Mother (40 page)

The tire pressure was indeed standard.

“Got it,” he said. “But you know that the pressure is listed right on the tires, don’t you?”

She stared at him with crazy eyes. “I don’t trust them. No doubt the tire company wants you to buy tires more often, so they change the numbers to make them wear out faster.”

“Okay.” Jason stifled a groan and concentrated on flexing his numbed glutes instead.

“I’d also like you to read the section about the gears before you take it out.”

Is she fucking kidding me?
“Um, I’m sure that’s not necessary, Prissy. It’s a standard automatic transmission.”

“Yes, but I think it’s important to understand how a machine maneuvers before you take it on the road. It’s a very different machine than an airplane, you know.” She began flipping pages. “Here we are.” And she read aloud.

It occurred to Jason that Prissy could have taken the car and filled the tires herself in the time it had taken her to give him a course on the car. His ass was twitching with pins and needles now. He flexed some more, dry-humping empty air with as much discretion as he could muster.
 

When she finally finished reading, she asked, “Does that make sense, Jason?”

He hadn’t been listening. “Crystal clear.”

“You’re a darling, Jason.”

He nodded, got out -
Ah, blessed relief!
- and walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door.

“You’re such a gentleman.” Prissy got out of the car then watched as he slipped into the driver’s seat. “Oh, do be careful,” she said as he slid the chair back to the furthest point. “Don’t hurt my Beamer!”

Prissy fiddled nervously with her hair necklace as he adjusted her rearview mirror and side mirrors. “Just move everything back where it belongs when you’re done, okay?”

Jesus Christ. If it’s this much trouble, do it your damned self!
“I will, Prissy.”

“And don’t go to Chevron. Go to the Shell on Honeysuckle and Hyacinth. I
always
take it to that one.” She hesitated. “You know where it is, don’t you? You should be filling your car there, too.”

He nodded but Prissy began giving him directions nonetheless.
Of course she goes to that one. It’s a million miles further away than any of the others.

“And tell Johnnie V. I said hello, will you? I’ve told him all about you. I know he’d love to meet you.”

Well, shit.
There went his plan to fill the tires at the Chevron right up the street. She’d know if he didn’t go straight to the Shell across town. Jason sighed and, under Prissy’s watchful eye, put the car in reverse.

She stared until he could no longer see her.
Sorry, Claire, I’ll be back soon.

Sitting at the desk by the bedroom window, Claire looked up when the BMW pulled into the driveway and was happy Jason was back. But ten minutes later, it pulled out again.
Oh, hell. They’re probably going to the store. Poor Jason.
She tried to distract herself by thinking about the horrors of shopping with Mother, but it didn’t help.

Claire wished she could pace to work off the nervous energy dogging her since she left her father’s room. The image of his made-up face haunted her and she’d set to looking for her phone again, wanting to call someone about Dad.
 

As soon as the BMW turned off Morning Glory Circle, she’d returned her gaze to the journal from Tim’s junior year. Looking for more, she flipped further into the notebook and stopped when she saw hard, cramped writing.
Don’t read it
, she told herself, knowing the pen pressure meant Tim had been upset. But she read anyway.

I’ve never been so humiliated. After school, I finished my homework, ate dinner with Mother and Carlene, and then went upstairs to shower like I always do. While I was washing, I heard a noise and thought Carlene must have wandered in. Mother never allows our bathroom door to be locked, even though Carlene is getting old enough to start snooping around. When I peeked out of the shower though, it wasn’t Carlene who’d come in. It was Mother!
 

I yelled at her to get out, but she wouldn’t. She said she’d noticed I smelled bad sometimes and wanted to tell me about proper hygiene. I told her I was learning about it in Health and Fitness class, but she didn’t care. She said they obviously weren’t teaching us the right way to wash. I slammed the shower door and told her to get out again, but she just started telling me things no boy should ever hear his mother say.

She explained I needed to pull back my foreskin and wash it really good. She said I had to pay extra special attention to the area under my testicles and my armpits, and my butt crack. Then she started explaining how I should wash my butthole really well with my finger. I was so humiliated but I didn’t say anything because, once she starts, she doesn’t stop. I even plugged my ears when she started talking about my penis. I didn’t think it could get any worse until she said she could show me how to do it right if I needed help! I told her OF COURSE I don’t need her help. She laughed and said she was a nurse and that it wasn’t weird at all.

Not weird? NOT WEIRD?!?!

She sat outside the shower door and waited for me to finish, but I wouldn’t come out until she left. When she finally did, I dried off, and ran to my bedroom and got dressed in my closet. I will never forgive her for invading my privacy like that. And I will never use the bathroom again without putting a rubber wedge under the door. She’ll come unglued when she realizes she can’t get in, but I don’t care. I am almost grown now, and I can’t handle these invasions anymore.
 

“Oh my God!” Claire shut the journal and resisted the urge to throw it across the room. It wasn’t what Tim had written here, as horrific as it was, that shocked her - it was a lost memory of her own that tumbled, full blown, out of some secret vault in her mind.

She was barely eleven the day she got her first period, but she thought she was bleeding to death because Mother hadn’t bothered to tell her about it and it would still be months before they’d show the girls-only movie in sixth grade.
 

First had come the blood, then the cramps. She’d even vomited a few times, it made her so sick. It was September, just before Labor Day, and she’d been reading in her bedroom when it hit.
Thank heaven I wasn’t at school!
 

She couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother, because the woman would demand she strip and let her examine her privates. She couldn’t, she just couldn’t. She thought she was going to die, but even that was better than confiding in Mother.
 

She got out a medical encyclopedia and looked up vaginal bleeding and was shocked at what was going to happen to her over and over for the rest of her life. But she was also relieved to know she was normal.

She shoved wads of toilet paper or Kleenex in her stained cotton panties and each time they leaked through, she wadded the underwear up and shoved them in her desk drawer, way far back where Mother wouldn’t see them. She used her allowance to buy boxes of Kleenex each month because she was too embarrassed to buy the real thing, let alone talk about it with anyone.
Why did I have body shame like that? What did that woman do to me to make me feel so humiliated over a normal bodily function?
 

She didn’t know the answer, but realized she must have had some sort of hygiene run-ins with Mother similar to what Tim recounted.
Something.
To this day, talking about menstruation embarrassed her to no end. She avoided the subject or changed it when her adult female friends brought it up.

Back then, by October, she was running out of underwear and had to do something because she didn’t get enough allowance to buy Kleenex
and
new underwear. She couldn’t go to the school nurse because Mother would find out. She had nowhere to turn.
 

Then, one day, when she was staying at Aunt Babs’ house while Mother was out of town, Babs asked her if Mother had bought her a bra yet. Claire had turned a hundred shades of red, and sweet Aunt Babs set her down and told her how embarrassed she herself had been about asking for a bra the first time. Then she talked about periods and how embarrassed she was about hers at first - and asked Claire if she felt that way.

Claire burst into tears and ended up in Aunt Babs’ arms for half an hour. Babs asked a few questions, then gave her a soda, waited for her to wash her face, and then took her shopping for new underwear and bras and Kotex. After that, Babs bought her another box every month that she carried home in her backpack so Mother wouldn’t know. And Babs never asked why she didn’t want to tell Mother.

God love Babs Vandercooth. I would have run away before high school without her.

Tears threatened, and overflowed when her memory skipped to the day she’d come home from school and found all the stained underwear - now white and reeking of Clorox - draped throughout the living room, dining room, and kitchen, for all the world to see.
 

She’d been a fool to leave them hidden in her room - she knew Mother snooped through everything. And she hated the woman for it. She hated her then, and hated her now.

That day, cheeks burning, heart in her mouth, she had gathered the underwear up and taken them to her room as fast as she could. She was afraid Tim would see.
Too bad he didn’t; he would have understood.
She’d slammed the underwear into her drawer and not ten minutes later, Mother had appeared in her doorway.

And she hadn’t said a word. Not a single word. No yelling, no understanding, no explanations, nothing about periods. Claire had been relieved. But the look in Mother’s eyes came back to her now. Ugly, triumphant, mean, like it had all been a joke. She’d smiled at her daughter like a dragon smiles at gold. Then she’d turned and left the room.
 

Claire wiped her eyes as sadness gave way to fury. Aunt Babs had kept her in feminine hygiene products for years, until Claire could buy her own. Babs had hugged her and said never to hesitate to talk to her if she ever had another problem.

I need to see Aunt Babs.
 

“Where the hell have you been?” Claire was on her feet, crutches in place, when Jason entered the room. “I wanted to call you but I can’t find my phone. She took it! I know she did!”

Jason’s heart sank. He was in no mood for this. He tried to sound chipper. “Your mom asked me to go put some air in her tires. I’m sorry. You lost your phone?”

Her face was a mask of rage, her eyes burning coals. She was pale and her hands were shaking.
The baby!
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “What happened? Is everything okay?”

She shrugged from his touch. “No,” she said. “It’s not okay!” Tears brimmed, then spilled from her eyes. “Do you know what she’s done to my father?”

Jason blinked, confused. “Your ... father? What?”
 

She wiped tears away with brusque swipes. “Go look at him, Jason. Just go look and see for yourself! The door is unlocked.”

Jason narrowed his eyes and flexed his jaw. “Jesus Christ, Claire. I thought something happened to the baby! We can buy you a new phone. And if this is about your mother again, I don’t give a damn! Enough is enou-”

Claire pounded the end of her crutch on the floor, cutting him off. “She’s nuts! Completely fucking nuts!” Spittle flew from her lips and her eyes were wild.
 

“Claire. Please, just calm down. You need to take it eas-”

“Go look! Go
look
at him, Jason! Go see what she’s done, then I’ll tell you what she did to Tim, and to me!” Her cry was shrill, unexpected, and undoubtedly heard throughout the entire house. She was panicked, perhaps in a full-blown anxiety attack, and Jason wasn’t sure what to do for her.

“Why don’t you just sit down and tell me what happened? Maybe you imagined something. In your condition-”

Her eyes narrowed to cruel slits. “No. I will not tell you a fucking thing, Jason. I don’t want to hear about how I’m being paranoid, or how I need to just take more vitamins and rest. I need you to see this for yourself.”
 

Jason’s heart hammered in his chest and his tongue was sandpaper dry. He raised his hands in surrender and spoke in gentle, soothing tones. “Okay, honey. I’ll go look.”

Claire’s jaw hardened to match her eyes. “And when you come back, you tell me she isn’t completely insane, Jason. You tell me we don’t need to leave this house right
now
.” She grimaced - her lips curving into a disturbing humorless smile, and then her face crumpled and she was overcome by wracking sobs.
 

Jason’s instinct was to go to her, to hold her, but he knew that would prove disastrous. She was like an angry cat, hissing, spitting, ready to attack.
 

“You’re scaring me, Claire. I’ve never seen you like this. Please, just-”

Claire’s head snapped up and she jabbed a finger in his face. “Go look, Jason. Right. Now.”

He spoke carefully. “I’ll go look. Right now.”
 

Brimstone

Stephanie Banks looked out the window of her office on Main Street in Brimstone, Arizona. Tourists strolled the historic town and the faint music of Brimstone Joe, the resident street corner violinist - fiddle player, she corrected - rode in on the chilly breeze. He’d put a Western twist on a movement from Mozart’s
Jupiter Symphony
and it sounded great. She smiled to herself. She’d moved to Brimstone twenty years ago, yet it seemed like yesterday and forever.
 

White clouds puffed in the brilliant blue of the high desert sky. She’d never regretted coming to this tiny historical monument of a town, or giving up her hippie dreams and going to medical school.
What would Tim think of me now? Stephanie Banks, doctor of psychiatry.
He’d be pleased, she knew. Sadness began to tinge her thoughts, so she made herself think of other things.

Her last patient had been Nick Johnson, an employee up at the Brimstone Grand. He was worried about voices he thought he was hearing in the hotel, and she’d already ascertained he had no schizophrenic tendencies. A lot of people heard voices at the Grand, probably due to acoustics and all the ghost stories attached to the former mining company hospital. Nick’s problems were minor, really more for a psychologist or just a therapist, but Stephanie was the only game in town. She didn’t mind; she liked being in a small place, and her reputation had grown enough that people from nearby towns were calling for appointments. She took those she could, but the citizens of Brimstone always came first.