A Mother's Love (23 page)

“It's none of my business,” she said.

“Well, you're making it your business. Tell me. What are you thinking?”

“He didn't touch the baby.”

“Bobby was asleep.”

“I don't care,” she said. “He didn't touch him.” She was putting on her shirtwaist and floral skirt. “Just be careful,” she told me. “See you Monday.” And she was out the door.

O
NCE, a few years after my mother left and we'd moved back to California, my father having taken “the cure” for his gambling and Dottie devoting herself to our care, I thought I saw my mother on Venice Boulevard. She was wearing a blue cotton dress and carrying groceries in a brown paper bag. Her skin was still pale, her black hair short, and her bearing elegant. I had hoped someday to see her disheveled, a crazy woman wandering the streets, drugged and wasted. Instead, she had a matching bag and shoes.

I was on the other side of the street and traffic was heavy, but I called to her. “It's me!” I shouted. “It's Ivy.” She must have heard, because she paused and cocked her head, like a robin listening for a worm. Then she quickened her pace, tossed her groceries into a waiting car, and, before I could cross the street, was gone.

I stood perfectly still, as if the slightest movement would break the spell, and a flood of warm memories washed over me. I saw my mother holding a spoon with an egg, about to dip it into dye. I felt her take my hand as we walked through the Desert Sands trailer park. I saw the lights she strung up at holidays, despite my father's protestations that he was a Jew. I could see her face when my father told her a joke that made her laugh; the way all the harshness fell off and she was smooth and sweet as an almond.

While I stood dreaming, the woman who may have been my mother was gone from view. Maybe it wasn't she. Maybe she hadn't seen me. Or recognized me. But as I stood on Venice Boulevard, something occurred to me that I had not considered before. I'd always thought that in taking Sam and leaving me behind, my mother had made a difficult choice. Something she had struggled with over months, maybe years. But seeing her there, looking so trim and neatly dressed, made me think differently. There was not the look of anguish I'd expected to see on her face. I decided that she had left me with my father not because she thought that was fairer to all of us, but because she hadn't wanted me at all.

It was a long time since I'd given much thought to her. After she left, I used to write letters to her, but then I stopped. I'd written them as if I actually had a place to send them. I'd put her name and
Sam's on the envelope with a stamp, assuming that eventually I'd know where they should go. In the letters I answered all the unanswered questions. I completed all the half-finished thoughts. I said the things I'd been about to say when she would get up, as she always did when I spoke, and wander into another room.

I told her how we were doing. At first I told her the truth. How life was difficult without her. How I was tired of fried chicken and Salisbury steak TV dinners. How the house was a mess. About the hours I kept. About how lonely I was from dusk, when my father went on his shift, until dawn, when he returned.

But then I remembered that my mother never wanted to hear anything bad. If I told her that So-and-So's parents were getting divorced or somebody was sick, she'd say, “Oh, Ivy, you always tell me such sad things. Say something happy. Make me laugh.”

So I began to make up things. “Dear Mom,” I wrote, “guess what? We're moving from the trailer into a three-bedroom house, a room for each of us, a house with a real lawn. Dad's been working regular hours and putting money away. No more crazy late-night shifts. I'm doing great in school. Mostly A's and B's.”

Lies, all of it lies. I spent hours alone, confronting the dilemma of what I'd do when at last she wrote to me. Which letters I would send—the
truth or the lies. In the end I wasn't quite sure what was the truth and what were the lies. They all became blurred into one reality, and by the time I realized I wouldn't be hearing from her and that I'd agonized for nothing over which letters to send, I wasn't sure what had happened and what hadn't. I still wrote the letters, wondering which ones I'd send. Which would make her want to rush home more.

But after that sighting on Venice Boulevard, I took all the letters, which I'd kept in a bottom drawer, and tossed them away. It didn't matter which ones I sent. It didn't matter anymore.

M
ARA SAT in the middle of her bed in a flannel gown, a cup of hot cocoa in her lap. I also wore a flannel gown (hers) and had a cup of cocoa. She had put Bobby in Jason's crib, and Jason was sleeping with Alana in her little bed. I had called that afternoon to say I wanted to see her and talk and she had suggested a sleep-over. “I could use the company,” she said.

We sipped our cocoa and I said, “Matthew came by again. I'm confused. He wants to see us and I suppose I want to see him. But I'm afraid.”

“That he'll hurt you again?”

I shook my head. “It's not so much for me. I'm afraid for Bobby. I don't want to make a mistake for him.”

She nodded. Her hair was pulled back. “I can understand that. Jason asks for his father all the time. He's very angry at me. I can't imagine what it will be like in a few years.”

“I don't want Bobby to be hurt …” I hesitated. “Not the way I've been.” Mara looked at me strangely. “There's something I need to tell you,” I said. “Something I haven't told you or anyone for a long time.” I smiled at her. “I hope you'll still be my friend.”

Mara sucked in her lips, leaning back against the pillows. “I'll probably still be your friend.” She patted my hand.

“I didn't tell you the truth when we first met. I didn't tell you the truth about my family.”

“Yes,” she said. “I didn't think you had.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Too many loose threads. Things didn't make sense.”

“I suppose I lied. I'm sorry about that, but it's just such a complicated story and I don't tell it to very many people.” I sighed, afraid to begin. Mara looked at me, not saying a word. “I have a sister,” I said at last. “Or at least I had one. My mother—my real mother, not Dottie—took her away when I was seven years old and I never saw either of them again.” Mara didn't even blink, so I went on. I listened to myself speak as if I were telling a story. “My father raised me and my stepmother Dottie has been like a mother to me and most people think she is my mother, so usually I don't discuss it. I never wanted to have a child, but you see, when I got pregnant with Bobby, I couldn't do
anything about it. I had to have the baby. I can't even explain why.”

“You don't have to,” Mara said. “I think I understand.”

“I'm worried that I'm like her. Like my mother, that is. You never see me when I'm alone with Bobby. You don't know what I'm like when I'm impatient and can't take it anymore.”

“We all have our moments.” Now she sat up, putting the cocoa down. “I just think … I really think that you're a mother. Your instincts are there.”

“I don't know. I can't explain it. I'm not so sure.”

“You don't have to be sure. Maybe it's better if you aren't. Tell me about your mother and sister.”

So I curled up beside her, and while I talked about driving home from the track with confetti in my hair and teetering at the lip of a meteorite crater, about the desert after a storm and the neon-illumined avenues of Vegas at night, Mara ran her fingers through my hair. Then I slept as soundly as I had in years.

T
HE NEXT DAY we went to the zoo. Mara's children raced around the sea lion pool while Mara and I stood watching the sea lions rise and fall. “They're beautiful, aren't they,” Mara said, pointing to a leaping pup. I envied them their smooth, underwater glide. They looked so free, even though they weren't. Alana came over and asked if she could take Bobby up to the glass. “Hold him tightly,” Mara said as Alana lifted him from the stroller.

The children went off to the side where the seals were climbing onto the rocks, Alana holding Bobby under the arms. “It gets easier as they get older,” Mara said.

I breathed a deep sigh. “I hope so.” A horde of school children arrived, shouting as a large male seal scampered high on the rocks, barking. For an instant our children were out of view. Then I
heard the scream that I recognized as my son's. It was a cry I'd never before heard from him and I raced to the edge of the pool. “I don't know what happened,” Alana said, speaking very quickly. “I mean, somebody bumped me and he slipped so I caught him and he just started to scream like that.” Alana was sobbing as I scooped Bobby up. He shrieked again, his right arm limp as I held him.

“Oh, God, I'm so sorry,” Mara said. “Alana, what happened? What did you do?”

“Mara, she didn't do anything. Maybe his arm twisted a little when he slipped. It wasn't your fault, dear.” I turned to Alana, who had tears streaming down her cheeks. Jason too had begun to wail. “You guys wait here. I'll take him to first aid.”

I went to a building on the side where two men sat at the barren table of the first-aid station. They were both big and burly. One was smoking a cigarette, which he put out quickly. “I don't know what's wrong with him,” I said to them. They stared at me because now Bobby was utterly silent, stoical. “Something happened to his arm. He fell down and someone picked him up and he's been screaming, holding his arm behind his back.”

One man told me in a thick Hispanic accent to sit with the baby on my lap, which I did, as he moved the arm gently. Bobby leaned into my chest, but not a sound came out of him. “Lady, if
there were something wrong with his arm, he'd be screaming his head off now, and he's not. He's probably fine.”

“You think he's fine.”

“I think so,” the man said. The other nodded.

I left the first-aid station with Bobby trembling in my arms. “What is it, sweetheart? Are you really all right?” Why didn't he cry when the man moved his arm? What was wrong with him?

But, though he didn't want his arm touched, he seemed better. He laughed when Alana made a fun face; he waved bye-bye to the sea lions with his good arm. We went downtown to a restaurant for lunch and Bobby slept in his stroller, but the arm still looked twisted. “Are you sure it's all right?” Mara asked, her voice concerned.

“No, I'm not sure at all.”

Mara had to leave after lunch because Dave was coming to see the children, and she didn't like to be late. If she was late bringing the children, he could be late with the support payments. She touched my hand. “Do you want to go home with us?”

“No, I'm going to take a walk. I'll go to a few galleries.”

“You'll be all right? Will you be able to get home okay?”

“I'll be fine,” I said. They left and I sat, thinking about which galleries I would visit, when suddenly Bobby woke up, screaming. I quickly asked the
waiter where the nearest hospital was, and he helped me get a taxi. I raced there.

The emergency room had a long line of people waiting to be admitted. It also had a roomful of patients waiting to be seen. There were about seventy-five people ahead of me in various states of deterioration, which appeared to result from drugs, alcohol, assorted forms of substance abuse, aids, homelessness, minor accidents (several had bleeding heads; it looked as if they had walked into walls). They all sat in rows of folding chairs, staring at a giant screen, watching a quiz show.

I went to look for a telephone. I called my pediatrician but he was away. The doctor covering for him, whose name sounded like Dr. Maggot, told me to go to the emergency room at New York Hospital and have an intern there report to him. I couldn't believe the wait there would be any shorter. Then I called Matthew. To my great relief he answered the phone. “Thank God you're home,” I blurted. “Something's wrong with Bobby. I need your help. I can't do this alone.” I told him which hospital I was calling from.

“What's wrong with him?”

“It's his arm. What does it matter what's wrong with him? I'm at an emergency room and I need help. There are dozens of people in line here.”

“I could come, Ivy, but not right away. In an hour or so. Tell me, how's he doing?”

“Is it something that can't wait?”

“I'm in the middle of a shoot …”

“I think your son has a broken arm and there's a line around the block that I have to stand in and somebody has to help me.”

“Look, I'll come as soon as I can, okay?”

Of course it made sense to me that he was in the middle of a shoot and he couldn't reschedule it. His voice sounded concerned. I couldn't expect him to drop everything. But I knew that if he were really Bobby's father, he would drop everything. He would just do it. “Don't bother,” I said. “We'll be fine.” And I slammed down the receiver.

I stood very still, knowing something irrevocable had occurred. Friends had told me this would happen, but I hadn't believed it. I would never again call Matthew. I would never solicit his help or try to win him over. But not for me. For the child. I had heard about mothers who lift cars off their children, who stand in the line of fire. And now it came to me, the story Patricia told me that had become a riddle, the one I couldn't solve. The one about the mother whose car stalls on the railroad track, her children inside the car. She tries to wave down the locomotive, to get it to stop, and instead the locomotive crashes into her car. What is wrong with this picture? And now I know. You fling the children from the car. Even at risk to yourself, even as the locomotive barrels down on you, you grab what children you can and hurl them clear.