Mrs. Mossovsky chuckled. She’d heard the joke thousands of times, but they still found it funny together. She poked a knitting needle at him. “Stop that, Arty. Don’t get fresh.”
“Fresh?” he wheezed. “Fresh? Don’t let me get started on your Tillie and Tabby.”
Tillie and Tabby are Mrs. Mossovsky’s breasts, yes, they are. Tillie and Tabby reminded me of Tate’s General Noggin, Bert and Ernie, Billy and Bob. . . .
“Arty!” she admonished, a tiny voice from a tiny woman whose tiny heart was slowing. “Now, stop! Stop!”
But it was routine, she knew it, I knew it.
Arty winked at me. “Best breasts in the nation, right there.” He pointed at his wife’s breasts as if I would not be able to locate them on my own. “Always thought that, too. She nursed all seven of our kids and she still has a rack that gets me going, can’t help myself. I love the Mrs.”
“That’s wonderful news, Arty,” I said. “Precious.”
“Yeah. That woman has made me a lucky man. Lucky almost every night, that right, Margaret?”
“Arty! That’s enough! Stop!” Mrs. Mossovsky continued to knit. I saw the smile. She wasn’t embarrassed. She was ninety-three years old and there was no such time for that foolishness anymore.
“And Boat?” I prodded Arty.
“The bad dog, Boat. What a bizarre, frisky dog. I think he’s gay. Gay as gay can be! Gay! One of our sons is gay. The nicest one, I will say. I like his husband, too. Brian. Nice guy. Right, Margaret?”
“Right,” she answered. “We love Brian. Carpenter. He made us a dining room table. Sits the whole family!”
“Sits the whole family, that’s right! It’s a finely crafted table! He’s a wood artist! So the gay dog, that—Boat.” He pointed at the dog lying on his king-sized bed at their feet as if I couldn’t locate the dog, either. “He doesn’t like the red collar, doesn’t like the green collar, and I come home and I show him the pink collar with that clingy-clangy bell on it. As soon as Boat sees it, he starts barking, jumpin’ around like he’s a kangaroo or something, twirling around, and I put it on his neck and he loves it! Loves it! Don’t you?” He raised a weakened hand to Boat’s head and petted it. “You gay dog, you. Bah!”
“How old is Boat?”
“Old! He’s damn old. We spend hundreds every month on his medical care, don’t we, Margaret?”
“Hundreds!” she agreed.
“He has special food. Special vitamins. He has bad hips, a bad heart, can’t see so good, partly deaf, or maybe he’s faking that part, I don’t know. He’s old and sick. Same as me and Margaret here. Poor Margaret,” he whispered, but he wasn’t skilled at whispering. “She’s got a bad heart, too. I’m not going until after Margaret. I gotta be around to fight off all the men, you know.”
“That’s a fine idea, Arty. I’d stick around, too.”
“The Mrs. is sexy as hell.”
“Sexy!” Margaret mocked. She was still stunning. Perfect bone structure doesn’t quit. Neither does peace. Peace makes a face lovely.
“The gay dog, Boat, likes a pink collar. What does he expect me to do? Paint his fingernails pink? Give him a pink bow? You’d want all that, wouldn’t you?” He petted the Saint Bernard. “Pink all over. I’m a man. I don’t wear pink. Blue. Gray. Brown. Those are my colors. Margaret wears pink. She’s got three pink negligees. I know, ’cause I bought them for her. She wears them to bed all the time, isn’t that right, boobs?”
“Arty, please! Stop! Jaden is here.”
“I don’t care, sweets. I like to see you naked. I want to see you naked now.”
“I will be soon, Arty. Take a nap first.”
“Nap schnapps. Naps are boring. When I’m dead I’ll be able to take all the naps I want.”
Whenever Arty or Margaret left the bed, Boat the Saint Bernard would get gingerly off, so carefully, and wobble around to keep an eye on them. He was old. He didn’t have long.
The night that Arty started to die, Margaret called me over to their house.
“Dear, I can’t do this alone. All the kids are coming, but I want you here in case. Please, Jaden?”
The large bedroom held the whole family that night. I knew all of them because they were constantly visiting, helping around the house, mowing the lawn. They were an emotionally healthy family, cheerful, polite, and grieving, but accepting of their father’s illness, and their mother’s illness, and what that meant. Their oldest son was seventy-one. The youngest member of the family was a one-year-old.
Arty left this world peacefully, with some medication from me to keep him comfortable, Margaret in bed with him, with her knitting, Boat in there, too, the kids and grandkids all around.
Right before he died, though, his eyes opened and he found Margaret.
“Hello, Margaret, my Margaret,” he rasped out. “I love you. I have always loved you.”
“Oh, Arty, I love you, too.” Margaret’s tears dropped on Arty’s face.
“I’m sorry, my love. I wanted to see you out first, but it doesn’t seem it will work out that way. I will wait for you, Margaret. We’ll go into heaven together.”
He took in his loving, crying family and smiled; then Boat wobbled up the bed and licked Arty’s face and he petted his bad dog. Boat put his head on Arty’s chest.
With his eyes on Margaret, Arty’s lids slowly closed. Within two hours he was dead.
When his heart stopped, Boat lifted that huge head off Arty’s chest and licked his face. He licked Margaret’s face, then gingerly left the bed with the help of two great-granddaughters and creaked over to a corner and stood staring up at it, the bell on his pink collar ringing. He didn’t move for thirty minutes; he stood and stared at that corner. He barked a few times.
I knew what he was doing. I’d seen it before with animals and their owners.
Arty was up in the corner. He was waiting. He was watching. He was saying his good-byes to the sobbing family members in his bedroom.
Within one week Margaret was dead, too, Boat beside her, his head on her chest. I was there, as were the kids and generations of grandkids. Boat licked Margaret’s face, then gingerly left the bed again, so painfully, the bell on his pink collar ringing. He stared at the same corner and barked a few times.
The next morning Boat died.
Now this could be seen as a tragic story, but it’s not. Margaret and Arty were in their nineties. Their lives had been long and blessed, with both fortune and trouble, but they had each other through it all and they had their children and grandchildren. Boat was ten years old. He was an adored dog.
They had had it all.
I want to have an Arty and Margaret kind of love.
I want to have a Grace and Russ and a Faith and Jack kind of love. Grandma Violet told me both couples were “mad for each other.” I think we all want that love madness. We all want someone we will be in love with forever. Not a rather vague love, the kind you have for a spouse who’s been pretty good over the years, and you’re used to each other, and you’re friends, and you have kids together and you’ve built a life. That’s a valuable love, too. It’s a gift. To have someone you love walk through life with you, that you really like, is a blessing.
But what we all crave, I think, is the in love relationship.
Where the passion for each other is still burning when you are old and dying, your hands wrinkled, your face showing decades well lived, in bed together, holding hands, a bad dog like Boat at your feet.
I wanted to have a Boat at my feet with Ethan.
I smashed down the utter loss I felt and buried it in my loneliness.
On the last night of tryouts I picked up Tate at the gym.
I waited and waited, outside in my car, in the dark, the cold rain streaming down.
They were five minutes late, ten minutes, fifteen. I saw one kid after another come out of the gym and climb into cars.
Charlie with the braces came ambling out. Milt and Anthony climbed into their mom’s car. Kendrick
who resembled a gecko came out.
No Tate.
I envisioned him in the locker room, hiding, head down.
I envisioned him up on the bleachers. Maybe he’d run there to cry?
I envisioned him walking home through the rain, too distraught to face me.
I closed my eyes and tried to get a hold of my quaking emotions. All these years he hadn’t played basketball on a team. If I had let him play, he’d have done better in tryouts. I slapped a hand to my forehead. Had I been too paranoid about his safety? Was I making the right decision even now? What if he made it? What if he didn’t? How would he feel? What were the repercussions either way?
I heard a pounding on my window and sat straight up.
It was Tate.
He wasn’t smiling.
I climbed out of the car and stood in the drenching rain, facing him. “Tate?”
He didn’t move for long seconds, then slowly, dramatically slowly, a grin spread across his face.
“Oh my gosh,” I breathed. “Oh my gosh! Did you make it?”
His arms flew up into the air. “I made it, Boss Mom, I made it!”
He picked me up, swung me around, then stood back and did a jig in the rain.
A jig. Exactly like the jig my mother had taught him to do when singing a song from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
I did the jig with him, then he hugged me again, lifting me off my feet.
“Thanks Mom thanks Mom thanks Mom!”
I had never, truly, seen that kid so happy.
He had made the basketball team.
It was miraculous. It was exciting.
I was thrilled for him.
I was scared to death.
I called Coach Boynton that night.
There was nothing he could do about my medical concerns and I knew that. So I went to concern number two.
“I am concerned that Tate will be made fun of by the other teams.”
“I know all the coaches. I’ll tell them about Tate, and they’ll talk to their teams. Hopefully the message will get out that they are to be respectful toward Tate as are the students at their school. I can’t guarantee you anything in that area, and they can’t either, Jaden, but we’ll try our best.” He sniffled. He’s sensitive. “I worry about that with Tate, too.”
“I’ve worried for seventeen years.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t want him to play.”
“I know that, too, but, Jaden, how do you stop this?”
“What do you mean?”
“The kid has a dream and you know teenagers. When they dream, they dream wide and far, whether it’s realistic or not, and anyone who stands in their way becomes the enemy.”
“I have been that enemy.”
“I’m sorry, I am.”
“Okay, Robert. He can play.”
He whooped. “This is gonna be a hell of a year, Jaden, hell of a year.”
“Keep him safe or you’ll lose the family jewels.”
“Letty would come after you for that. The family jewels belong to her, after all.”
“Then watch out for my kid or I’m comin’ after you.”
He laughed, then hollered, “Whooeee! Tate Bruxelle, you are gonna bring a championship into my life! Yes sirree! We’re goin’ to state, I can feel it in my bones.”
11
“I found her.” I heard the catch in my mother’s voice over the phone. “I found Brooke.”
I slammed the lid on my Crock-Pot. I was making cowboy soup with garlic, marjoram, oregano, beef, and several different types of beans and onions. I had only shed two tears into the pot for Ethan, then bucked up and moved on with the recipe.
“Where is she?”
“She says she’s at a women’s shelter in Los Angeles. I’m going to pick her up.”
“She’s letting you come get her?” Brooke often refused to see us. My mother would hire a detective, as she had this time, to make sure her daughter wasn’t dead, in a hospital, or in jail. He’d find her, my mother would contact her, and Brooke would say, “No, I can’t see you. I’m sorry. I’m a mess. I don’t want you to see me right now. Mom, you’ll cry. When I’m better, when I’m better.”
Her refusal would break my mother down. She’d have to go to bed for two days and pull the covers over her head, then she’d get back up and go to work.
“At least she’s alive, Jaden, we know she’s alive, there’s still hope. Damn that girl. It would have been easier to raise a loose python.”
“How does she sound?” I instinctively braced myself. That’s how it is dealing with people on drugs. You are always bracing yourself. Always in some state of grief, unresolved anger, absolute emotional chaos, or determined detachment.
“She says”—my mother paused, and I knew she was yanking herself together—“that her ex-boyfriend beat her up recently, but that she’s been sober.”
“Heard that before.”
“I know, sugar, I know.”
My mother sounded exhausted, but utterly relieved. It is obliterating and wrenching and a slip of hell dealing with addicts.
“I have never given up hope on Brooke,” my mother said. “She’s made me down whiskey by the gallon, and now and then I’ve snuck a cigarette, and I have cried so much there should be no drought here in California, but I have always hoped.”
I hoped there was hope.
A couple of days later I told Tate I was going to fly down and spent the night with my mom. Tate was spending the night at Anthony and Milt’s with the basketball team so I didn’t have to worry about him. He was so excited to go. Being part of the team had meant a lot more social activities for Tate, which I tried not to feel guilty about, but did anyhow.
“Tell Nana Bird that I saw her in that love scene in the hotel. She needs to know that I know what she’s doing when my back is turned.” He shook his finger. “Tell her I’m watching her cheat with Alistair, that it will bring her nothing but pain, mark my words!”
He loves to say “mark my words,” because my mother says it. “I’ll tell her.”
“Tell her, too, that protection is important.” Both pointer fingers were now pointing up while he intoned, his voice deep, “Condoms should always be used. No one is safe anymore. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
I groaned. “Your Nana Bird does not need a condom. She’s acting, Tate, there are cameramen, directors, other actors, all on set watching and eating doughnuts.”
He opened his eyes wide, mocking innocence. “I know about these private things because of the piles of women pounding at the door at night seeking my purity, Mom, wanting to take that special part of Tate Bruxelle! They can’t get a lid on their passion, I’m just sayin’.”
I shook my head. “It’s been hard to keep the women from your body, Tate.”
“No kidding! I’m a chick magnet. Also, tell her that she needs to cover up. It’s weird for me to see my Nana Bird in black lingerie.” He shuddered. “Yeah. Tell her to put a robe on or, better yet, a parka. Yeah. A parka.”
With dawn breaking over the horizon, I drove to the airport through the column of our bare maple trees, their branches a stick maze in the sky, waiting for winter to be over.
My mother lives in a hacienda-style house that sprawls on top of a hill in the Hollywood Hills.
There’s the expected high wall, a gate, security, etc. But once past that, her property is filled with palm trees, jacarandas, magnolias, lemon and orange trees, and a swath of manicured lawn. It’s a slice of hacienda tranquility.
Her home has a breezeway that guides visitors to the front door, past a huge fountain in the shape of Aphrodite, goddess of love, in the center of a circular patio. The house has white stucco walls, and the air flows through it as if there are no walls at all. Wood shutters close things up, a red tile roof keeps things cool, and my mother’s Mexican pottery, ceramics, colorful art, embroidered pillows, and plush, red, blue, and yellow furniture set the whole place off. She also has a few vo
odoo dolls, which she says honor our “witchly past, the witches in our line were related to royalty, you know.”
There are three bedrooms upstairs. Brooke and I had always shared a corner room with doors that opened to an upstairs porch. We all had views of the patio, pool, and the city beyond that.
The family room opens to a kitchen filled with bright, hand-painted colored tiles bought from Mexico on the counters, island, and backsplash. Off to the side is my father’s den, where he used to write his scripts. It hasn’t changed a bit since he died. My mother simply shut the door on that room, and that was that. She couldn’t bear to do anything else. She goes in there now and then to talk to him.
“I give your father an update on our lives in there. I open the doors and watch the butterflies, like we used to do. I eat oranges; we used to eat oranges together. I watch the sunset, we loved sunsets, and I have strawberry daiquiris while I watch it, because that’s what we used to do together. I feel closer to him there. When I leave, I feel the loss, but it’s dimmed somewhat over the years and I know he loves to hear how things are going. He always wanted to know everything about you kids. He loved you crazy-mazie.”
I think of her sitting in that den, alone, talking to my dad, and it hurts. The whole thing still hurts.
Anyhow, out back, a pool with a cascading waterfall and a hot tub with its own waterfall shine in the sun. She has her own vegetable and herb gardens that she lovingly tends and has also planted her “hereditary witch flowers,” as she calls them, Canterbury bells, hollyhocks, lilies, irises, sweet peas, cosmos, red poppies, peonies, and rows of roses.
My mother does work a lot, but she has free time. “I miss you and Caden, but I want to be here in case Brooke ever pulls her red head out of her buttocks and accepts help. I have to see things grow, I have to make pretty out of this hot and dried-out land, I have to be completely absorbed in my garden, or I will go straight out of my head with worry about that kid, plant myself in a jacaranda tree like a nesting peacock, and refuse to come down and face life.”