She Ain't Heavy, She's My Mother (13 page)

The first year’s offering was modest in comparison to what the pageant became or could become in my loftiest of dreams. There were decorated wagons, convertible cars, and borrowed grocery carts. My buddy Chucky drove his go-cart with American flags flying; my friend Lee Adler dressed as an American eagle; Jay wore an Uncle Sam mask and didn’t have an asthma attack. Of course I was the fife player of the iconic fife-and-drum corps, along with my cousin Kevin and school friend Dene carrying the flag and playing the drum.

The next year was even bigger and better. For Christmas I had asked for floats, which I am sure slightly startled my father; however, he did have five low-to-the-ground, rope-pulled, sturdy plywood-and-two-by-four structures built for me. (This holiday request was only to be surpassed a few years later when my love of antique furniture blossomed, and I asked for an eighteenth-century Chippendale secretary.) The theme was Great Americans, and I was to be George Washington. I researched eighteenth-century costume and drew an exact replica of General Washington’s Revolutionary uniform as he crossed the Delaware. However, Mom and Moozie thought that the pink satin Spring Fiesta costume would suffice, just add a white periwig, and voilà! I was a bit frustrated as a few years had passed since that fateful spring night, and the pants were tight and short, so Miss Inez cut them below the knee and
created more period-appropriate knickers. White knee socks were added, along with brass buckles on my shoes. All in all, it was all right, but I seriously doubt that General Washington ever wore a pale pink satin ensemble with a rose velvet cape, but I’m sure his Martha didn’t sport a mod floral maxi-dress either.

When I formally presented the list of prospective Great Americans to grace the floats, Dad had some specific ideas. He thought it could be great to have categories like Great Inventors, so that float could have Henry Ford, Thomas Alva Edison, and Benjamin Franklin. A float dedicated to Great American Sportsmen could host Saints quarterback Archie Manning, Jim Thorpe, and more. This idea was a gold mine, and I was eager to start modifying my float sketches and casting the great Americans. I wasn’t too pleased that Dad had pretty much insisted we have President and Pat Nixon represented on the presidents’ float. However, in my float design the antiwar peace symbol was most prevalent. The family got roped into the act as well. Aunt Marilyn and Aunt Norma designed hundreds of red, white, and blue star-spangled decorations and helped hammer together several floats. In the an un-air-conditioned warehouse on the back lot of Pontchartrain Beach, Moozie and Mom covered the floats with red, white, and blue bunting, plastic fringe, and crepe paper. The parade was a big hit with the neighborhood, and beyond. The local ABC affiliate interviewed me for the nightly news, and I was awarded the key to the city.

All year I had been planning how to make this year’s parade, our third, even better. My school notebooks were
filled with float and costume designs celebrating this year’s theme: Great Moments in American History. The floats would be grander than ever before, with stirring titles such as “The Pilgrims Land on Plymouth Rock,” “The Signing of the Declaration of Independence,” “The Civil War,” and “Man Walks on Moon!” I was even trying to figure out ways to have automation so that the papier-mâchè figures would move like in the big Mardi Gras parades. I would often ask the manager at the Piggly Wiggly or the Winn-Dixie grocery stores if I could have the battery-operated mechanism that was used in several moving advertising displays. If only I had known about hot glue, my life would have taken a completely different path.

My goals were high, and my dreams for the parade even higher. I knew my destiny and it all had to do with spectacle. But now, with one flick of my wrist, my parade, my glory, was history.

I was sent to sleep-away camp, and at first I loved the idea. We shopped for supplies and packed everything in a big trunk like I’d seen in the movies. Mine of course had to be decorated with bumper stickers and my special touch, my name spelled out in hand-painted bubble letters. While most of my friends went to camps on the Gulf Coast or even as far as North Carolina, my parents saw fit to ship this innocent to Camp Chippewa in Bemidji, Minnesota. Yes, Minnesota. I had heard of the state of many lakes before, but had never realized how far away it actually was. Later I wondered,
Just how far away did they need me?
Granted, I was a bit much at this age, a whirling
dervish, a Tasmanian Devil of sorts, but Minnesota? The first night at camp, a terrifying feeling came over me and did not leave until Mom came to retrieve me on the very last day. At rustic Camp Chippewa I suffered the worst case of homesickness in sleep-away-camp history, constantly begging to talk to my parents and to go home. Instead of acquiescing, Mom thought it best for me to stick it out and encouraged me to participate in all of the camp activities. Giving up or giving in was not an option.

Sadly, I was still pathetic at sports. I tried to play basketball in seventh and eighth grades, but was embarrassingly horrific. I redefined the term “scrub,” and would only get to play in a game if our team was winning like crazy or losing by an unbeatable amount. I would pray not to be put in the game, and still would rather watch the cheerleaders. There was one lad worse than me on the team, and he actually shot at the wrong goal and made two points for the opposition. He is now a gynecologist. So my only solace at camp was to sail. I learned to master the Sunfish sailboat quite easily, and taking that small slip of a boat out on Cass Lake filled me with a sense of freedom and accomplishment that I had never felt before. After a while I did open up, made a few friends, and enjoyed the experience a tiny bit more—canoe trips and sleeping in tents under the starry northern skies was so new—but I desperately longed for home, for my friends and my parade. To my surprise, my cabin mates thought I was funny. They laughed at my Carol Burnett imitations and acerbic commentary, but when I picked flowers and arranged them in a canteen on the cabin table for Sunday
inspection, which won us a trip to the ice cream parlor, I became an official smartass.

Jay was also sent away that summer, to Menlo Park, California, for summer school. Our small unit had been strewn to the far corners of the map, Family Deconstruction 101. It was the first time we had ever really been separated, and when we returned home things were different; we didn’t fight as much, but other storms were stirring.

B
ACK AT HOME,
my father’s drinking had reached its pinnacle and, as predicted, he suffered a massive heart attack. The physicians at Oschner Hospital noted that they had never seen such an enlarged heart. That’s my family. If we are going to do it, it’s going to be big.

My brother and I were pretty spoiled. Mom would later quip in her defense, “I may have spoiled you boys rotten, but you better never act like it.” Confronted with her husband’s bleak diagnosis, Mom realized that her children had lived a sheltered and privileged life with no chores or responsibilities.
What if John dies?
she thought.
What will we do?
She decided that Jay and I would now pull our weight, and although there was now a staff of two, Oralea and Howard (who did the heavier labor), from now on we would make our own beds every morning, and hers and Dad’s on the weekends, set the table, clear the table, alternate doing the dishes, and weed the garden (most everyone we knew was still a bit apprehensive about allowing me to operate potentially limb-severing machinery). But the killer was that because of our lack of aiming
skills, my brother and I would alternate weekends cleaning the toilets.

Such a big change, I thought—back from summer camp and descending from Little Lord Fauntleroy to Oliver Twist within weeks. But it was one of the wisest decisions she ever made. Many other changes were forthcoming. Dad had to take daily naps and eat healthy, salt-free meals and fresh vegetables. Quiet was enforced and a new menu was set, and there was little or no deviation from it. At first it was quite an adjustment, but she did not back down; a decision had been made unlike any before, and there would be no dissension. Dad would awaken bright and early with us now, no longer hungover in bed as we left for school. In fact he took to making us elaborate breakfasts, big stuffed omelettes and sectioned navel oranges, daily. Jay and I would get our fix of our favorite foods like traditional New Orleans red beans and rice, po’boys, and anything fried from the Newman cafeteria, but not at home. During his recovery, Dad spent days upon days designing a house he would build on the plot of land on Pratt Drive. Mom sat us both down and, with a combination of stoic strength and compassion, told us the truth about our father’s diagnosis.

“Boys—no, you are not boys anymore, although you’ll always be my sweet boys, you are young men.” She took a deep breath and looked upward as she inhaled, lifting her head higher as if gathering strength from above. “Your father is very ill, and we have to do everything in our power to make this home a quiet and calm place for him to heal. You now have your chores and
responsibilities. I am so serious about this. There will be no more fighting between you. If you two have a problem, you know to talk it out. I will not make idle threats. If you can’t abide by these wishes, then we will have to look at boarding schools. I have all the faith in the world in you young gentlemen, and I know you will make your father and me very proud.”

Mom continued to work on herself as well, embracing openness, self-discovery, and self-modification like a house afire. Her bedside table, desk, and kitchen table were covered with more and more self-help paperbacks and meditation tapes, as well as books from Al-Anon. No one wanted to believe my father was an alcoholic, especially us, but Mother never was one for denial or pretense. The cold, hard truth was that my father was killing himself with drink, and although powerless over this insidious disease, she was not allowing it to take her husband or her family or herself down without a fight. Through Al-Anon meetings she learned about the nature of this illness and imparted that knowledge to us boys. No matter what the drinker said, none of it was our fault. People drink because they drink. We cannot change others, only ourselves.

W
ITHIN A YEAR
Dad was better and somewhat sober, but he never would be considered healthy again, while Mom was radiant and thriving as never before. Taking better care of herself than she had in years, she glowed
with health and had reduced to a size eight, almost the same as when she wed. Within just a few short years she had completely reinvented herself, or, better yet, found herself, the true Gayle Batt, and there would be no turning back now. She blossomed in many other ways, too, taking on chairmanships and board positions with many arts and charitable organizations. She was becoming her own woman, her own creation. Still elegant, soft, and feminine, she was at the same time strong, determined, and courageous.

That same stripe of strength, determination, and courage would serve me well in high school and beyond. By freshman year, I tried to conform and be a typical Uptown New Orleans teen in my manner of preppy dress and my aloofish air, because after some teasing and name-calling I realized that the “artistic” kids were not accepted that well and were not hanging out with the cool kids. The desire to be popular and accepted by the cool kids outweighed my theatrical inclinations. I asked my cool friend and new neighbor Bjorn what I could do to be more cool. He said that sometimes I walked funny, and got too excited about uncool stuff. So I practiced walking in a more manly way, resisted performing the cheers along with the cheerleaders at all sports events, and, worst of all, I did not audition for any school plays or musicals. However, such rivers run very deep and could not be suppressed.

The touring company of the Broadway mega-hit
A Chorus Line
was coming to the Theater for the Performing Arts, and as Mom was always trying to get us to the
theatre or the opera or the symphony or the ballet, I agreed enthusiastically to attend. After seeing that performance, three words then described my life:
never the same
. It was a revelation, and although I was very uncomfortable with some of the gay characters, as I still was very confused and extremely closed about my own tendencies, the entire evening was magic. It was a special magic that has stayed with me through the years, which I feel still today when I see or, better yet, am in a great show. It would not be until my junior year when Kitty Greenberg, Newman’s head drama teacher and director, cornered me in the hall and pointedly and hypnotically said, “You, Bryan Batt, when are you going to audition for my play? You know you want to. I saw your Rudolph. You can’t hide forever, mister, come to the cabaret!” After that I was a goner—but back to freshman year:

That same week I had somehow managed to pass the Louisiana driver’s test. I was so proud to receive my driver’s license, though it was not a monumental feat, given the horrific drivers we endure in the Big Easy, because it meant that now I could chauffeur Mom to glamorous events. Because of Dad’s ill health, his social activity was restricted. Also, he loathed wearing a tuxedo or, even worse, tails, so the opera and carnival balls were fortunately scratched from his dance card. While Mom would get ready, dressing to the nines in gowns that I had hand-selected (like an elegant champagne Calvin Klein draped charmeuse silk), or that she found which had my stamp of approval, Dad would sit in his huge leather reclining wing chair in the handmade nightshirts Mom-ee made and watch the tube,
including reruns of the original
Bob Newhart Show
, while eating an ice cream parfait, which eased the recovering drinker’s craving for sugar.

On those evening trips with Mom, we would sing along to the eight-track tape of
A Chorus Line
over and over again in her big chocolate brown Cadillac. And even when we reached the song “Dance ten, looks three,” we sang even louder, laughing at the lyrics “tits and ass.” Eight-track tapes used to sometimes click over to the next track mid-song, and it always bothered me that it did so at the climax of Morales’ “Nothing.” In the song, Morales was in an acting class taught by Mr. Carp, a limited teacher. She was singing of how she was told to act like an ice cream cone and she tried to melt—when she had the realization that the class was nothing, and the teacher was nothing. Click.