Slim to None (20 page)

I nod. Of course it was. Weird, in a way, since my grandma wasn’t technically even a blood kin to me. But then again, two people who were genetically connected to me behaved as if they weren’t. So much for that "blood is thicker than water" theory.

"And I know right down to the end your mother dropped the ball—"

"That’s putting it mildly."

"You know what I mean. But with everything that she did wrong, she did wrong for reasons we’ll never know. Though I betcha they actually had nothing to do with little Abbie and everything to do with her own set of demons."

"And you’re defending her why?"

"I’m not defending her, honey. I’m trying to get you to see that holding onto all of that negative energy is holding you back. It’s not letting you move forward and live your life the best that you can."

"I’m the nation’s top food critic, you know? That’s not exactly small potatoes. And if that’s being held back, I wonder what I’m missing out on then."

"What you’re missing out on is the ability to forgive. To forgive your mother for her failings. To forgive your father for his. And ultimately, to forgive yourself for taking the blame for them. If there’s one thing I need to do before I die—"

"Don’t say that!" I hold my hands up against the thought.

"I’m an old lady. I won’t be around forever. I worry round the clock that you won’t have anyone to straighten you out."

"I’ve got William."

"Sure, you’ve got William. Wrapped around your finger, that is. You say
jump
and he asks
how high
. He’s not going to tell you to let go of that because he doesn’t want to stir up any old issues for you. That’s why I’m stirring them up for you—I’ll be the cook in your psychological kitchen. It’s time to let go, Abbie. Give yourself that gift."

I guess I eventually paid my grandmother some lip service and a couple of yeah, yeahs and then the pies came out of the oven and we got distracted from the conversation, thank goodness.

The next evening I got a call from one of her poker friends. Everyone showed up to play but my grandmother didn’t answer the door. By the time I got there someone had found a key she’d hidden in an old condom wrapper beneath a tree in her side yard. Only Gigi would be so creative. We found her sleeping peacefully on her back, her face looking up, hands clasped in what appeared to be prayer.

Thank God the poker ladies were there to help me. And William, of course.

Unfortunately by then I seemed to have a knack for unexpected encounters with the death of a loved (or not-so-loved) one, having weathered the untimely demise of my dear old mom.

My mother and I seldom spoke. I’d long ago basically moved in with Gigi, only popping into the house occasionally for good measure. I’d gotten myself through college, and when I came back to visit Gigi, I’d poke my head in to see if my mother was taking visitors. That was about what it had come to: she was like a bad version of Gloria Swanson, hiding in her darkened house, aging, miserable and alone. So it was a surprise one day when I got a message from my mother.

"I need you now, Abbie," she’d said in a weak voice to my answering machine. "I want to talk to you."

God, how I hated those times when she wanted to
talk
. Invariably her version of talk involved her berating me for something, usually it had something to do with my appalling weight (which wasn’t so bad back then), and also to bash my father, even though they’d been apart longer than they’d even been married by that time. I hadn’t the desire to defend myself yet again, and certainly wasn’t going to stand and be an advocate for my selfish father. So what was the point?

I was reluctant to oblige her, but as was often the case, guilt, always the engine that powered me, advanced me forward.

When I stepped inside the house that afternoon, the air seemed terribly still. It was approaching dinnertime, and the late-day sun peering through the transom windows—the only uncovered windows in the place—shone a spotlight on the dust motes snowing down from on high. It was the only movement I sensed in the place.

"Mother!" I shouted. I could never bring myself to settle on a more endearing term with which to address her. It almost felt like I should’ve added the word "dearest" after that.

Usually if I called out like that, my mother would reply in her weak-tea voice, that diluted attempt to speak that lets the listener know how long-suffering the speaker is. But that day, nothing.

I climbed the steps two at a time, wondering what was up. A slice of light drew me toward a cracked door at the end of the hall—it was the spare bathroom. The one I used to use, till I moved in with Gigi.

"Mother?"

I opened the door and was bowled over by the noxious aroma of bile and vomit. My mother’s body was suspended over the toilet, her face touching the water’s surface. Her hair was matted with sick, her skin a pallid gray. Everywhere was puke. Puke and pills. And empty bottles that once contained those pills: barbiturates, valium, codeine, you name it, she’d evidently swilled it all down with the nearby bottle of vodka to cement the deal. God, I’m surprised she didn’t just eat a half dozen chocolate éclairs instead, as I always figured she’d die if she ever ingested such a radically fattening bakery product.

"MOTHER!" I screamed it that time. I pulled her back out of the toilet bowl by her vomit-clotted, damp hair, and—frozen in place—her body thudded backwards. I was torn between feeling as if I needed to touch her to see if she was indeed dead and the sheer repulsion of coming upon her in such a grotesque condition and being terrified to touch anything of her. The rank odor permeating the room caused my stomach to double over on itself and I began to dry heave, soon retching up the contents of my own stomach as well.

I panicked—I didn’t know if I was supposed to deliver mouth-to-mouth or feel for a pulse or shake her to wake her up, but, God, there was little doubt she was dead. Her eyes were open and staring up at me. Nothing moved on her, no slight rise of the chest to indicate even a shallow breath. Already cadaverously thin, her threadbare cotton nightgown clung to her skeletal frame, the fabric stained with excrement. I raced down the stairs, over to my grandmother’s place. Yet I didn’t want her to have to witness this either. Grandma called the police, who confirmed what we already knew.

The thing about losing my mother wasn’t that I lost her. I’d lost her already, long, long ago. But that she had to make her exit in so dramatic a fashion, in a way that would remain with me forever, well, it angered me. It angered me deeply. It was selfish of her, the last of a series of deeply selfish acts by a woman who gave me life, but was incapable of subsequently giving any of herself to me.

My grandmother took care of most everything to do with disposing of my mother’s remains. She insisted on a simple service for her, but I refused to go. My mother ended up buried somewhere one notch above a potter’s grave. I honestly never asked where and my grandmother never told me, a secret that went to the grave with her.

The only good that came of my mother, in the end, was that I used the money from the sale of her duplex when I met William and we decided to take off to Europe. So maybe in some small way she did allow me a re-birth.

Distill Intentions, Mix with Confusion

The smell of this place reminds me too much of the smell that day with my mother. I’m teetering on flashbacks when the nurse ushers me into my father’s room.

"Here you are, Mrs. Jennings," she says, pointing to one of those complicated hospital beds with knobs and buttons and protective railings that just can’t help but remind you of the precariousness of the situation.

My father is asleep with the bed propped halfway up, his head cocked at an angle toward his chest, his near-hairless scalp on display front and center. He’s dressed in a pilled gray plaid sweater vest and a pair of mismatched brown Hagar slacks that seem to swallow him whole, as such pants tend to do on old men. He’s got the television cranked up loud on ESPN Classic, a football game from about thirty years ago on the screen in faded glory. Maybe he’s trying to relive a time when life was more agreeable to him than it’s now become. Although thirty years ago would be right about when things were going to hell at home, so doubtful. Or maybe that faded film serves to de-emphasize the reality of what was?

I feel almost like a voyeur being in here right now, privy to his apparently peaceful sleep. Though how he could sleep peacefully ever again after doing what he did to me I’ll never know. I think about that sad, scared, confused little girl I was, being dragged away from him upon finding him with his real family, and I firm my resolve to not yield to him, even if he tries to sweet talk me.

I stare at his face, trying to see
me
there. Yet all I see are the ravages of time, a face that bears witness to life struggles, as evidenced by the hard lines set across it. I watch as his old-man’s sunken chest rises and falls rhythmically; it’s almost hypnotizing in its regularity. I think back to my mother, stiff with rigor mortis, frozen in place on the cold bathroom tile, no motion from her lungs, nothing hypnotizing about her, and realize that soon this will be my father as well. Maybe not sprawled upon a bathroom floor, but soon all that he was won’t matter any more, at least to him. And all that he will leave behind is either finished or unfinished business. Some of it in the form of me.

I think about Jane Greer and that twinge of jealousy rears its ugly head at me. Jane who had the Daddy. I instead merely had the Donor. Well, dad-for-a-while turned-donor. I think about the way he left, as if he’d gone out to mail a letter or something. And never came back. Like sending out a message in a bottle that shows up thirty years later. I ponder all of those events in my life that were glaringly void of a father figure: bringing boyfriends home (not that I did that much, but still), the prom (and we know how that turned out), graduation, going off to college, my wedding.

God, I could use something to eat right now. I rifle through my purse in search of anything that could be construed as food. Amazingly I pull up a relatively intact power bar, something I optimistically threw in there in case I was trapped in an avalanche and food was not an option for the foreseeable future so I’d have to make do. I bite off the tiniest of bites and proceed to chew. And chew and chew and chew. I just know with this diet I’m going to end up biting my cheek or my lip, and then I’ll be sorry. I help myself to another nibble, chewing and chewing and chewing some more. I’m like a cow chewing its cud.

My father makes snoring noises that remind me of Cognac when he sleeps. Only Cognac is frequently chasing remote control airplanes in his sleep, and I doubt this is the case with my father. He’s probably either running from the grim reaper or running from his demons, including me.

I settle into the brown vinyl recliner next to his bed, trying to seek comfort in my position but only feeling as physically awkward as I do psychologically. I study the football game on the television: it’s some championship game with the New York Jets, and Joe Namath is the quarterback. Those were the days, back when men were men and some left their daughters for better families...

All of a sudden I feel a set of eyes settling on me. I look over to see he’s awake. Oh, God, I’m not ready for this. I stand up, stiff as a board.

"Janie?" he mumbles, rubbing his watery faint blue eyes. "Janie?"

I don’t know what to say so I just sit there, frozen in fear/stress/performance anxiety.

"Janie-pie. You look like you’ve put on some pounds. You’d better start thinking about losing weight or Jason will leave you!" He snickers at his joke. I gather Jason is Janie’s husband.

Is this why he left my mother? Because of her weight? Or is this why he left me? For that same reason?

Whoa. That’s impossible. My mother was the one obsessed with weight, not my dad. The bastard. Damn him, dissing Jane—I mean me!—for a body size. What is
with
this man? The things he’s done wrong could fill a book, yet he’d criticize someone for having put on a few pounds? Well, maybe more than a few pounds, if he’s thinking Janie went from her to me, size-wise, since he saw her, oh, maybe yesterday.

I’m starting to contemplate just slipping out, figuring he’d never realize it was me who had come, anyhow. As far as he knows I’m just Jane-who’s-been-porking-out, when I notice a familiar something winking up at me from beneath his mock ribbed turtleneck collar. Despite myself I reach out to touch it.

Half my heart. He’s wearing half my heart around his neck.

I drop it quickly, as if my fingers are scorched by the heat of it. How do I reconcile this with the father that I know? Knew? A father who completely forgot about me the minute the door slammed behind him. Yet remembered about my heart, after all these years. I take another bite of the power bar and chew as if my life depended up on it.

"He wears it all the time, you know."

I look over to see Janie leaning against the doorway, her arms crossed, her right leg bent, foot pressed to the door jamb.

"No, I didn’t know," I say through my incessant chewing. But did I want to know?

"When we packed up the house we went through all of Dad’s effects. I came upon this necklace and almost pitched it. Only he about pitched
me
when I tried to.
You can’t do that!
He yelled at me
. That’s my last connection with my Muffin
. And then he started to cry."

I’m silent, not quite sure what to say, letting everything just unfold while I digest it.

"I know you think that he forgot about you, but I’m pretty certain you’re wrong about that." She starts to move forward and leans over her father’s head, stroking his thin hair away from his eyes. "Right, Daddy? Did you say hi to Abbie?"

My fathers eyes grow large and damp. "Muffin?"

Okay, this is sort of like a hospital, right? A nursing home? There are medical terms that are common between the two, right? Because I need something
stat
! I need something, anything, that will work to assuage the anxiety that is burbling up inside of me. Chocolate pudding would do, and it’s a nursing home, so surely there’s some chocolate pudding nearby. I could even settle for rice pudding in a pinch. Jell-O? Not so much. But maybe even some saltines could help matters.

My father’s hand trembles as he reaches out toward me; it’s as if he wants to touch me to be sure I’m not a mirage. I wonder for a minute what happened to those strong hands of his—the ones I saw last peppered with shards of glass and speckled with blood. Now they’re mere shadows of the strong tools of the past: tissue-paper skin—spotted with age and threaded with blue-green veins—barely covers the frail bones. Reminds me of the fragile frogs legs we had to pin down in those sticky pans during dissection in eighth grade science class.

Well. Life ultimately becomes the great equalizer, doesn’t it? Even the less-than-mighty fall, eventually. I try hard not to flinch as his fingers slide between mine. It’s as alien a sensation to me as it would be to bite into a Big Mac.

His voice is a hard cheese rasping against a grater as he calls out to me again. "Muffin? My little Abbie girl?"

Little? Now there’s a word seldom used in conjunction with my name. I’ll give him props for that.

I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m supposed to say to him. My fantasies from long ago of cracking my hand hard across that face, or at the very least letting him know in no uncertain terms what I thought of him, all seem to have dissolved away at the sight of this diluted version of my former father.

"Dad, didn’t you have something you wanted to tell Abbie?"

He nods his head so slowly I barely notice it. Jane takes this as her cue to leave us alone and slips out of this claustrophobic room, closing the door behind her.

The crowd roars in the upper left corner of the room. I look up to see Joe Namath has just scored another touchdown. The camera shows a close-up of his face, long before he would become bloated with age and alcohol. Long before his nose was gnarled like a tree root. Damn, he was a good-looking man. And I remember that my father, too, was a handsome man, so full of life. But my days of being pushed on the swing set by my loving father are long gone now, and the reality of how life can chew you up and spit you out (now wouldn’t
that
be a smart diet? Zero calories!) has instead eclipsed the romanticized notion of the days of yore.

"You should know," my father begins as I jerk my eyes away from the grainy film on the screen, "I never meant to hurt you."

I never meant to hurt you:
this line ranks right up there with
I’ll respect you in the morning
or
I love you
as one of the top one hundred lies men will tell you in order to get what they want out of you. Well, he’s getting nothing out of me, that’s for sure.

I purse my lips together, and instead of chewing my latest bite of food I let it just sit there, softening up beneath my tongue. I know if I open my mouth now, out will gush forth a tidal wave of unpleasantries and I’d just as soon take the high road. No need to beat up an old man, even if he is my former father and probably deserves it. Hell, I can beat him up with silent treatment and still prevail.

"Your mother, she was a tough broad, that one was. It was okay at first—she was young and spunky and when we went at it, we eventually got over it. But the older she got, the more she let everything get to her. She could only think about how she didn’t want to be fat. All the time, ‘
I’m not eating that! I’ll look like I’m pregnant again!
’" He says this in a high-pitched voice, mimicking her.

"Enough already, I’d say. Fat, thin, who cares? Pretty soon she cut me off." He slices his hand slowly across his neck. "Nothing! No more. ‘
What’d I do to deserve that?’
I’d ask her. ‘
I can’t stand how I look and I know you can’t either
’ she’d say back. What could I do? I told her I loved her no matter what she looked like, even though she looked fine anyhow. No matter. For a long time I put up with it. But then Marjorie came back into my life—"

I clear my throat. "Look, I don’t need or want to hear this—" I don’t even know what to call the man—should I call him Dad? Or Mr. Cartwright?

He holds his hand up to stop me from continuing. "You should know this. This is the story of what happened. You need to know it."

He closes his eyes, apparently the strain of this confession takes it out of him. For a minute I watch his shallow breathing and notice his silvery eyelids flickering closed, then opening. "Marjorie and I dated before I ended up with your mother. We had plans to be married one day. But her father didn’t like me one bit. When he thought things were getting too serious, he sent her away to live with an aunt somewhere. It happened so suddenly, I had no way of ever finding her. One day she was there, the next day she was gone."

Ugh. As if I want to hear how my father hooked up with his better family? I stare up at the television and wish I had a Budweiser just like the guy in the commercial. At least it would fill the void in my gut that my soggy power bar is clearly not occupying successfully.

"Your mother and I had known each other for a long time—even while Marjorie and I were dating your mother was hanging around all the time. Soon as Marjorie was gone, she was at my doorstep. I was heartbroken, so I just went along with everything. Before I knew it, she was pregnant with you and we got married. It happened like that—" he weakly snaps his fingers. "Lickety split. At first things were okay. Well, better than okay—we had you! But things got gradually worse and your mother became very mean. And then when Marjorie came back to town with Jane—"

"Jane?
She
came before
me
?"

He nods his head, hanging it a little as if ashamed. "Jane was why Majorie left town. Only I didn’t know it then. She was pregnant and her father turned her out, sent her off to live with her aunt in Wyoming."

"So not only were they your good family, but they were your
real
family. Now it’s starting to make sense," I mutter under my breath.

"What’s that?" he asks.

I shake my head. "Nothing."

"I didn’t even know she was back in town. I’d gone to the park one Saturday to escape for a couple of hours after your mother and I had had another huge fight. I was sitting alone on a swing, rocking back and forth, my feet planted on the ground. Then I heard her calling out Janie’s name. I looked up and saw Marjorie standing there, hands on her hips, a little girl right before her. And then I knew."