“Yeah,” I said.
“But he told me it was too late for that, and I was just so awful sorry. Then he told me you’d gone back to school up here, so I just had to come up here and see you. I mean, you are my baby and all, and we haven’t seen each other in just years and years, have we?”
“It’s been a long time, Mother,” I agreed.
She was nervously trying to light a cigarette, and finally I fired up my lighter for her. Her hands were shaking as badly as mine were.
“Would you like a drink, Mother?” I asked her.
She raised her face quickly, and the sudden look of anguish cut right through me. She thought I was being snotty.
“No games, Mother,” I said. “I’m going to have one, and I just thought you might like one too, that’s all.”
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “maybe just a little one. I’ve been cutting way down, you know.”
“Mixer? Water? It’s bourbon.”
“Just a little ice, Danny, if you got any.”
I fixed us a couple, and I could see by the way her hands were shaking that she needed one pretty badly.
We both drank them off, and I refilled the glasses without saying anything. I think we both felt better then.
“I’m so proud of you Danny, baby,” she said. “I mean your college and all. I never told you that, did I? There’s so many things I never got the chance to tell you. You and Jackie both seemed to grow up so fast. It just seems like I no more than turned around and you were both gone. First Jackie in the Navy, and then your father passing away, and then you leaving like you did. It just all happened so fast.”
“It’s like that sometimes, Mother,” I said. “Nothing ever stays the same.”
“I can still remember you two when you were little,” she said. “Jackie always so lively and full of fun, and you always so quiet and serious. Just like day and night, you two. And now poor Jackie getting divorced again.” She dug out a handkerchief and held it to her face. She wasn’t crying; she was just getting ready.
“He’s a big boy now, Mother,” I said.
“It’s just all so rotten,” she said. “You’re the smart one. Don’t ever get married, Danny. Women are just no good. We’re all bitches.”
“Now, Mother.”
“No, it’s true.” The tears were running down her face now, smearing her makeup. “Your father was a good man — a fine man, and look what I did to him. He didn’t understand me, but that didn’t give me the right to hound him the way I did. I tried to be a good wife, but I just couldn’t help myself.”
“It’s all right now, Mother. Just try not to let it get you down.”
She finished her drink and mutely held out the glass. I doubt if she was even aware that she was doing it. I filled it again. She was making a good-sized dent in my bourbon, but what the hell?
“I’m pretty much a failure, do you know that, Danny? I failed your father, and I failed you boys.” She was crying openly now, the wet, slobbering, let-it-all-go kind of crying you see once in a while in an old wino.
“I’m so sorry, Danny. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right, Mother. It was all a long time ago.” How could I get her off it?
“Please forgive me, Danny, baby.”
“Come on, Mother.” That was too much.
“You’ve got to forgive me,” she said. She looked at me, her eyes pleading and her face a ruin.
“Mother.”
“I’m begging you to forgive me, Danny,” she said. “I’ll get down on my knees to you.” She moved before I could stop her. She slid off the edge of the couch and dropped heavily to her knees on the floor.
“Come on, Mother,” I said, trying to lift her back to the couch, “get up.”
“Not until you forgive me, Danny.”
This was silly. “All right, Mother, I forgive you. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Really, Danny? Really?”
“Yes, Mother. Come on now. Get up.”
She let me haul her to her feet, and then she insisted on giving me a kiss. Then she kind of halfway repaired her face. She seemed a little calmer after that. She talked for a few minutes and then got ready to leave.
“I’ve got just enough time to make connections for the Portland bus,” she said.
“Have you got your ticket?” I asked her.
“Oh, yes,” she said brightly. “I’m just fine.”
“Do you need any money — for a bite to eat or anything?”
“No, Danny, I’m just fine, really.” She stood up. “I’ve really got to go now.” She went over to the door. “I feel so much better now that we’ve had the chance to get things straightened out like this. I’ve worried about it for the longest time.”
“It was good to see you, Mother.”
“I’m so proud of you, baby.” She patted my cheek and went out quickly. I watched through the window as she carefully made her way around the house in front. Her hat was on lopsided, and her dark coat had a large dusty patch on one shoulder where she’d stumbled against something. She went on out of sight.
“Oh, Danny,” Clydine said. “Oh, Danny, I’m so sorry.” She was standing behind me, wrapped in a bath towel, huge tears bright in her eyes.
“Oh, it’s all right, Blossom. She’s been like this for as long as I can remember. You get used to it after a while.”
“It must have been awful.”
“I don’t even hold any grudges anymore,” I said. “I thought I did, but I really don’t. I really forgave her, do you know that? I didn’t think I ever could, but I did. I wasn’t just saying it.” It surprised me, but I meant it. “I just wish she could quit drinking, is all,” I added.
39
It was a Thursday morning several weeks after Mother’s visit and Clydine had just got up. I was still lying in bed. She stood nude in front of the full-length mirror that was bolted to the bathroom door. She cupped her hands under her breasts.
“Danny,” she said thoughtfully, hefting them a couple times.
“Yes, love?”
“Do you think I ought to start wearing a bra? I’m pretty chesty, and I wouldn’t want to start to droop.”
I howled with laughter.
“Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t! I don’t see what’s so goddamn funny.”
She was absolutely adorable. Sometimes I’d catch myself laughing for no reason, just being around her. I loved her, not with that grand, aching, tragic passion that I’d pretty well burned out on Susan, but rather with a continual delight in her, a joy just in her presence. Believe me, there’s a lot to be said for joy as opposed to tragic passion. For one thing, it’s a helluva lot less exhausting in the long run.
Anyhow, nothing would do but our cutting classes and my taking her out immediately so she could buy herself some new bras.
We got back about eleven, and she modeled them for me.
“What do you think?” she said doubtfully.
“It’s different,” I said.
“You don’t like it.”
“I didn’t say that. I just said it’s different. How does it feel?”
“Like a darn straitjacket,” she admitted. Then she sighed deeply. “Oh, well, I guess it’s just another one of the curses of being a woman.”
“Poor Blossom.” I laughed.
She stuck her tongue out at me. I’d noticed, but hadn’t mentioned, the fact that she’d backed way off on the truck-driver vocabulary and hadn’t really gotten much involved with the militants up here. She’d told me that she disagreed ideologically with the main thrust of the university militants, but I suspected that she’d just plain outgrown them. At least I didn’t have to worry about her getting her cute little fanny chucked into jail every weekend. That was something anyway.
After lunch she had a couple of classes, so I had a chance to get some concentrated work done. I was tackling the possibility that Melville’s Billy Budd was not a simple hymn of praise to the natural man, but rather a much more complex parable of the struggle of good and evil — represented by Billy and Claggart — for the soul of Captain Vere. I’d landed on it by way of the chance discovery that Melville had practically camped on the New York Public Library copy of Milton’s Paradise Regained all during the time he was writing Billy Budd.
I was deep in the mystic mumblings of the Old Dansker when Jack showed up.
He looked awful. He hadn’t shaved for several days, and his eyes looked like the proverbial two burned holes in a blanket.
“Jesus, man,” I said, holding the door open for him, “what the hell happened to you?”