It's the fall of 1967. We live in a split-level. It's dark in the house, Katie an infant asleep down the hall. Dad's gone on business, which was pretty much the norm then. Mom's put on something on the record player that didn't seem all that sad to my three-year-old ears, maybe the Seekers or Joan Baez. But there she sat in the family room alone, weeping, me at the top of the stairs trying to figure out why Mom was sad. Was it something I did?
Mom's given up on wearing the wig, and the baldness brought on by a lifetime of auto-immune diseases has left her scalp with a couple patches of salt and pepper hair, and not much else. "I'm an invalid," she announces with a resigned sigh as I sit down beside her after a day in the air getting back to Texas, back to the situs of so much of our origin story.
It is Thanksgiving, 1978. We live in a nice neighborhood in Richardson, Texas. Roger Staubach is our neighbor. Dad's peregrinations have come back to bite him, a woman has called the house to complain to Mom that he said he'd leave by now, and as a result Mom has banished him to wherever. Mom complains her back has failed her, confines herself to bed long before the Lions continue their tradition of losing on that Thursday. I don't want Thanksgiving to go away, and at fourteen cook a meal fit for this family. Katie, only eleven then, helps me bring it into the master bedroom where we all feast on the counterpane because Mom can't get out of bed.
"Mary's got this situation with her diarrhea," Bobby announces as I wince beside him. The assisted living intake nurse nods as if this matters, as Bobby then embarks on a lengthy recitation about the color of Mom's stools, their regularity, and how the miracle of potassium has been so potent in its treatment of her alimentary system that he may start dosing himself. I roll my eyes and ask the nurse what we need to tell him to keep this interview on track.
Dad looks a little out of place up there in the concrete bleachers of Plano High School, in a very expensive suit not suited for a blustery November day. I had mentioned to him in passing on one of my first post-divorce visits to his place, which used to be my place, that my football team lacked styrofoam cups for Gatorade on the sidelines during games. A few days later a wall of boxes arrived at the school, piled high with Howard Johnson styrofoam cups that would have filled our need into this century. That was 1979. Then he came to the games and sat up there in the stands by himself, still dressed to conquer the world but plopped down on that cement seat to watch his boy ride the bench.
I sit down on the couch across from Dad, television blaring so we can't really talk. He's in the same wingback chair he's occupied for the last couple years, expensive suit surrendered for sweat pants and a sweatshirt that doesn't quite cover his belly as he slumps in his seat. I talk up the success of the MSU Bulldogs and his favorite coach, Mike Leach. They have come back to thump Auburn. I figure Dad would be giddy, but he seems flat.
Dad tries to bait me finally, complaining that Joe Biden quietly started trying to destroy America fifty years ago, and reminding me that he's a real "conservative".
"Dad, that's just ridiculous," I reply. About that time Johnnie appears like an angel, the same woman who was the source of the 1978 kerfuffle, to whisk him to the bathroom. He is like a sack of potatoes as I lift him into his wheelchair.
"This one's strong," he announces, gesturing over his shoulder. "You been going to the gym?"
I am a hungry college freshman, working my way through school at USC. Mom's in her doctoral program with Dr. Stallings as her faculty advisor. Every week she drives to meet with him at the SC campus, driving down from the Antelope Valley. After her meeting I cross the street to have supper with her at the Sizzler on Figueroa Street across from campus, where she shovels me popcorn shrimp and picks my brain about how things are going and where I see my life headed.
The rooms at the two assisted living places are pretty nice, although the second one smelled a little like piss and the retirees seemed a little downscale for my preferences. Everyone who shows us around is sunny and enthusiastic about having "Mary" join their little family.
But Mom is "Mikie", not "Mary", and always has been. “Mary” is her birth name but no one has called her that in years, maybe ever. Bobby keeps calling her "Mary" when he talks to them. I'm confused.
I have graduated from high school, and each parent apparently has planned a graduation celebration. I do not know this. After the ceremony Dad and Johnnie take me to supper while Mom sits in an empty house waiting for the guest of honor to arrive, for naught. It bothers me to this day, thirty-nine years after the fact.
Dad is in shorts now, thin legs that haven't walked in years still strangely tan. When Johnnie wheeled him to the restroom he was wearing sweats, but reemerged in new bottoms. I don't ask. Johnnie and Katie are in the kitchen now smoking and drinking Miller Lite, me still sitting across from Dad wishing the television was a little less loud so we could talk while that's still a possibility. Georgia is routing Tennessee. I shout something across the way about how depth of bench can affect the flow of these football games, a topic so irrelevant to the moment as to be ridiculous. Dad stairs straight ahead at the screen.
Dad and I are driving down the Santa Monica Freeway. It's the end of 1982, I'm a college freshman, and having repented my decision to turn down an appointment to the Air Force Academy I now tell Dad I'm joining Air Force ROTC, and may want to fly jets.
"Why in the hell would you do that?" he asks, as we exit the freeway at Vermont Avenue. "I could take any n****r off the street and make him an Air Force Officer." He gestures toward the cluster of black folks at the bottom of the off ramp.
Dad's wearing little tan socks now. I doubt he still has shoes. What would be the point? Johnnie brings him a nice piece of brisket with potatoes and green beans, thick with bacon grease. He digs in, a very small person in a very small room watching a very loud television. Ole Miss is winning. He seems satisfied with life.
I arrive at Mom's new house befuddled. It is 1985. Where in the hell is Mojave? Why are we here? I'm a senior in college now, with orders to Columbus AFB, Mississippi as soon as I graduate. Mom's completed her doctorate, with no alimony and two kids and lots of folks who believed in her, maybe the greatest gift of all. Now she's in her first job as a high school principal, somewhere between Palmdale and Boron in the expanse of desert where the owners of commercial airliners park their unused airframes to sit in the dessicated, sandy emptiness to await some future air travel boom. She's made it. She's a principal.
And before too long she had a bigger school then was a superintendent and author and college professor on the topic of educational leadership. All the while, her immune system was quietly betraying her, the immune system meant to protect her from outside threats merrily eating her from the inside.
"I just want to die," she tells me yesterday. She's in her recliner, has taken the time to drop the wig on her head. It sits tilted awkwardly on her skull, bangs slanted across a wrinkleless alabaster white forehead. I see my grandfather in her eyes, which are still very much alive and glumly evaluating her predicament. Bobby describes her last bowel movement as she stares straight ahead, pretending not to hear.
Whatever I thought I was accomplishing by coming here has not come to pass, an exercise in hubris on my part that was bound to fail. I can't fix this.
I just want my Mom and Dad back. But that's the one thing no one can make happen. Two sacks of their former selves look back at me from generous chairs, lost and surprised at where we find ourselves. A warning.
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