Prolific: Farm Life Multiplied

== Chapter: Visiting Mom ==

I'd been debating whether I would go and see Mom, at all, that year. But, some kind of familial duty won out and I called and set up a visit.

I wanted to do it at her work again but she insisted it had to be after work, so we set up the day and time.

I asked her on the phone, could she be sober?

She said yes, but I didn't figure that would happen.

In a surprise for her, I told her I'd be bringing a girl with me.

Kelly had volunteered, as much as I wanted to bring Jay, who was out of town. We got to mom's place at 4, and she said she'd be there about 4:15, which I knew translated to at least 4:45 in her time, but since it was special, I thought that she might want to be on time.

Nope!

Somewhere near 6:15, she appeared, busy-seeming with her keys, like she wasn't already toasted. I didn't know what she'd do, but, yeah, well, that's just like I remembered it.

We got out of the car and I called over to her. She turned and waved, then got her keys sorted and we followed her upstairs.

Once we were inside, she flipped on the lights and turned around to give me a hug. She followed it immediately with one of her sweeping-back-hair, 'grand to meet you darling' sort of way, and then a hug that obviously made Kelly uncomfortable. Mom wasn't used to doing 'family' things, at least with my girlfriends, really, ever.

We took off our coats and all had some water, which I poured myself to prevent mom from making hers half-vodka.

Mom was perfectly sociable, and a random person might even believe she only looked slightly tipsy.

I knew better. Mom was hammered.

I'd seen her like this so I knew she was lucid enough to remember the meeting (my goal, really).

I had introduced Kelly as my 'girlfriend'.

(We'd decided as a group, earlier, that I could tell my mother that one of the girls was pregnant, so I had our group's permission.)

Kelly ended up being the person to come with, and we agreed to use a false last name if we were asked, but otherwise not offer it up - I didn't want my mom messing up Kelly's life.

It turned out, Mom didn't ask. I think she was confused why I'd brought a girl. She knew (I'd told her plenty of times) that she was an embarrassment and I didn't much want anything to do with her.

To her credit, though, Mom was cordial and caring towards Kelly-the-Girlfriend. She didn't know how to express it in a sane way, of course, but she did love me. I could tell that, and that she desperately missed me.

Even knowing that, I couldn't fix it. I could not be there for her, not ever. That wasn't who I was anymore, a person able to prop up her sanity with logical thought and rescue her from the self-destruction train.

After we did the 'what's your major' thing and a couple of what's up questions for me that I mostly ducked with schoolwork answers.

Kelly then told mom she had a surprise.

I waited to hear mom's reaction.

Mom got an odd look in her eyes. I think she expected Kelly to say something about us moving in together, or that we were engaged.

Kelly had to say again, "I have a surprise."

Mom finally figured out she was supposed to say, "Okay, what is it?"

This was it.

Kelly said, "Ma'am, Mrs. Kuiper? I'm pregnant. It's Kevin's."

I piped in quickly with a happy, "Yep!"

Mom's shock was complete. Her mouth opened, flat-faced slack-jawed shocked non-comprension. Then, the comprehension hit.

She started crying, but not saying anything, wrapping her face in her hands, wanting, bawling, and then falling over on the couch sideways, sobs wracking her body.

Kelly went to the and got a washrag with cool water, and I took mom's shoes off and brought an afghan since it was cool in the apartment. The washrag went over my mom's forehead, but it soon became a cry-into-this rag, and the crying continued.

We moved to sit across the room, not that it was a big room, but we gave her space.

Kelly turned the kitchen radio to the classical music station. I noticed she didn't have a TV anymore. She might have pawned it, or stumbled over it, or someone might have walked off with it.

One visit to the bedroom (we had to kill time) showed she had very little left in the apartment - just clothes and some laundry baskets with kind-of-sorted but wrinkled clothes.

This was what I didn't want. I didn't want to feel guilty over not being there for her. She didn't have much food, either - several giant boxes of Ramen, a giant sack of uncooked rice in the fridge (to prevent insects, she always said), some take-out leftovers that weren't edible, and cans of beans she'd probably gotten from the food pantry.

I think the only reason she stopped smoking was because it cost too much.

Yet, right there among the empty plastic cups, a cigarette butt in one of them. I wondered whose it was - hers, a steady guy, or something worse. No lipstick, but she didn't wear lipstick usually, she couldn't afford it.

We sat and waited, and chatted about whatever, until mom was cried out for a while, probably close to an hour. She'd stop, then start, then stop again and stare across the room blankly.

I had already figured her next move would be to go to the bathroom and get a drink out of the bottle in the toilet tank or under the sink, so I solved that by preemptively moving both bottles to the too-tall cupboard over the stove.

Sure enough, while I was in the kitchen, she went into the bathroom, coming out a few minutes later with slicked back wet hair and the kind of tired eyes that come from desperate sorrow.

Sitting across from us at the table, she'd gasp a little, then close her eyes, breathe long and steady, and open them again.

"Kelly," she asked, in as steady a tone as she could, "Are you... do you love... uh..."

The compassionate face Kelly had sometimes came out and she nodded, "Yes, Mrs. Kuiper. Yes, I love Kevin. I love him very, very much." She took my hand and I squeezed back.

Then, I got a small surprise - Kelly asked, "So, I don't want to keep calling you Mrs. Kuiper. What do I call you?"

We hadn't scripted this. I got nervous when there was something unscripted.

"Kelly, my name is Helena, and... everybody knows that, hell, no secret, 'cuz I'm Hell and I'm an enema."

It was obviously some kind of joke she used, but Kelly and I just ignored it. I'd prepped her about mom being crude like that.

"You can call me... well, my mother used to call me Ella. I haven't used that name in a long time. Or, Mom. You can always call me Mom. If you want. If you... already have a mother that loves you? Uh, then, uh... well, that's part of your life, that's your story, fine, but... I'm one of those, Go fuckin' pick a name your-own-goddamn-self girls... oh, sorry? Not that! You're beautiful, I didn't mean that! Oh, fuck. I'm messing this up."

"Not at all..." I watched Kelly deciding, "Ella."

Mom held it together for about 4 full seconds, then burst out crying again, and we waited another long while.

She came back to us, relaxed, not trying to hold it together anymore. "Kevin, I..."

"You want a drink. You can drink after we leave."

Her back went up, genuinely. "No! That's NOT it. I have... something that ... I'm... a bad person."

She paused too long, and I knew she was a bad person, so I didn't see the point in this conversation. Still, I waited a while, and when she didn't clarify, I tried.

I said, "We're all bad people sometimes, mom. Some of us are... powerless." I had kind of meant that as a jibe, an insult at what she was, but really, it came out different, and it was sort of accurate.

She took some deep breaths and said, kind of to herself, "You need to tell someone else about this. You choose, no way... yeah. Uh, yeah... No way... Uh..."

This cleared up and she looked at me, then really to Kelly. "It's funny, really. It's kind of time. You're old enough to hear things like this. You'll ... well, now, I guess. Uh..."

I waited through the word salad. She did this sometimes when she had something super embarrassing to deal with, and couldn't avoid it. I mentally prepared to hear about her car, or her job, or an illness, or even some friend who had some dreaded disease and she'd gone over and stolen something from their house. It would be off-hook, and I'd be stuck there, knowing it and not able to do anything.

Typical job, Mom. Failure forever.

I remembered Ted's mom, a friend from junior high. His mom was cool. She didn't ever do this stuff. I thought about her every once in a while and wondered why he got so lucky.

Mom's mouth set, in a frown. "You need to tell your father."

"Uh... wut?"

...?

...?

I was silent. Kelly just looked at me.

Mom's face was sideways, one ear on a shoulder, her eyes darting around like she couldn't figure out something she needed to figure out.

The questions were too many, I had nothing.

Kelly stepped in, "How, ma'am? Who should Kevin contact?"

I noticed it wasn't Ella anymore. I think Kelly saw the depth of this screw-over of my life. Maybe. If it was that. Was it? Maybe? My mind kept churning as I re-heard all the times she'd talked about my father being missing and a mystery, etc.

Finally, Mom went on. "Kevin"

I waited. It was taking a while in her head to get this to come out.

"Your father's name is Sandoval Ricardo Grant. Sandy. You can visit him, literally, anytime. He's at Ravenswood Cemetery, plot 932. Trouble is, that's Coral Gables, Florida, so... bit of a hike." She swallowed and her head moved sideways again, pain and wistfulness together.

"I remember, they put him next to a big pink rock." Her voice faded, then came back, dark and cynical and in a world of hurt, lashing out just by talking. "Yeah, well, he's cold and dead and gone, he's there, 'cuz I fuckin' killed him, and you'll find Ohhhhh boy you'll find that out, so there you go. Your Dad. Is Dad. Dead. Deady-dad."

My brain was stuck on 'Wut?' mode.

Kelly, I love her so much, she did me proud, she showed she was worth a spot on this planet. She stepped up and let my sudden tears flow silently and didn't make me put a voice in a throat that wouldn't work.

"Ella, can you... tell us what happened?"

This was a story. Mom did stories. She put her lips on autopilot and stuff just came out. The faster she talked the higher chance it was the truth.

We were lucky, and she spoke fast. "I was driving. I was pregnant with you, just barely, like five-whole-minutes pregnant. We were engaged and happy and I was drunk, tipsy, maybe, more than that. Fuck, I was shitfaced and happy, giddy over the moon. Sandy was a hunk, a great guy, and He loved ME, and we both knew it. Shitty Datsun, we didn't have 2 cents, and I'd have spent them on booze before I got new tires. But, that's what it would have been. Vodka or tires, and I would have chosen? Drum roll? Yay, Vodka! Because, I'm a fuckup, and I've always been a fuckup, and I'll ALWAYS be a fuckup."

Kelly prompted, "And... you crashed."

"Fuck yeah we crashed! I was going too fast by far, too fast By FAR, but wow that Datsun could go! So, yeah. Rolled, I think, maybe, hit a tree, down a thing, over a thing, bang, I don't remember it much. But, then, we're stopped upside, almost upside down, and there he was, eyes still open, blood... I remember thinking, 'Huh. That's what dead looks like.'"

I finally managed to get out a word. "Never. Told..."

She got mad and let it out, "Shit, Kevin, am I gonna tell you? Sweet kid, smartest thing in 3 states, gonna tell you word one of this? NO fuckin' way. I got you clear, out, somewhere new, I'm not telling you squat. Questions, that brings back the fuckin Pain, man. I thought this through! I thought, hey, you'll find out, you'll ... yeah, you'll go do some fool thing, you're the kind who would. You'll go and do something stupid like running away to see his grave, and get yer-sef KILT, and I'm no kind of a good mother if I let that happen. I knew, only way to make sure you're safe, don't tell you. From the start and ever."

"You could have!"

"Nope." She huffed a little, big breaths, letting some of this out. "Well, probably I could have, once you went to college, what, sophomore year? You ever finish high school?"

"Sorta."

Kelly looked at me. I hadn't given her my whole schooltime history.

"Oh, I supposed I could have told you, then, but by that point, you'd accepted the convit..., the convenyi, the... cover story - and it's really goddamn hard to change a story once you got a good story, you know? Hard to do that."

I didn't quite know if this was another one. There'd been lots of lies.

She looked at me, "See? You want to. So, go, big man, now, you just Fuckin' Go, look it up! Different place, different time. Palo Shit-Alto. We were at Stanford, world was our fuckin' oyster. Not here. I came here later. Had to change - too many people knew, knew what a fuckup I was, knew who I was. Smaller town then. Oh, sure, his parents flew in, came and got him, met me? The looks... I couldn't handle it. They flew his body home, and me, too, paid for a plane ticket I almost didn't use." She inhaled in a stutter-breath, and I knew she was wound up. She finished it, though, remembering with a sad conviction, "I had to, though."

She blinked and snot was running down so Kelly handed her a tissue.

"...I had to know, I had to go! I had to ... SEE him, get the final part. The REEally final part. Where was he gonna be, because of me. His stupidity. He should'a run from me... Yeah, parents saw that much, then, later, _too_ late! After the funeral, all staid and formal, lots of people in suits and there I was, crappy Penny's dress, all those women with big hair and lace? You know? You can't know. Fuck. Bob, he didn't want me there, Sandy's dad. And SHE didn't either. That's when their pity hit, too, and that hurt more. Well, not more... Sandy, fuck I loved him so much it tore out the middle of me and threw it, splat, DIRT, gaping HOLE in my SOUL." She gasped and scream-cried, then gasped again, controlling it, and finished, "But, they didn't know, I knew, and I could NOT tell them... About you."

She waited and sipped some water, rocking forward and back on the chair, staring off blankly.

Kelly asked gently, "Did you ever see them again? Talk? Tell them, about Kevin?"

"How could I? I knew, then, I had a girl-friend, she told me, no drinking after you're pregnant. No drinking, none. She was Fuckin' serious, and, yeah, I knew she was right. Hardest thing... Well, no, not hardest thing, Sandy... fuck. Yeah. So, I knew, yeah, no way I could talk to them sober, gaaaaahdamn pricks, I knew I couldn't. Had to stick it out. Quit, cold. Drove East. Stopped in Salt Lake City, I heard it was mostly dry there, harder to get drunk. Big laugh. Lots of bars there, but... I stayed out, Terrified - of... MY-ownDamnSelf! Had my appointments at the OB, tried goin' ta AA meetings a couple-a times. Well, lots, really, I had to, to... Stuck with it. Worked a part time legal secretary job. Good at it. Had you, then, and, well, there you were!"

I said, "Salt Lake County. Birth certificate."

She acknowledged me a little. "Damn, yah."

She looked back to Kelly, "But, Kelly dear, no, I never talked to Sandy's folks again after that. I ducked their phone calls, the forwarded mail, all of it. I think I was their pain, incarnate, in living True Color, vivid shitstained brown-stripe glory. I was their pain. And... really, yeah, I couldn't go there either. Shame piled on top of shame. Turn the page."

She inhaled, and exhaled, huffing in the process, sobs but not sobs. Pain, beyond pain.

We waited.

Trying to smile, she inhaled and head-tilted and blinked the tears. "And, then, there you were? All crying and horrified, but ... happy and bubbly and mine and his and ... I was okay, for a while."

This was as much as I'd heard mom say in years and years and years. Maybe ever. It was the most maybe-truth I'd ever heard her utter, too.

Most of it fit together. I had a feeling it really did mostly happen that way.

I wondered how she was managing to talk that long. I realized that mostly she'd been talking to Kelly. Sure, I was there, but she could get through it if she was telling this to a stranger. Me? That'd be too powerful. Some other emotion would get in the way and a lie would happen instead.

If I left her there, and I would leave her there, I wondered where her life would go. Probably it'd be the same direction it had been going.

Sitting right at that table, I thought about it, giving her that tea. Telling her, making her instruction be, drink no more, ever. Would she do it? Would she fall in love with me in the process, in some kind of wrong-way instead of just as a normal mother loves her son?

The tea would not make her sane. The tea would not let her release all the wacky crappy lies that she told herself. She would be sober but maybe not better off.

On a practical level, could I handle it? Having my own mother around as I Got Happy with this girl or that girl? If I got a blowjob in a library at a party where all of them were naked? Would she (shudder the horror) get naked, too?

Could I ever do those fun things again, once the babies started coming?

Would I ever?

I was not my mother. I would not embarrass my kids, or mistreat them, or make them clean up after me, or turn them into copy-cat wacknut kids. I'd be a Good Dad. I'd already decided this. At least, I might. I could trust, and hope, and admit weakness, all the things she couldn't do. Then, maybe? Maybe they'd be okay?

That's what being a dad would mean, for me: Hope.

Living on that farm, being there for them - loving, patient, encouraging, all the things I might have had and vaguely remembered, or the things that overlapped those things?

There were scary sharp and burning-edged bits of her, and I had to keep them from ever coming out near anyone I loved.

The thoughts in my head ran on, and she'd stopped talking and was just staring down, sometimes a short sob and then nothing.

I changed my voice to frank honesty, and felt it, and looked her in the eye as I sat up. "Ella."

Her eyes flashed at me with confusion and an acceptance of that word as a gift.

"If you want to see this child, when he or she is born, you can't get drunk anymore. Not any more. I think... I think you have to go somewhere else. You have to move out of this apartment, out of this... section of town, at least. Get a different job. Whatever. You have to go to the hospital, and tell them. Say, "I'm an alcoholic, and I need help. They will help you. Or, find an AA meeting, most churches have one. Walk in, you don't need to be a 'member' or anything, just go sit in on a meeting."

She looked at me, considering, trying to imagine that.

"Mom, if you can stay sober, you can see your grandchild. If you can't, you can't be in my life, can't ever. There are edges, lines that I have to draw. You get it?"

She nodded very slowly, looking down and to her left, a big sigh.

I'd not given her a callback number for me, I didn't want her to be able to complicate my life anymore.

I said, "Tell you what. Leave a message... at, well... at the Methodist church, on Beech street. I'll talk with them, they'll forward your message to me and we'll meet up. Tell them your address when you move. Methodist, on Beech."

She repeated that, and I turned to Kelly and motioned for us to go.

I opened the craptastic door for us to go, and Kelly gave her another hug, this time a warmer embrace. She said, "Ella, I really am glad to know you. Kevin's right, if you're able to find a ... a better path, I guess, then, we'd like to meet you again and let you see... this." Kelly patted her abdomen and smiled with the love she felt for it and me, even if there wasn't any sizable bump yet.

Mom frankly looked horrible - tired, old, distraught - but she also looked like she might have an idea, and my mom was pretty wicked smart when it came to her ideas. Sometimes they even worked.