Riding Fury Home (24 page)

When we got hungry, Mom and I left the bar and found a seafood restaurant that overlooked the harbor. Sailboats rocked on the water. The rain had begun. It started lightly and then became one of those East Coast summer torrents, sheets of water hammering down from the blackened sky.

After dinner, we raced to the apartment, newspapers over our heads. There were two double beds, and we each lay on one, reading
our paperbacks, inhaling the damp, salty air. We could hear the rain on the roof, and the thunder, which had earlier rumbled in the distance, got closer. I put down my book and counted the seconds between the lightning flash that momentarily lit the darkness outside and the loud clap of thunder. “One thousand one, one thousand two . . . ” I was chanting softly.
Bang bang bang.
Then, it came again, its rhythm faster—
bang bang bang.
I realized the sound was not thunder, but a pounding on the front door of our rental. Mom and I looked at each other, puzzled. The banging repeated, louder and more insistent. “I'll go see, Mom,” I offered as I got up. I went through the kitchen to the front door, which opened onto a landing. I flicked the porch light on. A woman was standing there, rain pouring down her long dark hair.

I opened the door. “Hello?”

Rain dripped off the woman's nose, her eyes red-rimmed. She smiled weakly. “Hi. You must be Karen. I'm Stella.”

“Stella!” Mom exclaimed. I looked over my shoulder and saw Mom standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the kitchen. “Let her in, let her in . . . ” she directed me. I stepped aside and Stella came into the kitchen, water pooling at her feet. She set down a small suitcase on the linoleum. My mother moved close to Stella to help her out of her raincoat, threw it over a kitchen chair, and stood facing Stella. I retreated to sit at the far side of the kitchen table.

They seemed to be rooted, facing each other in the middle of the room.

“Joanna and I have been at it, Glor. Fighting like cats and dogs the whole time we've been at the Cape. It was a big mistake.”

“And a hell of a thing you did to me!”

“I'm so sorry, Glor.” Stella began to cry softly, then choked out, “Can you forgive me?”

“Sweetheart, I've missed you terribly!” Mom stepped close to Stella, who flung her arms around Mom's neck. They both were crying now, holding each other close. Then they were kissing, as if they were alone. I was mesmerized, never having seen my mother's passion for anyone. Finally, Mom stepped back, as if coming to, and glanced over at me. “Stella, let's make you some coffee, get you warmed up.”

That night, I moved my things out of the bedroom and slept curled on a daybed pushed against one wall in the kitchen. Gloria and Stella stayed in the bedroom until late the next morning, while I puttered around the kitchen and made myself breakfast. I was happy for my mother, determined not to let loneliness enfold me. Instead, I plunged into my mystery book while I waited for them. Reading diverted me from some feeling that prowled in me, something fierce and fanged. It was out of the question to be jealous of Stella.

They finally emerged, moving languidly. Gloria's round face glowed like a happy full moon. I stared at my mother over my buttered toast as I joined them at the table in a second breakfast, struck silent with amazement at her metamorphosis. Stella made up for my muteness, chattering about the beautiful morning, now that the storm was past, and what wonderful things she'd heard about me.

She seemed familiar, this Stella. She had a prominent nose, an easy smile, deep brown eyes, and a body with that lushness of full hips and thighs that the women of my family hated in themselves. Jewish, I figured. Her long wavy hair was parted in the middle, just like mine. In fact, she looked a bit like me, like an older sister or an aunt. She was somewhere in her late thirties, much younger than my fifty-year-old mother, as was most of the crowd Mom hung out with.

“Gloria told me what an awful time you've had of it.” I realized Stella was speaking to me. She reached her hand across the table, grasped mine. “I'm so sorry,” she said, looking right into my eyes.
She gave my hand a squeeze. “But the good thing is, this way, I get to meet you.” Then she flashed me a radiant smile. In its warmth, I couldn't help but grin back.

At the end of breakfast, when Stella went off to the bathroom, Mom said, “I want to talk to you about something.” I tensed.

“Listen, Stella and I would like to go back to the city. Today. But there are still three days left on our rental. It would be a shame to waste the money; you could stay here if you like, enjoy the Cape a while longer—it's easy to get back to Manhattan on the bus—or come back with us. What do you think?”

I knew what my mother was saying, could see the yearning in her eyes: She wanted some time alone with Stella to reconnect. I imagined her tiny studio, that one open space without privacy.

“No problem, Glor, I'll stay here. You know I love the beach.”

“Are you sure, honey? We'll have lots of fun together when you get back in town.” Her face looked troubled, like she wasn't certain whether she was asking too much.

“Sure, Mom. I'll be fine.”

I helped them pack my mother's car, waved as she and Stella drove off down the narrow street. I wasn't too terribly bereft, knowing that in a few days, I would be with my mother again. Besides, it meant so much to see my mother's joy that I wanted to give her the chance to have more of that. Ironically, seeing her driving away with Stella gave me hope that for the first time, my mother could be there for me. Her happiness shored me up, created ground where there had been none.

“HELLO, DARLING,” Mom greeted me at the door of her apartment. She was dressed in a T-shirt and cotton drawstring pants; Stella, who stood right behind her in Mom's little foyer, was wearing a flowered Japanese kimono. They welcomed me in a relay of hugs, Mom passing me to Stella. They were both smiling in a dreamy-eyed way.

“Sorry if I interrupted,” I mumbled, embarrassed. I hadn't called to warn them I was coming back a day early.

“Don't be silly,” Mom replied. “You're just in time for dinner!”

I made a dash for the bathroom, and when I reappeared, Mom was tinkering at the stove, stir-frying vegetables in a wok. The table had already been set, but Stella was adding a place setting. On the stereo, Roberta Flack was singing her love ballads.

Mom's studio twinkled with candlelight. Two white tapers burned in a pair of tall brass candlesticks set at one end of the Danish dining table. Votive candles in red glass holders were perched on the coffee table and the nightstand, and in a row along the ledge that divided her kitchenette from the rest of the room.

I sank onto the couch, held spellbound by the romantic atmosphere. The air seemed thick, the colors of the room vibrant, the music swirling.

“Dinner's ready,” Mom called. Stella and I sat at the table while Mom brought in a salad topped with grated raw purple beets and pale green sunflower sprouts. I could see Mom had been catching up on health food cuisine amid her changes. I munched on my salad, wordless. It still stunned me, the novelty of witnessing my mother loving another adult.

 

 

THAT NIGHT, MOM MADE up the couch with sheets and a blanket, and I lay down on it a few feet from the raised platform where Mom and Stella slept. In the morning, I woke and glanced at the two of them entwined in sleep. Mom was on her back with her arms around Stella, who was snuggled onto her shoulder. I quietly opened my camera bag and got out my Leica. I was standing over them, readying my first shot, when Stella started yawning herself awake. Mom stirred and kissed her softly.
Snap
.

“Good morning. You don't mind, do you? It was a good shot,” I chirped as they both looked up at me. Mom answered me by kissing Stella again, more deeply.
Click
. When they stopped, Stella looked a bit startled, but Mom soothed her. “She's a photographer, like me; needs the practice.” Stella grinned up at me then, and snuggled closer to my mother, hooding her eyes.
Click
. Through
the lens of my camera, I watched Mom close her eyes and tighten her arms around Stella. Her mouth clenched into a look of taut ecstasy, like she couldn't get enough of her, like she could squeeze her to death.
Snap.

At breakfast, over our toasted bagels and peppermint tea, Stella offered, “Let me take pictures of you two.” Something eased in me then: something that lay hidden, something feral. I couldn't name it, could only sense its taut crouch relaxing
. I like Stella
, I thought.

We were all still in nightgowns—thin summer ones. Mom and I sat close together on the couch. She put her arm around my shoulder, and we grinned toward Stella holding the camera, cheek to cheek. Then Mom pulled down the shoulder of my nightgown, and kissed my bare shoulder. “Now you two,” Mom said, and took the camera. Stella smelled like talcum powder. She put her arm around my shoulder in a tight embrace. “Smile!” Mom commanded, but there was no need. We already were.

 

 

MOM AND STELLA alternated nights sleeping at each other's place. Sometimes I forced myself to stay at Mom's while they went over to Stella's, to give them some privacy, but most nights I followed them like a lost puppy. Stella lived in a studio on the sixteenth floor of a fancy high-rise with a white-gloved doorman, suited and capped. By Manhattan standards, her one-room modern apartment was spacious, with a couch facing a bank of windows, and a set of chrome and glass shelves along one wall with artfully arranged vases, sculptures, and a collection of owl totems.

When we stayed there, Stella hung a hammock for me from the metal hooks of her balcony. Unlike my mother's metal fire escape
landing, this was a true balcony. I would clamber into the hammock, curling my body above Sixth Avenue and Twelfth Street in the warm summer night, trying to ignore the honking.

Those first weeks in Manhattan, I often had trouble sleeping, thinking of Kate. I would reach out to the balcony wall and push myself in the hammock, hoping to rock myself out of obsession. I often woke with a start, heart and throat tight. Always the same dream, with variations: Kate and Dotty, laughing and mocking me, as if I had no right to sorrow, while they walked away from me down the hall of our Sonoma cottage holding hands, disappearing into their newly shared bedroom.

One night, I couldn't bear lying outside in the hammock awake any longer. Stella sat up in bed and flicked on the bedside light when I slid open her balcony door and stumbled into the apartment around 3:00 AM. Mom was snoring loudly beside her.

Stella's face in the lamplight, round and soft as if her baby fat had never melted away, her brown hair curling to just below her shoulders. “Can't sleep?” she asked. I nodded. She pulled her side of the covers back, sat up, and swung her legs to the floor. “Sit, sit.” She patted the bed next to her knees. I shook my head, standing near her.

“Afraid of bad dreams,
shayna maydeleh?
” Stella reached up and stroked my face.

I almost let myself cry. A person could learn to love Stella fast.

“Don't worry, sweetie. Here, have one of my Valiums.” She reached for the bottle on the nightstand, then handed me a pill and the glass of water kept always at the ready for her own pill taking. I hated sleeping pills and sedatives, but I was desperate. I swallowed it.

“Thanks a lot, Stella,” I mumbled.

I trundled back out to the balcony, hoping soon to be tranquilized into dreamless sleep.

 

 

DAYS WERE EASIER than nights. After I got back from Provincetown, Mom and I had a couple weeks to hang out before Labor Day marked the end of her summer vacation from her job teaching young adults at the Educational Guidance Center for the Retarded. Stella was working on an interior design project for a client, which kept her busy most weekdays. Mom and I wandered Greenwich Village together. So newly dispossessed, I drank in Mom's stomping grounds, this little square of Manhattan, even though I was uncertain whether I would claim it as my home. That Mom lived here made it home enough. Her companionship soothed, and the city distracted me.

We stopped for noshes in Greek restaurants, bagel joints, or delis, perused bookstores and record shops, lingered at a feminist coffeehouse on Seventh Avenue. As we tootled around, my mother seemed transformed, glowing with energy as if her new life sent a current through her. It both astonished me and made sense, now that I understood how she'd been forced to dampen herself, burying who she was.

A couple times, I vented to my mother about how awful the breakup had been—the shocking abruptness of Kate's declaration of shifted affection, the absolute blockade she erected to hearing my feelings. My mother's face took on a fierce look. “I'd like to kill her!” she declared.

On the weekends, Stella, my mother, and I would go dancing at lesbian bars—Bonnie and Clyde's or the Duchess—or to a private party at one of Mom's friends. The hostess's apartment
would always be bursting with women drinking, dancing to the blasting stereo, and passing joints around a circle, amid political arguments, gossip, and roars of laughter. Mom knew lots of women and would introduce me with excited gusto—
my daughter Karen
,
back from California,
like that was the greatest thing on Earth: Persephone returned from the underworld to her mother, Demeter.

 

 

ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, Mom, Stella, and I went to see a feminist theater group perform in a church on West Fourth Street. They asked members of the audience to stand up and describe their dreams and fantasies, which the troupe then acted out. When it was announced after the performance that another theater improvisation group was open for members, I was jazzed. Something for me to do, to begin sinking into New York.