Tales of the Madman Underground (32 page)

I was so wiped out I didn’t even notice that that might be a hint. I half-fell into her passenger seat, and we didn’t say much on the five-minute drive back to my house.

When we got there, all the lights were on. The lawn chair, and Mom’s suitcase were still on the porch, but Mom wasn’t. “Shit,” I said.

“What?”

“Mom was taking off with a guy for the weekend. That’s her suitcase. That means she got stood up. There’s gonna be a shitstorm waiting inside, one way or another.” I reached for the door handle, feeling a thousand years old.

“Hey,” Cheryl said.

“What?”

“Turn this way.” I did and she hugged me real long and close. It made me feel all warm and supported and like my dick was going to explode, but at least at this angle I didn’t have to worry about Cheryl noticing.

She kissed my cheek. “I hope you’re my friend, because I can’t help being yours. ’Night, Karl. Get some sleep, as soon as you can.”

On the porch, Mom’s suitcase sat next to the lawn chair, surrounded by dozens of crushed-out cigarette butts. I was just thinking about what this might mean as Cheryl’s car pulled away behind me.

 

 

When I went inside, Mom was just lying there, on the couch, hugging herself, still in the nice outfit she’d picked for going up to Put-in-Bay. The coffee table and floor around the couch had maybe ten or so empty beer bottles scattered around, and there was a very full ashtray in the middle of the coffee table as well. There were cats packed all around her like they were trying to keep her warm; they always seem to know when a person feels like crap and is going to hold still long enough to be a good place to nap.

Mom looked up, pushed the thick bright-yellow hair out of her face, and reached for me with both arms. “Got a hug for your mom, Tiger?”

“Sure, always.” Seemed to be my night for hugs. I sat down next to her, on the edge of the couch, and she shrugged off all those cats and curled around me like a python, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her face into my chest, her body under my arm, her legs pushing against my back. She hung on for a while; every time she’d go to talk, she’d start to sob, and stop and rub her face around on my chest again.

Finally, her voice muffled by my shirt, her lips moving against my chest, she whispered, “Tiger, I sat out on the porch till way, way, way after dark. I smoked all the cigarettes I had. I didn’t have a phone number for Bill or anything, couldn’t call to see what was going on. After a while it was really cold out there, and it was too dark for anyone to see me, so I just let go and cried, and cried, and cried. Isn’t that silly, Tiger?”

“I don’t think so, Mom, not at all. You were hurt.”

“I mean, isn’t it silly for your mom to be crying to you over some boy? It’s supposed to be the other way round, isn’t it?”

“At least there’s someone for you to cry to,” I said, feeling practical and tired. “And anyway, you’d be even more upset if
I
was crying over some boy.” That made me think of Paul, which I didn’t want to do. “So did anything else happen? Have you just been crying here the whole time?”

“Unh-hunh. No Bill. You can hear the phone ring all over the yard, I would have heard him if he’d called.” She was crying harder, and I squirmed a little to get more comfortable.

“I’m sorry, Mom. You were hoping—”

“I was
so full
of hope. And besides I
told
all my friends about this and now they’re going to ask how it went when I see them on Monday and I don’t know what I’ll tell them.” She sobbed again, and clung tighter to me. “I hate myself, Karl. I hate myself. I don’t know why I even
thought
a nice man would want to spend time with me.”

“He’s not looking like such a nice man to me right now.” I was trying not to fall asleep.

“So finally,” she said, “I came inside to wait, and got into some beer from the fridge, and have been lying here, crying and drinking ever since, with just the kitties for company. I tried turning on the TV now and then, but I was afraid that with it on, I might not hear the phone. Besides all the programs that were on tonight were sad, people dying of diseases or getting away with crimes or things like that, or those mean, mean hateful comedies. And I can’t watch the news, Tiger, you know me, I hate news, news is bullshit anyway. Thank you for coming home.”

“You’re welcome, Mom,” I said. The world was kind of spinning and I really wanted to get to bed.

When she finally eased up her grip, I got up and brought in her suitcase, and started to steer her toward the shower. She started to complain that I was “doing all these Me-Big-Man-Fix-It Things, instead of listening to me, Tiger, that’s what a woman wants, you need to just listen, I need you to just listen.”

“You need a shower and bed. You’ll feel better.”

“You sound so adult-y. My little man. All grown up and wants me to get my bath and put my jammies on.”

Eventually she disappeared into the bathroom with her robe and towel, and the water started to run, and I could hear her in there singing that “C’mon, People Now Smile on Your Brother” song, in her sharp head voice. She did that when she was starting to feel better, usually, so it was a good sign.

I went upstairs to start getting ready for bed, myself. The door to my room was standing open, but my hiding places weren’t disturbed. There was a pile of catshit right in the center of my bed, and one throw rug piss-soaked, which I’d have to wash before I could go to bed.

I wished I knew which cat it was that liked to shit on the bed. Grave Thirty-four in Cat Arlington was waiting.

Hairball was rubbing up against my leg, and I looked down at him and said, “Listen, four cans of tuna, all for you. Just point him out to me, and don’t ever mention our conversation, how’s the deal sound?”

Unfortunately the purring probably didn’t mean “yes.”

I lugged my bedding down the stairs. Mom was still in the shower. Groggy as I was, I did one more stupid thing—there’s always enough time and energy for that. I forgot to change the settings on the washer to cold.

Mom came out of the shower complaining that the water had started to get cold. Between her long shower and washing my bedclothes, I had used up all the hot water. I took a freezing cold shower—it was better than putting a body cruddy from a day’s work into my clean sheets—and then slept in two old sweatshirts on my bare bed, dozing and looking at Dad’s notes, until I heard the dryer stop at about three A.M. Between being actually clean and warm, and what the day had been like, I was asleep in an instant.

PART FOUR

I SAT UPRIGHT in bed like I’d had an electric shock, and sent poor old Hairball tumbling ass over teakettle. The slant of light in the room looked wrong. I grabbed my alarm clock. It wasn’t set; I thought I had but I must not have.

Ten thirty. Holy fucking shit. I should already be at my second job of the day.

I was breathing like I’d run six miles, rolling over, yanking on my pants, rehearsing in my mind all the apologies I would have to make to all the nice old ladies because I had missed one, would be late for the next, would have to make it up and that might mean the other two—

As I yanked my pants up, I heard something, realized I’d been hearing it for a while, and pulled open the curtains of my bedroom window.

It was raining, steady and heavy, a thick curtain of silvery water. MacReady Avenue was flooded three inches deep up at the corner with Grant Street. It must have been doing this for hours.

The sky rumbled low and heavy; brief pale glows of lightning washed everything.

I was saved. I didn’t deserve it at all, but I was saved.

I put on a T-shirt and went down to the phone by the front door, and started calling. Even if it cleared up later, the ground would be much too soggy and wet for any of the jobs I had scheduled—turning a compost heap, changing over a bed and replanting it, turning a summer bed under, planting three fruit trees. I called them all up, and even Mrs. Planetari, the job I had missed, seemed surprised, since it was so obvious that I wouldn’t be doing any of the work today.

I promised I’d find time to get the fall planting done during the next week, since the flowers and trees were already purchased and needed to get into the ground, and turn the beds and the compost heaps next Saturday. Maybe I could throw Squid and Tony some of the work.

My customers all seemed to think it was noble that I didn’t work Sundays. The real reason was because I needed that time to work around the house and get some rest. Dad had kind of made me promise to do that for myself—not for God.

“Karl?” I hung up the phone as I turned; Mom was leaning out of the kitchen. She was wearing her ratty old pink bathrobe and slippers, which she usually only wore in the winter when it got really cold and windy and our poor old furnace couldn’t keep up. She grinned through her mop of gold-blonde hair. “Do I look fucking motherly, or what, Tiger?”

“I kind of like it.”

“You would, horrible boy. Look, I got up early and had a real attack of maternalism, and I cleaned the kitchen. And then I realized it was raining, so I went in and turned off your alarm, and let you get some sleep.”

“That was nice of you.”

“It was, wasn’t it? Sometimes I’m so motherly I impress myself. Anyway, then I thought I’d like a clean kitchen, and now that I have the pleasure of my son’s company, I want to do something so motherly it will make us both puke, and make waffles.”

Back when I was a little kid, before all the bad stuff started, waffles had been my favorite. For the last couple of years I’d had them now and then at Philbin’s or Pongo’s, and at home on my birthday and Christmas Day, maybe.

Next thing I knew she was being all corny and stuff, fixing Belgian waffles. I grabbed an umbrella and pulled on rubbers over my sneakers, and ran up Grant Street to Lawsons to pick up Smucker’s Strawberry Syrup and Reddi-wip, so we had the works; I was soaked and freezing when I got back, but there was time for a fast hot shower before Mom finished the last of the first batch.

By then the rain had picked up and gotten serious about soaking the ground. It was one of those nice steady gully-washers that makes everything grow like crazy; I figured I’d get some weeding work next weekend, too, and maybe a couple yards to cut, plenty of work for me, Squid, and Tony.

We sat in the living room and ate those waffles—they were great, really, as good as they should be—and watched
Scooby-Doo
. Now and then a cat would act interested in Reddi-wip but Mom had leaned the broom up against the back of the couch and most of them were afraid of it, because it was her weapon of choice whenever she went batshit-crazy on them. Hairball sat next to my feet and looked at me mournfully, but knew me too well to make a move on my food.

Mom cracked me up with some of her work gossip, and I told her about school and my friends, and we both skipped everything important: I didn’t say a thing about Paul, and she didn’t bring up Wonderful Bill, and we had a great old time there.

She sighed, carried her plate out to the kitchen, and said, “Fire it up again? If you have one more waffle, I’m going to succumb to peer pressure and have another myself.”

“Come on, kid, the first one’s free, and you don’t want to be chicken, and all the kids are doing it,” I said.

“Eaah! Can’t hold out. Okay, two more waffles starting.”

I didn’t figure this would be the long-awaited Saturday morning when Velma at last gave in to her obvious lust and jumped Daphne, so I left the TV on to entertain the cats, and went out to keep Mom company.

She was leaning against the counter, looking semi-pensive. I let her have whatever thoughts, and just enjoyed feeling like I had my mom back. I knew it wouldn’t last, but a couple hours of total sanity, and a day off from work, was such a blessing I could’ve shit my pants.

After a while she checked the waffle iron, and apparently didn’t see what she wanted to see yet, so she shrugged and leaned back up against the counter, and said, “There seems to be some kind of law about guys. The more regular-guy and John-Wayney straight- shootin’ square-dealers they are, the more they turn out to be ucky ucky sons of bitches you can’t trust.”

“I’m sorry that this one didn’t treat you better, Mom,” I said, because I wanted her to keep talking, since for once it wasn’t about drugs, UFOs, Nixon, or what was wrong with my father. “I know you liked this one.”

“No he didn’t, and yes I did. He—I don’t know, Tiger, do you really want my love life with your waffles?”

“Gotta be more interesting than
Scooby-Doo
, Mom.”

“Well, at least my love life is more interesting than
something
.” She checked the waffle iron again, but I guess a watched waffle never browns. “Anyway, it’s just. It’s just. Um.” She sighed. “Okay, drop the big one on the boy right now, Beth. All right, I really did love Doug. Really. A lot.” She brushed her hair back over her ears. “But you know, if he hadn’t gotten sick, we’d probably be divorced by now, and I don’t know if I’d be like I am, but I wouldn’t be like I was. And I guess you and Doug would be living together as two swinging bachelors, hunh?”

That made me laugh like a crazy bastard. “Right, I’d be bringing home hippie chicks for him to hustle.”

She opened the waffle iron up and dumped out two perfect waffles. “How do you know when they’re ready?” I asked.

She grinned. “Ancient secret, Tiger Sweetie. You get married very young. You get a waffle iron as a wedding present and you have a husband that you think the sun rises on, and very shortly after a little boy that you think it rises and sets on, and they both love waffles. Then you make about ten thousand burned waffles—and about ten thousand half-raw ones—while your husband gamely eats them, and your little boy doesn’t care. Eventually you know what a goopity-gooey uncooked waffle looks like, and what a burned one looks like, and you stand by the waffle iron and when it’s been a little bit past raw, but before it’s burned, you pop it out. You just don’t remember all the crunchy carbon and half-raw batter I put on your plate when you were little. It’s like all the assassinations, everything looks fine as soon as none of the witnesses are talking.”