First half of Chapter One
In her faded blue bathrobe, Mom hobbled into the kitchen and filled her glass with water at the sink, as she did first thing every morning. Her scraggily shoulder-length hair was still brown, though her slow walk and wrinkled skin revealed her seventy-four years. Finally, she turned around and looked at me sitting at the table with my coffee. “You’re dressed. That’s unusual.”
I nodded. “I guess I just woke up early.” I’d already showered, which I knew could be seen as a disturbing shift from our routine.
She focused on me longer than usual, till a hanging judge gaze appeared in her brown hawk eyes. “Cathy, that shirt under your blouse. I don’t know why you wear it. All those little people on it are disturbing. It’s too busy. I don’t care if it’s by some famous artist or something. He’s no Van Gogh.”
The tightness around her mouth sent shame ripping through me while self-excoriation blazed like wildfire. I’d forgotten to button up my blouse, which was meant to hide the tank top that I secretly loved. The women at my job gave it to me for my fortieth birthday. Keith Haring’s art, they’d said. I searched for info about him on the internet. His little people came from graffiti he did in New York City. A part of me wanted to stab this fork into my head for forgetting to cover it and another side of me wanted to get sarcastic, channel the words of the young women at work and say: Aren’t you the geriatric fashionista. Both responses surprised me. Why was I so explosive today?
I got up to get her coffee and dumped the creamer she liked into it with a vengeance. I set it with a thud in front of her in her spot at the table.
Ignoring my coffee airstrike, she went on. “You should put it with the clothes we’re sending to St. Vincent’s. Just because those people at your job gave it to you, is no reason to hang on to it. I don’t know why you’re so concerned with what other people think of you.”
Though I was pissed, I strangled any words that might slip out. In my head, I shouted: the only concern I have of what people think of me is what you think of me. I have to be your good daughter. I made a solemn promise to myself to hold onto this shirt with my very life. It was a symbol of a new way of living.
When she settled into her spot across from me at the kitchen table, she opened the newspaper to the crossword puzzle and folded it, so she could work on it. I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug and gazed out the window at the ordinary northern Wisconsin backyard: lawn with Douglas Fir-lined walkway to the left, clotheslines between red poles, garage at the back, and Tigertail spruce to the right. The greenish brown grass held me in a kind of numbing stillness and I wondered, do all mothers exert this kind of pressure on their daughters? How does anyone get the guts to leave? I figured it had to be the love of another person that would finally prove stronger than a mom’s super glue.
The stillness out the window felt otherworldly, as though nature had been given a sedative. No bird pecked at the feeder or searched for worms on the grass, already turning brown in the August heat. Nothing gold can stay. Mom’s favorite poem. Though right now, it seemed nothing would ever change. Except the seasons. We might get all four seasons on any given day and, in an instant, the yard might transform into its opposite: ferocious winds could come out of nowhere, turning leaves into whirling, insane dancers and forcing squirrels and birds to become refugees searching for cover.
Like the weather, my quiet life was hurling toward change. A fitful wind had released something deep inside me, something both fearful and desired. For the first twenty years of my adulthood, I’d let go of my own sense of self, of wishes and dreams—to stay with my mother. She wasn’t disabled or anything, in fact she was still working as a second-grade teacher when I graduated from high school, the point at which I didn’t leave. Somehow, wordlessly, she directed me, kept me close, a second self for her.
Till yesterday. Yesterday, I did the unthinkable, I’d invited Jason to live in the garage— our plain-old, separate, stand-alone building made of metal, insulated for all-weather use. Jason, the kid who carried out our groceries from the supermarket, told me his girlfriend had kicked him out and he was sleeping in his car; so I invited him to move into the garage. I needed to confess this act to my mother, but I was still afraid of her disapproval, her quiet, deadly wrath.
Time to accept the consequences. Except I couldn’t. My whole life, I’d been rendered mute, like the backyard, but Jason had opened something up in me, a desire to act, to climb out of the narcotic cocoon I’d been wrapped in for twenty years, still I couldn’t yet face my mother, my insubordination too much for me to handle, let alone to reveal it with language.
As my mom scribbled a word on her crossword puzzle, I allowed myself to be swept back to the grocery store, maybe a year ago. I’d been paying for our food and glanced up to see the new employee Jason, only a few feet from me by the doorway, drenched in sunlight. A slim figure, in his early twenties, with a long neck, ivory skin, and light brown shoulder-length hair pulled back in a low ponytail, he stared at his hand in the air before his face as though he could read the future or discern some wisdom from the lines in his palm. His elongated fingers mirrored his delicate swan’s neck with its blue-ink line tattoo of Schroeder, the Peanuts character, bent over, playing his little piano. But Jason’s eyes were lifted up, full of sadness and fear, but ultimately, as the Bible says, wonder. He seemed to be sculpted in marble, an angel who took my breath away. It was as though my blindness to life around me was lifted and I could truly see. I didn’t need a photo; my cerebral cortex chiseled this image into permanent storage.
In the backyard, branches of the Tigertail Spruce slumped in the heat, its green needles with their silvery-blue underside brushed the browning grass. The sun had only been up for an hour and the temp was already nearing ninety degrees; it was August, dog days, as adults said when we were kids, though I never knew what that meant and never thought to ask. Three sparrows showed up and bopped around in the shade of the Spruce. I assumed they were twittering their sparrow songs, but we couldn’t hear them through the window.
Over these last months, whenever Jason put my grocery bags in the trunk, we would talk. He had an easy manner that made me comfortable and, in the light of his personality, my general anxiety evaporated. I looked forward to these conversations, though, mostly he talked and I watched his face as he enjoyed his own retelling of his life. He played guitar, wrote songs, played gigs at a coffee house
Gradually, Jason made sure no one else carried my bags. Recently after he put the groceries in our trunk, he stood with one hand on the hood, but he didn’t close it and asked, “So how come your mom isn’t with you anymore?” He seemed actually concerned.
“She’s got emphysema now and congestive heart failure. She too weak to go out much.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” A sorrow graced his face that made him even more radiant as he went on. “Back when I went to Church, my mom and I would see you and your mom. One time in high school your mom stood up for me when the priest was angry because I was a few minutes late to serve mass. She was always kind to me.”
My back stiffened. Her protection could be helpful to others, but to me, for me, it turned into control, though I was only starting to see this now. Or admit it.
He closed the trunk. “I better get back.” As he sauntered away, he smiled back at me. “See you next week.”
In the backyard, Douglas fir trees on the left side of the property drooped over the craggy stone walkway that led to the alley. The garage, sitting in stillness across the expanse of our lawn with the tiger tail spruce before it, had two entrances, one at the side that I told Jason not to use as my mother might see him. I showed him the other one in back next to the rollup door for the car. What if he stepped out of the wrong door and she saw him? Would she call the police? Sitting across from her at the table, she looked so harmless, innocent, in her bathrobe, looking at puzzle. Who would think I could find her formidable and intimidating? What if my feeling about Jason was as skewed as my assessment of my mother? Could I ever trust myself?
Yesterday at the grocery store. Everything about Jason was different. His face was drawn, like something had drained the life out of him. When the cashier handed me my change and motioned to Jason, he shuffled to me without smiling, gathered my bags, and marched toward the door. My heart sank. Hurt by his coldness, his indifference, I followed him out, gripping my keys tightly. He didn’t speak as we made our way through the lot, sweating in the humidity.
When he dropped the bags inside the trunk with a thud, I asked, “What’s the matter?”
He carefully moved my four bags closer to the spare tire, then stood up, looked at me with eyes overtaken by sadness. “My girlfriend Sabrina broke up with me. I’ve been sleeping in my car.” He bowed his head. “I miss her so much. And now I have to find a sublet or something. I don’t make much working here. If you hear of anything, please let me know.”
He closed the trunk. Tall, long hair, smooth fair skin. Beneath his t-shirt, his chest rose and fell with his breath. I said, impulsively, “We have a room fixed up in our garage. Would you want to stay there?”
What had gotten into me? I couldn’t believe I’d said that.
“Really?” Surprise animated his face. “That would be amazing. I probably wouldn’t stay too long, just till I find another place.”
“No worries. After all, the space is empty. My dad fixed it up for me years ago, but I never moved in.” I was acting like it was no big deal. It probably wasn’t in reality, but the reality of my mother was another universe.
“That would make such a difference. I can’t sleep very well in the car.”
“You can move in tonight. I need a few days to talk to my mom about it. I don’t think she’ll mind you staying till you find something permanent.” Don’t think she’ll mind? Insane fears boomeranged inside my head on hearing these words come out of me.
“I don’t want to cause you any trouble.”
“No, I just have to find the right time to broach it with her.”
Jason wrapped his arms around me and said, “This is a true miracle.” His chest was warm, close to mine. I felt faint. I had to pull away. My mouth tried to smile, but I was too uncomfortable for anything but a jittery attempt.
Now, sitting across from my mother, I had to stifle the pleasure I’d felt at having been so physically close and feeling like his savior. Jason was a sign. As a Catholic I don’t believe in superstitions, but signs are different. Jason in our garage.
