The Reluctant Daughter Part 4

"What do you want from the woman, Lydia? Two years ago, if I remember correctly, she sent you a check and you weren't happy about that either."

"A check," I say, my voice full of disgust. "What am I, a charity? She doesn't even know her own daughter well enough to pick something out for her."

"Sounds to me like she's d.a.m.ned if she does and d.a.m.ned if she doesn't." Vera starts walking again, and since her arm is still hooked through mine, I have no choice but to follow. She leads me to a wrought iron bench near the campus greenhouse and sits us both down.

"So, you're not talking to her, which theoretically should make you happy, but obviously doesn't," Vera says, summing up our conversation as if it's the end of a fifty-minute hour. "Seriously, Lydia." Vera looks at me with those piercing blue eyes that always demand the absolute truth. "Your mother is how old? Seventy-two?"

"Seventy-three."

"So she's not exactly young."

"Vera, she's not exactly old, either. She's practically the same age as you are."

"Still, life holds no guarantees," Vera reminds us both. "Your mother's been a chain smoker for what, about fifty years?"

"Fifty-nine, but who's counting?"

"You are," Vera points out. "Lydia, all I'm saying is, one never knows what's around the next corner. So don't stand on ceremony. If you want to talk to her, call her."

"But Vera, we've been having the same exact boring conversation since the day I left home. I just can't take it anymore."

"So talk about something else."

"I can't."

"Have you ever tried?"

"Not for a long time."

"Uh-huh." That's all Vera has to say to let me know that she wants details, so I supply them. "It was exactly twelve years ago, when my friend Vincent died. You remember?" Vera nods and squeezes my arm tightly against her side. How could she forget? Vera spent hours on the phone with me, listening to daily reports about Vincent's decline: the burgundy KS lesions splotched all over his face, the thrush in his throat that made it impossible for him to swallow, the numbness in his feet and legs...

"The day he died was a gorgeous hot August afternoon, just about a week before my birthday. Allie was off fis.h.i.+ng with some friends, you were in Europe, and my therapist was on vacation. I had been expecting him to go for weeks, but still when he did, it was such a shock, I was a total wreck. So in a moment of weakness, I called my mother. I know, I know, what was I thinking, right?" I look at Vera, who understands that the question is better left unanswered. "So the conversation was going on the way it usually does, with my mother talking about the weather and someone's grandchild who just got engaged, and the new tiles she'd picked out for the bathroom floor. I just couldn't take it anymore, so I interrupted her by blurting out, 'Mom, I'm really upset. My friend Vincent just died of AIDS.' And she said, 'I'm sorry to hear that.' Which you would think is an appropriate thing to say, if you didn't know my mother. After a few seconds of silence, she said, 'Lydia, let's talk about something pleasant. What else is new?' Don't you see, Vera?" My voice chokes with pain. "My mother wasn't sorry that my friend had died. She was sorry to hear that my friend had died. She didn't want to talk about it. She wanted to keep things light, change the subject, know what else was new. What else could possibly be new? Vincent had just died, for G.o.d's sake ."

Vera slips her arm out from my elbow and takes my hand gently in hers. "I'm sorry, Lydia," she says softly.

"What are you sorry for, Vera?" I ask, my voice rising sharply. "Why is everyone always apologizing for my mother?"

Vera doesn't respond and we sit side by side in silence for a few minutes until the quiet is broken by a man yelling at the top of his lungs, "Stella! Stella !" Out of nowhere, a floppy-eared beagle I presume is Stella bounds across the gra.s.s toward us, her tail wagging furiously and a noisy jangle of metal tags dangling from the red collar around her neck.

"Come over here, Stella, you silly puppy." Happy for the distraction, I lean forward to grab hold of her collar with one hand while letting her lick the fingers of the other. Stella's owner approaches us to reclaim his dog, and thanks me as he clips on her leash and leads her away. As Vera and I watch them go, the sun ducks behind a cloud, casting us in a shadow that makes me s.h.i.+ver.

"First I'm hot, then I'm cold..." I try to lighten the mood between us. "Is this what menopause is going to be like?"

"It was so long ago, I hardly remember." Vera waves her hand through the air, feigning nonchalance. "Have you had your first hot flash yet?"

"I'm not sure," I say. "My body's gone kind of haywire and I'm a lot warmer in general than I used to be. Especially my feet."

"That's only the beginning, Lydia. When you have your first hot flash, believe me, you'll know." Vera unb.u.t.tons her suede jacket and shrugs it off. "Are you still chilly? Here." She drapes it over my shoulders "No, that's okay." I wiggle out of her jacket and hand it back.

"Lydia, take it. For G.o.d's sake, I'm trying to mother you." Vera does not hide the frustration in her voice as she arranges her jacket across my back once more. "You know," she says thoughtfully. "That could be part of the problem."

"What do you mean?"

"You say you want your mother to know you, but how can she if you don't let her? Yes, she failed you when Vincent died, but have you let her in since then?"

"Vera, how can I? I took a risk and look where it got me."

"Lydia, I understand how much she hurt you, but that was twelve years ago. Everyone deserves a second chance."

"Second chance? Ha. Try eight-hundred-and-forty-seventh chance. And that's being conservative." I wait but Vera does not laugh or even chuckle. "Vera, I know it isn't all my mother's fault and that every relations.h.i.+p is a two-way street. I've learned at least that much for all the years I've spent in therapy." Vera still does not crack a smile. "But how can I fix things between us if she won't talk about anything besides the weather? It's always been like this. I've been trying to talk to her for years. For decades ."

"Decades? Hmm." Vera lapses into silence and I watch her out of the corner of my eye, well aware that she is pondering what I've just told her in order to put together her a.s.sessment of it. And a minute later, she proves me right. "Lydia, I'm not going to deny the pain your mother has caused you over the years," Vera begins. "And in a perfect world she would take the first step. She would call you, she would apologize to you, she would express a desire to make things right. But you and I both know that's not going to happen."

"I'll say."

"Lydia." Vera speaks my name in her no-nonsense voice, which is even more intimidating than my mother's. "All that happened a long time ago. You haven't had a real conversation with your mother in decades, as you say. So the question is, why hasn't anything changed?"

I watch two dried-up leaves whirling in the wind at my feet for a minute before I answer. "I don't know, Vera. I really don't," I tell her. "When I was younger, I tried to have a better relations.h.i.+p with my mother, but I just couldn't get through to her. Even as a kid I knew that things weren't right between us and once I asked her to come to counseling with me but of course she wouldn't. So as I got older, I just stopped trying. It hurt too much, and in a lot of ways it was easier to learn how to take care of myself. It's like somewhere along the line, my mother and I made this unspoken agreement to never dive below the surface and talk about anything that mattered. You know. Don't ask, don't tell."

"In other words, you gave up on each other."

I think this over. "I suppose so."

"How sad," Vera says and if I didn't know her better, I'd think she was being sarcastic. "Lydia, I'm going to be tough with you here."

I smile ruefully. "I wouldn't expect anything less."

"Good. So listen to me. It's time for you to grow up. You have to be the adult here. I mean it. You're not a child or a teenager anymore. You are an adult and you have to start relating to your mother like one."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you have to step outside yourself and develop some compa.s.sion for your mother. She's a woman, Lydia, with her own history and hurts and issues. She had a childhood which I doubt was easy, she married young, and if she has even half the brainpower of her daughter, I'm sure she was bored out of her mind being a 1950s housewife. And then her twin sister died, which is a tremendous loss..." Vera pauses to let this new take on my mother sink in. "She's a whole person, not just the mother of Lydia Pinkowitz, you know."

"Of course I know that, Vera."

"You know it up here, Lydia," Vera taps my forehead lightly. "But do you know it in here?" She pokes my chest right over my heart. "Anyway, the point is, you have to decide whether or not you want to have a relations.h.i.+p with the woman who happens to be your mother. And if you do, you have to take some risks. And if you don't, you have to let go. Which clearly you are not capable of doing. Don't give me that look. I'm not criticizing you." Vera, who can often read my mind, is quick to clarify. "I'm complimenting you. I think it's a good thing that you can't give up on your mother. But that being the case, you have to try to change things. I know it would be taking a big risk, but Lydia, look at all you're risking by not taking that risk." Vera's baby blues bore into me. "And believe it or not, Lydia, I truly think your mother will be grateful. She's a mother; she wants to mother you. And you're not letting her. And I'll tell you something else." The left side of Vera's cheek twitches like it always does when she comes up with a particularly brilliant idea. "You think of yourself as a motherless child. But did it ever occur to you that the woman who gave birth to you might very well think of herself as a childless mother?"

"Isn't it time to head back for the afternoon session?" I jump up so quickly, Vera's jacket slides to the ground. "There's a talk on Elizabeth Cady Stanton that a former student of mine is giving and I don't want to miss what she-"

"Wait a minute." Vera bends for her jacket and tugs my arm to make me sit back down. "Lydia. I love you like a daughter-"

"I know you do."

"-and I'm only talking to you like this because I don't want you to make the same mistake that I made."

I turn to give Vera my full attention, knowing from her tone that what she's about to say is very important.

"I never told you what happened when my mother died," Vera says, looking off into the distance. "A few months before she pa.s.sed away, she said something extremely nasty to me. I don't even remember what it was now; it could have been any number of things. It was probably something about Serena. I know my mother blames me and my lousy parenting skills for the fact that her oldest granddaughter had a silver ring in her eyebrow and a tattoo of a snake curling around her forearm." Vera pauses, still staring at the distant hills surrounding campus, and I let my eyes follow her gaze. Vera and I have taken many road trips together and sometimes our most intimate conversations have taken place as we sat in her car side by side, staring straight ahead just like this.

"Maybe my mother had a little too much to drink that night," Vera continues, "and told me yet again how she wished she had a normal-read: married daughter. A daughter who wasn't crazy enough to be a single parent by choice. ' That you call a choice?'" Vera asks, infusing her voice with the old-country Yiddish accent of her mother. "Or maybe she was just being her usual thoughtless, judgmental self and was criticizing what I was saying, what I was wearing, what I was doing, or the newest way I was messing up my life." Vera shakes her head as if to banish her unpleasant memories. "The point is, I stopped speaking to her. And she died before we had a chance to reconnect."

"Oh, Vera." I reach for her hand. "You never told me that."

"It's not something I like to think about, much less talk about," she says, still gazing across campus. "Believe me, never in a million years did I ever dream that my last words to my own mother would be 'Mom, I've had just about enough of you.'"

"Ooh." I wince as though someone accidentally-on-purpose stepped on my heart.

"I know." Vera nods and turns to look at me. "I would just hate for the same thing to happen to you, Lydia. It's a terrible feeling. Plus as a therapist, let me tell you it's a lot easier to do the work while your parents are still alive." Vera lets out a deep breath, squeezes my hand, and stands. Without another word we make our way back to the conference slowly, walking side by side like two draft horses. .h.i.tched to an old creaky wagon, dragging an impossibly heavy load.

PAVLOV'S DOG HAS nothing over our telephone. Talk about a conditioned response: the minute Allie or I even think about having s.e.x, the d.a.m.n thing knows and starts to ring. And tonight with the street noises outside our bedroom window muted by a thick covering of January snow, it sounds even louder than usual, almost like a scream.

Allie detaches her lips from one of her favorite parts of my body with a groan. "Just ignore it," I whisper, pretending I don't have one ear c.o.c.ked toward the answering machine.

"Okay." Allie happily goes back to what she was doing, but at the sound of my father's voice-so familiar and yet so strange and unexpected-we both sit up and strain to listen.

I am out of bed in a heartbeat, my bare feet padding across the cold wooden bedroom floor. Stark naked, I hurry through the living room and into the kitchen, but before I can s.n.a.t.c.h up the phone, I trip over Mishmosh, who appears out of nowhere and inserts himself between my feet mewling for a snack.

"Mis.h.!.+" I scold him as I catch myself on the kitchen counter and hear the last few words my father utters before he hangs up.

Allie is two steps behind me, carrying our nerdy, matching terrycloth slippers and robes. "What did he want?" she asks, making sure I am covered and warm before dressing herself.

"I don't know." I press the rewind b.u.t.ton as Allie picks up Mishmosh. The three of us huddle in the dark kitchen, listening.

"Lydia, it's uh...it's Dad." My father's voice sounds tired as he falters. "I'm calling to tell you that your mother is fine."

"What?" Allie asks, confused. "Why would he call to tell you that your mother is fine?"

"Hush." I quiet Allie and rewind the tape. "I'm trying to listen."

"...to tell you that your mother is fine," my father says again. "The doctors here say everything is fine and she's going to be fine, so there's nothing to worry about. I'll call you tomorrow." Then there is a pause. "Okay," my father says quietly, more to himself than to me. And then he hangs up.

"Oh my G.o.d." I stare at the answering machine as if it can live up to its name and answer the questions spinning around my head. What's happened to my mother? Where is she? What doctors? What's wrong with her? Allie lowers Mishmosh to the floor with a gentle thud and tries to lead me toward a chair but I insist on staying where I am and listening to the message again.

"Do you want a gla.s.s of water?" Allie asks. "How about a cup of tea?"

"No thanks." I switch on the light and play back the message one more time, writing it down on the back of the envelope that contains our electric bill. "How can my mother be fine at the same time that she's going to be fine?" I ask aloud. "If everything is fine, there's no need to use the future tense, as in 'she's going to be fine.'" I underline the offending phrase as if I'm correcting a poorly written essay handed in by a Women's Studies 101 student. "And if there's nothing to worry about," I continue editing, "then there's no need to say there's nothing to worry about. So obviously, there really is something to worry about."

"Why don't you just call him back?" Allie, ever the practical one suggests. She hands me the phone and I dial my parents' number but n.o.body answers.

"Where would they be on a Sunday night at..." I Iook at the digital clock on the microwave oven. "...thirteen minutes after eleven?" Because I was born on a Friday the thirteenth, I have always considered thirteen my lucky number, so I take this as a positive sign: just as my father said, my mother is and/or is going to be fine.

"Your father said, 'the doctors here,'" Allie reads the note over my shoulder. "Do you think they're at a hospital?"

"This is ridiculous," I say, my voice rising. "Why didn't he leave his phone number? Who leaves a message like this? I mean, what does he think, I can just roll over now and go back to sleep? My family is so d.a.m.n dysfunctional." My voice sounds shrill even to my own ears, but righteous anger is the only way to dissolve the hard knot of fear that's starting to form in my stomach.

"Lydia, let's not panic yet." Allie sits down and pulls her chair close to mine. "Try dialing star-sixty-nine and see if you can find out where he was calling from."

I do as I am told and my father's cell phone number comes up. Allie looks pleased: problem solved. Except my father doesn't answer when I dial the number. I leave a message for him to call me immediately.

"So all we have to do is wait," Allie says, folding her arms and leaning back, in it for the long haul.

"Not quite." I place the cordless phone on the kitchen table softly as though I don't want to wake up anyone who might have the good sense to be asleep at this hour. "My father's technical skills leave a lot to be desired. I'm sure he has no idea how to get into the voice mail on his cell phone."

"Why don't you call Jack?" Allie suggests. "He might know something."

"Jack." Just saying his name makes me want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. For a week. But Allie's right; maybe he does know something. "Can you get my address book?" I ask Allie.

"Where is it?"

"In my pocketbook. On the couch in my study." I don't have the strength to move.

Allie leaves the kitchen and returns holding my purse at arm's length. "No way I'm going in there," she says, dangling my bag out in front of her. "That thing bites."

I smile to show Allie that I appreciate her attempt to make me laugh, even at a time like this. Allie, a true butch from her steel-toed boots to the top of her buzz cut, has never carried a pocketbook and finds them a bit intimidating. "That thing is like a black hole," she once said to me, pointing. "It sucks up everything in its path. I'm afraid if I ever went in there, I'd never get out."

Taking my bag from Allie, I reach in, find my address book, and flip it open to the page that has Jack's information on it. I also fish out my cell phone and dial his Westchester number first, then his Manhattan number, and finally his number in the Hamptons. To my great surprise, all three of them have been disconnected.

"That's bizarre," Allie says. "Are you sure you have the right numbers? Maybe you're dialing wrong because you're upset."

"Do you want to try?" I ask, not masking my annoyance. I hand her the phone and not surprisingly she comes up with the same results: The number you have reached, 212-555-7347, has been disconnected. No further information is available. The number you have reached...

"What do you think happened?" Allie puts down the phone, admitting defeat.

"Will you feed him?" I nod my chin at Mishmosh, who has been sitting in front of his bowl patiently waiting for a handout ever since his two human can openers leapt out of bed. As Allie tends to him, I think out loud. "These are pretty old numbers. When was the last time I called Crystal or Jack?" Truthfully, I can't remember ever speaking to either one of them on the phone. "I bet I know," I say to Allie's back as she stands at the sink, rinsing off the cat food fork. "Jack probably doesn't even have a land line anymore. You know how he likes to be on the cutting edge of things. He probably went totally cellular years ago." I scowl at my cousin's inconvenient hipness. "Now what?"

"Now we have milk and cookies," Allie says, standing up and moving toward the cabinet over the stove.

Has Allie gone mad? I watch her, incredulous. Who can eat at a time like this? As Allie sets a box of Oreos, a carton of milk, and two gla.s.ses down on the table, I wonder what she's up to. Is Allie actually hungry? Having a sugar craving? Or such a creature of habit that she has to indulge in our usual post-coital snack even though she's been cheated out of an o.r.g.a.s.m or two?

"Here." Allie dips an Oreo into a gla.s.s of milk until it is nice and soggy, just the way I like it. "C'mon, eat something."

"No thanks," I say. "I'm not hungry."

"Have it anyway." Allie extends the cookie toward me. "You need a little nosh ." At the sound of the Yiddish word uttered so lovingly, my heart cracks open and I finally understand. Allie isn't doing this for herself. She's doing this for me. Allie can't make it-whatever it is-go away, but she can take care of me, nurture me, in this simple way, the way that she knows best.

I accept Allie's offering, a little smile playing across my lips.

"What?" Allie asks, smiling too, and dunking a cookie for herself.

"Alicia Maria Taraza." I take a bite of softened chocolate wafer. "Are you trying to mother me?"

" Mother you?" Allie, who often says she has all the maternal instincts of a pina colada, is insulted to the core. "Lydia Marilyn Pinkowitz, I am not trying to mother you," she says in a huff before gentling her voice. "Silly girl, I'm trying to baby you."

"Oh," I say softly. And then I crawl onto her lap and let her.