Mother Daughter Me (9 page)

My mother makes careful note of every shared expense. If she pays for something we’ve agreed to split, such as a session with Lia, her request for reimbursement, which she sends to me via email, is made as soon as possible. My mother is appalled by how expensive everything is in San Francisco. In particular, her cleaning lady in San Diego charged nothing compared with cleaning ladies here. She does concede that Blanca, the cleaning woman recommended to us by our landlady, does a nice job in the kitchen. She’s particularly impressed by Blanca’s skill with a trash can and invites me one day to take a look. We stand together over the trash can, peering in at Blanca’s handiwork. The white trash bag is folded so skillfully in and around the hard-plastic liner, you’d never know it’s there.

My mother’s need to focus on the minutiae of not just her own but other people’s everyday lives, which she had so successfully exercised on Norm, now has no outlet. When she lived five hundred miles away, I found it amusing. Such behavior may be extreme, but it wasn’t directed at me. Now, living under the same roof, it feels as if she’s in my business every minute. Laundry is a favorite focus, requiring her constant vigilance: The lid to the washing machine must remain open; otherwise, mold and germs will collect. Dish towels will gather bacteria if not put immediately into the dryer.

The kitchen is the worst. My mother is unhappy that it is not hers alone. And at the same time that she watches my every move, she believes I think that everything she does is wrong. But then, how could she not? I had quickly established myself as the only true cook of the household and therefore the one in charge of the kitchen. My mother used to cook when she and Norm were together—simple, nutritious meals—but when their health began to fail, cooking was one of the first things to go, in favor of microwaving, which is what she still does. I once opened her oven in San Diego to find she was using it to store a large bowl.

My mother tells me she was an enthusiastic cook and baker when we lived in Rochester, and no doubt she was—at least for a while. But I have no memory of her whipping up cookies or cakes, or anything else
for that matter, in the Rochester kitchen. I do, however, remember a scene that occurred in the small breakfast room behind the kitchen. I hear her screaming at my father. I see a plate flying at the wall, a piece of their wedding china, classic Ashford-gray Wedgwood painted with silver figs.

I learned cooking from watching others through the years, then trying things out on my own. Food became, for me, the ultimate symbol of warmth and nurturing. By paying attention to what I’m cooking, I like to think I’m paying attention to the people I’m cooking for. And for an enthusiastic cook, “a kitchen of one’s own” can become a place of pride and creation. There’s a great feeling of comfort to be found in an orderly kitchen. I learned this from Matt and his mother, Denny. Wooden spoons and cooking tools and salad servers go in one large ceramic pot on the counter, everything metal in another. Whisks have their own container, which also resides on the counter. Salt lives in a tiny wooden dish, and garlic in a pedestal bowl Denny made for me in 1973, when I was fifteen. This is how it is. And no matter where I live, this is what my kitchen counter will look like. My mother clearly gets the message, because whatever psychological sleight of hand I have employed, it is enough to get the kitchen looking exactly as I want it. As for the refrigerator, I’ve staked my claim there, too, and my mother has retreated conspicuously to keeping all her own perishables in one drawer. Food, and everything involved in its preparation and storage, has become the stage upon which I carry out my acid corrective against my mother.

There are moments when I allow myself to appreciate how painful all these power plays must be for her. Two months into living under the same roof and our relationship is bringing out a mean streak in me I scarcely knew existed. More than anything, what my mother wants is my attention, and I discover soon after she arrives in San Francisco that it is the one thing over which I have complete control. I become stingy with it. If she has a question, I allow her to ask it but make certain to appear absorbed in another task while she does. If she needs me to help her with something, I do it grudgingly, stiff with duty.

Such are the petty ways I exact my revenge, without really allowing myself to think about what I’m doing. But what am I seeking revenge
for? My mother’s failure to model how to cook or set up a kitchen? Of course not. The causes go much deeper, deeper than I want to admit, because that would require facing up to how much I longed for her in my childhood and how angry I still am at her desertion. The revenge is all about demonstrating that I’ve done just fine without, and despite, her.

———

“
D
OING A GEOGRAPHIC” IS A TERM RECOVERING ALCOHOLICS OFTEN
use for acting on the impulse to start over by moving to a new town, or state, instead of making any internal changes. It’s the anywhere-but-here part of the disease that says, “Remove yourself from this, go someplace new, and everything will be better.”

Two years into our Florida stint, my mother pulled a geographic as radical as the move from Rochester. The new plan was to head for California. She enrolled in the mathematics graduate program at the University of California’s shiny new campus in San Diego, and as soon as our elementary school let out for the summer, she put us into a new Buick station wagon—a gift from her parents—and drove us across the country. My assessment at the time, from a seven-year-old’s vantage point, was that my mother hadn’t been having much fun. I knew she hated the mosquitoes as much as we did. San Diego, she told us, was mosquito-free. And she must have presented the plan to us as a continuation of our big adventure, this extended road trip we were on.

You’d think we’d have protested at yet another move. After all, having been duped before, we were in no position to believe that the next move would be any different. But I have no memory of being unhappy about the news. Because that’s what often happens when an alcoholic parent is doing a geographic. She pulls you in and, before you know it, you, too, believe in the promise of the new place. And you fall in love with it, too, sight unseen. We packed the car with Archie comic books for me and several volumes of Nancy Drew mysteries for Sarah, whose literary taste seemed so grown-up to me at the time. The three of us delighted in ticking off each state—Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana—after reaching its westernmost edge. But the drive across Texas seemed to last a lifetime, and the sheer tedium of traversing the vastness of that state seemed to sap my mother’s spirit.

As with the first move, we stopped at cheap motels, one of which had a pool with a high dive. Somehow my mother got it into her head that Sarah and I should conquer it. She wanted Sarah to dive the twenty feet into the water. I, she said, could simply jump. Sarah balked at first, then pulled herself together quickly and dove. But I was terrified. I stood on that trembling board, its sandpaper surface chafing the bottom of my feet, for what felt like hours, crying, my legs knocking together with fright. My mother refused to stand down, and finally I jumped. She wrapped us in towels and gave each of us a ballpoint pen as a reward. I remember thinking afterward, at age seven,
What was she trying to prove?
I see now that our courage was hers, our flight off that board a proxy for her own leap into a new life. That’s why we couldn’t let her down.

When we arrived in San Diego, we checked in to the Travelodge near the airport. My mother told us that she would find us a wonderful place to live. After seeing some of the possibilities, Sarah and I asked my mother to please rule out an apartment complex in nearby La Jolla—named, appropriately enough, the La Jollans—that we had passed a few times while driving up the hill to UCSD. The buildings were as dingy and brown as the dry hills that surrounded them, and Sarah and I both took an immediate dislike to the place. But my mother rented an apartment at the La Jollans anyway, because living there meant we could walk to school. Once we nested in the new place, we were fine with it. My mother set up the television in our bedroom, and she bought us our
own bookshelf for my comic books (which I cataloged and shelved with a librarian’s precision) and the many volumes in Sarah’s Nancy Drew collection. The complex had a swimming pool and, best of all, nearby woods and a range of bald hills that were ideal for endless exploration. Our favorite thing to do was slide down the steepest hill on large pieces of cardboard, a California version of sledding that kept us occupied for hours.

My mother began her new life as a graduate student, while Sarah and I set out for yet another school. Every morning we walked the half mile to Scripps Elementary School. We made new friends. In Florida, the teachers punished misbehavior by hitting children’s upturned wrists with a ruler. In San Diego, no such thing was allowed. And my mother was right: We never saw a mosquito.

Not surprisingly, my mother’s troubles had followed us west. She had failed to grasp, perhaps, that when you flee you can’t leave yourself behind. The set had changed, but the basic script remained the same. As we had learned to do in Florida, Sarah and I watched for small things that might trip a switch in my mother and send her into a binge. In San Diego, it began with a cake. She had met a man, and she was smitten. One weekend morning she decided she would make him a chocolate cake and that the three of us would go to his house to give it to him. Perhaps she pictured in her mind’s eye what he would see—the striking young mother and her irresistible little girls, bearing a freshly baked cake. Her happy anticipation was infectious, and by the time we got into the car, we were on a jolly outing. When we arrived at the man’s apartment complex, my mother carried the cake up the walk to his door and rang the bell. The man opened the front door but kept the screen door between him and us latched. He was very handsome. He had a towel around his waist, giving me a fine view of his strong, hirsute chest. I don’t remember the words that were exchanged, but I do remember a sense of terrible awkwardness between the two grown-ups. In less than a minute, we were back in the car, and so was the cake. Upset and humiliated, my mother drove us home.

Not long after, she bought an unfinished table, painted it a glossy orange, and set it out on the back patio to dry in the Southern California sun. Within an hour, the noontime sun had not dried the paint but caused
a collection of blisters to form. Then one of the cats jumped on the table. My mother lost her temper. She screamed at the cat. She screamed at us, went up to her bedroom, and didn’t come out—for a night, or two nights, or some number of days and nights that I no longer recall. We were back on our own. Finally she emerged. The table was still outside on the patio; I thought we should have fixed it for her. But how? My mother looked pale.

“Do you know what today is?” she asked accusingly.

We shook our heads.

“It’s my birthday.” Then she turned her back to us and stumbled her way up the stairs.

It was at that moment that I first experienced what it felt like to take on guilt for a crime I wasn’t aware of having committed. It wasn’t only that it was my mother’s birthday and I hadn’t known or done anything about it, but I must also have felt that our oversight was what had sent her into a drunken tailspin that just seemed to go on and on. And it was on that day, too, that I began to feel responsible for someone I didn’t know how to take care of.

Since that day in 1965, I’ve been very aware of my mother’s birthday and have tried for years to please her with gifts she might enjoy. By and large, I’ve succeeded, and she always seems to appreciate my thoughtfulness, pronouncing each gift “just what I needed but didn’t think to buy for myself.” I savor the praise.

MY MOTHER’S SEVENTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY
is nearly upon us. This is the first time we’ve been together on her birthday since I was ten years old. As it happens, a friend of mine is going to be in town for a book tour, and he’s giving a reading the night of my mother’s birthday. It occurs to me that it might be nice to throw a party for him, and, since my mother hasn’t yet made any friends in San Francisco, it might also give her the chance to meet people in a festive setting. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. When I tell her the plan, I can see she’s offended at my making a party for someone else on the day of her birthday, even though she doesn’t say anything outright. By that time, however, there’s nothing I can do. The invitations have been sent out. I’m hoping that the ideal
present will help right the ship, so I’m on the lookout. A week or so before my mother’s birthday, while at a nursery, I spot a topiary dog—a delightful, life-sized terrier covered in ivy. I know at once that it’s the perfect gift for such a passionate dog lover.

My mother’s preoccupation with dogs started in the early 1980s, when she and Norm started raising a series of German shepherds and German shepherd mixes. My grandmother had owned standard poodles and named them all, without exception, after characters in Mozart operas—Lorenzo, Zerlina, etc. My mother followed suit, not just naming them after Mozart operas but once even choosing the same name—Papageno—her mother had used.

During most of my mother’s years with Norm, the dogs became her reason for living. She hovered and worried, took them to dog school, fretted over their diet, cooked them fresh chicken, and was soon an expert in all things dog. When it came to dog sitters, dog walkers, dog trainers, and medical procedures for the dogs, no expense was spared. Around the house were sprinkled the obligatory family photographs, but for the most part my mother’s emotional lens was focused on the dogs, and so was the camera. Roll after roll of film was devoted to dogs on a leash and off, dogs sitting, walking, running, jumping, eating, sleeping. When the time came to put them down, she grieved intensely. The attention, care, and time my mother devoted to her dogs was so much greater than what she had given her children that it was hard for her to let the discrepancy go unremarked. In an oblique stab at apology, she told me several times over the years that raising dogs was her second chance at parenting.