| FIND AND REPLACE, by ANN BEATTIE |
Issue of 2001-11-05
True story: my father died in a hospice on Christmas Day, while a clown dressed in big black boots and a beard was down the hall doing his clown-as-Santa act for the amusement of a man my father had befriended, who was dying of ALS. I wasn't there; I was in Paris to report on how travelling art was being uncrated—a job I got through my cousin Jasper, who works for a New York City ad agency more enchanted with consultants than Julia Child is with chickens. For years, Jasper's sending work my way has allowed me to keep going while I write the Great American I Won't Say Its Name.
I'm superstitious. For example, I thought that even though my father was doing well, the minute I left the country he would die. Which he did.
On a globally warmed July day, I flew into Fort Myers and picked up a rental car and set off for my mother's to observe (her terminology) the occasion of my father's death, six months after the event. It was actually seven months later, but because I was in Toronto checking out sites for an HBO movie, and there was no way I could make it on June 25th, my mother thought the most respectful thing to do would be to wait until the same day, one month later. I don't ask my mother a lot of questions; when I can, I simply try to keep the peace by doing what she asks. As mothers go, she's not demanding. Most requests are simple and have to do with her notions of propriety, which often center on the writing of notes. I have friends who are so worried about their parents that they see them every weekend, I have friends who phone home every day, friends who cut their parents' lawn because no one can be found to do it. With my mother, it's more a question of: Will I please send Mrs. Fawnes a condolence card because of her dog's death, or, Will I be so kind as to call a florist near me in New York and ask for an arrangement to be delivered on the birthday of a friend of my mother's, because ordering flowers when a person isn't familiar with the florist can be a disastrous experience. I don't buy flowers, even from Korean markets, but I asked around, and apparently the bouquet that arrived at the friend's door was a great success.
My mother has a million friends. She keeps the greeting-card industry in business. She would probably send greetings on Groundhog Day, if the cards existed. Also, no one ever seems to disappear from her life (with the notable exception of my father). She still exchanges notes with a maid who cleaned her room at the Swift House Inn fifteen years ago—and my parents were only there for the weekend.
I know I should be grateful that she is such a friendly person. Many of my friends bemoan the fact that their parents get into altercations with everybody, or that they won't socialize at all.
So: I flew from New York to Fort Myers, took the shuttle to the rental-car place, got in the car and was gratified that the air-conditioning started to blow the second I turned on the ignition, and leaned back, closed my eyes, and counted backward, in French, from thirty, in order to unwind before I began to drive. I then put on loud music, and adjusted the bass, and set off, feeling around on the steering wheel to see if there was cruise control, because if I got one more ticket my insurance was going to be cancelled. Or maybe I could get my mother to write a nice note pleading my case.
Anyway, all the preliminaries to my story are nothing but that: the almost inevitable five minutes of hard rain midway through the trip; the beautiful bridge; the damned trucks expelling herculean farts. I drove to Venice, singing along with Mick Jagger about beasts of burden. When I got to my mother's street, which is, it seems, the only quarter-mile-long stretch of America watched directly by God, through the eyes of a Florida policeman in a radar-equipped car, I set the cruise control for twenty and coasted to her driveway.
Hot as it was, my mother was outside, sitting in a lawn chair flanked by pots of red geraniums. Seeing my mother always puts me into a state of confusion. Whenever I first see her, I become disoriented.
"Ann!" she said. "Oh, are you exhausted? Was the flight terrible?"
It's the subtext that depresses me: the assumption that to arrive anywhere you have to pass through Hell. In fact, you do. I had been on a USAir flight, seated in the last seat in the last row, and every time suitcases thudded into the baggage compartment my spine reverberated painfully. My travelling companions had been an obese woman with a squirming baby and her teen-age son, whose ears she squeezed when he wouldn't settle down, producing shrieks and enough flailing to topple my cup of apple juice. I just sat there silently, and I could feel that I was being too quiet and bringing everyone down.
My mother's face was still quite pink. Shortly before my father's death, after she had a little skin cancer removed from above her lip, she went to the dermatologist for microdermabrasion. She was wearing the requisite hat with a wide brim and Ari Onassis sunglasses. She had on her uniform: shorts covered with a flap, so that it looked as if she were wearing a skirt, and a T-shirt embellished with sequins. Today's featured a lion with glittering black ears and, for all I knew, a correctly colored nose. Its eyes, which you might think would be sequins, were painted on. Blue.
"Love you," I said, hugging her. I had learned not to answer her questions. "Were you sitting out here in the sun waiting for me?"
She had learned, as well, not to answer mine. "We can have lemonade," she said. "Paul Newman. And that man's marinara sauce—I never cook it myself anymore."
The surprise came almost immediately, just after she pressed a pile of papers into my hands: thank-you notes from friends she wanted me to read; a letter she didn't understand regarding a magazine subscription that was about to expire; an ad she'd gotten about a vacuum cleaner she wanted my advice about buying; two tickets to a Broadway play she'd bought ten years before that she and my father had never used (what was being asked of me?); and—most interesting, at the bottom of the pile—a letter from Drake Dreodadus, her neighbor, asking her to move in with him. "Go for the vacuum instead," I said, trying to laugh it off.
"I've already made my response," she said. "And you may be very surprised to know what I said."
Drake Dreodadus had spoken at my father's memorial service. Before that, I had met him only once, when he was going over my parents' lawn with a metal detector. But no: as my mother reminded me, I'd had a conversation with him in the drugstore, one time when she and I stopped in to buy medicine for my father. He was a pharmacist.
"The only surprising thing would be if you'd responded in the affirmative," I said.
" 'Responded in the affirmative!' Listen to you."
"Mom," I said, "tell me this is not something you'd give a second of thought to."
"Several days of thought," she said. "I decided that it would be a good idea, because we're very compatible."
"Mom," I said, "you're joking, right?"
"You'll like him when you get to know him," she said.
"Wait a minute," I said. "This is someone you hardly know—or am I being naive?"
"Oh, Ann, at my age you don't necessarily want to know someone extremely well. You want to be compatible, but you can't let yourself get all involved in the dramas that have already played out—all those accounts of everyone's youth. You just want to be—you want to come to the point where you're compatible."
I was sitting in my father's chair. The doilies on the armrests that slid around and drove him crazy were gone. I looked at the darker fabric, where they had been. Give me a sign, Dad, I was thinking, looking at the shiny fabric as if it were a crystal ball. I was clutching my glass, which was sweating. "Mom—you can't be serious," I said.
She winked.
"Mom—"
"I'm going to live in his house, which is on the street perpendicular to Palm Avenue. You know, one of the big houses they built at first, before the zoning people got after them and they put up these little cookie-cutter numbers."
"You're moving in with him?" I said, incredulous. "But you've got to keep this house. You are keeping it, aren't you? If it doesn't work out."
"Your father thought he was a fine man," she said. "They used to be in a Wednesday-night poker game, I guess you know. If your father had lived, Drake was going to teach him how to E-mail."
"With a, with—you don't have a computer," I said stupidly.
"Oh, Ann, I wonder about you sometimes. As if your father and I couldn't have driven to Circuit City, bought a computer—and he could have E-mailed you! He was excited about it."
"Well, I don't—" I seemed unable to finish any thought. I started again. "This could be a big mistake," I said. "He only lives one block away. Is it really necessary to move in with him?"
"Was it necessary for you to live with Richard Klingham in Vermont?"
I had no idea what to say. I had been staring at her. I dropped my eyes a bit and saw the blue eyes of the lion. I dropped them to the floor. New rug. When had she bought a new rug? Before or after she made her plans?
"When did he ask you about this?" I said.
"About a week ago," she said.
"He did this by mail? He just wrote you a note?"
"If we'd had a computer, he could have E-mailed!" she said.
"Mom, are you being entirely serious about this?" I said. "What, exactly—"
"What, exactly, what one single thing, what absolutely compelling reason did you have for living with Richard Klingham?"
"Why do you keep saying his last name?" I said.
"Most of the old ladies I know, their daughters would be delighted if their mothers remembered a boyfriend's first name, let alone a last name," she said. "Senile old biddies. Really. I get sick of them myself. I see why it drives the children crazy. But I don't want to get off on that. I want to tell you that we're going to live in his house for a while, but are thinking seriously of moving to Tucson. He's very close to his son, who's a builder there. They speak every single day on the phone, and they E-mail," she said. She was never reproachful; I decided that she was just being emphatic.
Just a short time before, I had relaxed, counting trois, deux, un. Singing with Mick Jagger. Inching slowly toward my mother's house.
"But this shouldn't intrude on a day meant to respect the memory of your father," she said, almost whispering. "I want you to know, though, and I really mean it: I feel that your father would be pleased that I'm compatible with Drake. I feel it deep in my heart." She thumped the lion's face. "He would give this his blessing, if he could," she said.
"Is he around?" I said.
"Listen to you, disrespecting the memory of your father by joking about his not being among us!" she said. "That is in the poorest taste, Ann."
I said, "I meant Drake."
"Oh," she said. "I see. Yes. Yes, he is. But right now he's at a matinée. We thought that you and I should talk about this privately."
"I assume he'll be joining us for dinner tonight?"
"Actually, he's meeting some old friends in Sarasota. A dinner that was set up before he knew you were coming. You know, it's a wonderful testament to a person when they retain old friends. Drake has an active social life with old friends."
"Well, it's just perfect for him, then. He can have his social life, and you and he can be compatible."
"You've got a sarcastic streak—you always had it," my mother said. "You might ask yourself why you've had fallings out with so many friends."
"So this is an occasion to criticize me? I understand, by the way, that you were also criticizing me when you implied that you didn't understand my relationship with Richard—or perhaps the reason I ended it? The reason I ended it was because he and an eighteen-year-old student of his became Scientologists and asked me if I wanted to come in the van with them to Santa Monica. He dropped his cat off at the animal shelter before they set out, so I guess I wasn't the only one to get shafted."
"Oh!" she said. "I didn't know!"
"You didn't know because I never told you."
"Oh, was it horrible for you? Did you have any idea?"
She was right, of course: I had left too many friends behind. I told myself it was because I travelled so much, because my life was so chaotic. But, really, maybe I should have sent a few more cards myself. Also, maybe I should have picked up on Richard's philandering. Everybody else in town knew.
"I thought we could have some Paul Newman's and then maybe when we had dessert we could light those little devotional lights and have a moment's silence, remembering your father."
"Fine," I said.
"We'll need to go to the drugstore to get candles," she said. "They burned out the night Drake and I had champagne and toasted our future." She stood. She put on her hat. "I can drive," she said.
I straggled behind her like a little kid in a cartoon. I could imagine myself kicking dirt. Some man she hardly knew. It was the last thing I'd expected. "So give me the scenario," I said. "He wrote you a note and you wrote back, and then he came for champagne?"
"Oh, all right, so it hasn't been a great romance," my mother said. "But a person gets tired of all the highs and lows. You get to the point where you need things to be a little easier. In fact, I didn't write him a note. I thought about it for three days, then I just knocked on his door."
The candles were cinnamon-scented and made my throat feel constricted. She lit them at the beginning of the meal, and by the end she seemed to have forgotten about talking about my father. She mentioned a book she'd been reading about Arizona. She offered to show me some pictures, but they, too, were forgotten. We watched a movie on TV about a dying ballerina. As she died, she imagined herself doing a pas de deux with an obviously gay actor. We ate M&M's, which my mother has always maintained are not really candy, and went to bed early. I slept on the foldout sofa. She made me wear one of her nightgowns, saying that Drake might knock on the door in the morning. I travelled light: toothbrush, but nothing to sleep in. Drake did not knock the next morning, but he did put a note under the door saying that he had car problems and would be at the repair shop. My mother seemed very sad. "Maybe you'd want to write him a teeny little note before you go?" she said.
"What could I possibly say?"
"Well, you think up dialogue for characters, don't you? What would you imagine yourself saying?" She put her hands to her lips. "Never mind," she said. "If you do write, I'd appreciate it if you'd at least give me a sense of what you said."
"Mom," I said, "please give him my best wishes. I don't want to write him a note."
She said, "He's DrDrake@aol.com, if you want to E-mail." I nodded. Best just to nod. I thought that I might have reached the point she'd talked about, where you have an overwhelming desire for things to be simple.
We hugged, and I kissed her well-moisturized cheek. She came out to the front lawn to wave as I pulled away.
On the way back to the airport, there was a sudden, brief shower that forced me to the shoulder of the road, during which time I thought that there were obvious advantages in having a priest to call on. I felt that my mother needed someone halfway between a lawyer and a psychiatrist, and that a priest would be perfect. I conjured up a poker-faced Robert De Niro in clerical garb as Cyndi Lauper sang about girls who just wanted to have fun.
But I wasn't getting away as fast as I hoped. Back at the car-rental lot, my credit card was declined. "It might be my handheld," the young man said to me, to cover either my embarrassment or his. "Do you have another card, or would you please try inside?"
I didn't know why there was trouble with the card. It was AmEx, which I always pay immediately, not wanting to forfeit Membership Rewards points by paying late. I was slightly worried. Only one woman was in front of me in line, and after two people behind the counter got out of their huddle, both turned to me. I chose the young man.
"There was some problem processing my credit card outside," I said.
The man took the card and swiped it. "No problem now," he said. "It is my pleasure to inform you that today we can offer you an upgrade to a Ford Mustang for only an additional seven dollars a day."
"I'm returning a car," I said. "The machine outside wouldn't process my card."
"Thank you for bringing that to my attention," the young man said. He was wearing a badge that said "Trainee" above his name. His name, written smaller, was Jim Brown. He had a kind face and a bad haircut. "Your charges stay on American Express, then?"
An older man walked over to him. "What's up?" he said.
"The lady's card was declined, but I ran it through and it was fine," he said.
The older man looked at me. It was cooler inside, but, still, I felt as if I were melting. "She's returning, not renting?" the man said, as if I weren't there.
"Yes, sir," Jim Brown said.
This was getting tedious. I reached for the receipt.
"What was that about the Mustang?" the man said.
"I mistakenly thought—"
"I mentioned to him how much I like Mustangs," I said.
Jim Brown frowned.
"In fact, how tempted I am to rent one right now."
Both the older man and Jim Brown looked at me suspiciously.
"Ma'am, you're returning your Mazda, right?" Jim Brown said, examining the receipt.
"I am, but now I think I'd like to rent a Mustang."
"Write up a Mustang, nine dollars extra," the older man said.
"I quoted her seven," Jim Brown said.
"Let me see." The man punched a few keys on the keyboard. "Seven," he said, and walked away.
Jim Brown and I both watched him go. Jim Brown leaned a little forward, and said in a low voice, "Were you trying to help me out?"
"No, not at all. Just thought having a Mustang for a day might be fun. Maybe a convertible."
"The special only applies to the regular Mustang," he said.
"It's only money," I said.
He hit a key, looked at the monitor.
"One day, returning tomorrow?" he said.
"Right," I said. "Do I have a choice about the color?"
He had a crooked front tooth. That and the bad haircut were distracting. He had lovely eyes, and his hair was a nice color, like a fawn, but the tooth and the jagged bangs got your attention, instead of his attributes.
"There's a red and two white," he said. "You don't have a job you've got to get back to?"
I said, "I'll take the red."
He looked at me.
"I'm freelance," I said.
He smiled. "Impulsive, too," he said.
I nodded. "The perks of being self-employed."
"At what?" he said. "Not that it's any of my business."
"Jim, any help needed?" the older man said, coming up behind him.
In response, Jim looked down and began to hit keys. It increased his schoolboyish quality: he bit his bottom lip, concentrating. The printer began to print out.
"I used to get in trouble for being impulsive," he said. "Then I got diagnosed with A.D.D. My grandmother said, 'See, I told you he couldn't help it.' That was what she kept saying to my mom: 'Couldn't help it.' " He nodded vigorously. His bangs flopped on his forehead. Outside, they would have stuck to his skin, but inside it was air-conditioned.
His mentioning A.D.D. reminded me of the ALS patient—the man I'd never met. I had a clearer image of a big-footed, bulbous-nosed clown. If I breathed deeply, I could still detect the taste of cinnamon in my throat. I declined every option of coverage, initialling beside every X. He looked at my scribbled initials. "What kind of writing?" he said. "Mysteries?"
"No. Stuff that really happens."
"Don't people get mad?" he said.
The older man was looming over the woman at the far end of the counter. They were trying not to be too obvious about watching us. Their heads were close together as they whispered.
"People don't recognize themselves. And, in case they might, you just program the computer to replace one name with another. So, in the final version, every time the word 'Mom' comes up it's replaced with 'Aunt Begonia,' or something."
He creased the papers, putting them in a folder. "A-8," he said. "Out the door, right, all the way down against the fence."
"Thanks," I said. "And thanks for the good suggestion."
"No problem," he said. He seemed to be waiting for something. At the exit, I looked over my shoulder; sure enough, he was looking at me. So was the older man, and so was the woman he'd been talking to. I ignored them. "You wouldn't program your computer to replace 'Mustang convertible' with one of those creepy Geo Metros, would you?"
"No, ma'am," he said, smiling. "I don't know how to do that."
"Easy to learn," I said. I gave him my best smile and walked out to the parking lot, where the heat rising from the asphalt made me feel like my feet were sliding over a well-oiled griddle. The key was in the car. It didn't look like the old Mustang at all. The red was very bright and a little unpleasant, at least on such a hot day. The top was already down. I turned the key and saw that the car had less than five hundred miles on it. The seat was comfortable enough. I adjusted the mirror, pulled on my seat belt, and drove to the exit, with no desire to turn on the radio. "That's a beauty," the man in the kiosk said, inspecting the folder and handing it back.
"Just got it on impulse," I said.
"That's the best way," he said. He gave a half salute as I drove off.
And then it hit me: the grim reality that I had to talk sense to her, I had to do whatever it took, including insulting her great good friend Drake, so he wouldn't clean her out financially, devastate her emotionally, take advantage, dominate her—who knew what he had in mind? He'd avoided me on purpose—he didn't want to hear what I'd say. What did he think? That her busy daughter would conveniently disappear on schedule, or that she might be such a liberal that their plans sounded intriguing? Or maybe he thought she was a pushover, like her mother. Who knew what men like that thought.
The cop who pulled me over for speeding turned on the siren when I didn't come screeching to a halt. He was frowning deeply, I saw in the rearview mirror, as he approached the car.
"My mother's dying," I said.
"License and registration," he said, looking at me with those reflective sunglasses cops love so much. I could see a little tiny me, like a smudge on the lens. I had been speeding, overcome with worry. After all, it was a terrible situation. The easiest way to express it had been to say that my mother was dying. Replace "lost her mind" with "dying."
"Mustang convertible," the cop said. "Funny car to rent if your mother's dying."
"I used to have a Mustang," I said, choking back tears. I was telling the truth, too. When I moved from Vermont, I'd left it behind in a friend's barn, and over the winter the roof had fallen in. There was extensive damage, though the frame had rusted out anyway. "My father bought it for me in 1968, as a bribe to stay in college."
The cop worked his lips until he came up with an entirely different expression. I saw myself reflected, wavering slightly. The cop touched his sunglasses. He snorted. "O.K.," he said, stepping back. "I'm going to give you a warning and let you go, urging you to respect your life and the life of others by driving at the posted speed."
"Thank you," I said sincerely.
He touched the sunglasses again. Handed me the warning. How lucky I was. How very, very lucky.
It was not until he returned to his car and sped away that I looked at the piece of paper. He had not checked any of the boxes. Instead, he had written his phone number. Well, I thought, if I kill Drake, the number might come in handy.
I also played a little game of my own: replace "Richard Klingham" with "Jim Brown."
He was probably twenty-five years, maybe thirty years, younger than me. Which would be as reprehensible, almost, as Richard's picking up the teen-ager.
Back over the bridge, taking the first Venice exit, driving past the always closed House of Orchids, dismayed at the ever-lengthening strip mall.
My mother, again in the lawn chair, reading the newspaper, but now not bothering to look up as cars passed. I could remember her face vividly from years before, when my father and I had turned in to our driveway in Washington in an aqua Mustang convertible. She had been so shocked. Just shocked. She must have been thinking of the expense. Maybe also of the danger.
My mother seemed less timid now. Obviously, she, too, could be quite impulsive. I was just about to tap the horn when my mother stood and took a minute to steady herself before heading toward the house. Why was she bent over, walking so slowly? Had she been pretending to be spry earlier, or had I just not noticed? Then the door opened, and a man—it was Drake, that was who it was—stood on the threshold, extending a hand and waiting, not going down the steps, just waiting. He stood ramrod straight, but, even driving slowly, I got only a glimpse of him: this man who was not my father, with his big hand extended, and my mother lifting her hand like a lady ascending an elegant, carpeted staircase, instead of three concrete steps.
There was nothing I could say. It had all been decided. There was not a word I could say that would stop either one of them.
I turned left just before the street dead-ended, not wanting to risk passing by a second time. I realized that there was someone waiting to hear from me: possibly two people—the kid and the cop—if not three (my mother, who was probably hoping for an apology for my dire warnings about Drake). I could have made a phone call, had the evening go another way entirely, but everyone will understand why I decided otherwise.
You can't help understanding. First, because it is the truth, and, second, because everyone knows the way things change. They always do, even in a very short time. Back in Fort Myers, the transaction was all business: another shift was at work at the rental agency, and there was only the perfunctory question as I opened the door and got out about whether everything was all right with the car.