Fiction Friday

I’ve been going through a rough time lately. It’s not easy becoming a butterfly at 44; the chrysalis is damned tight and itches. Part of my “therapy” includes indulging myself with comfort foods from my childhood like grilled cheese sandwiches and cinnamon toast. These foods made me think of the following passage from a novel I wrote last November during National Novel Writing Month, but never edited. Forgive me if this is something I might have given you to read before; but I just thought the universe needed this right now.

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Adam had a speech prepared (his wife Liza had coached him through it), for when his mother demanded to be returned to her apartment after the biopsy and not back to Adam and Liza’s, where she’d been staying. For when she told him it wouldn’t be necessary for Adam and Liza to babysit her until the results come in. But after the procedure she’s quiet. Probably from the Valium she’d taken. Or maybe the reality of the claw-like creature on the x-ray and the doctor’s warning that she shouldn’t have waited so long are catching up with her and she’s been cowed into fearful silence. Adam is gentle with her, eases her into the car, offers help with the shoulder harness she’ll ultimately refuse in favor of the lap belt. He comes around the driver’s side, belts himself in and starts the engine.

“There’s that place at the Thruway exchange,” Adam says. “You want to stop for lunch?”

“Don’t spend your money,” she says out the window.

“It’s a diner, Ma. It’s not that expensive.”

“We can make at home. There’s still some of that casserole left. Or I’ll make you grilled cheese. You used to like grilled cheese. Remember, I’d make it for you after school?”

“Yeah. I remember.” He’d been craving grilled cheese lately. The way his mother made it. White bread, smashed flat, fried in Crisco, American cheese oozing over the edges. Liza, a nutritionist, called it artery-clogging nightmare, was surprised he and his brother Charlie had reached adulthood without having a coronary. Liza had tried to healthy it up for him with whole wheat and cheddar, snuck in grilled onions and tomato, brushed the bread with olive oil. It was good, he told her, and he appreciated the effort, but it just wasn’t the same.

Bathed now in the warmth of nostalgia and his mother’s seeming pliability, Adam throws caution to the wind. “Anything you need from the apartment? We’re going right by.”

She thinks a moment. Or maybe is just slow to react. “I wouldn’t mind some different clothes. And my knitting.”

“No problem,” he says.

She doesn’t speak again until after he maneuvers the Toyota out of the hospital parking garage and onto the main road leading to her apartment complex. “If I knew this was going to be such a little nothing thing, such a tiny needle, I could have driven myself.”

He grips the wheel, biting back what he really wants to say. The only little nothing thing about this morning was the needle. When they arrived at the medical center, there was no appointment on the books for Estelle Trager. Adam gave her the evil eye, but she swore she made an appointment. Or thought she had. A few phone calls later, they worked her in.

“It’s OK, Ma.”

“I know I made that the appointment. I spoke to the nurse myself. She must have forgotten to write it down.”

“It’s OK, Ma.”

They pull into her complex and park in front of her building. He hasn’t been here since earlier in the fall, when he and Liza came for Rosh Hashana. Liza had been the one making the runs back and forth for her mail, for cosmetics, to water her plants. The place seems smaller, older, more run down. The leaves have been haphazardly removed. A gutter droops from the north side of Building B. “I don’t know why they’re raising your rent,” he says. “It doesn’t look like they’re doing anything to deserve it.”

“Not like I’m going to be here too much longer.”

“Ma.” He snaps off the engine. “Don’t.”

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Estelle wanders her apartment like a real-estate appraiser, touching furniture and frowning into corners. The place stinks of cigarettes. The curtains are yellowed, the paint on the walls has a kind of film over it, sticky to the touch. A layer of dust had formed over the Queen Anne side table and the framed childhood portraits of Adam and Charlie, adding to the fuzzy aura.

“You’ll take the sofa,” she says.

“What. Now?”

“Later. Tell Charlie he can have the armoire. It was your father’s. He’s always liked it, and it will be nice, he doesn’t have any closet space in that apartment.”

“Ma. You’re still here. You can stop with giving your stuff away.”

“I just don’t want any arguments. I’ve seen people. They go without telling anyone what’s what and the family argues.”

“We won’t argue,” he says. He and Charlie got along well. The only serious argument they’d ever had was that Charlie had known Liza first. But they were past that. Mostly.

“It’s human nature,” she says.

For someone who’d come to get clothing she was going nowhere near the bedroom. She was adjusting blinds. Putting away the dishes that had dried on the rack next to the sink. Poking her fingers into the philodendron. “What are you doing?” Adam says. “Liza watered the plants right before we took you out of the hospital.”

“I’m just checking to see if maybe she forgot. When I was in her condition, my brain was like a sieve.”

He rubs the back of his neck. Christ. He couldn’t keep up this charade, keep coming home to Liza’s accusing looks. Oh, well. He’d gotten his mother as far as the biopsy. The rest they’d just have to take one day at a time. “Ma. I gotta tell you something.”

“She’s drinking,” Estelle says.
“Huh?”

“Liza. With the baby. I smelled alcohol on her breath last night. After she came home from the neighbor’s. I knew that girl was trouble, with those tight dungarees and the bosom out to here and the husband who’s never home and the kids running wild. I didn’t say anything. I just thought you should know first. As her husband.”

“Ma. There’s no baby.”

“Because she’s been drinking!” Obviously, the Valium is wearing off. “Did I warn you? Jewish girls don’t drink like fish! It’s her father. I told you. Unitarian? What kind of a religion is that? With all that coffee and talk about the origin of the universe and letting people believe in God or not. You know, he was drunk at the wedding.”

“Ma. I was drunk at the wedding.”

“No. There’s drunk and there’s drunk. You were celebrating. He was drunk. It’s in the genes. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you come home one day and find your wife passed out on the sofa - on my sofa - and your son sticking his fingers in electrical sockets and eating rat poison.”

“Ma.” He’d almost forgotten his point. “There’s no baby because there’s no baby. It was a false alarm.”

The indignation drains from her face. “False alarm?”

“She got her period yesterday. I didn’t want to tell you before the procedure.”

She digests this a moment, then smacks the side of his head. “Schmuck.”

He blinks at her. “Huh? How is this my fault?”

“It was your fault it was a false alarm. It’s bad luck. To go around tempting fate, talking about things when you don’t know yet.”

“But we’ve been trying! When she was late, I thought—“

“You thought. You thought you’d get a sick woman’s hopes up for nothing? I was gonna knit a blanket!”

“Ma. You can still knit a blanket. It’s gonna happen. One day.”

“Schmuck,” she says. “Just like your father. May he rest in peace.”