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It
was the phone that woke me up at quarter past noon. I thought it
would be the hospital, someone from the hospital saying my mother
had taken a sudden turn for the worse and had passed away only a
few minutes ago, so sorry. But it was only Mrs. McCurdy, wanting
to be sure I'd gotten home all right, wanting to know all the details
of my visit the night before (she took me through it three times,
and by the end of the third recitation I had begun to feel like
a criminal being interrogated on a murder charge), also wanting
to know if I'd like to ride up to the hospital with her that afternoon.
I told her that would be great.
When I hung up, I crossed the room to the
bedroom door. Here was a full-length mirror. In it was a tall, unshaven
young man with a small potbelly, dressed only in baggy undershorts.
"You have to get it together, big boy," I told my reflection. "Can't
go through the rest of your life thinking that every time the phone
rings it's someone calling to tell you your mother's dead."
Not that I would. Time would dull the memory,
time always did . . . but it was amazing how real and immediate
the night before still seemed. Every edge and corner was sharp and
clear. I could still see Staub's good-looking young face beneath
his turned-around cap, and the cigarette behind his ear, and the
way the smoke had seeped out of the incision on his neck when he
inhaled. I could still hear him telling the story of the Cadillac
that was selling cheap. Time would blunt the edges and round the
corners, but not for awhile. After all, I had the button, it was
on the dresser by the bathroom door. The button was my souvenir.
Didn't the hero of every ghost story come away with a souvenir,
something that proved it had all really happened?
There was an ancient stereo system in the
corner of the room, and I shuffled through my old tapes, hunting
for something to listen to while I shaved. I found one marked FOLK
MIX and put it in the tape player. I'd made it in high school
and could barely remember what was on it. Bob Dylan sang about the
lonesome death of Hattie Carroll, Tom Paxton sang about his old
ramblin' pal, and then Dave Van Ronk started to sing about the cocaine
blues. Halfway through the third verse I paused with my razor by
my cheek. Got a headful of whiskey and a bellyful of gin,
Dave sang in his rasping voice. Doctor say it kill me but he
don't say when. And that was the answer, of course. A guilty
conscience had lead me to assume that my mother would die immediately,
and Staub had never corrected that assumption--how could he, when
I had never even asked?--but it clearly wasn't true.
Doctor
say it kill me but he don't say when.
What in God's name was I beating myself
up about? Didn't my choice amount to no more than the natural order
of things? Didn't children usually outlive their parents? The son
of a bitch had tried to scare me--to guilt-trip me--but I didn't
have to buy what he was selling, did I? Didn't we all ride the Bullet
in the end?
You're just trying to let yourself off.
Trying to find a way to make it okay. Maybe what you're thinking
is true . . . but when he asked you to choose, you chose her. There's
no way to think your way around that, buddy--you chose her.
I opened my eyes and looked at my face
in the mirror. "I did what I had to," I said. I didn't quite believe
it, but in time I supposed I would.
Mrs. McCurdy and I went up to see my mother
and my mother was a little better. I asked her if she remembered
her dream about Thrill Village, in Laconia. She shook her head.
"I barely remember you coming in last night, she said. "I was awful
sleepy. Does it matter?"
"Nope," I said, and kissed her temple.
"Not a bit."
My
ma got out of the hospital five days later. She walked with a limp
for a little while, but that went away and a month later she was
back at work again--only half shifts at first but then full time,
just as if nothing had happened. I returned to school and got a
job at Pat's Pizza in downtown Orono. The money wasn't great, but
it was enough to get my car fixed. That was good; I'd lost what
little taste for hitchhiking I'd ever had.
My mother tried to quit smoking and for
a little while she did. Then I came back from school for April vacation
a day early, and the kitchen was just as smoky as it had ever been.
She looked at me with eyes that were both ashamed and defiant. "I
can't," she said. "I'm sorry, Al--I know you want me to and I know
I should, but there's such a hole in my life with-out it. Nothin
fills it. The best I can do is wish I'd never started in the first
place."
Two
weeks after I graduated from college, my ma had another stroke--just
a little one. She tried to quit smoking again when the doctor scolded
her, then put on fifty pounds and went back to the tobacco. "As
a dog returneth to its vomit," the Bible says; I've always liked
that one. I got a pretty good job in Portland on my first try--
lucky, I guess, and started the work of convincing her to quit her
own job. It was a tough sled at first.
I might have given up in disgust, but I
had a certain memory that kept me digging away at her Yankee defenses.
"You ought to be saving for your own life,
not tak-ing care of me," she said. "You'll want to get married someday,
Al, and what you spend on me you won't have for that. For your real
life."
"You're my real life," I said,
and kissed her. "You can like it or lump it, but that's just the
way it is."
And finally she threw in the towel.
We had some pretty good years after that--seven
of them in all. I didn't live with her, but I visited her almost
every day. We played a lot of gin rummy and watched a lot of movies
on the video recorder I bought her. Had a bucketload of laughs,
as she liked to say. I don't know if I owe those years to George
Staub or not, but they were good years. And my memory of the night
I met Staub never faded and grew dreamlike, as I always expected
it would; every incident, from the old man telling me to wish on
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