“That’s much better.”
A sales clerk who’d been watching from a few feet away came over, and I gave him both pairs of shoes. Then I sat down across from my mother. New strands of gray streaked through her hair and there were dark pools under her eyes. She was still in mourning, and would be for a long while yet. But how much did she really know about the man she was grieving? The question had been nagging at me ever since I’d received that phone call from the jewelry shop. “I’ve been wondering,” I said. “Why exactly did Dad buy that cabin?”
“You know why. So he could rent it out.”
“But he didn’t rent out to tourists that often, did he?”
“In the beginning, he did. But there was always trouble. Someone would plug the toilet or burn something in the toaster oven or break dishes and not replace them. I warned your father about this, but of course he never listened.”
Across the sales floor, a tall blonde was sipping an iced coffee as she went through the sales rack, methodically checking every pair in her size. What did my father’s mistress look like? Was she young and pretty, the way I had imagined at first, or was she someone with more substance to her? Some wit or personality. She had to be someone special if he was breaking up his marriage over her. In which case, how could my mother not know about it? “So if Dad didn’t rent out the cabin much, why did he keep it?” I asked.
My mother thought about this for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “I think your father really liked being a landlord. No one in his family owned a house before. The cabin made him feel, I don’t know, like he was successful.” She rubbed her eyes with the palm of her hand.
So she had no idea what had been going on, and all I had accomplished with my fact-finding mission that morning was to stir up her grief. I shouldn’t have asked, I thought. I looked away, desperate for another subject of conversation, and was relieved to see that the sales clerk was returning with the shoe boxes. I tried on the black pumps first.
“They look great on you,” my mother said.
“You like them?”
“Yes. Are they comfortable? Walk around, see how you feel.”
I took three hesitant steps; I wasn’t used to high heels. “They look, uh, professional.”
“Exactly,” my mother said, clasping her hands. She was gazing at me with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher and I looked at the shoes again, wondering if I’d missed something. “You know,” she said after a minute, “it’s not too late to go to law school.”
“What?”
“You’re young, Nora. Three years will go by quickly. And you can afford to go back to school now, with the life insurance money.”
“What are you talking about, Mom? Why are you bringing this up again?”
“Because you would be a great lawyer, I’m sure of it. The neighbors told me yesterday that their daughter Jessica passed the bar exam. Remember how she used to ask you for help with her math homework? She couldn’t finish it without you, and now look at her. A lawyer! She’s going to work for a big firm in San Diego.”
So this was why my mother had asked me to go shopping. Not because she wanted to spend time with me, but because she wanted to convince me to start a proper career, be more like Salma, or more like Jessica, or more like someone else. This was not a new conversation. We’d been having it in one form or another since I’d given up on medical school and decided to study music instead. The thought of having this argument again, sitting here in the shoe section at Macy’s, was intolerable. She was intolerable.
Only a moment earlier, I’d been feeling sorry for my mother and betrayed by my father, but now everything shifted. Whatever else he did, he’d never wished me to be a different person. He wouldn’t have staged an ambush like this or tried to convince me to give up on the only thing that gave meaning to my life. His love was free. But my mother’s love was a war. It was fought every day for the sake of shaping me into somebody new, somebody better. Even if I had gone to medical school or law school or business school, she would have found something else in me that needed to be improved, and would have made it a point to tell me about it. What was even more infuriating was that my mother never behaved like this with my sister. Salma could do no wrong.
I kicked off the black pumps and tried on the tan sandals. They were comfortable, and would be perfect for summer. “I’m getting these,” I said.
We drove back from Palm Desert in silence. Whatever lightness the day held had been dimmed by our argument; I couldn’t wait to be alone again. I dropped my mother off at the house and with a quick goodbye wave headed back onto the highway. It was the middle of the afternoon now and the sidewalks were empty, but passing the party supply store where my father had bought me a pi?ata for my eighth birthday, I felt his absence anew. At the Stater Brothers, where I stopped for milk, the smell of his aftershave on a random customer nearly brought me to tears. Even when I walked into the cabin, the memory came back to me of a hike we had taken to Willow Hole together. I missed him.
Salma
The first thing you see when you wake up is the Pan Am bag hanging from your mother’s shoulder. It is blue and white and has a hole in one corner. You’re in your father’s arms, still groggy with sleep, and as he carries you off the plane, you ask, “Is this where I go to school?” School is all you’ve been talking about for weeks, the carrot your parents dangled to get you to leave home. All you had to do was take the plane, they said, school would be at the other end. “Yes, here,” your father says, but distractedly. At the gate, your uncle is waiting. He hoists you up, kisses you, rubs his unshaved chin against your cheek. He smells like cigarettes, and he laughs easily, like your father. Yet not like your father at all.
Your uncle and his wife live in Culver City. They have a foldout couch, a backyard with a lemon tree and a swing set, and two boys who pinch you when no one is looking. On their days off, the adults cook elaborate meals, drink mint tea, and talk for hours about the king and Ronald Reagan. They make the king sound like he’s in the next room, and Reagan like he’s in another house. The children are supposed to play outside, but most of the time you have no idea what your cousins are saying, so you mimic the way they walk, the way they laugh, and finally the way they talk. They dress you up in costumes and parade you around the yard. You become a perfect little ape.