Sipping Tea with a Pretty Monster

Mothers keep secrets from their families for good reasons. Jodi’s mom, for example, sleeps around. Amanda’s mom snorts a little coke. The worst thing I can say about my mom is that she smokes.

But all that changed today when I came home from college earlier than planned.

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Home. The place where mom ruled. The woman who gave me unending advice on how to keep things looking good “down there.” The woman who overshared intimate details of her personal life with me.

It was nearly midnight when I unlocked the door, hoping mom was in bed so I could do the same. Unfortunately, she was up.

In the living room.

Nude, save for a pair of hooker heels. Strangling someone with pantyhose.

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College, for all its good points, did not prepare me for this. There was no curricular path to take that dealt with mothers in the act of killing someone while wearing no clothes. So I just stood there and watched the victim struggle before going limp.

“Hello, dear. You’re home early.” Mom smiled the smile that garnered her an obscene amount of money on the public speaking circuit. If she was nonplussed, I missed it.

“What the fuck, mom?” My university vocabulary deserted me at the moment.

“I’ll get dressed and make us a nice cup of tea, dear. And don’t be vulgar.”

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I didn’t want tea, but I got it anyway. Black tea. Strong enough to float a horseshoe on. Sweet enough to send me into diabetic shock.

Mom thought tea was a cure for all ills, especially when delivering bad news. When she and dad decided to get divorced, the news came with tea.

I had no idea how to start this conversation. What I did was glare at her until she spoke.

“It had to be done.” Mom reported this as if murder were a necessary evil, like dealing with periods, shopping with your mom, or figuring out the right bra to buy for the senior prom.

“Who was he?” This wasn’t what I really wanted to know, but I was afraid to ask her what the dead woman’s sins were.

“She.” Mom sipped her tea and nibbled on a Girl Scout cookie. Trefoils.

It took me a moment to digest this little nugget of information. Since the person had a bag over their head, and was fully dressed, I think I can be excused for not knowing the gender of the dead person.

“Okay, mom. Let me get this straight. You were nude, and you strangled a woman to death. Uh —”

“Well, I had to get her here first, so I honey-trapped her.”

“What’s that?”

“A honey trap? Using sexual promises to lure someone to a place where you can do what you want to do to them.”

“But…” My voice trailed off, unsure of how I wanted to object to mom’s behavior.

Mom stood up. “While you’re busy trying to construct a complete sentence, I’ll just nip out and load the body in the car. I have a date with a band saw that simply won’t wait.”

I drank the tea. It helped.

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I fell asleep waiting for mom to return from her errands. I refused to think about “the incident” since it involved some sort of saw, so I popped one of her sleeping pills and crashed.

It was afternoon when I woke up. The events of the night seemed like a horrible dream, but I had evidence that it happened. Mom’s slut heels were still in the living room, reposing innocently under the coffee table.

“Good afternoon, sunshine! Tea?”

I could write a treatise on how I didn’t want tea, but I would get it anyway.

“Tell me.” I hoped the first two words I uttered today would be sufficient for the day. They weren’t.

“Sweetie, do you remember Uncle Zack?”

“Barely.” I sipped the tea. Mom’s tea should be weaponized by the Pentagon.

“Well, he was fond of you and your female cousins. Too fond, if you get my meaning.”

I stared at her, puzzled.

“So fond,” she continued, “that he would often put his hands in inappropriate places.”

“Okay, I don’t remember that. He used to give me a box of chocolates and a stuffed animal when he visited.”

“And that’s as far as he would get with you, dear. So, I did what any right-thinking mother would do in this situation. I killed him.”

I asked for another cup of tea, with extra sugar.

“Um, how?” God, I had so many other questions about the matter, but my brain wouldn’t allow them to get to my mouth. Stupid, stupid, brain!

She explained. Sliced the carotid, dumped him into the bayou. Watch the alligators spin him to the bottom.

“I don’t know if he died from my wound, or from drowning by alligator. Did you know,” mom paused to take a sip of tea, “that alligators bury their food and let it rot for a bit before eating it?”

“No, mom, I didn’t know that,” I said matter-of-factly.

Mom sighed. “Anyway, that started me thinking. What am I doing with my life? Sure, I’m making tons of money and I have a beautiful daughter, but is that enough? Don’t I owe it to the world to get rid of as many bad people as possible?”

The mother-daughter relationship, throughout history, is fraught with differing opinions, tastes, and morals. I expected to argue with my mom over things, but this wasn’t a discussion I ever expected to have.

“By killing people?”

“Bad people,” mom said, correcting me, raising her right forefinger in the air.

“We have laws, mom.”

“The problem being, sweetie, that the law enforcement authorities always act after the fact. They come to the rescue after the person is dead, raped, or otherwise victimized. And then, well.”

“Well what?”

“How successful are they?”

She had a point.

“Which brings me to this.” I leaned forward and stared at my mom. “You seduced a woman?”

Mom smiled a smile that would make Dracula have second thoughts. “Yes. I’m very good at seduction.”

“Mom!”

“I’m pretty. I still have my figure, and a certain coquettish mannerism that others are drawn to.”

“Fuck!”

“Don’t be vulgar, dear.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. It was an uncomfortable silence on my part, but mom seemed to enjoy it. She flipped through a fashion catalogue, clucking her tongue at some of the modern attire. But that’s mom. Old-fashioned about fashion, but quite liberal when it comes to liberating the living from breathing.

“You have something to tell me?”

I sat up, stunned. Given the recent events, the news I had for her had been forgotten. The momentous revelation now seemed picayune.

“I did, but I think your actions have eclipsed my news.”

Mom grinned. “I see that the expensive education is paying off.”

“How many people have you killed, mom?” I was loathe to share my information right now. Didn’t seem like the right time, what with my mom’s confessions.

And I know what you’re thinking. How many people has she sent to the grave? I don’t think I want to know because the number, I’m sure, is big. And I’ll tell you why I think this.

My mom is crazy.

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Two things were revealed in the next ten minutes.

1) Mom had, thus far, killed thirty-seven people. I say thus far because she’s not a woman to give up on her dreams.

2) She already knew I was gay.

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“How did you know?” As good as it felt to not be censured by a parent for one’s sexual proclivities, it was still a bombshell.

“You wore a lot of plaid in high school.” My mom took my hand across the table, “Dear, no woman looks good in plaid.”

“That’s it?”

“Heavens no. You listened to a lot of Bikini Kill and L7.”

“So what?”

“And you slept with Jodi in your room many, many nights.”

“Yeah, okay. Girls do that.”

“Nude?”

She got me there.

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I spent the rest of the day avoiding mom. By that, I mean that I went out, had a few drinks, and I may or may not have kissed a couple of women. It’s kind of a blur, which is what I was hoping for.

When I got up the next day, mom was gone. In typical style, she left me a note that said everything and explained nothing.

Be back next week, sweetie. I hope you still adore your mother, despite what you perceive as her faults. As for me, I’m proud my daughter has the courage to accept who she is. There is a nice mushroom and onion galette in the fridge, and a rather nice bottle of Pinot from Oregon. Much better than the California Pinot, don’t you think?

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I spent the week wrestling with the issue. Seriously, how does one deal with a homicidal mother? I could turn her in, but that comes with a whole new set of problems that I didn’t want to deal with. I could ask her to stop, but I’d bet my K.D. Lang album collection that she wouldn’t. I could help her, but the thought turned my stomach.

Or I could just accept my mom the way she is.

Easier said than done.

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“I’m famished, dear. Care to grab lunch?”

Mom had been back five minutes, and as far as I can tell, she took several hits of speed on the flight home.

Since I was in the process of trying to accept my mom as she was, I accepted the invitation. Maybe being around her more would ease my unease, settle my unsettled mind.

The local pastry shop was her choice, oddly enough. I say oddly enough because she always complained about the line servers.

“They have the best tea, sweetie. And a Kouign-amann that simply sends one’s tongue to Nirvana. I’ll order two for us, along with a pot of tea.”

What I wanted was a Coke and a Danish.

“Sure thing, mom.”

The line wasn’t long, so we zipped through, laden with our treasures. Mom picked a spot against the wall. Just in case a “miscreant” came in and “started a brouhaha.” Mom had a strategy for everything. And a gun.

“You just want to shoot somebody don’t you?”

Sarcasm isn’t my usual mode of interacting with my mom. Desperate pleading was my game.

“Not until I finish my tea and pastry.” Mom graced me with another crocodile smile.

“Nice. Very cultured.”

“The girls behind the counter are extra surly today, dear. They’re always a little ungracious, though.”

“Is that why you told them to smile more and to ponder their assuredly bleak futures less?”

“Obviously,” mom said after swallowing her pastry and taking a sip of tea. She would never speak with food in her mouth. Hell, she wouldn’t even nod with food in her mouth.

My mom was a motivational speaker who had written two best-sellers: a Heaping Helping of Self-Help and A Second Helping of Self-Help. I never understood why people shelled out big bucks for her books, and even more money to attend one of her speaking events. Her advice was pablum, her sayings trite. Because of this, though, she felt it was her right – no, her obligation – to offer advice to all and sundry.

“Poisoning would be too good for them.”

“Don’t be flip, dear.”

“Or electrocution.”

“We could call it the Juice of Justice.” Okay, mom was going to play the game, outdo me with sarcasm. I gave it up.

“Why did you kill the woman in the living room?” I had avoided this question. A cold hand squeezed my heart; a dark dread that the answer would confirm my mom as an irredeemable monster enveloped me.

“She profited from charities raising money for sick kids. Quite clever, actually. She ran the funds through several shell corporations, but in the end, the money ended up in an account in Barbados.”

“And?”

“I persuaded her to transfer the ill-gotten gains to the proper charities.”

“Persuaded?”

“You would be amazed at what one can do with a lit cigarette and a serrated knife.”

“God, mom!”

“More tea, dear?”

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The myriad philosophers that I had read didn’t help. The “addition by subtraction” philosophy that mom purported as rationalization for her murderous ways didn’t help. All I could think of was that the hands that soothed me as a youngster now wielded knives and cigarettes.

I finally concluded that mom’s ways were another expression of love, a new and (to her) improved way to do what she could for her fellow humans before the Long Sleep. As for me, I’ll take a more traditional approach and avoid murdering people, and I told my mom this.

“Never say never, dear.” Mom’s advice on things came with platitudes.

“I’ll never stop loving you, mom.”

She smiled, nodding her head at my cleverness. “You mean you’ll always love me.”

“Shut up, mom.”

“Okay, dear. But come, give your mother a hug.”

“Put out the cigarette first.”

Because she loved me, she put out the cigarette.