The Year My Mother Came Back (6 page)

I feel momentarily crushed, on Jennifer's behalf as well as my own.
“A rare delight when school began—Alice is in kindergarten.”
She couldn't wait to get me out of the house; she was undone by baby Jennifer's insatiable exploring.

And yet, why wouldn't she be? Haven't I always been the same with my daughters? From Julia's first days of preschool, I craved those precious child-free hours from nine a.m. to three p.m. when I could get back to my work, focus on the stuff of my adult life that was important to me. That's exactly how I felt this morning, immensely relieved that both girls were back at school and I finally had the apartment to myself.

But when I hear my mother's 1959 sigh of relief, from this time capsule of letters, I feel a sharp jab, a remembered wound, an unrelieved longing: me wanting my mother more than she wanted me.

Would I have preferred for her to conform to the fifties paradigm of a housewife and mother, single-mindedly dedicated to her children? Not now, now that I know better. And did that paradigm even exist outside of our black-and-white television set, or was it a fabrication designed to dissuade our mothers from “going out into the world”? But when I was a little kid, brought up on
Leave it to Beaver
sitcom family values, then yeah, sure, it seemed like the way things should be.

“What should we get Mommy for Mother's Day?” Dad asked my sisters and me.

“How about a brand-new broom and dustpan?”

“Yeah, a brand-new broom and dustpan,” we all agreed. As soon as we got home from the store, we ran into the kitchen where Mom was preparing lunch. “Happy Mother's Day!” we shouted, handing her the gift—the unwrapped broom and dustpan, tied together at the neck with a red ribbon.

She stared at it for a moment, let it drop loudly to the floor, and stormed out of the room in disgust. There was no laugh track to our blunder. We stared dumbly at the broom and dustpan on the floor, a collective thought bubble of slow recognition forming over our four heads.

My fever is down. The infection is finally over.

Michael and I make love that night. I ask him to try not to touch my left breast, which is still sore. He lavishes attention on my right breast, to compensate. I love that.

“Do you mind the scar, Michael?”

“I don't notice it.”

I love that, too.

I start radiation next week. I won't need chemo, and that's a huge relief.

After Michael falls asleep, I stand naked in front of the bedroom mirror. My left breast, deflated by surgery, then inflated by infection, is back to its original size. The scar is healed, barely visible. I feel good. I'm grateful my body wasn't scarred by cancer, the way my mother's was. I wonder if my daughters worried about that. Did they have a vision of me disfigured by surgery? I shudder, suddenly asking myself, What if my daughters' beautiful bodies were some day ravaged by disease? What if Eliana's leg-lengthening surgery injures rather than heals her?

I've never told my girls what my mother went through.

I picture my mother, naked. Her breasts are gone. Her bony chest is crisscrossed with long, red scars, like uneven train tracks. Her armpits are carved out, where the lymph nodes were removed. Her face is etched with sadness, anger, resentment, and envy. That's how she looked at me—after her surgery, after my loving and exuberant mother was replaced by a gloomy, gray ghost of herself. These are the parts that frightened me when I was a teenager and made me hate her, the parts I've always tried to forget. When I was twelve and just starting to develop, Mom's damaged body terrified me. When I picture her today, her scarred body looks heroic, sad but strangely beautiful. Now, I wish I could make amends for shutting her out.

THE MUSICIANS SIT
on the Persian rug covering the wide window seat. The long-necked, turbaned sitar player improvises a mind-bogglingly complex raga on his long-necked instrument, which he balances between his left foot and right knee; while the compact, black-haired tabla player extracts intricate rhythms from his two drums, varying the pitch with the heel of his hand.

My mother and I sit at a table near the duo, enthralled by the music and by the plates of food passing by. Mom is ancient, white-haired, wrinkled and bony, but surprisingly animated. She's wearing a white nightgown and she's barefoot, which seems to fit in at this restaurant—maybe because the musicians are also barefoot and dressed in white. The slim young waiter glides as if on wheels, delivering aromatic dishes to other customers—steamy curries, sizzling tandoori platters, deep-fried pakoras, and puffy golden poori bread. Invisible tendrils of coriander, cumin, cloves, and cinnamon waft by our table. Each intoxicating spice has a particular sound and a color — a note that harmonizes with the music and a hue that blends with the red and marigold walls, the purple upholstery, the copper statues of Hindu gods.

“The music is so glorious, I feel guilty talking,” my mother whispers, leaning across the table. “Mmmm, everything looks and smells so delicious. I love this restaurant.”

“We came here once, a long time ago.”

“Did we? I don't remember. It's all a blur.”

“Yeah . . . Mom, there's so much I want to tell you.”

“Well, here I am,” she says, and in slow motion she stands up and extends her arms, like an eagle spreading her wings—or maybe a scrawny angel. The musicians match her tempo and slow down the music as she opens herself up, as if this is meant to be a dance accompanied by tabla and sitar. The gown's flimsy fabric reveals the angular contours of her rib cage and the loose skin drooping from her bony arms. “Here I am, Honeylamb. This is your chance to tell me anything.”

Then she drops into her chair, exhausted by the effort. Slumped over, she rests her arms on the table and catches her breath. The musicians pick up the tempo, and she perks up.

“Mom, I wish that you could have met my daughters, and my husband—and that they could have met you.”

“Oh, goodness, yes, it's a shame we never met.” She sits straighter. “From everything I've observed, my granddaughters are amazing girls, so different, one from the other, and yet both of them smart and kind and imaginative and brave—truly courageous, each in her own way. And Michael. You chose a wonderful man, Sweetheart, which is a laudable triumph. He's one of the good ones. A gem.”

“Wow, I'm glad you think so. You didn't like
any
of my boyfriends.”

“That was then. I'm sure I wasn't easy to live with.”

“No. I guess I wasn't, either.”

“Nope. Now where did that waiter go? I'm starving.”

“I'm sorry, Mom, for so many things.”

“Well, choose one thing and get it over with, Sweetheart, so we can order dinner.”

“I'm sorry we gave you that stupid broom and dustpan on Mother's Day.”

PART 2

“It's not true, yes it's true, it's true and it's not true, there is silence and there is not silence, there is no one and there is someone, nothing prevents anything.”

—
SAMUEL BECKETT
,
Stories and Texts for Nothing

ONE

“I loved having radiation,” says Aunt Phyllis, my father's sister, my fairy godmother, my good luck charm, my surrogate mom—the optimist I wish I could be.

“I don't believe you, Phyl. Nobody loves radiation.”

“Well,
I
did! Listen to me, dahling. It was almost thirty years ago, but I'll never forget. Arthur had just died, and I was getting used to being alone for the first time in my life. When my doctor told me I would have to go every day for six weeks, I thought I'd be bored to death. So I decided to add a little variety. I drove to the hospital a different route every day. It was like seeing my neighborhood for the first time. The leaves were changing color. Oh, it was the most beautiful fall. I know it sounds crazy, Alice, but I loved radiation. I missed it when it was over.”

“That's impossible. Nobody misses radiation.”

“
I
did. I loved the whole experience.”

I keep Phyllis's reminiscence as a mantra. As if I could ever love it. But who knows.

“YOU'LL START MONDAY,”
says Dr. Sofia Giordano, my elegant and erudite radiologist, in a lilting Italian accent. “Thirty sessions, five days a week for six weeks. Today, we design your treatment plan.”

The technician applies permanent tattoos to my back —four small black dots that I'll have for the rest of my life — and aligns a laser grid to the dots to capture 3-D images. Before allowing me to move, she marks the position of my tumor with a big X, drawn with blue magic marker.

“Don't wash off the X. It has to last the weekend.”

X Marks the Spot. Like a pirate's treasure map. Or an executioner's document. Or my mother's lullaby.
X marks the spot, with a dot, dot, dot.

IT'S MY FIRST
day. The hour-long commute begins with a rush-hour subway from Seventy-second Street, mashed into a standing-room-only train, followed by the walk west through the crush of midtown crowds. I pause outside the NYU Cancer Institute on Thirty-fourth Street and Third Avenue. Radiation scares me. My instinct is to “duck and cover,” to hide under a desk like we did in kindergarten in 1959, in the deluded belief that this would protect us from radioactive fallout, should an atomic bomb explode in the vicinity of our classroom. In the waiting room, surrounded by fellow cancer patients—my new peers—I try to channel Aunt Phyllis's optimism: My cancer is stage zero and completely curable. I'm incredibly lucky. (Oops, don't tempt the Evil Eye.
Tuh, tuh, tuh!
)

“My name is Jamal,” says a velvety and masculine, Caribbean-accented voice, rousing me from my prayer of gratitude. “This is Reggie. You can come in now.”

Jamal is from Barbados, Reggie is from Brooklyn. Jamal is tall and muscled, Reggie is short and slight. They are both dark-skinned and handsome. I like these guys. I take off my robe and lie face down on a foam mattress with a hole cut out for my left breast to hang down, so that my heart and lung will be out of the line of fire when I'm nuked. I'm surprisingly unselfconscious about being naked from the waist up. The mattress is lined with the softest cotton sheets. The room is chilly. Reggie covers me with a warmed sheet. Jamal lays a heated blanket over my feet. Nice.

“Just relax,” says Jamal. “Don't try to help us position you.”

Reggie and Jamal move me incrementally right and left, gently pushing and pulling my shoulders, arms, waist, back, ribs. Like a minimal massage, sort of sexy. I ask myself whether it's ethical to sexually enjoy being handled by these gorgeous and (I assume) straight guys. Under the circumstances, why not enjoy the absurd sensuality of it?

“Don't move until we say so,” says Reggie, smoothing the sheet over my shoulders.

Reggie and Jamal close the padded door behind them.

“Stay absolutely still for ten minutes,” says Jamal over the loudspeaker. “Radiation is commencing.”

THE WALLS ARE
gray, the lights are dim. A Handel symphony is barely audible over the fan and the intermittent electronic beeps and drones. I survey the room as much as I can with my left cheek pressed to the mattress.

The radiation machine is a sleek robot, about seven feet tall, steely gray curves. A pivoting metal arm is the only movement in the room, precisely aiming radiation beams from many directions. It circles above me, pauses; circles to the right of me, pauses; circles below me, pauses; circles to my left, pauses. “Do not breathe so deeply,” says Jamal over the speaker. “It makes your chest rise and fall too much, and the radiation will miss its mark. Just breathe normally.”

Breathing deeply is normal for me—thanks to all those years of clarinet lessons in my youth and yoga classes as an adult—so it's an effort to
not
breathe deeply. Shallow breathing does not feel normal. I have to Zen the anti-Zen-ness of it.

Ten minutes is a long time to stay absolutely still.

A loose hair tickles my nose each time I inhale and exhale. For each one of six hundred seconds, it flutters over my nostril, and all I can think about is the hair, my itchy nose, and my fear of radiation, all of which conspire to make the minutes feel interminable. My back muscle seizes up.
Aarrgh.
Ouch. Itchy nose, sore back, itchy nose, sore back, nose, back, nose, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck . . .

“YOU MAY MOVE
about now, Ms. Cohen.”

HOW COULD AUNT
Phyllis have loved radiation?

What would Phyllis do? She took a different route to her radiation treatments every morning, and watched the leaves change color. I'll give it a try.

THE NEXT DAY,
I drop Eliana off at school before my appointment. Her friend Jojo runs up to her, and they skip into the building, arms linked, whispering and giggling. I forego the subway, walk to Central Park, and enter the Ramble, a serenely beautiful wooded area with winding paths, tall boulders, and hidden ponds. The traffic noise drops away. My ears ring in this unaccustomed quiet. Bird calls, the wind rustling through branches, a squirrel spiraling rapidly down a tree. The leaves are just beginning to change. A bright red cardinal streaks by. I breathe deeply, inhaling the smell of dry leaves and crisp fall air. I didn't realize I'd been so nature-deprived. When I arrive at my appointment, my body is warm, perspiring, loosened up. My lungs have had an expansive hour to limber up for their daily ten-minute regime of shallow breathing.

I LIE STILL,
head turned to the right, left cheek on the sheet. With my peripheral vision, I follow the ascent of the metal arm of the radiation machine, making her silent arabesque, circling me in her strange dance. The bed itself now approaches the machine, as if she were an enormous octopus, pulling me toward her with her one long tentacle, to hold me in her maternal embrace, or to squeeze the life out of me. I soften my vision, listen to my breath, the fan, the mechanical beeps, a Mozart string quartet.

Time stands still.

Beep, beep, beep.

Mom. Mommy. Louise. She's here.

I tried so hard not to think about her, for such a long time. Now she's right in front of my eyes. I can't even turn my head to look away; I'm not allowed to move for ten minutes. My young, beautiful mother is standing beside the radiation bed, so close to me that I feel the warmth radiating from her body and her breath on my face—more vivid and tangible than any flashback.

Memories flood into the space left empty for thirty years. I don't resist. I want my mother with me. At this moment I don't need to be a mother, I just want to be a daughter. I need her right now. For the first time in decades, I want to remember everything about her. She holds out her hand. I reach for her, sliding my fingers over the threshold of her palm. With a crackle of electricity, her hand envelopes mine, and we tumble and swirl in a rush and roar of wind, traveling out of the room and back in time.

I held Mommy's hand, trying to keep up with her. I was five years old.

“Come with me, Alice.”

Madeline had to stay home to take care of Jennifer, who was only two. Campaigning for Civil Rights with Mom was a privilege. This was my first time. I felt my face blush. I wanted her to be proud of me. We went door to door. It was a warm summer evening, before dinnertime and the evening news, and she walked fast in her clippity cloppity high heels.

Knock knock knock.

We waited outside the door. I looked up at my mother. She smiled at me and squeezed my hand. She looked like a movie star, with red lips and shiny black curls, wearing the blue dress Daddy gave her on her birthday, the one he said gave her a good figure. She looked like Jackie Kennedy, from on television, except Mom was in color.

Knock knock knock.

“Oh, it's you. Mrs.
Cohen.
What do you want?” said a man, opening the door halfway.

“Would you sign this petition and support antisegregation legisla—”

Bang!
Door slammed in Mom's face. Why did he do that? It was rude.

She gripped my hand tighter. “C'mon, Alice.” She pulled me faster than before. “This is important work, Sweetheart.” The way she said that made me feel so special that I blushed again. We got to the next house on the block.

Knock knock knock.

“What do
you
want, Louise?” said a wife.

“Hi, Jeannie, how are you?” said my mother.

“Who is that?” called a man's voice, from deeper inside the house.

“It's Louise
Cohen,
” said the wife.

I didn't like the way the neighbors said
Cohen.

“She's here with her petition again. What should I do?”

“Tell her we're not interested,” said the husband's voice.

“Why aren't they interested?” I asked, when the door had closed.

“I don't know,” she said, her voice grumpy.

At the next house, a girl from my school peeked from behind her mother's legs. I was too shy to say hi or anything in the seconds before the door was shut.

One woman said, “Sure, Louise, sign me up. I don't know too much about it, but I'll sign,” and she did, and she and Mom chatted for a while. I was glad she signed it and talked with my mom, even though her cigarette was smelly. Mom shook her head no at me for holding my nose, and it was time to leave.

At the next house, the word “Jew” snaked through the door in a hissing whisper, in the millisecond before it slammed.

And so on, to all the doors around the block.

Then we walked back to our house on Wilbur Avenue. Even though we had only gone around our block, it felt like we'd traveled a long way. I was tired. So was she, I could tell.

“Don't ever give up, Sweetheart,” she said when we got home, kneeling down so she was eye level with me, putting both hands on my shoulders. “Even when it's frustrating, you have to speak up for what you believe is right.”

“Okay, Mom.” I liked it when she looked me in the eye and said serious things to me, stuff I'd have to remember forever and ever.

Then I ran into the living room to play with my sisters and Amanda the Cat. Madeline was practicing guitar, so I went outside with Jennifer, who was finally old enough to be fun to play with. We ran around in the backyard, and I pushed her on the swing. Kevin from across the street sneaked up on us and called her “Baby, Baby,” in a mean voice, which made her cry, so I shouted, “When you're two, you're not a baby anymore, dummy!” Somehow, that shut Kevin up and he slunk away. Jennifer stopped crying and looked up at me like I was her hero.

When my father came home from work, Madeline and Jennifer and I ran to greet him. Hugs all around, Daddy swinging us in the air, youngest to oldest. My mom brought in a plate of crackers and cheddar cheese, celery and carrots and V8 juice, and we had to be quiet while Daddy smoked a cigar and watched the evening news, and Mom made dinner. The cigar smelled yucky, but we weren't allowed to tell him that.

We sat down to eat baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and creamed spinach. Mommy used big words to tell Daddy about her day, about the class she taught at City University. I didn't understand the words,
“Designation of class . . . A mosaic of identities . . . The insulation of life in suburbia . . . ,”
but the overall effect was like listening to music. “
Juxtaposition of wealth and poverty . . .”
Shimmering syllables streamed from her mouth, like notes and melodies, “
An intricate and precise patterning . . .”
as fast as the rippling Chopin arpeggios Daddy played on the piano.

She told him about her research for the paper she was writing.
“The unwritten covenants of discrimination . . . A conspiracy of silent acceptance . . .”
Daddy, who loved his dinner, answered while chewing, with approving grunts, “Unh. Mmm,” and some medium-sized words, “Great, Louise. That's marvelous.” But she did most of the talking.
“Myriad municipalities . . . Economic and color barricades around their boundaries . . . Varying strata of the community . . . Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Negroes . . .”