“Okay, good. Get up.” I pulled him up by the arms and made him sit on the bed. “Now wait right here.” I went into the bathroom to grab some towels and then I came back in the room.
“You sure you have enough towels there, fella?” he said.
I tossed them on the bed except for one that I draped over his neck like I’d seen in one of the illustrations in Kate’s book.
I opened the box, which I had been saving for a crisis at the house, and applied the mixture to his head.
He ran his hands up and down my bare legs the entire time but I didn’t mind because I’d never colored anyone before and I was very interested to see the results. The box said to leave it on for twenty minutes, but because his hair was black, I decided to leave it on for longer.
I wrapped his head in Saran wrap and then, an hour later, brought him into the bathroom to rinse his head in the sink.
Next to the sink was a free-standing plastic shelf unit. Agnes’s cosmetics were on one of the shelves. I picked up one of the tubes. Max Factor mascara. Vintage. Probably from the first batch Max Factor himself ever mixed together. I tossed it back on the shelf and turned my attention back to Bookman.
“Is it out yet?” he said with his face in the sink, water running across the back of his head and his nape.
The difference was startling.
“Yeah, it’s out. You can raise your head up but don’t look.” He stood, his head dripping, and had a big smile on his face. The change of activity had already done him good.
I towel-dried his hair.
It was a greenish-shade of brown. And it felt exactly like steel wool, except straight.
“How does it look?” he asked.
I led him out of the bathroom. “It’s a new look. It’s good.”
“I wanna see. Hand me a mirror.”
I handed him one of my mirrors. Unfortunately, I had many. “Holy shit.”
“See?” I said. “Completely different.”
“It’s green.”
“It’s not green. It’s ash blonde.”
“It’s green,” he said louder. It made his face look even paler.
“It’s the lighting.”
He handed the mirror back to me. “And it feels absolutely awful. Are you sure you wanna do this for a living?”
“It’ll feel better when it grows out. Yes, I’m sure. What else is there for me to do? Besides, I don’t care about the actual hair part. I’m only really interested in the product lines that can carry my name.”
“Well you’re not gonna get very far with the product lines if you don’t care a little more about the hair part.”
“Oh shut up. You’ll get used to it.”
Then he softened. “I’m just teasing. I kind of like it. And I love that you did it to me. I’m yours. You can do anything you want to me.”
I thought, There’s that lotto feeling again.
A FAMILY AFFAIR
B
ECAUSE THE MINISTER’S WIFE REFUSED TO LEAVE THE MINister, and because my mother required a worshipful companion, she was forced to break up with Fern and secure herself a new mate. As luck would have it, Dr. Finch had recently begun seeing a suicidal eighteen-year-old African-American girl who had taken a leave of absence from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Her name was Dorothy.
And she was destined to spend many of her early adult years as my mother’s girlfriend.
Dorothy’s reddish-black hair tumbled down her shoulders in kinky loops. She had large brown eyes, an expressive mouth and a nose that resembled the dorsal fin of a salmon. Instead of being called “pretty” one might have described her as having “character.” I thought she looked like a young witch.
She was an excitable girl who seemed to be starved for chaos. The way other people seek comfort and security, Dorothy sought extremes. And she found this with my mother.
One of the things I liked about her was that she had long fingernails that she would carefully manicure and paint to fit her mood. If she were in a happy mood, her nails would be bright red. If she were feeling like she wanted to eviscerate her mother she would paint her nails burgundy. And when Dorothy was in one of her withdrawn, sullen moods, her nails would be neutral.
But to me, her best quality was her trust fund. It had been established by her father whom she loathed because when she was younger he showed her his penis on a rowboat. The trust fund was large enough that she was able to live off the interest alone.
And like a bottom-feeding catfish, I was able to live off the scraps.
“Here’s fifty,” she’d say. “Now get lost.”
When I officially moved into the Finch house, I assumed my mother would keep my old room for me in Amherst. The way mothers on primetime television do. But this was not the case.
Instead, Dorothy moved from her parent’s house in Buckland into my old bedroom. At least that was the arrangement at first. My mother was going to be a mentor to the troubled girl. “I’ve always wanted a daughter.”
But it didn’t take long before they shared the master bedroom and the other was used for storage.
Soon they were inseparable. And, I thought, extremely compatible.
If my mother was odd enough to crave a bubble bath at three in the morning, Dorothy was inventive enough to suggest adding broken glass to the tub. If my mother insisted on listening to West Side Story repeatedly, it was Dorothy who said, “Let’s listen to it on forty-five!”
And when my mother announced that she wanted a fur wrap like Auntie Mame, Dorothy bought her an unstable Norwegian elkhound from a puppy mill.
“Damn it, Dorothy,” my mother cried, “this animal is making me a nervous wreck. You’ve just got to take it back.”
“It’s not an it, it’s a she. And she wouldn’t have shit all over the stairs if you let her outside like I told you to.”
“Shat. And I couldn’t let her outside because she snaps at me whenever I set foot near her.”
“She’s not snapping at you. I told you, she’s epileptic. You have to give her the pills.” She rattled the bottle the vet had given her.
“I do not have time to be giving that damn dog pills. I have enough pills of my own to take. She has to go.”
Dorothy went into the bathroom and returned with a bottle of Vicks NyQuil. “Look, we’ll try this. I bet it’ll settle her down.” She poured a dose of the green NyQuil into the little cup and bent down.
The dog’s tongue slipped into the little cup as Dorothy tipped it backward. “See? She even likes it.”
The NyQuil took effect swiftly and the dog napped in the corner. “That’s more like it,” my mother said, stroking her hind leg with her big toe. “She’s a sweet thing when she sleeps, isn’t she?”
“See?” Dorothy said.
“Okay,” my mother said. “As long as you can manage her.”
“I can manage her. Just like I manage you.”
“Oh, you’re such a good pet,” my mother said, pressing Dorothy’s face between her hands and kissing her lips.
Although my mother teased that Dorothy was her pet, it was Dorothy who acted as if she had a trained bear for a lover. “Make that face!” she would shriek, clapping her hands like a child.
My mother would try to suppress her smile and remain dignified and composed. “I don’t know what face you’re talking about.”
Dorothy would scream, “You know exactly which face! Make it, make it, make it!”
My mother would laugh and bare her teeth. “Grrrrrrrrrr,” she would growl, holding her fingers out like bear claws.
Dorothy would bounce up and down on the sofa like a delighted little girl.
It was not uncommon to walk in the door of their home and find my mother sitting on the sofa reading over a manuscript with shampoo horns sculpted into her hair. Anne Sexton’s voice would be blasting from the speakers.
A woman who writes feels too much . . .
Dorothy viewed my mother’s propensity toward madness not as someth
ing to be afraid of, but rather as something to look forward to, like a movie or a newly released color of nail polish.
“Your mother is just expressing herself,” Dorothy would tell me when my mother stopped sleeping, started smoking the filters of her cigarettes and began writing backward with a glitter pen.
“No, she’s not,” I would say. “She’s going insane again.”
“Don’t be so mundane,” she would yawn, passing my mother a shoebox filled with cat vertebrae. “She is a brilliant artist. If you want Hamburger Helper, go find some other mother.”
I did want Hamburger Helper. And if I knew where to find a mother that could make it, I would have been there in a heartbeat.
Dorothy protected my mother, acting as a loyal guard dog who could also prepare snacks.
“Dorothy, I’m dying of thirst,” my mother might call from her reclined position on the sofa. She would be fanning her face with a copy of her first book of poems, the only one she didn’t have printed herself.
Dorothy would appear a moment later with a tall glass of iced tea, at the bottom of which she had placed a small plastic goat.
My mother would guzzle the tea, her eyes closed, and then succumb to a fit of coughing until she spat the plastic goat into her hand. “What in the world?” she would say.
Then they would both explode into a fit of laughter.
Dorothy’s unpredictable nature perfectly suited my mother’s unreliable brain chemistry. She was not only fun, but she acted as a buffer between my mother and me. I didn’t feel that I had to keep as close an eye on my mother’s mental health because Dorothy was looking after her. And when my mother did go psychotic, Dorothy went along for the ride.
On one of their rides, they brought me back a souvenir.
*
His name was Cesar Mendoza and he looked exactly like a cartoon lumberjack. His arms were as thick around as tree limbs. And his head was as square as an anvil. My mother had met him at the mental hospital where Dr. Finch had committed her.
“I’m not going to any goddamn mental hospital,” my mother raved, her eyes looking like somebody had lit books of matches inside of them.
“It’s just for observation,” Finch told her calmly.
“I will not be observed!” my mother shrieked, hurling her large-framed body against the door, causing it to slam in Finch’s face.
“Deirdre, you have to go,” he said through the door. “Come out now or we’ll have to get the police.”
In the end, my mother didn’t put up a fuss. She allowed herself to be taken to the Brattleboro retreat in Vermont.
She returned from the hospital still slightly mad with a six-foot-two lumberjack in tow. The lumberjack spoke only broken English. “I love you mother,” he said when he met me. “And I be your new father.”
I sat on her sofa, stunned by this development. Not only had my mother failed to recover in the hospital, it seemed to me she had gone even crazier.
“Where is bathroom?” he asked as he shuffled through the house, ducking under the doorjambs.
“It’s in the back,” I told him.
When he returned, he smelled of my mother’s new Avon perfume. “You like?” he said, extending his arm. “I smell pretty now, no?”
Dorothy clung to my mother’s arm, lighting her cigarettes for her and holding them between puffs. She explained the situation to me. “Your mother feels strongly that God has brought them together. And that Cesar is going to be a part of our lives from now on.”
She turned to my mother and looked at her profile with admiration, as if my mother had just announced her diagnosis of cancer and her decision to fight the disease with every bit of strength she had left.
I eyed the lumberjack who was busy sniffing his perfumed arm and smiling, using his free hand to gently rub the bulge in his pants. “What do you know about this man?” I asked.
“Not much,” Dorothy said. “Except that he’s married, he has two kids and the police are looking for him.”
Cesar grinned down at me, exposing the whitest, most perfect teeth. A surprising quality in a crazy person.
“Nice teeth,” I commented.
“You like?” he said, and pulled them out of his mouth.
I winced.
Because it was my mother’s first day home from the mental hospital, she was exhausted. It took all her energy to stand on her own and not use Dorothy or the wall for support. The medication had also made her movements slow and clumsy. “I’m going to bed. Dorothy, come with me.” She licked her cracked lips. “My mouth is so damn dry.” She turned to me. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Which left me alone with my new father.
“You mother tells me you are a gay,” he said, taking a seat on the couch.
I slid away from him. “Yeah.”
He stretched his arms out on the back of the sofa. “I don’t think you a gay. I think you have no man in your life. No father ever. What you need is father. Good, strong father. I be your father. You be my son.” His eyes had the same glossy appearance as my mother’s, as if they’d both gone to the same sinister opthamologist and been fitted with identical contact lenses.
I said, “Mmm hmm.”
He brought his arms forward and slapped his knees. “Now, go get your father something to drink. You have beer?”
I told him we didn’t have any beer but I could get him a glass of tap water or there might be some flat Pepsi in the refrigerator. He told me to forget it, and then he popped a handful of pills into his mouth, chewed and swallowed them dry.
Although I was officially living at the Finches, I spent some nights at my mother’s apartment in Amherst. Sometimes Bookman and I would stay there together or sometimes just me alone on the sofa. I told myself that I was like a bicoastal celebrity, moving between Amherst and Northampton at will, when the spirit moved me. But what I truly felt was that neither place was home. In truth, when things got too crazy at the Finches’, I stayed in Amherst. When I felt like my mother and Dorothy couldn’t stand me anymore, I moved back to Northampton. Usually, one night was the most I could stay in Amherst. One night every few weeks.
At just after midnight, I was awakened from a dream that a hard penis was pressing against my ass. It turned out there was a hard penis pressing against my ass.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I said, shoving him off.
He was completely naked, even his teeth were out of his mouth. “I only want to try,” he gummed. “I love you, new son.”
“Get away from me,” I said.
I locked him out of the living room and went back to sleep on the sofa. My powers of denial were strong even then, and I was able to convince myself that it didn’t really matter because it didn’t really happen. When I heard him climbing the stairs to go find Deirdre and Dorothy, I figured he’d finally leave me alone.
Throughout the night, my mother would come downstairs and pass through the living room on her way to the kitchen. She was sweating profusely, looking extremely preoccupied. Whatever she had been doing in her bedroom, it was clear that it didn’t involve sleep. When I asked her what was going on, she said, nearly out of breath, “Dorothy is still a virgin as far as men are concerned.”
Later, I heard Dorothy suddenly start shrieking and then sobbing. This was followed by the muffled sounds of my mother saying something in a soothing tone of voice.
An hour later the lumberjack came downstairs. He sauntered into the living room, thumbs hooked through his belt loops, and winked at me. “She as wet as a dishrag.” He motioned with his head, indicating upstairs.
The next morning, Dorothy appeared smug and pleased, but aloof toward my new father.
“Please give me the man a glass of something to drink.”
“Get your own fucking drink, asshole,” Dorothy replied distantly, as she brushed a fresh coat of polish over her nails. Fuchsia.
My mother, too, seemed ready to dispose of him now. Last night he was a gift from God, a new member of the family
, my lumberjack father. But today he was an insect that needed to be crushed with a shoe. The black widows had mated with him and now they needed to destroy him.
“I think it’s time for you to leave, Cesar,” my mother informed him as she stroked Dorothy’s hair. They were sitting at the kitchen table together, with Cesar hovering over them.
“No, I just get here. I stay and be man father.”
“You heard her, asshole. Scram,” Dorothy said, blowing on her pinkie to dry the polish.
The elkhound slept peacefully under the table, as it had for the past six days, moving only occasionally—and then very sluggishly—for a drink from its NyQuil-spiked water bowl.
“Where I should go?” he pleaded. “Have no place?” He glanced at me, but I shrugged and looked away.
Being mentally ill, temporarily homeless and wanted by the law, the only logical place for him to go was to Dr. Finch’s.
“Let me make a phone call,” my mother said finally. After she hung up, she scribbled the Finches’ address down on the inside cover of a book of matches. Then, instead of handing him the matches, she tore off the cover. “Here you go,” she said.
Dorothy snatched up the matches and held them over the candle on the kitchen table where they burst into flames. “Pretty,” she said.
At the Finch house, the lumberjack discovered and fell madly in love with Natalie.
Natalie was repulsed by him at first. “Get the fuck away from me, you missing link,” she said, slapping his hand away with the serrated edge of an aluminum foil box, one of dozens that were in the pantry, left over from the days of Joranne.
But his persistence, which came in the form of endearments like, “Shake that belly for me,” and “I’ll give you a hundred dollars,” finally melted her resistance.
One night while Natalie and I were going for a walk at Smith she turned to me and said, “You’ll never guess what I did.”
I knew that I couldn’t, in fact, ever guess what she had done. So I said, “What?”
“I fucked Cesar Mendoza.”