Crybaby Ranch Read online

  When we pull into the drive, Dad says, “I’ll bring your suitcase. Go ahead and say hello to your mother.”

  I spring at the chance to greet her alone and dash through the garage door, into the laundry room, down the hall to surprise her, though I know she expects me. When I reach the kitchen, I see the back of her hair above the glider, where she is sitting on the porch.

  “Mom.” I come to a breathless stop beside her. I am five years old, knowing that when she lays her eyes on me, her face will open like an Easter lily.

  She tips her head up toward me slowly. She smiles.

  Oh my God, she’s mad. She’s not going to hug me.

  “I’m so glad to see you.” I stoop down to her level. Her petite prettiness is so familiar to me tears sting my eyes. Everyone has always remarked on Mom’s natural vivid coloring, and it has not faded one bit. Perhaps her startling blue eyes are a shade or so paler, but still not a silver hair in her black curls, high cheek color the same, and she’s wearing her trademark bright pink lipstick, the only makeup she’s ever used.

  “It’s nice to see you, too,” Mom says. I’ve seen this set-faced friendliness before with clerks and salespeople. Her fingers rub the ironed edge at the hem of her cotton dress over and over. “Mom?”

  I hear my dad coming and look toward him.

  “We’re back, Lizzie,” he says in a hearty voice. He bends down and kisses her mouth and nuzzles her beneath an ear. “How’s my best girl?”

  I have never seen Dad do more than give Mom a parental peck on the cheek in front of me. She sometimes nuzzled him and teased him flirtingly, but Dad always pretended he wasn’t involved. He straightens upright again, yet keeps his eyes on her.

  Mom says to him, “She’s pretty. Who is she?”

  Horror slashes me wide-open. I swing around to face my father. “Dad…”

  He refuses to look at me. “You know this ugly duckling. This is Suzannah. This is our little girl.”

  three

  The first moment Mom leaves the room, I say, “Dad, my God, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Don’t get dramatic. You caught her on a bad day.”

  “She didn’t know me.”

  “I think she was just teasing.” He says Mom is depressed; she’s on medication. He keeps his eye on the door while he talks. “She doesn’t know. That’s the one thing I can do for her. You are not to say a word.” He moves away and hollers, “Lizzie, what are you doing in there?”

  “She doesn’t know what?” I follow Dad.

  “Not now,” he whispers and leaves the room.

  I take a couple steps toward the closed door. “Please,” I whisper. “I’m tired of being scared.” I know they can’t hear me and I’m embarrassed to act like a small child in need of the grown-ups’ assurance, but I’ve exhausted my fortitude for crash landings today. I move away from their door and go to my own room on the other side of the house.

  Somehow I slept straight through the night. Now this morning during breakfast I wonder if that’s true about the bad day and the teasing, or whether Mom may still be drinking. Either Dad gave Mom a good talking to and she’s trying to please him or she really knows me today. The sticky Florida heat is a rumor to my skin, I feel so chilled and afraid. My fingers try to draw warmth from my coffee mug. I hold the mug between my breasts to melt the ice crystals that inhibit my lungs from fully expanding.

  “Look at you with your high neck and long sleeves,” Mom says. “Why, I haven’t seen a top like that for years.” She talks to me as if we have breakfast together every morning. She turns to Dad. “Do I get my hair done today?”

  “No, that’s Friday.”

  “What day is this?”

  “Monday.” Dad scrapes his chair back. “See?” He goes to the rolltop desk in the corner of the kitchen and pulls out a calendar. “We wrote down Andre on Friday. Here we are on Monday, so we don’t go for one, two, three, four more days, do we?”

  Mom rolls her eyes to me behind his back, and I laugh right out loud, giving her away, I am so relieved. This is my mother. This is the old game we play, how we defend ourselves from Dad’s bulldozing and ever-present focus on our lives. Mr. Buttinsky, she always calls him, when we’re alone. Sometimes Mr. Butt for short.

  “Same old Dad?” I ask, grinning. He could slip out of a conversation and into his professor mode in an eye blink. But this lecture on counting the days seems a bit patronizing, even for him.

  “Worse.” Mom tips her head back and smiles when Dad passes behind her chair. He ruffles her hair and bends to kiss her upside-down mouth before taking his seat again.

  He acts like they’re honeymooners. That’s something new, but it’s at least a positive change. For the first time, I take more than a tight and shallow breath. A full measure of air draws into my lungs. I push my long sleeves up past my elbows and reach for a piece of toast and the orange marmalade.

  Dad points out a hummingbird. We watch it kiss the feeder that hangs from a scrub pine near the screen. When my grandparents owned this place, they called this porch across the back of the house the Florida room. Mom and Dad and I always eat breakfast here and sometimes nap on the cots in the afternoon. A pair of sandhill cranes squawk to each other over the toast Dad threw to them in the yard, and a squirrel taunts from a pine branch, hoping to discourage them from eating it all.

  Dad says, “Girls, I’m off. We meet back here at five thirty to dress for dinner and watch a little news. Our reservation is at the Prawnbroker for seven. Suzannah, let me show you this.” Dad walks to the end of the kitchen counter; I follow him. He holds a pad and pencil in his hand. “This is where we leave notes to each other.” He looks at me sternly, with meaning. “Do not forget to leave a note here whenever you leave the house. Even for a walk outside, you leave a note. Understand?”

  I nod, but I understand very little. Is Mom putting on some act here? The thought surprises me. But it’s true that Mom has always pretended she didn’t know what was going on to get our attention. I’ve never questioned her acting dumb. I’ve just repeated information or explained the obvious by habit. Or perhaps Dad is exaggerating a small memory problem into a large one, taking the opportunity to exercise more control over her. I follow Dad down the hall to the door, step outside with him.

  “Are you two still seeing Dr. Mengele?”

  “It’s Dr. Meagher and you know it. Don’t be disrespectful.”

  “He’s arrogant and keeps his patients in the dark.” Anger seeps into my voice. I’m tired of this fear and uncertainty.

  Dad lowers his chin, raises his eyebrows. “Perhaps you’d like to take over the bills. Then you can choose whomever you like.” He salutes me and steps into his car. He rolls down his window. “Remember, don’t discuss your mother’s trouble with her.”

  “But, Dad, I want to know how she feels.”

  “You’re here seven days. I’m here every day, around the clock—and I mean around the clock. Sometimes we are awake all night.”

  “How come?”

  “She gets upset. Sometimes she throws things.” He starts the engine. “I can’t talk about your mother behind her back…. Just be good to her.”

  “I have always been good to her. Dad, wait.”

  His car begins to ease out of the drive.

  “Keep it that way. And wear something decent tonight for dinner. You look like a Cossack all bundled up like that.”

  I watch him follow the circle drive out to the road. I am costarring in one of those movies in which the plot is based on nobody knowing what any of the other players know. Where all the suspense comes from everybody saying, “Don’t tell so and so.” This movie begins with Dr. Meagher, who is probably withholding information from Dad, who in turn is withholding what he knows from Mom, who in turn is withholding from the other two. And nobody is telling me one damn thing.

  I return inside and check on Mom.

  She is playing solitaire on the coffee table and watching a game show. Smoke from a cigarette drif
ts across her cards. Looks pretty normal to me. Exactly what she’s always done when left alone. I carry our breakfast dishes from the porch table to the sink. I’m glad Mom and I get time today away from Dad. I might discover things aren’t too different from the way they’ve always been. It’s just me. I’ve been gone two years. I’ve forgotten how it used to be around here. And besides, I’ve worked at becoming more alert to life. Somebody at my house needs to keep the dust stirring.

  This is the first time I’ve thought of Erik since I arrived. I pause on the porch with two short towers of used juice glasses and coffee cups and watch an anhinga land on the bare branch of a snag leaning over the creek. I don’t miss my husband one bit.

  I start down the hall to change into cooler clothes, turn back, read Dad’s note: Gone library. Back 5:30.

  I tell Mom, “I’m going down to Bessie Creek after I change my clothes. Back in thirty minutes.” And I also write that out in a note to her.

  She says, “Okay, honey,” takes a dainty puff off her cigarette, and lays a black ten on a red jack.

  I walk down the hall to my room. I’ve slept in this bed since I was a child visiting my grandparents. The window beside it catches the breezes off Bessie Creek. I remember Mom tucking me in at night. If I wasn’t sleepy, I’d ask questions about God to stall her leaving.

  Have I heard her use my name yet? Stop worrying, I remind myself. Get outside. The purple martins return this time every year. End of January they arrive by the thousands from South America, first sending scouts to check out their old nests. Dad said he hasn’t seen one yet. Maybe I’ll spot the first one and report the news to him at dinner. I dig around my suitcase for shorts. I hear a sound and look up to see Mom standing in the doorway. She holds my note in her hand.

  “Did you think I’d forget?”

  I am a toddler, caught in a lie. I don’t know what to answer. Either yes or no will get me in trouble. “I wasn’t sure you heard me. The television—”

  “Hmm,” she says, “sounds like your father’s gotten to you.” She raises her dark brows and leaves.

  I collapse on the bed. I have insulted her. Betrayed her.

  My dad is right: I’m here one week; then I go home to my life. He stays. Still, I carry my sandals down the hall to the family room, ready to spill all.

  Mom stops shuffling her cards when she sees me. “Honey, what day is this? Do I get my hair done?”

  four

  Erik tosses my luggage into the backseat, gets into the car. Under the sound of the ignition starting, he announces that he has made an appointment at a marriage counselor for us. Tomorrow.

  “Erik, I’ve had the worst week. I told you on the phone, I’m just wrecked.” Bring on that boredom and routine I used to groan about. Bring it on now. “Can’t this wait?”

  “You’ve been after me to see someone for years. Well, now I’m ready.”

  “But I’m not ready.” This reminds me of the times when Erik and I don’t make love for a while. I finally woo him into the mood. Then he comes too fast and blames it on the fact that it’s been so long since we’ve made love. I feel set up not to get the most out of this therapy appointment.

  Still, at last Erik is taking some responsibility for our relationship; I should feel glad about that. But then I always think I should feel glad we made love, too. I’m learning a thing or two there, finally. Part of my recent move toward independence includes taking charge of my own orgasms.

  I say, “I’m just so worn-out right now.” Tomorrow a week’s worth of catch-up waits for me in the classroom, but it’s hard to stir up sympathy while glowing with a Florida tan in the middle of a gray Ohio winter.

  When Erik drives, he leans into the door and tips his left shoulder down. He glances my way. “Your hair lightened on top. Must have spent a lot of time at the beach.”

  “Mom and I went for a couple walks.”

  I told Erik on the phone how hard it was sorting out the truth about my mother’s mental health. I tell him now, “I still don’t know what’s going on with Mom. It could be depression or she could be sneaking drinks, for all I know. Memory is affected by a lack of certain B vitamins, too. So is depression.”

  “To ask you, everybody is suffering from depression. Ever think you might have an opposite problem?”

  “Like what? What’s the opposite of depression, glee?”

  “Maybe. If there’s no good reason for it, that defines a problem.”

  That’s Erik: taking a firm stand against irrational glee. I hope he catches me pursing my lips at him. I admire his profile as he drives. Good thing, too. I seem to spend a lot of time talking to the side of his face, even outside of the car. He has a good strong chin and a mouth I just want to kiss. I like Erik best from the nose down. His eyes make me mad; they seem like hard brown nuts. I’d like to crack them open, poke around until I find something juicy inside.

  “Well,” I say, continuing to prove what a hard time I had in sunny Florida, “I can’t get my dad to discuss even buying One-A-Day vitamins from Publix. He’s intent on shutting me out of the problem, and I can’t wiggle my way in.” I look out the car window at faded red farm buildings and fields of brown stubble. A few hibiscus and bougainvillea bushes with their tropical neon blossoms could add a lot of zip to this January country.

  “First part of the week I kept score, shifting Mom’s points back and forth from the healthy column to the not-so-healthy column. Middle part of the week I created a new column and labeled it uncertain. By the time I left this morning, all the points were lined up there.”

  Erik doesn’t say anything. “You know what I mean?” I ask. Erik lifts his chin a notch.

  I look out the window. I can’t tell Erik the whole story. That gives too much reality to it. Perhaps this is the way Dad feels when he claims he can’t talk behind Mom’s back. The farmland is so flat I can see sky between the wheels of a train traveling beside us a half mile across a field. I remember Tessa from Jackson Hole remarking at the airport about the lack of hills here, even gentle slopes.

  I say to Erik, “This is hard on my dad. He feels like he’s betraying a secret trust talking about what’s going on with Mom.” I angle toward him in my seat. “Like us,” I say. “Married all these years and yet tomorrow we’re going to bring someone else into our private world. It’ll be hard talking about our problems.”

  “You wanted this.”

  What I wanted originally was for Erik to deal with his moodiness, get help with his depression. But honesty demands that I take a deep look into myself. I shift back around to face forward in my seat. These fields along the interstate with their narrow shelter belts of brush and bare trees look as depleted and forlorn as I feel.

  Maybe I want Erik to deal with his stuff because…What is that word therapists use? Projection? I could be projecting a depression of my own onto Erik. After all, he isn’t the one who tried to smell his watch, for God’s sake. He isn’t troubled with an alcoholic parent. He has never expressed dissatisfaction between the two of us. He even claims to like his job. Is this all my problem? Is my irrational glee a cover-up for a depression I keep attributing to Erik and my mother? I close my eyes and lay my head against the seat back. I’m too tired and confused to convince anyone, a therapist or even myself, that I’m a mentally stable person.

  For a long thirty minutes, it looks bad for me in therapy as Erik talks, talks more than he has at any one time during our seventeen years together.

  “She might be on something—drugs—I don’t know…. She’s real…high all the time. Forgets to sleep and works at the kitchen table late into the night. I get up for a drink of water and she’s sitting there with four, five necklaces hanging around her neck and bracelets covering her arms. She’s always gushing over some new enthusiasm.”

  Even I feel persuaded that a second, radically energized entity has taken over my body sometime in the past few years. As I listen to Erik’s report to the therapist, I begin to interpret my elation while working with m
y beads as a prelude to a pendulum’s swing into certifiable mania.

  Dr. Whitely checks me for a reaction. I refuse to look at him. I shift my eyes to the rows of orchids lining glass shelves in the office window. It’s going to be my turn to talk next, and I don’t have my life explained in my own mind, so I can’t set it to music and roll it out onstage for someone else.

  “She’s changed,” Erik tells Dr. Whitely. “I don’t know her. I don’t like her this way.”

  It all started with Beckett. Erik’s ex-wife, Delinda, filed for divorce and returned home to Los Angeles when Beckett was just five weeks old. I came to babysit him. Every day after high school during my senior year, I relieved the neighbor lady, who cared for both Erik’s baby and her own crippled husband by parking them in their wheeled seats in front of the television. Soon Erik interested me much more than the high school boys I had been dating. The money earned that summer I spent on new clothes to entice Erik. I realize now I went to way more trouble than I needed to. I had figured I would find it difficult as an eighteen-year-old to arouse the interest of a thirty-five-year-old. As it turns out, I have never aroused Erik’s interest, but I did lure him into marriage.

  Erik leans forward on the sofa as if to speak confidentially. “She used to…well, she never used to have orgasms. Now she’s quicker than me. I mean, that’s not bad. It’s just…I heard this doctor talking on the radio last week while she was visiting her parents. Here, I wrote it down.”

  Erik lifts his left hip up and extracts an old envelope folded into thirds. He reads from the outside of it. “‘Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.’” Erik looks up. “Ever hear of it? This fellow on the radio, this doctor, said to watch for personality changes, sexual-desire changes. That’s when I started listening.” Erik turns the envelope all around to collect his jottings. “He called it TLE. There’s a tendency to carry on conversations longer than the other person wants.”