Concrete Angel (14 page)

“Either they’re recovering from the shocks or the drugs,” Daddy told Aunt Linda wearily. “There’s a kind of murmuring when you walk the hall, a low hum of despair.”

“You tried the other route,” the doctor told Daddy in defense of their techniques. “Now let’s assume her brain, rather than her mind, needs stimulation.”

Before Mother was shown to her Spartan room, she had her first dose of electric shock. They shocked her three times a week over the eight weeks she was there. She forgot Daddy’s name for days at a time. Mine too. Once or twice, Aunt Linda handed me the phone and I’d listen to Mother babble and try not to cry.

She’d forgotten her own name by the third or fourth week. I listened to Daddy tell Grandmother Moran this in the hallway.

“Shocked senseless—that’s what it means,” she told him. “I never thought of it till now.”

“What else can I do?” Daddy asked.

“You don’t have to persuade me.” Taking pity on her son, she added, “You’ve tried everything else.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by this, but it was bound to be bad for my mother, and I stuck my tongue out at her. I didn’t waver in support of Mother.

A
unt Linda moved in while Mother was gone. In her own more benign way, she was as unbalanced as my mother. Our days were spent in languid contemplation of the offerings on the television schedule, the ebb and flow of street traffic, the grocery aisles at the A & P, the local candy store’s showcases. I didn’t mind spending time with Aunt Linda nearly as much as my mother did. I found her restful. Especially since, unlike the rest or her family, she never said a bad word about Mother. After a few days, we hardly mentioned her at all.

“So do you think we should have the beef or the chicken Hungry Man?” she’d say contemplatively, peering into the freezer, cold air rushing into her red face. Such decisions merited the same degree of thought as the question of what we’d watch on TV; answers to such questions were not to be rushed.

We were well-stocked with every frozen entrée of the era as well as the entire line of Pepperidge Farm desserts. Aunt Linda could finish off an entire cheesecake in fifteen minutes, not bothering to cut it into slices, forking into one side and eating her way across. She made it feel like the proper way to have dessert—whoever heard of saving some for later? Sometimes she’d ice a cheesecake with some jam or colored sugar, upping the sweetness a bit.

“I learned this trick at the women’s circle at church,” she told me.

Aunt Linda’d gone from plump to fat in the six years since she’d chaperoned Mother in Doylestown. It didn’t bother her in the least. I never knew a person more at ease with herself, and I soon began to look like Aunt Linda’s child. Little rolls of fat ribboned my thighs in only a few weeks.

“I told your daddy we could get by on our own,” she said, explaining the absence of Mrs. Murphy. “I’ve learned a bit about cooking since I last lived with your parents.”

She
had
learned a few things; she could defrost and heat anything she found in the freezer. She was quite adept at shopping for sauces to “jazz up” duller dishes.

“Whoever heard of chicken without milk gravy?” she’d say, peppering the frozen fried chicken with heavy canned gravy. There were also powdered sauces should we get bored with the canned selections. Convenience trumped taste or nutrition in the late sixties, and Aunt Linda served few dishes that weren’t covered with some sort of sauce.

“Nothing worse than a dried-up piece of meat,” she’d say, lathering on béchamel, Hollandaise, or sweet and sour.

After lunch, we’d walk the three blocks to the main thoroughfare and buy an ice cream cone or a sundae. “A little exercise can’t hurt us.”

Linda would stretch out on the too-flimsy bench outside of the ice-cream shop, dipping her bright pink tongue into the pink or green or peach ice cream. The bench undulated with her weight, and I watched, partly worried and partly fascinated as she constantly adjusted her position to keep all four legs of the bench grounded. The proprietor peeked out the window, probably worried about actionable accidents or the demise of his bench. But since we were his most loyal customers, his only ones some days, he was forced to accept it. Aunt Linda didn’t notice his fretfulness, completely engrossed in the sweet before her.

She went through their entire menu of flavors and choices during the months she stayed with me. I always chose something with chocolate.

“You need to branch out, Christine. You’re missing some of life’s greatest pleasures. Try pistachio or cherry vanilla.”

If life with Mother had been exciting and unpredictable, life with Aunt Linda was quiet and held no nasty surprises. She was completely satisfied with being what she was—a spinster aunt, the unmarried daughter of a rich man, a gourmand of epic proportions. I liked this about her. Where Mother exhaled her dissatisfaction, Aunt Linda inhaled stasis with content. She was as indulgent with me as my mother had been, but without the fits or tempers. It was a time of serenity, and I breathed it in. We might not engage in exciting adventures but life with her had its pleasures.

Physical contact was problematic though. Climbing into bed with Aunt Linda was out of the question. She needed every inch of space the double bed provided, so I was forced to sleep alone. Sitting in her lap was a battle between quickly finding a valley or tumbling to the floor.

“Whoops,” she’d say, scooping me up. “You’re a slippery little girl.”

Despite my love of Aunt Linda, some of the shine did go out of my life during Mother’s hospitalization. The sparkly things were gone. Daddy was away more than ever. Neither Aunt Linda nor I knew what to do with him when he
was
around. He interrupted the schedule we’d worked out by wanting to eat sensible meals and take exercise. He expected us to talk about more important things than what scheme Samantha had in mind to foil Darren or Endora on
Bewitched
. There was more on his mind than what ice cream flavor Aunt Linda should try next. More to think about than what Cissy Burt was up to at the Country Club wearing a bare-midriff dress to dinner. He disapproved of the pile of gossipy magazines always next to Aunt Linda’s chair, of the empty dishes filling the tabletops in the mornings, the endless wailing of the TV.

I’m sure he wondered if Mother had been right about Linda. Yet the peace and my contentedness convinced him she should stay. We got by. Perhaps there were no women who could satisfy Daddy, as Mother often said.

When Mother returned home after nearly three months in
Shock Corridor
, she was different: no longer interested in keeping a perfect house, not as manic, nor much fun. She was perfectly quiet for the first few weeks. Probably her brain needed time to unfurl itself from the fetal position it’d taken throughout her treatment. Her interest in being a CEO’s wife was completely gone. We didn’t drive to Ocean City, New Jersey to eat cotton candy and French fries on the boardwalk for breakfast. We didn’t make crazy costumes from the remnant table at The Sewing Bee. She wasn’t nearly as much fun as she’d been a year ago, but was certainly in better shape than three months earlier.

What did arise was her need to shop. But how to do it without getting caught? This was when Mother, with a grim determination and an innate inventiveness, came up with the “return” business.

I
t began at Grandmother Hobart’s house. It was someone’s birthday, but I can’t remember whose. Mother punished Grandmother those first few weeks after her return, not answering the telephone, blaming Grandmother Hobart for allowing Daddy to commit her to such a place, for not visiting her, for letting Aunt Linda take care of me. Her list of grievances was enormous and her subdued demeanor off-putting.

I crept around the house, avoiding her whenever I could, careful not to do anything to annoy her, although what that might be remained mysterious. She was a new person and I’d no idea how to handle her. After the weeks with Aunt Linda and the peace I’d grown used to, her behavior was especially scary. Aunt Linda had planned our day around food and joint activities. Mother never ate, mostly stayed in her room, and scowled at those she deemed responsible for her incarceration. Apparently at six, I wasn’t completely immune.

“You were practically in a coma the times I did come, Eve,” Grandmother Hobart said in defense. “I came home completely in despair, unable to do my housekeeping or care for your father—and well—he refused to even speak of it.” Mother rolled her eyes. She had yet to accuse her mother of anything specific, but it hung in the air.

My eyes went to Grandfather’s place at the table. It was already set for his dinner. He loomed over this household: his was the only padded seat, the only chair with arms. No one could sit there even in his absence.

But things between my mother and grandmother had slowly returned to normal, whatever normal was in our family, and we were sitting at the kitchen table digging into the same lemon cake with coconut icing Grandmother Hobart made for every birthday or special occasion. It was an exceedingly dry cake, a piece of pastry crying out for a scoop of ice cream, but my grandmother thought such additions excessive. I’d proposed ice cream earlier and been promptly told ice cream would make it too rich for a girl of my size.

“I put less icing on your side of the cake too,” Grandmother said, eyeing my burgeoning bulk. “Doesn’t do to give into a love for sugary treats at your age. It’ll dog you your whole life.”

She looked at me sternly, and I tucked myself further under the table. I was still coming off the Aunt Linda regime, and her words fell on me like hammers from the sky. My grandmother felt little need to endear herself to me through compliments and favorite treats. Children needed a firm hand. It might not have worked with my mother, but I was a difference case.

“That’s what comes from having a self-indulgent woman care for you.”

I looked at Mother, ready to watch her mount a defense, but then I realized Grandmother meant Aunt Linda.

“I didn’t notice you stepping in to help out while I was away,” Mother said finally, getting it out into the open and bringing an abrupt end to her period of unspoken recriminations.

Grandmother was not used to hearing herself publicly criticized. Her mouth opened once or twice as if a defense was forthcoming, but it never did.

I spent a lot of time at their house over the next few years. When I was there, I could easily imagine where my mother’s need to hoard came from. It was a cheerless house, and Mother had had to invent a way to overcome it. I passively accepted the dullness, using her role model to keep me in check.

My mother was slightly allergic to the coconut in the cake and a light rash broke out around her mouth as she continued to eat her paper-thin slice. She never turned down sweets the only food she cared about. So she persevered, her throat slightly raspy after a few minutes.

“Did you put vanilla extract in here?” she asked her mother. “Tastes more like nuts.”

“Very good, Evelyn,” Grandmother said. “Almonds. You’re developing a palate. Perhaps you’ll become a cook yet.”

“Why did you use almond?” Mother sniffed at her piece. “Almond would be more for a spice cake. Right?”

I was impressed by how much my mother knew about baking considering she hadn’t so much as baked me a brownie. “What’s a bakery for?” she’d say if anyone suggested such a thing. Or, “you can’t beat a good old Tastykake.”

Grandmother’s bravado broke down a little here. “You’ve certainly become quite an expert in pastry ingredients.” She sat a bit straighter in her chair, playing with her slice of cake rather than eating it, looking at it more critically.

I began to eat quickly, fearing the cake might be whisked away any second. It
was
odd-tasting, but there was nothing wrong with its sugar content.

Grandmother sighed, rose suddenly, and walked to the cabinet over the sink. She pulled out a little box, withdrawing the bottle of vanilla inside.

“I can’t get the cap off the vanilla. I think it’s off the track.” She yanked at it, nearly elbowing herself in the process.

“Let me see.” Mother grabbed the jar and twisted the top fruitlessly for several seconds before passing it back. “You’ll have to take it back to the A & P and demand a refund.”