A Book of American Martyrs(94)

Most radically she’d lost weight. Breasts, hips. She’d ceased to be female. In ceasing to be female very shrewdly she’d ceased to be maternal.

Seeing Mom after several weeks we’d stared at her as if trying to identify her. Then Melissa cried, “Mom-my!” and ran to her to be swept into her arms and hugged even as frowning Naomi held back and especially frowning Darren hung back out of distrust.

Who are you, fuck you. Your fault Dad is dead you left him all alone and kept us with you. We don’t love you.

That night, she tapped the bed beside her in the guest room reserved for her, that we might sit beside her. We saw on her thin wrist a man’s wristwatch with a black strap, that fitted her loosely: Dad’s watch.

“Just for us. Just for you. We won’t tell your grandparents. Our secret.”

She had a small recorder. She was not adept with mechanical things but she managed to play it for us.

Oh we had not heard since the first time. We’d forgotten.

H’lo there? Anybody home?

(Pause)

Jenna? Darling? Will you pick up, please?

(Pause)

Is anyone there?

(Pause)

Well—I’ll try again. If I can, tonight.

I’m sorry that—well, you know.

I think I’ve been distracted by—what’s going on here.

(Pause)

If I sound exhausted—I am!

(Pause)

I have a new idea, Jenna—about next year. Or, rather, next summer. When the children are finished with school. I looked up the date—June eighteenth.

(Pause)

OK. Sorry to miss you.

Love you.

(Pause)

Love all of you.

(Pause)

Good-bye . . .

(Pause)

H’lo? Did I hear someone? Is someone—there?

(Pause)

OK, guys. Love you. I’ll call back soon.

G’bye.





“NO MORE”


Early she’d wakened. Very quietly—stealthily—she was leaving us for Seattle.

A car had come for her, sleek-dark hired car like a torpedo in the twilit air before dawn waiting, motor running, headlights in the driveway below. And Naomi panicked and ran after her barefoot on the stairs for she was leaving without saying good-bye as she had arrived without (it seemed to us) saying hello. “Mom, wait! When will we see you again . . .”

But already she was at the door, with her suitcase. Already, about to step outside.

“Mom! Mom!”

Her thinning shale-colored hair had been brushed back severely from her face. Her thin taut body that had reverted to the neuter body of a young girl and was no longer a mother’s body was hidden inside a shapeless dark coat that fell nearly to her ankles. Her face—that had once been a beautiful face, or nearly—was now worn, wan, alabaster-pale—bloodless. (Darren had said Jesus! She looks exsanguinated liking the sound of words extravagant and reckless and angry in Zap Comix style.) Her eyebrows seemed to have disappeared. Her eyelashes were brittle and broken. The eyes were naked, raw.

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to anyone? Not even Melissa?”

Excitedly Naomi spoke. Not accusingly but with a sound of child-fear, that entered the marrow of the (fleeing) mother’s bones like radium.

She was shaking her head now. She was fully awake.

“Mom? Wait . . .”

In the doorway Jenna hesitated. She had not seemed to hear Naomi’s question yet she turned to Naomi her wide damp blind-seeming eyes. And she was smiling, a faint, terrible smile.

Shocking to Naomi, the face was a mirror-face. Almost, her own face reflected at her. But a tired face, an extinguished face, a baffled face. And in the eyes, for an instant, something like the dull blank of non-recognition.

“Naomi! I didn’t want to wake you, to say good-bye. Or—the others . . .”

Vaguely she spoke. Apologetically.

Then Jenna said, as if she’d only just now thought of it, as if this chance meeting with her elder daughter at the very moment of her departure had provoked the disclosure that would have otherwise remained unarticulated, “D’you know, it’s funny, after we listened to Gus’s voice last night, I was thinking—not for the first time actually, but this time more clearly— how I’d always taken for granted that we are meant to help one another here on earth—(forgive me: ‘here on earth’ is such a cliché! Gus would laugh at me)—to be good, to be generous, to be kind and loving and forgiving to one another. Whenever I meet another person, instinctively I smile at him—or her; I am obliged to be generous, to be kind, to be thoughtful, to think of the other, to think conscientiously of the other, and not of myself. Of course. Your father was like this, too—in his own way, a more aggressive way. Where I am fearful, Gus was fearless. He believed passionately in this response to life . . . But in the past year it has become clear to me that really, none of this matters.”

Naomi wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. None of this matters?

None of—what?

She was the bad girl, the skeptic. Naomi, and her brother Darren. Both skeptics. Sharp-tongued kids, bratty kids, kids who roll their eyes during Pledge of Allegiance. Smart-ass kids with high I.Q.s and low tolerance for others. Kids with wizened little crab apples for hearts.

Abortionist’s kids. Well, they all got what they deserved didn’t they.