Bottles in the Can
I opened the bathroom door and found my mother sitting on the toilet with a book on her lap.
“You’ve been in here an hour and I need to change my tampon,” I said. I tried to make my voice civilized but it sounded angry and annoyed, like my father’s. “Jesus, I’ll get toxic shock and turn fucking green.” I didn’t actually have my period but I had learned to raise the stakes with my mother, to get her to function. The book on her lap had a pastel cover and looked sappy—some kind of family drama, something awash with sentiment. I noticed two or three beer bottles next to the toilet.
“Maze, you’d love this book. It takes place in rural Midwest during an outburst of cholera. The narrator is a young woman with insomnia. She never sleeps. Never!” I stared at her. Her pale blue robe hung over the sides of the toilet, covering her naked body.
“You can’t spend all day getting drunk on the toilet!” I said. “And that book sounds awful. I hate the Midwest.”
My mother closed the book and gave the cover a considering look. I got a whiff of hops and urine.
Our bathroom is small and grey and has no lock. It’s a no frills kind of room with a simple tub, a simple toilet and a simple sink. The only interesting thing is a painting my father hung twenty years ago. It shows a contemplative man in a claw foot tub looking out the window as he bathes. Color and pattern fill the man’s bathroom and give it a generally opulent look. There’s even a Persian carpet beside the tub. The man wears a lucid expression on his clean face, an expression I’d love to see on my mother. I stare at the painting while my mother puts herself in order.
“You’re drunk, Mom.” I notice for the first time that the man in the painting holds a book in one hand that he dangles over the side of tub, his fingers loose. Apparently life stole his attention from the story. My mother laughed.
“Maze. I just had a couple of beers. I’m not drunk.”
“Isn’t Marion coming over this afternoon? And you’ll be drunk when she gets here. Just get out, so I can…”
I heard her fumble with the bottles. Clinking together as she lifted them in her arms. She stopped for a moment in front of the mirror, swaying. She looked lost. Like someone who’d just gotten off an international flight, who’d been fast asleep, and now can’t quite tell where they are and how they’ve arrived. I waited, below the painting.
“Maze, don’t be mean to me. I’m fragile today. I forgot about Marion.”
She moved past me, brushing my forearm with the soft skin of her hands, and I thought about slapping her face. My hand wanted to slap her, I could feel them tingle and rise. But I pictured her crumpling at the impact and I couldn’t do it. She had terrible balance when she drank. If she lost a tooth, or more of her mind, I’d always blame myself.
After she left the bathroom I opened the small window beside the sink and then closed the toilet and sat down. The window faced shrubbery and our neighbor’s wall. I inhaled the fresh, unfermented air and then the doorbell rang.
“Mom, get that! It’s Marion.” I waited for the sound of the front door to open. Instead I heard another ring and light knocking. “Mom!” My mom was probably already lying in bed with that stupid book open on her belly and another beer in her hand. Maybe she’d stopped in the kitchen for something salty to snack on. The knocking started again and I left the bathroom.
When I reached the entryway and looked through the diamond shaped window in the center of the door I saw that it wasn’t Marion. Marion was a tall, subtly glamorous lawyer who’d known my mother for thirty years and always been a mediocre but persistent friend. The woman on the other side of the door from me reached my eye level with mousy brown hair and large hazel eyes.
My mother stood on the other side of the door. My mother, smiling patiently. But how could it be her? How had she left the house so quickly without my hearing her drunken ambling, her crashings and fumblings? I couldn’t get a full breath, everything inside me felt ragged and thick. Had she locked herself out? Did she think she was being cute? Reappearing, fresh and new, to erase the image of her toilet-bound stagnation…I thought I might roar at her until the sound broke the glass of the window.
I didn’t want to open the door.
Then I noticed my mother looked different. This mother smiled with more amiability than runs in our family, and she looked put together, fresh. Her hair lay flat and smooth. It shined. Her eyes shone too, and a forest green dress hung over her long limbs in a verdant flow. Her fingers pulled on a string of amber beads around her neck. Lucidity radiated from her entire being like the man in the tub.
“Mother?” I mouthed. I was puzzled. The skin on my arm rose where she’d brushed against me moments ago. My mother nodded. I still didn’t open the door. Instead I turned my head and looked behind me, beyond the entryway of my parents’ house, through to the dining room. I saw a pile of papers on the table, silver car keys, a Safeway bag. Beyond the dining room I could see the glow of television escape the darkness of my parents’ bedroom. I was looking though the house as if it were a tunnel or a mine. It looked infinite and grotesque. Then, I saw movement. Emerging from the glow of the bedroom, I saw my mother. My other mother. In her pale blue robe. She frowned, holding the pastel book in her hand, and a bottle of beer. She turned in my direction with a sad and distant nod.
Both mothers stared at me.
(Written 2010ish)
