My mother calls to me from downstairs. I’ve been holed up in my old bedroom for a few hours trying to tune this goddamn guitar. I can do it by ear, I know I can, but I can’t concentrate on it today. This guitar brings back some memories that I’d rather not think about and I almost wish that it wasn’t here. Between this and what happened between Amanda and me the other night it’s like drowning in, you know, nostalgia, and it’s painful.
I think, after the gig on Monday, I think I’m gonna check into Sunset House again. Just for a few days. I gotta get my head on straight about shit, and sittin’ in my mother’s house ain’t doin’ it for me. Sunset House will. It’ll at least gimme a place to be where everyone else is in the same boat. And it’s neutral, as my doctor’s like to say. Neutral. That really means boring.
I put the guitar back in its case. I don’t think that I’m gonna take it with me Monday night, I think it would be a mistake. The part of my life that this represents is over with. It was a weird moment, pretending to be someone else while I was already pretending to be someone else, all at the same time. I think it was just a part of the confusion I felt. I was bein’ ‘Backstreet AJ’, who was bein’ ‘Johnny’, and now, lookin’ back on it, it all seems stupid and way over the top. Not that I didn’t like bein’ Johnny, well, not so much bein’ him, but bein’ on my own out there. It was a lotta work carryin’ a show on my own, but it was a lotta fun, too. Only, I was at the peak of my career then, and I was with Amanda, and more things seemed to be in place than they are now. Even with the drinking and drugs. It wasn’t bad then, just on the way to bein’ bad.
Mom’s downstairs looking at this big old box with a pair of scissors in her hand.
“Open it,” I tell her, as if she wasn’t about to do that anyway. She slits the tape, pulls open the carton, and there’s a Styrofoam cooler inside. Okay. I’m baffled. But only until mom takes the lid off.
Oh, man. Shi.
“What’s this?” mom asks me.
“Food.” I can’t say anything else, I’m choking up. She sent stuff anyway. I drop to my knees and start unpacking the carton. Cookies. Tons of ‘em. And, shit, a lasagna, and chicken, the orange chicken. It’s all packaged up careful, ice cold, but ready for the oven.
“Food?”
“From Siobhan.”
“Who’s Siobhan?”
“You know, Shi. My housekeeper.” There’s an envelope tucked into the cooler, too, addressed to me. I open a bag of cookies, offer one to my mother, and then sit on the steps to read the letter.
It’s short.
Dear Alex,
I was puttering around the kitchen and found some things stuck in the back of
the fridge. In lieu of throwing it out, I’ve sent it to you. Eat at your own risk.
Shi
“Why is she sending you food?” mom asks me, and she’s kinda laughing, “did you tell her about my cooking?”
“Hunh? Oh, yeah, I did. I asked her if she could come out this weekend, but she can’t, so she sent all that,” I say, pointing to the box. The cookies are fantastic. The ones that she packed in my bag I ate on the trip out. All of them. Two dozen. I was about nauseous when I got off the plane.
“You asked her to come out here?”
“Yeah, to cook,” I say. I look at my mother. She looks right back at me. And we stare. We stare for a good long time. I know that this woman is lookin’ right into me, lookin’ right through me. There’s no real expression on her face and after a while it’s all just eyes anyway. I’m the one who looks away. As soon as I do I hear her sigh.
“To cook,” she says, every ounce of disbelief and distrust in her wrapped up in those two words.
Now, I have a coupla choices here. I could go into a long, long explanation about Siobhan. I can tell my mother that she’s a thirty-ish single mom who has been the best housekeeper I’ve ever had. That she’s been doin this great job of redecorating my home, that she’s been a friend to me in an emergency when my foot got fucked up. I can tell her all that. I can even tell her that it looks to me like Shi has made some friends already in the short time that she’s lived in California, and that some of those friends, well, one of them, I know through my work. And that because of that friendship, which is mostly Shi’s friendship with Mickie, I’m probably gonna go back to singin’, something I’ve been butt afraid to do for a long, long time. I could outline everything Shi’s done for me since I hired her, and all the good things that have come from it.
Or I could give her a short explanation. I have a housekeeper, she’s great, she sent me food when I asked her to because you, mom, like we all know, suck at cooking.
Or I could tell her that I have a new housekeeper that I really like, that I’d like to be, at the very least, a friend, and at the very most, a lover. I could tell her how exceptional I think Shi is, how wonderful, how, how lovely and, and loving, yeah, loving, ‘cause I see the way she loves her daughter and it’s a helluva lot more loving than a lot of parents I know. I could tell her how incredible this person is, how much I like bein’ around her and how much I want to be with her in every way I can think of.
None of these explanations are gonna get a real positive reaction.
“Yeah, I called her about how I wanted the guitar, and she had sent these cookies with me on the flight, see, and I teased her about sendin’ more. Then I thought, hey, she could just get on a plane with the guitar and come for the weekend with her daughter, and maybe, you know, cook for us this weekend. But it’s Mother’s Day, and that’s not good for her. Or us. I made us reservations, no, don’t ask, it’s a surprise. So she must’ve felt sorry for me and sent this. She sure don’t usually respond to my whining, so I’m blown away.” I get up and look into the box again. “You’re gonna love the chicken, I think it’s my favorite.”
And for fuckin’ once I’ve done it right. I’ve explained something the way it should be, without havin’ to tip my hand about my feelings and without havin’ to make up some big fat lie that’s gonna just come back at me later anyway. Mom’s smilin’ now, instead of lookin’ at me like I’ve lost my mind all over again.
I figure this is a good time to tell her a few more things.
“I wanna go back to Sunset House,” I say. I turn to her with a grin. “I need to put myself in for a coupla days. Nothin’ major, just, just to get away.”
And there it is, I can see how old my mom’s gotten. Her expression changes from one of amusement to one of concern in a heartbeat, and it ages her right before my eyes.
“Are you all right?” she asks, and her hands take mine.
“Ya know, I’m pretty okay, I just, I’m just confused about some things and I thought while I was here that it wouldn’t be a bad idea. I don’t have my regular meeting to go to here, or the shrinks, and, I dunno, I just thought that I’d like to hook up for a few days there. Maybe stay there a day or two. I mean, I’m here and no one has to know but you, and ...”
“When?”
“Next week, after Monday.”
“I’ll take you,” she says.
“You don’t...”
“If you want to go, I’ll take you, baby.”
And the next thing I know I’m in her arms.
She hugged me at the airport. The usual, standard, ‘good to see you’ hug. She smiled and I knew she was happy to see me, and that made me happy to see her, ‘cause I was holdin’ back about it. I knew I was holdin’ back ‘cause I didn’t want to be hurt by any weirdness there might be comin’ from her. But this hug, now, this hug is the same kind of hug I used to squirm out of when I was usin’ and pissed off at the world and she would try to hold me, to reach out to me, and I would just reject it. Completely reject it. It’s a hard hug, where her arms shake. It’s a lot like the way I hugged Shi good-bye, and when I recognize that, that choked up feeling starts to come back.
This hug doesn’t leave me with any choice but to hug mom back or reject her all over again. I can’t do that. I can’t send us backwards that far again. And I know, right at this moment, that to keep holdin’ a grudge over the e-mail thing is a very wrong thing to do. Even if it still hurts like hell to think about it. I guess mom has a coupla things in the back of her mind, too, that hurt like hell, and that I’m the person who put them there.
So I hug back just as hard.
“Okay, ma,” I say.
“I love you,” she says, and the words are harsh and fierce comin’ outta her mouth, but they’re only a whisper, too.
And it sounds so true to me, it finally sounds so completely true, that everything I’ve been holdin’ in, holdin’ back, spills up and outta me. I didn’t even know I WAS holdin’ anything in, I thought that I had let so much go and now I know that’s not true because I’m bawlin’ on my mother’s shoulder like a kid and she’s cryin’, too. And I know that I needed to be back here, to come back here and have this moment no matter how embarrassing and painful and fucked up it is. I had to, or it was never gonna be right with mom, and even though I thought that I could live with everything bein’ up in the air between us, live with my anger, and her anger, I can’t.
I can’t.
I need for this to be ‘right’, kinda like I need things to be ‘right’ with me and Amanda. Maybe not great, definitely not perfect, but ‘right’.
I’m finally glad that I came back to Florida.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is this Siobhan?”
“Yes.” I don’t recognize the voice on the phone, although the caller ID reads a number I know. In an instant, I realize who’s on the other end of the line.
“This is Denise McLean, A.J.’s mom.”
“Hello.”
“I just wanted to call and thank you for the package you sent today. A.J. and I had the chicken and it was just fantastic.”
“Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it.” I’m slightly amused that Alex shared and I’m VERY surprised that his mother’s on the phone with me.
“A.J. told me that he invited you and your daughter to come out this weekend.”
“Yes, he did, but it’s not a good weekend to ...”
“I was wondering if you’d like to come at the end of the month?”
I smell a conspiracy.
“I, well, there’s school and...”
“Isn’t there a holiday weekend? A long one? I don’t keep up with that, but...” she goes on.
My mind is elsewhere. Mrs. McLean might not know about school schedules, but her son does, there’s one plastered to the front of the fridge with days marked off that I need to be late to work, or to take time for conferences. The little weasel has obviously read it. I’m grudgingly impressed.
“Yes, Memorial Day weekend.”
“Well, I’d like it if you came, and I just wanted to extend the invitation myself. A.J. has had nothing but good things to say about you, and I’m dying to meet you.”
“Likewise. I’ll double check my calendar and get back to you, Mrs. McLean.”
“Fine. Well, thank you for dinner tonight, and we’ll be having that lasagna tomorrow. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” I say, and click off my cellphone. Alex is one piece of work, getting his mother to do his wheedling. I can’t help but laugh.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
I hang up the extension I was listening in on. I’d like it if you came, too, Shi. I’d like it a lot.
~~**~~**~~***~~**~~**~~
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions
