I stood on the cracked, weed-framed sidewalk outside the
white clapboard house on the busy street in Dorchester where
I'd grown up, car keys in hand, and made three
promises:
1. I would not kill my
mother
2. I would not kill
myself
3. And no matter what, I would not
talk about that incident in 1998.
My mother came down
the porch stairs, toting a massive indestructible-as-hell
and black-as-coal Samsonite suitcase in her right hand.
"You're seven minutes early," she said, as if arriving early
were a crime.
She looked bright and fresh, even
though her pixie-faced Anne Klein watch had yet to tick its
way to seven o'clock. I, on the other hand, felt like a cat
had dragged me out of bed and regurgitated my body onto the
concrete.
My mother had dressed for the occasion—as
she always dressed for every occasion—in a cream suit with a
white blouse, nude hose and dark blue sensible pumps with
two-inch heels. She had the pearl studs my father had given
her for their tenth anniversary in her ears, her dark brown
hair in a stiff pageboy and her crimson-red lipstick bowed
in place.
I'd pulled on jeans with ragged cuffs,
flip-flops and a faded T-shirt I'd bought in Mexico when
Nick and I had gone there on a weekend trip two years ago.
My face was bare, my blond hair in a ponytail. My jewelry
consisted of a Velcro-strapped water-resistant Timex I'd
bought off a street vendor in the Back Bay.
"Good
morning to you, too, Ma." I slapped on a smile that cracked
my lips. "And I'm early because I couldn't wait to get a
start on the trip."
When I was three I told my first
lie to my mother, or at least the first one I could
remember. That initial snowflake—something about an elephant
causing the mess of Barbies in the living room—had added one
snowf lake, then another and another until the snowball of
lies became a glacier that seemed to sit between us, cold
and frozen, as hard to move as Mount Everest.
I told
another lie today, because it was easier than saying Nick
had given me the final shove out the door, telling me if I
didn't get over there now, I'd never go. What had seemed
like a good idea last week had quickly turned into something
I dreaded as much as a colonoscopy.
My mother and I,
Hilary Delaney, were going to make a road trip. When I was
eight, the prospect might have sounded good—exciting
even—but only because I would have been too young to know
better. But now, at thirty-six, the thought of spending a
week stuck in a car with my mother, listening to her rehash
all the mistakes I'd made in my life, wasn't at all
attractive.
I'd become a masochist, I thought as I
hefted my mother's suitcase into the tiny trunk of my Ford
Mustang. Cherry-red, and impractical as all hell, but mine.
I shoved the suitcase this way, and that, trying to squeeze
it past my canvas duffel bag and into the tiny
trunk.
"Be careful, Hilary. You don't want to dent
the suitcase or it'll never close properly."
I blew
my bangs off my forehead. "I'm more concerned about denting
the car. It took me three years to save enough to buy
this."
My mother swept a glance over the Mustang's
candy finish, which told me in a half a second what she
thought of that purchase. "You should have bought
something more practical. A sedan at least. You know red
two-doors are the most—"
"Stolen cars in America.
Yeah, I do. And I still wanted it. Maybe I was having a
midlife crisis. Or a really long stretch of PMS." I wrestled
the Samsonite some more.
"You can hardly fit a thing
in that trunk. If you had a Chrysler, like Deloris
Christenson, you could—"
"Maybe if someone had
brought a smaller suitcase, this wouldn't be such a
problem."
And then, the Samsonite decided to settle
the argument for us. It slid in with a final heave and
plopped into the trunk. My mother gave me one of her "I was
right" smiles of satisfaction and I gave her one of mine
right back.
A draw.
Nicholas Warner, my
on-again, off-again, now-sorta-off boyfriend, would say this
trip was some deep-seated need to settle things with my
mother, so I could finally grow up.
He was right,
damn him.
As much as I tried to be an adult, I still
felt like a kindergartener around the woman who had shaped
my formative years. I was here, not just to be a taxi driver
to my Uncle Morty's house in San Francisco, but to find that
missing key— the one that unlocked the secret to why I'd
inherited dysfunction, along with her blue eyes and fondness
for fried clams.
I didn't actually intend to have
a conversation about the past. Rather, I'd devised a
nice, elaborate backdoor plan to skate around the
issues.
Actually touching them with
words?
There weren't enough miles on Planet Earth for
that.
This was also a chance to put some distance
between Nick and me, and his sudden detour into a serious
relationship, which took me down a path I didn't want to
travel. The girl was supposed to be the one hinting around
at churches and preachers, not the guy. But Nick wanted
more, and I didn't, which made me push the "off" button
between us and agree to this insane trip with my
mother.
As a diversion, I'd brought not one, but four
books on tape and a dozen new CDs of music that I thought
she'd like and knew I'd hate. I had a roadside emergency
kit, a brand-new, responsible-as-hell AAA membership and a
cell phone. I was as prepared as I could be.
I'd
planned for everything. Except Reginald.
He came
trotting out of the house, little hooves clacking on the
wood porch, before he lumbered down the four front steps,
his backside teeter-tottering like a Weeble from side to
side as he crossed the sidewalk, then used the crumbled curb
as a stepstool into my car. He settled himself in the
backseat and began snorting and rooting at the black vinyl,
as if I had some truffles beneath the springs. I shuddered
and bit back a wave of revulsion.
"No. No, no,
no!" I put up my hands, warding off the pig from
hell, "I will not bring THAT PIG along."
There was no
other way to talk about my mother's potbellied pig but in
capital letters. Babe he was not.
"That pig? He's my
best friend, dear," Ma said, innocent, high-pitched. "He has
to come. Whither thou goest, Reginald goest, too."
"I
thought you made arrangements with the vet."
"I
tried, I really did. But once I got there with Reginald, and
saw that cage they planned to put him in…" My mother heaved
a sigh. "I just couldn't do it. So I packed his bags and
here we are!" She lifted the handle on the passenger's side
door and settled herself inside the car.
For a woman
who has climbed the career ladder with single-minded
determination, my mother is insane when it comes to her pig.
I don't get it. It's as if she puts all her immaturity into
her relationship with Reginald. There's simply no dealing
with her when she starts to baby him, doing things like
grinding his pig chow into miniscule pieces so he won't
choke. I have tried explaining to her that he has a mouth
the size of the Grand Canyon, but still, she treats him like
a two-year-old. She even has a comprehensive health plan for
him and a plot picked out in Lazy Daisy's Pet
Cemetery.
She'd bought him after she retired two
years ago, when I told her she needed to find something to
do—something besides calling me three times a day to tell me
how to run my life. I'd meant she should join the
horticultural society or start scrapbooking or look into
rental properties in Florida, not fall in love with a mammal
that starred on platters at restaurants.
My mother
put her boxy navy purse on her lap, clamped her hands over
the clasp, sat ramrod straight and stared at the road ahead
of us, showing me the debate was over and that she was ready
to go.
When my father used to take us all to the Stop
& Shop, she'd always assumed the same position, as if
somewhere along the way, she had seen a billboard of a mom
in a car and decided that was how it was supposed to be
done.
"Ma…" I began, trying to fit in another protest
toward Reginald before I got in the car and made him a
permanent part of the journey. But I knew it was a losing
battle. Anything with my mother was a losing
battle. Rosemary Delaney was a former defense attorney—a
very successful attorney—and she could debate everything
from toilet paper choices to murder weapons quite literally
to death.
Before retiring, she'd made it to the top
of her field, even becoming a partner at Fitzsimmons and
Wilson, but she had never learned to drive. She got her
master's degree by taking the bus to Suffolk University. She
went to work by train, taking the subway downtown every day
for thirty-two years. She's a woman who can understand the
most complicated laws in the Massachusetts legal system and
argue them in front of the sternest judge in America, but
had always been too terrified to conquer
Park-Reverse-Neutral-Drive.
It's like she only took
the parts of the women's lib movement she liked and left the
rest stuck in a fifties time warp.
My mother reached
behind herself for the seat belt, buckled it, then reseated
her purse on her lap. "Well? Are we going to get started? Or
just sit here and let the neighbors stare?"
I
reminded myself again of my no-homicide, no-suicide
pact.
Our trip was going to take a minimum of five
days to reach California, figuring in stops for sleeping and
eating. I would have driven all day, but knew my mother
wouldn't hear of it. For one, she'd start to lecture me on
all the horrible things that could happen if I sat in the
driver's seat for too long— lockjaw, nerve damage, insanity.
For another, Reginald would undoubtedly need frequent potty
breaks, which would mean letting him christen every rest
stop between Massachusetts and San Francisco.
And I'd
be left standing by the PETS AREA: PLEASE CLEAN UP AFTER
YOUR FURRY FRIEND sign, grinning like I didn't mind and
secretly steaming inside because I'd be the one doing the
furry-friend poop patrol. My mother had actually hired
someone to be her backyard pooper-scooper, because as
much as she loved Reginald, she didn't love the things that
came out of him and had never scooped a poop in her life.
That left me to do the dirty work on this trip, unless I
could convince that guy from The Discovery Channel to come
along and do his "Dirty Jobs" show from the backseat of my
car.
My mother was self-sufficient, smart
and—
A huge pain in the ass.
My ass, in
particular.
Still, she was my mother and I loved her.
Ever since my father died five years ago, I'd tried…well,
more or less, to build a closer relationship with her. She
was my only living immediate relative in a hundred-mile
radius. And, she was my mother. But trying to get close to
her was like trying to hug a cactus. She just wasn't that
kind of person.
She never had been. I accepted that.
It was what I knew, and I was, after all, thirty-six, way
past the age where I needed someone to fix my boo-boos and
give them a kiss to make it better. I was all grown up and
cool with it.
Then why was I suddenly so damned
nervous about the prospect of having to converse with the
woman who'd given me life?
It was only a few days, I
reminded myself as I got behind the wheel, buckled my seat
belt even as my mother reminded me to, and started the
Mustang.
Behind me, Reginald began grunting and
oinking, his black-and-white body shaking and shimmying like
John Travolta in the seventies, then he let out a gassy bomb
that gave new meaning to the words "going
nuclear."
It was going to be a long
ride.
Reginald apparently hadn't thought to go before
we left. We were barely onto I-93—not even in sight of the
turnpike yet— before he started to make whiny noises and
pace the backseat, his hooves leaving crescent-shaped dents
in the vinyl. I exited the highway then searched for a good
ten minutes for a shrub that wouldn't make Reginald wince.
According to my mother, Reginald had a boxwood phobia and a
shy bladder, so I had to keep walking into the thick woods
along the highway, searching for a suitable shrub for his
purposes.
I was waiting for Reginald to make his
deposit, or whatever it was that a pig would do, when my
cell phone rang. "How are you holding up?" Nick asked. I
missed him already, but wasn't going to tell him, because
being "off" meant not being needy.
"No one's dead
yet, not even the pig. I count that as a victory,
considering we left ten minutes ago."
Nick groaned.
"She brought her pig?" Nick was very familiar with
Reginald, after a nearly-disastrous babysitting incident a
few months ago, when my mother had gone on a girls' weekend
with her Bingo buds, Erma and Rhonda, to a bed and breakfast
that didn't allow porcine pals. It had been her one and only
trip sans Reginald.
"Of course she brought him.
They're pretty much attached at the hip."
"You poor
thing." He chuckled, then sobered. "Anyway, Hil, I called
you for a reason."
The way he said it, I knew I
didn't want to hear the words. For a second, I considered
hanging up the phone, feigning a bad connection. Considering
only a few suburbs of Boston separated us, I doubted he was
going to fall for that.
"Nick, can we
not—"
"Hilary, I should have said this before you
left this morning, but you ran out the door so fast, I never
got a chance."
"I was in a rush, which was partly
your fault." I'd spent the night at Nick's place, intending
to stay long enough for him to cook me breakfast and entice
me to chuck the whole road-trip idea, pleading typhoid or
something equally convenient. The majority of me had wanted
to opt for a weekend in bed with the man I hadn't seen
nearly enough of lately, or at the very least, go back to
bed for seconds.
© 2003-2024