Mother's Day

Yesterday Evening, Zoe and I were sitting in the living room, when the telephone rang. Without a thought on my mind, I picked up the receiver and said, in tenor, as follows: "This is a recorded announcement. Do you suffer from coughs, colds, tightness around the chest? Then try Hydoplexideem. It contains gustodex, pyroflavin and rich nodules of flicomycin. Now for the time. It is exactly nine-forty-seven." There was a long silence and a million miles away I heard someone hang up.

And Zoe said, "I don't think that was a particularly wise thing to do, do you?" She was sewing and kept her head down. "After all, you were funny enough a year ago to last you for a while, don't you think?"

"There is a certain modicum of merit in your observation," I said. "But it wouldn't be politic to elaborate on it."

When I speak to Zoe in formal, composed sentences, she knows better than to say any more, and we sat in silence until bedtime. We have been married ten years this coming November, and it took us three years and two children before we learned that we detested one another.

Since that discovery, we have lived in a state of symbiosis. She needs someone to take care of her, and I need someone to take care of. When I get sick of it, which is usually once a year, I get quietly loaded and plot itineraries to Mexico. When she gets sick of it, which is usually once a week, she makes smart, uncalled-for remarks.

Such as the above, which refers to a joke I played, perhaps the finest joke I ever played. The only people who really liked the joke were my mother (the victim) and myself (the perpetrator). We both got a big bang out of it, and in the light of what happened – I refuse to say in spite of what happened – I am very happy I gave her this big bang for one full day.

Usually it takes a month of gestation to bring forth a good sound joke, but the one I played on my mother popped into my head, full-blown and breathing well, with no further work to do on it, save to play it. I was sitting in my office early one morning, with nothing to do, or no intentions of doing anything, and hey, presto! – there in my head was this lovely, juicy notion. I picked up the telephone and called my mother. I covered the mouthpiece with a handkercheif. Once or twice before she had recognized my voice.

"Mrs. St. Thomas?"

"Yes, this is Mrs. St. Thomas."

"Mrs. St. Thomas, this is Walter Conklin of the Blue Star Grocery and Market. How are you this fine morning? Mrs, St. Thomas, I am very pleased to advise you that you have won the first (continued on page 44) Mother's Day (continued from page 41) prize in our weekly drawing, a twenty-five-dollar grocery order, plus a case of Shredded Wheat. Now, what do you say to that, Mrs. St. Thomas?"

I heared her booming contralto and I knew her enormous bosom and big barrel belly were shaking with inner laughter.

"Why, I say it's high time I won something, after all these years," she said, "and no more than right." No one ever got away with pretending they had given my mother anything to which she was not already entitled.

"Then am I to understand that you do accept the prize, Mrs. St. Thomas?" I asked. "We prefer that you do, but if you had rather not, we will draw another number."

"You'll do nothing of the kind," my mother shouted. "You'll hang up the phone, that's what you'll do, so I can call my son Tom to come down and get the prizes."

"Then our heartiest congratulations to you, Mrs. St. Thomas," I said, and hung up. Before I could light a cigarette, she was on the wire.

"Thomas Jefferson St. Thomas," she said, "guess, just guess, oh you'll never guess, what has just happened. Never guess and just never, never believe it."

"Then I'll hang up," I said, "If I can't believe my own dear, sweet, wonderful, sainted mother, then I'd rather not hear it."

"Oh, will you shut up," she shouted. "I've won the first prize at the Blue Star."

"Old girl, we must have a poor connection," I said, "It sounds like you said you've won a blue star.Does this mean you've stopped drinking?"

"Oh, you Tom Fool, you heard me," she shouted. "A twenty-five-dollar grocery order and a case of Shredded Wheat, a whole case."

"You're not intending to accept it, naturally?" I asked.

"Accept it? Not intending to accept it? What kind of fool mood are you in, boy?"

"Well, Old Washtub," I said, "you know you've always said that in this world you get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. And besides, we never liked Shredded Wheat very much, anyway."

"I've raised up a half-with to torment me in my old age," she said. "You just get right down there, this very day, and pick up twenty-five-dollars worth of groceries, and tell that Walter Conklin to give you some kind of cereal you like."

I didn't plan to call her back until sometime after lunch, but occasionally during the morning I dialed her number. It was busy each time, as I knew it would be. I could see her in her big rocking chair by the telephone calling everybody she knew and telling them the wonderful news of her wonderful prize.

About ten o'clock my older brother, John Paul, called. "I've just gotten a call from Sweet Mother," he said. "Is it on the level or is this just another one of your bright ideas?"

"Hang up the phone, John Paul," I said. "I'm expecting a call from my bookie any minute, and unless he's throbbing with true love for his fellow man, I've lost every cent of the St. Thomas fortune, and more besides, on a horse named Gus, who ran sixth on a muddy track yesterday. You may have to got to work, John Paul."

That struck the proper pitch of horror, and he hung up, to return to his beekeeping, his project at that time to go from sunrise; to sunset on a non-profit basis. Ages ago, aeons, when I was fourteen and John Paul was twenty-two, he got the notion I needed discipline. A good hard punch on the nose changed his mind, and he has had enough sense to operate on that memory ever since. And as I am, and have been since Old Memsahib got too fat to get around, the money man in the St. Thomas family, he quells easily.

A little later on, my sister Libby called. "Little Brother," she breathed, "I've just talked to Sweet Mother, and I know you're up to some wickedness. I beg you, if you love us, if you love Sweet Mother, to stop right now, before it's too late."

I am five feet and eleven inches tall, I weigh in at 240 pounds, without an ounce of fat. For thirty-three years I have had the favor of Libby's sage counsel, grim warnings and dire prophecies. Sad bastard that I am, I have repaid her with the stony brutality of short and stubby words. And still she has never gotten the word that I am not Little Brother, and need only for her to point the true way to send me pell-mell in the opposite direction.

"Libby, shut up and listen to Little Brother," I said, "I've just spewed up my islands of Langerhans all over the goddamned floor. It looks like Little Brother has come down with hyper-glycemia, Libby, and you know what that means, Libby."

"Very well, Little Brother," she said, "I might have known that nothing I might say could deter you. To flout me, and Big Brother, has ever been your long suit. But I did think you might for once consider Sweet Mother."

She hung up. Now I have, in the past, addressed my mother, our mother, as Old Girl, Old Horse and Old Wash-tub; as Memsahib, Boss Maam and Old Begum; as Mrs. Muckafuss, Myrtle Murgatroyd and Little Moonbeam; but stretched on the rack till Libby's saints go marching in, I would never call her Sweet Mother.

Around one-thirty, I called Mama again, with, the handkercheif over the phone.

"Mrs. St. Thomas," I said, "this is Walter Conklin again." I had a nice, right, tight sound in my voice, the kind of noise an airline clerk makes when he tells you he has no record of your reservation.

"And how are you, Mr. Conklin? Don't tell me that I've won another prize already." And she laughted, immoderately.

"Mrs. St. Thomas, I am greatly embarrassed. We seem to have made a dreadful mistake." I heard her mighty intake of breath, and I pressed on. "You know we called this morning and advised you that you had won the first prize in last week's drawing? Of a twenty-five-dollar grocery order and a case of Shredded Wheat?"

"Yes, yes," Mama said, "and none of the children like Shredded Wheat, so when Tom comes down, you just give him a case of some kind of cereal they like."

"Well, Mrs. St. Thomas, that's just it," I said, "I made a mistake this morning when I told you that you won. What I meant to say was that you almost won."

"Why, you dunce," my mother cried out, "what on earth are you blathering about? Almost won? No one calls anybody and tells them they almost won! Are you drunk, Conklin?"

Conklin caught ten minutes of hell so hot I began to pity him. In pauses, I bleated apologies, stoking her to fantastic degrees of Fahrenheit. And when she ran down, finally, I said, "Mrs. St. Thomas, the Blue Star is frightfully sorry for this most grievous mistake, but we do hope that we'll have the pleasure of serving you in the future as we have in the past."

"You feeble-minded scoundrel," my mother said, "you'll not while off with weasel-gutted apologies. My son, Thomas Jefferson St. Thomas, a giant of a man, will be at your store within the hour, and I shall be with him. If the prize is not forthcoming on the instant, I shall direct him to thrash you within an inch of your life. So see to it, sir, that you see to it," And she hung up.

She called me within the minute, breathing pure sulphur. I argued that (continued on page 106) Mother's day (continued from page 44) the prize was beneath a St. Thomas, but in the end I agreed to go by the Blue Star with her, and beat the living bejesus out of the pusillanimous Conklin. Pacified and happy at the thought of impending battle, she hung up.

When you reach the point of revelation, when the victim must learn that he has been led around the mulberry bush, a sadness sets in. It's best to let him find out in some indirect way, but this was my masterpiece and I had to be present when Mama went to the Blue Star and confronted the baffled management, when the truth finally dawned on her, and with a shout of fury she would begin to cuff me on the side of the head, and we'd finally collapse against each other, laughing until we cried.

And in the middle of this sadness, a time when it is fatal to be interrupted, Zoe called, and I played the Tom Fool to the end.

"Tomtom," she said, "I want you to come home." She had not called me Tomtom in many years, but I didn't read the clue. I remembered later there was no Zoe sound in her voice, which is to say there was no Zoe sound in her voice, which is to say there was no ice, no fire, no contempt, no hatred, but only pity, futilepity.

I growled deep in my throat. "Zoe, Zoe, you lovely bitch," I said, "I have been too long denied my conjugal rights, and I seethe with unslakable lust. Let's get a hotel room tonight, and I swear I'll make you beg for mercy before the sun comes up."

Time was she cut me down with words well chosen for their cutting edge, or hung up in ladylike silence. But this time she was silent and there was something obscene, menacing, in her silence. And then Libby, dear Libby, was on the phone. In the hereafter, as a reward for her good works, Libby will stand at heaven's gate and direct the hellbound to the right road.

Little Brother, come home," she said. "Sweet Mother is dying, and may God forgive you, little Brother."

I placed the receiver down in the desk. I wrote my name down on a memo pad and studied it. I thought that Thomas Jefferson St. Thomas was a strange name. I carefully erased it, and then, why did I write it again, very carefully, in large, bold capital letters? I stared at it in cold satisfaction until I became aware of my breathing, deep and regular. I got up and went home. There seemed to be no hurry.

We all lived with Mama then. Our house is storn down now, and the site had been taken over by a shopping center. I was born in that house, and I had a lot of fun in it. But if you really want to hear some fine sad music about it, you must hear Libby and Charles lament the dear old rent-free days.

Zoe was waiting for me. I wasted no time.

"No sermon, no speech, no editorial," I said. "And especially no sound like a wife. Just tell the tale."

She told me. She was very nice about it.

After my first call, as I had figured, Mama had run all over the neighborhood, telling everybody in shouting distance of her bonanza. Then she had spent the rest of the morning, rocking back and forth, and yelling over the telephone. And she had danced a wild jig with the kids all over the house.

"Then you called again," Zoe said, "and after she hung up, she was so quiet I came in to see about her. She was slumped in her rocking chair. She was very gray and drawn in the face. I think that was her first attack. I tried to make her lie down and let me call the doctor, but after a while, she got up and went upstairs and in no time I heard her rushing back and forth, getting dressed, and shouting to herself, the way she does. Once I heaard her say, 'Hit him again, Tom boy' and all sorts of things I couldn't make out, all at the very top of her lungs."

Zoe heard her come to the head of the stairs, and heard her fall, and came rushing out of the kitchen in time to see her roll to the foot of the stairs. It was not enough that her heart should burst; the fall had broken her neck.

"Oh, she was impossible,"Zoe said. "She lay there and told me to call Dr. Parker. He got here with an ambulance and she just stood him down. She said she was dying and that she was dying at home, and she made them move her into the spare room downstairs."

Zoe put her hand on my arm. "It was an accident," she said, "and your mother has lived a long life. You must remember that."

"No," I said. "I killed her. Just the same as if I aimed a gun and pulled the trigger and shot her in the head. Not head, heart."

I walked down the hall and went in the room, with Zoe behind me. Libby and John Paul were there, I had to move around them to get to the bed, but I didn't see them. I don't even remember if old Parker was there.

Now Mama was a big woman all her life and in her old age she got to be enormous. I think she weighed as much as I do. But she weighed as much as I do. But she was as fast and light and graceful on her feet and it was amazing to see her coming down the street toward you, like a ship in full sail. She lay on the bed, huge as a mountain, and when I looked down at her, she grinned up at me, a real fierce eye-squinching grin.

"Tom boy," she said, "I'm a beached whale."

"Sport model," I said, "how do you feel?"

"Don't talk nonsence, boy," she said."I'm on my last run."

"I thought you were going to live forever," I said.

"You know, I thought I was, too," she said. "But I've had a good run of it." And Libby made an ugly sound behind me, and Mama raised her voice. "Libby, I'll have no sniveling at my deathbed. If you can't hush, girl, then leave the room." And Libby hushed.

There was something I wanted to know. "Are you scared?" I asked.

"I won't lie," she said. "I'm scared to death." And she laughed at her own joke, but it seemed to hurt, and she stopped. "I've lived for long and long," she said. "I've seen some sights and had my pleasures, so I can leave."

We were silent then, and the only sound was her breathing, which was very loud. Then she said, "Don't you let that Conklin jackass get away with that stunt of his, you hear me?"

I could have gone along, I guess. I could have said something to reassure her that Conklin would cough up that prize. It never crossed my mind.

"Little Moonbeam," I said, "there was no prize at the Blue Star, You've been led up the pole."

She didn't believe me at first, because that's part of the game, but finally she did. "You always were a fool," she said, "but if I'd lived, I'd have paid you back."

What Libby and John Paul can't bear to remember is that she laughed then, I mean she roared the room down. Not for long, because it hurt, and it would be wrong to say she laughed herself to death, because actually she stopped and lived on for a few more minutes, but she laughted as long as she could, and when she could laugh no more, she died.

Zoe led john Paul and Libby out of the room. I stayed on until the funeral parlor people came and took over, and then I went into the living room. All three of them were in there, and huddled was the word for them. I stood and looked at them, and they never looked up. My brother. My sister. My wife. And not one of them would speak to me or look me in the eye. I moved on out of the room, and at the door, I spoke to them.

"Boss Maam has paid her debt," I said, "I still have mine to pay."

We sold the house about six weeks after the funeral, and we got a lot of money for it. Zoe and I live in a new u'xurban development, and we get along as best we can. Life, I think, is simply a matter of inhaling and exhaling, and putting down one foot after another, and if Zoe is not what I took her for, then neither am I. Neither, I say, am I.

John Paul and Libby and I meet in town, once a month, and have dinner together. At first, we visited each other and then I had this happy thought of the three of us dining together which has cut down on the vibrations as you can well imagine. All this is just as creepy as it sounds, and it will go on forever, but with my fist around a whiskey glass, I can stand it.

I come to the end. I trust you understand that I do not disagree in any particular with my dear brother and sister and wife. As far as they go with it, they are quite right, Mama was the victim of my joke. But then, sometimes I live that day over, and I wonder whose jokes was I the victim of?

I was not, you might say, so bloody lucky as Old Memsahib. But from the way I answered the telephone last night, apparently I have learned to live with it. It gives me wildly to hope that certain people are due for a little untoward excitement from time to time.