"cold men destroy women," my mother wrote me years later. "They woo them with something personable that they bring out for show, something annexed to their souls like a fake greenhouse, lead you in, and you think you see life and vitality and sun and greenness, and then when you love them, they lead you out into their real soul, a drafty, cavernous, empty ballroom, inexorably arched and vaulted and mocking you with its echoes — you hear all you have sacrificed, all you have given, landing with a loud clunk. They lock the greenhouse and you are as tiny as a figure in an architect's drawing, a faceless splotch, a blur of stick limbs abandoned in some voluminous desert of stone."
"Dear Mom," I wrote back. "I am coming home on the 23rd, so should he there for the candlelight service on Sunday. Hope all is going well. Exams are merciless. See you soon."
a photo of my mother when she is fourteen and the adult bones are at last there — stark cemented lines, startling as the curves in a mountain road, from eye to jaw, her skin lineless, and although she is not smiling there is no sadness in her face, simply an inquiring, a wide stare of scrutiny, a look of waiting, of preparedness.
my mother was the only mother I knew who wore her hair long. Sometimes she would wear it in a single braid that hung like a dark tail, marbled with auburn sun streaks, down the middle of her back; other times she wore it in two side braids that would swing back and forth when she bent over. "You look like a featherhead Indian lady," James would tell her. He was just being made aware of the distinction between India Indian and the kind you saw on TV. "How," my mother would joke, holding up a hand. And James, not getting it, would tug impatiently at her braids and say, "Because of these, because of these."
she is fifteen and has Tonied her hair into a wild frizz that dances, dark and frenetic, way out beyond the barrettes she uses to clamp it down. She is sitting on a bench in a park somewhere, eating an ice cream cone, blue jeans rolled up mid-calf, legs spread wide and feet pigeon-toed, ankles caved outward, and she is hunched a bit forward with her cone, making a crazy face that involves sticking out her tongue and crossing her eyes.
there were nights my parents fought, woke us up with their fighting, and James would put his pillow over his face and I would lie wide-eyed, terrified and paralyzed by my father's bellowing, the doors slamming, something metal always clinking somewhere to the floor, the pounding on the walls, and my mother's "Oh god, oh god, just leave, why don't you."
One afternoon, the day after one of these night fights, I brought my friend Rachel home on the bus with me. We walked in the kitchen door and I reminded her to wipe her feet. Down the hallway that led to the bathroom I suddenly saw my mother, sitting on the toilet with the door wide open, her legs and hips bare and white, her underwear coiled at her ankles, her long hair all unbraided, a mane of unbrushed ripples floating out and downward toward her waist. She didn't move when we walked in. She just sat there in an old black shirt like some obscene statue, her head leaning frozenly on her hands, her elbows propped on her knees.
"Is that your mother?" whispered Rachel.
And I said maybe it was and maybe it wasn't.
My mother never saw us, but continued to stare like a drunkard at something on the floor just ahead of her.
"Come on," I said, and led Rachel upstairs to my room where James, on the bed, was reading a bird encyclopedia: cow-birds, starlings, cuckoos. "Look at this," he said. "A blue-booted boobie." And we looked and saw it was just some dumb black-faced bird. And then all three of us played "Careers" and Rachel bought a farm and lots of happiness, but I was the first man on the moon and loaded up on stars, winning everything.
her high school graduation picture. The yearbook caption reads, "Salutatorian" and "Best Ail-Around." Her friends write things like, "Beautiful Anna, we will miss you off in Chicago, come back to visit."
"The Windy City has a treat coming its way. Good luck."
"Stay as sweet as you are. Remember the Bluebird Dance. We had fun. Good luck at U. of Chi. Love, Barbara."
that night, or was it another night, my mother came into our room late after we had already tucked ourselves in and she laid our schoolbooks on the floor next to our bed and then stood in the doorway awhile, looking wraithlike, silent, in a long white sleeveless nightgown, one bare arm dangling loosely at her side, the other bent upward, hand cupped around the back of her neck, thoughtfully, her head tilted toward the dangling arm, her dark unpinned hair obscuring one shoulder like the hood of a cape. And there was a bird outside on the lake, hooting, calling, and it was the only sound, and James murmured groggily, "That's a loon, a ruby-throated loon," and my mother turned and disappeared until morning.
"your father wrote music, too, you know, but he never shared it with us," my mother said, a bit breathlessly, as I smoothed out her blankets. "Music ultimately left him unstirred. Like a god irritated with his own tinkerings. Despite his talent, or perhaps because of it, he heard only the machinery, the clanking and spitting. He felt nothing. No compassion." She coughed. "You would think creating something would necessarily be an act of love or compassion."
"Mother," I said, remembering the nurse's instructions. "Perhaps you should take your pill now."
she leaves behind all her friends, including Barbara. A picture of this, with streamers and cake and wine hollies. At college she falls in love with a sophomore named Jacob Fish and works toward a degree in fine arts. After four years she leaves him, inexplicably goes back home, paints and designs sets for a local Syracuse theater group. Kismet. South Pacific. See the scenery. She also sings in the chorus; that's her, there.
i remember overhearing a brief snatch of a fight my parents had once. Or rather my mother was crying and having difficulty explaining why to my father, as he seemed angry and distant, she said, and soon he was screaming at her that she should stop her goddamn crying and perhaps get some exercise for a change. At this my mother cried even harder and my father stormed out of the house. But the next day, and several times a week for years afterward, my mother was running along the lake in sweatclothes and old sneakers she didn't mind getting wet. Once in a while I went with her, jogging next to her, watching her breasts float up and down beneath her sweatshirt, imitating the way she breathed in and out with quick snorts. Twice we saw dead birds washed up on shore and we stopped to look at their bedraggled carcasses, their eyes already crawling with small black bugs. "What is beautiful is seized," my mother said. "My grandmother used to tell me that."
scotch-taped to my mother's scrapbook is a thumb-sized lavender picture viewer, which, when you look through the eyehole and hold it up to a light, magnifies a tiny picture of her and Jacob Fish on New Year's Eve at a big hotel in the Catskills. On the outside of the viewer is printed in gold script, "Kiamesha Lake, N.Y.," and there is a small gold chain attached to it, so you can hang it somewhere or twirl it around your fingers. Inside of it, when you peer through, my mother is standing next to Jacob Fish, both done up like prom royalty, my mother in a strapless apricot dancing gown, her hair piled up on top of her head, fastened with pins and one pale rose, and Jacob Fish, short and tow-headed, just about her height, with a navy blue bow tie, a kindness and graciousness in his face, which, I can tell, made my mother happy, made her smile, tunelessly holding his arm in the little lavender capsule.