October Snow (5 page)

She turned on the transistor radio on the counter, and groaned when she heard the voice of Delbert R. “Doc” Baker, a shock-jock out of Boston. She reached to change the station, then stopped.

“…and so here I am, sitting at the bar minding my own business, you know–checking out the merchandise…”

His sidekick, a guy they called “Shotgun Seamus”, piped up. “You mean the available young ladies, Doctor Del?”

“Young, yes. Available,
obviously
.” They both guffawed.

“Scantily clad?”

“Very few clothes, that would be correct, Seamus.”

They laughed again. Jo thought about picking up the phone and advising them to emerge from the locker room someday. She decided against it.

Daisy was licking her foot, and she reached absently to scratch her neck. “You know, Daisy, it just isn’t worth saying
anything
anymore, is it?”

“…and these two girls are trying to talk intelligently about that feminist chick, the one who’s in all that hot water for saying she’s glad she’s staying at home with her kid now.”

“Helena something-or-other…Helena Stillman-Gates, Doc.”

“Hyphenated, of course.”

“Yessir.”

“The Feminist Nation is all up her butt for betraying the sisterhood…”

“Personhood, you mean.”

“Forgive me, Seamus. ‘
Personhood
’…And Conservatives are swooning because she’s a Liberal.”

Pouring a glass of orange juice, Jo groaned out loud.
Maybe she’s a woman who thinks for herself, ‘Doc.’

“So for our last hour here, we’ll talk about it. The Feminist Nation. Feminism in general. Any aspect of it that interests you.”

Feed off her, go ahead.

“Harry in Waltham, go.”

“Mornin’, Doc. Best show on the radio.”

Another sycophant
.

“What’s up, Harry?”

“My blood pressure.” Laughter, too raucous for the lame quip.

Wow, Harry, that’s an original.

“These
fem
-nists have wrecked this entire culture. Kind of entertaining to watch them turning on their own now.”

“Making popcorn as we speak, pal.”

“Seriously, they sexed-up the country, brought us abortion, get married like it’s nothing more than a
shopping spree–
just like the one they go on, right after they divorce the poor guy who’s left holding the bag…”

“And all the bills,” Baker chimed in.

Ah, yes–Harry got the short end of the divorce stick.

“You got that right, Doc. I’m Exhibit A.”

I knew it.

Her cell was ringing. She sighed as she saw Matthew’s name come up, and the very feeling of wanting to avoid her son made her stomach grip again.

“Mom?”

“Good morning, Matthew.”

“I can’t make it for dinner again this week. Busy.”

“That’s fine…” She thought better than to say what she was thinking, taken off-guard by her sudden flash of anger. She glanced at the clock. “Hey, I need to get ready. We’ll chat later. Just wanted to say good morning.” She pressed her lips together. “Love you.”

She paused, waiting.

“I’ll be over to see you soon.”

“Have a good day at work, honey.”

He snorted. “Yeah, whatever.”

As she snapped her phone shut, Jo noticed that like last night on the phone with John, she felt no pain from the awkward exchange. She felt relief that the call was done.

“You said it, son. Whatever.”

.

chapter 3

T
HE DINGY MAROON
apron, with
Berry Crate
embroidered on the bib, always felt like a noose around her neck. She decided to wait until she got into the restaurant to put it on.

She reached for an elastic band to pull her hair back, then stuffed it into the fraying pocket of her black trousers. Barb had warned her, several times and always at full voice, to get new work clothes; but there was no way that Jo was spending that kind of money on anything for The Crate.

“Daisy, c’mon. Out.” The dog was a bit slow getting off the bed, and Jo wondered if the arthritis she had noticed in her lately was getting worse.

Daisy decided to take her time outside. Jo stood under the towering oak tree out back, wrapping and unwrapping the leash she held loosely on her wrist, thinking about how odd life seemed lately. It felt like something was happening, shifting, like her life was in motion. She’d had that feeling many times before, and it would make her feel disjointed, even panicked; but this time, it was more like floating someplace, deep and safe, where nothing could touch her.

She thought again about Matt’s call, and the defiance she felt afterwards–and that, toward her own child. She didn’t feel troubled by it, at least not as much as she was detachedly curious about her reaction. Ten years ago, she wouldn’t have believed that kind of scorn to be even a possibility.

She had felt that same flash of anger toward John the night before, when he called her on her way to work to let her know that again, he wouldn’t be seeing her–not this week, either. He had promised, several times; but still, she hadn’t seen him in over a month, even though he lived only ten minutes away.

Matt appeared every two weeks or so to have dinner with her. It was logistically more difficult for him, as he lived forty minutes away in Laconia; but Jo knew that it wasn’t for love that he made the trip. It was his sense of duty, one that Matt–always the steady one, “the good one,” he liked to say–imposed on himself. Jo, like all solitary, aging mothers, could sense his resentment toward his feeling of obligation, and she withered under it.

In those last few years before the boys left home, Jo understood that with as close as the three of them had always been, bonding under the trauma of Keith’s abuse, the split would come because it
had
to–and it would be emotionally violent, as much so as their childhoods had been when Keith was anywhere near them.

But in the two years since Matt moved out, and in the four since John left, Jo had struggled to stay close to them. It was a losing battle, one of ever-increasing misery from the futility of the fight that she waged alone. She knew, from the time Keith sauntered smugly back into their home, that the future was a hopeless place.

The contempt that she endured from her sons built quickly in them after Keith moved back in. It wasn’t hard to understand, not at all, because they didn’t want him back. Jo hadn’t wanted him back any more than the boys did; but they couldn’t comprehend, not then, that Jo had as little power in the situation as they did. They didn’t know that if the divorce went forward, Keith and Counselor Pit Bull would destroy them all. And Jo couldn’t tell them. She couldn’t allow herself to be accused of turning the kids against Keith, and then have them given to him as a result. “Parental Alienation Syndrome,” the Pit Bull had called it, and Jo became something of an expert on the subject in the months that followed.

After the divorce, when she worked at the center, she tried with everything in her to help the countless women with their horror stories about losing their children to a father who abused them. It seemed that the only way to protect the children was for these women to stay with their abuser, and Jo thought that to be the equivalent of state-sanctioned domestic violence. The mothers couldn’t tell anyone, except the advocates like Jo–duty-bound to keep it confidential; if anything, the mother who remained with an abuser had to make absolutely
certain
that outsiders knew nothing, because if the state found out she was “allowing” abuse in her home, she’d lose her kids for failure to protect. But if she tried to leave, and raised the issue of abuse, she’d lose her children for alienating them.

She decided that in the end, the state had certainly gone the distance to force battered women underground.

In her own life, she found it to be a darkly fascinating paradox–that in making sure she couldn’t be accused of alienation, it was she who had been alienated. Fascinating, and quietly devastating: she, like so many other women, had been caught in the catch-22 of being forced to let the monster come back, or lose the boys to him. But because John and Matt had turned on her for letting Keith back in, she lost them anyway.

Those years were the most painful of Jo’s life, watching her children slip away, knowing their contempt for her. There were many nights back then, right after Keith had come back, when she would jolt awake from a restless sleep. She would go first into Matt’s room, and then John’s, and talk softly to them as they slept, hoping to imprint their subconscious minds with a remembrance of her. Of the mother they had once loved, and the family they had been.

Even after the boys were out, she tried hard to be understanding, and strong, supporting them however she could; however, she was at the same time dealing with recovering from the decades of Keith’s abuse, and she knew too well how often she had messed up. Sometimes, trying to hang on felt like such a desperate thing–and even when she knew that she was failing to meet that impossible, untenable standard of stability that dogged all battered mothers like a curse, she faked it to the best of her waning abilities. She had so wanted to be their hero, because they needed one so badly. As did Jo, but May had been right: there was no such thing.

At some point, she didn’t recall when, she began to understand that the hanging-on was the thing that hurt. Letting go, that was a relief. It made room for resolution. At the very least, she didn’t have to fake the motherhood thing anymore. It wasn’t that it was getting too hard to fake it now–it simply didn’t matter. No one needed her to fake anything, not at all. Not anymore.

She vaguely wondered why she wasn’t more bothered by the distance that was growing inside her. All she knew was that when her defiant anger rose up, it felt good. Powerful. It was a strange experience, foreign to her when it came to her children. Perhaps, she thought, she was finally acknowledging the truth of how she had felt for a very long time: the anger, until now, would have been just too painful to allow, the worst thing of all. Until Keith came back, they had been a close little family, the one that all their friends had wanted to be a part of, the family that other mothers had envied. Now, not even Jo wanted to be a part of it.

Daisy was tugging to go back inside. Jo reached down and stroked her head. “Yeah, let’s go. I need to get to work.”

They called her name as they always did when she walked into the kitchen. She blew them kisses, and slipped her apron over her head as she looked around for Barb.

“Where’s Big Barb?” she asked Kaleen.

“In the office. With Max.”

“Any idea what’s up?”

“No. They’ve been in there a while.”

Sam was gesturing from the doorway to the dining room. “Jo, c’mere.”

“Hey.” She pulled the elastic band from her pocket, wrapping it around her wrist. “What’s going on with Max?”

“I’m not sure. Barb came out to a two-top she was at, told her right in front of the guests to get in the office. Gave the table to Mary, told us to split the rest of Max’s station until you got here.”

Jo frowned, looking toward the office. “You and Mary handle things. I’m waiting here for Max.”

“Barb…”

“Screw Barb.”

Sam’s eyes went wide. “Okay. I’m gonna go bus. Don’t get in trouble.”

She was still looking at the office door. “Yeah, okay.” She pulled two dollars out of her pocket. “Kaleen, ring up a cup of coffee for me.”

“We have to pay for coffee?”

“You pay for everything here.” Jo handed her the money. “Keep it.”

“Thanks, but you don’t have to tip me.”

“Just keep it.” She pulled a mug from the rack, inspecting it carefully before pouring coffee into it. Leaning against the industrial-sized ice machine, she sipped her coffee and waited.

Barb emerged from the office a few minutes later. She glanced down at Jo, her eyebrows raised. “You better have proof that you paid for that coffee, missy.”

Jo pulled the receipt from her pocket, holding it too close to Barb’s face. Barb looked first surprised, then annoyed as she backed away. “Coffee break already?”

“I’m not on the clock yet.”

Barb glanced at her watch. “Going to pull your hair back?”

Jo stared her down, one side of her mouth turned up in a sarcastic grin. “See previous answer.”

She had never seen Barb stammer before. “Uh…Do you have…an
issue
, Jo?”

She didn’t answer, her smile almost imperceptible as she raised her cup to her lips. Barb finally looked away, grabbing some papers from the file folder that hung by the office door and bustling back into the office, slamming the door harder than usual. Jo thought Barb looked like she was diving back into the womb.

As she studied the narrow kitchen, and the five or six servers who were rushing in and out of the dining room, Jo thought of an ant colony. They reminded her of worker ants, clamoring and climbing all over each other. Servicing the queen.

At the same time, she was suddenly aware of the cooks yelling at each other. She realized that their fighting was such a constancy that she rarely tuned in to them enough to hear how ugly they were. When she first started working there, the raging bad language had been jarring, even depressing; at some point, she had simply stopped hearing it.