Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo? Read online

  We finally settled on the stream noise, which was not a cheerful trickle but a mighty flow suitable for class-five kayakers. It compelled me to visit the bathroom four times a night, but at least I was used to it, so I had my mother switch her noise machine to Stream rather than her customary Waterfall. Then I went into the bathroom to put on my pajamas while she donned hers in the bedroom.

  When I came out, I stared at her in disbelief. We were wearing the same flannel numbers from LL Bean that are sold every Valentine’s Day. Covered with candy hearts that say things like TRUE LOVE and (my favorite) FAX ME, they are the perfect combination of comfortable and cheerfully deranged, to the head-shaking resignation of my husband. They would only be alluring to a man who had a thing for his Aunt Mabel. No wonder I hadn’t given my parents any grandchildren.

  Granted, mine were white and hers were pink, but I had noticed that lately our tastes were fusing into one pink-and-white, candy-heart-studded ball. When we had taken the jaunt through the cemetery, we both inspected the tombs with our hands on our hips angled in just the same way before I saw what was happening and quickly folded my arms. And when did I start to get as excited as she did about new cleaning products? It’s happening, I thought. Oh, Lord, it is happening. Adulthood comes not with the realization that you’re turning into your mother but with the acceptance of it. At this stage in our lives, I was forced to admit that we were much more alike than we were different.

  “What’s different?” asked my mother. I realized I had spoken aloud—another thing that my mother does all the time.

  “What? Oh, nothing.”

  She shrugged and took out her contacts, downed a sleepin’ pill, put in industrial-strength earplugs, and pulled the covers completely over her head, as is her habit. With her burrowed in like a badger under the blankets, all I could see of her was a tuft of Medium Ash Blonde hair poking out at the top. I read my book with all the lights in the room blazing. She didn’t even turn over, which was a relief. She had always been a light sleeper and woke with a volley of obscenities to any noise. When we were younger, I learned to navigate the squeaky floorboards of our hallway by creeping along the edge of the walls to the bathroom. I had no desire to revisit that time.

  Type A even on vacation, we bounded out of bed early the next morning so that we could cram in three house tours. “That tile floor is slippery, just so you know,” my mother said as she emerged from the bathroom clad in a towel. “I stepped out of the shower and nearly fell on my kazatz” Sometimes she made up her own form of Methodist Yiddish.

  Off we went to the Andrew Low House near Lafayette Square. On the way my mother, crisp and polished in slim black pants and a white top, noted with approval the ladylike dresses she saw on the locals. She had a cringe-inducing habit of commenting on passersby as if she were safely behind a two-way mirror. “Look at all the pretty colors!” she said. “Southern women just look a little more polished.” Conversely, she was aghast at some of the sloppy outfits on the tourists. “Gracious, look at the ankles on that woman,” she said, pop-eyed with horror at a blonde who stood two feet away from us. “And she’s wearing capri pants, of all things!”

  My mother, while naturally pretty, puts a lot of zeal into looking good. Her hair is always perfectly styled and highlighted. The only time I ever see her without lipstick is well before breakfast. Every January, she methodically diets to lose any trace of holiday weight. Thus, for this jaunt I left my casual getups at home and packed more carefully to escape her laser up-and-down gaze.

  To my silent horror, I soon learned that house tours with my mother were more of a call-and-response situation. The last thing I wanted was a group of strangers gawping at me, but my mother couldn’t care less, having often told me that one of the joys of getting older was not giving a “hoot” what people thought. “Andrew Low’s most famous guest was Robert E. Lee, who stayed in this bedroom,” said the guide mechanically, standing in front of a canopied bed.

  “Well, isn’t that interestin’,” murmured my mother, who had dropped her g’s and left them somewhere up north. My palms started to sweat.

  “He was a houseguest here for a week,” the guide continued.

  “Huh,” said my mother loudly, causing a few people to turn around. She looked at a picture of Robert E. Lee that was proudly displayed on the bedroom wall. “He really was a handsome man,” she announced, and others around us nodded.

  “Meanwhile, General William Tecumseh Sherman, who of course burned Atlanta, spared our fair city of Savannah, giving it to President Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas present.” The guide went on to explain that instead, Sherman seized the cotton that was languishing in cargo ships to use up north.

  My mother put up her hand. “Well, did he pay for it?”

  The guide snorted. “What do you think?”

  My mother put her hands on her hips. “Those Yankees,” she said disgustedly, and the group chortled. Everyone else seemed to be entertained by her, while a part of me always remained a pained, self-conscious teen in her presence. I refrained from mentioning that she currently lived in New Jersey. Northern New Jersey.

  After another house tour, we broke for lunch. Her accent guaranteed that we were never consigned to the tourist ghetto in restaurants. “Hah theyah!” she would chirp brightly. “D’y’all have a nice table fuh two? You do? Why, thenk yew!”

  We spent the day indulging in every feminine activity that we could possibly do short of tampon shopping. We hit an antique garden furniture store, made a stop for cupcakes and lemonade, breezed into a stationery and note card emporium, and walked through a garden before racing back to the hotel in time for the free late-afternoon wine. Then it was off to a soothing 6 P.M. dinner of shrimp and grits. As we strolled home, she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Dawg gone it!” she cried. She really does say “dawg gone it.” “I haven’t called your father yet.” She rummaged through her purse and produced her cell phone. “Dammit,” she said, peering at the screen. “He’s called me four times already.” This was typical. As usual when he was away from her, my father had logged many mournful calls while she had been busy laughing and clinking lemonade glasses with me.

  My mother had instilled in all of us girls the ability to enjoy our own company, and the men in our lives were often baffled by how little they were missed when we were elsewhere.

  “Hi, Jay,” she said dutifully. “Uh-huh. Mm-hm. Well, your golf game is never good the first day. You always get better. You know that.” Then she perked up. “You watched Oprah? With all of the guys around? Well, how did you manage that?”

  My father had always rolled his eyes at my mother’s daily Oprah fix, but in the preceding year, after they’d received TiVo as a Christmas present, she’d started recording the show and watching it during dinner. Gradually my father, usually a fan of gory crime shows and New York Giants games, became a convert, going from grumbling about that “touchy-feely crap” to holding forth at the dinner table about the wonder and magic of The Oprah Winfrey Show. “I’m not into the ones about the giveaways and stuff, some of your more lightweight ones like kitchen remodeling and makeovers and what have you, but I tell you, that Oprah has a number of programs that are fascinating. Real human-interest stuff, like CBS News Sunday Morning does.”

  And so after a round of golf, my father had tiptoed off to his bedroom to watch Oprah’s interview with Barbara Walters. Initially his condo mates had a good chuckle, but soon enough, two of them had pulled up a chair. My mother shook her head as she hung up the phone. “I’m not surprised that all of his cronies joined in. Park a man on a couch, turn on a television, and he’ll watch anything. Hell, that’s how I got your father to watch Oprah in the first place. It was easier for him to sit there than to get up and move to another room.”

  The next day sped by as we quickly made our way through my roster of activities. She seemed as determined as I was to make this a capital-M memory. As soon as we finished one thing she would ask me what was n
ext as I shuffled worriedly through my folder. My father traditionally assumed the navigational duties when they were together. Now it was up to me.

  Before we knew it, we found ourselves back at the hotel for the appetizers and the “free” libations—wine for her, sweet tea for me, which we carried to a shaded arbor at the back of the hotel.

  “Good, there’s nobody here,” said my mother, inspecting the area. “Let’s sit on this porch swing.”

  We took a seat and listened to the birds chirping. “Did you call Tom today?” she asked.

  “I did, while you were in the shower.”

  She took a sip of wine. “Aren’t you glad you married him? Your father and I always say, ‘Thank God for Tom.’”

  “I’m glad every day,” I said.

  “If something happened to Tom, do you think you’d remarry?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Ma. I doubt it. It took me long enough to find him. We’re talking decades.”

  “I feel the same way. I think I’m more of a picky person than your father is. I always think about what my sister Juanita said after her husband Joe died. She said she’d never get married again, because all old geezers were looking for was a nursemaid. But listen, if I croak before your father does—”

  “Please,” I interrupted her. “You’re one of those people who will hang on with both fingernails until you’re in the triple digits.”

  She ignored me and tipped back some more wine. “If I croak before he does, it’s up to you girls to get him a new wife.”

  I sat up. “Really?” We had never had this discussion before, but I found, to my surprise, that it wasn’t upsetting. I was comforted, like her, by the idea of having a plan. Not that she was ever going to die, of course.

  “Yes, and sooner rather than later. You don’t even have to wait a year. Six months, that’s fine. He says he could never remarry, but I don’t want him to be unhappy. And Lord knows there are a lot of predatory gals out there. He would have no problem whatsoever. Let’s face it, the numbers favor the men. And he’s the type of person that needs somebody else around.”

  I nodded. “True.”

  “Grandchildren and kids, it’s not the same. You don’t tell your children the same things you would talk about with your spouse. You don’t sleep with your grandchildren and kids, either.”

  I didn’t know precisely what to say to that, just as I didn’t know how to respond earlier, at lunch, when she remarked that every generation thinks that they invented oral sex. So I quickly changed the subject and asked her what she wanted to do on our last night in town.

  “Ooh! I know,” she said, brightening. “I want to go on a Haunted Savannah ghost tour! There was a brochure in the lobby. Why don’t I call and see if I can get us in?”

  I told her I was not a tour aficionado, but she gradually persuaded me. (“Oh, come on, aren’t you the least bit curious? What if it’s really spooky?”) And so as night fell, we walked over to the parking lot of a nearby café and waited for the guide.

  A minivan soon pulled up and a middle-aged man climbed out. I saw my mother’s face fall when she spotted his rainbow suspenders.

  When it comes right down to it, there are not many positive situations that involve rainbow suspenders. The first date or new boss that bounces in wearing rainbow suspenders evokes a major “uh-oh” moment. Think about it: Mork from Ork. Steve Urkel. Mimes. One exception might be the hired entertainment at a children’s party, but even then, those suspenders let you know exactly what you’re in for.

  The man explained that he was an actor who had once appeared as a ghoul in Dawn of the Dead. Then two other people ran up, breathless, and we were ready to go. He retrieved his walking stick from the minivan, and we proceeded to the first haunted house.

  He stood in front, leaning on his stick in what he thought was a picturesque way, and told us about a nineteenth-century girl who had been punished by her father for naughtiness by being tied to a chair in front of the parlor window for three days before she expired. His timing was off, and his tale did not contain the barest trace of spookiness. When he started re-creating scenes using different dialects—another worrisome flag—my mother officially turned on him and lagged grumpily behind the group as we made our way to the next house.

  He pointed to the soaring Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, to the glittering gold cross atop the spire, and mentioned that someone had climbed it in the nineties to steal the cross, before firemen were summoned to lead the hapless criminal down.

  My mother craned her neck to see the top of the spire. “It seems pretty high for a person to climb,” she said doubtfully. The guide ignored her. She turned to me. I don’t like him, she mouthed. I want my money back. I silently thanked the Lord that this wasn’t my idea and my record remained unblemished.

  As he continued with his tour, my mother would periodically sigh loudly, or say, “Oh, please,” until I pulled her aside.

  “Mom,” I whispered, “there are only four of us, so paste on a fake smile right now.”

  She stared back at me defiantly, which put me in the strange position of having to scold her like she was an errant child. I pulled out one of her favorite expressions from my youth. “Wipe that expression off your face before I wipe it off for you,” I warned.

  She laughed. “Am I that obvious? Okay, I’ll behave.”

  Back at the hotel, we consoled ourselves with slices of chocolate malt cake that were left on a silver tray in the dining room for guests.

  “There were still some spooky bits,” she said. “I liked when he took us to the gates of the graveyard.”

  I shoveled in another forkful of cake. “Well, it will make a good story for your friends at home.”

  But she couldn’t let it rest. The next morning, before we went to the airport, we stopped by the church so she could do a little fact checking.

  “Hah theyah,” she said to a church lady with bouffant hair and a necklace of large fake pearls who was stationed at the door. Then she repeated the story of the thief, and the church lady laughed and told her it wasn’t true.

  “But I have seen a ghost right here in the church,” the lady added. “That is a fact. A little girl was abducted from here years ago. She was last seen right near that pew over there.” She pointed to the far side of the church. “The family was frantic. For years, I would sometimes feel her presence, but I never told Monsignor because I just felt so foolish. But then a few years ago, right after the floor had been mopped, I looked down and saw small footprints right where she had been taken. And this church was empty.”

  “No,” breathed my mother.

  The church lady nodded. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I will never forget seeing those little prints.”

  We edged closer as she told us all the details. “Now, that was spooky,” said my mother afterward.

  Then we bid that jasmine-scented city adieu and flew home to the decidedly less fragrant Newark airport. “Remind me why we live here again,” I said.

  “I have no idea,” said my mother. “Listen, you can go ahead and take a cab to Brooklyn. I’ll be fine.” Of course she would. But so few opportunities arose where I could actually take care of her.

  “No, I’ll put you in a cab and then I’ll get one,” I said. We stood in line at the taxi stand. As we neared the front, I gave my mother a hug good-bye.

  “This is the most vaginal weekend I’ve ever spent in my life,” I said.

  “Me, too,” she replied, her eyes misting ever so slightly. Then she stepped into a cab. “Bye, baby,” she drawled.

  The Joys of a Breakfast Buffet

  Every weekday morning, my best friend, Julie, drops her daughter, Violet, off at school and then calls me at precisely 9:07 as she walks to the gym in her Upper West Side neighborhood. Julie is a writer like me, so we act as makeshift co-workers for each other, having our morning chat around a symbolic watercooler.

  JANCEE: How was the party last night? I hope—no, I trust—that you left early.

/>   JULIE: Please. I was in and out in an hour and ten minutes. Home and in bed by nine.

  JANCEE: I’m proud of you. (Julie and I do not like to go out in the evening. In our entire twenty-year friendship, we have never had dinner together, as a courtesy to each other.) Do you know what’s great about getting older? Not getting looks when you say you like to go to bed early Not getting looks when you order a seltzer instead of a vodka tonic.

  JULIE: Not getting looks when you walk down the street. You know what someone said to me the other day? “If I lived near you, we would be such good friends.” And I thought of that expression that you’ve used, from when you were a kid: “Tick-tock, the door is locked.” I can’t take on another friend. Unless somebody dies or moves away, then a slot opens up. Although let’s be honest: If Martin Scorsese wanted to be our friend, I would have time for him. He could come to Bergdorf’s with us and look at skirts. So? How was Savannah?

  JANCEE: As we speak, I’m lying down with my eyes closed. Does that tell you something? But it was really fun. You were right to tell me to go. It was a little stressful to be the planner—she’s used to having my father plan everything, so I had to take over. But it will be something I’ll always remember. My mother won’t always be so lively. You know? Now is the time.

  JULIE: I want to take a trip with my mother, too. I think that it’s a lot further down the road, though, when I travel for pleasure. Right now, travel means punishment to me—work, or obligatory visits. (Lowers voice.) Oh my God. There is a woman on the sidewalk in a heroin stupor, nodding off. She’s wearing a shirt that says INSIDE THIS T-SHIRT IS ONE TERRIFIC MOM. Did she eat that mom, or snort that mom? In what case would wearing that T-shirt be a good idea anyway? I never want to wear a T-shirt that sets someone up to judge me.

  So, what did you and your mom do together?

  JANCEE: You know what I realized during that weekend? I’ve reached the age where I have the same interests as my folks. When did that happen? I like most of the things they like, with the exception of craft expos and going to Wal-Mart. But other than that, we all talk excitedly about sunblock with SPF 70 and omega-3s. As a matter of fact, I’m going to take one of those capsules right now. They’re in the fridge. They’re a little cloudy but I think that’s okay.