Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Strangers and Other Family Members

Story material in the form of mother-daughter relationships is endless. This story was published Timber Creek Review in October 1998 and was short listed for Ian St. James prize in 1995 in the UK.





"Jane, get your sneakers off the spread." Solange struggles to pull a fresh starched canopy onto its frame. The pink and blue pattern matches the bedspread whose cleanliness is in jeopardy.

"Oh, Mom," Jane says. Disgust drips from her lips. While Solange wants Jane's room pristine, the teenager turns the French Provincial decor into what her mother calls "early dump".

This room is a mother-daughter battleground. The Guns and Roses poster was a victory for Jane, although the peace settlement involved framing, not taping it to the violet-flowered wallpaper. Jane's choice, wooden bunk beds and white walls barely visible between Garfield and teen idol posters had less chance than Custer against the indians.

"You always get crazy when Gramma comes." Jane rolls onto her stomach. She doesn't offer to help.

Solange, determined to finish before her own mother's arrival, says, "I want everything perfect for her."

"Gramma doesn't care."

"I do." She snaps the last corner of the canopy together then fluffs everything possible. The cat runs out of the room before he, too, is fluffed.

"Keep this room exactly like it is until Dad arrives with Gramma." Ted drove from their New Hampshire farm to Boston's Logan Airport to pick up the reason for Solange's three-day cleaning binge. She picks up her empty basket which had contained flowers for each room and goes down the narrow stairs.

At the bottom, Solange looks out the Dutch door over her garden to the loosesteife coloring the landscape a violent purple. She draws a give-me-strength breath. A breeze blows gently over her face.

The oak tree across the drive has two red leaves. Mid-August is too soon for fall, even in New Hampshire, she thinks.

Moments like this, surrounded by all she loves, even whiney Jane, makes Solange appreciate the life she's carved for herself -- so different from her childhood, when home was a series of apartments near wherever her mother taught.

When Edith said, "You can't get anywhere in academia if you're pro student," and began scanning want ads, Solange would know her mother's contract hadn't been renewed and she'd once again be the new girl at school.

"Change is exciting," Edith would say.

I hate change, Solange would think. Sometimes she wondered if her mother wasn't a little bit glad her father had been a victim of Hitler. She couldn't picture her mother as a housewife.

When Solange mentally lists her accomplishments, she counts giving Jane one address and two parents first. Other items include a home with matching furniture, rugs and drapes. Books, although appreciated by all, are confined to the library. One or two might end up on the night table, but more would be banished to where they belong. As a child she and her mother never ate a meal without moving at least a dozen off the table -- that is -- when they had table.

Until this summer when she refused, Jane had gone to camp, a normal summer pastime, according to Solange who'd spent too many summers with the Lobi, a tribe in Ghana. Solange hated it, although she's proud of the two PBS documentaries based on her mother's work. A trickle of anger creeps through her as she remembers when Edith had been offered three goats for Solange's hand in marriage. Edith had countered with fifteen.

"But I knew he couldn't take me up on it," Edith had defended herself. "I had to make another offer so he wouldn't lose face."

Solange's gaze rests lovingly on her garden, calming her as Ted's car turns into the driveway. Before the car stops Edith jumps out of the car. She runs to sweep her daughter off her feet. 

She stands six feet. Unlike most sixty-three-year olds she's skinny except for ample breasts. Edith burned her bra years before feminists thought of it. "Women went without bras until this century. Why should I spend good money on a marketing ploy?" she'd said in the late 1950s.

 Edith's breasts were good for comfort. Solange more than once buried herself in them about some problem. However, most of her teen traumas were because of her mother.

Edith had wanted Solange to have a career. Solange chose marriage. Although Edith praises her daughter on how well she does her job, Solange always hears an unspoken "But..."

"My baby," Edith says.

"A baby in her forties?"

"You'll always be my baby. Now where's my grandbaby?"


Before Solange can say, "Sulking in her room," Jane bursts out the back door and into Edith's arms. 


"How I missed you, Gramma."


"Well, I'm here now," Edith says. With one arm around her daughter and the other around her granddaughter, she sweeps them through the kitchen door. Ted follows with her luggage, a single backpack.
*****
At supper Edith picks up her steak bone to chew it clean. Ted grilled the meat outside. Solange made a salad from lettuce and tomatoes from her garden. Jane picked the corn only after the water boiled. Everyone eats silently. A pile of bones and cobs grow in a ceramic bowl in the middle of the table.

"Wonderful meal. Thank God, it wasn't fish. I'm sick of fish," Edith says.

"We don't each much beef. Cholesterol," Solange says.

"Iceland certainly doesn't endanger France's gourmet reputation one iota," Edith says, her mouth half full of corn. "Besides living in a dorm for eighteen months, well let's just say the food wasn't the best."

"Tell us more, Gramma," Jane says. Ted sits forward. Solange goes into the kitchen to make coffee. When she comes back, Ted, Jane and Edith are laughing.

"He was so drunk he couldn't stand. In fact, he was so drunk he thought I was beautiful and young. I decked him and dragged him back to his bunk."

"I'll never understand what made you go to Iceland in the first place."  Solange thinks her mother was probably the only Ph.D. fish packer there.

"Money. I could make more than I could teaching without all that political crap." She moves forward in her chair. Everyone subconsciously does the same. "You know I didn't come straight here. I stopped in D.C."
Edith has a habit that infuriates Solange. She changes topics midway through a speech. Solange often wondered how a lecture about the dairy industry plotting to make people drink too much milk could end up with a talk about zebras' sexual habits.

"I've got approval."

"For what?" Ted asks with a warm smile for his mother-in-law. He puts his hand over Solange's telling her that he knows that she feels overwhelmed by Edith's energy. Solange gives him a smile as she centers herself.

"The government is giving me a grant to open a ranch for kids. Unwed mothers, kids with drug problems. I've signed the purchase and sales agreement for a place in Warm Gulch, Wyoming."

"Wyoming?" Solange asks.

"Purchase and sales?" Ted asks.

"Kids?" Jane asks.

Edith looks around the table relishing the drama.

"You're close to retiring," Solange says.
"I don't want to retire. Not every kid has had the chances our Janie has. I want to take the ones in trouble, get 'em miles away from everything and work 'em into being straight."

"Right on, Gramma," Jane says.

Solange listens to the grinder work its magic on coffee beans. She loves the smell. The clock reads 6:30. Ted left an hour ago to drive to Boston for an early flight to New York. She wishes he was here to protect her from her mother. Not that he does anything in particular, but it's comforting having him near. She puts the filter into her pot and measures the water. Soon odour de café fills the room.

"Wonderful smell," Edith says coming into the kitchen. She wears jeans and a T-shirt with a faded Garfield asking, "Why me?" a gift from Jane three Christmases past. She takes a mug and pours a cup.

"Milk or sugar, Mother?" Solange asks.

Edith shakes her head and sits at the table in front of a big fireplace, the cooking place for this house in a time long ago. She sniffs her coffee before taking a long drink.

"Breakfast?" Solange asks.

"Are you having anything?"

"I was about to cut some homemade oatmeal bread."

"And your blueberry jam? I thought about that when I was eating so damned much fish. You certainly didn't learn to be such a wonderful cook from me."

Food is a safe topic. Both women love eating, even if Solange is the only one who likes cooking. It's more than liking it. She finds preparing food almost sexual with so many textures, feelings, colors, smells.

Edith isn't one to rest in safe topics. "What do you think about the ranch?"

"You're serious, then?" Solange puts the bread on the table with a serrated knife. The bread tray has slats and an under tray for crumbs.

"You don't approve?"

"I guess I though you'd settle down. Take life easy." She gets jam from the fridge. It's in a little dish with a small spoon that they'd bought when they toured Germany last year.

"Can you see me in Florida with all those old people talking about their illnesses and peach towels on sale at Wal-mart?" Edith probes shared memories of their visits to Edith's parents. "Janie still asleep?"

"It's against her religion to get up before noon during vacation."

"You were like that as a kid. I was too. I'd read until five in the morning. Then I'd stay in bed 'til my mother couldn't stand it. She was afraid I'd never get a husband with my nose in the books."

"You did."

"Once. Never found a second willing to put up with me. I do come on a little strong." Edith slathers a thick slice of bread with purple jam.

"That, Mother, is like calling the rock of Gibraltar a pebble."

Edith smiles. "Janie asked if she could visit my ranch...Now don't get huffy. I said it was up to you."

"I don't want her with a bunch of drug addicts."

"I knew you wouldn't." Edith pours a second cup of coffee. She holds the pot toward her daughter who shakes her head no.

"Do you blame me?"

"Janie's been too sheltered. This is such a little town. Norman Rockwell could have spent his life painting here."

"What's wrong with that? You had me living in the African bush and in slums and God knows where else. Jane's had stability...."

"...and yearns for the exotic, not the stable. She's more like me in that."

Solange sighs. "I'm going to weed the garden."

Before Solange can leave, Janie bounces into the room. "Morning Mum. Morning Gramma." She plants a wet kiss on each of their cheeks. Opening the refrigerator, she takes out pita bread and cheddar cheese. With a grater she shaves enough to cover the bread. Realising her mother and grandmother are watching she asks, " Want some?"

Solange shakes her head no, but Edith nibbles at the cheese. "Good and sharp. Make me one, please Janie-Honey."

"Sure thing." Jane hums to as she works. Solange can't remember the last time her daughter did anything but skulk around the kitchen.

"Are we still going to the tide pool today?" Edith asks.

"Yup. Mom, will you loan Gramma your bike?"

"Where's the tide pool?" Solange asks.

"At the reservation." Jane refers to the government protected beach where the ocean crashes against the rocks. At low tide water is trapped between the boulders. Solange doesn't like Jane to go there, afraid her child will be swept out to sea.

"Don't worry, Mom. Gramma will be there. I want to show her all the neat sea life. I've named most of them from the book you sent me, Gramma."

"Bring the book along." Edith puts dishes into the dishwasher.

"Wouldn't you rather take the car, Mother? It's a good five miles."

Edith sees Janie shake her head behind her mother's back. "We'll see more on our bikes. Right Janie?"

As Solange puts her gardening gloves and tools into a basket she plucked from a wooden beam overhead, she watches Jane with her mother. Her daughter talks about being an oceanographer. Solange had no idea she was thinking of that as a career. Jane's face is washed with smile after smile, not unlike the waves at the beach. This child is not the same teenager who slouches around the house and growls at questions like, "What do you want for dinner?"

"At least let me make you lunch," Solange says.

Before Jane can say no Edith holds up her finger, "With a thermos of your lemonade and oatmeal cookies. I saw some in the cookie jar." Edith had done more than see. At three a.m. she'd raided the jar.

"Deal," Solange says.

"You know, Janie, after a long bike ride, that lemonade will taste wonderful." Edith smacks her lips.
*****
The visit races by, but Solange sees little of her mother or Jane. They spend a lot of time at the tide pool or out on bike rides. Grandmother and granddaughter go to Boston to see the inside of the Christian Science Monitor Globe. Jane comes back excited. Edith had shown her where she lived when she'd taught at Simmons.

"Neat place," Jane says. Solange doesn't tell her how much she hated the traffic and noise.

On Solange's hospital volunteer day Jane and Edith drive to Kittery, Maine to visit the factory outlets. Edith wants to stock up on bedding for her ranch. They leave at seven in the morning taking Solange's station wagon.

"I'm part of Gramma's research into the teenage mind," Jane says, hurrying out the door leaving her parents sitting at the table.

"Well, your mother certainly hasn't been underfoot this visit. And Jane's been a love to live with.

Maybe Edith gave her a frontal lobotomy on one of their adventures," Ted says,

*****
Sweat streams down Solange's face. Her hands are dirty from pulling weeds. The temperature has soared, a typical New England trick, a cool day, a hint of fall, followed by a sizzler. Her mother is leaving in the morning.

Edith comes out. She hands her daughter a glass of lemonade with ice cubes piled to the top. Frost coats the glass. Edith has another for herself.
"Thanks." Solange takes the glass and sits on the big rock at the edge of her garden. Edith joins her. The oak tree offers shade.

"Fantastic garden." Edith points to the pole beans climbing teepee style. The corn forms neat rows. Toward the back, huge vines shelter pumpkins that in a few weeks will make perfect jack o'lanterns. "I've always missed having a garden. Maybe that's why I've always had so many house plants. Remember when we moved how  the plants took half the truck?"

"And the books the other half," Solange says. "Jane's going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss her. She's a delight."

"I don't find her that way."

"Of course not, you're her mother, Dummy. She has to fight you. It's a rite of passage. Like menstruation. I did it to my mother, who was like you. Loved her home, her family, her garden. I rebelled, became the intellectual, the world traveller." Edith shakes her head. "What a care I must have been for her. I'm sorry she died before we made peace with one another. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll die before we make peace."

"Are we fighting Mother?"

"Not with words."

Standing, Solange puts her glass on the rock and faces the loosesteife, her back to her mother. She crosses her arms. Edith walks around to block the purple field from her daughter's vision. "At what age do you let go of the past?" Edith asks.

"I like my life." Solange's tone carries a verbal pout.

"You should. It's a good one. Ted's a sweetheart. The house is lovely. Except..."

"Except what?"

"Janie told me about your house cleaning orgy before I came. Do you think I care if Janie's canopy is washed. I came to see my family, not a canopy."

"I care," Solange says.

"Why?

Solange takes her glass. "I'm going back into the house."

Edith grabs and turns her. "You don't want to talk about it. Well, I'm not giving you a choice. I wish my mother made me talk to her." She softens her voice. "I don't care if you wash Janie's canopy if you want it clean, although that should be Janie's decision. I do care if you wash a canopy to impress me about something. Tell me with words. I don't speak canopy."

Solange sits backs on the rock. She twirls the glass in her hands and puts its cold surface against her neck and forehead. She thinks she must seem to her mother like Jane seems to her when they fight. "It shows you how I wanted to live as a child."

"And I couldn't give it to you. It's not in my personality." Edith reaches for her daughter's hands. "I made mistakes with you, but you're doing the same thing with Janie. In trying to give her the life you wanted you forgot to ask what she wants."

"Are you telling me how to raise my daughter?"

"Nope. Well, maybe a little -- I'm trying to save you from this same conversation with Janie in about twenty years."

Solange squeezes her mother's hands. "I remember when you gave up on having me go to college you said, "If you love something set it free. If it returns, it was meant to be."

A gleam comes into Edith's eyes. "Never told you my collorary did I?"

"What collorary?"

"And if it doesn't come back, hunt the s.o.b. down and shoot it." Edith jumps in the air clicking her heels.

"Mother!"

Edith hugs the stranger she knows as Solange. Solange thinks about the stranger she knows as Jane. For the first time the differences don't matter.

The Shopper



This story came about when I was watching a shopping station and was tempted to buy a car polisher, and I didn't have a car. Also, among the expat community, some wives have a hard time to adjust. It just seemed a perfect combination for a story. The Shopper was published in a Texan literary magazine in the 1996 and an anthology from Belgium in 1999.




The car fills the TV screen. Half is shined. The other half is wax covered. A polisher sits on the hood. "This polisher is not sold in stores. To order look for the flag of your country," the announcer says. The camera zooms into the shiny surface.

Susan's hand inches toward her telephone. 037 51 75 50. She doesn't need to see the white cross on the red flag. She knows the number by heart, although Switzerland isn't her country. Maine US of A is.

Just as she touches the five she remembers -- she doesn't have a car. Still, Geoff, her husband, had said that morning he might lease one.

He'd sat on their balcony drinking Earl Grey tea from a bowl. He'd stared at the mountains with that vacant look he gets whenever he sees a Jura or an Alp. He'd begun drinking tea from bowls after they'd visited Colette and Jean-Claude's farm. Susan had been shocked, but Colette had explained it was a French habit.

Susan uses her mug that says, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans." She tried switching but each time the bowl grazed her lips she imagined what her mother would say if she were to drink from a bowl.

While Geoff talked about the car, Susan sat wordlessly, her back to the mountains. He said, "If we'd a car you might get out more." She heard the unspoken, "You can't stay home for the next twenty-three months we're in Geneva." He put the bowl next to the roses he'd bought and kissed her goodbye. As he picked up his briefcase he said, "Try and go look at the cars."

She picks up a brochure for a Subaru, 4x4, five forward gears. It is in French. She decides to wait for him to go with her.

She dials 037 51, then stops. If Geoff leases a car the polisher will be handy. Of course, neither of them waxed their last car, a 1989 Colt, nor had they polished their 1985 Escort or their 1977 Pinto.

When those cars had been splashed with mud or coated with dust, they'd driven through a car wash, the kind where heavy cloth strips descend and go whap, whap, whap all around the auto. She would wait on the side with Bark, watching the car go through.

She misses Bark, although her mother writes weekly to report how happy the dog is running around the farm. Susan isn't sure what bothers her more -- that Bark doesn't miss them or that he's at the farm and she isn't.

The car has disappeared from the screen. Putting down the phone, she imagines giving Geoff the polisher the moment he brings a new car home -- if he brings one home. If he doesn't they can take the polisher back to Maine. She wonders how to convince her husband what a good buy it really is.

She pictures him with his lips pursed the way he does each time he discovers she has one again given into television shopping. He'd mocked her after she made her first purchase, a youth kit. That was two weeks after they'd bought the television at Migros.

"We need a TV table. Let's go to IKEA," she said.

"Can't you go during the week. I'd rather go hiking," he said.

She started listing excuses: no one would speak English, she'd get lost, he wouldn't like what she chose.

He threw up his hands. Still, the day had been successful. They'd eaten salmon topped with a fresh dill sprig at IKEA's restaurant. He said for a shopping day, it wasn't all that bad.

When Geoff left for work the Monday after the big shopping trip, Susan had crawled back into bed. As she channel surfed, she took real pleasure in the noise in the apartment. At home her sister, mother, friends and neighbours constantly dropped by. In Geneva she knew no one, although neighbours murmured, "Bonjour" or "Bonsoir" as she scuttled past them.

Suddenly she sat up in bed. She found not one but two English-only channels, each with a shopping program. Then she found a third, Eurosport, which also had a half hour of selling before the step-exercising segment.

After that as soon as her husband left, she'd get a cup of tea and watch television until dinner. One day when Mont Blanc blocked the English-only channels she changed to TF1. Normally French television made her more homesick -- especially if she watched Murder She Wrote, which was on almost every day. It didn't seem right for Angela Lansbury to babble in French.

A French woman who looked about thirty jabbered away. She was striking in the way of French women. Susan tried to decide what made her look so smart. It was more than the print scarf picking up the colours of her skirt and blouse.

She watched spellbound as the woman loaded gel into a blue plastic phallus then put it in the freezer. Susan wondered if it were an adult Popsicle. A clock moved a half hour, but the real time elapsed was five seconds. The woman took out what must have been a duplicate and rubbed it on her face going into ecstasy.

The host held up a series of cards each with a number. Forty was the first. She shook her head to each until the host held up one saying fifty-one. If gel could take twenty years off the French women's age, Susan knew she must have some to protect her from Geneva pollution so unlike fresh Maine air.

Two weeks later she has her gel and phallic container. She followed the directions exactly looking up each word in the French-English dictionary and writing it in her pink and purple plaid notebook. She felt silly rubbing a blue plastic penis over her face.

The next morning Geoff put on the light to see if by chance he'd missed finding clean underwear. He hadn't. Susan had missed her allotted laundry hour. He forgot about his underwear when he looked at her. "Oh my God. You've got measles."

Jumping out of bed, she ran to the mirror. She had to squat down because it rested on the rug. Geoff said since they'd only be there two years why take the chance that the landlord would keep the deposit because of holes in the walls. So as she hunkered down to look in the mirror, a red and swollen face looked back. "I used a new face cream," she said. The youth kit became a joke.

Geoff hadn't found it as amusing two weeks later when she'd ordered a drill to hang the mirror or when the paint stripper arrived a week after.

"Maybe we'll want to strip some furniture," she said.

He shook his head, the same way he did when the Boston Patriots dropped a really easy catch.

He was so angry when she paid 650 Swiss francs for an oven that looked like a lettuce dryer and cooked by air that he didn't speak to her for two days. But when he found the CDs and DVDs from the Prince's Trust Concerts, he just said, "Why?" making it a four-syllable word.

"You love Eric Clapton. He's in at least three songs and backs up Rod Stewart."

"We don't have a DVD player," he said.

"We can take it home."

"It won't work. The US had a different system."

They bought a DVD player. Eventually, after listening to a Tina Turner-Paul McCarthy duet he said, "OK, I love the CDs, but I still worry about you. At home you always did so much but here..." The phone interrupted.

When Susan bought a tool to add rhinestones to her clothing, she'd kept it a secret. When the VISA bill arrived, she had to show him how she planned to redesign her T-shirts and jeans. He sighed as she brought out all the things that came with set: rhinestone, fake pearls, a hand-held tool and  twenty reusable patterns.

"Susan, you don't even like rhinestones." He'd handed her back the rose pattern she'd given him. As she slipped it in the envelope she dropped the rhinestones. She crawled around the floor picking them up one-by-one. "Maybe I can get a small business going."

"How? You don't go out. You won't even try to learn French?"

"There's the International Club."

"You went once and haven't gone back."


Susan sat Indian-style on the floor, her hand full of rhinestones. She couldn't tell him how uncomfortable the wives made her feel. They were use to living away from home. They spoke French. Susan's ear couldn't distinguish the sounds much less wrap her tongue around them.

Susan decides to buy the polisher, but as she pushes 037, a key clicks in the lock. Since it's two in the afternoon she's surprised to see Geoff. She hangs up before he reaches the bedroom.

"Get packed. We're catching the 16:50 to Paris."

Susan puts on her navy T-shirt dress and ties a scarf in the same way the woman, who wasn't allergic to gel in plastic penises. She puts underwear and her lilac nightie in the overnight bag. Geoff packs his saddlebag that wraps around his briefcase.

"We'll have the weekend to explore. My meeting isn't till Monday." He hugs her.

In the train they go to the dining car, which only sells sandwiches. She doesn't understand how a country with such a wonderful reputation for good food can make such unimaginative sandwiches. She daydreams of chicken tarragon on pita bread. She eats her dried out cheese and her more dried out baguette as the countryside flashes by.

In Paris they stay at the Edouard VII near the Opera. A brass lion in the lobby reminds her of the lions at the Copley Plaza Boston where they'd spent their wedding night.

The room has a king-sized bed. Geoff throws her down and tickles her a prelude to love making. She doesn't come, but she hasn't since they moved. Nevertheless, she feels happy.

Saturday they visit the Louvre. Looking up through the new glass Pyramid they see the old building in the background and fountains in the foreground. Geoff drapes his arm around her shoulder. "Lord, I love living in Europe. I wish we could stay forever." He doesn't feel her shudder.

They ride the escalator to the look down at the top of the pyramid. "I don't like this view," Geoff says. "It clashes with the old buildings."

"Like a pimple on Cindy Crawford's face," she says.

They stop at a brassiere. They sit facing the windows so they can watch people walk by. She orders hot chocolate. He has a Stella & Artois beer.

Outside a crowd gathers to watch a man pretending to be a statue. He wears a white toga, white makeup and white hair powder. Taking ten francs from her wallet, she goes out to put it in his hat. His white bare feet look cold. She wishes she had some white socks to give him.

In the Metro they sit opposite a man talking to himself. About every three words he pulls a face always the same face. Then he folds the corner of his blue overcoat over and over. Frightened, Susan nestles into Geoff.

When he leaves for his meeting, he suggests she visit Notre Dame. She agrees, but instead goes to Bretano's. The English bookstore is two doors from the hotel. She buys a book about the cathedral. When Geoff come back she shows him the book and says, "See what I bought?" without telling where.
*****
Ten years in the future the couple will be back in Maine. They will have three kids. Susan will be busy.

When they entertain, Geoff will sit back in his chair, take a puff on his pipe and say, "Those years in Europe were the best in our lives."

Susan will say nothing. She'll look out the window past the fenced in areas for the horses to the barn where they have the truck, station wagon and company Buick.

A box containing an unused polisher is hidden in the loft. All three of their vehicles will be dirty.