As I Die Lying (10 page)

She looked at me with puffy prizefighter
eyes, her swollen red lids like overripe fruit. I looked into them
and shuddered.

This woman had endured unimaginable pain to
bring me into the world, in an assault of fire and needles between
her bloody thighs. This woman had sung me lullabies, changed my
diapers, and given me suckle from her stretch-marked breasts. This
woman had delivered me to my earliest and most terrible enemy and
then absolved herself through voluntary amnesia. Her weakness paved
the road of my childhood with blood and bruises. Her love had
covered up my gravest sin like flowers smothering a coffin.

She spread her arms, like a crippled bat
trying to take flight. Her robe fell open, revealing her scrawny,
pink nakedness.

"Come here and give Mommy a big hug," she
said.

CHAPTER TEN

No love is more sacred than that between
mother and son. All maternal kinships should resemble a Renaissance
painting of Madonna and Child. The mother with her milk-white skin
and healthy blush of rose at her cheeks, gazing lovingly down at
the plump-faced infant who is wearing a cherubic smile. An ideal
captured in oil, preferably with dramatic clouds etched overhead,
funneling holy light. But here, in this true illusion of life,
there is no such graceful light and there are no virginal
births.

A black rage rolled over me. I wanted to
reach across the table and pull Mother out of her filth, slap her
across the face until I drove out whatever demons she harbored. But
I knew the demons. I had inherited them and they walked the halls
of my Bone House.

The rage passed, and as the dark veil
dissolved, I saw her as she really was, weak and scared and
self-deluded. She sought any escape she could find and was willing
to go to obscene extremes for distraction. She was to be pitied,
not hated.

The one who was to be hated was beyond the
reach of retribution. If there was blame, it lay with him. He had
done irreparable damage, plowed mad furrows in the fields of our
lives and sown salt, then had escaped into death. I could only hope
there was a hell, or somewhere even more deserving of his wretched
citizenship.

"Mother," I said, brushing her wiry, unkempt
hair away from her waxen forehead. "You don't have to do this."

She began crying. I would have thought those
eyes had been wrung dry long ago, like a bed sheet twisted in the
hands of an impassive washwoman. But crystal tears collected in
their corners, glistening around the rims before beginning their
slow, sad journey down her cheeks. Emotions always disgusted me,
whether my own or another’s.

"...not your fault...," she said, between
sobs. "My poor baby...it's not your fault."

"Shh, it's okay now. You've just had a little
too much to drink. Everything will be okay."

"I'm so sorry...for everything."

I held her by the chin and wiped her face
with the dirty cloth of my shirtsleeve. She reached for the
mayonnaise jar she used for a tumbler, her fingertips smearing
fresh prints on the greasy glass. She was no longer bothering with
ice cubes. Ice only slowed her descent into oblivion. Watered-down
suicide.

"I had to get away, Mother. After everything
else, at least we had each other. But even that turned bad. We're
still in his shadow."

"I just get so lonely sometimes." Her tears
gave out, and glass reclaimed her eyes.

"I do, too. I miss you, Mother."

"Then come back."

"You know I can't."

I began clearing the dishes off the table. I
carried a stack of plates over to the sink, my back turned to her.
The world beyond the window was a place of sky and sunshine, a
landscape that couldn't possibly house such miseries as ours. On
the sidewalk, two girls played hopscotch, taking turns skipping
through blue-chalked squares.

"It can be like before...like, you know...all
of it."

"Never again. Not after that."

"But it happened."

"That wasn't us. That couldn't have been
us."

"How can you say that? You were there," she
said. Her drunkenness had turned cold, her voice arctic.

"Because I
had
to be," I said,
unwilling to face her. "Do you think I knew what was happening? I
was only a child."

"But not innocent."

"Nobody's innocent."

I could hear the clink of glass and a
gurgling sound as she refilled her drink. She took an audible gulp.
Her throat must have been stripped of all sensation by her
prolonged abuse. Her sibilants mushed with a smooth familiarity, as
if she had delivered this soliloquy to the uncaring air many
times.

"He was your father. No matter what else,
that can't be changed. You're the flesh of his flesh. And they say
blood runs thick. Blood runs thicker than water."

I rattled the dishes and turned on the faucet
full force, trying to drown out her damning words.

"Thicker than water," she repeated, softly,
but I could hear her even over the roaring in my ears. I ran out of
the kitchen. The thunderstorm of rage was returning, stretching
from a closet deep inside my Bone House, widening like the flat
Midwestern horizon outside.

It was Little Hitler, the bastard child of
night, the one I thought was extinct, his mission accomplished. His
return was triumphant and cruel as he wallowed in my misfortune and
savored the lemony sting of my pain. He brought with him his
baggage of paranoia and deceit, as well as memories I hoped had
been forever buried. He had desecrated that grave of time gone by,
unearthing my most horrible moment and dragging its skeleton
through the halls of my head.

"No, no, no!" I shouted, pressing my hands
against my temples, trying to physically squeeze Little Hitler
out.

Mother thought I was yelling at her. I could
hear her stirring, trying to flog her wasted leg muscles into
standing up.

My spasms eased and light returned. I stood
on the threshold of my room and the threshold of my past. I found
myself sagging against the door jamb. The memory had been beaten
down, reinterred. Little Hitler was gone.

I went into my room. It was like entering the
museum of someone else's life. Exhibit A: My old desk, where I had
built model cars, the top pitted where spilled glue had eaten
through the polyurethane finish. Exhibit B: A poster of The
Beatles, curling at the corners, taped at the creases where the
paper had split with age. John, Paul, George, and Ringo looked down
like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Exhibit C: My
pine-slatted bed, the blankets spread but wrinkled, where I had
knelt in prayer, where I had cuddled teddy bears, where Mother had
told me good-night stories, where boots had walked, where Mister
Milktoast sobbed, where me and Mother had...

Where monsters had crawled from the darkened
space beneath, where horrors real and imagined had transpired.

The room was just as I had left it. I was
afraid Mother might have begun sleeping there, to dream of flesh
and meadows, spring rain and sin, with my scent on the pillow. But
the bedspread was the same one that had been there when I had moved
out, and it was unstained.

I looked out the window above my desk. It was
partially open, and a small breeze played through the dingy
curtains. Many times I had gazed at this scene. The garage next
door was unchanged, still flaking battleship-gray paint from its
cinder-block walls. The lot was strewn with junk cars, engines that
had been raped and tossed aside, rusting metal scraps that covered
the ground like red bones. The smell of gasoline and grease clogged
the air around the building. The occasional ringing of a tool
falling on the concrete floor mixed with revving motors and the
rowdy voices of mechanics in a symphony of atonal masculinity.

To the rear of the garage was a sliver of the
street, and beyond that, a scraggly patch of woods. A gap had been
cut through the trees by the power company, the trimmed precision
out of place in that forlorn foothold of nature. I had played in
those woods as a child, blissful stolen hours away from home with
Mister Milktoast as my only company.

At the end of the garage lot was the old dog
pen I had used as a secret clubhouse. Where I had kissed Sally
Bakken in my tenth year. Where I had uncrossed my heart and risked
death. Now honeysuckle vines choked the fence, and the roof of the
doghouse had collapsed under the weight of tireless rot.

In the distance, a cornfield stood, waving
young starchy arms. The wind cut over the tops of the stalks and
pressed out gentle patterns that resembled ocean waves searching
for a shore. Many times I had sailed away in my mind, across that
imaginary green sea and over the horizon, to a land where little
boys were never punished.

I went to the closet. My clothes hung there
as if from gallows. The person who had worn them had been
prosecuted for his crimes. Not in the halls of human justice, but
in the highest court. Judgment had been passed, with appeal denied.
Richard Allen Coldiron was condemned to serve a life sentence as
himself.

I turned and walked out of the room, leaving
it to gather cobwebs and cracks.

Mother was halfway through her drink when I
entered into the kitchen. Flies buzzed around her head, frantic now
that their food supply had disappeared. One landed on Mother's nose
and fiddled its front legs as if washing up before dinner. She
didn't notice, and it drank freely of her toxic sweat.

"You're mad at me, aren't you?" Her voice was
cracked and coarse.

"No," I said. "I don't care enough to be
mad."

"Why don't you sit down and tell me about
what's going on in your life? Talk to your Mom?"

"There's nothing to say."

"You know how hard I tried to change."

"People never change."

"I
need
to drink. It's the only way I
can forget. But it only works once in a while."

"That's good for you, but what about me?"

"What about you?" She finally noticed the fly
and brushed it away.

"Don't you think I'm trying to forget, too?
And that coming back just makes it harder? Why do you think I
left?"

"Because of that...and the drinking?"

"You make me sick, Mother. Just look at
yourself. You can't even make it to the sink to vomit. How much
longer before you can't get to the bathroom?"

"But you love me," she said, giving me that
crooked, watery smile.

"Because I
have
to."

"Is Mommy pretty?"

People never changed. They only got
worse.

"Ask the mirror.” I wished I hadn't come. I
wished I had never left. I wished.

I turned at the door and looked back at her.
She was a well-known stranger, a familiar alien. We had been
through so much together. Too much to ever be close again.

"When are you coming back?" she said, running
her trembling, knotty finger over the rim of her jar. Mercifully,
she had drawn her robe so that it once again covered her chest.

"I'll be back. But not to stay."

"Do you need money?"

"I'm fine."

"You be good now." Her voice had taken on a
faraway quality, as if she were speaking to the golden boy I had
never been. That I had never been allowed to be.

I looked back a final time as I walked out
into the unforgiving sun. Mother's eyes were like searchlights,
their wavery beams crawling across the floor, looking for an
undrained bottle. She had already forgotten I had been there. She
had boarded her ship. She was sailing across a sea of her own, to a
land where mothers never had to say they were sorry.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I drove back to the football field to meet
Virginia. Despite the bright beauty of the spring evening, and what
little snatches of fragrant blossom I caught among the smell of
burning motor oil, I found no peace in nature. The encounter with
Mother lingered, leaving an acrid aftertaste. I negotiated the
straight flat streets as if I were being pulled along by an outside
power, like reluctant electricity drawn through a circuit.

Virginia was waiting when I got there, arms
folded, leaning against her car. I was cheered by the sight of her
expressive face. She had selected navy blue slacks in place of her
camouflage. The fabric clung tightly to her flesh, showing the
sleek promise of her curves. I felt underdressed since I had on a
twice-worn red flannel shirt and blue jeans hardened with overuse.
But she was wearing her brazen leather jacket and her usual
arrogant pout, so I decided maybe not much had changed.

She grinned at me. I don't know if I was
openly ogling her or if my mind was away, back in the hellhole of
Mother's apartment. I caught myself and adopted my role as the
Poet, putting on my subliminal smile. Even without giving my face
over to the people in the Bone House, I had learned to fake it.

I pulled my car up beside hers. We got in her
Mitsubishi and looked across the handbrake at each other.

"Where to now?" she asked, leaning back and
stiff-arming the wheel like a race-car driver.

"Let's just get out of here," I said.

I was replaying the scene with Mother in my
head, and I had to let that episode fade to gray before I could
relax. I stared through the windshield as we went across the
parking lot and down the black ribbon of asphalt. Virginia must
have thought I was being reflective, thinking deep poetic thoughts.
End the line with whatever rhymes with “fake.”

She hadn't lied about her craving for speed,
because as soon as we hit the long stretches of road that were
lined with nothing but cornfield and flood ditch, she bottomed out
the gas pedal. We were doing over a hundred miles an hour, a black
bullet shot from an aimless gun, hurtling through the Iowa evening.
I looked out the passenger-side window and everything was a green
blur, and farther out was the fixed point of the horizon, as if we
were at rest and the Earth revolving under us at an insane speed.
At any moment, the world would lose its integrity, disintegrate
into pieces, and gravity would fail, flinging us into the vast
emptiness of space.