The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(18)

*

We made a turkey. Stove Top stuffing. Pillsbury rolls. It was the first time we had that kind of real American combo. We ate like she was away for the weekend and we were sneaking in as much ordinary life as we could before she returned, maybe teased us, maybe pretended to be grossed out. Every few minutes my brother and I said, too many times, too loud, how good the rolls were. I mean, really, exceptionally good. Unbelievable.

*

Devin had come to visit me two months before the stroke, late summer, when the biggest challenge we faced was removing twenty years of life from the house. He had not met my family, and I wanted to show him this place before it was gone.

We stood on the deck that looked out over the valley and hills, the dusk giving the high points one final golden glow. Cows dotted the dead grass, redwood trees stretched in wild stripes.

“I could live here,” he’d said. “I’d like a place like this.”

“Not me,” I said. “This place is haunted.”

I could hear Davy inside working on an old tiny motor, the clatter of tools, an intensive project he was single-mindedly focused on despite the sea of other, larger, pressing projects closing in. I could hear my mother on the phone, negotiating dates with the Realtor. A little more time, she said, just another week or two. Then: How’s your garden?

“But you could have a garden,” Devin said. “I could work at Google and make all the money and eat free sushi for lunch every day.”

“That’s true.”

“And you could write steamy romance novels and make millions,” he said.

“It’s a good point.”

“It is a good point.”

He told me later that night, after my parents had gone to bed and we were alone, that when I’d gone inside, my mom, empty wineglass in hand, had walked over to him, hooked his arm, and firmly marched him farther down the deck, away from the house.

“Do you know how special she is?” she’d said, turning to look him straight in the face. Her hair was short and silver. People stopped in the grocery store to comment on the greenness of her eyes.

“Yeah, I—”

“Really, exceptionally special.”

“I know.”

“Do you know?”

“She just loves you so much,” he told me when we were brushing our teeth.

*

“Loosen up, babygirl,” my mom said, pushing a shot of tequila at me across the table. “Loosen up, and toughen up.” She smiled.

I took the shot and raised it into the air. “What are we cheersing?”

“Adventure,” she said, and swallowed the thing down. Small glittery skulls hung from the ceiling like a warning.

“So tell me about why you keep dating people who aren’t your equals?”

“Mom.”

“Want me to tell you what I think? You’re scared. You want to be in charge.”

“Let’s not talk about this,” I said.

“You feel like you need to be the boss,” she said.

“That’s not it,” I said, even though it obviously was.

“Well, what is it then?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sir,” she said, meeting the eyes of our waiter. “Two more tequilas, please.”

“You can’t just get me drunk and make me talk.”

She smiled again. “Wanna bet?”

It was March 2007, three and a half years before her stroke. I was twenty-two. We were at a small Mexican restaurant in a strip mall somewhere near the Oregon-California border. The mariachi music was low and the lights were bright, and my mom and I sat across from one another in a small booth against a yellow wall, tequila debris between us. Also, history between us. Some lingering linguistic trail that pointed back to the moment in the kitchen when, at fifteen, in the midst of a fight about a friend’s house I was no longer allowed to visit, I told her: “I don’t love you.”

They weren’t just fighting words, though. Since I was thirteen, I’d known it. I believed it through my early twenties. I didn’t love her.

When she looked at me, shocked, the corners of her mouth turned up just slightly as if she were about to laugh, because usually whenever I said something dramatic, she laughed. That’s how I knew what to say next. The surprise on her face. “I don’t love you now, and I never have. I never will.”

She didn’t laugh. She looked at me, stoic. We both realized that something in what I’d said was true.

Finally, she turned back to the carrots she was chopping and gave a halfhearted chuckle. “I sure can’t wait till you’re not a teenager anymore,” she said, trying to cover the wound. But I knew what those words had done, and how they were now and forever a part of her world.

Never have. Never will.

*

“I just want you to find someone who will make you happy,” she said, holding up the next shot of tequila.

“I can make myself happy,” I said.

“The world is lonely and you are lonely in it,” she said. “Get a partner. A good one. It’s better that way.” Her tequila was still in the air like a vessel of preserved amber that might hold some key to unlocking the future. I raised mine, too.

“That’s why I ended up with David,” she said. “He’s a guy who loves me no matter what. He works hard and loves the family.” She paused to suck lime. “He stepped in when it was just me and you, when you were two, and I didn’t know what to do next. He built you a little kitchen. Do you remember? A little wooden kitchen. That’s when you started calling him Davy. Not David, or Dave, like everyone else, but Davy. He built you that kitchen before he’d even met you.”