“I haven’t been alone. I’ve known many women.”
“A year here, six months there. You’re alone now. And that last one, May. She was very nice, and sweet to me as they come, but for too long I knew she wasn’t your type and you weren’t hers and that it was a lost cause from the start.”
“Funny, but I didn’t think so. And it is strange you ask about tonight, since I did meet someone.”
“Bring her along tomorrow.”
“I only met her briefly.”
“We can postpone dinner a day or two. You get her number?”
“I’ll be calling her. Anyway, it’s too early to talk about and surely too early to invite her for dinner with you.”
“Why? If a woman likes you, nothing’s too early. You once called me a lighthouse, so listen to the light. If you call her early tomorrow, say you’re going to your mother’s for the first time in months and would she like to come along. That way she won’t from the start think you’re a momma’s boy, which you’re not. And when she does see us together she’ll like the idea of someone being so joking and outspoken with his mother, and if she’s from out of town the idea of going to a good family dinner way out here might appeal to her too. A lot of people have heard of this neighborhood and think it’s special.”
“She’s from the city. Anyway, I want to see you alone so we can talk.”
“What will we say that we haven’t tonight?”
“My work. What you’ve been doing. Politics. Plenty.”
“How is your work going?”
“Fine. But tomorrow. Anything else I can bring? In fact I know exactly what. An electric blanket.”
“You have one?”
“Two. Could you use the extra?”
“They’re supposed to keep you warm for relatively little electricity, so if it’s not your only working one.”
“I don’t have one good or bad but I’ll get you one tomorrow. I knew you’d say no if I said I’d buy it.”
“I don’t need one.”
“I’m bringing it, but ripping up the label and receipt before I get there.”
“Then you should have kept me fooled. The whole thing was too calculating for you.”
“Come on, will you, that’s what I am.”
“No you’re not. Think more highly of yourself. When it comes to qualities — But before we hang up, what’s this new woman’s name?”
“Helene, but for who-knows-what reasons she might not want to see me or be able to for weeks or months. It’s happened. So enough about her unless something materializes, since I don’t want to be explaining for the next year about what ever happened to this woman.”
“She’ll want to see you. If she gave you her number, she will, and I bet in a hurry, and she’ll take to you too. Everyone does.”
“You’re my mother, so you’re saying this. And the truth is I think I sometimes need that kind of talk, much as I go out of my way to say I don’t. But don’t get your hopes up there’ll be any new woman in my life. What I’m saying is that if I was really feeling bad about myself now, which I’m not, then I’d say that if there’s any way to ruin it with any new woman I meet, you can be sure I’ll do it instinctively or find out how.”
“Then I shouldn’t get out my chiffon gown yet, that it? As you wish. Goodnight, dear.”
“Wait. Oh jeez. I sound like a moron sometimes, don’t I?”
“No. Who said so?”
“Then I didn’t make you feel awful just then?”
“No, and you didn’t plan to, did you? So stop worrying. But I am very tired, so I hope to see you tomorrow. Thanks for calling.”
“Thanks for what?” but she’s hung up.
Walking up Sixth I think I shouldn’t have said a lot of the things I said to her about myself and also should have told her of something I read in the paper this week about how anyone seventy-five or seventy and older shouldn’t have his room thermostat set lower than seventy or seventy-five degrees. Which? She’s over and her apartment temperature’s much lower, but over seventy on the thermostat for anyone under or over any age other than for someone, let’s say, seventy to seventy-five days or ill in a number of different ways sounds too high. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but the reasons the article writer gave for the warning were something about the gradual deterioration and collapse — but I’d only be making up most of that about the effects on the various body organs and tracts. But something like “Contrary to current scientific and popular layman belief and recent federal guidelines for residential and office buildings’ air conditioning and heat, any temperature lower over a prolonged period…acute hypothermia…very elderly and infirmed…”
I haven’t another coin. Easily enough achieved, considering the mission, but what would she say? “Please — the government — let me sleep.” No, that’s what she’d think. She’d say “What is it, darling, something you forgot to say that couldn’t wait?” I’d say “Damn, woke you up again,” and she’d say “Anyone else I might mind, but I’m sure coming from you it’s for a good reason,” since she knows I want nothing more for her than to be healthy and safe. Content too, of course, but there’s just so much an only alone son with a weighty workload and in another borough and with a welter of excuses and all those outside willful and fortuitous abuses can do. Damn landlords sometimes. Damn city. Damn geographical location, figmental extrapolation. Damn countries and oil and gas companies and international bickering and national trickstering and so on. Too tangled for me to understand. My damn density and dumb damnedness sometimes too, and all right for me to dig-in during this kind of crisis, but my mother? I don’t want her going to—
Car shrieks, startling me. Pedestrian almost hit. Leg inches away from the bumper, exhibiting her fist. Standing in front of the cab at the corner, fist shaking, pigtails waving, boot raised to boot the bumper, stumps the ground. “You shit.” Cabby waits, seems to me resignedly. No fare in the cab, for her to finish and go away. Sits back, pushes his hat back, scratches his back, ah that felt good, tugs on his nose and looks behind him, can’t back up and then go around her because a truck’s there. “You goon,” she says. Records on his clipboard. Let me see: Fiftieth to Broome and West Broadway, next pickup on Prince to Greenwich and Sixth — Truck honks, he points in front and honks back. You back up, then I can back up, because she won’t back up, and we can both go. “You dope. Yes, dopo, moronico, maniaco, cause you won’t be happy till you run over some poor dildo which you’ve no doubt done a hundred and 0 times before. At least say the fuck you’re sorry.” It’d seem he was in the right, had the light, maybe driving too fast, that I didn’t see, but she was walking against it. Light turns red for him. “Suck,” and smacks his hood and crosses the street. He opens his window, wouldn’t I love to with you honey, hell with her, closes it, truck and cars behind him honk. Raises his arms without turning around: what do you want me to do, be as dumb as that broad and run the light? Lights up a pipe and puffs on it. Match must have stayed lit where he threw it on the floor, for he suddenly ducks below the dashboard. Green, cars honk, trucker just shakes his head not believing this, cabby pops up, oh the light, what do you think but the light? honks, beeps, from farther down the street my dog has fleas, makes a left, truck and cars behind him, where was I? Woman seems stoned. Nursing home. Don’t want my mom in one. Shaking her fist or waving a kerchief at the cab as it passes, for my eyes can’t focalize from so far. Her getting chronically sicker and weaker, one of my worst fears. Like my dad his last two years: incontinent, sometimes defecating in bed, “Looked like afterbirth,” my mother once said, “Bedsores muffins could fit in,” nothing she or the visiting nurses could do about them, her worst fears too. How could we afford it for one thing? Not foremost but one. For another I just don’t want her in one of those homes even if we could afford it or through Medicare or — card, whichever gives the applicable aid, not do I ever want to visit her in one, though if she had to be there I of course would. But what would we do or say? Walk her around the halls, sit in the solarium sun, how’s the food, what’d you do today? Me, what could I be doing here that’s new? Nothing’s new. Please drop me in the nearest grave. “Whatever you do,” she once told me, “don’t stick me in one of those old-age places. I didn’t to your father, and he never even asked me not to. Fact is he told me to do what was easiest for me with him, but what could I do but help while I still had my strength and health, and taking care of him I also have to admit gave me something very useful and engrossing to do and improve on. The second most urgent thing I’m asking you to do if you can’t the first is just before you send me to one, give me all the sleeping pills you can lay your hands on that it’ll take to kill me in one night. You won’t have to be home. Just give me them and say goodnight and I’ll take them alone.” I told her not to think or say such things and she almost screamed at me that she was serious so what was I going to do? I told her I’d have to think it over and she said “Think about it quick — one never knows.” I said “Why, is there something about your health you just found out that I don’t know?” and she said “No, it’s up and down as ever, but let’s be realistic — at my age and condition anything can go to pot overnight,” and a week later phoned and said “You remember what I asked you about promising me something extremely important to do?” and I said “No, wait, what, afraid I forgot, sorry, but how are you?” and she said “You remember — you got a head screwed on you tighter than a vise and certainly for something like that, but maybe we should drop it till you tell me you remember or want me to help retrieve your memory for you — do you?” and I said “Sure, if that’s what you want, but better another day, because right now — well, I had to have a translation in by noon if I wanted to get paid, so I stayed up all night and am now feeling sick from it besides very tired — anyway, how are you?” and she told me how she was and Goldie and Ray and that was the last time she spoke to me about sleeping pills.