“Why, yes. Doozy is your mother. That’s her nickname.”
“Really?” I said. “We’ve never heard it.”
“Doozy is the nickname Wowser gave her.”
“Wowser? Who’s Wowser?”
“I thought it might be your dad.”
I just held my head in my hands. Kurt asked if this had gotten out. Ms. Lowler didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, what he was talking about.
Kurt and I love to talk about Mother because we have different memories of her before she lost her marbles, and we enjoy filling out our impressions. For example, Kurt had completely forgotten what a balls-to-the-wall backyard birder Mother was. We went through a lot of birdseed we really couldn’t afford. Dad shot the squirrels when Mother was out of the house. By holding them by the end of the tail, he could throw them like a bolo all the way to the vacant lot on the corner. Naturally, Mother thought the squirrels had decided the birds needed the food more and had moved on.
Kurt remembered her gathering the cotton from milkweed pods to make stuffing for cushions. He was ambivalent about this because we both loved those soft cushions, but it seemed to be a habit of the poor. Dad was the one who made us feel poor, but through her special magic Mother made us understand that we had to bow our heads to no one. By being the queen she transformed Kurt and me into princes. It stuck in Kurt’s case. Wowser and Doozy put all this at risk.
Two weeks later we were summoned back to the home by Ms. Lowler, who this time wore an all-concealing cardigan. She’d had enough. It seems Mother had been loudly free-associating about her amorous adventures in such a way that it wasn’t always best that she occupy the common room during visiting hours. She had a nice room of her own with a view of some trees from her window and a Bible-themed Kinkade on the opposite wall and where she couldn’t ask other old ladies about whisker burn or whatever. That’s where we sat as before, except this time I located the call button. Kurt and I were in coats and ties, having come from work, Kurt shuffling the teeth of the living, me weaseling goobers across my desk. She smiled faintly at each of us, and we helped her into her chair. Kurt started right in. I kind of heard him while I marveled over the passage of time that separated us from when Mother ruled taste and behavior with a light but firm hand and left us, Kurt especially, with a legacy of rectitude that we hated to lose. Kurt was summarizing the best of those days, leaning forward in his chair so that his tie hung like a plumb bob, his crew cut so short that it glowed at its center from the overhead light. Mother’s eyes were wide. Perhaps she was experiencing amazement. As Kurt moved toward what we believed to be Mother’s secret life, her eyes suddenly dropped, and I first thought that this was some acknowledgment that such a thing existed. Kurt asked her if she’d had a special friend she’d like to tell us about. She was silent for a long time before she spoke. She said, “Are those your new shoes?”
I followed Kurt into Ms. Lowler’s office. “I would like to speak to you, Ms. Lowler, about our Mother’s quality of life.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“She’s no longer here at all, Ms. Lowler.”
“Really? I think she’s quite happy.”
“Ms. Lowler, I’m going to be candid with you: there comes a time.”
“Does there? A time for what?”
“Ms. Lowler, have you had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the principles of the Hemlock Society?”
“I think it’s quite marvelous for pets, don’t you?”
Later, when Mother started thinking Kurt was Wowser, he really got onto the quality-of-life stuff. I waited before asking him the question that was burning inside of me. “Have you ever done it?”
“I’ve never done it but I’ve seen it done.”
There were times when Mother seemed so rational apart from the fact that what she told us fitted poorly with the Mother we used to know. She said, for example, that Wowser always wore Mr. B collars with his zoot suit.
Kurt told me that he never knew what would happen when he visited Mother. Lately she’s shown an occasionally peevish side. Today she suggested that he “get a life.” This was about a week after Mother had started confusing Kurt with Wowser, and a few days after Kurt had started addressing Mother as Doozy in the hopes of finding Wowser before he could add his own stain to our family reputation. “You’re in a different world when your own mother doesn’t recognize you, or thinks you’re the stranger who gave her a hickey.”
This brought up the Hemlock Society all over again. I told Kurt to forget about it. “Why?” said Kurt. “That’s the only way we get our real mother back. The human spirit is imperishable, and Mother would live on through eternity in her original form and not, frankly, as ‘Doozy.’ They really should weigh the spirit just to convince skeptics like you. I see the expression on your face. You could weigh the person just before and just after they die. Then you’d see that the spirit is something real. Scientists have learned how to weigh gravity, haven’t they? It’s time to weigh the spirit.”
I’d give a million dollars to know why Kurt is in such a lather about our “standing” in town. Does anyone actually have “standing” in a shithole? Well, Kurt thinks so. He thinks we have standing because of Mother’s regal presence over the decades, which, I will admit, was widely admired but which seems to be under attack via these revelations about Wowser and Doozy. I shudder to think what would happen if Kurt found out who Wowser is. Sadly, we know who Doozy is. Doozy is our mother.
I said to the shining young couple across my desk, “If you take this loan, at this bank’s rates, at this point in your lives, you could find yourselves in a hole you’d never dig out of.” Was this me speaking? This was an out-of-body experience. I didn’t tell them that if I went down this road I’d be in the same mess I was recommending they avoid. Feeling my heart swell at the prospects of this couple was more than a little disquieting. From their point of view — and it wasn’t hard to see it in their eyes — I was just turning them down. They would have liked me better if I’d hung this albatross around their necks and let them slide until we glommed the house. After they were gone, I slumped in my chair — a butterfly turning back into a caterpillar. I hadn’t felt quite like this since I repeated ninth grade with Mrs. Novacek busting my balls up at the blackboard doing long division.
Kurt has this habit of picking up his napkin between thumb and forefinger as though letting cooties out. It’s his way of showing the restaurant staff that nobody is above suspicion. He was on his third highball when I said, “There were times when Mother could be pretty hard.”
“Where do you come up with this shit?”
I felt heat in my face. “Like when she was den mother.”
“Of course she was hard on you. You were still a Bobcat after two years. What merit badges did you earn?”
“I don’t remember …”
“I do. You earned one. Handyman. You earned a handyman merit badge. I never ever knew anyone who even wanted one. I had athlete, fitness, engineer, forester, and outdoorsman in year one. And Webelos. I didn’t find Mother hard, ever. Unless you mean she had standards. Where are you going? You haven’t even ordered!”
After the lunch I missed, Edwin, our bank president, came to my desk for the first time since spring before last and asked when I would start moving product like I used to. The young couple must have complained.
Visiting Mother with Kurt was getting to be too hard. The last time we tried, Mother got a mellow, dewy look on her face, and at first Kurt thought it was her pleasure at seeing us. Then he seemed to panic: “She calls me Wowser, I jump out the window.”