“Where are you?” I ask.
On her end I hear classical music. I hear a mother humming to her child. I hear a child laughing. No.
It’s just a television.
“I’m at a Holiday Inn just outside of Kelso.”
“Oh,” I go.
Then it’s just us sucking in and blowing out air into our cellphones. I can hear her breathing. She can hear mine. We don’t breathe alike, as near as I can tell. I try to match hers. A kid thing.
“Why Holiday Inn?” I go.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“How was Vienna?” I say.
Dead air. Television backdrop.
“I have something for you,” she says.
My voice comes out all in a rush. “For the longest time I thought it was the word ‘shoe,’ and the word ‘burt.’ Isn’t that dumb? I used to imagine a guy with great footwear and beautiful hands … Isn’t that the stupidest fucking thing you’ ve ever heard?” I say into my iPhone. I look at Obsidian. In her eyes there is something like a mirror. I see a girl leaving my own face, and someone I’ve never known replacing her.
“Room 324,” the tin mother goes.
“Tomorrow is my birthday,” I say, but my voice is unrecognizable to me.
“I know, Ida,” she whispers, signaling through the flames.
34
THEY DON’T TELL YOU LOVE CAN SNEAK UP ON YOUR ASS and sucker punch you.
When my mother opens the door of room 324 of the Holiday Inn she looks like what Catherine Deneuve would look like if Catherine Deneuve loved you unconditionally. And if Catherine Deneuve loved you unconditionally? Trust me, you’d swoon.
Catherine Deneuve’s real name was Catherine Fabienne Dorléac.
I fight the swoon with all my might. I grab Obsidian’s hand so we’re two-fisted. My mother stares at our hands and takes it in. She looks up and collects Ave Maria and Little Teena in her gaze, too. She stands aside and lets us all in to the hotel room like it’s in her nature. The room smells like a mother’s perfume, a little like vodka, a little like bath salts. Clothes sit neatly folded in a black suitcase — the lid open. Toiletries stand guard over by the sink, neatly. The carpet is the color of dirt. The bedspread and drapes pattern a combination of dirt and ochre colors. There is a painting of horses on the wall. A crappy painting. The television bubbles. News. When I look at the bed I see a slightly rumpled hollow where a single woman has been there watching TV and drinking alone. I don’t see any pill bottles but they must be here somewhere.
“Oh GAWD this room is so dreamy!” Ave Maria chirps, throwing herself onto the mother bed, caving in instantaneously. Typical.
My mother mans the remote control and points our attention in the direction of the nightly news. It’s us. The nightly news is us. Sort of. There’s been an arrest of a well-known psychoanalyst. A missing girl. A fire in a Seattle condo. An incident at a juvenile halfway house up north. The news reporter on scene at the halfway house is interviewing an eye-witness. There is a short clip of Ted. “MAWR,” he bellows, and sucks his hand. Local authorities are investigating.
Gee, other than that, we’re free and clear.
“Christ,” Little Teena says.
“There’s no mention of Marlene,” I say to Little Teena. “Or the showbiz goons.”
“I noticed,” he goes.
Obsidian comes up behind me and spoons me and says, “She got away, I’m sure of it.”
My stomach feels pretty much like I swallowed cement and my bunghole is forever encased in stone. I feel dizzy. I sit on the edge of the dirt brown and ochre bed and put my head between my legs. What are they going to do to “Ted?” Is Sig in jail? And where in the hell is Marlene? Alive? Dead? All because of me? “Fucking fuck …” I exhale.
A hand rests on my shoulder. I clamp on it — thinking it’s Obsidian — but right away I feel the wedding ring and elastic skin so soft skin and realize it’s her. My mother.
“Ida,” she says.
I look up and straighten up and shoot a defiant look upwards. “My name is Dora now,” I say.
“I see,” she says. Not even fazed.
“Dora, then.”
I stand up and pace the room. I don’t look at her. I try not to smell her skin lotion or bath salts or vodka breath, all of which feel familiar as a teddy bear to me. I try not to want to touch her waves of hair. I try not to remember sitting in her lap and wanting to die there. “I have a plan,” I stammer. “Obsidian and I just need to get to the airport is all. We have … wigs.”
“Wigs?” My mother crosses her arms over her chest. She is wearing a black cotton turtle neck and black straight leg jeans. She looks like a pretty middle-aged Catherine Deneuve spymom. “Dora,” she says, clearing her throat, “may I speak to you alone? In the bathroom?”
Ave Maria grabs a hotel pillow and covers her head and ears with it. Little Teena proceeds to fix himself a drink. Obsidian looks at me with “if you want we can run” in her eyes.
Every part of me doesn’t want to speak alone in the bathroom. Except for of course my entire self, who just once wants more than oxygen to get to be alone with this beautiful spymom. To bury my face in her chest. To have her hold me and rock me like a tiny fucking baby and sing to me and FUCK. GODDAMN IT. GET A GRIP, PUSSY.
“Fine. Whatever.” I stomp into the bathroom.
Once we’re in there, my mother unbuttons her pants and pulls her pants and underwear down and pees. A great waterfall of gushing piss. I mean my mom’s vag is in full view. I stare at the sink.
“Oh gaaaaawwwwwwwd,” she moans. “I held that too long.”
I bite the inside of my cheek so I don’t say what I’m thinking, which is doesn’t that feel kind orgasmically good?
My mother finishes peeing and stands up. The room smells briefly like very pretty bums. Then she flushes and sits on the edge of the bathtub. I lean against the closed bathroom door with my arms crossed over my chest. I stare at the shower head.
“Ida — I mean, Dora,” she goes, “this is a little awkward.”
No shit.
I sneak a peek at her face briefly. She has mother worry eyes and eyebrows. Her mouth purses. She blinks. Long eyelashes on a blonde are always beautiful. I quickly stare at the toilet paper roll, then feel dumb, shift my gaze to the mirror. That way I can look at her without looking at her. “You can tell them to release the Sig,” I go. “No one outside of my immediate family has done anything bad to me,” I say. “I’m fine.”
She closes her eyes. She sighs. Her sigh has years in it.
“Look,” she says, and her voice is tired out. She rubs her temple. She opens her eyes. I’m still looking in the mirror to see her. She stands up. Her hair smell wafts between us. Goddamn it. It’s the kind of hair smell that makes you want to bury your face in the waves.
“Too much has happened for me to try to change it. I mean you and me. You’re all grown up.” When she says “you and me” she waves her hand in the air between us like she’s shooing away flies. When she says “you’re all grown up” she puts her hands on her knees and spanks her kneecaps twice.
Something at the corner of my left eye aches.
She stares at her knees. “I blew it. I know it.”
My throat squeezing.
“You know, when I was pregnant with you, I left your father.”
Breath jacked. Lock jawed. Wha-wha-whut?
“I mean I thought I would leave him.” She looks up at me. “I came to this Holiday Inn. This room. I laid down on that bed,” she points to the bathroom wall. On the other side Ave Maria is probably laying right where she did. “I drank an entire bottle of vodka, and I put an entire bottle of Xanax in my mouth. The television was on. I rested there like that for some time. Some of the Xanax dissolved and went down my throat. I put my hands on my gigantic bare belly. You were in there. You kicked.”