When My Mother Died

Particular individuals come into my life, and I'm sucked into this
painful fascinated with them. The way they glance to the side in a
sweeping motion. The way they speak softly, a something so delicately
witty. Their ravishing smile and the devilish activity I can see
cooking behind it. And a jolting bomb will go off in me and all the
debris and rubble will drop and the smoke will fill, smoky feelings and
emotions and thoughts filling, choking. And it's like, I have to let
that smoke out or I'll suffocate myself. These are the bomb
people.

A glimpse over here and she notices my face. Energy thrusts me through.
She shines of full teeth and charm. Probably honed her smile as a girl,
until it could clutch people by the throat and twist them down to her
pretty little presence. Something inside lurches out when I see that
smile. Something like desperate pleads to be let into her world? I
don't know.

I give one back.

"Rob! Hey buddy, I haven't seen you in awhile. What'cha doing here?"
She's like this with everyone. It's apart of her appeal. The ability to
keep people stuck to her with little skits of overwhelming delight or
appreciation.

"Hey Kristin, I'm just writing a paper for art. Nothing crazy? what are
you up to?"

She drops into a seat next to mine and throws back black shinny drops
of hair and stares at me. Right into my eyes. I can hear her
fascinating speech impediment read off in my head before she speaks.
"What am I up to? What am I up to??" She slowly says illusioned and
starry-eyed. "What am I up to? Yes? I'm? I'm up to? accounting."

I laugh. She sounds like a damsel realizing out loud who the killer was
all along, while he waits patiently.

Kristin is one of these bomb people. And what's worse, I think she
knows it. I think I can detect it in that smile. She's like a vulture
with road kill. She could swoop down whenever I'm near and tear away at
my half defenseless body if she was hungry to. And if she did, I'd
release my dogs to the open field between us and try to catch her. Try
to bring her in inside my house so I can have this washing joy in me
all the time. But she'd fly away screeching with amusement, for she's
much too witty to get trapped by me. And my dogs would be scattered all
over, sniffing the roads and banks. And my house would stand empty with
the dogs gone and people could come in and take whatever they wish.
Just have a waltz inside, chuckling at my foolishness and have at it.
My respect sits hidden in the green wrapped box under the bed upstairs.
My composure is stashed behind the light sparkling china in the
cabinet. Dignity in the garden and confidence in the sink, evaporating
with the water.

"You know Rob, if you were a cloud, I'd puncture you with a pin and
drink your water, I would."

"Then I'd be an acid cloud." I say. She's killing any chance for me to
focus on my paper. She's the kind of person that forces you to think
about how she's there, next to you. Her just sitting, doing whatever.
You don't really even think about it, you just feel her presence and
lose your thoughts. Get caught and pillow fluffed into this cloud of
airborne attraction.

"Do you think I can have visitors like you when I'm working here?" I
say.

"Well, Rob, of course you can. You're the perfect gentleman."

I turn back to my paper.

I don't know why I'm this way; with the bombs and explosions and
fighting and the dogs cooped up in this strange house. I don't know why
I react they way I do to these people. Maybe I have an addictive
personality. Or obsessive. Maybe some intimacy complex is growing out
me, looking for people to feed on. It probably comes from something in
my childhood like it always does, right? Some emotional desperation
lodged back in the fog of time. A scarring incident involving mother or
some other prescribed reason like it? Either way, somewhere underneath
I'm terrified and addicted to these people.

"Great. I'm perfectly petrified of this awful stuff." She stares at the
mess of papers she came in with, shuffling them between her
fingers.

I look up from my screen and stare at the empty student common's court
I'm sitting in. It's a grand expansive building, the court inside
opening up to five stories above. The floor is covered with wooden
black top tables and polished chairs. The atmosphere rests calm. There
are lights far, far up above, retreated into the vast white ceiling.
They glow dimmed for the late studiers scattered at their different
tables, comfortably away from each other, studying physics or math or
sociology. When people talk, muffled hums of voices echo around the
court and off the white five story walls.

Kristin tosses a crumpled accounting paper into my direction and goes
rummaging back into her stack.

When I first met her, I believed she was from the east. Maybe New York,
Chicago, Milwaukee. A lisp appeared whenever she slurred syllables,
which somehow gave off what I thought to be an Eastern accent. I found
out later she was from Oregon, in a city somewhere on the Pacific
coast, which was funny seeing that's pretty much as far away from the
east as possible.

She seemed to pick my fickle personality up perfectly and put it in
some incubator to grow at her design. She had a sarcastic coyness
whenever we talked that always left me with a thirst for more. I would
try to break her sarcasm with mine but so far I haven't got to her.
When I feel like I have her in a half arm nelson, she'll slip out with
agitated boredom and stroll away.

"So Rob, how's school going?"

"Well, I'd have to say it's going on splendid like."

"Well, that's wonderful Rob. I'm so happy for you. I've been proved
wrong again."

"Oh Kristin, what are you saying? You thought I'd be doing
otherwise?"

"Oh, of course not Rob. I mean, the last thing I'd expect you to do
would be to drop a class out of laziness or such." I had recently
dropped my English class after neglecting a months worth of work.

"Good to hear faithful, faithful Kristin."

"So how's your friend? which happens to be a girl?"

"She's fine, doing fine. I'm actually meeting her at ten
tonight."

"Oh really" she said, "What are you two friends going to be doing
tonight?"

"She's watching a wall her sorority put up. You know, the Writing on
the Wall Project outside? I'm helping her watch it."

It was a concrete wall built with brick blocks. Each block was painted
by students with some derogatory or discriminatory comment, racial,
sexual, sexist, or anything else they thought up. It was the Wall of
Shame or something? I didn't really get into it, just mostly browsed
along it looking at all the stuff students had come up with. Some were
pretty interesting that I'd never heard before, like "sliatch" and
"rere". In a week there's supposed to be a symbolic destroying of
derogatory slang on campus by knocking over the wall. My friend is
watching it for vandals and I thought it would be pretty low to let her
sit outside alone all night. She basically has the farthest figure a
human could have as a security guard. She's this little Polynesian
thing that you could almost step on. Plus, I was having sex with her
too so? you know.

"Wow, fun."

"Not really."

"What? Aren't you going to love spending all night alone with your
sweet friend talking and laughing and touching. You know, doing stuff
friends do?" She was half laughing to herself.

"You should probably get back to your accounting there Kristin, it's
looking pretty dry."

"Your cell phone's ringing." Kristin responds.

"Right" I fuddle in my bag and pull it out.

"Hello?"

"This is Dave." The sound is wet and crackling. It didn't sound like
Dave. It sounded like someone completely different. Like some little
whinny guy who had a nervous high sob of a voice. Some guy who lives
alone with a mother who strokes his hair and listens to him complain
about the guys at work.

He starts to cry over the line as I cradled the petite piece of
equipment to my ear and look at my paper. "Mom is dead." He says
sobbing. I forgot to add a citing source into the quote I have of some
guy talking about color and personality. "Mom is dead." He repeats. I
didn't understand what he was trying to say. Mom couldn't be dead. So I
just sit there and listen to him cry louder and louder.

There's a rustle on the phone for a second then someone else comes on.
"Son, you there?" The voice is firm and scratch heavy. My dad.

I wait a second to answer. A chill runs up my frame as I think about
why my brother is with my dad. He hasn't seen him in months. I have no
clue why he went all the way over to my dad's house. "What is
it?"

He starts slow, "?Your mother was killed this morning." Stopping for a
sigh. "Your brother found her in the car." Another pause. "Son, you
need to come home ok. We need to see you." He let the silence stretch
for a few long seconds. "I'm? I'm sorry son."

"Yeah, ok." I said.

"Son, I'm sorry you had to hear this on the phone. It's something you
shouldn't, but you need to come home."

The point of the call. I really can't get the point of the call. I know
my dad is saying something he thinks important, but I don't understand
why he's saying what he's saying. It makes no sense that he would be
hesitating about something. My dad never calls. "Dad, why did you
call?"

His voice starts to rise. Frustration starts slithering in. I'm getting
annoyed. "Son, your mother is dead. You need to come home. I'll buy you
a plane ticket tomorrow and you just need to get on the plane and come
home ok. Son?"

"Son, dad, son, dad, dad. Stop saying son and tell my why you called."
I'm getting pissed about the way he's talking but not saying
anything.

His voice strained. "Rob, not right now? Wait till you're with your
brother ok. I need you to hold together and listen to me, ok? I'm going
to have a plane tic?" I cut him off.

"Look, plane tickets?" I stuttered, "Plane tickets are?" then again,
"What's the point of plane tickets! You're not making any sense
here!"

A sharp inhale brakes over the line. "Now stop the bull shit you fuck!
Your goddamn mother is dead!" He screams into the phone. "Bloody car
Rob! OK! It's your real fucked up nightmare pal!" He catches himself
suddenly. I can hear him holding his breath. The seconds drag on. After
awhile he releases the air in his lungs and exhales deeply. I can hear
a small stiff laugh. The kind people use when they are about to cry. He
takes a few seconds and then speaks again. "Rob? you know how I am."
His voice is heavier than before and sounds exhausted.

I remember the phone calls when I was younger. He'd call from work with
a somewhat less, but still heavy scratch in his voice, like off an old
blues vinyl. 'Son, we are going to have a talk when I get home. A talk
about your grades.'

But I don't remember ever hearing his voice sound exhausted. "I'm so
sorry son. I'm sorry. I'm sorry?" He chokes. Then after awhile I hear
him start to cry. It might be one of the only times I've heard him do
that. It was a crunched in cry with a hole somewhere that he couldn't
plug. When it came out, it came like a pop, like deep masculine bars of
iron cracking out and hitting the floor. Again a few seconds stretch
and thicken. He sniffs his nose and coughs. Then he clears his throat,
right into the receiver. It's a blast of noise that puts me into a
stun. Deep and popping like mucus or saliva or food being cleared out.
I could hear each click and pop of it, starting at the very bottom of
his throat and clicking off in sequence all the way up till it met the
back of his mouth. I could see the little bubbles of saliva rupture off
the side of his esophagus and liquid shooting up into his chops and
collecting with the mucus and bits of food. Then the collection of bits
and spit is lifted by his tongue and swallowed back down into his
throat again. I can see the slimy ball of juice sliding down his bumpy
raw passageway, draining down into darkness. Some of the food pieces
moving up against the side of his throat and sticking there, pretty
much where they had been before. "I know how you two were to each
other."

"Ok" I hang up the phone.

I stand up in a wobbly phase. My eyes catch fluid and I'm lost at
sight. My shoulders release and fall. I start staring into the
distance. I'm not sure what I'm looking at. I can hear away off, the
voices of people, hushed and echoed. The air gets soft. I'm still
holding the phone kinda in the air, halfway to my ear and halfway to my
leg and I just stare. Then I see the wall come into focus. The white
five story wall way over on the other side of the court. It's rising up
from a semi-circle encasing the room, but the side isn't flat like I
thought it was. Instead it sails in and out like liquid ivory, towering
up over the atmosphere of the court, over the immense space between the
students. I follow the wall up in amazement, bending the muscles in my
neck to the wavering structure, trying to get my eyes to go further and
further up.

I hold my breath as I finally come to the top where the lights on the
ceiling shine bright. There's not much to see up there. Just a bobbling
white expanse, a rippling milk ceiling. But I stare at it. I stay fixed
to that milk sky. Watching it flow around, go nowhere, just softly wave
up and down. Suspension in a stance, phone in hand. The rest of my life
floats away in the milk like a kite. I can see it on a string, drift in
and away, disappearing.

"Rob, are you ok?"

The trance breaks. A feeling of rawness comes, a partitioning in my
chest. I realize, those words severed the last tie I had to that place
up in the ceiling where my life was being carried off. And now it's
over. Gone for good.

"Lets take a walk Rob." Kristin says.

I gaze down onto her. She's sitting there, staring up at me, a truly
sympathetic look glowing out of her. In her eyes, I can almost see
pain.

"Yeah, lets take a walk?"she repeats. She stands up, straightens her
sweater and takes hold of my arm. I watch her little hands wrap around
it and tuck into my side. It feels so right.

As we walk out of the court, out of the building, into the dark silent
night, she rests her head softly on my shoulder.

"Rob? I'm so sorry. I heard your father say it? I'm so sorry."