“Our tree’s too big!” Auburn shouted.
Hank and Pud studied the situation.
“We could cut a hole in the ceiling,” Hank said.
“Or the floor,” Pud said.
“Or take thirty inches off the middle and splice the tree together,” Hank added.
This is your typical example of Native American humor. As a kid, it drove me crazy, but now it was Auburn’s turn.
He crowed. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
Hank’s face was dead serious. “You got a better idea?”
Maurey introduced Shannon to Toinette and Roger. Toinette offered her supper, but Shannon said she had eaten on the plane. Shannon complimented Roger on his chokecherry necklace and asked him to show her how it was done.
“What’s Gus up to?” I asked.
“Gus is on a cleaning binge. She’s throwing out everything she doesn’t consider vital to survival.”
“My baseball cards?”
“They went the first day.”
Chet came from Pete’s room. “Our friends are coming in tomorrow.”
“Do they need a place to stay?” Maurey asked.
“I made reservations at Snow King Inn.”
Shannon and Chet shook hands and Shannon said she was sorry about Pete. Chet said Pete spoke of her often; Maurey went to the kitchen and brought back lemonade and these little crackers shaped like fish. Everything was going fine—I’d just taken my place at the popcorn-stringing station—when Shannon said, “I expected Grandma Lydia to be here.”
I stuck a needle through a popped kernel and the kernel broke in half, leaving me with nothing on my needle.
“Your father and grandmother aren’t speaking,” Maurey said.
Shannon looked at me. “Why not?”
Maurey answered. “He says she ruined his life.”
I set the needle next to my lemonade and gave up on Christmas decorating. There’s no use trying to be constructive when you’re ganged up on by women.
“That was weeks ago,” Shannon said. “You be nice to your mother.”
“She’s not nice to me.”
“Jeeze, Louise, who’s the grown-up around here? Dad, I want you to march down to her house and make up. Right now.”
“No.”
Maurey said, “Forgive your mother, Sam.”
Hank said, “You have the power to make her Christmas bright.”
“I won’t do it.”
No one would look at me, except Roger who had an expression on his face like I’d stolen his teddy bear.
The silence didn’t last long. Shannon laid down an ultimatum. “Forgive Lydia or I won’t forgive you.”
I hate ultimatums. “For what?”
“For hurting my friend Gilia. For messing up Halloween by making that boy try to kill himself on our front porch.”
“Don’t forget he was creepy to your boyfriend,” Maurey said.
“That too.”
I stood up. All day I’d been looking forward to my daughter’s arrival, and now this.
“I’m being persecuted,” I said.
Chet’s face was the saddest thing I’d ever seen. He said, “People you love die. Don’t waste precious time holding grudges.”
I searched the room for an ally—Chet to Roger to Auburn to Hank to Shannon to Maurey. They were all accusing me and they were all wrong.
I said, “I’m going to bed.”
***
She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself to him.
Ah, Madame Bovary. If only someone would throw back her white neck for me. Emma was so happy there for a moment, not knowing that she, like Anna Karenina and Oedipus’s mother and so many other lovely yet loose women created by male novelists, would soon die a cruel death at her own hand.
On Lydia’s fortieth birthday, Shannon and I flew up from North Carolina to surprise her. Hank arranged for us and practically everyone else who knew Lydia to meet at this hoity-toity restaurant in Teton Village. Surprise birthday parties carry a high risk. Take Katrina’s as an example. Anyway, Hank told Lydia the two of them were going out to eat, and when she walked into the dining room we all yelled
“Surprise!”
and broke into that awful song. Lydia’s face turned to wax, she looked at the massive cake Dot had baked, and she looked at me; then, calmly, she left. I didn’t see her again for two years.
They—my family and friends—were probably right about Lydia. I’ve found there are few instances where I’m right and everybody else is wrong. In the morning I would drive into GroVont and do whatever it took to reestablish a relationship with my mother.
A knock came at the door, which is always interesting in the middle of the night. I welcome late night knocks. I marked my place in
Madame Bovary
with a Kleenex strip as Shannon walked through the door wearing her pac boots without socks and her cold weather flannel nightgown.
She held out two wrapped Fudgsicles. “You hungry?”
I nodded even though I wasn’t, particularly.
She gave me a Fudgsicle, then pushed my feet over under the blanket, clearing a spot so she could sit on the end of the bed. I could see her looking around at my living situation, critically. Even though the room had been home for over six weeks, it wasn’t much more personal than a monk’s cell. I had a bedside stump for my Kleenex box and Madame Bovary and a length of clothesline between two nails for a closet. Five or six dirty coffee cups sat mired in dust bunnies under the bed.
“I’m planning to fix the place up after Christmas,” I said.
Shannon said, “Don’t go out of your way on my account.” From somewhere in the flannel nightgown she produced a baby blue envelope. “Gilia sent you a letter.”
She must have originally planned to mail it because the letter had been addressed and stamped. It was one of those personalized stationery envelopes women give each other as gifts, the kind with the return address embossed in white. The uncanceled stamp was a painting of a Baltimore oriole—it said so under the picture—but best of all the envelope smelled ever so lightly of Gilia.
“What did you do to her?” Shannon asked.
“How do you mean that?”
Shannon tore the top off her Fudgsicle wrapper and pulled the paper down over the stick. I don’t do it that way. I pull the wrap up over the top, like a sweater.
“Gilia’s been moping around ever since you dumped on her. I asked what was the matter and she said you two connected intellectually and emotionally.” Shannon did this arch thing with her right eyebrow. “You didn’t screw her, did you?”
“Of course not.”
I turned the letter over and looked at the back. It didn’t have any of those Xs and Os most women put on letters.
“She’d be nuts to give you another chance.” Shannon sucked the curved tip of her Fudgsicle. “But if she does, you better not blow it again, Daddy.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want a parade of Wandas in and out of my life.”
“Me either.”
We each slurped our ice cream bars in silence for a while. I poked my fingertips with the sharp corners of the envelope and hefted it for weight—didn’t feel like more than one page. I wondered if it would be rude to read it in front of Shannon. She seemed lost in thought. She was staring at her Fudgsicle the way I stare into coffee when I’ve got something intense on my mind.
Suddenly, with no warning, Shannon raised her head and hit me with the full force of her brown eyes. “Dad, we need to talk.”
I bit off a chunk of chocolate ice and waited, in no hurry. Whenever a woman says “We need to talk,” it means she’s reached a decision and it’s already too late for you to talk back.
She said, “A couple of girls from UNC-G have an apartment on Carr Street, there across from the school. They needed a roommate and I applied and they took me.”
I didn’t understand at first. “But that would mean moving out of the Manor House.”
“Yes, moving in with them means moving out on you.”
“All your stuff is at home.”
She reached over and patted my shin under the blanket. “I’m getting a new home.”
Pretend your sacred daughter sticks a knife between your ribs into your heart and twists it and you’ll get an inkling of how I felt. “Why would you want to leave our house? You need more space? I’ll give you more space.”
“I’m nineteen, Daddy. I’ll be twenty next summer. It’s time I got out on my own.”
“You can be on your own at home. Ask the girls to move in with us. There’s plenty of room and they won’t even have to pay rent.”
“Living with girls isn’t the point. It’s a matter of independence. I’m leaving the nest and you have to let me.”
“I do?”
“Yes.”
Melted chocolate ran down the stick onto my fingers. Shannon was staring at me hard, the way Gilia used to. It’s not fair women can do that and men can’t.
“Will you be living with Eugene?” I asked. “Is this an excuse for unbridled sex?”
When I said
unbridled
, Shannon smiled. She knew in my imagination I was picturing her as a debauched harlot. “I’m done with Eugene, and this doesn’t have anything to do with sex. It’s my freedom.”
She was too young to talk about freedom. Only yesterday, she’d held my hand when we crossed the street. She used to run all the way home from first grade because she missed me. Hell, I used to run all the way home from eighth grade because I missed her.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“We’ll see each other.” Shannon’s laugh was a clear bell. “I’m bound to be over with dirty laundry.”
Maurey was right: Life is the shits. “But all I’ve ever done is take care of you.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to do something else.” Shannon leaned forward to kiss my cheek and take the stick out of my hand. “See you in the morning,” she said. Then she was gone.
Dear Sam,
Shannon says you don’t conquer females the way my ex-husband did. She says you have an obsessive compulsion to save lost women, that you meet miserable women who need love which you translate as sex and you convince yourself their lives wouldn’t be miserable anymore if only you would do them the favor of sleeping with them.
According to your letter, you were planning to commit to me at some unnamed point in the future, but I don’t see how you can commit to anyone if you have an obsessive compulsion that forces you to sleep with sluts.
Atalanta Williams says you have never been loved by a good woman and if a good woman were to ever love you, you would straighten up.
My father says you are a truthless satyrmaniac and Skip Prescott says you’re a “pussy hound,” among other things.
I don’t know what I say. All I know is I miss our talks and you are a villain.
Sincerely,
Gilia
I dreamed I was trapped in an elevator with thirteen Greco-Roman wrestlers. Their nude bodies glistened in virgin olive oil. Testicles hung down like baseballs in the toes of full-figure panty hose. I was wearing a Victoria’s Secret crepe chemise with nothing on underneath. The wrestlers milled back and forth, moaning and jostling me with their shoulders, thighs, and slick buttocks. Suddenly, over by the elevator controls, an Indian pull-started a Poulan chain saw. Lydia shouted, “Castrate the homophobe!” and the wrestlers rushed to the opposite corner of the elevator, crushing me between layers of naked male flesh.
***
In the morning, I dropped Maurey and Shannon off in Jackson so they could Christmas shop for the boys. The plan was for me to drive back to GroVont, reconcile with my mother, then pick the women up around noon and go back to the ranch, where Maurey had a job lined up for me and Pud—something about elk in the hay.
The plan reminded me of when I used to write lists of what to do today:
Take a shower.
Buy socks.
Write great American novel.
Pick up film at Wal-Mart.
It’s like if you sneak the big chore in, maybe you’ll check it off without noticing, only this would be harder because I’d written novels before; I’d never reconciled with my mother.
“Go to her with your heart in your hand,” Maurey said. “Lydia can’t deal with open vulnerability.”
“Beg her forgiveness,” Shannon said.
“Beg her forgiveness for what? She’s the one who lied.”
Shannon patted me on the back of the head. “Jesus, Daddy, you’re so naive.”
The morning was beautiful—fresh snow on the Tetons, royal blue sky above, robin’s-egg blue sky on the horizon. Winter can be real nice from inside a warm Suburban with two wonderful women by your side.
When I stopped at the Jackson Town Square, Maurey said, “Don’t lose your temper. Remember, she’s the childish one, you’re the adult.”
“Yes.”
Shannon giggled. “I’m lots more mature than Daddy, who’s lots more mature than Grandma. Our family must run in reverse.”
“The Callahan clan does everything backward,” Maurey said, opening her door. “Let’s go to the bank first so I can get some money.”
“No need, I still have Dad’s credit card.”
Instead of driving away, I sat with both hands on the steering wheel watching Maurey and Shannon walk toward the nearest tourist trap. From the backside, they not only could have been sisters, they could have been twins. Same dark hair—Shannon’s short, Maurey’s long—same shoulders, as they walked their arms swung the same distance from their look-alike hips. Maurey said something and touched Shannon on the elbow, then Shannon looked back at me and burst into laughter.
I imagine Maurey had said words to the effect of “What do you bet he’s still sitting there, mooney-eyed with sentimentality.” Words to that effect anyway. Women love to think men are predictable; I try not to let them down.
***
As I made my way across the frozen valley back along the highway to GroVont, I rehearsed possibilities of the upcoming scene with Lydia. What was I supposed to say? You don’t erase twenty years of pain by quoting the back cover of a self-help book.
“Gee, Mom, it’s fine you raised me thinking I was a child of rape when I wasn’t. I can validate the empowerment that motivated your disinformation response.”
“Thank you, Son, I accept responsibility for my actions.”
Then we would cry cathartic tears and join arms around a campfire and sing “Kumbaya, My Lord” in perfect harmony.
Fat chance.
You could tell from several houses down the street that something had happened at Lydia’s. Hank’s truck was backed in the driveway and the tailgate was down. Possessions were piled around the sides—skis, snowshoes, Lydia’s swivel work chair. When I pulled up next to the truck, I saw it was partially loaded with book boxes, a stereo, a painting of Martha Washington burning a bra over the Delaware, and Lydia’s computer.
The cabin door opened and Hank came out, carrying two file boxes. I stood between the Suburban and his truck while he carefully stacked the boxes against the back of the cab.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Hank studied the label on the end of a box. “
The Castration Solution
.”
“Why is Lydia moving Oothoon?”
Hank turned to me and held his hands up, waist high, in a Blackfoot don’t-ask-me gesture. He said, “She’s joining the feminist underground.”
“Is it because of me?”
“A man from Federal Express telephoned. Said her lost overnight packet had been found under the short leg of a dispatcher’s desk in Hannibal, Missouri. Said the dispatcher is fired, Lydia’s money will be returned, and the packet will be delivered by ten A.M. today.”
“The poisoned chew toy.”
“We’ll hide out on the reservation until whatever happens blows over.”
“I don’t think assassination attempts on the President’s dog blow over.”
Hank shrugged. “Your mother always wanted to be an outlaw.”
“What about you?”
The door slammed and Lydia appeared with two pairs of boots and a lamp made from an elk horn and semi-translucent rawhide. One pair of boots was normal brown with dark stitching, but the other pair had been painted yellow. Lydia herself wore sneakers, jeans, and a Patagonia jacket.
She said, “I’m leaving the TV, the Atari, and my car. You better take good care of her—oil changes every spring and fall. You’ll need new tires if you plan on driving this winter.”
I looked at the lump of snow in the front yard that hid Lydia’s twelve-year-old BMW with something like 180,000 miles on the engine. The two cars she’d owned before this had also been over-the-hill BMWs. Don’t ask me why.
She talked as she transferred her load to Hank. “Periodically while we’re in Canada I shall be mailing manifestos for you to release to the media. Don’t let those twits at
Newsweek
edit my copy.”
“I thought you were disappearing on the reservation.”
Lydia glared at Hank, who hung his head, shy dog-style. “Somebody’s got a big mouth,” she said, which may be the least true statement anyone ever made about Hank Elkrunner. “Tell the Secret Service we’re in Mexico. Don’t mention Canada until they break out the persuasion devices.”
“Persuasion devices?”
Hank fit the lamp and boots into the back end like pieces into a jigsaw puzzle. He said, “I’ll walk to Zion’s Grocery and pick up some food for the road. You two can finish loading.”
A look of dismay flitted across Lydia’s narrow face. “You’re leaving me alone with him on purpose, aren’t you?” Hank gave his near smile.
Lydia said, “Rat.”
Hank walked up the street, toward what passed for downtown GroVont. Lydia and I stood next to the truck, watching Hank’s back as an alternative to looking at each other.
I said, “Don’t you think making Hank into a fugitive is a lot to ask?”
Lydia turned, her hands on her hips, thumbs forward, fingers back. “Hank believes in loyalty—unlike other members of my immediate family.”
“What’s the chances of us having this discussion without snide sarcasm?”
Her hands dropped to her sides, and for one fleeting moment, Lydia looked profoundly depressed. “Slim. Or none.”
Her first unguarded statement since I don’t remember when—I took it as a good sign.
She looked at the truck and sighed. “Men have forced women to fall back on whatever weapons they have, and I’m afraid I’m down to sarcasm. Come on in and warm up. You may as well be of some use while you’re here.”
Whenever the television screen shows long lines of refugees running from a natural or manmade disaster, it’s always interesting to see what possessions they deem important enough to flee with on short notice. Cooking utensils and bedding seem to head the list, followed by edible animals. Lydia hadn’t packed any of that stuff. Instead, she went into hiding with her Oothoon Press files, most of her Ann Coe art collection, and a suitcase full of Danskins. A pile of political books. An exercise trampoline.
While Lydia finished packing, I wandered the house, taking in cracks in the logs and stains in the kitchen sink. When you grow up in a house, each square foot of wall and floor carries a memory, or not so much a memory as the emotion of one. I couldn’t recall what event caused my strange stirrings at standing in my former closet, but I felt the strange stirrings just the same, as if the past had turned into its own shadow.
Lydia found me standing in the closet and told me to disconnect the VCR in her bedroom and take it to the truck, but to leave the TV. I guess wherever she and Hank planned to hide out already had a television.
As I walked down the hall with the VCR in my hands, I passed the open bathroom door and looked in to see Lydia staring at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror. Maybe it was a dimple in the mirror, or maybe leaving home after twenty years got to her, but I thought I saw a tear hanging off her lower eyelid. I thought her lip trembled. When she saw me in the doorway behind her, she focused her eyes on mine. Finally we were eye to eye, even if her back was to me.
“Remember when we moved in here?” she said. “That doctor Caspar rented from had dead animals on every wall.”
“You slept on the couch for three months.”
“Until Hank got me into bed.”
“Why the lie, Lydia?”
She blinked once and whipped open the medicine cabinet. One hand held a paper bag while the other hand scooped in pill bottles, aspirin tins, and boxes of Q-Tips. “You’re not going to let it drop, are you?”
“I can’t.”
A plastic jar of Mary Kay night cream missed the bag and hit the floor, where it rolled under the club-footed bathtub. Lydia’s back rose and fell, then she turned to face me.
“Okay, shoot. Accuse me of child abuse.”
I sat on the side of the tub with the VCR in my lap. Lydia closed the toilet lid and sat on it. The déjà vu element was amazing. We could have been mother and son in 1965, settling in for one of our sink-side bull sessions.
I repeated, “Why the lie?”
She blinked twice more. “I couldn’t very well tell the truth.”
“You didn’t have to tell me anything.”
She did the maneuver where she blew air straight up, lifting her bangs off her forehead. It translated as
Give me a break
.
“You kept hounding me for information, and then you found those pictures in my panty box. What were you doing in my panty box in the first place?”
Typical ploy—shift the defensiveness to me. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Times like this I would give anything to still smoke.”
The stall technique. I said, “Lydia.”
She crossed the right ankle over her left shin. “Sooner or later I had to come up with a story.”
“But gang rape?”
She dropped her eyes to the floor. Her voice was small. “That’s the story I told myself. After you tell yourself something a thousand times, you forget it’s not true.” She seemed to be drifting back in time, growing younger as I watched. “When you called to ask if their names matched Shannon’s list, I didn’t remember at first what really happened.” She looked up, willing me to believe her. “I was scared to death. I didn’t know what to do.”
“The truth might have worked.”
She uncrossed her legs. “I thought the truth would make you hate me. You may not believe it, but I don’t want you to hate me.”
I’d come prepared for anger and screams and gotten what I least expected—sincerity from my mother. Maybe. When you’ve grown up with the queen of manipulation, you learn to distrust anything that seems straightforward. My great fear was that someday Lydia would break down and speak the truth and I’d be too suspicious to listen.
She must have seen the doubt in my face. “What do you want from me, Sam?”
I stared at the VCR. “Remorse. Some indication that you’re sorry you screwed up my life.”
“One social blunder of mine did not screw up your life.”
“It’s not just the lie. You were never a mother. From the time we left your daddy’s house, I cooked all the meals, did the laundry, tucked you in at night.”
“You volunteered to cook and clean.”
“You never once told me to do my homework or pick up my socks. I was the only kid in seventh grade who could stay out all night without calling home.”
“Some boys would like that.”
“No, they wouldn’t.”
She snapped. “Okay. I’m sorry. Are you satisfied now?”
The vein in Lydia’s forehead beat a blue rhythm. She couldn’t help who she was. You can no more force your parents to change than you can teach a cat to stop killing songbirds.
I said, “There’s a big gap between apology and condescending glibness.”
Lydia almost fired off an angry retort, but something changed her mind, and she slipped back into sadness. She pouted. “I’m not the type for guilt.”
“I know.” My reflection in the VCR control panel was distorted by knobs and switches. If I moved my head a bit to the side, my nose looked like a pig’s snout. “I wonder why I’m nothing but a huge glob of guilt.”
“It must skip generations.”
What did that mean for Shannon? Lydia leaned forward on the toilet seat and laced her fingers into a web. She spoke to her palms. “I had you right after I turned fifteen, the poor little rich girl who’d never made a decision in her life. Pregnancy doesn’t give you instant maturity. It just makes you fat.”
She raised her hands to her face, thumbs on cheekbones, and looked at me through the web. “I’m sorry I did such a shitty job raising you.”
Maybe she meant it. Maybe not. I like to think she did. Either way, I’d gotten what I came for.
“I’m sorry I lied about the rape. I’m sorry I didn’t bake cookies and sing lullabies to you in your crib. I’m sorry you did the laundry. I’m sorry I let you stay out all night—what was the other thing?”
“Homework.”
“I’m sorry I never made you do homework.” She dropped her hands. “Anything else?”
“I guess not.”
“Can you get on with your life now?”
“Yes, I can get on with my life.”
“’Bout damn time.”
***