The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus (5 page)

It doesn't take much to set off another one.

I might see a lost birthday balloon

tangled in the branches of our pepper tree.

Or maybe I'll catch a glimpse of Monkey,

sad-eyed but still grinning from his lonely

perch atop the toy box in Sam's room.

Or I might hear Michael, up in his studio,

absentmindedly whistling the tune from

the mobile that used to spin above her crib.

Some of these flash floods

feel purely hormonal,

as though it's simply crying season.

Some of them

feel considerably

more justified—

like when

my editor Roxie calls

to put the screws to me.

Or when I glance at my face in a mirror

and see that I look more wrinkled

than laundry left in the dryer.

Or when my mother confesses that all those

aches and pains she's been plagued with lately

have been diagnosed as polymyositis—

a muscle disease that makes her feel,

she says, like a voodoo doll being jabbed

with hundreds of white-hot pins.

Because my father died

when I was twelve

and my mother never remarried,

and because she lives alone in Cleveland

and all her friends are at a funeral today

(which she was in way too much pain to attend)

and because

I'm her only living relative

(except for Sam and my cousin Alice),

I'm
the one she speed-dialed just now

when she fell out of bed

and couldn't get back up off the floor.

So I'm the one

who's listening to

her shard-sharp screams.

I'm the one whose heart

is thrashing in my chest

like some wild, caged thing

while I try to get my mother

to calm down and hang up the phone

and call 911.

But because she's too scared

and in too much agony

to do what I'm telling her to do,

and because I didn't have the foresight

to find out her new next-door neighbor's

phone number,

I'm the one who's standing here

sweating clear through my T-shirt

while trying to figure out

how the hell to call 911 in Ohio

when you're dialing it

from California.

You
can't
call 911 in Ohio

when you're dialing it

from California.

So you've got to Google

the phone number of the police station

nearest your mother's house

and then force your stuttering fingers

to stop shaking long enough

for you to dial the number

and then pry open your locked jaw

so that you can ask the police

to send an ambulance

and then you've got to

call your mother back

to tell her help is on the way

and when

she doesn't answer

her phone,

you've got to

fling yourself onto your bed

and totally fall apart.

He finds me

quaking under the covers,

surrounded by an acre

of crumpled Kleenex.

When I tell him about my mother,

he gathers me into his arms,

strokes my back,

and presses his lips to the top of my head.

He doesn't tell me

not to worry.

He doesn't tell me

to cheer up.

He doesn't tell me

that everything will be okay.

And I love him for it.

Samantha comes home from

her chorus rehearsal

and, traipsing past

our open bedroom door,

she glances over

and sees us snuggling on our bed.

“Eeeooowww,” she says.

“Can't I leave you two alone for a
minute?”

Then she flounces off down the hall,

calling back to us over her shoulder,

“Remember, you two sex fiends:

no glove, no love.”

Michael and I

exchange a glance.

And both of us

burst out laughing.

Her attending physician's name is Dr. Hack.

I do not consider this

a good sign.

Dr. Hack calls me to tell me

that there is good news

and there is bad news.

The bad news is

that my mother's polymyositis

is advancing more rapidly than he'd like.

The good news is that he'll probably

be able to alleviate her pain

and maybe even reverse her symptoms

if he gives her

enough steroids

to kill an elephant.

The bad news is that taking

such megadoses of steroids might cause

my mother to experience “roid rage.”

They might even

cause her to have hallucinations

or manic episodes.

He says

one of his younger patients

got so crazed

that he bought an old car

and deliberately drove it into a tree

at forty miles an hour.

“But the good news…” Dr. Hack adds

with a shrill little chuckle

that sets my teeth on edge,

“the good news is that your mother

is probably way too sick

to get into that kind of mischief.”

And the worst news of all,

I think to myself,
is that you, Dr. Hack,

are my mother's doctor.

I tell her I'm going to hop on a plane

and come to visit her.

She tells me I'm going to do

no such thing.

When I protest,

she
forbids
me to come.

She assures me

that she's doing just fine.

She says her doctor's a dreamboat

and that he's taking excellent care of her.

She tells me that my place is at home—

with Samantha.

She reminds me that my daughter

will be leaving for college in the fall.

She says I need to enjoy every second

of her company while I still can.

She warns me

that once Samantha's had a taste of the world

she might flit home for a summer

like a migrating bird

or maybe breeze into town

for a few days now and then.

But after she's built her own nest,

mine will be emptier than a poor man's pocket.

Even though the season finale

of
Glee
is airing tonight,

and even though

she's absolutely dying to see it,

and even though

she's been planning to go

to a big finale-of-
Glee
party

with Wendy, Tess, and Laura,

a party which promises to be
the

social event of the television season,

Samantha has opted

to stay home instead,

so that she can make a funny Photoshopped

get-well card for her grandma

and bake a batch

of her famous butterscotch brownies—

the ones her grandma loves

better than anything.

That's the kind of girl

Samantha is.

She doesn't rush

to the family room

to watch the TiVoed episode of
Glee.

She brings me up a tray

with a couple of warm brownies

and a frosty glass of milk

then hops onto my bed with me,

grabs the remote, and says,

“We're gonna watch
Roman Holiday!”

Because

she knows

it's one of my all-time favorites.

But
I
happen to know

that Samantha thinks
Roman Holiday

is terminally sappy.

So I say,

“If it's okay with you,

I'd rather watch the season finale
of Glee.”

And when she hears these words

a smile lights up her face

like a Fourth of July sky.

A memory of the very first time

Samantha smiled at me.

I mean
really
smiled.

She was just a couple of months old…

She was lying on her back in the center of our bed,

one arm raised above her head,

her first two fingers aligned

as though she was a tiny pope, blessing me.

I was sitting cross-legged at her feet

in a state of photo-snapping bliss,

her biggest fan,

her most loyal subject,

enthralled with the intensity of her gaze,

so sober and intelligent,

as though she was trying to send me

a telepathic message of the utmost importance.

Then—I sneezed.

And her gummy grin opened before me

like the pearly pink gates

to my own private heaven.

My baby smiled at me.
She smiled!

And now that I'd stumbled on

the magic spell,

I would never stop chanting it.

“Achoo!” I said.

“Ah…choo!

  Ahh…
choooo!

    Ahhh…
CHOOOOO!”

Samantha tells us

she'd like to be

by herself

when she opens them—

those life-altering emails

that she received today

from all the college deans

of admission.

But before she sequesters herself,

Michael and I remind her

that what's
supposed
to happen,

will happen.

That everything happens for a reason.

That sometimes these reasons

don't present themselves

until many years later.

She smiles grimly,

not buying any of it,

then retreats

into her bedroom.

And when she closes the door,

the sound of it

echoes through the house

like the sharp crack of a gavel.

Alone

with her computer.

Michael and I

have been out here

for

ten eons.

Alone

with each other.

Her face is as blank

as an un-carved pumpkin's.

My heart

stops.

But then she beams

a thousand-watt grin

and says she got in

to the school of her dreams.

We hug! We scream!

We dance! We cheer!

We shout hoorah

for our darlingest dear!

But when she's not looking,

I dab at a tear—

she'll be

three thousand miles away

from here.

But the last thing I want to do

is rain on Samantha's parade.

So I slip out into the backyard

to compose myself.

I close my eyes,

take a few deep breaths,

and when I open them again,

my gaze falls upon our pepper tree…

When Samantha was a toddler,

Michael and I

read picture books to her for hours,

cuddling in the shade of that tree.

We promised her

we'd build her a tree house someday,

when the branches grew strong enough

to hold it…

The three of us

whiled away summer afternoons

chasing each other

around the tree's thickening trunk,

weaving wreaths

from its feathery leaves,

watching the doves

build their nests…

When the tree

was tall enough,

Michael made a hand-painted swing

for Samantha.

He hung it

from a sturdy branch

and we took turns pushing her on it

till she learned how to pump…

When Sam was six, we taught her

how to climb into the tree's lap.

She often brought Monkey there
with
her

and sang him little songs she made up.

But on Samantha's seventh birthday,

when we told her that the tree was finally

big enough for a tree house, she began to cry

and begged us not to build it.

She'd gotten it into her head somehow

that the tree would be in agony

when the nails were hammered into it.

And no one could convince her otherwise.

So we never did build

that tree house for Samantha.

But, together, the three of us

built something better.