I’d been in the Midwest for many years, gradually working my way up the ladder to district manager for a major stationery chain. In my spare time – which I had not so much of once I made my first step up from sales clerk to assistant store manager – I would come up with greeting card ideas.
Humorous, but a little dark. Nothing my company would ever print.
One of my favorites was: “All of us are celebrating that you didn’t wake up dead today.”
I sketched an old man in a wheelchair, head bowed, reading the message on the card with a magnifying glass.
Another I thought quite good was: Live Midwest Aloha, Don’t Drink and Shoot. For this one, I drew a man carrying a shotgun, bowed to the ground in an attempt to pick up a dropped beer can. His friends are pointing and laughing, the expression on his face is angry.
I’d not been back to Honolulu in many years, neither had my parents ever come to visit me. Let’s just say that growing up in that house, the three of us didn’t live the Leave It to Beaver lifestyle. We couldn’t have gotten along much less, I don’t think. Sometimes it felt as if we were three animals forced to live in a cage too small to accommodate them.
When I went off to college in Wisconsin, it was like being paroled from prison. I was so anxious to leave, that I flew out the day after high school graduation. Through the plane window, I watched my parents wave goodbye to me. It felt more like they were waving good riddance.
I mean, I love my mom and dad, but that doesn’t mean I like them all that much. We’re blood. And, you know, blood means something. Right?
So when my mom called to tell me my dad died, while I shed no tears, I agreed to come home for the funeral. We were blood. I felt as if I owed him – and my mom – that much.
This was in the days when you could greet people at the airport gate. My mom had a lei for me. This surprised me, as you may guess, but nothing was more surprising than to see her smiling. I stood there wondering how long ago it might have been that I last saw her smile. It must have happened sometime. But I couldn’t remember when.
Phone calls were expensive in those days, and none of the three of us were letter writers. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time any of us had communicated. As I say, when I moved away, it was as if the prison doors had been flung open, and I’d run through them like Walter Payton busting through the line to daylight.
“So how have you been?” my mom asked, sounding genuinely curious. Her voice wasn’t at all as I remembered it. It was light, almost musical. I wondered if maybe she’d felt she was set free when my dad passed away.
I’m not sure how much they loved each other. One day when she’d had too much to drink after coming home from work, she let slip that I’d been an accident. And because of me, she slurred, they’d had to marry. This did nothing to warm me to her.
“I’m good,” I said, smiling back at her. “You look, uh, happy.”
She laughed. “Come on, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
We headed not for the baggage area, but for a tiki lounge in the concourse. My mom led me to the bar and ordered two Primo drafts. I’d not had a Primo in all these many years, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted.
“Okay,” I said after we’d clinked glasses and had our first sip, “so what is it you were going to tell me?”
She beamed, then took another long swallow. “Well,” she said, smacking her lips, “your dad had a million-dollar life insurance policy, so I’m going to use that money to see the world.”
I know that her work as a teacher with the DOE has allowed her to have her summers off, and it struck me, when she mentioned travel, that I’d never known her to take advantage of the long summers to go places. Until this moment, I’d not known that she liked to travel.
“Well, ah, that’s great,” I said. “So you haven’t been traveling since you retired?”
“Oh no no no. Your father. I tell you.” She asked the bartender for another. “He never wanted to go anywhere. He didn’t have time off the way I did when I was teaching. He was a workaholic of the first magnitude. You know.”
This I did remember. My dad had been a realtor, and that ate up his time seven days a week.
“Right,” I said, “I remember the long hours. You don’t think all that work, ah, I mean, his working so hard. Do you think that contributed to his, ah, death?”
My mother laughed and slapped her knee. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it could have. Hey, your glass is empty. Want another?”
Before I could say anything, she ordered us two more. She was getting into that woozy state I remembered too well. It was every day after work. I think the term is a functioning alcoholic. If my dad were not out working, he’d be the cook. My mom rarely made us anything, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were a regular meal for me growing up.
My dad had been a good cook, and if I ever appreciated him, it was at those times when he’d prepare dinner for the three of us, which turned out most times to be for just him and me, my mother too drunk to eat and passing out for the night.
“Hey,” my mom said. “Penny for your thoughts.”
“Oh, well, I was just remembering the good old days,” I offered.
“The good old days where?” my mom asked, slightly slurring as she turned to order a fourth beer.
The question was an odd one, unless, of course, you’d lived with the three of us. It was only at that moment it struck me that my mom might have had as rough a time as I had. Sure, I never got the feeling that they were lovey-dovey, but I never really thought about how that relationship might have deeply affected my mom.
“Well, you know, back when I was growing up here.”
“Hah!” my mom said loudly enough to turn some heads. “You know damn well those days were not good. You survived, I survived, he survived. The three of us slogged through. And once you took off, it was just your wonderful father and I. And let me tell you, Christopher, those were not going to end up being good old days either.”
“Mom, if it was that bad, why didn’t you get a divorce?”
Leaning heavily against the bar, she shook her head. You didn’t do it back then. You were supposed to stick it out. I didn’t know anyone who got a divorce, and let me tell you,” she swiveled on the stool and slapped me on the shoulder, I know other women, lots of ‘um, who thought about leaving their husbands.”
The sound of her voice was a mixture of anger and pain. Like I said, we were blood, and I felt for her at that moment.
“I’m so sorry, Mom. I didn’t realize how bad it was for you.”
“Eh, Christopher, it’s water under the bridge now. Hey, I got a million dollars, and I’m finally going to live.”
I pictured my mom and me sitting by my dad’s coffin, my mom counting out thousand dollar bills in her lap. “Here,” she’d say, “doublecheck my math.”
I watched her order another beer. She could barely sit up now. It would kill her plans if she slid off the seat and injured herself badly enough that she couldn’t travel.
“Hey, Mom,” I said. “It’s not really a million, you know. You’re going to have to pay taxes.”
“Right right right, I know. But that still leaves a helluva lot.”
“Yes,” I said. “So, Mom, you didn’t say. How did Dad die?”
She laughed. “He fell down the stairs and broke his neck.”
The way she said it, made me queasy. The idea of her pushing him down flashed through my mind. She wouldn’t. Would she?
“So, ah, he slipped?”
“Right right right, Christopher, it was a horrible accident.”
“Ah, geez, that’s awful. Were you, ah, there when it happened?”
She swiveled to face me. “Yes, Christopher, I was right there when it happened. I tried to catch him, but he was too heavy for me to hold up, and down, down, down he went.”
I could see her at the top of the stairs, counting that stack of bills, my dad lying sprawled at the bottom, his limbs twisted in odd positions.
“What a good son,” she said. “You think I killed him, don’t you?”
I didn’t know how to respond. The look my mother gave me froze me.
Finally, as if I’d just lost a staring contest, I said, “No, of course I don’t think that.”
“Let me tell you,” she said, leaning with her hand against my shoulder. “It’s harder than you think to just kill someone.”
She smiled, her eyes wandering her off somewhere far away. On the trip of a lifetime. And I shivered for seeing her joy.
Lanning Lee 