Pieces of My Mother (14 page)

Last night my father crept into my room and told me he was going to die. I didn't believe him. It's hard these days to know what is true. But I am wiser now about the comings and goings of people from our big yellow house, since I started seventh grade. I have my own AM-FM alarm clock radio. My clock radio has bright red neon numbers that you can see in the dark, a turn dial for both AM and FM radio, and an eleven-minute snooze button. It stays next to my bed and helps me keep track of everyone. Last night when my dad came in and sat on the end of my bed, it was exactly 2:14.

I heard his truck coming down the gravel road first, and then saw the quick flash of headlights through my bedroom window. My dad's truck bumps the loudest over the potholes and always pulls up to the same spot underneath the bay laurel tree. The engine lulls for a moment, then lets out a series of sputters like the coughing sounds my brother makes when he wants to stay home from school. Even from the way the heavy door slams shut, I know it is my dad's white Ford truck.

I looked over at my clock radio, saw the lined binder paper lying on top of it, and remembered that it was a Rabbit-Rabbit night. Before falling asleep, I made a sign with big red-ink letters to remind myself to say the words “Rabbit-Rabbit” before I say anything else when I wake up. If I say “Rabbit-Rabbit” as soon as I wake up in the morning on the first day of the new month, I will have good luck all month.

I forgot to say “Rabbit-Rabbit” the last two months, and that's when the raccoons got back into the barn and killed two more chickens, and Tracy Dunn shoved me into the oleander bushes for no reason at all. Now my mom's canceled her trip to come visit us, and I am sure it had something to do with my forgetting two months in a row.

As I listen to my dad's footsteps coming up the stairs, it's clear that I need to stick to the Rabbit-Rabbit plan, that I really need to go back to sleep—that I need some good luck.

When the hall light clicks on, my dad is standing in my bedroom doorway. A bright yellow halo backlights him.

“Melissa. Wake up,” he says.

I don't say anything. I pretend to be asleep. He comes to my bed and sits down heavily, as if to bounce me awake.

“You have to get up,” he says more urgently.

I peek at the red numbers of my clock radio. Two fourteen.

His voice is muffled and he says, “You've got to help me.”

I open one eye: he is holding a white rag over his mouth and nose. For a moment, I think that he is crying.

“What are you doing, Dad?” I finally say.

“I'm going to die,” he says.

It's quiet for a minute, with the exception of our dog, Amy, lapping water out of the toilet bowl in the bathroom.

“I'm going to die if it happens again,” he says.

“If what happens?” I say.

He starts telling me the whole story.

“I was driving home and it started. I couldn't stop it. I sneezed and sneezed, and I counted the sneezes. I sneezed
eight
times in row. Do you know what happens to you if you sneeze nine times in a row?
You
die
.”

He gestures to his white rag. “I'm trying to hold it in.”

“Dad, I have never heard that.”

“Everybody knows this,” he says.

“Is it some sort of Irish thing?” I ask.

“It's not Irish. It's just a
thing
everybody knows. If you sneeze nine times in a row, you will die. If I die, I need you to be the one to tell people what happened.”

I look at my dad with his shoulders hunched and that white rag pushed into his face, and I try to make sense of everything he is saying. But I am too smart to fall for this. The time on my clock radio confirms it. I know the Bit-a-Honey downtown stays open until two in the morning. I even know what he orders when he's out—Myers's rum with Coke and a slice of lime. If I were with him, he would order me a Shirley Temple with two cherries.

“Go to bed, Dad. It's a school night and you've been drinking rum,” I tell him.

He doesn't move from the end of my bed. He sits there like he didn't even hear me.

Then he raises his voice at me. “How dare you! I'm going to die and you don't even care. You're going to be sorry!”

I lie very still as he says these things. He needs comfort or sympathy or something from me. I am not going to give it to him.

He stands. “I can't believe you, of all people…” He exits my room, his white rag held desperately to his face.

I listen carefully as he moves around the house. In the kitchen he tells our dog, Amy, his story. But mostly he tells her about me, about how I don't care enough about him to even get up and be with him in his last moments. He tells her that “of all people,” I should be the one to understand.

My thoughts jump around like firecrackers exploding on the pavement. It occurs to me that I may be wrong. Is it possible that if you sneeze nine times in a row you can die? I have never sneezed more than three times in a row. Why did he have the rag? Should I be doing something to help him? And how much later could the ninth sneeze come?

I force my eyes closed, but my mind stays awake. I try counting sheep and goats, but it doesn't work. I wonder if I should get up and check on my dad.

• • •

I wake first thing in the morning with a sick feeling, like I've eaten something bad. I don't even look at my clock radio because I'm thinking about what happened last night. I am the one who is supposed to wake up my dad on school mornings, but I am afraid. The house is still quiet. And it's cold. So cold that I pull on my red parka over my clothes. I walk with my arms tightly wrapped around myself and stand at the foot of the attic stairs.

“Dad! Time to get up!” I yell.

“Dad! Dad! Dad?” I yell three more times.

He usually says, “Okay.”

I have a feeling now that something is very wrong. I panic and begin to climb the staircase to his room, passing the strange painting of dark-skinned natives pushing a boat out from a riverbank. “Boris,” the head of the wild boar my dad shot and had stuffed, juts out of the wall at the top of the stairs. As my toes touch the top stair, I notice for the first time just how many antique tools, blades, and implements are hanging on the wall. I keep my eyes focused on the wall of gadgets and say, “Dad. It's time to get up.”

When he doesn't answer, I turn and see his body piled up with striped wool blankets.
He
told
me
I
would
be
sorry…He told me he might die.

Nothing makes sense. I glance down, afraid to take in the stillness of his body. There on his bedside table are scattered coins, gum wrappers, Excedrin tablets, and an antique bottle embossed with the words “The Waters of Life.”

“DAD!” I yell as loud as I can.

His body stirs ever so slightly. He lifts a blanket from his face and squints at me with bloodshot eyes.

“
Don't ever do that again!
” I yell. But my voice is shaking. My whole body is shaking. I have never yelled at him before.

He smiles at me. It is a cheery leprechaun smile.

“It's not funny, Dad!”

“It's too early to get up,” he mumbles and pulls the wool blanket over his head.

How could he do that to me? I want him to understand how confusing it is to live in this house sometimes. I am so mad at him, but I can't think of the right words so I stand for a minute thinking of what else to say. Something gathers in my throat and I am about to say it but I can't.

I turn away.

I leave him there in his messed-up bed, and as I walk down the stairs, I remember something truly terrible.

I didn't say, “Rabbit-Rabbit.” The one thing I wanted to do right.

I kick my math book across the linoleum floor.

I don't care. It's a stupid thing anyway. Like saying “Rabbit-Rabbit” is going to change anything in our yellow house. It's not going to change how much my dad drinks at the Bit-a-Honey or stop the raccoons from killing our chickens late at night or make my brothers any nicer to me. And it's certainly not going to make our mom get on a plane and visit us.

I set my winning lottery ticket on her bedside table. What's so lucky about winning two dollars in the lottery when I'm going to lose my mom forever?

She asks for a sip of water, and this time I know how to hold the straw for her. I tear open the roll of butter rum Life Savers and offer her one.

“I brought you a Life Saver, Mom.” I quickly realize it's a pretty stupid gesture because she can't eat.

“Mmm, what flavor is it?” she asks. Her eyes are closing.

“Butter rum.”

“Yee-uck,” she says.

I thought she liked butter rum. But it's me who likes butter rum. Two strikes. A losing lottery ticket and a flavor she hates.

I want to say something meaningful to her while she's still awake. I'm reaching for something profound or bigger than both of us, but I can't form the words. Everything feels too late to say. If I had an ounce of courage, I would reach out and rest my hand on her warm forehead. But I'm a water skeeter darting and skimming the surface of a lake I am afraid to swim in. Facing her and her imminent death is the collision of the past, the present, and the future all at once. What can I say to her that's at least familiar? I glance at the lottery ticket, and of all things, a pony gallops into my mind.

“Mom, remember when we drove Jackson across country from Vermont to California?”

She opens one eye and looks around the room. “Jackson? Who's Jackson?”

How could she forget about Jackson? The horse she once put all her faith in.

Strike three.

“I'm having second thoughts about having bought that pony,” says my mom.

“Yeah. He hates being in the trailer,” I say.

“It's the gasoline too. Costing me a goddamn fortune pulling a trailer.”

Jamie, me, my mom, and the pony have been on the road for five days, traveling across country in my mom's red Datsun. She bought the pony for three hundred dollars and plans to train him and then sell him for a high price. She offered to take us on her trip from Vermont to California before school starts so that we could have some extra time to visit with her. I'll be starting junior high in eight days. She says she will drop us off in California and then head home to Washington with the pony. This trip means I get to spend a whole extra week with my mom.

My dad was hesitant about the road trip, but I begged him to say yes and reminded him that we could always call from pay phones along the way. Eden had no interest in road traveling and got an invitation to stay at his friend's house for the week.

The pony named Jackson in the trailer behind us has been nothing but trouble since we left. He refuses to get back into the trailer when we let him out to stretch his legs, and it can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to lure him back in. We had to tether him to a tree for the night in Nebraska when we heard on the radio that a tornado was ripping through the plains. We'd huddled in the Datsun, with the rain threatening to pierce the metal roof, and watched Jackson through the blur of the downpour. He stayed perfectly still with his hind end to the wind and his head bent down low, as the lightning lit up the whole field around him. My mom decided then and there that he probably had some wild Mustang in him.

“He's got character and potential,” says my mom. “That's why I bought him. If I can get him trained, he could be a champion show pony someday and worth a hell of a lot of money.”

This is the first horse my mom has ever owned.

“Maybe you can be the one to show him someday,” my mom says to me.

My whole body turns into a field of goose bumps. I'd love nothing more. I'm getting to be a really strong rider, and my mom tells me that I have good hands and a natural seat. She should know: she grew up riding at the prestigious Ox Ridge Hunt Club in Darien, Connecticut. We share this deep love of horses and riding.

“Madison Square Garden, here we come!” she hollers out the window.

Right now though, we're just trying to get to California as fast as possible so we won't have to get Jackson in and out of the trailer again. My mom had me crawl in the trailer at the last stop to check his legs and make sure there was no heat or swelling from standing in the trailer too long.

On this trip, I have seen more cornfields, cars, and cows than I ever could have imagined. I sit in the front seat and Jamie mostly sleeps stretched out in the back. Like Jackson, he's not a very good traveler. He said to wake him up when we get to California. Not me; I'd rather stay awake the whole way and see as much as I can.

Late at night is the best time to drive. There's a hum to the road, a music-like sound that comes from the tires moving fast along the pavement. We pass trucks as big as whales and trailers full of cows and pigs and chickens and corn. On the opposite side of the highway, I track the headlights in the distance as they zoom toward us like bright comets and then disappear. And then there are the bumps in the road that remind us to stay awake and drive another hundred miles.

My mom tells me, “Go to sleep, darling.”

“But you need me to keep you awake,” I remind her.

“Nah, I've got pills for that. Just try to close your eyes.”

But I want to stay awake forever. The August night is full of winking stars, and I love the hum and roll of the road all night long. I want to sit next to her until the sky turns lavender.

“Crawl in back and get some sleep,” my mom says, sounding tired and edgy.

I can tell she wants to be alone in the night. I think she likes the dark quiet as much as I do. We are from the same family of barn owls, I suppose. I lift my knees and curl my toes against the warm dashboard.

“I'm just not tired, Mom.”

Maybe it's because I've got her all to myself and there's nowhere to go except straight ahead. The white stripes and yellow dashes on the pavement could take us to so many places together.

“I always wanted to be a truck driver,” she tells me.

“Yeah, me too,” I say.

She turns and looks at me like she doesn't believe me.

“I think I'd like the life,” she says as she cracks her window open to let the smoke from her cigarette trail outside. “I'd even like to write a book on all the best trucker diners to stop at,” she says.

It's true; she is very particular about where we stop. If she sees a lot of big hauling trucks parked outside a diner, we pull over. We sit at the counter along with all the truckers. My mom tells me that real truckers can be the most fascinating people. She smiles and stirs her coffee in circles when she talks to them and then always asks them the same question: “Where you headed?” She waits for them to ask her the same question in return but sometimes they don't.

Back in Iowa, while Jamie and I were spinning around on the counter seats, the long-haired trucker next to us told my mom that he'd like to take her all the way across the country sitting on his lap. She sat up especially tall, threw her head back, and laughed. When we returned to the car, she was all giddy. She rolled down the windows and cranked up the radio.

Tonight, we pass a bright pink neon sign along the roadside. “MOTEL, MOTEL,” it blinks. My eyes itch when I look at it. I'd like to stay in that motel with the flashing sign. But we're not staying in motels on this trip; we're sleeping in the Datsun. My dad thinks we're staying overnight in motels, but he doesn't know all the details about traveling with a difficult pony like Jackson. Besides, truck drivers don't stay in motels. My mom says they have wonderful beds right inside their trucks and don't need to stay in a motel or inn, so neither do we. “MOTEL, MOTEL,” stay awake, stay awake—that's the last thing I remember.

• • •

My mom shakes my shoulder back and forth. “Melissa!” she says. It hurts to open my eyes in the brightness. My cheek is pressed hard between the window and the metal door handle. I squint out through the windshield, mad that I fell asleep. I was supposed to stay up all night.

“Look out your window,” she says.

I turn my head. There are hundreds of them. No, thousands. “What are they?”

“Antelope,” she whispers.

I whisper the word “antelope” because I know they might disappear, that I might be dreaming this. There are miles of them. Everything in sight is blue sky, golden grass, and antelope.

“Where are we?”

“Wyoming,” my mom says.

I decide here and now that Wyoming is my favorite place. Even Jamie wakes up to see the antelope fields and says it's almost as good as watching
Wild
Kingdom
on Sunday nights. For miles we watch the herds of grazing antelope.

When the antelope are far behind us, we pull into a diner for my mom's coffee. Behind the counter, mounted on the wall, I see the head of a rabbit with a set of antlers alongside its long ears. The small gold plaque underneath it reads “Wyoming's Famous Jackalope.”

“What the heck?” I say out loud. The man behind the counter asks me if I've ever seen one.

“I saw a lot of antelope on the way here,” I say.

“Yeah, those jackalope are hard to see. You got to watch the fields real careful. They're quick little nippers.”

Wyoming is getting better by the second.

“Gas is goddamn expensive here,” says my mom. She makes a face into her Styrofoam cup. “And the coffee is crap too.”

I take it to mean that this is not a good truck stop.

We don't get breakfast at the diner. Instead, we walk across the street to a grocery store. Jamie hands my mom a big bag of potato chips and a handful of black licorice ropes.

“No,” she says. “We're getting two things here. Bread and orange cheese.”

“That's just stupid,” says Jamie.

“Well, that's all we can afford,” she says.

“I'm going back to the car,” Jamie says, walking away.

Mom grabs him by the T-shirt. “Look, we've got forty-two dollars to get from here to California, and we can't get there without fuel in the tank.
Capiche?
”

I watch my mom from the rearview mirror as she pumps gas into the tank. The Wyoming wind blows her curly hair in all directions. From the backseat Jamie says, “You notice we're not skimping on coffee and cigarettes. God no, not that. I say Mom ought to unhitch this trailer and turn that mule out with the antelope where it belongs.”

“Don't be a jerk. Jackson is not a mule,” I say.

I gaze out the window all day searching for a jackalope. My mom made a good decision about the orange cheese. It is the best cheese I have ever tasted, and I tell her over and over how much I like it. It's creamy and fat and tastes good smashed against the soft, white bread. I tell her it's better than any truck-stop meal.

I close my eyes at the worst time. When I open them, my mom is pulling over to the side of the road. I turn around to check if there's a police car.

“Why are we stopping here?” Jamie asks, popping up from the backseat.

My mom reaches across me and rolls down the window. A tall, scruffy man is standing outside the car. He has on blue jeans, with a tie-dyed bandanna around his head and a knapsack on his back.

“Where you headed?” she yells.

“Grantsville, Utah,” he says, looking into our small car. “Just outside Salt Lake.”

It's not fair. Now she's doing what she said she wasn't going to do.

“I need someone to help with the driving,” she says.

“Yeah, I can do that,” he says.

She avoids my eyes, but I see my mom thinking for a second. That's her judgment second, when she decides if she's going to say, “Sorry, man—we're not going that far,” or, “Hop in.” She promised us that we were not going to pick up hitchhikers on this trip. She told us she only picks up hitchhikers if they live locally. This guy does not look local to me. I glance at Jamie who must have been sleeping too. He would have grabbed the steering wheel if he had seen her trying to pull over to pick some guy up.

“Melissa, hop in the backseat,” she says.

“This is bull,” says Jamie.

The tall man takes my front seat and then adjusts it back to make room for his long legs. He smells like salty soup and chewing tobacco.

While my mom drives, she and the stranger talk. I get the details. His name is Frank, and he's going to Utah to get a job because he's “flat broke.” He says he's been hanging out on the road trying to get a hitch for the last three hours.

“Good thing you came along,” he says, grinning back at me.

Yeah, good for him. He asks her for a cigarette, and together they smoke and talk in the front seat. She tells him about her champion pony back in the trailer.

The next time we pull over, it is late at night and my mom gets into the passenger seat. She wraps a blanket around herself and closes her eyes while she talks. She tells him that she hasn't slept in days, and that she still has two states to go after she drops us off in California.

“Maybe I'll stick around in California with my pony for a little while,” she tells him.

I wonder if that means longer than a week. I pretend to be asleep. Then I open my eyes like a wide-eyed owl and watch the back of Frank's head. I will watch the back of his head until the daylight comes. I watch the shadow of his dark curly beard, the curve of his sharp nose, the outline of his lips, and the white edge of his eye. His hands, covered in a pair of gray socks with holes cut out for the thumbs, rest on top of the steering wheel.

I hate him for being in our car, for being in charge of our car. I'm mad at my mom for lying. This was supposed to be a family trip. I figure at this point he can pretty much take us down any road he wants and I won't know the difference because these roads all look the same. I take notes in my mind of the exit numbers on the green-and-white road signs. I keep myself awake by looking for jackalopes in the dark until we pass a sign that says, “Now leaving Wyoming.” My chances of sighting a jackalope are shot.

I suppose her judgment was all right, because Frank doesn't fall asleep while driving or take us to some strange deserted road to kill us or steal our car. When we pull onto the Grantsville overpass he thanks us for the ride, then asks my mom if she “could spare a little cash.”

“Honey, I don't even have the money to make it to California.” She reaches into her bag and hands him a cigarette.

When Frank asks for that cash loan, Jamie covers his mouth like he's coughing, but he starts laughing so hard into his hand that he can't stop. I don't get it. Then Jamie leans over to me and whispers, “It's the poor asking the poor.” Then he starts laughing even harder. And I laugh too, because his laugh sounds so good to me. It's a sound I haven't heard in a long time.

When Frank steps out of the car, my mom says, “Melissa, hop in the front seat.”

The left blinker click-clicks.

“That's okay, Mom. I think I'll stay in the back.”

I turn around to look at the tan-and-white horse trailer still behind us. I hope that Jackson's legs aren't starting to swell from being in the trailer for too long. I'm tired and I'm sick of the orange cheese. Right now, nothing sounds better than getting to California. And nothing feels better than seeing things from Jamie's point of view in the backseat.

• • •

When we run out of money in Nevada, my mom calls my dad. He has an old college friend meet us down at the Boomtown Reno all-you-can-eat buffet to loan us some cash. My mom says we can “go all out.” Jamie and I fill our plates like pig troughs. Green Jell-O cubes, layers of pink roast beef, scoops of mashed potatoes, tropical fruit salad, chocolate pudding, and gooey spare ribs that hang over the edges of our plates. We eat like we haven't eaten in weeks.