DO YOU EVER think while something is happening, about what's happening someplace else? My mother, after the divorce, would stand on the back porch at sunset, smoking a cigarette, and she'd say,
"Charley, right now, as the sun is going down here, it's coming up someplace else in the world. Australia or China or someplace. You can look it up in the encyclopedia."
She'd blow smoke and stare down the row of square backyards, with their laundry poles and swing sets.
"It's such a big world," she'd say, wistfully. "Something is always happening somewhere."
She was right about that. Something is always happening somewhere.
So when I stood at the plate in that Old Timers game, staring at a pitcher whose hair was gray, and when he threw what used to be his fastball but what was just a pitch that floated in toward my chest, and when I swung and made contact and heard the familiar thwock and I dropped my bat and began to run, convinced that I had done something fabulous, forgetting my old gauges, forgetting that my arms and legs lacked the power they once had, forgetting that as you age, the walls get farther away, and when I looked up and saw what I had first thought to be a solid hit, maybe a home run, now coming down just beyond the infield toward the waiting glove of the second baseman, no more than a pop-up, a wet firecracker, a dud, and a voice in my head yelled, "Drop it! Drop it! " as that second baseman squeezed his glove around my final offering to this maddening game just as all that was happening, my mother, as she once noted, had something else happening back in Pepperville Beach.
Her clock radio was playing big band music. Her pillows had been freshly plumped. And her body was crumpled like a broken doll on the floor of her bedroom, where she had come looking for her new red glasses and collapsed.
A massive heart attack.
She was taking her last breaths.
WHEN THE OLD TIMERS game was finished, we walked back down the tunnel, passing the current players. We took each other's measure.
They were young and smooth skinned. We were fat and balding. I nodded at a muscular guy carrying a catcher's mask. It was like watching myself going out as I was coming in.
Inside the locker room, I packed up quickly. Some of us took showers, but it seemed silly. We hadn't really worked that hard. I folded my uniform top and kept it as a souvenir. I zipped my bag shut. I sat for a few minutes, fully dressed. Then there didn't seem to be much point.
I exited the way I'd come in, through the employees' entrance. And there was my father, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky.
He seemed surprised to see me. "Thanks for the cleats," I said, holding them up.
"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 ofit–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 you 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 griefin 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 across 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, was 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, afew 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 was 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 lather 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 undershirt 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. I heir son.
"What... ? "
"He was a few years older than you." "A ... boy?"