In A Country Of Mothers Read online

  Ellen didn’t say anything.

  “Someone new? Someone I know?”

  “Neither,” Ellen said. And there was a groan in the background.

  Jody couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or disgust. “Well, don’t let me keep you,” she said. “I’ll call from L.A.”

  The last time Jody had looked at the map, they were coming up on both the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. She was starting to wish she’d brought some Valium.

  “Tomorrow we rest,” her mother said as they unlocked the door to their room. “We go to the Grand Canyon. We spit on it.”

  “In it,” Jody said.

  “Whatever. You do what you want and I’ll do what I want.”

  The Grand Canyon. If only Freud had seen it, Jody thought, life would be different. All around the analyzed world, the boundaries of acceptability would be broader and grandiosity would be celebrated. The significance of size in all subjects from dinner plates to penises would be acknowledged.

  The day after their day off, the car broke down. It wouldn’t have been a road trip without a breakdown.

  “How come you’re slowing down?” she asked her mother.

  “I’m not,” her mother said, pumping the gas pedal, sliding the gears into neutral, and attempting to restart before gliding to a soft stop on the edge of the road.

  “Shit,” Jody said, looking at the map. The time zone had changed again, Mountain to Pacific. If it was getting earlier and earlier, why did Jody feel like it was getting later and later?

  She flipped through the Triptik, the Triple-A prayer book, and found the rescue number. The only hitch was that you had to be near a phone and they were in the middle of the goddamned desert. Jody could picture her mother making her get out of the car and walk. She’d walk for hours, become completely dehydrated, look up and see buzzards circling, waiting to come in for the kill.

  Jody didn’t offer to get out of the car or to look under the hood. She didn’t say anything except “We probably shouldn’t use the air conditioning if the engine’s not running.”

  Finally, a couple driving a station wagon stopped and offered to use their car to push Jody and her mother down the road to a gas station.

  “Every day it’s something,” her mother said.

  “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

  “Do we have to pay them?” her mother asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Jody said. “You could offer, but they probably won’t take it. They’re doing it because they feel bad for us, and want to prove to each other what good people they really are.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jody shrugged. At the gas station Jody’s mother offered the couple twenty dollars and they took it without even pretending to protest.

  “Don’t see too many of these Japanese cars around here,” the guy in the gas station said.

  “It’s a Saab,” Jody said. “From Scandinavia.”

  “Same thing.” The guy couldn’t figure out how to open the hood. “Bunch of tricksters,” he said, laughing. Jody got out to help him. “Ought to be a law against it, arranging things so you can’t find ’em, don’t you think?” he asked, finally locating the dipstick and pulling it out. “Oil’s fine, though.” He put the stick back into its hole.

  “Just die on you?”

  Jody nodded.

  “Could be the alternator — lots of these Volvos got alternator problems.”

  “It’s a Saab,” Jody said, for the first time feeling possessive of the car that would be hers once they got to L.A.

  “Well, give me a minute with it,” the guy said.

  Jody and her mother sat in the station office, and while the mechanic futzed — dropping tools, cussing himself and the car out — Jody started thinking. She thought to herself until the thoughts were too much and she was driven to speak, if only to relieve the pressure of thinking.

  “Did you ever regret getting me?” she asked her mother. She purposely said did and ever rather than do or now, because she wanted to make it easy for her mother to say yes. And she purposely didn’t use the word adopted, even though she knew her mother disliked it when Jody referred to herself as something they’d bought perhaps on a Sunday afternoon in a hardware store. Oh, and give me one of those children you’ve got over there. Lost my other one a couple of months ago, might as well go ahead and replace it now….

  “Don’t you ever wish—”

  Her mother cut her off. “I wonder why you’re asking that now?”

  Jody knew why, sort of, but wasn’t about to admit anything. “A question with a question,” she said.

  “This isn’t exactly the perfect place to talk.”

  “It’s fine,” Jody said, looking around at the oily service bays.

  “You,” her mother said, hitting the word with passion, “are my daughter.” It came out with a kind of frightening edge Jody wasn’t expecting. “Not someone else’s. Mine. So what if I didn’t have you? I couldn’t have you. I couldn’t have anyone else, either. Are you ever going to forgive me for not actually giving birth?”

  Jody didn’t say anything. Usually her mother wasn’t so emphatic about it. Maybe they’d been driving too long, had spent too much time together, were too far from home, and were just plain exhausted. Jody felt bad. Her mother was fifty-five years old, almost past middle age, and still Jody pursued this topic with regularity and vigor. Would she ever give it up, or was it a ritual — their ritual, perhaps the basis for their relationship?

  “I don’t make up for him,” Jody said, referring to her dead brother, whose name she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud in the wilds of Arizona.

  “You’re not him,” her mother said. “No one ever asked you to be anything other than yourself.”

  Jody knew this wasn’t true, but to explain in the middle of a gas station was too complicated. Her mother was right, this wasn’t the place for the conversation. It was a conversation best had some place safe and familiar, a place that could protect you even if you couldn’t protect yourself.

  Regardless, Jody couldn’t let go. “If it weren’t for him dying,” she said, “you wouldn’t have adopted me.”

  “We always wanted more children,” her mother answered.

  It was a familiar excuse. When her brother was born, something had happened — a ruptured uterus, something, Jody couldn’t remember now. Anyway, the result was no more children. Her mother always used that medical fact as proof that Jody and the brother were separate issues.

  “You never know,” her mother said. “I always wanted a little girl.”

  “I know,” Jody said.

  They’d never had the whole conversation, the one they had to have in order to put the thing to rest. They never really said anything. It was all hemming and hawing, out of fear that someone might say the wrong thing, someone might get hurt.

  The car problem was solved more easily than the thoughts stirred by their half-conversation. Within the hour they were back on the road, quieter than before. Jody knew it was because they were getting closer to Los Angeles. The closer they got, the sooner her mother would leave. But before she could leave, they had to go over everything one more time, as if to refresh their memories and confirm their understanding, to make everything less than perfectly clear for the millionth time. It was ritualistic. From the dead brother, they would progress; it wouldn’t take long before they’d be discussing how Jody had hated to go to elementary school, moving on to her early therapy experiences, and closing out with how good it was that she was going off to graduate school to become what she’d always dreamed of being — a person? No. A filmmaker.

  Two hundred and some miles later they were in California. Jody felt like she’d been holding her breath since they left home. In California she relaxed, breathed deeply, and then asked herself why. California was nothing, nowhere. It was the far edge of the country, a ledge waiting to fall into the ocean, an earthquake epicenter. Her chest tightened again, a strange shrinking sensation. She tri
ed to comfort herself with signs. Mileage indicators, the big H’s indicating hospitals, exits, and names of towns were her favorites.

  “We have to make a decision,” her mother said. “We’re about a hundred and fifty miles away. Do we want to knock ourselves out and just get there or do we stop now and wait until tomorrow? What do you feel like doing?”

  “Dunno,” Jody said. “What do you want?”

  “Rest,” her mother said.

  Jody was glad. Suddenly she was in no hurry to get there. The longer it took, the better.

  “I need some Advil,” her mother said. “I have this horrible muscle spasm in my back and all down my leg.”

  “I think we should kill ourselves,” Jody blurted. “We should find a garage, close ourselves in, and let ’er rip.”

  “Too late,” her mother said. “If that’s what you wanted, you should’ve said something a long time ago. Just after Little Rock you might’ve convinced me, but now it’s almost over.”

  “Exactly,” Jody said. “It’s over.”

  Jody lay on the bed in the final motor court of the journey paralyzed by the same thoughts that had frozen her five days before.

  “You know,” her mother said from the tub, “we’re not going to be able to talk on the phone as much as we’ve been doing. It’s very expensive to call California, so let’s try and make it every other night from now on.”

  Alone in the room, Jody started to cry. She didn’t mean to. Crying wasn’t her specialty. She lay there bewildered, the tears running down her face. Her mother was deserting her. She was taking her to Los Angeles as a kind of final favor, then leaving her. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

  “What’s wrong?” her mother asked, coming out of the bathroom, two towels wrapped around different parts of her body, her feet leaving damp tracks on the tan carpet.

  Jody sniffled. “Why did you drive twenty-six hundred miles just to be mean to me?”

  “Mean to you?”

  “You drove me out here. You know I’m scared, and then you say ‘By the way, don’t call home anymore.’ Who the hell am I supposed to call, the National Guard?”

  “Stop it.”

  Jody got up, went into the bathroom, and slammed the door. Two glasses fell off a shelf and shattered on the floor.

  “What’re you doing in there?”

  “Nothing,” Jody said, bending down to pick up the glass.

  “Come on. Let’s find a nice place and have a decent dinner.”

  “Not hungry.”

  “Dont do this. I’m trying to help you. I’m not forcing you to go to Los Angeles. You wanted to come. I’m not the one who applied to graduate school. You’re scared, that’s all. Try and control yourself.”

  After a few minutes her mother said, “I’m hungry.”

  “So eat. Who’s stopping you?”

  “Be nice. I’m your mother. Now, come on. Let’s go somewhere.”

  “McDonald’s,” Jody said.

  “Is that what you’re dying for?”

  “McDonald’s represents certain standards, certain givens. You know what you’re getting before you even get it. They make everything in one place and then ship it all over the country. No matter where you go, the pieces are all exactly the same.”

  “Are you sure this is it?” Jody asked her mother. “I can’t imagine picking this place.” An ancient, four-story walk-up on a mound of land someone might accidentally call a hill, a cracked-up pool in the back: no one would call this home.

  “You picked it,” her mother said, unlocking the trunk, starting to unload onto the sidewalk. “This is the one you wanted.”

  “It’s tacky,” Jody said. First floor, no window bars, what had she been thinking?

  “It’s bigger than the one in New York,” her mother said. “Three times the size.”

  “Great. I’ll spend my nights patrolling the premises, clutching a shot-gun.”

  “At the time that’s what you liked about it. The word charm came up.”

  “Oh,” Jody said, pulling open the sliding glass door that led out to the pool area. There must have been something that had attracted her to the place. But for now it reminded her of a bad David Hockney painting.

  “Well make it work,” her mother said, carrying in more stuff. “Put up some shades, buy a few bright things. It’ll be nice. You have a pool right outside your door. There’s a view. It’s always nice to have a view.”

  Her mother spent the rest of the week helping Jody find things: the bank, a decent supermarket, hardware store, cleaners, all the little things, donut shop, UCLA. They spent hours driving around Westwood, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, downtown, trying to figure out what connected what. The city was the strangest mishmash: Miami meets Mexico meets a set designer and a special-effects team, a horror movie. Weird foliage was everywhere, lots of things with sharp leaves, bushes that looked half-dead. Jody’s eyes ached from the sun. She broke down and bought herself a pair of Ray-Bans, the real thing.

  They scrubbed, soaked, and sterilized the apartment as if the previous tenant had been a certified serial killer. Jody didn’t particularly want to start putting things away. Unpacking meant she was staying, and in her heart she still wasn’t sure. The day her mother would have to leave got closer and Jody still didn’t know where the airport was, how she’d drive there and back.

  “I’ll go alone,” her mother said. “We’ll say arrivederci here and I’ll take the airport car or whatever it is.”

  Jody knew that her mother was afraid she’d snap. At the departure gate Jody would demand to get on the plane, to go back home.

  The apartment was almost finished. “You just need a few more little things,” her mother said. “If we hurry, I can buy you a plant before I have to go to the airport.”

  They drove to a strange plant warehouse her mother had noticed the day before and bought a huge ficus for the living room.

  Her mother zipped her suitcase closed, and Jody opened the door to keep an eye out for the airport limo.

  “Maybe we should say goodbye before we leave the apartment,” her mother said, fixing her hair.

  How do you say goodbye and then spend the next hour sitting thigh to thigh with someone you’ve just hugged and kissed like you’ll never see them again? The horn blew outside.

  Jody and her mother went out together, Jody helping load her mother’s suitcase into the trunk. Car service both ways: the low-stress, high-cost solution. Airport limo to curbside, ticket agent, baggage check, security to departure gate, check-in, seat assignment.

  Would Jody ever see her mother again? Would the plane get home all right?

  “Thanks,” Jody said, kissing her mother.

  “It was nothing,” her mother said. “Do well. Be good. I’ll talk to you when I get home. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “I’ll call you. Call Daddy and tell him I got on okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bye.”

  Another kiss at the last gate. The back of the mother walking away. The back of the mother; sadness rising. The back of the mother disappearing. Lots of other people moving up the ramp where the mother just was. When to leave the airport? Wait until they close the door of the plane, until they announce last call, until they vacuum-seal everyone in and the engines start up, until the man with orange cone pointers for hands pushes the plane backwards with a couple flicks of the wrist? Should she run to the observation deck and try to find the plane outside? Should she watch every plane rev up and race down the runway? How long should she stand there — until the plane lands in Washington? At what point should she let go, turn on her heels, and head back the way she came, toward the strange city that was now her home?

  “UCLA,” she said to the cab driver.

  20

  Plotting how to use every available inch, Claire and Sam stuffed the car with everything they owned and more — things they’d bought just to struggle with, groceries that were readily available in the Easthampton A&P but w
hich were somehow better coming from home. As they carried what seemed like the entire contents of their apartment down to the sidewalk, the sky began to darken.

  “Hurry,” Sam said.

  “We’re in trouble,” Jake said.

  When Claire went upstairs to get the last few things, she found Adam standing in the middle of the living room, crying. Rushing made him nervous. When he was nervous, he cried. Claire gave him graham crackers and sent him down to the lobby with Jake.

  The apartment was quiet, still. It looked better with the stuffing taken out of it. It looked like the kind of place Claire would want to live. She had the urge to run downstairs and tell them to go without her.

  Checking to make sure they had everything, Claire realized she’d packed as though she were leaving for good, not going on vacation. When just going away, you took what you needed, ugly and practical items that could get lost or ruined without causing any grief. But Claire had packed silk blouses and shoes that cost two hundred and fifty dollars a pair. There was no reason to even take them out of the suitcase, or to take the suitcase out of the car — except that it was less likely to get stolen from the back of a closet than from the trunk of a car.

  As they drove up Third Avenue toward the Midtown Tunnel, it started to pour.

  “‘Rain, rain, go away,’” Adam sang, “‘Come again some other day.’” It was his first big trip without a car seat; he was seat-belted in and propped up on two pillows so he could look out the window.

  If the trunk leaked, her things would be ruined.

  On the Long Island Expressway a car was trapped in an enormous puddle, a miniature flash flood. Traffic pulled around it in a great wide arc, not touching even the edges of the puddle, unsure where the disaster started, where it stopped. Water came up to the door handles of the trapped car. Claire saw that the man and woman inside looked surprised; if they opened their doors, water would rush in, and there was no way of knowing how much, or if it would ever stop. If it had been a different kind of couple and a different kind of car, they could have climbed out through the sun roof and stood on the trunk waving their arms until someone took pity on them and pulled over to help. Without seeming to notice, Sam drove around them.