Getting Waisted (19 page)

He had no real understanding of why marrying me was so important. He couldn’t comprehend why some man wearing a special suit could wave his magic wand and make us more married than he felt we already were. But he loved me and wanted to make me happy; it was the stamped legal paper that sat in a drawer that he objected to. To him it was wrong that that kind of power could be assigned. He looked at me tenderly. “Tell your mother and your friends that we got married in Quebec when we went to visit my family.” I think Gilles hoped that going public would satisfy both of our needs. It worked—sort of. I told my mother and, not one to waste the moment, she threw a wedding celebration together, including making an announcement of our nuptials in the newspaper. The backlash from my friends and family, who felt slighted by my not telling them, was overwhelming. In that moment, being a writer came in very handy. I fabricated a story of our spontaneous but perfectly private and romantic wedding ceremony performed by a justice of the peace in a beautiful small town by a lake. I instructed Gilles to fill in all the blanks and forever we were to keep our mouths shut to this lie.

My mother pulled out all the stops. It was a huge gathering, with everyone she had ever known, including our extended family and all of Gilles’ and my friends. I had to threaten my over-excited mother to not hire a skywriter to proclaim how lucky I got. My dad wasn’t there. He was far too deep in dementia-land. My girlfriends, in an outpouring of gratitude to Gilles for taking me off their hands, all handed him dollar bills. My contingent of former standby dates, my gay posse, did their best not to flirt outrageously with Gilles, whom they all had a crush on, out of respect for my mother. My family plundered their coffers to make my fake wedding special, believing it was definitely cheaper than feeding me for life, which is what I think they thought they were in for. But it worked. I felt married. How could I not? We opened gifts for two hours. I pushed the guilt aside by reminding myself how often I had worn hideous bridesmaid’s dresses.

I was lying in bed in that wonderful half awake, half dream-like state, protected from all bad things by
my fake husband’s
right arm welding my head to the pillow. I fell asleep again. The phone rang next to my ear. Of course, it had to be my mother who never seemed to understand it was not okay to disturb her newly married daughter early in the morning.
Aaaach!
I wasn’t on guard at 8:30 in the morning; a person answers their phone at 8:30 with no trepidation. “Hello? Oh, I see. Yes, I understand. Was it peaceful? Thanks for calling.”
Thanks for calling . . .
My precious Gilles put his arms around me. “I have to tell people. Whom do I tell? He didn’t have anybody and I already know.” My body shuddered with the realization that my father was dead. I sat leaning against Gilles. He lifted the front of his T-shirt to allow me to put my head underneath and lay my cheek against his warm skin but there were no tears. He rocked me back and forth, lulling me into a short-lived sliver of safety. I bolted out in a fury. “I am not telling my mother! Maybe in a year when she thinks to ask, “So, how is he? Your father?” “DEAD! I’ll tell him you were asking.” I knew I was playing with fire. She’d be mad, but she didn’t have that right. I was the one who was angry. She may as well have put a blindfold on him and spun him around three times pushing him in whatever direction she wanted. She never asked him what he wanted. Gilles turned me to face him and softly pointed out my father was more than twenty-one and my mother didn’t have a gun to his head. I was adamant about not
telling her and about not having a minister. He didn’t go to church. I was not having some stranger stand over my father’s body and tell the assembled—me—things he was making up about a man he’d never met . . . “Richard Watson Parker lead an extraordinary life . . .”
Yeah, he forgot to have one.

My father was not religious. His church could be found amongst the trees and the parks he loved. He had always said he wanted to be cremated so that’s what I did. I bought flowers. He loved flowers: lupines, crocuses, and daffodils. We were driving to his favorite park. A car horn blared and I slammed on the brakes. I had no idea why the overcooked blonde in the car next to me was so angry. She swore at me and screamed. I had run a red light. I had no idea. I was on another planet. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” But it wasn’t enough for her. She whipped out from behind and pulled alongside me, rolling down her window, ready for another attack. That was it! I stormed out of the car and was about to get in her face when Gilles pulled me back, but not before I could shout: “My father is in the trunk and he’s dead!”
With that, she flipped me the bird and was gone. Gilles pointed out she was probably calling the police to report a murder.

I was fairly sure it was illegal to bury your dead in the Toronto Park System. “What if someone sees us? What if we get caught? What if . . .” Gilles calmed me down. “It’s okay, we’ll tell them, it’s our cat Miou-Miou.” I pointed out we didn’t have a cat, and Gilles countered that we wouldn’t miss this one, then.

I found it so odd that the box was heavy. Did that mean that even in death I, too, would be heavy? Life was not fair and apparently death wasn’t either. I found the perfect spot, two tall oak trees overlooking a meandering stream. He would have loved it. It was April. It was Canada and the ground was frozen. The digging was arduous, impossible but we managed. I took the seeds out of their packages and tossed them over the newly dug earth. I knew flowers would grow there, and everywhere else the wind blew them. It felt good, simple, quiet, and surrounded by green and trees. I heard whistling—lots of whistling. A long, snaky line of schoolchildren led by their teacher was heading toward us and I felt panic begin to flush across my face. We stood motionless as they stomped close by us, right past the two tall trees, and then they stopped. I watched and saw they were headed to the bathrooms. On the other side of the twin trees where my daddy was now buried, were a pair of red, wooden arrows, one on each tree. One read, “Boys,” the other arrow; “Girls.” Not quite the marker I would have chosen. But it was an unforgettable one and seeing as I was the only person who needed to know where my dad was buried, it was somehow perfect. There would be an endless parade of little children stomping close to my father’s grave and I knew if he could, he would have risen up . . . “Private property! Private property! Go on, have a move on.”

We pulled up in front of our house, exhausted, to find my mother standing there, waiting. I opened the car door and then saw she had a knife! It was a butcher’s knife and I immediately tried to shut the door but she pulled it open. She was hopping mad like Rumpelstiltskin, going on about having to hear the news from a near stranger. “I hope you are feeling very proud of yourself young lady. ROSE! Rose from the bakery told me he was dead. Not you, but Rose. And she heard it from Liesl, who got it directly from a very knowledgeable woman at a flower market, where you bought some cockamamie English garden for his grave!” I wasn’t feeling quite as confident about my plan. I had hit the bull’s-eye and it didn’t feel good.

“You only care because other people knew before you.”
The knife blade was suddenly being pointed right at my chest, its gleaming tip milliseconds from drawing blood. “MOM!” She spun the knife around so the blade was now pointed at her chest and thrust the handle into my hand, pounding her chest.

“Go for it. Finish the job you’ve started.” While fighting back relief that she was not going to actually kill me, I marveled at my mother, who deserved an Oscar for her archetypal Jewish mother histrionics. For the first time since hearing that my father had died, I felt the tension drain from my body. I stood before my mother struggling with a mix of hurt and remorse, “I decided you would be the last to know, because I knew it would send you around the bend. I had no idea how angry I was with you.” I could feel relief mingled with laughter bubbling to the surface. “And now you have me pointing a knife at your chest.”

She was confused by my reaction. “You have a knife pointed at my heart and you are laughing.”

I responded, my laughter bordering on hysterical, “Look at you. You figured out a way to make this day be about you, instead of him.”

She was holding firm, “He’s dead. I’m only halfway there.”

“Oh, Mom, you are
too
alive.” Of course that made no sense to her. “It’s a compliment. Just say thank you and go home. We’ll talk about it later. I can’t do it now. I need time. I need . . . peace.”

I needed a sandwich.

18

The Okay Corral

Diet #21
Jenny Craig

Cost
$250.00

Weight lost
Nothing, I just needed
to pay for it to feel proactive

Weight gained
8 pounds

My mother held fast to her fury
at having been the last to know about her husband’s death, and continued to give me the ice empress treatment. She told my sister she was disinheriting me. Given the state of her finances, we got a real laugh at her nerve. Whenever I would call her, she’d hang up on me before I could utter a word. I redialed and before she could hang up, I shouted, “Don’t hang up on me, you’re my mother! You are supposed to be the mature one.” She slammed the phone down. I called back again, only to receive a barrage from her wounded pride.

“And you think you are the mature one?
Aaach!
You are now the expert on everything. You are made of stone. You have no feelings. You are just like him! I’m the one who gave
you
life, but what do I know?” The volley took on a competitive life of its own, and she hung up on me again.

My finger spun the rotary dial, “And I know how much you wanted to have me.”

“If you’re unlucky like me, you get pregnant!” Breathless, I slammed the phone onto the receiver.

Gilles watched this tantrum with more than a bit of concern. “When we have a baby, will it grow up and do this?”

“Not unless you have it with my mother!” I had a small bout of panic. “Do you want a divorce?” He reassured me he didn’t but was taking the idea of a vasectomy more seriously.

Soon enough I was parked outside my mother’s house loading up on stamina, okay, Twinkies.

I rang the doorbell. Queen Elizabeth wasn’t pleased to see me. I apologized for not telling her about Daddy. She stepped back from the door and allowed me to enter.

The vibe was similar to an old Western, but without guns. We didn’t need them. We both were upset, and angry, and it oozed out of every pore as we squared off eye to eye in her living room. I admitted that I had wanted to hurt her, but it wasn’t planned or even expected. It had bubbled to the surface and then it was just there. “Years of anger and frustration not just at you, but at him, too.” He never spoke up. He allowed himself to be swept along, taking no responsibility for his life. “I knew you were just doing what you had to do to survive.” She was convinced I hated her. I wanted to make her understand that being angry and frustrated wasn’t hate; it was about being angry and frustrated, and not knowing what to do with those feelings. In that moment I realized I never cried. I was too scared. I explained that I didn’t want to feel . . . my feelings. So I ate.

Of course, as soon as I had said it, I could have predicted her response. “So you blame me for being fa . . . heavyset?”

“No, Mother, it’s not your fault—well, not all of it.” She blazed but then went soft.

“Okay, fine, tell me everything I have done to ruin your life and then I will say sorry every day for ten years, if I live so long. Then can we be a happy mother and daughter like from the movies?” I didn’t think she was thinking
Mommy Dearest
, but that was the movie that came to my mind.

“How about neither of us say sorry and we just talk, oh I don’t know, maybe listen. I know you have always loved me but when I needed attention, you were always too busy.”

“That accusation is wrong, I have always . . .
Aaach.”

I gave her a long look, took a deep breath, and summoned my courage. I told her I felt that whenever she looked at me all she could see were her regrets and so it was easier for her to just avoid looking at me. “I guess I thought if I got bigger, you’d notice me.” I explained none of this was conscious. “Can You See Me Now? Not yet? Okay, I’ll get bigger.” I knew I was being an idiot. I should have just put a spotlight on my head.

My mother took me by the hand and sat me down on the sofa. “Now it’s my turn. You are a fine independent woman. I admit to having a little trouble with the independent part, but you came by that honestly. You are not my regret. You are my success. The men I married were my failures, but I did what I had to do. War is never normal; it’s stupid, ugly, and solves nothing but ruins everything.” And from that revelation on, mother and I began to talk,
really
talk. It was like a great first date. I learned for the first time about her dreams, mostly unrealized, all cut off by war. She was a single working mother long before it was the norm. The Queen Elizabeth thing? She needed that just to get by; that was her strength. She took my face in her hands, “You know that I love you more than there are stars in the sky.” She kissed me all over my face. It was at that moment that I realized how much love we had for each other. Our movie suddenly turned into a tearjerker. I started to cry big, fat, monsoon-sized tears.

“I didn’t know that, I never knew you loved me. I always thought I was that
Oops
baby. Mom, I love you more than there are worms after a rain, really big worms, really big rain.”

“Aachh.
What we need is some strudel.” I couldn’t have agreed more.

With my mother’s and my issues finally resolved, I felt I was ready to tackle the other long-standing problem: my plus-sized body. Gilles thought I was crazy to have been seduced by TV ads hyping a new and apparently easy way to lose weight, The Jenny Craig System. But I wanted their hype to be the truth and so I went for a consultation in a slick and very professional looking upstairs lab-like unit in a strip mall. I was weighed and measured and immediately became filled with shame at the results. My very encouraging consultant assured me I would lose ten pounds within two weeks. I took out my checkbook and I felt holy once again.

Two days later, a huge box arrived filled with smaller, attractively packaged and labeled boxes with all kinds of yummy food choices. If only they had tasted as promised. To me, they tasted like dog food, not that I really knew what dog food tasted like but I did know these dishes tasted awful. I would rather have eaten dirt. I went back to tell my consultant but she wasn’t there. Another, a clone of the first one, didn’t know me and insisted on a weigh-in before I could make my displeasure known. To my surprise, she read from my chart the weight I had started at and magically, and I mean magically, she proclaimed that I had lost nine pounds. For a second I was over the moon, until I reminded myself that I hadn’t dieted at all.

It was three months to the day after my father died. Gilles and I were at a retro movie house seeing Steve McQueen in
Bullitt
. It was his favorite, and he wanted to share it with me. We were walking home. “Did you love this movie?”

I had to be honest. “I liked it but I had a little trouble. I couldn’t stay with it after his car slammed down that first hill and sideswiped that whole row of vegetable stands. I got obsessed with the mess. Those poor Chinese vendors, all their goods squashed and splattered all over the sidewalk and street. It was upsetting. I worried for the rest of the film about who cleans that stuff up. Messes in movies leave me feeling unsettled; they make me think of my own messes.”

Gilles looked at me with affection but, at the same time, he was also shaking his head. “We really are two strangers and you are stranger than anyone.”

From halfway down the block I recognized the sound of our phone ringing. My stomach did a sudden triple flip. “Something is wrong.”

Gilles remained calm, “Because we have a phone call. You are always think the worst.”

My mother had a brain aneurism while playing bridge. She only played competitive bridge—need I say more? The doctor reassuringly explained that any of us could be walking around with a ticking aneurism in our heads and it could live there for years like an unexploded mine, waiting for the slightest wind gust to detonate it. He added that, unlike a stroke, which can turn anyone into a turnip if it’s bad enough, a brain aneurism, if found, could be cauterized and the patient would bounce back whole and healthy—that’s if it could be found, not easy when it was in the tangle known as our grey matter.

My sister, Gilles, and I paced ceaselessly outside the operating room waiting for news from the front. Oh God, I was desperate for some chocolate, but I knew my timing, no matter how critical, was inappropriate. Heroin would probably have done just as nicely. I watched the door open. The doctor walked toward us, but I already knew, just by the set of his shoulders. Another of life’s weird ironies—my mother was dead and it happened while she was playing bridge. Too bad, she was holding a killer hand. But at least she went out doing what she loved.

My sister and I were at the coffin boutique, being shown the bewildering variety of finishes available, from woods of the world, to veneers, brass or bronze fittings . . .
All the better to carry you out with . . .
Discreet little metal pricings stood on top of each customized humidor. I was shocked at the gouging going on, and thinking they probably didn’t have seasonal sales or specials. My sister was just as flummoxed. “I have no idea what we should get her. What do you think she’d like?”

That was an easy answer: “A better team of doctors.” My sister impaled me with a look. I closed my eyes to fight back the tears and then responded. “The fiberglass ones probably last the longest—I don’t know, maybe the walnut? All her end tables were walnut . . . ”

We were all having dinner together—my sister, her husband Phil, and all of Mummy’s bridge friends. They were all talking about her as if she was still alive. No one had said the “D” word even though tomorrow was the funeral. I asked if they thought Mummy was holding a really bad hand and that was why she checked out. “What do you mean?” I suggested that she had always been a sore loser.

The predictable pile-on was immediate. “Why do you do this? Why do you need to always make jokes?” Easy answer, “The other choice was just too painful.” I willed myself into stone and apologized. I kissed my shocked sister and brother. “I don’t want to do this dance anymore and I know you won’t understand this, but I forgive you.”
All their judgments vanquished.
I could see by their faces they had no idea what I was talking about, but it no longer mattered.