Crazy Enough (26 page)

“Mom?” Her lids fluttered but her face stayed stone.

I thought she'd be dead when I got there, so when she wasn't,
I couldn't help but puke up thirty years of random anger and hurt that had shook in my head the whole way to this moment. She was unconscious, but I let her have it.

“I don't hate you, Mom. I never did. All I ever wanted was for you to be okay, so I could have a mom, I needed a mother, but ended up with a sick kid. You,
you
were the child. You made me feel like I could not only never love you enough, but I was
why
you were in so much pain, that it was me making you sick. Do you have any idea how much that hurts? To love someone, to fucking miss you so much, more than you could possibly imagine, and feeling like it's me making you sick? That it's my fault you're gone? Meanwhile you're telling everyone around you how much we all hate you, and hurt you? That is fucked up, Mom. You're not sick. You're sad. I have no idea how to love anybody, least of all myself. And no one can ever love me, either, because they know I'm broken, they can smell it on me, the sick and sad you gave me. But I am not you and I am never going to be. I refuse to end up like this, like you. I won't be the mess you made.

“I realize you're in a coma or something and can't . . . you probably can't even hear me . . . but . . . I don't hate you, I never did. God knows, I tried to, and I'm sure it made being miserable a lot easier believing I did, but the truth is, I love you, Mom. I have always loved you. It just was never enough.”

Somewhere along my rant her hand moved. “He-ll-o-oh . . . darling . . .”

Her voice was a painful dry creak. Her eyes opened slightly. Normally, in moments like these, I would roll my eyes at her shtick of grim, hanging-by-a-thread-I'm-so-terribly-ill . . . but I just sobbed.

“Mom, what has happened to you?”

She was so weak it took her awhile to articulate anything. The doctors had pushed a breathing tube into her trachea during the seven-hour surgery. It was out now, but her throat had been scraped raw. “I'm sorry for hurting you and the boys,” she said. “I don't know why . . . sorry.” She drifted out again as I sat with her a while longer.

Was that real?

She was so heavily medicated that she might have been incoherently babbling. But my heart hoped that it took that much sedation and trauma to strip away all the bullshit and get some real out of her.

“I'm sorry, too, Mom . . . I love you.” I kissed her forehead. It was so dry under my lips, like the back of your hand after washing several times with a harsh chemical soap. She was out cold, again, so I whispered goodbye to her, promising to come back.

That evening, having a post-dinner beer with my dad at his house, I told him about the exchange. I asked him if he thought she had meant it. He took a drag off his smoke.

“Sweetie, all that matters is you got to say everything to her. That's all I cared about. I'm sure she heard it . . . it doesn't matter if she
got
it or not.”

“I think she did, Pop. She must have. Something is really wrong with her this time.” He just smoked and nodded without actually agreeing.

Mom had a heavy round of tests most of the next day and was exhausted, so I didn't get to see her again until late the following afternoon. She was doing much better, though. She had been moved out of the ICU and into a private room.

I ran into one of her doctors as he was coming out and I was headed in. He nodded a hello at me, but looked grim. After
introducing myself and thanking him for taking care of her, he looked down and shook his head. “She's never going to walk again. I swear we did everything we could.”

“Hey, it's all right, we know you tried . . . wait . . . did you just tell her she's paralyzed . . . for the first time . . . just now?”

“No, but she's been so sedated that I wasn't sure she had really heard it. We offer counseling and rehabilitation here and elsewhere, but I had to wait for your mother to be fully conscious before discussing all of that with her.”

“How did she take all that?”

“Your mom took it surprisingly well. I'm more upset than she is, really. She smiled and seemed more concerned with my feelings than her own situation . . . incredible.”

I thanked the doctor again, and wished him well as he left. I took a deep breath and steeled myself.

It hadn't even occurred to me that she might not know what happened from the surgery. I was too hell bent on unburdening myself of all my sadness onto my shrunken, near comatose mother. I stood at the door of her room and cursed myself for being so selfish.

Grow up, Storm. If Mom is just hearing that she's paralyzed right now, she might be in shock . . . or desperate. Go in and be strong for her, for a change. She might be freaking out. She might try to kill herself, for real this time, save up her pain meds and . . .
then I heard her laughing.

Mom had this musical, girlie laugh, but her throat was still ragged so it was more of a throaty chuckle, but still, somehow, bubbly and light, like lemon soda.

I pushed the door open and peeked in. Mom was propped up in her hospital bed and was chatting on the phone. She saw me and smiled, held up the pointer finger of her free hand in an “I'll just be a
minute, darling” gesture. I walked in and sat in a chair facing her while she gabbed.

Her room was sunny and bright. There were a collection of flower bouquets and a few get-well balloons by her bed. Get-well cards stood open like colorful tents on her dresser along with a box of chocolate-covered cherries. The room was sweetened by her lily-of-the-valley perfume. Someone must have brought that to her along with her teeth, because her face wasn't a sunken-eyed voodoo mask anymore. She even had a little more color in her cheeks as she talked excitedly to whoever it was on the phone.

It seemed the doctor was right, she was lucid and alert, even downright chipper. I was trying to decide how to give her my present of Clarins face cream, a fancy brand that I was sure would pull an excited
Oooh!
from her.

I sat in the chair, my hand in my purse, holding onto her gift, and waited. Then I tuned in to what she was gabbing on about.

“It's really remarkable,
I know
. Well, I'm not getting one of those sad old lady wheelchairs, I'm a very strong woman and I will roll that sucker myself. I've done it before . . . yes, with my knee surgery, it's not that bad, really, well, oh,
nooo,
it's easy. We paraplegics have a much more heightened sense of balance. All of the senses, really.”

We paraplegics?
She was . . . bragging?

“The doctor could tell that I'm incredibly strong, he even said so . . . and he'd never seen a recovery go so well from such an intense surgery . . . I
know
. . . poor thing . . . he's a lovely man.”

She was downright ebullient over her situation, her brand-new badge of sadness.
This one people will see! I will cruise around in my shiny new wheelchair, and roll that sucker over all their sore and soggy hearts. Everyone everywhere will feel sooo baaad!
I felt an old animal prick its ears
up in me. I heard her say “we paraplegics” at least two more times before I realized I was crushing the box that held her present.

I got up so quickly it startled my mom off the bragging train for a moment. I put the cream next to the phone by her bed. She looked at it, then mouthed “Oooh!” at me, and continued her chat.

“Goodbye, Mom.” I kissed her papery forehead. “I love you.”

“I'm almost done,” she silently mouthed again.

“Me, too.” We looked at each other for a moment, I felt tears coming, but also an urge to rip the phone out of her hand and smash it through her sunny, private window.

“You will never see me again,” I said quietly.

She air-talked a “Wha . . . ?” to me, midsentence, without skipping a note.

“Goodbye.” I left, trying not to run from the room, the hospital, and the planet.

She got me, though, the newly crowned Queen of Paraplegia . . . I had to admit, she got me good.

T
o keep Mom as dead to me as possible, I threw myself into my work. My band had label interest, a big, New York–based management company was courting us, and I had an investor. Kat, a gorgeous, marathon-running mom of four, die-hard philanthropist and supporter of the arts, paid for our album and put us on tour.

It was 2000, and the world hadn't ended, much to the embarrassment of doomsday prophets and those Y2K douche bags. But, just as things seemed to be going well for me, at last, the world blew up. I guess it had to.

We were recording “The Calm Years” and it was going well, the songs and the performances were strong, but my relationship with my band was growing tired. And damn near dead were the feelings between my boyfriend, Michael, and I. Michael had been my guitar
player, collaborator, and musical partner for seven years. I still loved him, but we had become like brother and, well, brother. We called each other Dude and felt like band mates who lived together and slept naked in the same bed.

It all imploded when my substitute mom, Rose, died.

Annie Leavitt was number one, Rose was my number two momstitute. She was my rock 'n' roll mom for a few years. She was a painter, a dark and swirly gypsy woman with big soft hips and a dirty laugh. When she got a fat tumor pulled out of her neck, the doctors found it had leeched into and body-snatched an entire vertebra in her upper spine. Thankfully, the surgery was a success and she suffered no nerve damage; she had to wear a neck brace and get about six weeks of aggressive radiation series. But, after her last treatment, she cackled, “Ya-hoo! Gimme a damn cigarette!” It was a new beginning.

Then around Christmas she developed a nasty cough and could only stand up for about five minutes at a time. We talked about taking a road trip somewhere warm. She had relatives in Arizona and I had a big fat van with a bed in the back. We would go after New Year's, when I was done recording “The Calm Years,” we decided.

The call came while I was in the studio. Rose was back in the hospital, with pneumonia, they thought. The cancer in her neck had snuck away from the burn of the radiation to make a wet, black nest in her lungs. She didn't even bother with chemo or any other medical option.

I was one of only a few women she wanted with her at the end. I'd record all day in San Rafael, then go back to Sonoma every night, to help out any way I could.

The morphine was a pink liquid Rose dubbed
Marilyn.
“Time for a little more Marilyn, Stormy!” We let her have as much as she
wanted, but it wasn't enough to keep her back from locking into spasms in the middle of the night. Her lungs were so packed with cancer, that there was barely a teacup's worth of room in there for her to breathe with. We all took turns sleeping in bed with her, so when a lightning cramp would split her from sleep, we'd be there to rub her back.

About four days before she died, it was my turn to keep the massage vigil. She woke up with a sleepy and miserable sob and I went to work on the knot. She moaned a grateful sound, likely for the company as well as my gentle kneading, and then settled back down.

The room was quiet except for the whir of the oxygen machine and her clotted little breaths. I kept rubbing her back gently, and started to cry. I whispered into her hair “God, Rose . . . I wish there was something I could say. I talk so fucking much but I can't think of even a few words that even begin to describe what your believing in me has done . . . Something you can take with you so you know how magical . . .”

“Aww, fer fuck sake, I'm not dead yet!” she croaked into the stillness.

“You
bitch
! I was totally having a moment.”

“Yeah, well, I'm trying to sleep.” She mustered a laugh out of the one cancer-free bit of her lung, I chuckled and held her close. “Stormy. You're bigger than what you're doing. Your band, your boyfriend, Michael. They're great, but you're just bigger.”