Lies My Mother Never Told Me (36 page)

“I had a terrible time? Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” she said, “you're Gloria.”

 

The jackals started to circle, smelling the death struggle, and a free meal. She was hemorrhaging money. The nurses' aides alone cost over $3,500 a week, and Gloria was shelling out a small fortune on liquor and food. And meanwhile, Bobby told her they'd be getting a check soon for
Whistle
, hundreds of thousands of dollars; soon they'd be picking out her dress for the Oscars.

Jamie and I had been growing increasingly concerned about Gloria's financial situation. We called a lawyer to see if we had grounds to petition the county court to have our mother declared incompetent.

I took Eyrna out to see her grandmother for a few hours on Presidents' Day. Jamie and I both had power of attorney from the last time she'd almost died, and every week, one of us needed to pay Gloria's bills. Vladimir wanted $960 for the groceries and house necessities he'd bought over the last month. Michael Mosolino wanted $750 for the groceries he'd also bought, over the last few weeks. Who was eating all this food? I wanted to know. Vladimir secretly told me it was Bobby. Michael secretly told me it was Bobby, but also Vladimir.

A big man I didn't know wearing work boots entered the kitchen. He said he was ready to start. He said he wanted a down payment on the agreed sum of $5,000.

“Start what?” I wanted to know.

“I want that big tree cut down,” my mother told me, “pay him.” She flung her arm out indifferently, the Red Queen giving an execution order.

“I think we need to discuss this,” I said, my hand out to slow everything down.

“Oh, shut up. You're an asshole,” she said to me.

“Get your coat, sweetie,” I said to Eyrna, “we're going.”

“What?” said my mother, surprised.

“We're leaving. I won't be spoken to that way in front of my daughter.”

“Oh, come now, you don't have to go,” her nurse's aide said to me as if she were talking to a five-year-old. She turned to my mother. “Say you're sorry, Gloria. Say you didn't mean it.”

“But I did mean it. This is my house. I can do what I want!”

I had tried so hard to accept that she was not in control of her faculties. But a hurricane of emotions was raging within me, and I felt on the verge of incredible verbal violence. But this raging crazy person inside me was no longer me—not the person I'd become—and I knew the only way I would survive intact was to get out.

I calmly put on my coat; I helped Eyrna with hers. “I'll call you tomorrow,” I said in a low voice. They all stared at me in stupefied silence.

On the way west, driving along curving and treacherous Noyack Road, teal blue inlets sparkled through the dense, dark, leafless trees. I turned and saw that Eyrna was asleep in the back. Conked out from the strain, I guessed. I felt ill, as if I had the flu. But I didn't. I switched the radio on low. A sad, strange, complex orchestration with a kind of New Age techno instrumentation filled the silence. I recognized Madonna's voice immediately, though I'd never heard the song. It was about the ending of a relationship, the end of trying to make things work.

An orchestra of string instruments took up the refrain and grew in intensity until it reached a vibrating pitch. But then a lone guitarist strummed a few chords, and the song came to an end,
dead in its tracks, in the middle of a measure. Astonished, I turned off the radio and pulled off the road at a boarded-up marina.

I decided I would not go to court to have my mother declared incompetent. I would not fight. I put the car in drive and hit the gas. I felt as if I'd jumped off a sinking ship and was in a life raft with my little girl, my face turned away from the horror, rowing, rowing, as fast and as hard as I could in the opposite direction.

 

Two days later, the phone rang. I thought it was Kevin on his way home from work.
“This is your mother.”
No one could spit out the word
mother
like she. It was pulverizing in its power to degrade and insult.
“You are a vicious little cunt,”
she went on,
“and I'm going to kill you, do you hear me?”
Her voice was low and filled with venom.
“How dare you try to steal my money!”

I shouldn't have picked up, and I immediately cut her off without saying a word. I turned off the ringer and sat there, shaking, unable to get my adrenaline under control. I could feel my hand inching toward the phone to call her back and say I was sorry. But sorry for what?

The answering machine clicked on and her shouting filled the apartment.
“You fucking bitch, how dare you hang up on me! I'm going to bury you, you fucking whore. You're a thief and a liar. I'm going to cut your heart out with a knife…”
I ran past Eyrna, who was playing in the living room, to the answering machine in the kitchen, and turned that off too.

Someone had told my mother about the petition to have her declared incompetent. It could only be one of two people—Michael or Bobby—both of whom my brother had apprised of our plans. I felt my blood pressure crash, as if I were about to faint. I went into the bathroom, locked the door, closed the toilet lid, and sat down with my head between my knees. A hard rain began to pelt the window. I heard Eyrna's small feet padding toward the door.
She turned the knob, slapping the door with her palm. “Mommy? Are you all right?”

Still trembling, I unlocked the door and let her in. I couldn't look up. Eyrna's hand gently patted my back. I forced myself to turn my face toward her. She tried to read my eyes. I couldn't stand when my mother used to look at me that way, because she always knew what I was feeling and made a joke.

“Why did Grammy say those things?”

“Oh, honey.” My voice shattered. I didn't know what to do. “She's insane, honey. She's poisoned her brain with alcohol.”

 

For two days I refused to answer the phone, so Gloria called the Southampton police and told them I'd robbed her. Jamie immediately called the police and faxed them our power of attorney papers. The officer who'd shown up at my mother's house told Jamie over the phone that she had offered him a drink at nine in the morning. He was concerned about the two individuals who were goading her on, a certain Bobby and a certain Michael. Did he know these characters? Jamie was horrified. How were they goading her on? Well, said Officer Cavanaugh, they were telling her she's absolutely right, that her daughter's a thief. Mark my words, said the officer, those two are trouble. Next thing they'll do is bring in a reverse mortgage for her to sign. You'd better watch your back.

 

Having no idea what else to do, I walked over to my lunchtime tae kwon do class.

Mr. Sevilla took one long look at me and said, “What's wrong now?”

“My mother called the police. I'm afraid they're going to come arrest me. She says I stole from her.”

He threw his head back and exploded into laughter, showing his back molars, as if he hadn't heard anything so funny in his life.
“Ah, that's a good one!” he said gleefully and slapped me on the shoulder. Every time the doorbell rang during class, Mr. Sevilla shouted to the girl behind the front desk, “Don't answer it! It's the police coming to take away Ms. Jones!”

 

Two days later, Michael gave Gloria a million-dollar reverse mortgage contract to sign. Jamie drove out to Sagaponack from Washington in the middle of the night to stop her.

On Wednesday, March 15, my brother called at nightfall to tell me my mother had taken away my power of attorney and signed a new will in which I'd been disinherited. She'd left my share of the estate to Eyrna and had cut Michael Mosolino in for 10 percent. I felt a piercing pain through my chest on the right side, as if I'd been speared. I called Kevin at work. “Kevin…”

“Are you okay, my love, what's wrong?”

“She cut me out of her will.” My mouth was completely dry, and I was hyperventilating. “I can't breathe.”

“I'm coming home.”

“It's okay.”

“I'll take a cab,” he said and hung up.

Kevin gave me a muscle relaxant and a eucalyptus rub and attempted to talk me down. He made me promise to call our doctor first thing in the morning.

In a panic, gasping for air, I said, “If you want me to, if you think it's the right thing to do, I'll go out there. I'll apologize to her. I swear, I will.”

“To hell with her and her money. We don't need it. We never needed it. All we ever wanted was to be able to provide for Eyrna a private school education and an Ivy League college, if that's what she wants. And she'll have that. We'll be all right.” Kevin held me in his arms, rubbing my back where my right lung seemed to be in some kind of spasm. “It's okay, my love. You didn't do anything wrong.”

 

I must have dozed off just before dawn. I awakened with a start, only a short while later. Feeling as if I had a hundred-pound weight pressing down on my chest, I wondered if the solution would be to find some heroin somewhere and kill myself. But where did one find heroin, anyway?

I turned over, and there was Eyrna, gazing down at me in the pale light, her eyes shiny. Ah, my only child, my greatest gift…She jumped on me and kissed my neck. I opened my arms to her, and she folded her warm body into mine. I smelled her clean, fruity hair.

“I love you, Mommy.”

Suddenly I couldn't breathe, and I wanted to push her off.

Help me, God, I thought. Let me get through this. Let me accept whatever you put in my path. But really, I was thinking, underneath that soft and gracious prayer, God, how much longer are you planning for this to continue? Could you let me know? Is this going to go on for a year? Five years? Six months? If I knew, I could hold on…

“And I love you, too, baby girl,” I choked out, “more than anything in the world.” The alarm buzzed loudly, and it was time for Eyrna to get ready for school.

 

I waited with her for the school bus to come, watched her climb aboard, her heavy backpack hanging from her shoulders. I waved good-bye as she sat in a window seat and blew me a kiss. I took our little dog down to the East River esplanade. The sun was bright for late winter, and warm on the stone walk. The river seemed quite blue, a dark mirror of the sky. By nature I'd never been brave, unless faced with an absence of choices. That's when I could act bravely, like a rat with its back against the wall. My mother had disowned me. She'd done the very worst thing to me she could think of. That was really the only thing she
could
do, to punish me for turning my back on her. I had a moment of perfect clarity: she'd done her very worst, she'd fired off her last, best cannon, and I was not dead. She had nothing left. My father's work was safe, because by law the copyrights already belonged to Jamie and me as well as Gloria. She couldn't cut me out, and no one could touch James Jones's work without my consent.

Have you ever met a victim who wasn't right?

The only power I had was the choice to no longer be a victim. “God,” I murmured out loud, to river and sky, “I give this up to you.”

My soul went quiet within me in the bright sunshine. I realized that for today, for right now, everything was all right. My daughter was safe. My husband loved me, and he was safe. My home had not burned down. I was not sick. We had money in the bank. The bills were all paid. The dark carrion bird of guilt and shame suddenly loosened its talons and lifted off from my shoulders and flew away.

It was over. And I was free.

 

She lived for another ten weeks. Her violent messages on my answering machine did not stop. Who dialed the phone for her? Jamie's and my lawyer told me to save Gloria's messages and record them. I couldn't listen to them, so I asked Kevin to do it, even though her words made Kevin's face turn the color of ash.

Less than a week before she died, Bobby and Michael threw her a birthday party that cost her more than $10,000, catered by Michael's own company.

I had no premonition or feeling of loss on her last night on earth. Kevin and I made love that Thursday night, quietly but fiercely. It was the first time in months. He held me in his arms as we slept, and I felt safe and protected and deeply loved. The next morning, I took Eyrna to the school bus, and when I returned to our apartment, the phone was ringing. Of course, I didn't pick
it up until I heard my brother's shattered voice. What now? I thought, my heart pounding as I brought the receiver to my ear.

“Kaylie, Mom died,” Jamie said. “Bobby found her at six this morning. She had a heart attack.” He started to cry. I hadn't heard Jamie cry since he was eight years old.

“My poor Jamie,” I said. “I'm so sorry.”

I felt terrible for my brother, but no sense of loss, no regret, no sadness for her. Like the survivor of a terrible war coming out of hiding and finding a silent world of swirling dust, I felt nothing but relief. Jamie took some deep breaths, then told me he'd be driving out to Long Island late tonight. I said we'd meet him there tomorrow.

When we disconnected, I called Kevin at work. Eyrna's Candidate for Black Belt test was that night, June 9. She also had two girlfriends sleeping over, a party she'd been planning and looking forward to for months. My mother had fallen and broken her hip on Eyrna's eighth birthday. She had taken so much from us already that I decided I would not tell Eyrna until tomorrow.

 

Two days later, on Sunday afternoon, Jamie called Michael Mosolino to try and sort out Gloria's new will, which Jamie didn't think was valid. We were sitting at the round, wrought iron and glass table in our mother's garden. Michael had somehow gotten himself into the will for 10 percent of his aunt's estate. Michael was also named successor executor and trustee for Eyrna's share, if anything ever happened to Jamie.