“What are you doing out here?” he said, annoyed. “Can’t you find someone to talk to in there?”
I spurted out a sarcastic breath. “I dunno, Dad. I guess I came out to say hello. I haven’t seen you in like two years.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head in disgust. “How are you gonna get back in the game talking to me?”
Chick Finds Out His Mom Is Gone
“HELLO?”
My wife’s voice sounded shaky, disturbed.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said. “Sorry I—”
“Oh, Chick, oh, God, we didn’t know where to reach you.”
I had been ready with my lies—the client, the meeting, all of it—but they fell now like bricks.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Your mom. Oh, my God, Chick. Where were you? We didn’t...”
“What? What?”
She started crying, gasping.
“Tell me,” I said. “What?”
“It was a heart attack. Maria found her.”
“Wha...?”
“Your mom...She died.”
I HOPE YOU never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.
“Where?”
“At the house.”
“Where, I mean, when?”
Suddenly, details seemed extremely important. Details were something to grab on to, a way to insert myself into the story. “How did she—”
“Chick,” Catherine said softly, “just come home, OK?”
I rented a car. I drove through the night. I drove with my shock and grief in the backseat, and my guilt in the front. I reached Pepperville Beach just before sunrise. I pulled into the driveway. I shut the engine. The sky was a rotted purple. My car smelled of beer. As I sat there, watching the dawn rise around me, I realized I hadn’t called my father to tell him of my mother’s death. I sensed, deep down, that I would never see him again.
And I never did.
I lost both parents on the same day, one to shame, one to shadow.
A Third and Final Visit
MY MOTHER AND I WALKED now through a town I had never seen. It was unremarkable, a gas station on one corner, a small convenience store on the other. The telephone poles and the bark of the trees were the same cardboard color, and most of the trees had dropped their leaves.
We stopped in front of a two-story apartment building. It was pale yellow brick.
“Where are we?” I said.
My mother checked the horizon. The sun had already set.
“You should have had more dinner,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “Come on.”
“What? I like knowing you’ve eaten, that’s all. You have to take care of yourself, Charley.”
I saw in her expression that old, unshakable mountain of concern. And I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.
“I wish we’d done this before, Mom, you know?”
“You mean before I died?”
My voice went timid. “Yeah.”
“I was here.”
“I know.”
“You were busy.”
I shuddered at that word. It seemed so hollow now. I saw a wave of resignation pass over her face. I believe, at that moment, we were both thinking how things might be different if we did them over.
“Charley,” she asked, “was I a good mother?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but a blinding flash erased her from sight. I felt heat on my face, as if the sun were baking down on it. Then, once again, that booming voice:
“CHARLES BENETTO. OPEN YOUR EYES!”
I blinked hard. Suddenly, I was blocks behind my mother, as if she’d kept walking and I’d stopped. I blinked again. She was even farther ahead. I could barely see her anymore. I stretched forward, my fingers straining, my shoulders pulling from their sockets. Everything was spinning. I felt myself trying to call her name, the word vibrating in my throat. It took all the strength I had.
And then she was with me again, taking my hand, all calm, as if nothing had happened. We glided back to where we’d been.
“One more stop,” she repeated.
SHE TURNED ME toward the pale yellow building and instantly we were inside it, a low-ceilinged apartment, heavily furnished. The bedroom was small. The wallpaper was avocado green. A painting of vineyards hung on the wall and a cross was over the bed. In the corner there was a champagne wooden dressing table beneath a large mirror. And before that mirror sat a dark-haired woman, wearing a bathrobe the color of pink grapefruit.
She appeared to be in her seventies, with a long, narrow nose and prominent cheekbones beneath her sagging olive skin. She ran a brush through her hair slowly, absently, looking down at the counter.
My mother stepped up behind her. There was no greeting. Instead she put her hands out and they melted into the hands of the woman, one holding the brush, the other following the strokes with a flattening palm.
The woman glanced up, as if checking her reflection in the mirror, but her eyes were smoky and far away. I think she was seeing my mother.
Neither said a word.
“Mom,” I finally whispered. “Who is she?”
My mother turned, her hands in the woman’s hair.
“She’s your father’s wife.”
Times I Did Not Stand Up for My Mother
Take the shovel, the minister said. He said it with his eyes. I was to toss dirt onto my mother’s coffin, which was half-lowered into the grave. My mother, the minister explained, had witnessed this custom at Jewish funerals and had requested it for her own. She felt it helped mourners accept that the body was gone and they should remember the spirit. I could hear my father chiding her, saying, “Posey, I swear, you make it up as you go along.”
I took the shovel like a child being handed a rifle. I looked to my sister, Roberta, who wore a black veil over her face and was visibly trembling. I looked to my wife, who was staring at her feet, tears streaming down her cheeks, her right hand rhythmically smoothing our daughter’s hair. Only Maria looked at me. And her eyes seemed to say, “Don’t do it, Dad. Give it back.”
In baseball, a player can tell when he’s holding his own bat and when he’s holding someone else’s. Which is how I felt with that shovel in my hands. It was someone else’s. It did not belong to me. It belonged to a son who didn’t lie to his mother. It belonged to a son whose last words to her were not in anger. It belonged to a son who hadn’t raced off to satisfy the latest whim of his distant old man, who, in keeping the record intact, absent from this family gathering, having decided, “It’s better if I’m not there, I don’t want to upset anybody.”
That son would have stayed that weekend, sleeping with his wife in the guest room, having Sunday brunch with the family. That son would have been there when his mother collapsed. That son might have saved her.
But that son was not around.
This son swallowed, and did what he was told: He shoveled dirt onto the coffin. It landed with a messy spread, a few gravelly pieces making noise against the polished wood. And even though it was her idea, I heard my mother’s voice saying, “Oh, Charley. How could you?”
Everything Explained
SHE’S YOUR FATHER’S WIFE.
How can I explain that sentence? I can’t. I can only tell you what my mother’s spirit told me, standing in that strange apartment with a painting of vineyards on the wall.
“She’s your father’s wife. They met during the war. Your father was stationed in Italy. He told you that, right?”
Many times. Italy, late 1944. The Apennine mountains and the Po Valley, not far from Bologna.
“She lived in a village there. She was poor. He w
as a soldier. You know how those things go. Your father, in those days, was very, I don’t know, what’s the word? Bold?”
My mother looked at her hands as they brushed out the woman’s hair.
“Do you think she’s pretty, Charley? I always figured she was. She still is, even now. Don’t you think?”
My head was spinning. “What do you mean, his wife? You were his wife.”
She nodded slowly.
“Yes, I was.”
“You can’t have two wives.”
“No,” she whispered. “You’re right. You can’t.”
THE WOMAN SNIFFED. Her eyes looked red and tired. She didn’t acknowledge me. But she seemed to be listening as my mother spoke.
“I think your father got scared during the war. He didn’t know how long it would last. A lot of men were killed in those mountains. Maybe she gave him security. Maybe he thought he’d never get home. Who knows? He always needed a plan, your father, he said that a lot: ‘Have a plan. Have a plan.’ ”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Dad wrote you that letter.”
“Yes.”
“He proposed. You accepted.”
She sighed. “When he realized the war was ending, I guess he wanted a different plan—his old plan, with me. Things change when you’re not in danger anymore, Charley. And so—” She lifted the woman’s hair from her shoulders. “He left her behind.”
She paused.
“Your father had a knack for that.”
I shook my head. “But why did you—”
“He never told me, Charley. He never told anyone. But at some point, over the years, he found her again. Or she found him. And eventually, he brought her to America. He set up a whole other life. He even bought a second house. In Collingswood. Where he built his new store, remember?”
The woman put the brush down. My mother’s hands withdrew and she hooked them together now, bringing them under her chin.
“It was her ziti your father wanted me to make all those years.” She sighed. “For some reason, that still bugs me.”
AND THEN SHE told me the rest of the story. How she discovered all this. How she asked once why they never got a bill from the hotel in Collingswood. How he said he was paying cash, which made her suspicious. How she arranged for a babysitter one Friday night, then drove nervously to Collingswood herself, going up and down the streets, until she saw his Buick in the driveway of a strange house, and she burst into tears.
“I was shaking, Charley. I had to force every step. I snuck down to a window and looked inside. They were eating dinner. Your father had his shirt unbuttoned, his under-shirt showing, like he always did with us. He was sitting with his food, no hurry, relaxed, as if he lived there, passing the dishes to this woman and . . .”
She stopped.
“Are you sure you want to know this?”
I nodded blankly.
“Their son.”
“What . . . ?”
“He was a few years older than you.”
“A . . . boy?”
My voice squeaked as I said that.
“I’m sorry, Charley.”
I felt dizzy, as if falling backward. Even telling you now, I have trouble getting the words out. My father, who had demanded my devotion, my loyalty to his team, our team, the men in our family. He had another son?
“Did he play baseball?” I whispered.
My mother looked at me helplessly.
“Charley,” she said, almost crying, “I really don’t know.”
THE WOMAN IN the bathrobe opened a small drawer. She took out some papers and flipped through them. Was she really who my mother said she was? She looked Italian. She seemed the right age. I tried to picture my father meeting her. I tried to picture them together. I didn’t know a thing about this woman or this apartment, but I felt my old man all over the room.
“I drove home that night, Charley,” my mother said, “and I sat on the curb. I waited. I didn’t even want him pulling in to our driveway. He came back after midnight and I’ll never forget the look on his face when the headlights hit me, because in that moment, I think he knew he’d been found out.
“I got into the car and I made him roll up all the windows. I didn’t want anyone hearing me. And then I exploded. I exploded in such a way that he couldn’t use any of his lies. He finally admitted who she was, where they had met, what he’d been trying to do. My head was spinning. My stomach hurt so badly, I couldn’t sit up straight. You expect a lot of things in a marriage, Charley, but who could see themselves replaced like that?”
She turned to the wall, her gaze falling on the painting of the vineyards.
“I’m not sure it really hit me until months later. Inside that car, I was just furious. And heartbroken. He swore he was sorry. He swore he didn’t know about this other son, that when he found out, he felt obligated to do something. I don’t know what was true and what wasn’t. Even screaming, your father had an answer for everything.
“But none of it mattered. It was over. Don’t you see? I could have forgiven him almost anything against me. But that was a betrayal of you and your sister, too.”
She turned to me.
“You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can’t trade them in. You can’t lie to them. You can’t run two at once, substituting back and forth.
“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”
She sighed.
“So I had to make a decision.”
I tried to picture that awful moment. In a car, after mid-night, with the windows rolled up—from the outside, two figures silently screaming. I tried to picture how our family slept in one house while another family slept in another, and both had my father’s clothes hanging in the closet.
I tried to picture charming Posey of Pepperville Beach losing her old life that night, crying and screaming as it all collapsed in front of her. And I realized that, on the list of Times My Mother Stood Up for Me, this would have to go at the top.
“Mom,” I finally whispered, “what did you tell him?”
“I told him to leave. And to never come back.”
So now I knew what happened the night before the corn puffs.
THERE ARE MANY THINGS in my life that I wish I could take back. Many moments I would recast. But the one I would change if I could change just one would not be for me but for my daughter, Maria, who came looking for her grandmother that Sunday afternoon and found her sprawled on the bedroom floor. She tried to wake her. She started screaming. She raced in and out of the room, torn between yelling for help and not leaving her alone. That never should have happened. She was only a kid.
I think from that point on, it was hard for me to face my daughter or my wife. I think that’s why I drank so much. I think that’s why I whimpered off into another life, because deep down I didn’t feel that I deserved the old one anymore. I ran away. In that manner, I suppose, my father and I were sadly parallel. When, two weeks later, in the quiet of our bedroom, I confessed to Catherine where I had been, that there was no business trip, that I was playing baseball in a Pittsburgh stadium while my mother lay dying, she was more numb than anything else. She kept looking as if she wanted to say something that she never ended up saying.
In the end, her only comment was, “At this point, what does it matter?”
MY MOTHER CROSSED the small bedroom and stood by the only window. She moved the curtains aside.
“It’s dark out,” she said.
Behind us, at the mirror, the Italian woman looked down, fingering her papers.
“Mom?” I said. “Do you hate her?”
She shook her head. “Why should I hate her? She only wanted the same things I did. She didn’t get them, either. Their marriage ended. Your father moved on. Like I said, he had a knack for that.”
She grabbed her elbows, as if she were cold. The woman at the mirror put her face in her hands. She let out a small sob.
“Secrets, Charley,” my mother whis
pered. “They’ll tear you apart.”
We all three hung there silently for a minute, each in our own world. Then my mother turned to me.
“You have to go now,” she said.
“Go?” My voice choked. “Where? Why?”
“But Charley...” She took my hands. “I want to ask you something first.”
Her eyes were wet with tears.
“Why do you want to die?”
I shivered. For a second I couldn’t breathe.
“You knew...?”
She gave a sad smile.
“I’m your mother.”
My body convulsed. I spit out a gush of air. “Mom....I’m not who you think...I messed things up. I drank. I blew everything. I lost my family...”
“No, Charley—”
“Yes, yes, I did.” My voice was shaking. “I fell apart....Catherine’s gone, Mom. I drove her away....Maria, I’m not even in her life ...she’s married...I wasn’t even there...I’m an outsider now...I’m an outsider to everything I loved....”
My chest was heaving. “And you...that last day....I never should have left you...I could never tell you...”
My head lowered in shame.
“...how sorry...how I’m so...so...”
That was all I got out. I fell to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, emptying myself, wailing. The room shrunk to a heat behind my eyes. I don’t know how long I was like that. When I found my voice, it was barely a rasp.
“I wanted it to stop, Mom...this anger, this guilt. That’s why...I wanted to die...”
I lifted my eyes, and, for the first time, admitted the truth.
“I gave up,” I whispered.
“Don’t give up,” she whispered back.
I buried my head then. I am not ashamed to say it. I buried my head in my mother’s arms and her hands cradled my neck. We held each other like that, just briefly. But I cannot put into words the comfort I drew from that moment. I can only say that, as I speak to you now, I still yearn for it.
“I wasn’t there when you died, Mom.”
“You had something to do.”