The Full Cleveland (19 page)

“You should spend the night sometime, Mom.”

“You mean those twins? With their heads? Where do you come up with this stuff?” Her fingertips flew to her lips. “Heh heh. The way you always end your letters with, ‘The horror, the horror.' That's quite hilarious.”

“Well, I hope you're all having a good laugh, Mom. That's why I'm here.”

“Look, sweetie,” she said, while picking up one of those little cards about steak even the best hotels seem compelled to scatter all over your room. “That's for you.”

There was a dress box from Saks on one of the beds. “What is it?” I was guessing a dress.

“Open it up and see.”

It was a dress. Under the white tissue paper, a black wool dress with rather stunning what's called leg-of-mutton sleeves. I thought it looked silly at first, but when I put it on, it was short, snug, and sexy. And the arms were all gathered up and amazing. I loved it.

“I like it,” I said into the three walls of mirror in the dressing room, looking right through them to Thanksgiving Day and Rey McDowell. Maybe he'd unbutton this dress, down the back. Maybe he'd slip his hands under, onto my skin. I looked quickly at Mother to make sure she didn't sense the potential this had.

“You're beautiful,” she said, simply enough.

I didn't say anything. I was listening, though. It seemed significant. Not that she'd said it, but that she did it so matter-of-fact and casual and all, as if there were a certain given involved. Maybe that attitude would soon extend to officially dating the boy next door. We appeared to be making progress.

She went to the bed and opened her suitcase. “I think by now you can fit in my shoes.”

The dress was so we could go to dinner at her favorite famous restaurant midtown. It was a perfect autumn night, so we walked down Fifth Avenue, then turned a corner and swung into the prettiest restaurant I'd ever seen. The walls were hand-painted murals, like our dining room at home. But unlike our pale, cracking, pastoral scenes, these depicted bright, colorful Basque flower markets. A triumphant arrangement of white orchids stood on a marble pedestal in the middle of the room. We sat on plush red banquettes at a corner table. The waiters immediately began to fuss over us. I looked around. We were the only women unescorted by men. This made me feel proud of us, somehow.

We were both eating the same kind of fish. The same very flat white kind with a pale translucent sauce. There was also white wine, which Mother ordered, which was uncommon, because unlike Dad, she rarely drank anything with alcohol. So there was the pale fish and the white wine, which I already said, and the silver bucket the white wine was in, plus the French waiter with the red hair, who had announced with a smile from the start his name was Christian. And of course the room itself, the sheer color of it, and it all began to seem pretty perfect, like a very good idea to do it, except just as I was beginning to give her complete credit for it, Mother started to cry.

You didn't even know it was happening until you looked up, and then her eyes were glossing over, and then two tears were slipping down and splashing, right into her translucent sauce. “Oh, dear,” she said, staring at her fish, “I'm so sorry.”

The way she said it, it was like she was apologizing to her fish. That is, she was including him, while apologizing to everyone, everywhere, for everything. I mean, not just for crying, is all.

But I focused in. “Is it
Dad?”

I thought, you know, Dad did something. Something ugly and awful. Another woman. I narrowed my eyes. “He did something. Didn't he.”

“No, dear. Dear no.”

At least we both knew what we were talking about. I sat back, relieved. Mother was still crying, but just a little bit, and you probably had to be sitting as close as I was to know it was all going on. “Oh, this is so stupid.” She sighed.

“But what's so stupid?”

She dabbed at the corner of an eye with her dinner napkin and repeated the gesture at the corners of her mouth. “Honey, try not to use that word.”

Forget it. I wasn't even going to mention it. She was crying.

Mother now laughed the light but tortured laugh that is almost obligatory with public tears. “Forgive me, darling. I can't in good conscience drag you into this. I'm not even angry with him anymore.” She put her napkin down. “There. It's over.” She leaned and patted my hand. “You're very sweet.” And she stood to excuse herself.

I took the opportunity to grab her arm. “Is it divorce?”

The man at the next table looked over, looked her over, and waited to hear it. Mother freed her arm. “Of course not,” she said, glancing at the man and then blaming him on me, giving me The Look, then gliding off, completely poised, toward the ladies' room. The man at the next table and I met eyes and both looked quickly at a wall.

Mother didn't come back for so long I thought maybe she was calling home and apologizing to everyone for everything on the phone. You had to wonder if the fight was still on about fighting, if she'd found Lucy boxing in the basement, and couldn't forgive Dad for starting it all by installing the official equipment to do it down there. And you really had to wonder why she'd driven all this way in a Buick alone. She'd said she was on a shopping trip, and to visit her sisters. It was probably true but it still sounded suspicious. Like where were my favorite aunts now? I'd asked, but she'd said, uh, they were out of town. That, plus being alone at the table next to the man who couldn't be trusted to look at his wall, and I started wishing I could go make a phone call myself, maybe to Mary Parker.

I mean definitely to Mary Parker. She had educated me and all, but I didn't know that was going to be it. That I wouldn't be able to keep going back for more. That all the knowledge I'd ever get now you could fit on a post office postcard. A normal best friend you could call up and ask what's wrong with your mother. But if I called Mary Parker, she'd probably just say something like, a rose is a rose is a rose. And leave it for me to decode.

But I'd write her at length about the incident anyway, I knew that. I'd write that before tonight, I had seen my mother cry only once, but that was long ago and it was from actual physical pain. The time she had been standing over Luke when he was little, helping him with a picture puzzle, when he gleefully threw up his spastic baby arms, plunging a piece of puzzle deep into her eye. How we were all awestruck as they came to take her to the hospital. That it hadn't occurred to us that she could be hurt, that she was capable of bleeding and crying like we did when we fell on cement and skinned our knees, or fell off a horse and broke a bone.

But then she'd come home from the hospital wearing dark glasses, looking glamorous as ever, so we quickly and willfully forgot. That it was much better believing she couldn't feel pain. Except then you end up here, not knowing what your mother's crying about. The person you've known longest in your life, and you have no idea what she cries about. You could ask her, I thought. Just ask her what she cries about. But maybe she wouldn't tell you. Or maybe she'd tell you something, but not that. I looked nervously around the restaurant, wondering when she would come back.

From across the room, a young man was staring right at me, while nodding to the older man he was with, who I decided was definitely his father. But since he was nodding in my direction, it was easy to imagine he was listening to me and agreeing with me, that we were having dinner together and not with our parents. He had light, pretty curls that fell to his shoulders, which made him look like an angel, one of those male ones you don't often see. He looked slightly sad like an angel too. How they often hold their wings out, flip side up, in a gesture of resignation, or wisdom that is too profound. Maybe his father was telling him he was getting a divorce from his mother.

Two tables over, a young couple was arguing. Each time one of them spoke, the other one interrupted and said they were making too much noise. I decided they were either arguing about getting married, or had already done that and now had to start all over again and argue about getting divorced.

In fact, as you looked around more, you began to wonder why this was everybody's favorite famous restaurant. Everyone was almost on the verge of tears. I shrugged for the male angel. And he returned it, as if telling me not to worry, it was just something in the sauce.

Mother slid into her seat. Her mouth was redone in red and her usual pretty smile perfectly intact. When I saw it, I knew I probably wouldn't have the nerve to ask.

She touched my hand. “Honey, it's wrong of me to worry you when you're not even home this year. Daddy and I are just having a little difference of opinion.” She glanced over at the man and his wall, leaned in and added, “You know what you said before will never happen to your father and me.”

But what I did, I leaned in too. “Say you did get a divorce. Then who would get us?” And even as I said it, it wasn't at all what I'd ever intended to ask.

Even so, the last thing I expected was an answer to that question. But Mother picked up her napkin and held it midair. “Well, I suppose that will be up to all of you. You kids can choose.” And she happily put the napkin in her lap.

I stared at her. That was
cold.

“You asked me a question. I gave you an answer.” She picked up her fork. “It's an interesting question.”

I guess it was, after all.

Christian, the red-haired French waiter, reappeared and poured wine. “Do you even drink?” I said, watching Christian take off.

“Oh, I drink, dear. Every once in a while. Would you like some white wine?”

Sure. I was underage. I'd love some white wine.

Soon Christian swung by and poured my second, then third, glass. Mother's was still full, so he just did a smooth French fake over hers.

So maybe it was the white wine, then, which accounts for the scene that came next. It started making me braver, that is, but just not brave enough. So instead of coming right out and asking Mother what I knew I should ask her, I warmed up by asking her questions a philosopher couldn't answer. I hiccupped first, but she didn't hear it. She was reconnecting with her fish. “Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it fall, does it make a sound?”

She answered right off. “I've always thought they should put a tape recorder in the woods and settle that.”

I said, “That's a
good answer
, Mom!!!”

“Honey, keep your voice down.”

Then I asked her, “Do you think pure logical thinking can yield us any knowledge of the empirical world?”

She blinked at that. Then she said, “I suppose not, no.” And she went back to her fish.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

I took a gulp of white wine. “Is it easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?”

She looked up at me and frowned. “That's in the Bible.”

“Yeah, but who ever thought it up?”

“Well, if it's in the Bible, it had to be God.”

“Yeah, but what
about
it? Huh?” I shook my head gravely. “It doesn't look good for rich people, does it?”

“Honey, maybe you've had enough wine.”

“Here's how you handle it, Mom. In my mind, I make it a very big needle. But you have the option of making a very small camel. Is that how you do it, Mom? Make a very small camel?”

“Now I have no idea what you're talking about.”

I leaned in and whispered, “What you have to do is, outsmart the Bible. Just make it a big needle! Or a small camel! Then the rich man can go to heaven!”

She took her own gulp of white wine. “Are these some of the things you're learning in school?”

“No, Mother. I don't learn anything in school.”

Then, just like that, I started doing what I'd planned to do all along out by the school pond. I started crying. I mean, not sobbing; I even caught one of the slippery tears in time, but the one on the other side dashed through my fingers.

Mother put down her fork. “Oh, no.”

So then do you know what I did? I started laughing. I mean not roaring. Just another hiccup first off, then a chuckle, then a small sob, then ha ha, then a couple more pond-size tears. “Honey, get ahold of yourself. Are you happy or sad?”

I said, “I don't even know, Mom. I'd have to ask Mary,” I sobbed, “Parker.”

•   •   •

Christian appeared at the wave of her hand. Mother reached over, picked up my wineglass, and turned it in. Then she stood up, took me by the sleeve, and paced me like a pony to the ladies' room. As she dabbed my face with cold water, it looked as if she didn't know whether to laugh or cry herself. “You may have to run that by me again, about the small camels.

“It's my fault, but you're going to have a headache in the morning.”

But I didn't think it was her fault and I'd have a headache in the morning. I thought, in the morning back at school, and then at night between The Twins, I'd be thinking what a night I'd had in New York at dinner with my mother. I guess sometimes you can watch your mother cry for the first half of the meal, and then cry yourself for the second, and still have quite a laugh together.