The Mothers A Novel

8





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My mother stood waiting at the door with Harriet like June f*cking Cleaver when we reached my parents’ house late Sunday night.

“How’d it go?” Her arms were open.

“Fine.” I put down my bags and caught Harriet’s paws in my arms, leaned in for her smooches.

“So,” she said, eyes wide. “Where’s our new grandchild?”

I stood up from Harriet and looked at my mother. “You can’t be serious.” I placed her front legs back on the floor.

That was when my father came out of the living room.

“Hi, guys.” He kissed us both.

“It’s going to be a wait, Joanne,” Ramon said. He turned to my father. “It could be a long wait for a baby,” he said.

My father shifted his feet. “Sure. Of course it will be a wait. Of course.”

“I mean, Jesus, Mom.”

“Honey, I was joking.” My mother went into the living room for the spread of cheeses and a tapenade I now saw on the coffee table. “I just hope it comes before I’m too old to get on the ground and play with it.”

I let out a sound that resembled the initial escape of steam in a humidifier, the warm steam of illness.

“Sweetie, Mom’s been really hoping this weekend went well. Just so you know. We can’t wait to hear about it. I made venison!” My father clapped his hands together.

“And I made risotto,” my mother interjected. “Right?”

“Your mother made her famous tri-mushroom risotto. The mushrooms are from the farmer’s market.”

My mother’s famous risotto? Famous to whom? I knew I’d certainly never tasted it or heard tell of it. I also knew my mother was not aware of any other mushroom variety than the porcinis she got at the Safeway (did she even know they were porcinis?) until she started reading Alice Waters and talking about the importance of eating together, as a family, though of course by then neither my sister nor I lived at home.

Ramon said, “Well, that sounds positively delicious!”

Ramon was always so sweet to my parents, but the truth is, he has a delicate, catered-to-by-an-old-world-mother constitution, which makes him sensitive to just about everything physical, and we’d eaten so much meat the night before I knew it sounded as revolting to him as it did to me.

I, however, had the energy for only one battle. “Well, we’re exhausted and I don’t really want to talk about it, okay?” I cleared my throat. “Dinner sounds awesome!”

“Cheese?” My mother swatted Harriet’s nose; she was already grazing around the table.

“But hopefully it will be soon.” Ramon walked over to the coffee table and cut a slice of Manchego, clearly chosen in his honor. “I, for one, certainly hope this is all over very soon.”

Why couldn’t he have just said “we”? I clenched my teeth. I am angry at everyone, I thought. How will I stop being angry at everyone? Ramon had opened the door to discussion.

“I understand.” My mother watched him eat her proffered cheese. “We are really excited to hear all about your weekend. You know you haven’t talked to us much about this at all.”

I closed my eyes. How would I explain? About one of those blond social workers—Crystal or Tiffany, with their Johnson’s No More Tangles–like smell, asking us, their faint eyebrows raised: Will the adoptive child feel welcome in your home, embraced by all members of the family? Will the adoptive child feel welcomed by the prospective adoptive grandparents?

“We’re not against talking to you about it, Mom.”

“Thanks so much for taking Harriet.” Ramon looked at both of my parents.

“We love having her!” My dad cut himself a big slice of cheese.

“Anyway.” I grabbed my bag to go upstairs. “Just so you know, we’re dancing as fast as we can.”

_______

Up up up to the attic. The goddamned attic. It is a place, but let’s be real, the attic is also a metaphor. And so is the woman who lives there. I was moved to the attic when Lucy was born and she, in all her adorable, teensy babyness, took over the room next to my parents’ bedroom.

I heard the padding of Ramon making his way up the carpeted stairs behind me.

“Can you believe that?” I hissed, turning toward him.

“Come on, Jesse.” Ramon reached the top step. “Your mom’s just trying to help.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please.”

“You have to relax.” Ramon put his hands on my shoulders.

I shook them loose. “Seriously? If you tell me to calm down, I might lose my mind.”

“I said relax.”

The last time I’d seen Michelle, Zoe had been playing with some hideous bald doll at the table, and, reaching to pat my arm, she’d told me, as her kid banged the shit out of the doll, It will happen for you guys. Everyone I know who has really wanted a child has gotten one, she’d said. I’d laughed inwardly then, but now, here in the attic, I thought perhaps the problem was that I had not wanted this enough. Perhaps I had, like so many mothers, had my doubts. My wasted wishes, ones I’d made in this room, for boys to love me, for my sister to disappear, for my nightmares to recede and my dreams to come true—perhaps these were responsible for what I now lacked.

“I am as relaxed as I’m going to get,” I told Ramon as I lay back on my old twin bed.

“You know, we don’t have that many black friends,” Ramon said. “A few, but not that many.”

I breathed deeply. “What’s your point?”

“You took the black pom-pom. You just took them all without thinking.”

“Oh, I thought,” I said.

“Did you though?” Ramon asked.

“You guys ready for dinner?” my mother called from below.

Up came Harriet, her little brown nose peering over the top stair.

“Harriet!” I threw myself on top of her, willing her to lie down. She licked my face. I lifted up the leather of her ear and whispered to her, and she kept trying to pull away to lick my face, language too much for her to bear.

“I might have liked to choose too,” Ramon said.

“We’re good!” I screamed downstairs. “Be there in a minute!”