Suzanne Dottino

Lo’s Views of Her Mother Weeping

 

 

A hoity-toity man with a small dog in his lap was driving a red Cadillac with thick white - walls and a gash of silver chrome on the hood. He ran over my mother.

 

*

 

I let my lace curtains fall in front of my bedroom window. I took a bite of my apple, readjusted my glasses and flipped through the pages of my Movies! Movies! Movies! Magazine. I looked in the mirror and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. I went to my dresser and took out my training bra, a pair of red shorts and a white tank top with clusters of yellow flowers embroidered on the neckline. I laid them on my bed. I lifted my pink nightie up over my head but stopped mid-way. I stood still facing my bedroom window. I was trying to think of why, for what reason and how had my mother died. Oh yes! She was run over by a red Cadillac with thick white-walls and a gash of silver chrome on the hood.

 

*

 

I walked down the stairs trying to occupy the least amount of space possible by inhaling myself away. And when that didn’t work I imagined my flesh to be as see-through as the skin of a taut white grape, and that my blood was drained of its red blood cells, so that it was clear, like water, and flowed through a network of transparent tube-like veins that were entwined over and around my glass bones, bones that were glued together with Elmer's glue that had dried clear. I made it halfway down the stairs when Hans Jobbe Duvall our houseguest with the funny French accent happened to be going up the same time I was going down, rammed into me. I placed my right hand on the banister to base myself in the here and now. I told him about my mother’s death. As I spoke two distinct things happened simultaneously: a light went out POW! in his head.  

And a light went on, POP! in his eyes. He appeared to be scanning his mind for the appropriate response. The first was: “Happy” his lips parted and curled upwards. “Happy.” I frowned. He quickly shifted his response to “Sad,” by curling his lips downward. He even said, “Sadly, your mother dying was the best thing. Her general ennui had bellowed and barked, peetered and plotz, so to speak.” It never occurred to me that my mother might be better off yet I didn’t care to head him off at the pass. I made fish lips at him and then told him that I too supposed it was the best thing. Always had. So there!

 

*

 

As time drew on I went into deep wonder about that smile of his and also about that POP! And that POW!  I wondered quite frankly if he had something to do with my mother’s demise and my fate for a future as well? I wondered too if I should keep my eye out on that fellow-figure-of-a-farther-than-feels-fatherly: that fellow with the French accent who roamed delicately behind me as I drifted from room to room, up the stairs and down the stairs. I closed the door to my bedroom, sat at the edge of my bed and unwrapped a pink square of soft chewing gum. I plopped the cherry flavored morsel in my mouth and began to chew away. Click, snap, crack, click snap, crack. I drenched the trickle-turned-flow of flavorful juices out immediately and proceeded to blow large, larger and finally largesse bubbles.

 

*

 

With my elbow bent and chin digging into my palm I stared out my window and into my backyard. I lowered my heart shaped sunglasses to see straight through the sun’s glare and wavering glaze without the aid of the shades, and concluded that yes, It simply was not possible that it was my mother on the swing in our piazza out back and weeping. My mother was dead. It could be my schoolteacher (?) the Librarian (?), My clarinet teacher (?) The crossing guard (!) or who knows. Although under closer inspection, that woman on the swing did resemble my mother. I felt peculiarly drawn to the possibility that she was merely an impression of my mother and not the real thing. However, her tears dispelled that thought and I had fond thoughts of our moments together as mother and daughter when we drove and bickered our way to Hour Glass Lake. My mother forgot to apply sunscreen to her face that day and she suffered sunburn. She wept. Even then she was a weeper. As I looked closer at the weeping woman in the piazza I saw that she resembled the weeping woman with the sunburn. The two matched up. Poor things. I’d have offered her my Coppertone but she was over there and I was over here. If only I wanted it more. A little grease could have kept her safe from harm. The sun wouldn’t have burned her and so, we’d have all smiled and laughed and sung and danced.

 

*

 

It was someone's mother on that swing set. That much was clear. She was motherly. That was something one couldn’t help but take notice of. She had that disillusioned sorrowful glint in her eyes that is so commonly worn by mothers. She wore a white apron that has a silver whisk, a red tomato, and a stalk of green celery stitched and scattered across the bib section. My mothers' tears streamed down her cheeks and left small languid puddles at the base of her swing set. Her body hunched over and convulsed as she wept and wept and wept. Her muscular sobs caused the swing to sway back and forth, to and fro. Me Metronome. She was sobbing in time with her pain, which, as one was meant to see, painful. But yet again, maybe, maybe, maybe it was not my mother who was weeping out there. Perhaps it is was Allison’s Mom, or Laura's, or maybe it was H’s Mum, visiting from France.

 

*

 

As I stretched out on my bed someone was a-knock, knock knockin’ on my door. It was Hans. He entered with both arms high in the air and said, "Lo and behold!", as if he didn't know who and where I was! I propped myself up on my pillow and wiggled three fingers from the back of my head and said, "Me no like that you pretend you no know me. Me is Lo and you sir, you know what is and is not a no-no, did you kill my mother? The instant I said the M word it sounded vulgar, vile rude, and repulsive. I was worked into a haze. I wanted to stop my verbal interrogation with Hans-man right then and there. When, Lo and behold! He put his fingers over my mouth and told me to hush-hush. He prattled a song in my ear while bouncing me on his lap. A few seconds later or perhaps it was longer, like I said ah wuz in a haze, I stood up and flattened out the wrinkles down the front of my frock.  My face was hot and flushed and my smile, dreamy. I sauntered off into the bathroom. Now that was inneresting, positively inneresting.

 

*

 

Where oh where? Oh my! Oh dear! Oh! Oh! Oh!  There she is! There is my mother! She’s swinging in the chair in the piazza...and she is weeping.  I will DO something...some bon-bons ma ma...some intellectual Journals...her heart is exploding...my heart is exploding...she looks off to one side and extends her hands out in front of her…she needs me but why only now...now that she is there and I am here...how could this be…how did we get this way...have I gotten in the way? What has wounded you ma-mee? Your muumuu?A collagen injection…is it my bobby socks? My sharp tongue? YES! That must be it...I'll cut out my tongue...I'll go the long haul, I'll take the high road, I'll throw myself in front of a roaring train, I'll drown in a sea of your tears, I'll starve to death, Etc.

 

*

 

I’ll wait for a sign from my mother. If it was my mother she’ll show me a sign. Oh look! My mother was throwing some of her prize knick-knacks in the air and waiting for them to fall. Very French.

 

*

 

It was on Friday, A. said to me as he swung his tennis racket up and back over his head. Duh, I said, as I lobbed back his serve. I let go of my grip on the racket and wiped the sweat from my palm on the back of my white trunks as A. let the ball whirr past him. Wake up! I screamed. He winced. Your mother…well…you see… His voice trailed as he fumbled with the yellow florescent ball he had taken from his white trousers. I'm not over it, if that's what you think I said, hands on hips. Adam-man walked to the net. He leaned sideways and propped himself up with the racket as though it were a cane. On Friday your mother was not well dear. Your mother had taken to walking on lines so to speak: hence her tragic ending. Now I don't suppose you ever found the driver of that audacious sedan, did you? Well, I did and he reported that your mother was witnessed under the wheels of the parked aforementioned sedan and had slashed them violently with her nail file. I started the car and ran her over. Finis!  Adam flicked his wrist in the air, pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his glistening forehead. So, it was you, you murdered her.

 

*

 

In the piazza, there was my mother's swing. In it sat my mother. She wore an attitude similar to that of a dead Indian Chief. Her face coveted a gentle smile, care worn eyes, and her hands were crossed delicately on her lap. For a millisecond I was drawn in and back to a time when I sat at the edge of her bed. It happened just once. She had brown clay drying on her face, a beauty mask. Also on her bed were little teacups and saucers borrowed from my old dollhouse.  She was having a tea party.

 

*

 

I quietly closed the sea green door with the number 16 written smack in the middle of it. I placed my suitcase down, whipped out my shades and noticed that the black car with the darkened windows and whiskey colored license plates was parked right next to us in the parking lot of The Harmony Hotel for Conscientious Travelers in Twenty Nine Palms California. I flicked off my sneakers, and peeled off my white anklets. The darkened window rolled down halfway down where all I could see was the outline of a cowboy hat. I looked back to our room and then back at the hat that was raised up from the dark head and tipped in my direction. With my suitcase in hand, I walked to the road and walked and walked and walked and walked. I walked on the shady side of the street, set my bag down and then waited.  For what, I didn’t know. I put on strawberry lip-gloss.  I thought about what I wasn’t going to do. But what was it? What? What? What? What was I not going to do?  Oh yes, I won’t look back.

 

*

 

          My mother is looking at herself in the mirror. She is wearing a short skirt (pink taffeta) on which there are a number of yellow YIELD signs, red STOP signs and black tire tracks embroidered throughout. From behind her false eyelashes she asks: How do I Look? I too am in the mirror and I am looking at her. Hi mommy! You are back! I am wearing a short skirt that is black cotton, pleated. I turn my body profile, tilt my head down and frown at my drooping breasts. I place both my hands on my stomach that has swelled into a balloon. Well? My mother asks impatiently.  Oh, Um, you look like you are looking, that's how you look, I say happily. Oh and there is Adam!  Adam is in the mirror too and he is looking at all three of us there in the mirror. He is wearing a brown linen suit, a tan cashmere vest and a cream-colored shirt. He pulls a white handkerchief out from his pocket and waves it in the air Truce? He says. My mother and I walk out of the mirror weeping.  I turn back at A. and look at him fondly and wave. I am walking backwards but in step with my mother. I wave at Hum and tell him, Too late, Mister.

 

 

 

Suzanne Dottino's work has appeared in The Wagon, The American, The Brooklyn Review, The Brooklyn Rail, St. Petersburg Review, JWVV and many others. Her plays have been published by Samuel French.com, IndieThaeatrNow.com. She is the Drama Editor at SpringHouse Journal. She is the Fiction Director for the Sunday Night Fiction Reading Series at KGB Bar where she also serves as editor to kgbbarlit.com. She is currently at work on a psychological thriller.