Authors: Harvey Smith
Not everything made in the plants was toxic, but that didn't seem to matter. Vacuum-sealed tanker cars often carried tons of small plastic pellets. These were shipped out to locations across the country and melted down for injection-mold operations. The pellets were compressed for shipping and a train car full of them ruptured during my sophomore year in high school, killing our quarterback's father. Tiny pieces of plastic. When the vacuum seal on one of the tankers cracked, the resultant explosion shredded the train car completely, tearing the man to pieces and showering the area with white pellets. Someone from school drove by and said it looked cool, like snow.
I switched off the Lexus and sat behind the wheel, looking at the complex through dark-tinted windows. It had been built by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. All the people who lived there were ostensibly too old or otherwise incapable of making it on their own. The buildings were ugly, made of pale brick and the cheapest possible building materials. None of the structures had more than one story, giving the entire place a squat profile. Electrical and telephone wires crisscrossed overhead and occasionally something triggered a flight of marsh birds from one of the surrounding fields.
I glared out over the grounds, watching an old woman hobble from her unit to the central building, probably to check her mail. She wore slippers and a flower-printed dress, and there was a scarf tied around her head. I shook my head, wondering what she did every day, whether there were people who wanted to be around her, or whether she was just miserable and isolated, too broken to carry on a reasonable conversation.
Visiting my mother here for years, I knew that many of the residents weren't even old. Many of them were drug addicts who managed to hoodwink the bureaucracy operating the complex. Like my mother.
I locked the doors and walked across the parking lot. As I passed a dumpster, a younger guy approached me, very lean and ropey like a racing dog, wearing nothing but a loose pair of shorts and high top sneakers. He was so pale that an extensive network of veins showed from beneath his skin.
“Hey, want some smoke?”
“No, I'm all right. Thanks.”
He seemed to forget about me, continuing along the sidewalk without response, rounding the corner of the closest building.
I walked up the path leading to my mother's front door. A strip of masking tape was stuck to the plate bearing the apartment number. The tape was peeling up at the edges and someone had pinned it in place with rusted thumbtacks. In faded script, the tape said RAMONA HICKMAN. A few potted plants were scattered across her porch, all dead. The porch light next to the door was covered with spider webs and the husks of moths. I reached out and rapped on the door.
A long while passed and there was no response. I knocked again, much louder. Finally, something rattled behind the door.
Muffled, but distinctly afraid, a woman's voice sounded out from the other side. “Who is it?”
“Mom, it's me.”
“Who?” asked my mother.
“It's me…Jack.”
“Jack?” She sounded confused.
“Mom, it's your son…Jack. Open the door.”
There was a faint, “Oh.” The chain clicked and rattled as she slid it out of the groove. The door swung inward, revealing my mother a few feet beyond the threshold, a shrunken figure in a housecoat. I smelled cigarette smoke and garbage. She was barefoot and her legs were covered with insect bites. Her kinky red hair had washed out to gray and her skin had an ashen quality.
“Oh, Jack,” she said. “It's so turr'ble about your daddy.” She just stood in place after speaking.
I wanted to turn away, to walk back to the car without a word. She would stand in the doorway for a minute, I imagined, confused and mumbling to herself. She'd close the door, go back to the kitchen, and smoke a cigarette. Ramona could not be touched by such a gesture. Her emotions, if she had any, were inaccessible. If I left and never contacted her again she would simply continue to live in the housing complex until her death. She only called me once or twice a year when she managed to get her hands on a phone or acquired a prepaid calling card. She only contacted me to ask for money, saying she'd gotten into a bind and needed cigarettes or toilet paper.
I let out my breath. “Yeah, Mom, it is…it's terrible. He was never happy.”
“No,” she said. “No, he wasn't.” She looked off into space over my shoulder as if trying to remember something.
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah,” she said.
I waited for another second and when she didn't move I took a step up into the apartment. My mother shuffled backward, allowing me to enter. She closed the door and hurried to lock it, awakened into action.
“Mom...it's okay. No one is out there. It's daylight outside and I'm here.”
“Well, you never know about people,” she said, twisting the bolt.
The place was just as it always had been before, maybe worse. There was a path cleared through the jumbled landscape of her belongings, leading from the front door to the living room, then from the living room to the kitchen. I knew that there was a single bedroom and a tiny bathroom in the rear of the unit. She'd piled every imaginable piece of domestic junk along the walls and most of the floor space. The place was filled with broken pieces of furniture, a couple of dead television sets, numerous trash bags full of old clothing, a barbecue pit that was missing its lid, a massive Christmas wreath on a tripod and a number of yard ornaments. The old TV sets looked massive compared to my new Sony.
I stepped closer to my mother, causing her to freeze. Leaning in carefully, I put one arm over her shoulder, hugging her. Her body felt strange to the touch, like it completely lacked muscle tissue.
“Oh,” she said, recognizing the gesture. She smiled in a way that resembled a grimace and said, “Well…”
I made my way along the path to the kitchen without touching anything. Sitting down on one of the wooden captain's chairs there, I perched at the edge of the seat, avoiding contact with the ratty cushion tied to the slats in back. Every square inch of Ramona's dining table was covered with glasses, diet soda cans, ashtrays, food cartons, medicine bottles, celebrity gossip magazines, and equipment related to her books-on-tape setup. She'd acquired the ridiculous tape machine through a program dedicated to helping the blind. After that, being on a mailing list for the blind had opened the door to additional benefits.
She tottered through the dimly lit room, stopping next to her one working television. She picked up a pair of channel lock pliers from a tray next to the television. She fumbled with the pliers, using them to manipulate the controls. She twisted the broken-off knobs until the television came on and began to blare loudly. Holding the channel locks in her left hand, she straightened up and looked down at the screen. Long seconds passed before she moved again. Bending slowly from her thick waist, she went down again, trying to change the channel, but failing, the clumsy pliers slipping off the plastic knob.
“Durn it,” she said quietly, repeating the process. Finally, she managed to grab the tip of the knob and changed the channel.
The frayed material of her housecoat blocked part of the screen, which was discolored and snowy. A male newscaster in his fifties was presenting a story on a local food drive. Waiting on my mother, I suddenly found myself thinking back to the night in Point Reyes when I watched the homeless man sitting in a torrent of bird shit. I could see his vacant expression, his lack of concern…the disarray of his clothing and the filth in his beard.
Satisfied, my mother returned the channel locks to the tray and rotated to look into the kitchen. Seeing me, she stood up straight, as if struck. “Oh,” she said.
I wasn't sure what to say. Had she really forgotten that I was there? I exhaled deeply, trying to ignore the nasty smell in the air. There were three full trash bags sitting on the kitchen floor nearby. An apple core and an empty can of deviled meat had fallen out of one of the bags.
“Mom, come sit down. Please. I came to see you.”
“What?” she asked. She stood in front of the television slightly stooped.
“I came to see you,” I said louder. “To visit…”
“Oh.”
I started to speak again, louder, but she shambled into the room.
My mother was fifteen when I was born, which meant she was now forty-seven. In Sunnyvale, I routinely saw fifty-year-olds jogging on the hike and bike trails or emerging from yoga classes, bouncing down the gym steps as they migrated toward their teardrop SUVs or convertibles. By way of contrast, Ramona had the body of a woman in her sixties.
She reached the table and collected her cigarettes and lighter from where they rested near a pile of cassette tapes labeled in oversized fonts. Settling into one of the chairs with a creak, she lit up a cigarette and took a long pull. Her eyes squinted into crow's feet. She exhaled a gout of smoke and coughed a few times. She tried to spit a small piece of tobacco off the tip of her liver-colored tongue.
There was a tiny pricking sensation against the inside of my wrist. Looking down, I saw a flea. The dark, aerodynamic body stood out against my skin. I reached over and took it between my thumb and forefinger, rolling it until it was crushed into debris. My mother didn't own a pet.
I stared at the window, trying to block out the sound from the television, trying to calm myself against the onslaught of this environment. Delicate lace curtains bordered the window frame, stained from years of smoke. The glass in every window of the apartment was completely covered in aluminum foil. Tiny points of light shone through tears in the foil. I never understood why old people in the area did this. Apparently it made sense to my mother.
“Mom, I came to talk to you about Dad. About Big Jack.”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, nodding. “Yeah.” She looked up at me with a sudden intensity that surprised me. She held my gaze and said, “It's so turr'ble about your daddy.”
I felt my chest go slack and I sagged forward, resting my forehead in my hand. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it is.”
She went back to smoking and a few minutes passed.
I looked at the floor for a long time. “Who told you about it?”
“What?” My mother looked at me as she held the cigarette up to her mouth, her fingers crabbed around the filter. “Oh…your step-momma told me.” She nodded, bobbing her chin a few times. “Yeah, she did. She told me… He never was happy, was he?”
“No, Mom. I don't think so.”
“Yeah. He was a hard man to live with…a hard man.”
More than anything, I wanted to be out of the apartment. I wanted to jump to my feet, push my mother's chair backward, and crash through the aluminum-foil-covered window.
I saw her flipped over in the chair, still smoking calmly, with her red-gray seaweed hair spilling across the tiled kitchen floor around her head.
Instead, I asked, “Do you have a ride to the funeral? I wanted to make sure.”
Ramona nodded. “Yeah…your brother is gonna come get me.”
“Okay, good.” I stood up. “That's good. I'm going to see him later today.”
“I'm glad,” she said. “He's your brother. He's become a fine man. And handsome too.” She smiled and I saw that her teeth had mostly crumbled away. They looked like raisins hanging from her pale gums.
I willed myself to go numb and tried to smile. “I've got to take off.”
“Okay,” she said. Her tone was flat. “Okay…let me get up.” She rose weakly and I wondered if she was faking. She spent so many years trying to appear sick or beaten down, first in order to fool Big Jack then the county welfare agents. I had no idea what her physical health was actually like. Maybe what was originally an act was now real, after living like this for so long.
She followed me across the living room, taking several drags on her cigarette along the way. At the door, I turned the handle and gave her another awkward hug, which felt like hugging a dirty floor mop in a dress.
The door caught on the chain and I nearly yanked it off the hinges in aggravation. I wanted to yell,
What the fuck are you afraid of?
Instead I looked at her, still very close. “Okay, Mom. I'll see you soon. At the funeral.” The words made my tongue feel heavy.
“Alrighty then,” she said quietly. The smell of cigarette smoke was strong around her, clinging to her like an atmosphere. She craned her neck a little and looked up at me more directly, her eyes larval and glistening. Her voice fell to a whisper, as if ashamed. “How do you think they're gonna do it?”
I swallowed. What the fuck now? When I waited, she didn't follow up. “How will they do what, Mom?”
She peered at me with new life in her face, more lucid. “You know…lay him out. How do you think they're gonna do it?” She peered up at me, rodent-like, seeming even older.
I waited, soaking in her words, trying to comprehend her meaning.
“How are they gonna cover up his head?” she asked.
“Ah...” My tongue roved slowly across the enamel of my teeth. “I'm sure they've got something, Mom. I'm sure they deal with this all the time.”
“Will they use a bag over his head?” There was a childlike quality to her question and she pressed closer. She struggled with the concept, fixated.
“Yes. Or a veil.” I stepped backward through the door, stumbling. My foot settled reassuringly onto the concrete porch as I stepped farther away from her. “They'll probably use a veil. That's what I've heard.”
My mother looked down into space roughly at my midriff. Her face lost the odd intensity and went slack again. “Oh.”
“I'm going,” I said. “I'll see you at the funeral.”
“Okay, then…bye.” Her voice rose in pitch on the last word as she tried to muster her emotions for the farewell.
“Bye, Mom. Love you.” I backed away another few feet then turned for the parking lot.
Chapter 7
1975
The snow cone vendor leaned down from the window of his van to hand Jack a coconut snow cone. As he smiled, the man's lips peeled back and revealed a nest of greasy, blackened teeth. Measured from the floor of the van, he stood about five feet in height and was nearly as wide. Jack reached up to take the snow cone, but his eyes were locked on the man's swampy mouth. Desire for the sweetened ice fought with disgust. Carnival music played from speakers mounted to the top of the van. The music had a slurred, metallic quality because the same song played all day long, several days a week. Whenever Jack heard the song, sometimes from blocks away, snow cones and rotten teeth came to mind.