Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag! (16 page)

I think about you when a pregnant mouse escapes who was on a fertility drug and is expecting multiple births in my woodwork any minute. I'm a desperate woman, Jane, living in an atmosphere seen only in a bus station rest room.

I want your job!

I want to sit on a hillside and know that the phone won't ring the moment I sit down.

The more I watch my family, the more nonthreatening and civilized baboons seem. Obviously you have chosen the easy way out. I'll be all right in a few weeks. I always bounce back, but if I were you I'd look over my shoulder.

I want your job, Vanna White. What a breeze. You sleep late, go to the studio, go into makeup, and then for thirty minutes, watch people spin a Wheel of Fortune. You don't have to do anything but smile and flip over vowels and consonants.

You don't have to fight traffic or defrost frozen hamburger in the dry cycle of the dishwasher or wear wet panty hose. You don't even have to make change when someone buys a vowel. Why couldn't I have fallen into something like that?

Charles Kuralt's job On the Road wouldn't be bad to take either. Ride along in an air-conditioned van, see a guy by the side of the road whittling famous presidents out of peanut shells, stop the van, and “do” twenty minutes. Call it a day and take off the next morning to find another subject.

Or maybe I'd like a job like hairdresser to Tina Turner, Grace Jones, and Cyndi Lauper. I could sit around and watch soaps and eat chocolate, and then once every six months they'd call for me and I'd whip out a can of spray paint or shellac and my job would be done for another six months.

I want your job, Lady Liberty. All you have to do is schlep around in a caftan; sporting upper arms that could fan Brazil, and looking like you've eaten every pigeon that came within arm's length.

You have a 35-foot waist, a 3-foot mouth, and an arm that holds seven tourists on a curved stairway, and no one says to you, “Yes, but she's tall.”

But face it, I've got a job. A job that after thirty years leaves me unsure of myself, fraught with frustration, and no end in sight. I don't have the guts of Mayor Koch of New York to say, “How am I doin'?”

Sometimes, I dare to look back and think about what I would have done differently. I always felt I should have been younger when the kids were born ... about twelve or so. I'd have had more stamina and that's an age where everything is funny. The kids, in retrospect, should have been older. Maybe the bugs in their plumbing could have been worked out and they could communicate once in awhile.

I talked too much. I had good material, but I used it indiscriminately. Every hour I said, “Why don't you grow up?” and when they did, I accused them of wanting to be an adult too fast.

I never really looked at them. When I looked at their mouths, I saw dirt around them. When I looked at their noses, I saw them running. When I looked at their eyes, I saw them open when they should have been closed. When I saw their hair, it needed combing or cutting. I never really looked at the whole face without offering some advice.

For over twenty years, I invited myself into their lives. I put sweaters on them when I was cold, removed blankets from their beds when I was hot. I fed them when I was hungry and put them to bed when I was tired. I put them on diets when I was fat. I car-pooled them when I felt the distance was too far for me to walk. Then I told them they took a lot of my time.

I never realized as I dedicated my life to ring-around-the-collar that cleanliness is riot next to godliness ... children are.

But oh Jane, Vanna, Charles, and Miss Liberty ... some days I'd kill tor your jobs.

And this is one of them.

CAN WE TALK?

Saturday: 11 p.m.

I paused at the door of the guest room to see what my daughter was watching on TV. On the small screen, a girl with a mouth like Emmett Kelly and electric hair rested her head on the chest of a man sleeping next to her. She traced circular 8's in the hair on his chest. He awakened and kissed her.

“I love you,” she whispered, “but I know so little about you.” . /

“What do you want to know?” he breathed.

“What's your last name?”

“Chemowsky.”

“Is that Polish?” she asked brightly.

It was the usual story of instant sex ... just add a bed and stir. “Don't people get married anymore?” I asked.

“Not if you want to keep your ratings,” she said.

“Are you saying that marriage can't pull a 30 share on TV? That a couple can't hold something together for thirteen weeks without being canceled?”

“I'm saying marriage isn't particularly dramatic, intoxicating, passionate, or riveting.”

“I suppose your father and I are just hanging on for the social security checks.”

“Mother, I do not want to have this conversation again.”

“I just want to know why the resistance to marriage.”

“There is more to life than washing socks and snapping beans,” she said. “Women have to know who they are and have a job that's fulfilling before they settle down. God, even Barbie's gone corporate!”

“Barbie as in Ken, two-inch bust, who never has to worry about hair color, who just removes her head?”

“That's the one,” she said, flipping off the TV set. “It's not easy for a forty-eight-year-old woman to enter the job market.”

“Barbie is forty-eight years old!”

“With no thoughts of getting married. Don't look so shocked, Mother, what did you think she and Ken were doing in that cardboard car under the bed ... playing John Denver records?”

“Not Barbie.”

“If you took the rubber band off her hair, her face would fall to her knees.”

“There's no need to be cruel. I've never asked a lot of my children. Just that they get married and make me a mother-in-law and a grandmother ... in that order.”

“You wouldn't like it,” she said. “I hear being a mother-in-law is overrated. Trust me, she rides to the church in the front seat with her son and rides home in another car. She's in the front row at the wedding and in the kitchen at the reception.”

“I don't believe it.”

“And the only time she gets the grandchild is when it is contagious or they can't get a regular sitter. Besides, it isn't easy anymore finding someone to get married to.”

“Then you have thought about it.”

“Not really. Only that in 1955, 2,073,719 boy babies were bom. Out of that number, 872,638 died in the war, in accidents or of natural causes, leaving 1,201,081. You still with me?” I nodded. “Since 10 percent get married and 5 percent get divorced, you can assume 15 percent of this total are marrying and divorcing one another, leaving 1,020,919. Homosexuals represent possibly 10 percent, bringing the eligibles down to 918,827. Of the little less than a million eligibles roaming around, 5 percent don't know their sign and don't even care. Another 5 percent are tied to their mothers by a food fixation. That leaves only 20 percent who are searching for a girl who will pick up their clothes, run their baths, burn her fingers shelling their three-minute eggs, run their errands, bear them a child every year, look like a fashion model, tend their needs when they are sick, and hold down a full-time job outside the home to make payments on their boat. Besides, Grandma has already been on my case. She said all I need is a nice personality and a sense of humor and they'll be standing in line at my front door.”

I couldn't believe Grandma was using that old chestnut on her granddaughter. She told me that too. I'm no dummy. When I was in school, I saw boys date girls with the personality of a leftover, but if she was stacked, she could get a date to take her to have her teeth cleaned.

Personality and sense of humor got to be a joke ... then it got to be a stigma. Every time someone was trying to palm off a girl who breathed through her mouth and had a nice tooth, they'd say, “She has a great personality.” Or when they were trying to set you up with a boy who raised earthworms and had a collection of Spanish dolls on his bed, they'd say, “He has a wonderful sense of humor.”

“Forget about Grandma and her personality and sense of humor,” I said. “You should be looking for a man who manufactures batteries.”

“I thought you wanted me to marry a doctor.”

“Marry a man who turns out batteries for a living and those rosebud lips of yours will never touch plastic again.”

“Oh please.”

“I'm telling you we've gone from the Stone Age to the Battery Age. You put four to six to eight batteries these days in everything from talking robots to electronic games to your toothbrush. Christmas cards run on batteries, so do home computers and cameras and dolls. No one wants anything anymore that sits there and does nothing.”

“You have just described three-fourths of the marriages in this country.”

“We're back to that,” I said. “Ifyou ask me, you're looking in all the wrong places. You're looking in bars and health clubs. Forget the bars. Everyone's happy in a bar and you can't trust health clubs. Everyone holds his stomach in. There is an alternative to the bar scene.”

“Which is?” she said suspiciously.

“The supermarket. I saw it on television. 'Singles Night' for men and women who want to meet people in a natural setting.”

“What's natural about squeezing the same avocado?”

“It sounds great. You just get a little name tag at the door, and the first couple to exchange phone numbers gets a free dinner someplace and then you play games.”

“What kind of games?”

“I don't know. Someone said they had bowling contests with toilet paper.”

“Be still my beating heart,” she said. “I'll bet every five minutes, the PA announces, 'Attention Shoppers. A real bargain on cupcakes this week. Mid-twenties, single, great shelf-life, check her out on aisle 3.' ”

“Why do you make everything sound so sexist?” I asked.

“Because it is. Somehow I can't see myself reaching for the same brand of wheat germ at the same time as the man of my dreams.”

“Are you still seeing that man you brought by last month?”

“He was shallow, insensitive, crude, chauvinistic, married, and bragged about setting fires.”

“So give him a chance. What about the other one who loved Barry Manilow?”

“He thought ERA stood for Earned Run Averages.”

“And the accountant who lived at home with his mother?”

“He thought ERA stood for a detergent.”

“Didn't your brother fix you up with a nice boy?”

“My brother's idea of nice boy came by in a pickup truck with a bumper sticker on it that said THIS MAY NOT BE THE MAYFLOWER, BUT YOUR DAUGHTER JUST CAME ACROSS IN IT.”

“That's a strange metaphor.”

“Mother, let's get down to the core of this conversation. Who just had another grandchild?”

“Mayva.”

“I knew it.”

The last thing I want is to hand down guilt to my children. I have never wanted to infringe on their personal lives or become a burden, but I just have difficulty in understanding why they want me to die from a broken heart leaving no grandchildren.

What am I asking? A small wedding, a few months to adjust, a full-term pregnancy, and then twenty years or so out of their lives to raise my grandchild. Is that expecting too much?

How am I supposed to feel when all of my contemporaries are whipping out billfolds containing sixty-five candid pictures of grandchildren and I'm still carrying around June Allyson and Dick Powell?

It isn't bad enough that I have to tromp through miles of toys at Christmas with these women and listen to how their little angels threw their arms around Grandma's neck and said, “I wub you mamaw.” I have to be reminded if my kids don't get off the dime—and soon—I will be the only grandmother who cannot feed herself.

Why are they putting off having a family? Could it be that we have frightened them with our perfection? Our imperfection? No, it's probably our perfection.

Maybe they figure they can't measure up to taking a birthday cake hot from the oven at 11:24 at night and stuffing it into a yawning mouth saying, “Eat! In thirty-six minutes, it won't be your birthday anymore.”

Maybe they can't face up to washing the dog in tomato juice when he encounters a skunk, sitting through a concert of battling French horns, or knocking out a wall in the dead of winter to make room for a ping-pong table that will be used only to throw books on after school.

I don't like to ... excuse the expression ... labor the issue, but in a few years I will be too old to be a grandmother. After all, there are certain duties that come with a grandchild. Timing is everything.

In a few years I will not have the strength to crawl around on the floor and play, baby-sit longer than two hours, or remember all the wisdom that made me such a wonderful mother.

“There's no reason in this world why my children shouldn't be miserable and tied down like the rest of us,” I blurted out.

My daughter shook her head and smiled. “That's it, isn't it?”

“I was only kidding.”

“Remember when we were kids and visited a home where there were velvet drapes, glass coffee tables, and white bathroom towels, and you always said, 'Why not? They don't have kids.' ”

“I didn't mean ...”

“When we turned the dining room into a fort to play and the place was a mess, you always came in and said, 'This house will never look like anything as long as I have kids.' And I remember that day when we were on a bus riding into town and a really neat car with a woman in a yellow chiffon scarf pulled up next to us. I looked at you, Mom, and I didn't have to be told how much you envied her. I could see it. I know you never thought we listened to anything you said, but I heard you that day ... loud and clear.”

She listened ... but what did she hear? Did she hear my tears the day she was born? What a pity because never, before or since, had I known such joy. For awhile, I couldn't even speak to anyone about it. I just played with her fingers and tried to memorize every feature of her face to savor the moment.

Did she hear my prayers the night of her asthma attack and I was threatened with the loss of something I could not bear to even think of living without?

Did she hear what was in my heart when she graduated and I sat in the darkness with tears in my eyes?

Did she hear my smugness the day on the bus when we looked at the woman in the new car? I was saying to myself, “Lady, I wouldn't trade you even for what I've got.”

She listened. But some emotions don't make a lot of noise. It's hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint—like a heartbeat. And pure love—why, some days it's so quiet, you don't even know it's there.

She looked at roe and said, “Don't worry. I'll manage.”

I said, “Kids! They make you crazy.”

I could have bitten my tongue in half.

ARE WE TALKING MEANINGFUL YET?

In the media room, through the miracle of VCR, my son was lying prone on the sofa watching Miami Vice.

I perched on the arm of a chair and listened.

“If you chill out, those low-life slime buckets will sew your fingers to the inside of your mouth. I'm telling you those maggots are lookin' for a big score at Cokeland, and if Customs doesn't like you, you're gonna get bake and shake. That means you're looking at a dime and a half mandatory, so if the deal's goin' down, play ball or do the time and let us in on the sweep. If it's White Christmas, you're dead meat anyway.”

I turned to my son. “Why do I have the idea that they're not talking about Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney?”

“Hey, I don't have to watch this now. I can save it until tomorrow,” he said, flipping it to another channel.

“No wonder we can't communicate,” I said. “We don't even speak the same language.”

“You've been saying that for years,” he said.

“It's true. I don't understand cop shows and I've never been able to understand what those people said on those records you played when you were home, but I'm sure it has to do with sex, violence, drugs, or Satanism.”

“What album is that and who is the artist?” he said showing some excitement.

“All of them. Of course, all I heard was oh, oh and be be and gimec and 1 wonyou, but you probably heard more.”

“I have a confession, Mom,” he said. “That's all I ever heard. If there was more to it, I couldn't understand 'em either.”

I didn't believe him for a moment. We're talking about a kid who watched a Michael Jackson video so many times he could predict the exact second his ears grew fur ... the same kid who kept a cockroach as a pet because he couldn't bear to kill it and yet watched six hours of graves being dug. He found entertainment in someone swinging from a guillotine, cars exploding, and a child eating an ice cream cone in an electric chair on MTV.

Something strange was moving on the TV set. “What's that?” I asked.

“It's called a Cyndi Lauper.”

“What happened to her hair? It looks like she slept on the same side so long she went bald.”

“She has it cut that way.”

“Is this a telethon to help her?”

“Mom! It's her new video. She's great.”

“Greater than Marge Fexter's niece who is visiting and would like you to take her to a movie?”

“I told you. I don't go out with anyone with a button-down oxford cloth blouse. That's gross.”

“You're just like your father. I can't communicate with him either.”

It's true. Men take forever to get to the point. Not me. When he walks into the house, I say right off, “Why do you want me dead?” and he knows right up front that he has set the thermostat back too far and it's so cold I'm afraid to fall asleep.

Like his sons, he answers every question with a question.

If I say, “How do you like my dress?” he answers, “Are they wearing that style this year?”

“How do you like my haircut?”

“Are you pleased with it?”

“What time do you want to go to dinner?”

“What time do you want to eat?”

Our vocabulary is different. When women ask, “What do you think of this casserole?” “interesting” is not the reaction we are looking for.

It makes me furious when men carry on an intensive conversation with a phantom voice for twenty minutes, responding with, “No! I don't believe it. What kind of numbers are we talking about? Wiped out, huh? How could this have happened? Keep me posted. Call me in the middle of the night if you have to.” And when he hangs up and you ask, “What was that all about?” he says, “Nothing.”

The TV once again grabbed my attention. I saw a singer who turned into a bumblebee and flew in pursuit of a girl. He appeared in her bath disguised as a piece of soap. He appeared in her hairbrush and in her medicine chest. He appeared as a bug crawling under the blanket. He scaled the Empire State Building, and from time to time his head left his body.

My son looked at me. “Now don't tell me you don't understand that!”

“I hope you won't take this the wrong way,” I said, “but I think you're very sick.”

“Mom, parents and their kids aren't supposed to communicate. It breaks down the hostility that we need to sustain our relationship. Remember how you and Dad were always on my case about my long hair?”

“We may have mentioned it a few times.”

“Mom! Every time you were supposed to give me the kiss of peace during Mass, you'd turn to me and say, 'Get a haircut, Weirdo.' ”

“Look, I didn't go through thirty-six hours of labor to give birth to Sandra Dee,” I said. “And that disgusting beard.”

“Everyone had a beard: Merlin the Magician, Doc of the Seven Dwarfs ... Santa Claus.”

“None of them had a mother,” I challenged.

“The point is,” he said, “do you remember what happened when I got my hair cut and shaved off my beard?”

I remembered. We became strangers. Our relationship had always been built on a firm ground of criticism. His long hair and his beard brought us together. From the moment he entered the door until the moment he left, we had rapport ... feelings ... threats ... and untold guilt.

I found myself planning our next encounter and thinking up creative ways to bring up the subject of his hair. I used to flash a picture of Dick Clark and say, “Now there's a boy who enjoys rock 'n' roll and you can still see his ears.”

Once on a vacation, it was all we talked about from Gary, Indiana, to Salt Lake City, Utah. It really made the time fly.

And then one night he came in and his hair was cut short and his beard was gone. We had nothing to say to one another. Nothing to nag about. Nothing to criticize. Nothing to communicate. Finally, his father said, “So, why didn't you tell us you were getting your hair cut?” We chewed on it for the rest of the evening. It was like old times.

Maybe he was right. Maybe parents didn't try hard enough to communicate with kids in their vernacular. I couldn't just come right out and ask him when he was going to find work, so I tried speaking his language.

“So, how are you coming at mainstreaming your talents?”

“Do you have a problem with that?” he asked.

“I thought there was something we could share.”

“There was an ad for a pizza delivery boy, but it wasn't meaningful.”

I smiled. “Fulfillment without gratification is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Boy, isn't that the truth,” he said. “Choices. That's what life is all about.”

“Have you tried networking?” I asked.

“Negative. There's no real esteem there, you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly,” I nodded. “Pressure without upward mobility is just another meaningless expression of verbal skills.”

“You really do understand, don't you?” he said.

“I have always said challenge without inadequacy is the social glue that holds us all together.”

He smiled and looked at me. “Boy, Mom, I never dreamed you knew how I felt. If we had had this dialogue ten years ago, maybe we would have had a better relationship with one another. I'm going to try what you said.”

I said good night.

God, I'd have given anything to know what I said.

GOOD NIGHT ... WHOEVER YOU ARE ...

I stopped by the bathroom and heard the water running and my son humming.

“Are you home?” I shouted, rapping on the door.

“What do you think?”

“Do you have towels?”

“Don't I always?”

“Did you lock the back door?”

“Was it unlocked?”

“What time do you leave tomorrow?”

“Do you have to know tonight?”

“You want to sleep in?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Good night!”

It was wonderful to know I could still communicate with my kids.

“SAY GOOD NIGHT, GRACIE"

Saturday: 11:30 p.m.

My husband was propped up in bed reading the paper when I closed the door softly.

“Where have you been?”

“Talking to the kids,” I said.

“So, how's everything with them?”

“Ask them yourself.”