Here's a story for you all. It probably has A LOT of editing and spelling issues but enj0y!
Today I thought I’d clean the bathroom like I’d promised to for weeks but instead I sat and stared at the rain from the broken go-cart in the living room. Its contents thrown about like black oiled fish guts. The slap-tap of the water bouncing off the pavement. My legs don’t work. The scum on the sink spreading but I’m waiting for your car in the driveway in a gold knitted hat, in a go cart, in the living room.
“For heaven’s sake, Toby, get in this kitchen and clean off these dishes! I’m tired of this filth you cause in this house.”
She always seemed to forget it was her filth that made the house smell so wretched and her dishes that piled up even though she never seemed to eat. I walked into the den where she had laid the night before, barefoot, ragged, sunken in and drunk. Her sterling rose colored lipstick was smeared to one side and she was humming an unrecognizable tune when I caught her eye.
“It’s about time Toby, Jesus you move like a cripple and what in the world is wrong with your face?”
I automatically look down, ashamed of the plainness of my looks. Mattie is an extravagant type of lady. The kind who wears expensive clothes and drinks high prices wine for everyday leisure, the type of lady who makes big hand gestures when she talks and small giggles when the rarity of embarrassment happens. She was a woman who wasn’t easily satisfied.
“It’s almost two o’clock, Toby, what have you done all day?”
I continued not to say a word and walked on through the swinging door into the kitchen. There was vomit in the sink. “My goodness, Mattie, What is it with you? Can you go one night? One night without drinking yourself senseless?” My screaming at her seemed to be a kind of ritual, our types of ‘hello’ to each other. It was my way of making her feel bad enough to just leave me alone, go into her room or the cellar and drink while I stayed upstairs painting or writing letters to him that I would never send.
“Don’t you raise your voice at me, Toby Madeline. I’m in charge here.” She half moaned half screeched while holding on to the golden handle bar on the breakfast nook.
“Grow up Mattie. Get a job and stop living off your dead husband’s inheritance. Do something with yourself.” I snarled at her knowing this statement hurt her to hear just as much as it stung me to say it. I walked out the front door forgetting about the rain and continued walking till I saw the bus nearing the stop just up ahead. I jogged to the stop right as the bus got there. Opening the door was a tall older man with a five o’clock shadow. His eyes were deep set and tired, his mouth slightly bent in a smile as he nodded his head towards me. “Looks like you should had an umbrella, girl.” At this he gave me a toothy grin and everyone watched as my shoes squeaked against the bus floor. The dark woman with the curly haired infant watched me intently looking down when I had finally caught her eye. The older handicapped man in the corner looked disgusted with my appearance and turned away disapproving, "damn kids,” he muttered and shifted in his wheel chair. I walked to the back part of the bus. My cap had developed a constant drip onto my shoulder. The bus had started up again and I jolted in my seat sliding into the pole next to me. I began to play with the strands on my chocolate powder brown sweater holding back the tears of anger and frustration.
“I like your hat.” A small pink cheeked child who had gotten on the bus with a stout elderly woman had said. He hopped on the seat and poked his fingers through my hat hole.
“Thanks.” I smiled at him and he giggled. The elderly lady I found out was his grandmother who he has to stay with during the day when his father worked. He told me his mother went away with the cancer and that’s when they moved to the city. My stop was nearing and I bid farewell to the boy. My clothes were still damp but no longer wet. I stepped off the bus into the fresh, cool, air. The sun had come out and the clouds were parted at spots. I walked the short distance down the almost deserted street corner up to the discolored and dilapidated tenement buildings.
“Joshua Bening!” I yelled to the open window a few stories high. I waited a minute and shouted again, “Joshua Bening if you don’t get down here!” A light blue windbreaker came sailing out the window and my heart sped up and my stomach filled with butterflies. In minutes he was standing next to me but I was still looking up toward the now almost cloudless sky.
“Nothing up there can be as great as what I’m looking at,” he said with mock suaveness. I looked at him and laughed but he saw the sadness in my eyes. “Is it Mattie again?” His concern was genuine and I felt completely at ease and for the first time in days, comfortable.
“She’s been drinking for days.” When I said the words the flood of memory of the last few days came back. The fighting, the crying, and waiting for her to get sober.
“Why didn’t you come see me sooner?” He had placed his hand on my back guiding me down the street towards our favorite café. I stayed silent as he ordered our coffee from a pale girl with green eyes. “Do you want anything to eat, Toby?” I shook my head no. I couldn’t eat. My stomach was in knots. We sat in a booth with ‘Café Terrace at Night’ imitation paintings on them.
“She hasn’t stopped this whole week; with his birthday coming up she’s been completely overwhelmed.” My legs were shaking as I spoke. I looked down at my dark roasted coffee quickly getting cold. I took a sip just to do something with myself.
“How are you handling it, Toby?” The question came as a surprise and caught me off guard. My mouth was stuck dry together, the bitter taste of coffee glued to my tongue.
“I’ve been better. I waited for him today; you know neither of us has moved that go-cart from the living room?” Joshua chuckled a bit as an ambulance raced by, its sirens being heard blocks away and the murmurs around us rising.
“We should finish the go-cart, Toby. You know as a tribute to him or something.” Joshua’s suggestions, as obvious as it seemed, never even occurred to me. I had kind of grown accustom to the large metal heap in our living room. It stood like a monument or a tombstone.
“I don’t know, maybe.” My words came out in a whispered voice. “We should walk.” I told Joshua already standing up putting on my overcoat. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and the streets had seemed to be completely covered with people of all sorts. My walk was quick paces and I wove in and out of the students, businessmen and customers around me. Joshua was somewhere behind. I could hear his voice telling me to “slow down” or “wait up” I eventually began to get winded and I slowed, allowing our gap to close.
“What’s up with you?” Joshua’s breath was hard and I could feel the tears running down my burning cheek. Angry walkers bumped against us sneering over their shoulders as they passed. We got closer and I whispered between sighs, “Why wasn’t I good enough for him to stick around?” I closed my eyes and I was back at the doorway again looking in at the red covered wall. The way his legs lay at an awkward sideways angle sloppily over one another. What would have been his head lay all over the sage love seat Mattie had put in his rich oak office. The gun lay on his limp lap. Joshua had led me to a nearby bus stop heading toward our homes.
“She blames me for it. She says I didn’t get help fast enough, or because we always fought, or …we didn’t ever fight Joshua.” I couldn’t stop the tears that now covered my face and Joshua’s hand from wiping them away. His eyes were damp with sadness. He’d known only enough of my father’s death, the rest I refused to speak of and now the story came out so freely. I was unable to hold it in and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “I didn’t think Mattie ever loved him, or me for that fact but when I got her on the phone, when I told her he was dead, when I read her the note he left me…I’ve never felt someone’s pain so real and deep at such a distance. My mom went silent after that for days she didn’t say a word. She wouldn’t eat, she just stayed locked up in her room reading the note he left specifically for her. She would hover over it reading it over and over again. At night I’d hear her from my room cursing him for leaving but when day came it was always my fault that her husband blew his head off. She seemed to forget I lost my dad.” The bus had pulled up and was waiting for me and Joshua to get on. As my foot left the pavement onto the bus I felt a sense of relief from having shared even so little of me and Mattie’s story. When I looked at Joshua he didn’t seem judgmental or afraid like I had thought he would. Instead he took my hand and held it tightly knitted with his and talked again about finishing the go-cart me and my father had started. I talked about letting him read the notes I write to my dad. Then he stopped and looked at me intensely, "Maybe, Toby, you need to forgive her just as much as she needs to forgive you, after all, she lost a husband.”
“Maybe.” Was all I would allow out. I knew inside he was right. I hated her these past months. She disappeared when my father died and I gave her no chance of redemption when she tried. I’d grown used to our religious fights when she’d come home and the silence otherwise. I thought over how much we had both changed since my father’s death as I walked back to my house. Joshua already on his way back home. When I walked in to the house Mattie was laid in a ball in the corner, a bottle of scotch next to her feet. She looked vulnerable and innocent and angelic as her chest rose with each deep, stifled breath, her lips pouted like a lover, her eyes crinkled in almost confusion. I wondered what she was dreaming. Then as I walked towards her and lightly kissed her forehead, for the first time in eight months I told my mother I loved her.
© Valerie Long
