One More Stop (10 page)

Bathing is a soothing solution for any frustration. After my evening with Maggie, I threw myself head first into my Holiday Inn in-room jacuzzi. I felt as if I were a flaccid ancient sponge swirling at the bottom of the ocean floor. When I came up for air, I pushed the full tilt bubble button, and vibrated myself into a deep despair. How I wanted to be Maggie’s lover. Here I was soaking and sulking in my mother’s town. Damn!

The Midwestern moon had come and gone. There was no sleep in sight … None. I recalled those many years long past, when my mother lost her sleep time. Night after night, she left my father alone in the master bedroom, threw her lime green housecoat over her shoulders, snuck downstairs and paced. As she paced the living-room floor, I watched her from upstairs, through the railing. She paced, lighting one cigarette after another, inhaling as if there would be no tomorrow. She already knew what we would later discover. She’d wring her hands as if she were trying to rid herself of herself.
‘I just want to sleep,’
she said over and over.
‘Want to feel something,
anything
. Can’t cry. Can’t feel. Can’t sleep.’

Humans are like finely tuned trucks. We need to park
ourselves
in a garage every now and again; let the hot rubber tires sit for awhile, shut off the engine before the radiator boils over. My mother’s engine ran and ran, until one day she
short-circuited the wires, threw on the ejection switch, and catapulted herself into a heavy-metal scrap pile.

I dunked my head into the jacuzzi one more time; I am in my mother’s womb, this wee little bird fish, bandied about from one feeling to another. At this instant I know that my feelings have always been hers: every hurt, every fear, hers. Then I heard it: my own voice, ‘Stop breathing. Stop breathing now.’

With total ease, I held my breath. Counted slowly, as if I had performed this ritual many times before, one … and … two … and … three … and … four … and … With every passing number, I slowed my count down. I felt light-headed. I reached the number eighty-three. That was the year she parked herself in the bathtub in the master bedroom and drowned out the noise.

Now, twenty years later, in her town, I was ready to follow in her footsteps. ‘No!’ I came up for air, gasping for breath. I saw the red numbers on the clock radio; six thirty a.m. ‘Six thirty in the fuckin’ morning! Shit. I have got to get ready for school. I can’t do this.’ Make a sound. Move. Get out of the jacuzzi, extricate yourself from the womb. ‘Can you hear me? Can you fuckin’ hear me!’ I shouted. ‘You are driving me crazy! I need to function. I am going to function. Watch me!’ I splashed water everywhere. ‘I’m gonna breathe you the fuck out of my mind! Out of my mind.’ I dragged my soaked self from the jacuzzi, sat down on the synthetic lime green carpet, tried to breathe. Couldn’t find the breath. Got up, stomped over to the dresser, pulled open the dresser drawers, heaved every article of clothing onto the bed. ‘It’s time to get ready for school. No! You are not invited into the classroom. Do you understand?! I am shutting you off now. And, unlike you, I am going to live. I will nurture those students from deep inside my belly. And, I will not abandon them!’
On the road to class. I am exhausted. I turn the radio on as loud as the feedback will allow. Brenda Lee sings:

‘I’m sorry

So sorry

Please accept my a-pology.’

Never mind. Let’s think about the lesson plan: Ancestors. Open the window, just a little bit. Listen to the sound of the air. Breathe in, breathe out, long exhale from the
northeast
. How I love that sound. Open the window too much, too much exhale. Has to be just right. Damn stoplights! … Destroy inhale/exhale. Press hard on the pedal when the light turns green. Sound blows right through me, touches me. That’s where the inhale/exhale meet. Right there. Stretch, blink, yawn, move from side to side. Lovely feeling.

‘Hush-a-bye baby on the tree top!

When the wind blows …’

‘The cradle will rock. I thought I told you … Never mind. Going to school, Mom.’

‘Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top!’

‘Rock-a-bye or hush-a-bye? Which one, Ma? It is damn
confusing
when you keep switching the opening line.’

‘Mmm mm mm mm mm on the tree top.’

‘Enough! Time for class. Let’s not ruin my lesson plan.’ I pull into the parking lot, leave my mother in the car. She lets herself out, follows me like a shadow.

I walk into Willwrite’s classroom. Molly has moved up from the back of the room. She is seated in the front row. Don’t want to let her down. Remember being let down.

Twenty years ago … on the telephone with Dina. She informs me, ‘Pop’s coming to dinner. I wish you were here.’

‘Family is so totally about obligation and very little else. You are the exception.’

‘Is that what Dr Guttman has to say?’

‘He hasn’t been very insightful about much anything since his Cape Cod holiday. It’s like he’s bringing his own personal baggage into the room. It’s annoying.’

‘He’s human too.’

‘Not for a hundred dollars an hour. His shoes aren’t shined like they were before he went away.’

‘Why would you look at his shoes for a hundred dollars an hour?’

‘Dick size – the wanger foot theory.’

‘Don’t you lie down in therapy?’

‘Sometimes you do and some …’

A muffled sneeze erupts on the other end of the phone line: ‘Achew. What do I take for a cold?’

‘Echinacea and Goldenseal.’

‘Guess what?’

‘You’re having good sex.’

‘I have good sex. It might not be kinky like yours.’

‘Where’d you get that idea? Random maybe, but not kinky.’

‘You’ve had so much, I just figured it had to be kinky. Otherwise, why would you be having so much of it?’

Ouch.

‘Guess who else is coming to dinner with Pop?’

‘Who?’

‘Guess. You’re holding your breath again, aren’t you?’

‘I can not imagine who you have conjured up to replace our short-lived ex-stepmother Mrs B. at the dinner table.’

‘Simone.’

‘And how did you come up with that brilliant coupling?’

‘I didn’t. Pop did. She called him. They had dinner at the house. He finds her
très charmante
.’

Later that evening I call Simone. ‘You had dinner with my father and didn’t tell me about it?’

‘Darlin’, you are so jealous. That is not like you.’

‘How the fuck would you know what I’m like? You’re never here. When you are, we’re always running around to some black and white photo exhibition.’ No response. ‘Why did you move three thousand miles away? Why? Is Michel Varny more important than me?’

‘Never.’

‘I don’t want to listen to you drone on about the poor
indigent
tribes of South or West or East Africa. I don’t.’ Still no response. ‘And what were you doing with my father?!’

‘He reminds me of you. Funny. So cute.’

‘Have you fucked him?’

‘Are you crazy?’

‘What have you done with my father?!’

Unbeknownst to Molly and her fellow classmates, I am thinking about my father’s broken promises to my mother, how I found out about his extramarital affairs, room-mates in college confessing to his flirtations. Blink … Blink … Blink … Close that chapter. The students are waiting. ‘So, who wants to talk
about yesterday’s exercise? Ancestors, right?’ A sea of hands: Look at that sunny, blonde, rosy-cheeked cheerleader with B on her sweater … Over there. Oh dear … sunken eyes, lip ring, striped yellow and green hair. Don’t think he’s slept for days. … Is that a boy or a girl? Doesn’t matter. Look around the room, Loli. Without any prejudice, pick a person; random choice. Not about who catches your eye. If that were the case, Molly Malone would monopolize this forty-seven-minute period. Her mother monopolized last night. For now forget about Molly Malone. Try to forget about her mother.
Impossible
. Look at that tall, gangly, red-headed, freckle-faced boy. He could use some good old-fashioned schoolroom attention.

‘You, you in the back, third row from the right, what’s your name?’

He squirms in his seat. ‘David.’

‘Hi David. Refresh my memory. The first part of
yesterday
’s process had to do with what you wanted to reveal about yourself to someone from the past? Correct?’ David scans his papers. ‘Isn’t that right?’ His papers fall like mini paper
airplanes
onto the floor.

‘I think so. Yes.’

‘Did you do the exercise?’

‘Oh sure I did.’

‘Good … and …’

‘It’s hard to talk about yourself.’

‘It is. Did you?’

‘I did. I never talked to a character in a book before.’

‘I’m not at all surprised. Which character did you pick? More important, what did you say about yourself?’

‘Alexandra, the daughter in
O Pioneers
.’

‘She’s a wonderful character, isn’t she?’

‘I like her … a lot.’ He takes his time. ‘When I was a child, my mother told me stories about her grandmother; my
great-grandmother
. She died a long time ago, before I was born. My mother said that her grandmother was the bravest woman who ever lived in Nebraska. She kept her family together. Both of her sons died when they were children: some fever. She never complained about it. She always believed in God. She loved the prairie. She never left Nebraska.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘No. I spoke to Alexandra. Maybe because she reminds me of my great-grandmother. Alexandra kept her family together just like my great-grandma.’

Like my sister. She keeps the family together. I wonder why she does that? Why keep such a screwed-up family together? Why give so much and get so little in return? ‘Why don’t you read us what you wrote.’

‘I don’t know if I did the exercise …’

‘David, just read it. I’m sure that it’s fine.’

‘I wrote it like it was a letter. I imagined this old guy driving a mail wagon with a gray horse pulling the wagon through the prairie. I guess he was Mr Pony Express. He delivered this letter to Alexandra on the prairie. After she read it, she threw it into the fire. I think she was angry.’

‘David. Please.’

He rocks back and forth like a playground swing in pants. His legs bang together as if he were dancing a new-fangled dance. His balls rattle, voice quivers, and finally, after his nerves simmer down, in spite of his fear, David reads his letter.

‘Dear Alexandra. I have been reading about your life and your times in Willa Cather’s
O Pioneers
. If you were living on the prairie now, you would be very unhappy. Nebraska is a
dead place. I don’t know how or when it died. But, there’s just no life in this part of the world anymore. Hopefully, next year I will graduate from Beatrice High. I can’t wait to leave this town. There’s just nothing to do here. My father has a farm, but things are very bad. He’s taken out so many loans to keep it going. I don’t know how he’s going to send me to college. Even if I get a part-time job, it will be difficult. Hopefully, I will get a partial scholarship. I’m on the varsity basketball team. Maybe that will help. None of my friends want to stay here either. I guess we’re bored. There’s nothing to do.’ David looks up from his paper. ‘I already said that, didn’t I?’

‘Keep reading.’

‘I hate the cold dry wind, the snow in the winter; the spring is too short, and it rains so much of the time. I don’t like all the dust in the summer, and I’m so busy with school and helping my father out on the farm in the fall, that I hardly even notice when the leaves have changed color. How did you survive out here? Maybe you could give me some understanding. Maybe your courage could rub off on me. Is it possible for me to like it more here? Could you explain why you thought it was
beautiful
? I just don’t see it. Everyone I talk to wants to go anywhere but where they are, especially if they’re here.

‘So, I’m glad I could write you this letter. You see, I can’t talk to my mom. She died last year. And like I told you before, my father’s having hard times on the farm. Oh, by the way, my mother’s grandmother was named Alexandra after you. She came from the old country. Just like you, she loved it here. Maybe girls like it better than boys. I guess that sounds silly, doesn’t it? I’m sorry to be such a downer. But, I thought it was important for you to know how I feel about this place.’ He looks up. ‘I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.’

‘Don’t worry about it. It’s an exercise. This is what you had to say to Alexandra. You’re just sharing it with all of us. And, by the way, thank you for that. Go on.’

David continues. ‘There’s no cute girls left in our class. All the cute ones have boyfriends.’

Willwrite gets a handle on the giggling in the room. ‘All right, ladies and gentlemen, that’s enough. Go on, David. You’re doing a splendid job.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Thrilled with Willwrite’s praise, he continues his letter with a touch more confidence. ‘If you want to write back to me, I’m in Mr Willwrite’s class. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for letting me take up so much of your time. I appreciate it.

Yours truly,

David Lincoln.’

David Lincoln is in a state of shock, astonished that he was able to open up his heart and mind and talk to a character from a book. More astonishing than that, he let each and every one of his classmates in on his private feelings. Young David places his papers inside a paperback book; Willa Cather’s
O Pioneers
no doubt. His next-desk neighbor slaps him affectionately on the back. David is a huge success. He is confounded by his sudden fame. After all, he is a basketball player not a writer.

Willwrite approaches David’s desk. He stands next to the young man. David looks up. With great admiration, Willwrite rests his hand on David’s shoulder. David Lincoln has been
liberated
. In but one memorable moment, he has become more than a basketball player in a hick prairie town.