room. Our steps were unnaturally small and slow, marching behind Rose and her walker.
"Having a good day, Rose? " my mother asked. "Oooh, yes. Now that you're here. "
"Do you remember my son, Charley? " "Oooh, yes. Handsome. "
She said this with her back to me. "And how are your children, Rose? "
"What's that now? "
"Your children?"
"Oooh. " She waved her palm. "They checked up on me once a week.
Like a chore. "
I couldn't tell, at that point, who or what Rose was. An apparition? A real person? Her house felt real enough. The heat was turned up, and the smell of toasted bread lingered from breakfast. We entered the laundry room where a chair was positioned by the sink. A radio was playing some big band song.
"Would you turn that off, young man? " Rose said, without turning around. "The radio. Sometimes I have it too loud. "
I found the volume knob and clicked it off.
"Terrible, did you hear? " Rose said. "An accident by the highway.
They were talking about it on the news. "
I froze.
"A car hit a truck and crashed through a big sign. Knocked it right down. Terrible."
I scanned my mother's face, expecting her to turn and demand my confession. Admit what you did, Charley.
"Well, Rose, the news is depressing, " she said, still unpacking her bag.
"Oooh, yes," Rose said. " So much so. "
Wait. They knew? They didn't know? I had a cold flush of dread, as if someone were about to rap on the windows and demand I come out.
Instead, Rose turned her walker, then her knees, then her skinny shoulders in my direction.
"It's nice that you spend a day with your mother," she said. "Children should do it more often.
She put a shaky hand on the back of the chair-by the sink. "Now, Posey," she said, "can you still make me beautiful?"
MAYBE YOU'RE WONDERING how my mother came to be a hairdresser.
As I mentioned, she had been a nurse, and she truly loved being a nurse. She had that deep well of patience to carefully dress bandages, draw blood, and answer endless worried questions with upbeat reassurances. The male patients liked having someone young and pretty around. And the female patients were grateful when she brushed out their hair or helped them put on lipstick. I doubt it was protocol back then, but my mother applied makeup to more than a few occupants ofour county hospital. She believed it made them feel better. That was the point ofa hospital stay, wasn't it? "You're not supposed to go there and rot," she would say.
Sometimes, at the dinner table, she would get a faraway look and talk about "poor Mrs. Halverson" and her emphysema or "poor Roy Endicott" and his diabetes. Now and then, she would stop talking about a person, and my sister would ask, "What did the old lady Golinski do today? " and my mother would answer, "She went home, honey. " My father would lift his eyebrows and look at her, then go back to chewing his food. It was only when I got older that I realized "home" meant
"dead. " That was usually when he changed the subject, anyhow.
THERE WAS ONLY one hospital in our county, and with my father out of the picture, my mother tried to work as many shifts as she could, meaning she couldn't pick up my sister after school. So most days I would fetch Roberta, walk her home, then ride my bike back for baseball practice.
"Do you think Daddy will be there today?" she would ask. "No, stupid,"
I would say. "Why would he be there today?”
"Because the grass is high and he has to mow it," she'd say. Or,
"Because there are a lot of leaves to rake." Or, "Because it's Thursday, and Mommy makes lamb chops on Thursday. "
"I don't think that's a good reason," I'd say. She'd wait before asking the obvious follow-up.
"Then how come he left, Chick?" "I dunno! Hejust did, OK? "
"That's not a good reason, either," she'd mumble.
One afternoon, when I was twelve and she was seven, my sister and I emerged from the schoolyard and heard a honking sound.
"It's Mommy! " Roberta said, running ahead.
She didn't get out of the car, which was strange. My mother thought it rude to honk for people; years later she would warn my sister that any boy who wouldn't come to the front door was a boy not worth dating.
But now here she was, staying in the car, so I followed after my sister and crossed the street and got in.
My mother did not look well. Her eyes were black below the lids, and she kept clearing her throat. She was not wearing her nursing whites.
"Why are you here? " I asked. That was how I was talking to her in those days. "Give your mother a kiss," she said.
I leaned my head across the seat and she kissed my hair. "Did they let you out of work early?" Roberta asked.
"Yes, sweetie, something like that. "
She sniffed. She looked in the rearview mirror and wiped the black from around her eyes.
"How about some ice cream? " she said. "Yeah! Yeah! " my sister said.
"I have practice," I said.
"Oh, why don't you skip the practice, OK? "
"No ! " I protested. "You can't skip practice; you have to go. " "Says who?"
"The coaches and everyone. "
"I wanna go! I want a cone! " Roberta said. "Just a fast ice cream? "
my mother said. "Gaw! No ! OK? "
I lifted my head and looked straight at her. What I saw, I don't think I had ever seen before. My mother looked lost.
I would later learn that she had been fired from the hospital. I would later learn that some staff members felt that she was too much of a distraction to the male doctors, now that she was single. I would later learn that there had been some incident with a senior member of the staff and my mother had complained about inappropriate behavior.
Her reward for standing up for herself was the suggestion that "it isn't going to work out anymore. "
And you know the weird thing? Somehow, I knew all this the moment I looked her in the eye. Not the details, of course. But lost is lost, and I knew that look because I'd worn it myself. I hated her for having it. I hated her for being as weak as I was.
I got out of the car and said, "I don't want any ice cream. I'm going to practice. " As I crossed the street, my sister yelled out the window, "Do you want us to bring you a cone? " and I thought, You're so stupid, Roberta, cones melt.
Times I Did Not Stand Up for My Mother
She has found my cigarettes. They are in my sock drawer. I am fourteen years old.
"It's my room!" I yell.
"Charley! We talked about this! I told you not to smoke! It's the worst thing you can do! What's the matter with you?" "You're a hypocrite!"
She stops. Her neck stiffens. "Don't you use that word. " "You smoke!
You're a hypocrite!"
"Don't you use that word/"
"Why not, Mom? You always want me to use big words in a sentence.
There's a sentence. You smoke. I can't. My mother is a hypocrite!"
I am moving as I yell this, and the moving seems to give me strength, confidence, as if she can't hit me. This is after she has taken a job at the beauty parlor, and instead of her nursing whites, she wears fashionable clothes to work–like the pedal pushers and turquoise blouse she is wearing now. These clothes show off her figure. I hate them.
"I am taking these away, " she yells, grabbing the cigarettes. And you are not going out, mister!"
"I don't care!" I glare at her. "And why do you have to dress like that?
You make me sick!"
"I what?" Now she is on me, slapping my face. "I WHAT? I make you"-shpl-"sick? I make"-shpl-"you SICK? "slap!–"Is that what you"-slap!- "said?"-slap, slap!–"Is it? Is that what you THINK OF ME?"
"No! No!" I yell. "Stop it!"
I cover my head and duck away. I run down the stairs and out the garage. I stay away until well past dark, When I finally come home, her bedroom door is closed and I think I hear her crying. I go to my room. The cigarettes are still there. I light one up and start crying myself.
Embarrassed Children
ROSE HAD HER HEAD TIPPED BACK in the sink, and my mother was gently spraying her with water from a faucet attachment. Apparently, they had a whole routine worked out. They propped pillows and towels until Rose's head wasjust so, and my mother could run her free hand through Rose's wet hair.
"Is that warm enough, hon? " my mother said.
"Oooh, yes, dear. It's fine. " Rose closed her eyes. "You know, Charley, your mother has been doing my hair since I was a much younger woman. "
"You're young at heart, Rose," my mother said. "That's the only part. "
They laughed.
"When I went to the beauty parlor, I would only ask for Posey. If Posey wasn't there, I would come back the next day. 'Don't you want someone else?' they'd say. But I said, 'Nobody touches me but Posey.'
"
"You're sweet, Rose," my mother said. "But the other girls were good.
"
"Oh, dear, hush. Let me brag. Your mother, Charley, always made time for me. And once it got too hard for me to go to the beauty parlor, she came to my house, every week.”
She tapped her shaky fingers on my mother's forearm. "Thank you, dear, for that."
"You're welcome, Rose."
"Such a beauty you were, too. "
I watched my mother smile. How could she be so proud of washing someone's hair in a sink?
"You should see Charley's little girl, Rose," my mother said. "Talk about a beauty. She's a little heartbreaker."
"Is that so? What's her name?"
"Maria. Isn't she a heartbreaker, Charley?"
How could I answer that? The last time they had seen each other was the day my mother died, eight years earlier. Maria was still a teenager. How could I tell her what had happened since? That I had fallen out of my daughter's life? That she had a new last name? That I had sunk so low I had been banished from her wedding? She used to love me, she honestly did. She used to run at me when I came home from work, her arms raised, yelling, "Daddy, pick me up!” What happened?
"Maria is ashamed of me," I finally mumbled. "Don't be silly," my mother said.
She looked over at me and rubbed shampoo between her palms. I lowered my head. I wanted a drink in the worst way.
I could feel her eyes. I could hear her fingers kneading Rose's hair. Of all the things I felt disgrace about in, front of my mother, being a lousy father was the worst.
"You know something, Rose? " she suddenly said. "Charley never let me cut his hair. Can you believe that? He insisted on going to a barbershop. "
"Why, dear? "
"Oh, you know. They get to an age and it's 'Get away, Mom, get away.'
"
"Children get embarrassed by their parents," Rose said. "Children get embarrassed by their parents," my mother repeated.
It was true, as a teenager, I had pushed my mother away. I refused to sit next to her at movies. I squirmed from her kisses. I was uncomfortable with her womanly figure and I was angry that she was the only divorced woman around. I wanted her to behave like the other mothers, wearing housedresses, making scrapbooks, baking brownies.
"Sometimes your kids will say the nastiest things, won't they, Rose?
You want to ask, 'Whose child is this?' "
Rose chuckled.
"But usually, they're just in some kind of pain. They need to work it out. "
She shot me a look. "Remember, Charley. Sometimes, kids want you to hurt the way they hurt. "
To hurt the way they hurt? Was that what I had done?
Had I wanted to see on my mother's face the rejection I felt from my father? Had my daughter done the same to me?
"I didn't mean anything by it, Mom, " I whispered. "By what?"
"Being embarrassed. By you, or your clothes or ... your situation. "
She rinsed the shampoo from her hands, then directed the water to Rose's scalp. "A child embarrassed by his mother," she said, "is just a child who hasn't lived long enough. "
THEREWAS A cuckoo clock in the den, and it broke the silence with small chimes and a mechanical sliding noise. My mother was trimming Rose's hair now with a comb and scissors. The phone rang.
"Charley, dear," Rose said. "Could you get that for me?"
I walked into the next room, following the ring until I saw a phone hanging on the wall outside the kitchen.
"Hello? " I said into the receiver.
And everything changed. "CHARLES BENETTO? " It was a man's voice screaming.
"CHARLES BENETTO ! CAN YOU HEAR ME, CHARLES? " I froze.
"CHARLES? I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! CHARLES ! THERE'S BEEN AN
ACCIDENT ! TALK TO US ! "
Hands shaking, I placed the phone back in the cradle.
Times My Mother Stood Up for Me
It is three years after my father's departure. In the middle of the night, I awaken to the sound of my sister thumping down the hall. She is always running to my mother's bedroom. I bury my head in the pillow, drifting back to sleep.
"Charley!" My mother is suddenly in my room, whispering loudly.
"Charley! Where's your baseball bat?"
"Wha?" I grunt, rising to my elbows. "Shhh!" my sister says.
"A bat, " my mother says. "Why do you want a bat?" "Shhh!" my sister says.
"She heard something. " "A robber's in the house?" "Shhh!" my sister says.