I’m sure it was her decision. My father was not a passionate man. Older than she by a good twenty years, he had walked behind his plow alone for as long as anyone could remember. When my mother’s family discovered what she had done, it never crossed their collective mind to blame my father, and I don’t doubt they were right.
As far as Leo or I could tell, marriage and fatherhood never had the slightest effect on the old man. He continued doing what he had done all along, and treated us with the same solid neutrality he handed out to the occasionally hired day laborers. I have often thought that it was in an effort to reflect his stolidity that Leo had never married and I had evolved the way I had. It hadn’t worked for either of us, of course. Certainly, as I came to realize following Ellen’s death, I had aimed for the image of a man untouched by events all around him and instead had ended up like a fish in a sea of complexities. I became so immersed in seeing at least some value in every viewpoint that I began to wonder if my father’s aloofness hadn’t perhaps been rooted in some less-than-human brain dysfunction.
I never saw my parents touch. I sensed a mutual respect, but I could never tell if that was based only partly on the fact that they both did their jobs to perfection. For even in the gloom of the Depression, life didn’t vary at home. Our farm marched ahead at my father’s steady pace, good times or bad, reflecting as much of reality as he did. Had Leo and I not left the house to go to school and grow up, I think the Depression, World War II, the atomic bomb, McCarthy, and all the rest would have passed us by without notice. And through it all, Mother did as she had done before, only now the children were her own and far fewer in number.
That, of course, was the crucial distinction, and one she had set out to create by choosing my father. Because despite his machinelike lack of emotion, ours was a happy home, made partially so by his stolid ability to make every new year as predictable as the last. Her role was to make those years pleasant and fulfilling, and as Leo’s caring for her now testified, she’d made it a success. When the phrase “earth mother” cropped up in the sixties, my picture of Mother was forever titled.
Of course, the problem with earth mothers, I have since found out, is that they’re so good at handing out goodwill, they all but stop being three-dimensional human beings. They don’t volunteer what’s in their hearts, and few people bother to find out. After my father’s death and my departure from home, Mother buried herself for years in community activities until finally, one day, old and on walking sticks, she quit-totally.
She lived in a wheelchair now, her world restricted to the downstairs of the house. She was surrounded by books, magazines, crossword puzzles, a radio, a television set, and two cats. Outwardly, she remained pleasant and gooeasidth="1em" d-natured, but I always sensed a tiredness there, as if she’d been asked to smile for the camera just one shot beyond her tolerance. Leo always said I was full of it, and maybe I was. I had to believe, after all, that if anyone knew what really made her tick, he did-unless he was too close to see.
Gail stopped the car in front of the house but left the engine running. I stopped halfway out the door and looked back at her. “Not coming in?”
“I don’t think so, Joe. Despite all the reassurances I gave her on the phone, your Mom knows how close you came to dying. I think she’d like to see you alone. Tell her I love her, though, okay?”
I leaned back inside and kissed her. “Okay.”
“Give me a call when you want a ride back.”
I pulled my bag out of the backseat and waved goodbye, watching her car until it disappeared over the rise.
16
She was in the living room, surrounded by three small tables, her daily pastimes piled around her like the borders of a nest. But her hands were motionless in her lap. She was watching a soap opera, something I’d rarely seen happen before. She was an avid radio listener, but daytime TV was a sign of things amiss.
She caught my movement and turned suddenly toward me. For a split second, I saw the face of a woman with no reserves left-blank, hollow-eyed, sagging from the lack of life. It was gone so fast, it was more of an impression than a real image, but it left me shocked. In its place was an older version of what had welcomed me into this house as far back as I could recall.
She gathered me in for a hug. “What foolishness have you been up to?”
I kissed her warm wrinkled cheek. “I wish I knew.”
She held my face out at arm’s length. “And Frank?”
I could only shrug.
“Where’s Gail?”
“She went back. I think she felt awkward.”
“She’s a good girl.”
I straightened and glanced at the television. Mother hit the remote-control button by her side and killed the picture.
“Stories without end. Not like life at all.”
I had to smile. “I can’t argue with that.”
She was watching me closely, her eyes bright and sharp. She had one of those faces in which every line followed her mood. She smiled, and hundreds of wrinkles smiled; she frowned, and they were all sad. “How do you feel, Joe?”
“A little detached.” I walked over to the bay window and sat on the bench sill. This had been my favorite reading spot at night as a kid, surrounded by the cold wind on three sides, and yet warm and safe.
“It sounds like after Korea.”
“I suppose so. I hadn’t thought of that. God, you have a long memory.”
“A mother’s memory. For you, that was just a phase. For me, it was the death of my child-it robbed me of something special. It’s not a time I will ever forget.”
“I ended up going to college, at least for a while.”
She shook her head. “The price was too high.”
I smiled. She was right. I had been the one to break the cocoon holding this house and its inhabitants. That had changed things for ever, and no achievement of mine would ever justify it.
“How long are you going to stay?”
“Just a couple of days-until I get my legs back.”
“You were hit very hard, weren’t you?” The softness in her voice made the answer superfluous, but I didn’t want her to retreat to what I had seen when I’d entered.
“Not hard enough, I guess. I’ll be okay in a couple of days. But I’ve got to go back to wrap this thing up. I can’t leave it hanging.”
“Did you stop by to see Leo on the way up?”
“No, I came straight here.”
“Go down and see him. He’d like that.”
“What about you?”
She gestured at her piled-up pastimes. “I’ve got my projects. Go.”
I kissed her again and went outside. As I closed the door behind me, I heard the television start up. The stories without end had acquired a certain appeal, and I found that sad.
I crossed over the icy snow to the barn and swung back its big double doors. The blank, gray light fell on a semicircle of eight dusty, mummified cars, all looking like alien pods wrapped in canvas. This was Leo’s pleasure palace-his other obsession besides women. Under each tarp was an automobile loved for its own special virtue, whether it was looks, engine, popular appeal, or merely that it had been around for so long. None of them were in mint condition. Leo kept them covered, but only because the barn was so dusty. Their paint jobs were dull, and they were dented here and there; on the street they attracted attention for their quaintness, not their gleam.
But while their shells were weather-beaten, their innards were immaculate. Each car ran with the smoothness of its first mile.