Part II: Journeys (Chapter 8)
Journeys
Off the Ohio Turnpike, Exit 7 onto US 250–Sandusky
The day Mother
died, liver was puffy and
engorged with disease, her skin yellow and waxy, her gut aching – despite the
alcohol in her bloodstream.
Her mind numbed, her love for
me – for anyone, actually – all withered from years of alcohol haze, years of
reckless living.
What was it like to die all
alone while my younger brothers watched Wile E. Coyote on TV and Johnny
Lawrence sold used Buicks in Canoga Park?
What did she think as she
closed her eyes for the last time?
Fear?
No. Relief.
Yes, that had to be it.
I remember that day years ago
when she died.
Fifteen years.
Almost a generation away.
My mother-in-law Sarah – Doug’s
mother, that is – called me long distance. I was separated from Doug for the
first time, only no one in Sioux City knew I’d left Doug, and I’d asked his
family not to tell.
Why I was being so secretive, I
don’t know, except that I never told my own family anything important until I
absolutely had to, and my relationship with Doug hadn’t quite reached that
point yet.
But it would, and, yes, the
shit did fly all the way from Iowa.
Anyway, Sarah called me up and
said, “Samantha? I have some bad news for you.”
Stop.
My first thought was that
Nicole had been hurt or even killed, but Sarah was far too calm for such
catastrophic news. “Well?”
“Your mother died last night.”
“Oh.”
Had she said the soup boiled
over on the stove, I might have gotten more worked up.
“Samantha? You hear me?”
“My mother’s dead.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, Sarah. Thanks.” And I
pushed the button on the phone, held it, and stared at the mouthpiece. I
released the button. My mother’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead....
Deeeeaaaadddddddddddddddd~~~~~~~~~~-------
Nana had phoned Doug’s, Nicole answering.
Her daddy had already left for work, she home alone –
I told you I was a lousy
mother.
– And when Nana asked Nik where
I was so early in the morning, she lied, saying I was out grocery shopping.
I’m sure Nana sniffed out the
lie immediately, knowing damn well I would never
crawl out of bed at 6:00 a.m. to run for groceries, but she’s never said
anything.
She simply told Nikki straight
out that Grandma Lawrence was dead. This didn’t mean a whole lot to Nikki;
she’d never seen my mother, so she took the message and called Sarah, who
called me.
Yes, a rotten mother.
What a miserable web.
Aunt Sal didn’t speak to me for
a year after I refused to fly out to California for the funeral, only I didn’t
even know she was mad because Sal never wrote to me anyway, so there she was,
all pissed off, venting all this anger to Nana, and I’m totally in the dark.
What a waste.
Not going to the funeral was
one of the easiest decisions of my life. Sounds cold, doesn’t it? It’s not that
I didn’t love her in my own way, it’s just that –
Well. Mother chose a lousy time
to die: finals’ week. I was in my second year of graduate school, probably my
toughest year, and I had to do well in my final exams.
How could I possibly ask my
professors for a break? It would have been a sham, just another excuse in a
long line of excuses that students give their professors.
But that’s beside the point. If
I wanted to go, I would have gone. Period.
The thing is, Mother died, her
daughter refused to go to the funeral, Mother was cremated (which about killed
Nana), Sal spent a year fuming, Johnny spread Mother’s ashes over Canoga Park,
my half brothers were raised by their father and then a few years later, when
he died of a broken spirit, by a kind neighbor lady.
I have not seen the boys since
they were small – no desire now.
And what I remember most about
my mother are five simple words, indelibly tattooed on my brain:
You don’t love me anymore.
In retrospect, I’m not at all
surprised Mother died at an early age. Maybe self-destruction was encoded on
her genes. Or maybe life just got too difficult when so many of her hard-living
friends started croaking.
Especially Monique.
Monique’s death really screwed her over.