A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That Page 23

  “Bye-bye,” she told Joanne. The phone fell from her hand onto her pillow, and even that I had to take care of.

  I wanted to bring my mother home, and even though I’d changed things around, I wanted her to feel at home, safe and comfortable, but she was restless in her own bed, stirring in the night, saying in a sleepy voice, Where am I?

  “You’re home,” I said, “with me.”

  “Who?” she said.

  “Me,” I repeated.

  “Oh,” she said.

  When she had to pee, I helped her into the bathroom. The pee was pungent, dark brown and strong, not like any pee I recognized. It was late, the middle of the night. I tried to smile at my sleepy mother, helping her up. I tried not to look at the pee when I flushed, but caught a glimpse despite myself. I thought pee like that should be called something else, not urine, not waste. Something foul as that should have had its own name.

  In the morning I helped her into the car. She insisted on the backseat so she could rest. I drove her car that was becoming mine. She was sleeping on her side, curled up, snoring and mumbling, incoherent back there, and every now and then I turned to look at her, staring at her one cheek and closed eye. She wouldn’t like me driving like that. She wouldn’t want me to stare and get upset. She wouldn’t want me to swerve and weep going eighty miles an hour.

  I removed my acrylic nails one by one with my teeth. I spit the acrylic into my palm, then let the bits fall into the ashtray. I left little spots of red polish that I’d get to later. I decided to let my own nails grow—never again would I walk into that beauty shop where the two of us went together, where I’d make her pull up a chair and sit next to me.

  “I’m right here,” she’d say from the couch, a magazine open in her lap.

  “Closer” I’d insist.

  “How close can I get?”

  “A lot closer than where you are now. Get a chair,” I’d say. “Please,” I’d tell her.

  In a traffic jam on a side street I turned and looked at my sleeping mother again. Her wig was lopsided. She’d stopped snoring and was breathing softly. I stared at the empty passenger seat. I took the 710 North to the 405 North and then I got off at Durango, headed south, and drove my mother home.

  That night at Safeway in the fruit and vegetable aisle, I saw Daniel. He was wearing a ridiculous outfit—tight black pants and a red and white striped shirt. It was the silly beret folded and hanging from his back pocket I saw first. “Daniel,” I said.

  “You look terrible, Rachel,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “She’s going, isn’t she?” he said softly.

  “No, no,” I lied.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “I know it doesn’t seem like you’ll survive, but you will.”

  “What are you wearing?” I said, trying to change the subject. “What’s with the silly getup?”

  “I’m a gondolier” he said.

  “You do those canals, right? It’s beautiful out there.”

  “What’s happening with your mom? Where is she now?” he wanted to know.

  “She’s home,” I lied again.

  “Are you going to buy that lettuce?”

  I looked down at my hand and the head of red leaves I was gripping. They shot out of my palm like a bouquet of flowers. “I guess so,” I said.

  “Let me help you,” he said, pulling a plastic bag from the roller above my head, leaning over and smelling good, like the water he worked on. Just then the store’s timer went off, the silly recorded thunder, and the miniature lights blinking—a warning. Mist hit the bins of lettuce and onions, the peppers and tomatoes. Mist hit my cheek. “I’ve got to go. I’m in a hurry,” I said, pulling the bag from Daniel’s hand.

  “I want to help you,” he said again.

  “She’s waiting for me,” I lied for the third time. I looked at his face. There was mist on his cheek, too. “Okay,” I said, handing the bag back to him. “Will you pick out some tomatoes. My mother likes tomatoes. I’ll make her a salad when I get home,” I told him.

  A graduate student had taken over my classes, so I was with my mom throughout the days. Gilbert was with her most nights. When I visited, I brought Chinese soup and begged her to eat. Instead, she’d lift the sheets and invite me in. The staff looked at me funny, nurses, the doctor, the ones who bathed her, the ones that brought her lunch, something smelly and unrecognizable, a chicken breast or slice of ham hidden under a plastic dome. What’s a grown woman doing in bed with her mother? they wanted to know.

  And my body was fetal, parallel with her body like in the beginning. I was holding her from behind, my arms around what was left. I was staring at the back of her head, the few stubborn hairs, then I was looking at her wallet and keys on the hospital nightstand—the keys, I couldn’t help thinking, a reminder of the doors she wouldn’t open.

  Michael Brown wants me to buy this redbrick house on Seaside Drive. He thinks I can afford it. I’ve led him to believe such nonsense, talking to him on the phone about assets that don’t exist. I follow him up the porch steps. I’m standing on the porch next to Michael Brown, who is dark and handsome, good jaw, wide chest. Moments ago, he helped me out of the car and shook my hand hello. I thought he held my hand for longer than was necessary. I blushed, felt the blood in my face. Now he’s trying key after key, unable to find the one that fits. He sticks a key in the hole, twisting, twisting, unable to get it out finally. “Fuck,” he says. Then, turning to me, “Oops. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “I can’t believe I said that. How unprofessional. I’m really sorry,” he says again, pulling on the key, then giving up, hands at his sides.

  “Let me try.” I step closer to the door. I close my fingers around the key. I’m gentle. It slides out smooth and easy. I smile at Michael Brown, putting the key in his open palm.

  He puts the key in his pants pocket. “Sorry about cussing. I shouldn’t use words like that. It’s just—”

  “I like the word fuck,” I interrupt. “I use the word myself, more than I should.”

  “Still, I’m sorry,” he repeats.

  “I’ve used it in front of my classes and my mother. Lately, I’ve even tried it out on my dad. It’s part of my effort to get to know him.”

  “Still,” he says.

  “I’m an English teacher, take it from me. The word means what it means, but it also means whatever you need it to mean.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Right now, for you, it means I can’t find the right key or This key is stuck, and depending on your tone it might even mean, I’ve lost the key. We’re locked out.”

  “You’re right,” he says. Michael Brown smiles at me. His teeth are big and white, his lips full.

  “Now what?” I say.

  “Yes!” he says suddenly, remembering something, making a discovery. “That’s right, I put it in here.” He pulls the key out of his shirt pocket and opens the front door.

  It’s the first of three houses he wants to show me today. I’m following him up the stairs to the master bedroom. It is where he wants to begin, what he wants me to see first. He’s been talking about this master bedroom all week on the phone, the sunken bathtub, the skylight, the huge window and the palm fronds I’d wake up to if I lived here. He’s a big man, this real estate agent, this Michael Brown, over six feet tall, with a broad back. His head is little, though, unusually so, and walking up the stairs behind him I’m amazed that a little head like that rests on such a thick neck, such shoulders, that a little head like that houses such big teeth. I imagine saying, Hey, Mr. Real Estate Man, how about a little head? And then before he says yes or no or you’re crazy, I imagine stopping him, saying, Oh, I’m sorry, I see you’ve already got one. This makes me laugh out loud behind him on the stairs.

  “What,” he says, turning, “do I have something on my pants? Did I sit in something?” he wants to know, and he is wiping himself off, and I am sa
ying no, no, no, no, no, and I am laughing and I can’t stop and I know that my laughter is strange, unusual, not like any laughing I’ve done before. I sit down on the stairs. Michael Brown is at the top, as many stairs away from me as he can possibly get. “Don’t you want to see the master bedroom?” he says.

  I shake my head no.

  “Aren’t you interested in taking a look?”

  “My mother is dead,” I say.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “but—”

  “Gilbert was there, my friend Angela.”

  Michael Brown is nodding, his eyes darting side to side as though he’d rather be anywhere but where he is and with anyone but me.

  “Claire had stepped out, though,” I continue.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again.

  “I was in bed with her. I had my arms around her body and—”

  “Look,” he interrupts, “I can see you’re really upset, but I’m not the best guy to talk to. I don’t know you,” he says.

  “That’s true,” I say. “You’re right about that,” I tell him.

  “Do you want to see the house at a later date? Maybe Monday?” he says.

  “Your head is really little,” I blurt out.

  And Michael Brown reaches up to touch his little head, like that action alone might make it grow.

  “It looks good” I lie.

  “You like it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?” he says.

  “No.”

  “You don’t look okay, that’s why I asked. I mean, it’s none of my business, and like I said, I don’t know you.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “You should talk to someone who knows you,” Michael Brown says.

  “I’m going to get to know my student,” I say, and as the words leave my lips, I realize how true they are. “Daniel is twenty-two—twenty-three, tops. Do you think that’s a bad thing to do?”

  “I think we should look at the house, that’s what I think,” Michael Brown says.

  “I should wait until the quarter is over, until grades are in, shouldn’t I?”

  “You want to see the bedroom or not, lady?”

  “I could spend some time with him now, though, couldn’t I? He wants coffee, he wants lunches, he wants to go to readings in Los Angeles.”

  “Look,” he says, shaking his head.

  “I’ll let Daniel know me—that won’t kill anyone, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Be serious. No one will drop dead because I enter into a friendship with Daniel,” I say, believing it.

  Michael Brown looks down at his shoes.

  “Maybe I won’t even wait.”

  “Do what you want,” he says weakly.

  “I’ll go to coffee. I’ll go to lunch. I’ll tell Daniel everything.” I stand up on the stairs and face him.

  “Look, do you want to see the house or not?” He’s shaking that little head of his, muttering something about other buyers and the cost of time.

  “I’ve seen enough,” I say, turning around, walking away, one step and then another, step by step away from Michael Brown. I go out the front door, take a deep breath, get in my car, and drive myself home.