And there it is. The thing that stops me this time, just as it has each time before:
I can’t write my story without knowing my own history. And my mother’s.
I know almost nothing about her, and I know even less about my father. My history
is this blank, yawning void. No wonder I can’t write anything.
I have to talk to my mother.
At the thought, I open my purse and find the small orange container. I am down to
my last Xanax. I swallow it without water and then, slowly, I pick up my cell phone
and call my business manager.
“Frank,” I say when he answers. “This is Tully. Is my mother still cashing her monthly
checks?”
“I’m glad you called. I’ve left some messages. We need to talk about your finances—”
“Yeah, sure. But now I need to know about my mom. Is she still cashing her check?”
He tells me to hold, and then comes back onto the line. “Yes. Every month.”
“And where is she living these days?”
There is another pause. “She’s living in your house in Snohomish. Has been for a few
years. We sent you notice. I think she moved in when your friend was sick.”
“My mom’s living in the house on Firefly Lane?” Did I know that, really?
“Yes. And now, can we talk about—”
I hang up. Before I can really process this information, work through it, Marah is
coming out of Dr. Bloom’s office.
That’s when I notice the goth kid is beside me again. His black hair is streaked in
magenta and green and safety pins hang from his earlobes. I see a glimpse of the script
tattoo on his throat. I think it says madness, but there’s more I can’t see.
At Marah’s entrance, he stands. Smiles. I don’t like the way he looks at my goddaughter.
I get to my feet and edge around the coffee table, sweeping in protectively beside
Marah. I take her arm in mine and lead her out of the office. When I look back from
the door, gothie is watching us.
“Dr. Bloom thinks I should get a job,” Marah says as the door closes behind us.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, frowning. Really, all I can think about is my mother. “That’s
a great idea.”
* * *
All afternoon, I pace in my apartment, trying to think clearly.
My mother is living in one of the two houses I inherited from my grandmother; the
house I have never been able to sell because it is across the street from the Mularkeys.
This means that if I go to talk to her, I have to go back to the place where Kate
and I met, where my whole life changed on a starry night when I was fourteen years
old.
And I have to either take Marah with me or leave her alone. Neither choice seems particularly
appealing. I am charged with watching her like a hawk, but I don’t want her to see
this meeting with my mother. Too often our reunions have been either humiliating or
heartbreaking.
“Tully?”
I hear my name and turn. I think, vaguely, that Marah has called me before, but I
can’t be sure. “Yes, honey?” Do I look as distracted as I feel?
“I just heard from Ashley. A bunch of my high school friends are going to Luther Burbank
beach park today for a picnic and waterskiing and stuff. Can I go?”
Relief comes in a sweet rush. It is the first time she has asked to spend time with
her old friends. It is the sign I have been waiting for. She is returning to her old
self; softening. I move toward her, smiling brightly. Maybe I can stop worrying so
obsessively about her. “I think that’s a great idea. When will you be home?”
She pauses. “Uh. There’s this movie afterward. A nine o’clock show.
Wall-E
.”
“So, you’ll be home, by…”
“Eleven?”
That seems more than reasonable. And it gives me plenty of time. So why do I have
a nagging sense that something is wrong? “And someone will walk you home?”
Marah laughs. “Of course.”
I am overreacting. There’s nothing to worry about. “Okay, then. I have a business
thing to do, anyway, so I’ll be gone most of the day. Be safe.”
Marah surprises me by hugging me tightly. It is the best thank-you I’ve had in years,
and it gives me the strength I need to do what I know needs to be done.
I am going to see my mother. For the first time in years—decades—I am going to ask
her real questions, and I won’t leave until I have some answers.
* * *
Snohomish is one of those small western Washington communities that has changed with
the times. Once a dairy farming community tucked in a verdant valley between the jagged
peaks of the Cascade Mountain Range and the rushing silver water of the Snohomish
and Pilchuck Rivers, it has blossomed into yet another of Seattle’s bedroom communities.
Old, comfortable farmhouses have been torn down and replaced with big stone and wood
homes that boast magnificent mountain views. Farms have been sliced and diced and
trimmed down to lots that fan along new roads that lead to new schools. I imagine
you rarely see girls on horseback in the summer anymore, riding in cutoff shorts on
the sides of the road, their bare feet swinging, their hair glinting in the sunlight.
Now there are new cars and new houses and young trees, planted sometimes in the very
place where older ones had been uprooted. Weedless lawns stretch up to painted porches,
and well-maintained hedges make for good neighbors.
But even with the new views, the old town still shines through in places. Every now
and then an old farmhouse stands defiantly between subdivisions, its fenced acres
thick with tall grass and grazing cattle.
And then there is Firefly Lane. On this small ribbon of asphalt, outside of town,
not far from the banks of the Pilchuck River, change has come slowly, if at all.
Now, coming back to this place that has always meant home, I ease my foot off of the
accelerator. My car responds immediately and slows down.
It is a beautiful summer day; the unreliable sun is playing hide-and-seek among the
wafting clouds. On either side of the road, green pastures roll lazily down toward
the river. Giant trees stand guard, their arms outstretched to provide shade for the
cattle gathered beneath.
How long has it been since I was here? Four years? Five? It is a sad, serrated reminder
that time can move too fast sometimes, gathering regrets along the way.
Without thinking, I turn into the Mularkey driveway, seeing the
FOR SALE
sign planted by the mailbox. In this economy, it is no surprise that they haven’t
been able to sell the place. They are renting in Arizona now; when this house sells,
they’ll buy something.
The house looks exactly as it always did—a pretty, well-tended white farmhouse with
a wraparound porch overlooking two sloped green acres that are outlined by mossy split-rail
cedar fences.
My tires crunch on gravel as I drive up to the yard and park.
I see Kate’s upstairs window, and in a blink I am fourteen again, standing here with
my bike, throwing stones at her window.
I smile at the memory. The rebel and the rule-follower. That’s what we’d seemed like
in the beginning. Kate had followed me anywhere—or so it had seemed to me then, through
my girl’s eyes.
That night we’d ridden our bikes down Summer Hill in the darkness. Sailing. Flying.
Arms outflung.
What I hadn’t known until too late was that I was following her, all those years ago.
I am the one who can’t let go.
The drive from her childhood home to mine takes less than a minute, but to me it feels
like a shift from one world to another.
My grandparents’ old rental house looks different than I remember. The side yard is
torn up; there are mounds of landscape debris piled in the middle of dirt fields.
Before, giant juniper bushes had shielded the rambler from view. Now someone has ripped
out the shrubs but not replaced them with anything, leaving piles of dirt and roots
mounded in front of the house.
I can only imagine what I will find inside. In the thirty-some years of my adulthood,
I have seen my mother a handful of times, always—only—when I have gone in search of
her. In the late eighties, when Johnny, Katie, and I were the three musketeers at
KCPO, I stumbled across my mom living in a campground in Yelm, a follower of J. Z.
Knight, the housewife who claimed to channel a thirty-thousand-year-old-spirit named
Ramtha. In 2003, I’d taken a camera crew and gone in search of her again, thinking—naïvely—that
enough time had passed and maybe a new beginning could be forged. I’d found her living
in a run-down trailer, looking as bad as I’d ever seen her. Starry-eyed with hope,
I’d taken her home with me.
She’d stolen my jewelry and run off into the night.
The last time I’d seen her, only a few years ago, she had been in the hospital. She’d
been beaten up and left for dead. That time, she sneaked out while I slept in a chair
at her bedside.
And yet here I am.
I park the car and get out. Holding my laptop like a shield, I pick my way across
the torn-up landscaping, stepping over trowels and spades and empty seed packets.
The front door is wooden and has a faint green furring of moss. Taking a breath, releasing
it slowly, I knock.
There is no answer.
She is probably passed out on the floor somewhere, dead drunk. How many times had
I come home from school to find her lying on the sofa, half on and half off, with
a bong not far from her outstretched hand, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead?
I test the knob and find that the house is unlocked.
Of course.
I open the door cautiously and go inside, calling out, “Hello,” as I go.
The interior is gloomy and dark. Most of the light switches I find don’t work. I feel
my way into the living room and find a lamp and turn it on.
Someone has ripped up the shag carpeting and exposed the dirty black floorboards beneath.
Gone is the seventies furniture. Instead, there is a single overstuffed chair positioned
next to a garage-sale side table. In the corner a card table plays host to two folding
chairs.
I almost leave. Deep inside, I know that nothing will come of this meeting, that once
again I will get nothing but heartache and denial from my mother, but the truth is
that I have never been able to walk away from her. Not in all our years together,
not with all the times she’s abandoned or disappointed me. I have spent each of my
forty-eight years aching in some small way for a love that has never been mine. At
least now I know better than to expect something different. That is a help, of sorts.
I sit down on the rickety folding chair to wait. It is not as comfortable as the other
chair, but I am not certain of the fabric’s cleanliness, so I choose the metal chair.
I wait for hours.
Finally at just past eight o’clock in the evening, I hear the crunching of tires on
gravel.
I straighten.
The door opens and I see my mother for the first time in almost three years. Her skin
has the wrinkled gray cast that comes with years of hardscrabble, drunken living.
Her fingernails are brown with dirt. Clawing your way through life will do that.
“Tully,” she says. It surprises me, both the strong, even tenor of her voice and the
use of my nickname. All my life she has called me Tallulah, which I hate.
“Hi, Cloud,” I say, standing.
“I’m Dorothy now.”
Another name change. Before I can say anything, a man comes into the house and stands
beside her. He is tall and whipcord-lean, with wrinkles in his tanned cheeks that
look like furrows. I can read his story in his eyes—and it is not a pretty one.
My mother is high, I’m pretty sure. But since I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sober,
how would I know?
“I’m so glad to see you,” she says, giving me an uncertain smile.
I believe her, but I
always
believe her. Believing her is my Achilles’ heel. My faith is as constant as her rejection.
No matter how successful I become, ten seconds in her presence will always turn me
into poor little Tully again. Always hopeful.
Not today. I don’t have the time—or the energy—to step on that Tilt-A-Whirl again.
“This is Edgar,” my mother says.
“Hi,” he says, giving my mother a frown. Her dealer, probably.
“Do you have any family photographs?” I say, a little impatiently. I am beginning
to feel claustrophobic.
“What?”
“Family photos. Pictures of me as a girl, that kind of thing.”
“No.”
I wish it didn’t hurt, but it does, and the hurt pisses me off. “You took no pictures
of me as a baby?”
She shakes her head, saying nothing. There is no excuse and she knows it.
“Can you tell me
anything
about my childhood or who my dad was or where I was born?”
She flinches at each word, pales.
“Look, missy—” the pot dealer says, moving toward me.
“Stay out of this,” I snap. To my mother, I say, “Who are you?”
“You don’t want to know,” she says, sounding scared. “Trust me.”
I am wasting my time. Whatever I need for my book, I won’t find it here. This woman
isn’t my mother. She might have given birth to me, but that’s where her commitment
to me ended.
“Yeah,” I say, sighing. “Why would I want to know who you are? Who I am?” I grab my
purse off the floor and push past her and leave the house.
I pick my way over the furrowed, upended piles of dirt and get in my car and drive
home. All the way back to Seattle, I am replaying the scene with my mother over and
over again in my head, trying to glean meaning from nuance, but there is nothing there.
I pull into my building and park.
I know I should go upstairs and work on my book—maybe today’s outing will be a scene.
At least it is something.
But I can’t do it, can’t walk up into my empty condominium. I need a drink.
I call Marah—she sounds sleepy when she answers—and tell her I’m going to be home
late. She tells me she’s already in bed and not to wake her when I get home.
I exit the elevator and go straight to the bar, where I allow myself only two dirty
martinis, which calm my racing nerves and steady me again. It is almost one o’clock
in the morning when I finally go upstairs and unlock the door to my condo.