The Melting Season (26 page)

“How could you leave me?” she said.

“Oh, this is my fault?”

She looked down sullenly. She could not lie.

“We are taking Jenny away from you,” I said. “You are done being her mother.”

“You can’t have her,” she said. “She’s mine.” Her voice was caught up in her throat and all of the words were only coming out halfway. She was missing the beginning of some words, the ends of the others, and it sounded like one long noise.

“Mom, you cut her hair, you hurt her arm, you cannot keep her. You do not know how to be right.”

“I know more than you,” she said. “More than you ever will.”

“I know enough,” I said. “I know when it is time to leave. And it is time to leave.”

“You’ll never get rid of me,” she said. I knew she was right. She was my mother. But I could fix it so that I was in control. All I had to do was leave. But I could not leave without asking one last question.

“Why can’t I feel?” I said.

She shot her head up.

“You know. Down there. I have never been able to feel anything at all.”

There was a weary smile on her face. She had gotten into our heads and ruined our insides. She had chosen to do it. It was her will.

HOW DID THAT STORY GO AGAIN? The one she always told me late at night, leaning over me. That smell on her breath. That look in her eyes.

Later on, he pushed her down on his bed and he lay flat against her and jerked himself off to the side. He picked up her arms and wrapped them around him.

They slept for a few hours, and then, before the sun rose, he walked her back to the train. They did not look at each other, and there was no goodbye. She slid under the turnstile. She looked at the subway map. One transfer, and she would be at the airport. With her bruised face, with her swollen lip, she was sure they would let her fly home. Never to return.

She stood on the platform and waited for the train to arrive. A few businessmen joined her. A side glance at the young woman with the long blond hair and the messed-up face. The train pulled into the station. She sat down. She straightened her dress. She pulled her legs together. Her thighs stuck together. She pulled up her dress a bit and looked down. She was bleeding.

 

 

 

 

 

MY MOTHER PULLED THE BEER can to her mouth stiffly, first hitting the top lip as if it were lost, then sliding down to the bottom one. She drank and drank and it spilled a little down the corner of her mouth and down her neck. I watched the line of beer drain into her housecoat. Her eyes drifted, and then whatever light was in them before was gone. She put the can down. It was empty. She crushed it with her fist and the table shook.

She started to stand. I said, “Sit down.”

“I want another beer,” she said.

“No,” I said.

“You get me another one,” she said.

“Talk,” I said.

She slumped down in her seat and flopped her hands on the table. She stared down sullenly, then jerked her head up at me and held her gaze on me for a while. Finally, she said, “You can’t feel because you’re not supposed to feel.” Her words came out a slushy mess, as if she were wading through them in her mouth. What a wasted mess my mother was.

“I’m not explaining it right,” she said.

“Figure it out,” I said. “I can wait.”

“You can’t feel because if you feel it will hurt,” she said.

“Mom,” I said.

“Can I please have a beer?” she begged.

“No,” I said.

She bent her head down, then said, very quietly, “I didn’t want it to hurt anybody anymore.” She slouched forward on the table, her head still down, and then held it up with her hands. “You were my little girls.”

“That’s right,” I said. And then I spoke very clearly so that she would understand—and so she would remember it after I had left—that what she had done was wrong. “We were just little girls.”

Valka came down the steps with Jenny. My mother stood and I stood and pushed her down and she barked a noise at me.

“We are done here,” I said. And we unlocked the dead bolt on the front door, the three of us crazies, and walked out into the snow.

I
had to do one last thing before we headed out of town. I was cold and shaking. I made Valka drive. The snowflakes were gigantic and lovely and we could barely see but I knew how to get there by heart. We rode slowly, past the last working stoplight before the railroad tracks, and down the barren back roads between farms. I blasted the heat. Jenny fiddled with the radio and she sang along quietly in the backseat.

“Couldn’t we do this tomorrow?” said Valka. “Like when we can see. Like when we’re not going to hit a snowbank and be trapped forever.”

“No. Now,” I said. “You made me come home, and now I am going to finish it.”

Valka tightened her hands around the steering wheel. “If I die I’m going to kill you.”

And then the snow stopped and it was fine, I could see everything clearly ahead of me. The cornfields were empty, it was just snow everywhere. There was not another car on the road. I was too excited to be done. I had never been done with anything before. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to feel right. I wanted to feel.

We parked in front of the home I used to share with my husband. There was a light on upstairs, and downstairs it was dark except for the flickering light of the TV. Jenny stopped singing and Valka tapped her hand on the window. The dog from next door came out with his limp, barked once, and then ran back behind his house. It was too cold out for even the animals.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” said Valka.

“I’ve never been surer of anything,” I said. Which was not really the truth but I was caught up in being a hero. It was my big dramatic moment. The end of my story in Nebraska.

There was no more waiting in cars for me. I got out of the car and opened the trunk. I pulled out the suitcase full of money. The suitcase from my honeymoon. A present from my mother. A goodwill gesture to get me out in the world, but also to make sure I was thinking of her while I was gone. Everything was rewiring in my brain all at once.

I slung myself into the snow, one foot after the other, until I reached the path Thomas had cleared. I held the suitcase tight in my arms. This is what I needed to do to be free. I laid the suitcase gently in front of the front door. I stared at it for a moment. I nodded to myself. I would never darken this door again.

I walked back to the car and got in and slammed the door shut and it sounded nice and firm and final to me.

“Do you feel better now?” said Valka.

“Yes,” I said.

“Did that give you the closure you need?” said Valka.

“I think so,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Yes. I feel free.”

“Good,” said Valka. “Now, can you please go get that money back? Because otherwise you are flat broke. And if you’re going to move to Los Angeles, you’re going to need some cash.”

“But—” I said.

“I mean, really,” said Valka.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Jenny.

“Right! And what about that unborn child back there?” said Valka. “Who’s paying for the baby food?”

“But what about closure?” I said.

“Oh, screw closure,” said Valka. “I’ve got a good therapist you can call. Get your closure that way. Take the money and run, kid.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said.

A light turned on downstairs. Valka pointed at the house.

“You better do it now or forever hold your peace,” she said.

I bolted out of the car, leaped through the snow, and grabbed the suitcase. Another light turned on, and the outdoor light, too. The last thing I wanted was to see that husband of mine. Like ever again. I ran back to the car, and when I slammed the door that time, it sounded even better.

“Okay, I get it now,” I said.

“Must I teach you everything?” said Valka.

“Just shut up and drive,” I said.

And so she did.

W
e all watched that show. Not a person alive in the U.S. of A. missed the series every Tuesday night at 8 P.M. EST for the three months it was on.
Rio: Undone
. How she almost died from driving under the influence in the early morning. How she wounded four Mormon parishioners visiting from Utah with her white Suburban. How she got off scot-free from jail because of the testimony of two people: a preacher and the head of a major studio. And there was the doctor who claimed she would never survive in jail because of her wounds. Rio could not remember a thing before the accident. There was talk of a lawsuit against another doctor who had given her prescriptions for a variety of medications that she did not technically need, but that faded, just like Rio’s looks.

Because then there was the “undone” part. This miracle of modern technology could never have plastic surgery or another injection again. It would kill her, the doctors said. So everything she had ever done to herself started to undo itself, and she decided to let cameras film it. One week there were wrinkles around her forehead, the next around her eyes. Her lips shrunk down to thin purple lines. Her chin dropped into a jowl. The episode where she begged to get her hair colored had everyone laughing along. “I wouldn’t want to go gray either,” said Valka, whose hair had just started growing back in, baby soft brown and fine.

Her body—once it healed from bruises inside and out—was still in good shape, and her therapists insisted she work out, though she had to take it real slow. The episode where she ran a 5k for breast cancer helped raise an extra 100 million dollars in donations. At the end of the series, she was a forty-eight-year-old woman. Still beautiful, there was no denying that, but she looked exactly like she was supposed to look before she had started messing around with what God gave her.

“She kind of looks like my aunt Irinie,” said Valka. “But without the stoop.”

We watched her on the Emmys. Oh, Rio got lots of parts after that, not just for Lifetime but for the pay cable stations, too. She was the gray-haired grandma now in the TV movies, never the mom again. I did not get how forty-eight years of age equaled an old lady, but I do not make the movies, I only watch them. But it was her role as Helen Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, later in life, that won her the Outstanding Supporting Actress award. Valka and Jenny and I cheered her from our living room and threw popcorn in the air. In her speech she thanked her agent, her manager, Jesus, and blind people everywhere, who would never be able to see her movie but would hopefully be able to hear how much love for them she had in her heart.

That same weekend Thomas’s penile implant stopped working and he got an infection and almost died. It had actually broken down a week before, but it took a few days for the infection to kick in. He did not realize he was sick. He passed out on the tractor and his fiancée found him in the field. She ran around looking for him when he was late for dinner, and gave him mouth-to-mouth and saved his life. That was more than I could ever do for him.

His doctor pulled out the implant and told him it was best if he steered clear of putting any other foreign objects up there. He was back to the nub. When I heard all of that, I called him and told him to send me the divorce papers.

She can have him, I thought. Who am I to stand in the way of love?

 

 

 

 

 

ME AND VALKA AND JENNY all live a fine life together in Santa Monica. We go to the beach on the weekends. Valka sits under a giant umbrella to protect her skin from the sun. “I’ve had enough cancer for one lifetime,” she said. Jenny and I rush through the ocean like it is the most amazing thing we have ever seen, and it is. It is wild and romantic and angry and free. Baby Laura squeals from the shore until we dip her feet in the water. I like that she is going to grow up near the ocean. Sometimes Paul McCartney comes in from Las Vegas and gives that baby the eye like he is trying to plant one right inside Valka. I wonder what she has told him and what secrets she has kept for herself. She does what she needs to do. I try to be the best friend I can.

Jenny is great in the shop. She deals with all the teenagers in town like a champ. They are her people. It is a relief for Valka, I think. We all keep an eye out that she does not get another bun in the teenage oven anytime soon. Next year she is taking floral design classes at the community college. Valka would be just fine expanding her floral empire with Jenny’s help. I keep the books, stay in the back, away from any of the chitchat. I pray sometimes to keep my head together, because you can use prayer however you want. There are no rules one way or the other. Jenny and I go and talk to a therapist. We both agree it helps us just as much as the sunshine does.