Mom the Poet

My mother was a writer although, as best as I know, she never had a single word published. She possessed the necessary tools—stationery, a computer, lots of time—and often late at night I could hear her tapping away in the kitchen while I couldn’t sleep.

One July, the summer before I was scheduled to start high school, she left home for a week in order to attend a poetry seminar in neighboring Massachusetts. I remember the brochure. “Get Serious About What’s Serious,” it said on the front, right under a picture of fledgling writers being instructed by a bearded “professional.”

My father, a history professor at St. Bridget’s College in Connecticut, was off until September. He supported my mother’s writing much like he had supported all her past endeavors: her painting, her photography, her acting at a local community theatre. He encouraged her to swim at the local Y, to visit her  psychiatrist from time-to-time, to not work outside the home unless she really wanted to.

We were making a cake—two layer vanilla with white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts—the Saturday afternoon she was due back. My father was a pretty good cook, a better than average baker. We had, we figured, two-and-a-half hours to get this thing made and decorated, the kitchen cleaned up and everything put away, before she walked in at her estimated arrival time of four p.m.

I had a relationship with my mother that not all teenage girls have. We enjoyed one another. I was an average student with few close friends, but she never pushed me academically or socially. Every afternoon during the school year, an hour or so before my dad would come home and start dinner, my mother would make herself a Manhattan.   “A Manny,” she called them. She’d pour me a glass of Sprite, or Coke, or ginger ale and we’d sit out on the enclosed porch. Halfway through her drink she would say something like, “Life is a puzzle, Zoe. You put all the pieces together, but the picture still doesn’t make sense.”

I would nod my head, feign understanding, sip my soft drink, and memorize every word.

In bed at night I would picture a perfect life with just the two of us. I would be permitted to eat whatever I liked, go to bed only when I was tired, skip school in order to become “truly” educated. I would miss my father, if not his disciplinary ways, and I would finally get a dog—a collie—something I had always been denied because my dad was allergic.

We decorated the cake with cream cheese frosting and I wrote MOM THE POET in green letters on top. Later that night, as my father planned it, we’d go to Chuck’s Steak House, my mother’s favorite restaurant, home of the best curly fries in recorded civilization.

It was clear from the moment my mom walked into the house that something was wrong. “Hi,” she said, but she stood like a startled stranger close to the door. She’d even left her suitcase in the car.

“Everything okay?” my father asked as he approached.

“No,” she said. “I’m afraid everything is not okay.”

“Go upstairs,” my father told me. “We’ll call you down in a second.”

“It’s all right,” my mother said. “She should hear this.” And then turning her attention to me she said, “I met somebody this past week and I want to be with him.”

A lot goes through the mind of a thirteen-year old in a very short time. This is a joke, I thought. I’m not hearing this right. Maybe she doesn’t mean what I think she means. And finally: Oh, god. Don’t let it be that guy on the front of the brochure.

“I missed you,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Why’d you even bother to come back?” my father eventually asked. He was, I thought, frighteningly calm.

“I wanted to do this face-to-face,” she told him. “And I want Zoe to come with me”

But we’re going to Chuck’s Steak House later, I wanted to say.

“Zoe stays,” my father said.

“I think she’s old enough to decide for herself,” my mother said.

“I want to go with Mom!” I blurted out.

More words were spoken, I’m sure, but my next recollection is standing in my bedroom as my mom stuffed some of my clothing into a floral-print backpack.

“This will work out. I promise,” she said. “This will be good.”

Downstairs it was quiet as midnight.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Vermont.” She zipped the backpack closed and, not knowing the effect her next words would have, said, “We’ll send for the rest of this stuff.”

I froze. I didn’t scream, I didn’t cry, I didn’t make a sound. But I did have a vision. It was as clear as the time I dove into the pile of leaves and disturbed a wasp’s nest. As vivid as getting hit in the eye with a fist-sized rock thrown by my cousin Max.

It would take place days from now, a week maybe, and my father would be standing in this very room, this very spot, carefully folding my clothes and arranging them in cardboard boxes he’d gotten from the liquor store. He’s wrap them in heavy brown paper, address them with a black marker, drive them to the post office, and insure every ounce against accident loss or unforeseen damage.

“I’m not going,” I told my mother.

She stopped, faced me. “Zoe,” she said, “I really, really need you.”

“We made you a cake,” I said.

Downstairs she spoke the last words I would hear her say in this house where we had been a family. “Which car should I take?” she asked her husband.

#

My mother and father divorced about a year later. After it was final, he got me a dog, a pug which he mistakenly thought wouldn’t shed. I named her Rosie and kept her in my room, but the sounds of my father’s stuffed nose and sneezing could be heard throughout the house.

My mother called at least once after the divorce to tell my father that she was well, that she was working as a nurse’s aide in White River Junction, that whomever she had left him for was gone. She reported that she had little time to write.

After that I expected to see her roll in, driving the red Saab she’d left with. I was hopeful she would, relieved when she didn’t.

I saw her a few times, most recently at my college graduation a couple of years ago. She looked gaunt and emotionless despite the smile.  My dad was cordial—he introduced her to the woman he’d been seeing and invited her to join us for dinner—but she said she had a long drive ahead.

Shortly after the ceremony I watched her walk across the athletic field toward the visitors’ parking lot, regret heavy on her shoulders, heading toward Vermont, or maybe Massachusetts, or maybe nowhere at all.