Any Place I Hang My Hat (40 page)

MAYBE I’D BEEN too harsh in my judgment. Why adultery necessarily? Other things could be going on in that motel—brunches, conferences. It was, after all, April. Maybe Bring Back the Bard was having a Happy Birthday, Shakespeare gala. I glanced at the rearview mirror.

Then I realized: Of course, the Gold Coin Motel. It was part of a cheesy travel chain, one of those approved by In Depth’s accounting department. All the Coins I’d ever stayed in looked like this one: two or three stories covered with quarter-inch brick siding and a faux-slate roof. It was supposed to evoke the glamour of an estate from the Gatsby era, but not even the most unreconstructed yokel could be conned into such a belief.

From Manchester, Vermont, to Miami to L.A., there were two types of room: cheap but overpriced, and cheaper. The former had a four-poster bed made out of some mystery material the color of maple. In all the rooms, the bedspreads exuded an odor of chemicals from their biennial dry cleaning. The lounges at the Gold Coin were just as predictable. Bartenders, dressed butler-style, served a house red, a mélange of merlot and Juicy Juice. Mixed drinks were set down on paper cocktail napkins imprinted with birdbath-shaped champagne glasses. Here you are, madam, a cocktail waitress in a black dress and a white apron would say when she handed over one of the Coin’s large, luxe drinks, 100-proof smoothies with names such as Cotillion Raspberry and Hunt Club Lime.

The Gold Coins’ coffee shops, if I remembered correctly from the 2000 primaries, featured a gold lamé cloth draped over tables on which the breakfast buffet—composed mostly of small boxes of expired cereal and petrified scrambled eggs—was spread. I could not pass a Gold Coin anywhere without recalling the gelatinous, rotting green grapes concealed beneath a thin layer of honeydew in what the room service menu referred to as Our Sumptuous Fruit Medley.

Would a group devoted to Shakespeare be willing to celebrate the Bard in such a setting? To imagine that was beyond my powers of fantasy. So I tried to picture my mother chairing a brunch for some cause: pro-gun-control, anti-war-in-Iraq, or anti-gun-control, pro-war. Or perhaps she was attending one of those sales that took place in C-hotels and that I kept seeing advertised in newspapers: 10,000 paintings all framed including large landscapes for over sofas one day only! the ads would proclaim. Or Miles and miles of genuine Oriental rugs!

I turned the car around and backed into a space across from where I’d originally parked. I wanted to see my mother through the windshield when she left the motel, not as a small figure reflected in a rearview mirror. Also, this way I was directly across and a few cars down from her Volvo. Thus situated, I studied my cuticles for a while. Once that thrill was gone, I phoned the motel’s front desk. “You know,” I began, “I suddenly remembered I’m supposed to go to something in the conference room at the motel. Anyway, I think it’s at the Gold Coin. But I’m not sure. Do you have anything scheduled this morning?”

“Uhhh,” a hungover voice on the line said. “Let me check.” I waited, and waited some more. “Uhhh,” the voice returned at last, soft, so as not to make a headache more painful. “We don’t have anything on today. Not till Tuesday. Uhhh, North Shore Quilters Guild.”

I decided that while I waited, I ought to stick to my Sunday schedule. Newspaper reading might be tranquilizing, or at least a comfortable routine. I picked out the parts of the papers I usually read, then placed them in my customary order of preference. Having gotten sorted out, I stacked the excess five pounds of newsprint neatly on the floor in the rear.

As always, I began with the news. This time, though, planes, trucks, a passing crow, and the thud of my heartbeat kept distracting me. I found myself having to go back over the same few paragraphs. No matter how many times I read what Senator Inhofe was supposed to have said in a closed Armed Services Committee hearing, the information refused to penetrate my consciousness. So I abandoned any attempt at substance. Instead, I checked out the employment section to see what writing jobs were being offered in Washington, hoping to see The New Republic will double your salary! Become a columnist today! I didn’t. Then I looked at the Times Magazine’s food page. It featured some disgusting soupy thing with whole shrimp. The accompanying photo was so high-resolution it showed the little buggers’ bulbous shrimp eyes, as well as their antennae. It seemed more a lesson in evolution—From Insect to Crustacean—than dinner. I closed the magazine, divided the newspaper sections back into Times and Post, and set them on the passenger seat.

I was then free to gnaw the knuckle of my thumb and glance continuously from motel to Volvo. After a few minutes, against my will, my eyelids drooped and closed. It was as if a drain had suddenly opened and my energy was running out fast. I tried to open my eyes again, but it was too enervating. I leaned back against the headrest. Just a five-minute power nap. But almost instantly my head jerked forward as I contemplated the varieties of head lice from other rental car drivers who’d similarly laid back their weary heads for an I-can’t-go-on moment.

How many times would I have to shampoo before I’d feel sure that my hairdresser wouldn’t get nipped? Stop this craziness! I ordered myself. There aren’t any lice. This isn’t about lice. This isn’t about shrimp eyes. This is about your mother.

I calmed down, or at least the back of my head gradually stopped itching so badly that I wanted to claw at it. But reality was worse than imagining an entire corps de ballet of lice doing pirouettes. My strength was nearly gone. I glanced down at my legs. They looked the same but felt so weak I doubted they could support me. If I got out of the car, they would turn from flesh and bone into a substance resembling diaphragm jelly. They’d give way and I’d wind up three and a half feet tall. Frightening, this weariness, because I was a strong person. I knew it. My life had proved it.

So what was wrong with me? Maybe throughout the years, to stay strong, I’d locked away my mother in a small jail cell located on the farthest border of my consciousness. She couldn’t get to me from there. To be sure, I understood intellectually that she had to be a major factor in my psyche. Ergo, I couldn’t be all strong. When the person genetically wired to care for you says, essentially, Fuck it, I don’t want this job, you’re never going to be 100 percent.

But in locking her away in that cell, had I indeed protected myself? Or had I simply given her time to grow more dangerous? Could this whole confrontation gig wind up breaking me instead of making me whole? Except for the total of two and a half years when Chicky was out of prison, I’d gone without love. Okay, that’s how the cards were dealt. While I wouldn’t recommend my childhood to anyone, it was a better hand than some kids got. Still, I was beginning to understand that to my young mind, I’d been abandoned by both parents—my mother by taking a hike, my father by his refusal to stay out of the slammer for long. No matter how much strength I believed I had—and proved I had—it could be that surviving that lonely life had made me not just vulnerable, but fragile.

Fragile? Fragile was looking good. I was so wiped I didn’t have the strength to extend my arm, turn the key in the ignition, and get the hell away from the Gold Coin and my mother. Take it easy, I soothed myself. You’ll feel better in a minute. This is totally psychological. But five, ten minutes later I was no stronger. Okay, my head understood that at some point I would find the wherewithal to start the car and escape. Yet my body knew I was incapable of doing it any time soon.

Or maybe whatever action I took wouldn’t matter. My mother would stroll out of the Gold Coin in an hour or a minute, catch a glimpse of me, know precisely who I was, and chuckle to herself knowing she had won. With just one glance, she could see that she was stronger. Always had been, always would be.

It wasn’t even five minutes later that the electric double doors at the motel entrance parted. Out she came. Alone, but that wasn’t proof of anything. If one is an adulterer, one does not depart the site of the assignation arm in arm with one’s inamorato. She was dressed as before, short skirt, high boots, black turtleneck. This time, though, I could see her face. Not the eyes, because she was wearing sunglasses with overlarge tortoiseshell frames that were either avant-garde or retro-hip; I’d have to ask Tatty. I thought back to that single black-and-white photograph of my mother I’d studied throughout my life: hidden behind other sunglasses, her mouth chalky from that early-seventies lipstick that made her lips appear the color of pearls.

Here she was in color. How come I hadn’t noticed her hair earlier? Probably because she’d worn it up. Now it was loose, down to her shoulders, with layers of cascading curls, a passé profusion of twirly hair seen nowadays mostly in hookers’ wigs. As she emerged from under the overhang at the entrance, I could see its color, a striking dark red that emphasized the pallor of her skin. As for the rest of the face, from a distance it appeared heart-shaped with a pointy chin. Not a witch’s chin: It was the sweetheart face of a silent film star.

She was walking slowly with a slight side-to-side ungainliness. Arthritis? Sex-soaked panties? General klutziness? I couldn’t guess because even thinking required more energy than I possessed. Oh God, I prayed, give me just a few minutes of strength. But there was no surge of vigor. I could only stare, so mesmerized by her approach even my autonomic nervous system—breathing, blood flow, and the like—seemed suspended.

Yet each of her steps toward me brought a new revelation. A Vuitton drawstring sack, the absurdly large kind, spacious enough to hold a bag full of groceries or a couple of dachshunds. Fishnet panty hose rising above the high boots. Her legs were young, her face not quite. What looked like gullies of dissatisfaction had dug themselves from her nose down to the sides of her mouth. Her lips were purplish black, a wild color for a pale redhead to wear. It wasn’t until she came within fifteen feet that I realized she was so close, in seconds she could simply get into her car and drive off.

That galvanized me. I turned on the ignition, put the car in gear, my foot on the gas, and drove six feet. Then I slammed it into park. Now the Civic was making the top of a T with my mother’s Volvo, blocking her exit. No, no, she gestured from her distance, waving her hand. Then, from ten feet away, she pointed over and over with her index finger: My car. That’s my car. Then her thumb told me, I’m pulling out. Was her rust-colored nail polish meant to go with a lipstick other than the one she was wearing? Or was it an outré touch?

I turned off the ignition and got out of the Civic. I took my eyes off her only to locate the lock button on the car’s remote. Dropping the keys into the pocket of my khakis, I stood where I was, about five feet from where she’d frozen the instant she looked me in the eye and knew.

“I’m Amy. We need to—” As I said “talk,” her head jerked from right to left. In a far corner of the lot, on the other side of the motel’s entrance, she spied an elderly man putting a suitcase into the trunk of his car.

“Get away from me!” she blared. One hell of a powerful voice, like a quarterback calling an audible. Her Bring Back the Bard affiliation made that line from Lear spring up: Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low—an excellent thing in woman. The man glanced up from his trunk. Maybe he didn’t think her voice was all that excellent. Maybe he hadn’t heard the words themselves. Or if he had, he may have decided this was one catfight he could pass on. When she realized Trunk Man would be of no help, she pivoted and started to run away from me, down the row between the lines of parked cars.

Not running exactly. Not in those high-heeled boots. Not when she was way into her forties and competing with a practiced runner still not thirty. Two strides and I was beside her. I grabbed her upper arm. Slender, but no muscle tone, all flesh. “I know this must be hard for you,” I told her. “But if we don’t talk now, we’ll have to talk at Knightsbridge Road.” A little incentive, Chicky would call it, although the fussy might call it blackmail. “We can all talk there. You, me, and Ira and the boys.”

“Let go of my arm!” I kept my grip. “Now!” Perhaps chez Hochberg that was her scary voice. Don’t mess with Mom. Sorry, Véronique, sorry. It certainly wasn’t scary to me. Nevertheless, I realized that in playing rough with her, I had pushed her to be tough in return. “I understand,” I said. “I don’t want you to feel threatened. I apologize if I came on too strong.” Her response was to raise the arm I was holding on to and try to bite my hand. “Are you crazy?” I squawked.

“Let go of my arm,” she demanded. It was a fairly even tone for someone who had just gotten through baring her teeth. “I don’t like to be threatened with physicality.”

What do you like to be threatened with? was the response that came to mind. I suppose it disappointed me that she’d used a pissy word like physicality. I’d expected better. “No running,” I told her. She nodded, just once. “I don’t expect a relationship,” I went on. “What I do expect from you are answers to my questions this one time.” Again, one nod. “Full and complete answers. Not nods, not nos and yeses.”

“Fine,” she exhaled. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to sound bored or if, when she wasn’t yelling, she spoke in a flat, unemotional tone. “This one conversation only. I don’t want you driving out here every—”

“I have no intention of doing that,” I said. “But for the record, I make the rules for this discussion.”

“And if I don’t abide by them?” In the spring sunshine, her pale foundation clung to her skin a little too passionately, emphasizing spiderwebbing on her upper lip, enlarged pores along the sides of her nose.

And if I don’t abide by them? she had said. A response between snide and snotty. In all my imaginings of meeting her, I’d considered feeling fury, mortification, disgust, or even surprise tenderness, and I’d been prepared for powerful feelings on my mother’s side as well. What else could be expected after all these years, after the sundering of the most basic bond in nature? Yet so far, aside from her lame call for help, all that seemed to have been stirred up in both of us was a moderate-to-high level of crankiness.