She wore khaki trousers and sneakers and I could tell she was trying to walk briskly. “When you were a little boy the bay wasn’t so dirty,” she said. “You used to dive off the back of the boat and swim around like a fish. You’d go down and disappear under the bottom and my heart would just stop.”
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh, I know. You were just so small. Actually, I enjoyed watching you, Bill and Lisa having fun like that.” We were at the community dock now and she stopped to stare at a line of weathered boards. “I can’t believe Lisa is gone.”
I put my arm around her. “Neither can I. Lisa was special. She loved you very much, Mother.”
“I know. I loved her too.”
“Lisa knew that.”
She rubbed my arm. “Why aren’t you married, Monksie?”
“Haven’t found the right person, I guess.”
“I suppose that’s the important thing, finding the right person. Still, life is short.” She paused. “I wish I were closer to Bill’s children. The distance has been so difficult.”
“I know.”
“Do you talk to Bill?”
“Occasionally.”
“I think I haven’t talked to him in months. Poor Bill. Bill and your father never got along. Sad thing.”
“Yes, it was.”
“I don’t think Ben was fair to Bill.”
“I think you’re right.”
“But you. Your father was crazy about you. He’d talk about you when you weren’t around. Did you know that? Well, he did. You were his special child.”
“I suppose I knew that. Lisa certainly believed it. Bill, too. Actually, I appreciated your evenhandedness more than his attention.”
“You would.” She smiled at me. “He was right to consider you special.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
The conversation was unraveling my resolve. She was so lucid, so reasonable, so much herself.
Pollock: You first.Moore: No, you.Pollock: No, I insist.Moore: You.Pollock: You.Moore: Very well.
As I stood there with Mother, the breeze off the bay filling my shirt and chilling me, I tried to consider her coming loneliness, waking in a strange bed, with strange faces, strange food, but instead I thought of my own loneliness. I had allowed the letters of friends to go too long unanswered and I imagined they had written me off. I felt small for regarding myself, for being so self-centered in the face of Mother’s coming day and life.
“Should we be going?” she asked.
“Mother, I have to tell you what’s going on.”
“Yes, dear?”
I held her close and looked at the water while I talked. “Lately, your condition has been getting worse. The doctor said it would happen this way.” I took a breath. “Do you remember standing in the boat out in the middle of the pond.”
Mother laughed. “What?”
I could see she did not know what I was talking about. “You rowed yourself out into the pond and I had to swim out and get you.” I let her silence settle. “You locked Lorraine out of the house and came to me in the study with Father’s pistol. You locked yourself in the bathroom at Lorraine’s wedding. Mother, I’m afraid you’re going to get lost and hurt. I’m taking you to a new place to live today.”
She pulled the edges of her sweater. “Is it time to go?”
“I guess so.”
“I trust you to do what’s best, Monk.”
My first table saw had a plastic guard on it. I would faithfully lower it and let it protect me every time I slid a piece of wood through the machine, happy when it cut easily, cursing when the awkward shield caused me to have to switch off the power or bring back the half-sawn wood. But the high whine of the blade, frankly, scared me. I could measure with my eyes and hear the destructive capabilities of the disc and even smell it when a piece of wood would linger against the blade and get burned. Then I learned to remove the guard for larger boards, then screw it back on. I screwed it back on less often, then less often still until I could not say where the thing had been put. I would push the boards through without a thought that I might lose a finger or that the blade might fly off and carve through my cranium. I began to enjoy the burning smell, the whine of the machine, the sight of the first notch the blade made in the bottom corner of the board.
And so we made the trip to Mother’s new home in Columbia. She was so clear-headed throughout the admissions process that I was ready to take her back to the beach. But the administrator showed no pause, only asked the questions and filled out the forms. We walked to Mother’s suite, an apartment more than a room, though it lacked a kitchen. Mother touched the institutional furniture and frowned slightly.
“Would you like me to bring some things from the house?” I asked.
“That would be nice. You decide what.”
We walked outside to the grounds and the real sadness of the place took me. An old woman reached to me with her eyes as I passed her wheelchair, asking if I could tell her something, tell her that I knew her, anything. They were all old, all waiting. Some seemed in good enough spirits. Most were women. Outside, the sun was warmer, the expanse of green lawn leading to a wrought iron fence negating the earlier hint of fall in the air. I turned to Mother to find her wandering away toward the fence.
“Mother?” I chased after her. “Mother?” I turned her around.
Her face showed no recognition. I was a blank space in her universe. She let me lead her back to her rooms. The young nurse who had been guiding us and trailing back a proper distance seemed to all too well understand what was happening. She helped me put my mother to bed, backed me out of the room and said that she would sit with her a while. As I left I realized that all the furniture had rounded edges and was soft wherever possible. I would bring no furniture from home.
Bill and I were over at Eastern Market, wandering through the aisles of produce and fish. Bill was a teenager and I was pretending to be one. Father had charged us with finding a nice late-season bluefish. School was about to begin for us and we were enjoying the last days of summer break. Bill was talking with a friend of his who worked at a crab stand while I looked over the fish. Two letter-jacketed boys from Bill’s school swaggered down the aisle toward us, making their kind of animal noises to announce their presence.
“Hey, it’s Ellison,” the shorter one said.
“Hello, Roger,” Bill said.
“Ready for school?” Roger asked.
The taller of the guys looked at his watch, then out the far door. “Come on, Rog.”
Roger smiled. “In a minute.” He looked at the skinny kid behind the counter. “What about you, Lucy?”
“Don’t call me that,” the kid said.
“So, what were you two talking about? Is there a party somewhere I shouldn’t know about?” Roger laughed, nudged his friend. His friend laughed weakly, disinterestedly. “Is this your brother?” he asked Bill.
“Yeah.”
“You one, too?” Roger asked me.
I looked at his face, then at the letter G sewn onto his blue and white jacket. I understood it was an award for wrestling, because it had pinned to it a medal, two figures posed one behind the other in close contact.