chair and sat down facing her. She crossed her arms over her stomach. Mom tried not to look around for a clock. She tried not to glance down at her watch, or have a nervous breakdown.

“You’re a very bright woman,” Dr. Reiss said, breaking the interminable silence.

“Thank you.”

“And I understand you have a perfect four-point GPA.”

Mom brushed away something imaginary from her pants leg. Nothing would actually stick to the red fabric; all was repelled.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“A shame, then, that I shall be giving you a C in this class.”

So this was it, Mom thought. She had managed to fool an entire university through the force of will alone, and she had come within inches of making a clean escape. But Dr. Reiss could see through her, could see the whole bleak story: the scholarship to Miami University she’d sacrificed at sixteen to marry my father, who she thought was twenty-six years old and a pilot. (He was eighteen and a gambler.) The twenty-four years of poverty and terror and ennui; the sexy, unpredictable man who managed it all, dominated everyone around him, animals even. Her children, who had never before had any reason to be proud of her, and who now saw her in a new way, children she had adored and ignored simultaneously, because she simply
could not get up off the couch,
she could not clean a condemned house with no running water, she could not cook meals with food that didn’t exist or wash clothes without a washing machine. Without clothes. She couldn’t drive a car she didn’t have, without a license she couldn’t acquire. She had taken her vows and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet. One chance — that’s what she had seen she had — one flying leap that was really composed of eight thousand separate possibilities for falling, and she had taken that chance and come this far and been found out. And in a stupid class full of selfish, self-indulgent, narcissistic, spoiled children who were encouraged by Dr. Reiss to talk talk talk about their feelings, when what they ought to have been doing was shutting up and studying the conversations of their elders and superiors. It was
here
? Here she would be done in?

Mom nodded, sighed. “Have I not gotten an A on every paper? Attended every class?”

“You have,” Dr. Reiss agreed. “But this course is called Interpersonal Communication, Mrs. Jarvis, and I have yet to see — or hear — you communicate with our class at all. You have revealed nothing of yourself this quarter.”

Mom sat back, stunned. “You must be joking. The students discuss ‘warm fuzzies’ and ‘cold pricklies.’A diagram of their ‘feelings’ could be used on
Sesame Street.
”

“Nonetheless, you seem not to take the goal of communication very seriously.”

“Interpersonal communication, you mean.”

“It’s an important field of study.” Dr. Reiss turned her bracelets around and around her small wrist, leaned toward Mother with intensity. “It is through a more feminine approach to dialogue that we will eventually break through the hegemony of the patriarchy, Delonda. No less than that.”

“I see.” Mom looked at her watch, took a deep breath. “I have noted that you reveal absolutely nothing of yourself in class, Dr. Reiss. You are as closed as a prison guard.”

Professor Reiss sat back, blinked five or six times behind her thick glasses. “Write me a final term paper justifying yourself and I will rethink your grade. You are dismissed.”

There was no possibility she could get to the Administration Building on time. She ran up the hill, away from the English Building, ran in teeny tiny steps. A girl on a bicycle stopped to watch her.

“Are you all right?” The girl was young, athletic, tall. “Weren’t we in a class together?”

Mother was so winded she could barely control her lips. “I have…a…oh, God.” She held her side, tried to catch her breath. “I have an appointment at the Ad Building in five minutes and I don’t think I can make it.”

The Tall Girl said, “Bummer. Can you ride a bicycle?”

“Of course I can ride a bicycle,” Mom said, thinking of mine, which was trusty and dear and even had a bell.

“This is my boyfriend’s bike — you can take it if you’ll be careful and lock it up. Just leave it in front of the Ad Building and I’ll get it later.” Tall Girl took out a combination lock on a chain in a plastic tube. A plastic tube. Mom had absolutely no idea what she was seeing. “Are you ready?”

Mom nodded and tried to get on the bike. It turned out Tall Girl had a Tall Boyfriend, and Mom couldn’t get her foot over the center bar, particularly with the crotch of her bright red pants nearly down around her ankles. She hiked up the pants, exposing white tube socks she’d borrowed from Rick. A crowd began to gather. Someone yelled, “Jump on it from the back, like a horse!” She tried that and found it to be regrettable.

Finally, a boy with a Gary, Indiana, accent, someone from the Region, said, “Hey, lady, you wanna get on that bike? Give me your foot.” She trusted him with her foot because she had grown up in Whiting and so they were practically family. The boy had two friends brace Mom on her right side; he pulled one foot up and over, the other boys pushed, and before she knew it she was on the seat, the tiny little seat of the Very Tall Boyfriend’s bicycle.

The Region boys said, “Ready?”

Mom whispered, “Yes.”

They pushed her forward, down the hill toward what was called the scramble light, an intersection where students crossed four lanes of traffic in six directions at the same time, in faith believing that (a) they were immortal, and (b) cars would stop for them because they were young and pretty. But Mom’s bike kept gaining speed, no matter how furiously she pedaled backward. She had never heard of hand brakes, I had never heard of hand brakes; all civilized bicycles in all the decent nations of the world had back-pedaling brakes and that was all we knew.

As she approached the masses at the scramble light, realizing that she was homicidally brake-free and traveling at roughly fifty miles an hour, Mom did the only thing she could do: she began screaming, “I’m out of control, I’m out of control! Get out of the way! Run!!!”

Innocent children dove to the ground and Mom made it through the light and onto the sidewalk, where some idiot professor was getting out of his car without even bothering to see if there were formerly fat women barreling down the sidewalk screaming. Mom flew toward him, screaming, and he dove into the bushes around the Science Building.

She was slowing just slightly as she approached the front of the Administration Building, enough that she thought she might be able to get off the bike if she just threw herself sideways, which she did. She landed on her elbows and knees, abrading and de-skinning herself in ways with which I was long familiar. Miraculously, the cherry-red knees of her pants did not tear, but they did turn black from grass and blood. Mom’s head landed on her bookbag, breaking the little bottle of Avon Timeless cologne she had carried specially that day in order to dab a bit behind her ears before meeting the president. The bag began to leak.