Do You Have Children?

“You should think about this, Reed,” my mother continued. “They prefer to be with me. You know that.”

Ouch. Could that be true?

“Oh yes,” she continued, seeing my face. “They’ve told me. Many times. It breaks my heart to tuck them in at night and hear their prayers. I don’t think they say prayers at home with you, do they? No, I thought not.”

Impatient, yes indeedy. My fury rose to my ears.

“They do NOT prefer to be here with you,” I snarled, at the same time, asking myself if perhaps they might prefer her house alone in the woods to mine. No other company, just Granny and they, all the time. She’d have to drive them to school and drive them to friends. Find friends because my mother had cast off all hers. Alienated them. Her phone never rang.

“Oh, yes they do. And I can prove it. Right now!”

“How would you do that?” I choked.

“Ask them,” she said with a triumphant grin. My gut clenched.

"They’re asleep! It’s ten o’clock at night.”

“We’ll wake them up right now and let them choose. You or me.”

I woke them, all right, and stuffed them back into the car, drove the hundred miles to my own house and never spoke of it.

So I didn’t get to start a career. I bought cheap houses and fixed them up and set the table with good silver and packed lunches and took them skiing and sent them off to see their father and yes, my mother, whenever they wanted.

I pitched just one Little League game until my son walked off the field, bored. I bought him a pony. My daughter had her Barbies, my son his Tonkas. Bikes, skates, swimming and tennis and sailing lessons, cooking, Europe and even six weeks in Greece with just me. Nightly readings by the fire. They had fabulous Christmas presents, the poor little broken-family orphans. Everything my parents did for me and more.

Men came and went. Very few wanted to take on two young kids and to tell the truth, I had had my fill of being a wife. So it was the open sea for me.

The daughter, Sarah, was ever distant. I never knew when she menstruated. She did not want me to hang her one art project. She did not want to paint or cook or sew or knit or plant anything. She lived behind a closed door from the time she was eleven or twelve. She went to boarding school in ninth grade and spent her holidays with chums. At the senior year celebration of her B.U. Women Crew she told me I was not to come because her father would be there, instead. Not a shortage of tickets. She didn't want to see us in the same room. Was I sorry I had supported her team with actual money?

Nick left boarding school under a cloud before the end of his ninth grade. I got him into Germantown Friends Dayschool and for a time he had a nice little job opening up the corner store on the same block. He was funny and lively and popular and acted in the school productions. But his father was not pleased with his low grades and never attended any functions. The kids always went to their father, in Paris, in Teheran, in Newport or Florida.

When Nick abandoned school in his junior year to play with cocaine and the Philadelphia police would not enforce the curfew unless they caught him on the street, I begged the ex talk to the boy.

"Don’t bug your mother, you’ll be out of there pretty soon,” was his advice.

Indeed, before senior year, the boy left for his father’s, dealt more drugs, flunked public high school, flunked a semester at UTenessee and tried to kill himself. He let me rescue him, then disappeared into that awful, Arctic world of dealing. I bailed him once and then set myself against that tide. No more money, just straight talk. He fathered a child, abused his wife and abandoned them. I chose her and the kid and haven’t heard but once from him since. When he sees his kid, begging to be forgiven his child support, he forbids the boy to see me. We ignore this admonition.

My daughter has not spoken to me in almost ten years. Who knows if my mother told the kids I was a crazy, drunken lesbian? I’ll never know if the ex’s bountiful supply of money lured them away.

So you, my sisters and brothers, you asked what happened after the horse kicked the kid’s head in. Now you know. Tell me, do I still have two children?

Too Awful

These posts are so painful, so awful, I have to take break. Who the hell wants to know this?

Do You Have Children?

It was true. I didn’t think I was a good mother. I often felt angry and frustrated. Lonesome and cut off from my life. Writing seemed a thousand years in my past. The Husband didn’t want me to work and he sneered when I sold one little article for twelve dollars.

I minded the kids, cooked, entertained, decorated the house and kept a lovely horse. Rode with my girlfriends when the kids were in school. I gardened and raised dogs. I visited my widowed mother. Kept supper warm when the husband came in late.

“You better find yourself a place to live,” he said, opening his suitcase on our bed.

“I don’t want this,” I cried. “I won’t sign a divorce.”

“If you don’t sign, I’ll have the sheriff put you and the kids on the street,” he said.

Boy, I could see it. I could see it. The idea of separation from him was terrifying. Where would I go? Where would we go? The dog, the cats, the horse, my garden—for surely we couldn’t continue on what he would provide. And sure enough, we didn’t continue.

“What if I don’t take the kids,” I said, trembling at such an idea.

“If you won’t take the children,” he said stiffly, “I’ll put them up for adoption. My sister will take them.”

Indeed his sister, whom he had barely spoken to since I’d known him, nine years, could afford to take them since she’d divorced very, very well. What a fool I was.

I couldn’t let them go. I set my oars and headed my little boat into the stormy seas.

Of course I was delighted to let the Ex have the kids anytime he wanted. And my mother, lonely in her widowhood, was thrilled to have them singly or together for a week or two. She felt she was a great help. And she was. She was. Then, this, out of the blue.

“You know, Reedie, you should let me have the children,” she said one rainy spring night as I prepared to head back home, leaving them with her.

“What?”

“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “I could do a better job. You’ve always been so impatient! They need more love. I have the time and I know your ex would pay me the money he pays you.”

Alarm bells went off.

“Thanks, Mom, but I don’t think so,” I stammered. How could this sixty-two-year-old woman with a terrible bad back who spent most of her days in her bed-nest with the TV on and her nights listening to rabid talk radio, a woman too acrophobic to go to a movie, who slouched around the house in a nylon mu-mu from the discount store, how could she possibly raise two kids who had music lessons and sports and, shit, I put in five hundred miles a week carpooling.

“No thanks,” I said, icily.

(More tomorrow)

Do You Have Children?

Men never ask me this question but mothers always do. If I hesitate and answer that I have two children, she may imagine they’re dead. So I hasten to add that we are only estranged. Have been estranged for years. This leads down a path I do not want to tread, at least not with someone I’ve just met.

You, however, I know you. I can tell you a little more of the story. But I must begin with the Great Disclaimer: I was a Monster. Yes, it’s no wonder they got rid of me. Although I didn’t beat them, didn’t chain them up—quite the contrary, I let them go where they wanted. They visited their father, my mother and their friends whenever they liked. I packed them up and spent the holidays alone.


Or with a boyfriend. Single for eighteen years I confess I did have lovers and yes, sometimes they stayed overnight but not in the same room, not until the boy was home from boarding school at fifteen. Even then I was discreet about the bedtime romps.

I was lonely. I like company. I like men and yes, sex. Of course I want to say, my only sin. Now that I’m digging into it, I see there is an underlying, original sin.

I never wanted to be a mother. I never babysat, never played with dolls or imagined what kind of a mother I would be. Never had a crush on a girl, either, although that may be irrelevant. Babies were just outside the picture. The first baby was an accident.

I married Mr. Executive to escape my mother, a woman obsessed with my virginity. She’d have locked me up in a chastity belt if there were such things. The pill came along ten years too late for me.

Frying pan into fire. Without birth control, illegal in Connecticut in 1960 even for married folk, I was two weeks along when I married and a mother a month after my twentieth birthday. The second child was meant to save my marriage.

As my husband prepared to move out I screwed up my courage and asked if he would take the children. I was just twenty-six, still young enough to finish college and start a career.

“You’re a good father,” I said. He had a great job and the kids adored him. “You take them. I’ll have visiting privileges.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I have a job. I can’t be a full-time parent.”

"You can hire a nanny and a housekeeper. Stay in this house, keep the kids in school. I’ll be around."

“And,” I confessed, “I don’t think I’m a very good mother.”

A Good Walk Spoiled

A certain man I know—lets call him ‘Mr. Bob’—might retire if he could avoid playing golf. Poor Bob, he’s both a terrible golfer and a tender-hearted guy who can’t say No when Uncle Albert calls.

“Are you free on Wednesday?” Uncle Albert asks. That’s Senior Discount Day at the local greens. Uncle Albert likes the Senior Discount Deals: twenty bucks for eighteen holes and a free hot dog before you tee off. Free small beverage, too.

“I’ve never been any good at golf,” Mr. Bob says. His clubs aren’t the high end whackers a guy can brag about. And Mr. B doesn’t want to order expensive custom golf shoes with little pegs so he wears his good sneakers. Slippery, amateurish, plus it’s very irritating to walk around in soggy socks.

The Tiger isn’t calling Mr. Bob for a casual round. He’s never had the time or money to take lessons or belong to a club. His younger brothers love golf and they’re so much better the last time they played—the only time—he got his ass handed to him. Not that sibling competition has anything to do with the golf. Just saying, is all.

Golf is supposed to be a relaxing day in the sunshine but those few times Mr. B. has played with Uncle Albert, he comes home tired and pissed off.

“Did you have fun, dear?” the wife asks. But she can see the grim answer on Mr. B.’s face.

“First we get paired up with a couple of jokers I hope I never see again. All they talk about is the local hockey team I don’t give a rat’s patootie about. Sometimes they’re retired geezers, like Uncle Albert, only interested in what other courses charge, who has senior discounts for anything, how much they pay to get the car’s oil changed. Dog shit money.

“And I can’t talk about politics or the news because Uncle Albert is such an idiot. An archconservative idiot. He hates Obama. He hates the Federal government. Immigrants. And taxes, boy does he hate taxes.

“Basically he’s cheap. I’m ashamed to say that because he’s my uncle.

“Lemme tell you how cheap. Say he hits one into the rough. We’re both pretty lousy players. He’s only a little better than I and.. well, I did hit a couple of long, straight drives today. Surprised myself. But no, not enough to inspire me. I’m too old to start over. And golf is really boring.

“You get behind some women, for example. Women talk. Yak yak yak while we wait. But we’re just as bad.

“Say Uncle Albert’s ball is buried in the rough which is very often. Now, the gentlemanly thing to do is not hold everybody up by looking for the god damn ball. You just take another ball out of your bag and tee it up as close to where yours went in as seems reasonable and get on with the game.

“Not Uncle Albert. He goes into the bushes, whacking away with his club which I don’t think is legal. Certainly not good for the bushes. He searches until he finds his ball. Meanwhile, he’s finding other balls. Lots of them! After several minutes he emerges with handsful of balls, wearing a big smile.

“’Won’t have to buy any new ones for quite a while,’ he says with satisfaction. This is a guy whose house is worth over two million and he’s always drives a Lexus. Jeez. Today while I was waiting for him I looked around the edge of the rough and found an old ball, myself. So old the cover was split and a little tree was growing out of it.

“I don’t know why Uncle Albert doesn’t have anybody else to play with. Lots of old farts have those kinds of political opinions and the time and money to find the Senior Discount hot dogs. For some reason it’s me.

“And for some reason I can’t say no. I don’t know why. Maybe because he’s a relative. If he heard I had quit working, I’d have to play every single week. Get real golf shoes. Listen to those hockey bores. I tell you, honey, no matter how I complain about my job, it beats golf all to blazes. I’d much rather hike by myself.”

And Mr. Bob does just that when he can fend off Uncle Albert’s invitation.

As Mark Twain said: Golf, a good walk spoiled.

I Thought You Were Dead

On a whim I went back to my old hometown, Middle Haddam, Connecticut, last year as I was zipping through the state. I parked the car and walked all around town, beginning at the first house, the one with the cowboy wallpaper, the one where Dad brought home the terrified hound and the one where Mom threatened to leave.

Not in that order. The hound relaxed and Mom stayed put. Wallpaper’s probably still there. Nothing seems to have changed. Except me.

“I wonder if Sandra Hale still lives here,” I asked the grumpy postmistress.

She nodded toward a little old man twirling the knobs of his post box.

“That’s her husband. Ask him.”

He smiled at me.

“I’m a very old friend of Sandra.” I hesitated. What if..? “How is she?” He nodded and explained she was right outside in the car.

“San’,” I said as I rapped on the closed car window. She looked almost exactly the same: thick, reddish hair, pale skin with freckles. Sensible glasses. Exactly my age. Which would make her husband my age.

I rapped again. She was fooling with her checkbook and looked up with irritation.

“What do you want?” she growled as she rolled the window down just two inches.

“San, it’s me, Reedie!” I exclaimed joyfully. Had not seen this woman since I first married in 1961. Boy, she looked great!

“Oh, Reedie,” she cried and opened the door. Just about time, I thought, then stuffed that away. “Gosh what are you doing in Middle Haddam?" She looked me in the eye. "I thought you were dead.”

Well. Welcome back.

Then we hugged and she told me all about her life married to Richie, that old man, and he came out and stood aside our floods of girlish reminiscing. They had followed his Army career and come home to take care of her aging parents who had finally died off, leaving Sandra and Richie a house just above our old grammar school.

Our old pal, Doris, who lived in the next town, had once married briefly and lived quite cheerfully on her own. This one and that had died or moved away. We soon ran out of common folk to catch up on.

Then she had to go somewhere and drove off.

Dead, huh?

I got a better reception from the one real estate broker in town who bought my mother’s last remodel and remembered her with proper respect. She actually apologized to me for updating a bathroom.

“Your mother was so clever at tucking a bathroom into a tiny space,” the broker said.

“What? You’re destroying my mother’s work after.. let’s see.. only fifty years? That's a hell of a note!”

She smiled thinly. Oh hell, I’m just a ghost.

The door of the little Episcopal church where I tied that unfortunate knot was locked. Just as well, I thought. A bosomy lass came out of the brick Rectory where Dad stopped for a post-sermon martini many a Sunday. Good enough reason to listen to Father Love’s bromides, apparently. The bosoms glanced at me, got into her car and drove off. Boy, am I dead or what?

Another house my mother rescued, the one across from Sandra’s house. This diffident homeowner apologized for not having furniture up to Sally Stevens’ standards. I waved my hands helplessly and tried to reassure her. I did note, without saying anything of course, that my favorite maple trees were no more. Not her fault, they were about 200 years old when I left 60 years ago. Still. Her furniture looked just fine, better than anything Mother could afford.

“Ah, Mother's sconce,” I pointed out as I left.

“I love that sconce!” she dithered happily.

I headed down the twisty River Road past Gretchen’s house where her wonderful grandmother just keeled over dead one fine September afternoon and I had to go get poor Gretch’ from St. Margaret’s School way over in Waterbury. Haven’t seen dear Getchen but once since I married and moved away with my la de dah Yalie husband. Her brother, a skinny kid terrified of his beautiful mother, killed himself at Parris Island boot camp. Some one else found Gretchen then but I didn’t live there.

None of the old, shingled cottages had seen a carpenter’s hammer. I’d love to see Gretchen again and Sandra and Doris, my bridesmaids but I was walking in a parallel universe. At last I came to the lovely big river and Mary Starr’s summer cottage right on the shore. The dark screens of the river-facing porch were exactly as I remembered. Up the green painted steps and I’d be on the comfy flowered couch among the grownups, their dripping ice teas and gins, their cigarette smoke and loud, husky laughter.

Mary Starr was a jolly, fat woman who loved everybody, dogs and cats included. She was just taking a batch of bread out of the oven.

“Go ahead, hon, just pull the end offa that loaf and see if it’s any good,” she’d say. “Here’s the butter. Sal, you got to feed this girl!”

Mary Starr and her bigger, fatter and sooner dead husband, Alan Starr—man, they could cook and could they eat. Lobsters with bowls of butter and lemons. Shad, shad roe, bluefish, swordfish, steaks as thick as your thigh on the charcoal grill. Crispy on the outside, red and rare in the middle.

“Let’s see if you can pick this up with your toes,” Mary would say, tossing a dime on the bare wood floor when we kids got bored. This was before we learned to drink. My pal, Tinkie, same age, and I would madly scrunch our toes to win the dime and another and another. My mother rolled her eyes but Mary waved her off. “Good for their feet. Going to be ballerinas one day, Sal. You’ll see.”

The Starrs owned a brass bell factory where Tink’s mother, Margo, worked as a secretary in those desperate last years before cancer took her. Yes, there was Margo pulling on a long cigarette filter, very elegant, keeping an eye on Tink. No shenanigans, that was Margo. Tink was a complete orphan at thirteen.

All our lives changed when Margo went.

But the river remains the same. I doubt any house in Middle Haddam has seen a single new two by four since I left. Mother still rules. And I am, to Middle Haddam, still dead.

Sunday Morning Sex

Hearing that her grandfather had just passed away, my old friend, Katie, went straight to her grandparent's house to comfort her 95 year-old grandmother.

When she asked how Grandfather had died, Grandmother replied, "He had a heart attack while we were making love on Sunday morning."

Horrified, Katie blurted that sex for 100-year-olds was certainly asking for trouble.

"Oh no, my dear," Grandmother replied. "We adjusted long ago to our advancing age. It seemed our best time coincided with the Sunday bells of the nice little church next door. Long and slow and even. Never strenuous, just in on the Ding and out on the Dong."

She paused to wipe away a tear. "He'd still be alive if the ice cream truck hadn't come along."