Unlike our father, it pleased her that none of her children had reproduced. She used the fact as part of a routine she delivered on a regular basis. “Six children and none of them are married. I’ve taken the money we saved on the weddings and am using it to build my daughters a whorehouse.”
After living with her boyfriend, Bob, for close to ten years, my sister Lisa nullified our contract when she agreed to marry him. Adding insult to injury, they decided the wedding would take place not at a drive-through chapel in Las Vegas but on a mountaintop in western North Carolina.
“That’s nice,” my mother said. “Now all I need is a pair of navy blue hiking boots to match my new dress and I’ll be all set.”
The first time I met my future brother-in-law, he was visiting my parents’ home and had his head deep in the oven. I walked into the kitchen and, mistaking him for one of my sisters, grabbed his plump, denim-clad bottom and proceeded to knead it with both hands. He panicked, smacking his head against the oven’s crusty ceiling. “Oh, golly,” I said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were Lisa.”
It was the truth, but for whatever reason, it failed to comfort him. At the time Bob was working as a gravedigger, a career choice that suggested a refreshing lack of ambition. These were not fresh graves, but old ones, slotted for relocation in order to make room for a new highway or shopping center. “How are you going to support my daughter on that?” my father asked.
“Oh, Lou,” my mother said, “nobody’s asking him to support anyone; they’re just sleeping together. Let him be.”
We liked Bob because he was both different and unapologetic. “You take a day-old pork chop, stab it with a fork, and soak it in some vinegar and you’ve got yourself some good eatin’,” he’d say, fingering the feathery tip of his waist-length braid. Because of his upbringing and countless allergies, Bob’s apartment was a testament to order and cleanliness. We figured that someone who carefully sham-pooed the lining of his work boots might briefly date our sister but would never go so far as to marry her. Lisa couldn’t be trained to scoot the food scraps off her soiled sheets, much less shake out the blanket and actually make the bed. I underestimated both his will and his patience. They had lived together for close to three years when I dropped by unannounced and found my sister standing at the sink with a sponge in one hand and a plate in the other. She still hadn’t realized the all-important role of detergent, but she was learning. Bob eventually cut his hair and returned to college, abandoning his shovel for a career in corporate real estate. He was a likable guy; it was the marrying part that got to me. “My sister’s wedding” was right up there with “my recent colostomy” in terms of three-word phrases I hoped never to use.
Three weeks before the wedding, my mother called to say she had cancer. She’d gone to a doctor complaining about a ringing in her ear, and the resulting tests revealed a substantial tumor in her lung. “They tell me it’s the size of a lemon,” she said. “Not a tiny fist or an egg, but a lemon. I think they describe it in terms of fruit so as not to scare you, but come on, who wants a lemon in their lung? They’re hoping to catch it before it becomes a peach or a grapefruit, but who knows? I sure as hell don’t. Twenty-odd tests and they still haven’t figured out what’s wrong with my ear. I’m just hoping that whatever it is, it isn’t much larger than a grape. This cancer, though, I realize it’s my own fault. I’m just sorry your father’s still around to remind me of that fact every fifteen god-damned seconds.”
My sister Amy was with me when my mother called. We passed the phone back and forth across my tiny New York kitchen and then spent the rest of the evening lying in bed, trying to convince each other that our mother would get better but never quite believing it. I’d heard of people who had survived cancer, but most of them claimed to get through it with the aid of whole grains and spiritual publications that encouraged them to sit quietly in a lotus position. They envisioned their tumors and tried to reason with them. Our mother was not the type to greet the dawn or cook with oats and barley. She didn’t reason, she threatened; and if that didn’t work, she chose to ignore the problem. We couldn’t picture her joining a support group or trotting through the mall in a warm-up suit. Sixty-two years old and none of us had ever seen her in a pair of slacks. I’m not certain why, but it seemed to me that a person needed a pair of pants in order to defeat cancer. Just as important, they needed a plan. They needed to accept the idea of a new and different future, free of crowded ashtrays and five-gallon jugs of wine and scotch. They needed to believe that such a life might be worth living. I didn’t know that I’d be able to embrace such an unrewarding future, but I hoped that she could. My brother, sisters, and I undertook a campaign to bolster her spirits and suggest new and exciting hobbies she might explore once she was cured and back on her feet.
“It’ll be great,” I said. “You could, I don’t know, maybe you could learn to pilot small planes or volunteer to hold crack babies. There are a lot of things an older person can do with her time rather than smoke and drink.”
“Please don’t call me stoned on pot and tell me there are lots of things I can do with my life,” she said. “I just got off the phone with your brother, who suggested I open up a petting zoo. If that’s what being high does for a person, then what I really need to do is start smoking marijuana, which would be a bit difficult for me since the last time I saw my right lung it was lying in the bottom of a pan.”
In truth, her lungs were right where they’d always been. The cancer was too far advanced and she was too weak to survive an operation. The doctor decided to send her home while he devised a plan. The very word sounded hopeful to us, a plan. “The doctor has a plan!” my sisters and I crowed to one another.
“Right,” my mother said. “He plans to golf on Saturday, sail on Sunday, and ask for my eyes, kidneys, and what’s left of my liver on that following Monday. That’s his plan.”
We viewed it as a bad sign when she canceled her subscription to People magazine and took to buying her cigarettes in packs rather than cartons. She went through her jewelry box, calling my sisters to ask if they preferred pearls or gems. “Right now, the rubies are in a brooch shaped like a candy cane, but you can probably get more money if you have them removed and just sell the stones.” In her own way she had already begun to check out, giving up on the plan before it was even announced. But what about us? I wanted to say. Aren’t we reason enough to carry on? I thought of the unrelenting grief we had caused her over the years and answered the question myself. It was her hope to die before one of us landed in jail.
“What’s Amy planning on wearing to this little Pepsi commercial,” my mother asked, referring to the mountaintop ceremony. “Tell me it’s not that wedding dress, please.”
Lisa had decided to be married in a simple cream-colored suit, the sort of thing one might wear to work on the day of their employee evaluation. Figuring that at least somebody ought to look the part, Amy had the idea to attend the ceremony dressed in a floor-length wedding gown, complete with veil and train. In the end, she wound up wearing something my mother hated even more, a pink cocktail dress out-fitted with detachable leg-o’-mutton sleeves. It wasn’t like her to care what anyone wore, but she used the topic to divert attention from what we came to refer to as her “situation.” If she’d had it her way, we would never have known about the cancer. It was our father’s idea to tell us, and she had fought it, agreeing only when he threatened to tell us himself. Our mother worried that once we found out, we would treat her differently, delicately. We might feel obliged to compliment her cooking and laugh at all her jokes, thinking always of the tumor she was trying so hard to forget. And that is exactly what we did. The knowledge of her illness forced everything into the spotlight and demanded that it be memorable. We were no longer calling our mother. Now we were picking up the telephone to call our mother with cancer. Bad day at work? All you had to do was say, “I’m sorry I forgot to vacuum beneath the cushions of your very lovely, very expensive Empire sofa, Mrs. Wa
lman. I know how much it means to you. I guess I should be thinking of more important things than my mother’s inoperable cancer.”
We weren’t the ones who were sick, but still, the temptation was so great. Here we could get the sympathy without enduring any of the symptoms. And we deserved sympathy, didn’t we?
Speaking to our mother, we realized that any conversation might be our last, and because of that, we wanted to say something important. What could one say that hadn’t already been printed on millions of greeting cards and helium balloons?
“I love you,” I said at the end of one of our late-night phone calls.
“I am going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” she said. I heard a match strike in the background, the tinkling of ice cubes in a raised glass. And then she hung up. I had never said such a thing to my mother, and if I had it to do over again, I would probably take it back. Nobody ever spoke that way except Lisa. It was queer to say such a thing to someone unless you were trying to talk them out of money or into bed, our mother had taught that when we were no taller than pony kegs. I had known people who said such things to their parents, “I love you,” but it always translated to mean “I’d love to get off the phone with you.”
We gathered together for the wedding, which took place on a clear, crisp October afternoon. The ceremony was held upon a grassy precipice that afforded magnificent views of the surrounding peaks, their trees resplendent in fiery red and orange. It was easy to imagine, looking out over the horizon, that we were it, the last remaining people on the face of the earth. The others had been wiped out by disease and famine, and we had been chosen to fashion a new and better world. It was a pleasant thought until I pictured us foraging for berries and having to bathe in ice-cold streams. Bob’s family, hearty and robust, could probably pull it off, but the rest of us would wither and die shortly after we’d run out of shampoo.
My father wept openly during the ceremony. The rest of us studied his crumpled face and fought hard not to follow his example. What was this emotion? My sister was getting married to a kind and thoughtful man who had seen her through a great many hardships. Together they shared a deep commitment to Mexican food and were responsible card-carrying members of the North American Caged Bird Society. The tacos and parrots were strictly between Lisa and Bob, but the rest of her belonged to us. Standing in a semicircle on top of that mountain, it became clear that while Lisa might take on a different last name, she could never escape the pull of our family. Marriage wouldn’t let her off the hook, even if she wanted it to. She could move to Antarctica, setting up house in an underground bunker, but still we would track her down. It was senseless to run. Ignore our letters and phone calls, and we would invade your dreams. I’d spent so many years thinking marriage was the enemy that when the true danger entered our lives, I was caught completely off guard. The ceremony inspired a sense of loss directed not at Lisa, but at our mother.
“No booze?” she moaned. My mother staggered toward the buffet table, its retractable legs trembling beneath the weight of sparkling waters, sausage biscuits, and decaffeinated coffee.
“No booze,” Lisa had announced a week before the ceremony. “Bob and I have decided we don’t want that kind of a wedding.”
“Which kind?” my mother asked. “The happy kind? You and Bob might be thrilled to death, but the rest of us will need some help working up the proper spirit.”
She didn’t look much different than she had the last time I’d seen her. The chemotherapy had just begun, and she’d lost — at most — maybe five pounds. A casual acquaintance might not have noticed any change at all. We did only because we knew, everyone on that mountaintop knew, that she had cancer. That she was going to die. The ceremony was relatively small, attended by both families and an assortment of Lisa’s friends, most of whom we had never met but could easily identify. These were the guests who never once complained about the absence of alcohol.
“I just want you to know that Colleen and I both love your sister Lisa so much,” the woman said, her eyes moist with tears. “I know we’ve never been formally introduced, but would you mind if I gave you a big fat hug?”
With the exception of Lisa, we were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort, it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well-made cocktail.
“Hey, wait a minute. Where’s my hug?” Colleen asked, rolling up her sleeves and moving in for the kill. I looked over my attacker’s shoulder and watched as a woman in a floor-length corduroy skirt wrestled my mother into an affectionate headlock.
“I heard what you’re going through and I know that you’re frightened,” the woman said, looking down at the head of thinning gray hair she held clasped between her powerful arms. “You’re frightened because you think you’re alone.”
“I’m frightened,” my mother wheezed, “because I’m not alone and because you’re crushing what’s left of my god-damned lungs.”
The scariest thing about these people was that they were sober. You could excuse that kind of behavior from someone tanked up on booze, but most of them hadn’t taken a drink since the Carter administration. I took my mother’s arm and led her to a bench beyond the range of the other guests. The thin mountain air made it difficult for her to breathe, and she moved slowly, pausing every few moments. The families had taken a walk to a nearby glen, and we sat in the shade, eating sausage biscuits and speaking to each other like well-mannered strangers.
“The sausage is good,” she said. “It’s flavorful but not too greasy.”
“Not greasy at all. Still, though, it isn’t dry.”
“Neither are the biscuits,” she said. “They’re light and crisp, very buttery.”
“Very. These are some very buttery biscuits. They’re flaky but not too flaky.”
“Not too flaky at all,” she said.
We watched the path, awkwardly waiting for someone to release us from the torture of our stiff and meaningless conversation. I’d always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn’t that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidently ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say. My mother and I had been fine over the telephone, but now, face to face, the rules had changed. If she were to complain, she risked being seen as a sick complainer, the worst kind of all. If I were to do it, I might come off sounding even more selfish than I actually was. This sudden turn of events had robbed us of our common language, leaving us to exchange the same innocuous pleasantries we’d always made fun of. I wanted to stop it and so, I think, did she, but neither of us knew how.
After all the gifts had been opened, we returned to our rooms at the Econolodge, the reservations having been made by my father. We looked out the windows, past the freeway and into the distance, squinting at the charming hotel huddled at the base of other, finer mountains. This would be the last time our family was all together. It’s so rare when one knowingly does something for the last time: the last time you take a bath, the last time you have sex or trim your toenails. If you know you’ll never do it again, it might be nice to really make a show of it. This would be it as far as my family was concerned, and it ticked me off that our final meeting would take place in such a sorry excuse for a hotel. My father had taken the liberty of ordering nonsmoking rooms, leaving the rest of us to rifle through the Dumpster in search of cans we might use as ashtrays.
“What more do you want out of a hotel?” he shouted, stepping out onto the patio in his underpants. “It’s clean, they’ve got a couple of snack machines in the lobby, the TVs work, and it’s near the interstate. Who cares if you don’t like the damned wallpaper? You know what your problem is, don’t you?”
“We’re spoiled,” we shouted in unison.
We were not, however, cheap. We w
ould have gladly paid for something better. No one was asking for room service or a heated swimming pool, just for something with a little more character: maybe a motel with an Indian theme or one of the many secluded lodges that as a courtesy posted instructions on how to behave should a bear interrupt your picnic. Traveling with our father meant always having to stay at nationally known motor lodges and take our meals only in fast-food restaurants. “What?” he’d ask. “Are you telling me you’d rather sit down at a table and order food you’ve never tasted before?”
Well, yes, that was exactly what we wanted. Other people did it all the time, and most of them had lived to talk about it.
“Bullshit,” he’d shout. “That’s not what you want.” When arguing, it was always his tactic to deny the validity of our requests. If you wanted, say, a stack of pancakes, he would tell you not that you couldn’t have them but that you never really wanted them in the first place. “I know what I want” was always met with “No you don’t.”
My mother never shared his enthusiasm for corporate culture, and as a result, they had long since decided to take separate vacations. She usually traveled with her sister, returning from Santa Fe or Martha’s Vineyard with a deep tan, while my father tended to fish or golf with friends we had never met.
The night before the wedding, we had gone to a charming lodge and eaten dinner with Bob’s parents. The dining room had the feel of someone’s home. Upon the walls hung pictures of deceased relatives, and the mantel supported aged trophies and a procession of hand-carved decoys. The night of the wedding, Lisa and Bob having left for their honeymoon, we were left on our own. My sisters, stuffed with sausage, chose to remain in their rooms, so I went with my parents and brother to a chain restaurant located on a brightly lit strip of highway near the outskirts of town. Along the way we passed dozens of more attractive options: steak houses boasting firelit dining rooms and clapboard cottages lit with discreet signs reading HOME COOKING and NONE BETTER!