Local Souls

  • • •

  I DO NOT holler this. I simply sit here. I sit mild, rounded, sniffling, smiling at her, the Madonna content in her rotund middle age. —Cait is mine, is home, is living, is prettier than even I remember. Is all I’ll ever require. But I set my fork down. Not exactly hungry now. Know what’s a real good diet? Life is.

  • • •

  SURE I’M OUT the three thousand bucks, so what? American Express will surely forgive that bill, only fair, considering. Be great corporate publicity. Tomorrow I’ll drive to Richmond fast, negotiate Ian’s return of my down payment for an orchestra that was going to be merely skeletal, after all. Once that’s done, I will only be “out” certain intangible emotional expenses. Cost? No more than my credibility to all of Falls. After this who will ever believe me again, when nobody did before?

  My outlay? Incalculable. But an expense I’ll forever keep hidden. All that matters is she’s visible again, my own best self back whole.

  (For what it’s worth, the name of the firm that countersigned the repatriation shipping order and collected my three grand? “Isis Novelties, Ltd. Nairobi.”) Avoid them.

  IX

  ON LEARNING OF MY CHILD’S DROWNING, I HAD NOT, as I stated, managed to weep. Unlike my newly-sensitive ex-husband who—these days as an adopted Californian married to philosophy’s own Tiffany—can grow misty-eyed over anything, including a Niçoise salad if it is tossed sufficiently beautifully. (Shelburne too, come to think of it, is a veritable Trevi Fountain. I know it’s one of feminism’s gains but somebody should maybe tell these guys, when it comes to men and sobbing? —less is more. Once, twice per male lifetime. Father’s death, Mom’s. One really good dog’s. Otherwise, put a sock in it.)

  Myself, I didn’t truly cry till Cait returned. But once we got her tucked back safely home under her sky-blue comforter, I sensed I could. The very evening she arose—painful centimeter by centimeter—all six feet out of her grave, stand back.

  The moment my living daughter walked in, I belatedly felt the lash of her father’s leaving. Funny how that works. When Edward forsook me overnight six years ago, concussion, adrenaline, pride, three needy kids and watchful neighbors all kept me plodding forward. Like that robotic vacuum cleaner they advertise now, one you can leave to roam your empty house sucking up the dust and hair of others. Gorging, ramming chair legs, unable to switch itself off. Herself.

  During Cait’s absence, the twins and I, we worked out something very dear, half-mute but quite athletic; it keeps you in shape, being so close to two fond ten-year-old males of equal strength who monkey-climb doorframes and oneself. Isometric affection my twins still offered me. Support geodesic.

  Their father? cleanly gone. His theoretical Tiffany no earthly help.

  • • •

  THAT SELFSAME EVENING of the day Cait stunned by simply strolling in alive, I took to bed early. At last, sanctioned rest. Eight p.m., alone upstairs, I let boys’ eventful pajama party grow even wilder than their usual. Did I care? Full of mac and cheese, my soccer fans sounded almost happy at Brazil’s early goals. Apparently the U.S. players had “choked.” Booing their own nation for the first time maybe let local boys feel more international, little 007s licensed to kill abroad. It sure made them louder. “Girls! Our USA boys are playing no bettern GIRLS, man! And right out on TV where foreign people SEE ’em, man!”

  Will it never end?

  Three ghetto blasters all played different rappers, none any good. Boys kept thumping up and down the stairs beside my room, fridge to bike-rack to microwave. One of my customary bossy yodels down our staircase—“Hey, dweebs, keep it to a mild roar”—usually shushed them for six-minute intervals.

  Tonight, trust me, childish roughhousing did not faze me. Would they like to torch the house? Matches in the top-left drawer beside the stove. Phone for pizza, strippers? Fine by Jean. She’d slip her versatile AmEx card under her bedroom door. I hope to never—even on my due date of death—feel as tired as I did that night.

  All the “parenting” books tell you. What we do is self-engineered obsolescence. Once you teach your kids to (1) love, then (2) leave you, your job on earth is done.

  And I thought I’d be okay with that. I’d expected to feel overlooked once my kids turn, say, fifty. But at ages ten or eighteen? No. Tonight I felt dead to them. I lacked a husband. And my own children, like their sleepover friends, seemed to recall Jean Mulray’s usefulness one hour before dinnertime or whenever the next mall run was required. I could say I felt swamped, emotionally exhausted. But it was more than that. I could not collect, rejoin myself.

  So, covered by the twins’ room’s rap droning over All-Sports TV, as part of catching up, royally sick of being the strong one, I quietly released one smallish test-sob. It caught hard. Felt extra-good. What got tough, ever reining it all back in.

  I soon let myself cry. But as a diva does her scales. Strengthening. And why on earth not? Who was I NOT being sloppy for? I cried for my wretched mother, who preferred her French wallpaper and white brocaded chaise to the muddy world. I cried for my having failed Eddie. For fully-funding Shelburne while never quite interesting him. I cried for the way only Tragedy had ever made me feel comically-and-completely alive. I thought of that now-trite line: Tragedy plus Time equals Comedy. But how many geologic ages would my own joke take to hatch?

  Then, as if on cue, Cait herself knocked. She slipped unasked into the room I’d once shared with her father.

  “Mom? I am so sorry. Whatever crossed wires were my fault, forgive me, ’kay? I put you on the Do Not Call list once but the phone kept totally blocking without my noticing. You suddenly shut up. And that? That felt . . . mature of you. Honestly, I was relieved. Past that, now I’m here to register concern tonight. Because, I wonder, can you hear yourself? I know you know you’re crying, okay? But by now you’re sounding kind of like a beagle barking. I thought it was a dog. Not that ‘blame’ is in any way involved here. Only, maybe consider the boys and their friends, all right? I can barely imagine the strain and excitement of this, and then suddenly getting me back and all. —But, Mom, look. Cait’s brought something into the house for a change. Making up for all your heirloom-stuff I gave away. I feel worst about your shoes. Africa showed me: the person’s only pair of footgear is so . . . I’d say, maybe, ‘autobiographical’? (Whoa, there’s an essay.) Yeah, very close-in, the shoes. You alone, Mom, get to make your charitable decisions. I see that now. That was so not right of me. Should have left you at least a couple pairs, three. It was selfish and no one is readier to admit it. —But here is what I brought you . . . Women from ‘my’ region? they weave these? and we all think their home-loomed products are pretty much . . . gorgeous, I mean, right? One U.S. catalogue placement could make a huuuuge difference for my village. This one cloth, Mom? I’d say is the best I ever found at any market there, ev-er.”

  She unfolds from nowhere a fabric of gold.

  • • •

  “CAITIE,” I GO. “You’re too much. You’re everything they say. Me? I’m not really able to . . . not worth . . .”

  “Shhh. —Market days, they sometimes wear these over their heads, a mantilla-shawl-burnoose-type deal. I owe you so much. Do. Hush now. Here, may I drape you, Mom? Omalu and her sisters, they totally taught me how to tie it perfect in back.”

  She hops onto my mattress. My living daughter reaches behind me. She tugs fabric across my shoulders. Up it goes till it settles, billowing around my head. Isn’t it just like Cait? Having this on hand, she tries distracting me from bawling, does this easily as any parent diverts an infant’s attention from its selfish li’l self.

  Caitie arranges cloth, scratchy, round my hairline. My crybaby eyes must appear swollen half-shut. So much atypical emotion. I sense I look a fright. Especially when scanned from up-this-close. Next room, twins and friends chant like Comanche braves round a war-counsel fire.

  I rest propped among the pillows on my bed. Cait, trying to prettify me, rises onto browned legs. She kn
ee-walks nearer. I am lightly straddled. Her hennaed head tilts either way. She’s appraising, smiling. Above me Cait seems a bazaar-saleswoman hoping to convince me I look super in her wares. I try grinning back. But I feel an amateur, uneasy responding to another’s touch, to the pull of my own battered vanity. I truly have none left. I’ve saved back no goodwill for just myself. Goodwill! My daughter gave so much of mine away.

  “More like it.” Cait’s salesgirl voice sounds insincere.

  This headdress’s cheap dye smells of fish, something soaked in brine. Scent hints at the unclean then suggests the contagious. Around me cloth crackles, stiff. As Cait, astride me, adjusts it, an almost-weightless box of balsa wood seems to break against my cheekbones, crush either ear. Loose metal threads poke my scalp. “You look so ‘hot,’ lady, know that? But you still need something. Guess what?” Her eyes swim huge in their blueness all before me.

  I shake my head no. I’m scared of risking an answer.

  Cait now curves in closer. Her gristled backside indents Mom’s marshmallow tummy. She, lean, rests across the full hill-country of Momma Jean hips. No one has “been on top of me” (in or out of this bed) since her father enlisted in Ethics 101 and started matriculating under Tiffany.

  Caitlin fusses with my awning burnoose. Aren’t feminists the enemies of veils? This one means to make me finally pretty in the ways poor Ice had hoped. If an organdy hair ribbon won’t do it, try the whole paper bag.

  Boys go jumping off the top bunk. They scream over a winning soccer goal: “It’s Bra-zil! Brazil’s boys are Gods. USA boys are Girls. It’s Gods against Girls. They’re Gods, man. Gods always beat the Girls!”

  “Know what you need, Mom? I think, see, you’re getting tired of mothering. —And who can blame you? Here your kids are, running off everywhere. Seems to Cait, you might need a real mother about now. Not just some frozen fish-stick witch like yours, either . . . ‘Jean.’ My Africa has ‘grown me.’ I’m finally home and just the woman to do it. I’m here to give a little back.”

  • • •

  UH-OH. ONE NUBILE female rests across me. She is trying to mask me. She cannot know how boned and boyish her hips feel sunk into my over-ample sponge-blob ones. She lifts the coarse veil to frame my face. It slips. Cait is planning some major hug or, worse, a kiss, a spirit makeover I don’t need. Success-oriented as any young Ivy exec, she will not be stopped. Foil-cloth covers my one eye then both. The cloth now tastes, a toxic net.

  Her words drift down through fish-stink foil, “Need . . .moth-er-ing . . . Am sensing a huge hug-deficit!” Strong arms hook behind me. Fabric blindfolds then gags. I head-butt toward the boyish weight.

  My girl feels stronger than the twins and me combined. Africa’s full-attention has enlarged her force field. Blue eyes have charmed local wildlife and half-nude tribal elders but it ain’t quite working here for me! “Girls Can Do Anything,” except climb up on ole Jean here.

  As Caitlin Mulray, having dressed me like some village doll, a fairly big one, presses hard atop me, I recall her father newly twenty, avid as some brand-new Boy Scout knife. First I shrug to beg for air. But Cait, deranged with sudden college-essay empathy—mistakes this spasm as my next shaking sob.

  Muscle-stolid, she comes in for another sloppy Liberal hug. Was her latest eco-sacrifice deodorant? She now smells not-unpleasant. But too acridly vital. My little girl’s dry-honey scent seems gone for good. What smell replaces it, this close? I am near the headspring of the Mississippi-Nile. “Please, Cait . . . let me. Breath is . . . I . . . Hugging . . . hurts. —You’re back a-live. What in hell else do you want?”

  Itchy gilt closes my throat. Dying here. “URgh, Cai . . .” I drop back and, panicked, do shove once. With all my deranged menopausal might. I hear a pretty good thwump.

  Boys’ music pounds, Africanized, peppery, competitive, alive. Once I’ve beaten this golden shroud back, I regain light. And only as I tear into free air again, only then, sweat-soaked, do I note another woman, thrown seven feet across the room.

  On her back, she is swearing (that Swahili?). She’s been decked against a baseboard. She keeps mashing one palm to her brow, jerking it away to look for blood. Curled fetal in her corner, she now glowers. “Thanks a lot to you, too. Fucking COW!”

  Somehow I laugh. She’s made me feel so silly, nine years old and oddly free. Her insult means she lives. It means she truly is my child and mainly simply hates me. All is as before, amen.

  But swelling overtakes Cait’s right eye. My handiwork? I watch it grow. My girl now squints from such an aged lopsided face. Who did this to her? It’s my face but twisted far more sideways, briefly maybe even meaner.

  (Cait’s friends all call her “awesome.” But to somebody my age, that word can still imply “scary.”)

  I reach for my re-living huffing girl.

  “Dearest self,” I say, and climb on all fours toward her end of my bed. Instead of reaching out, she prods her bad eye’s swelling. Almost socks herself to test then prove my crime. Finding no head blood, she seems to wish a great gash open.

  I explain I felt trapped: she’d clamped atop me with that rag. What had she been doing? I’m a classic claustrophobe, her father always said. And I never have fared well with mandatory consolation. —Nothing but sleep has happened on this mattress since her dad’s last bouncy Friday night ride here. In my last six Eddie-less years, I’ve somehow made my peace here with the sensual Nothing of a real high thread-count.

  “Sorry, honey,” I call. “You meant well. But put yourself in my . . . not ‘shoes’ but . . .”

  We simply slump here, panting now, sweating through our clothes. Lady wrestlers, opposite corners.

  I do admire her photo-ready navel.

  • • •

  BUT EVEN NOW I keep thinking: Her beautiful funeral will never happen, not in my lifetime. Could I have said aloud my prayer for all dead children from The Book of Common Prayer? Would I have finally licked the stage fright Ice called some form of epilepsy? For a sec, I wonder if we might not produce the whole show anyway? just to generally celebrate, oh, the concept of “Return”? Should Falls miss the costly world premiere of Sir Stanley Shelburne’s Caitlin Cantata? Has it been, all along, a “vanity production”?

  Still, I understand: every single citizen might love the pageant except, of course, this one, the one Repatriated, sulking in yon corner.

  One last time I strain her way. But Cait is prodding her puffed eye, using an intentionally-uplifted middle finger. And only now, having just been pinned by my own girl, do I, silent, understand: Jesus Christ, know what? She’s considered magnetic because she’s as “crazy” as they say you are, Jean! That’s what draws others to her. Unlike you, nobody’s quite seen through her yet. Poor child is too much like you, so just go ahead and fully pity her up-front. The sec she stops being pretty—her moral knack, her smarts, those will—like yours—go overlooked from that day forward.

  I call, “Shouldn’t have, honey. Your weight stopped me breathing. I like breathing. Besides, hey, you only caught me crying. Is that such a crime, considering? Just let me. Couldn’t you let Momma Jean haul off this first night you’re alive again and—however like a hound the ole hag sounds—just let Mom cry for you?”

  “For YOU, you mean!”

  And this I hated. Right then, as usual: Caitlin Mulray sounded mainly right.

  X

  LIKE THE REST OF FALLS, I HAD TURNED MY CHILD INTO someone ideal then immortal. I heard from Doc Roper’s head-nurse how our darling GP had retrieved all Cait’s childhood records. He then tied a black ribbon around them, keeping them in plain view out on his desk. Memorials everywhere.

  Now, merely literally alive, she just needed me to do her Third World laundry. Plus, would I kindly keep her brothers’ hip-hop music off while she got in some serious beauty rest, prepping for her favorite Atlanta Journal and Constitution reporter and his photographer due in on Thursday? “Probably dumb of me to schedule picture-taking this near so long a flight. But
tell me, on a scale of one to ten, how swollen did you get this eye? Tell me true and I can face it. I’ll either grab a bag of ice or use a whole bottle of foundation or cancel. It’s totally your call, Mom.”

  • • •

  IN SECRET I sped to Richmond the Monday after her return from African death. I’d phoned Ian to make a vague if urgent-sounding secret appointment. I asked to see my young contact alone if possible. Maybe the surprise element would finally work for me. Ian’s door plaque still promised, SPECIAL CONCERT FACILITATOR, VIRGINIA SYMPHONY LIAISON. I would rely on that.

  He rose as I swept in wearing an old daisy-print Marimekko meant to announce a whole new emotional landscape. I saw that Ian, however, sported a black turtleneck: Proof he was hip? A mark of respect for my mourning? Or both? Or maybe some attempt to scotch my sudden need for discount, refund?

  “So,” his smile promised purest professional kindness. “This, our Thursday, is nearly here at last. Yes, dear Jean, everything’s in readiness. We’ve explained your circumstance to orchestra members. Their union rep lost his young son in a car wreck last year. So he went on and on about our people’s giving this their all, etc. The alto—who, by the by, was Third Rhine Maiden in a Met Das Rheingold in which Jessye was supposed to’ve sung years back, her name is Jean too, funny, has learned you-all’s score coming and going, and says it’s not without . . . has real merit. Called it surprisingly difficult considering it was originally being written for less experienced . . . for ‘high school band.’ I think you and your composer-friend will be pleased with our soloist’s artistry.”

  “‘Mixed-Band-Chorus-and-Orchestra.’”

  “Of course,” he said, corrected. “Holst was choirmaster at a girls’ school, composed great if simplish things for them. No, our musicians are always glad to premier new works. Good for our grant profile, too. The 1812 and Jupiter do tend to come around again pretty quickly. Whereas contemporary compositions of whatever provenance give us a chance to take the pulse of—”