On Wednesday I will be seventy-seven. October 18: me, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Martina Navratilova. I’m glad the guy in the hood hasn’t yet invited me for a game of chess.
My mother has been dead for fifteen years. For a while, after she died, when I looked in the mirror, I saw her. She’s on my mind today, or she’s on the mind of the writer. All you need to make her alive on the page is quote what she said or invent it.
Mostly when I write about my life, I’m writing about a lab rat, who is me, in the voice of an observer in a white coat. Why did that animal bang its nose against the electrified gate in the maze? I’m using myself to write about things that happen to humans in general.
This post really is about my mother and me, except for all the things I changed. It’s a piece assembled from a story I published long ago that’s uninteresting except for these exchanges. Also, I took out all the pain. It’s still there. These are scenes between a mother and a daughter who have in common an impulse to talk and maybe not a lot of other things—or maybe all sorts of things they can’t see.
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Toby and Laurie on Broadway
My mother had an expression in Yiddish: No one can see their own hump. We were in a café. It was 1993, and I was forty-seven. My father had been dead for twelve years and Gardner, my partner, had been dead for three years. Toby said, “I regret you didn't marry and have a family. If you had married Bruce at twenty-five instead of nineteen, you would have stayed with him.”
I said, “I'm glad I didn't have children.” She said, “But you wanted to for a while.” I said, “For a while I did, but now I don't.” She stared off and said, “I never wanted children, not really, not if anyone had asked me, which they didn't, and I wouldn't have known what to say if they had, because who knew what I wanted?” She sipped her coffee and said, “I wanted to be a WAC.” I said, "Why didn't you enlist?” I knew what she’d say because I’d heard the story many times before. She said, “Get out of here. Nobody enlisted. Nobody. My mother would have killed me.”
******
A few years later, my mother met a journalist on a bus and told the woman I was her daughter. The journalist said, "You’re Laurie Stone's mother?” My mother said, “I thought she was saying I wasn't smart enough to be your mother.” I said, “My guess is, she was surprised by your age. She probably assumed I was younger.” Toby said, “She did ask how old you were.” I said, “What did you say?” Toby said, “Thirty. I told her you were thirty. What's it her business? With me, you're safe. You're safe with me.”
******
In a profile of Roman Polanski, he described his experiences during World War II. As a Jew in Poland, he was separated from his parents between the ages of eleven and thirteen and had to fend for himself. When he was reunited with his father, the two couldn’t get along, so his father installed him in his own apartment, a choice that scandalized the family but Polanski claimed to have appreciated, saying, “It was a relief. After you're twelve, thirteen, it's too late to have parents. You don't need them anymore.” Maybe so, but they never leave.
******
When Audrey Hepburn died, my mother called me and said, “I'm dying of colon cancer.” I said, “Why do you think that?” She said, “There was a red blob in my stool.” I said, “What did you eat yesterday?” She said, “A red pepper.” I said, “That was the blob. Pepper skins aren't digestible.” She said, “How do you know? I eat red peppers all the time and never see blobs.” I said, “Do you look at your shit every day?” She said, “No.” I said, “Call God's Love.” (God’s Love We Deliver was feeding homebound people with AIDS, and I volunteered there, making meals.) She said, ”Why should I do volunteer work? I've sacrificed enough.” I said, “I'm not thinking of what you can do for them but what they can do for you. You need a place to go.” She said, “What makes you say that?” I said, “You’re inventing illnesses.” She said, “Don't think I don't appreciate you.”
******
Another day, we were talking in a café. My mother said, “When I was a little girl, a woman came up to my mother and said to her about me, 'She's so beautiful.' My mother shot back at the woman, ‘She stole my beauty’. I felt so guilty. My sister was the rebellious one. I wanted to make things easier for my mother. She worked hard, under such difficult conditions. I had a job in a department store. I would get paid and run home with the money. I would scrub the kitchen floor, because I couldn't stand the dirt. She wanted me to spend my wedding night with her. I said, ‘Murray is taking me to a hotel. That's what married people do’. My father worked long hours in a factory and came home exhausted. He would pat my head, to show he loved me. He couldn't say ‘boo’, much less ask for a raise. He had brains, though. He could read and write English very well. He came from a much better family than my mother. He was headed for a decent life, but my mother snagged him. That's the story my sister tells. My mother had a lot of men, got herself pregnant, and figured she could hook this schnook.”
I said, “Do you believe that?” My mother shrugged and said, “My sister hated my mother. She'd make up anything to get back at her. She'd say, ‘Toby, don't you know what a witch she is’? I'd say, ‘Etta, don't talk that way’.”
I had no memories of my mother and grandmother arguing. I remembered them speaking Yiddish at machine gun speed, then laughing and holding each other. My grandmother would cook for days before our visits, and she would load my mother down with shopping bags of food to take home. I knew she’d lived in Poland, near the Russian border, but not why she'd come to the States. My mother said, “She was sent off by her mother, who kept her older daughter at home. They were both killed during the war. My mother had all those kids, plus the abortions, and two babies died before I was born. I wasn't supposed to live either, but she willed me to survive. That's how she talked. She saved Ellen, too.”
I said, “What do you mean?” Toby said, “When Ellen was born, she wouldn't eat, or she'd eat a little and throw up. The doctor said it was from my fear. I was anxious that I couldn't do anything right, and Ellen could feel the tension in my body. She was so skinny, like a frog, and Daddy was traveling, so I went to stay with my mother. When my mother held Ellen, she ate.”
******
Toby and I were on Broadway. She was seventy-eight, a year older than I am now. She was recalling a trip she took with my father to Pakistan and said, “He couldn't get over a haircut he got there for twenty-five cents. Where were we? You see, I can't remember anything. I have that disease. What the hell is it called?” I said, “Alzheimer's.” She said, “That's what I have.” I said, “Not yet.” She said, “How do you know?” I said, “You're not stupid enough.” She said, “By then I'll be too dumb to understand what I have.”
We ducked into Shakespeare & Company and found an Atlas. Toby cried out, “Karachi. That's where it was.” Back on Broadway, she took my arm. We passed Zabar's. She said, “Goddamn that place. I got lured in the other day and bought chocolates, and now I'm afraid to eat them. Last time my cheek blew up. Remember? I'll give them to you.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “But will you eat them?” I said, “I'll eat a few, and give some to Natalie. She loves chocolate.” Toby said, “Nah uh. You can't have them. You give everything away.” I said, “You mean the candy has to go through my body, so you can feel you’ve eaten it vicariously?” She said, “Exactly.”
She slipped a pendant out from under her scarf, a chunk of turquoise in filigreed silver. She said, “Do you like it?” I said, “It looks like a mezuzah.” She said, “You have a point. I will nail it over the door.” She said, “You look good, knock wood. I don't compliment you as often as you would like, but to me that's asking for trouble. I can see you as a little girl like it was yesterday. You were wearing this coat Daddy made. Everyone wanted it, because it looked so good on you. It changed his business. He became very popular after that. You wore the coat to a party and at night I found little frankfurters in the pockets. I said, “I still take food from parties.” She said, “Why would you do such a thing? It makes you look like a beggar.” I said, “I often feel like a beggar.” She said, “Why?” I said, “I don’t need to know. All I need to do is tell the truth.”
Sometime in my thirties, I began sitting near children on busses and staring at the down on their cheeks. I would lean in to smell them. I admired their ability to walk and talk. I would picture myself arriving home to a little girl. At the sound of my voice, she would jump up like my dog. We’d be on the streets, holding hands. When I was little, after Ellen would leave for school and my father would go to work, I’d watch my mother get dressed from her bed. Outside, we’d squeeze hands in little pulse beats that meant I love you. She was the prettiest mother in the chicest clothes.
******
My mother called and said, “Dr. Postley is concerned about the congestion in my lungs.” I said, “Does he know you smoke?” She said, “Are you crazy? Do you think I would tell him such a thing?” I said, “How many cigarettes a day?” She said, “Seven.” I said, “If you quit, your lungs will clear up.” She said, “The last time I quit, my body blew up.” I said, “You can control what you eat.” She said, “It's not the eating. It's the metabolism. At my age, you blow up if you stop smoking. It's a fact.” I said, “So you'll blow up. At least you won't die.”
She said Ellen's daughter was planning to start a family right away. “Ellen is going to quit her job and move to Boston. She doesn't want to miss a minute with her grandchildren. She said to me, 'Ma, You're coming with me, even if I have to drug you. I'm not leaving you alone’.” I said to Toby, “What would you do in Boston? You know how much you love New York.” She said, “Of course I love New York, but you don't understand what it is to be alone. At least Ellen cares if I live or die. If I get sick, I have no one to make me a cup of tea. What, I'm going to depend on you?” I said, “I will make you a cup of tea.”
When pain becomes subtext, the writer can call the editing done.✅
Mordant, sad, hilarious. The trifecta.