Concrete Angel (13 page)

Mother glanced at Linda in surprise. She wouldn’t have guessed her to know about such things.

T
hen Mother got pregnant.

She left the diaphragm she’d secretly worn for years in the drawer one night and a few weeks later she was throwing up.

“Aren’t you glad we have Linda here to help you now?” Hank asked once she’d been to the doctor.

“I’ve already packed her bags,” Eve told him, eating one of the endless apples her new condition dictated. Small, tart apples—the kind nobody else but the horses on the Moran farm liked. “I can’t be made upset by endless quarrels with Linda with the baby coming. It wouldn’t be good for me to be angry all the time.” Hank finally nodded. “When can we start looking for a house in the city? I’ve been looking at the ads for houses in the Society Hill area.”

“Moving now wouldn’t be a good idea, Honey. I’m sure your doctor agrees. Can’t we wait until the baby comes and we’re back on our feet?”

“Back on our feet! I’m not falling for that line again. You said I could choose where to live once I was pregnant. We might as well get ourselves into place beforehand. Things will only get more confusing with a baby to care for.”

“Bucks County’s a lovely area. People can’t wait to get away from the dirty, crime-infested city and live out here. Can you see its beauty?”

He was rubbing her shoulders, but she squirmed away. Acquiescence to sexual invitations came at a price with my mother.

“I can’t see anything but animals. Dowdy clothes, diners instead of restaurants, a drive-in-movie with heaters for the cold weather, the church choir instead of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Kiwanis square dances instead of a night club. The whole town smells like manure when it doesn’t smell of skunk. Do you want your son to go to school with farmers?”

When Hank started to suggest there was nothing wrong with the local schools, she reminded him he hadn’t been a pupil in a rural school.

“Philly was different in the late forties and early fifties.” He walked over and dug around in his desk, coming over with a pamphlet from The Templeton School, which he handed to her. “I play golf with a fellow who sends his kids here. You know, Pete Weideman?” She shrugged. “Or, if you like, we can move nearer the city when our child reaches school age. Meanwhile he can roam the countryside like a boy should: fish, ice-skate on a pond, run through the woods.”

She always hated it when he was so well-prepared for her arguments
.

“How about this?” she said to her husband. “Let’s look for a spot between Doylestown and the city. You won’t have such a long commute, and I can be nearer cultural institutions, fine schools, fine restaurants…decent shopping.”

“And the last shall be first.”

“What?” She paused. “See there’s a good example of your fine education. I bet you learned that line in school. Shakespeare, the Bible?”

“Never mind.” He sighed. “Sure, find a suburb you like. I can live with it.” He paused. “Between here and the city though. I don’t want to spend all day on the road with a new baby to bounce on my knee.” He smiled. “Or his mother.”

S
helterville was ten minutes outside the city limits and only forty-five minutes from Daddy’s office. A leafy suburb with good schools, it boasted several parks, good city services and a nice shopping area. Unlike Doylestown, chic stores abounded— whereas ones carrying canning supplies, farming equipment, yarn, and sturdy overalls were scarce. Trains traveled from Shelterville to downtown, Philadelphia, New York, and other parts of Pennsylvania on a regular basis.

My parents needed a bigger house with a baby on the way and found a nineteenth century colonial with a stone façade. Pale blue shutters framed the windows and the door was a royal blue with a fetching stencil of an oak tree. Although it was nearly as old as the house in Doylestown, it’d been modernized in the mid-fifties. It was equipped with central air when such things were uncommon.

With a baby coming, there was a lot of shopping to do.

“Maybe you should wait until after the baby showers,” Daddy suggested, looking at the boxes piling up in the nursery and elsewhere. “Mother’s invited everyone in town.”

Mother winced. “I can imagine the sort of gifts your mother’s friends will buy.” The only smart shop in Doylestown—the one where she’d bought the gloves and handbag—didn’t carry children’s things.

“My only hope was the Doylestown matrons would send items I could easily return, Christine,” she told me later. “Or order stylish presents from New York or downtown Philadelphia stores.”

M
y mother was able to satisfy her immediate need with sterling silver baby cups, plush stuffed toys, darling dresses with smocking and lace trim. She knew it was a girl despite her words to Daddy.

Daddy probably didn’t mind that the nursery was well outfitted. He clung to the hope motherhood would change his wife, satisfying the restive thing inside her, the part of her needing to be fed by possessions. Though he must have shaken his head when the bills came in, he didn’t say a word.

My birth was an easy one, but Daddy dutifully paced the floor in a waiting room, the last generation of men to be excluded from the delivery room. If he was disappointed in my sex, he never said so, and in three days, Mother and daughter went home. Mother recovered under the care of a nurse—a gift from her in-laws. I had my own nurse for six weeks longer.

Instead of a post-partum depression, Mother slipped into a new phase, one no one had seen before. She became a Supermom, keeping the house spotlessly clean with only the occasional help, entertaining Daddy’s associates at home and at the club, pushing the pram to the Curtis Hall park, learning to heat prepared foods. She joined theater groups, bridge groups, golf groups, and a church. Everything was hunky-dory.

“A nice time, it was,” Aunt Linda said later. “We were certain your mother’s troubles were behind her. Convinced she’d only needed to have a baby to keep her mind off of buying things. Or taking things, Christine. Another theory discussed was that her hormones straightened themselves out after your birth. ‘Course what did we know?’” Aunt Linda paused to catch her breath. “Oh, I’m not saying you didn’t have more dresses than you would have occasion to wear. Or that Eve didn’t shop more often than she should, but compared to what came before… and later…” Aunt Linda shook her head

If the Jesuits were right, those four Supermom years anchored my fealty solely with my mother. Her presence was like that of the sun, she blocked everything else from my view. She focused on making each day special. I’d wake from a nap to find my stuffed animals seated at the dining room table, ready for a tea party. She let me order any item that caught my fancy on a restaurant menu: the most improbable and expensive dishes—like oysters or vichyssoise were mine.

“She encouraged you to try new things,” Aunt Linda said, “even if she ended up eating it herself. Even if the entree was left untouched on the plate.” She stared out the window as if summoning back those days. “She was gay, always gay, but we shouldn’t have trusted the manic quality. We should’ve seen the desperation lying beneath.” Aunt Linda blushed. “Anyway, that’s what they said at the hospital when she fell apart.”

Mother and I dressed in outlandish costumes and paraded down the streets. Bedtime came whenever I liked. In fact, she encouraged me to stay up late, to sleep with her, to take a bubble bath whenever I felt like it, to try on her clothes, her makeup. She did my nails in the most improbable colors—before Goth girls inured us to such things. We bought a dozen pink-iced donuts once and ate them without pause.

One December, when I told her I missed splashing in my plastic swimming pool, she dragged it out of the garage, blew it up, set it on the kitchen floor, and filled it with water doused with bubble bath.

We watched old movies, westerns, and Johnny Carson, despite the hour it came on. We indulged in themed shopping days, filled the house with balloons, flowers, bubbles, painted a mural of jungle animals on the dining room wall, covering it with white paint before Daddy saw it. We hung crepe paper from the chandelier, pretending it was a maypole.

I adored her. No one had such a mother. I was her confidante long before I knew the word. “The bad years are behind me, Christine,” she said repeatedly.

I smiled hopefully when she said this, but not having the slightest idea of what she meant.

Where was my father? Working constantly or at least gone from the house. He probably had a mistress. Perhaps a second or third. A manic Eve was not much better than the other ones he’d known. He spent a lot of time with his parents in Bucks County, something Mother never wanted to do. When he was home, he was often poring over bills, watching sports on TV, getting ready to leave. He was glad to have a child, but didn’t find me very interesting. Perhaps later we’d spend more time together, I heard him say. When we could play tennis or golf or ride horses. Perhaps if I ever had something interesting to say, we’d grow close. He’d listen to me.

If Mother’s behavior during these years sounds like a manic phase of mental illness, well, that’s what it was. There were little peaks and valleys along the way, a day here and there when she didn’t get out of bed; made a quick visit to the local GP for a B12 shot or some Valium; spent a weekend at home with her parents from time to time, but on the whole, it was a good period.

When I was nearly five, she crashed. Couldn’t get out of her bed, wash, dress, care for me. I went to sleep with the sound of Daddy’s feet pacing the hallway. I’d wake to hear him begging her to get up, pleading with her to try and pull herself together.

“I can’t pull you out of this hole alone,” he said, his eyes glittering as I huddled with her under the blanket. “Dig yourself in far enough and you’ll have to go away again.”

Go away
again
. I didn’t know what he meant. They’d all managed to keep her period at The Terraces from me. If she went away, would I go too? How could I possibly get along without her?

She couldn’t respond, continued to stare out the window, clutching one of her shiny things, her eyes black holes. I was sure it was my fault. Only yesterday, we’d gone to the circus, the zoo, the ballet. What had I done? Had I twined myself around her too tightly? But still I clung tight. Or did she cling to me?

Aunt Linda or one of my grandmothers showed up most mornings. They stood outside her bedroom door wringing their hands, softly asking if she’d like some tea, soup, a glass of ginger ale. How about a new book from the library? Maybe the minister should come by? Maybe her GP? The Morans didn’t like Mother much, but they hated to see her like this, hated to think Daddy might be pushed to his limits again. That he might have to spend a fortune to whip her into shape. Grandmother Hobart was still less inclined to interfere, perhaps intuiting the blame for this creature was on her head—perhaps she set Eve on this course.

Mother refused to see anyone or ask for anything. There was only me, swaddling with her under the covers. Trying to crawl, or perhaps, claw my way inside her again. I had no faith I could exist on my own. Was I was anything at all without her?

T
he Terraces had closed its doors during Mother’s period of sanity, the new drug regimen its undoing. It was now a golf club where many of the same people cavorted. Mental institutions had dramatically changed with the influx of new drugs. Daddy chose a different sort of hospital this time, one which sanctioned both drugs and administering judicious shock therapy to patients no drugs or therapy could reach.

Mother was one of those patients. They weren’t called residents or guests at this facility. There wasn’t much talking, no large green lawns, no tennis courts or swimming pool. No one strolled the grounds; patients were hardly outside at all. The idea was to get the patient on her feet as quickly as possible, even if she had to be jolted back to a vertical position. No one would attempt to get inside Mother’s head this time; her mind was an unfathomable place—a place only drugs or electricity could reach.

And the patients looked dazed, according to Daddy.