A Spring Morning Blows Up

I never expected to be sitting here, in the California Department of Motor Vehicles hoping to get my driver’s license on my 16^th birthday. But here I am. I had a four o’clock appointment and the man who would be my mom’s next husband had brought me. We were going to be waiting awhile. We were number 84; they weren’t even to 70 yet.  Man, when I get my license I can get out of here. Well maybe not out on my own, but at least down to Tower Records. I won’t be stuck at home every night. 

And her next husband? What’s with this guy? I’m sixteen and he acts like he has been father forever. He’s tall and lean, self-confident I will give him that. And at least he was willing to bring me here. Mom couldn’t be bothered. He seems certain though this will work out.

It was just a few weeks ago though when I heard my mother call my name. I was in my bedroom reading, just down the hall. Easy distance for her to summon me, because of course she knew I would be there in a second. Always the dutiful son.

“Jack, get your sister and come into my room.” 

Uh-oh. Some bomb was about to be dropped on us. I knew it. She only summoned us to her room for a “serious discussion.”

“Nic, mom wants us!” Nothing. She was lost in whatever. My younger sister just let things wash over her and as a result she never paid much attention to what was going on. 

I ran down the stairs of the condo we’d shared with mom’s last husband. Nicole was in the living room reading, engrossed in her book.

“Nic, mom wants us in her room. Didn’t you hear me calling?” She rolled her eyes. At this point I could hardly blame her. We ran up the stairs, not wanting to keep mom waiting in her room. Being summoned by mom was not a daily or even a weekly event, at least like this, but you knew when it happened that you did not want to delay. She had just returned from a weird trip to California. Why weird? My mom never went anywhere without us with rare exception. She had gone out west late last year when her mother, my grandmother died. But it had been more than four years since she had taken a trip like that. It should have been a clue.

They called number 71. Sigh.

The bedroom she shared with her then husband Eugene, who everyone, except me for some reason, called Larry, because his middle name was Lawrence, was almost sterile. The dark cream walls had little on them, and the furniture was of the sort you would see in any staged home, high quality, and anonymous.

“Come sit next to me.” She patted the bed. I could see she had been crying. She put her arms around us both and squeezed. I recognized the squeeze. It was the same one she had given me almost ten years ago when she told me she was divorcing my biological father. The same one she had given me four years ago when she told me we were leaving our west coast home for Michigan so she could marry Eugene.

“Seventy-two!” At least I would have my license at the end of this. The new man was patient. I will give him that. Waiting was so painful for me, the longer the wait the more it seemed like the outcome was going to be bad. I don’t know even know when I started drawing that correlation. He had picked up an outdated magazine. Did places like this have a requirement that magazines had to be at least a year old before being put out?  My observation was that magazines were put out when they were a year old and tossed when they were over five years old. Bravo to him for being able to be entertained by old news.

“I’m leaving Eugene and we are moving to California.”

Boom. A beautiful Michigan spring morning had just blown up. Because of course it had. This outcome had been perfectly predictable four years ago when I was a 12-year-old. That’s why I resisted moving so much.  My mom was a westerner through and through, although I think that was more out of habit rather any real thought. She had gone to school for a year in the Midwest and then she had lived there for three years with my biological father. Not a nice word for any of it, so when she told us that we were moving to the Mid-west this outcome was inevitable

Add on top of that Eugene was a smoker! My mom’s feelings about smokers, well about anything really, were well known. She made sure of that. It was not a good one. Her mother had died from smoking for goodness sake. Well, I think it’s easy to see how I got to the California DMV that day. It was all due to that decision to marry Eugene.

“Seventy-three!”

The four years in Michigan had not been easy. I had resisted moving to Ann Arbor thinking I had some say in this, and that had made the adjustment twice as hard. But having gone from very awkward sixth grader – to a semi-confident high school sophomore, the announcement that we were leaving again was not welcome news.

Unlike previous moves that had been seemingly dragged out for reasons someone my age could not possibly fathom, this time we were going to be on the move within four weeks.

“Seventy -four!”

There was a lot to do, the most immediate being she needed to divorce Eugene in Michigan. She did not have the time, money, or inclination to travel back to Michigan from California. Of course, what I did not fully understand was that her new old boyfriend, the one with me at the DMV, was paying for the move, the divorce, and our new life and that he was not going to let her come back here to deal with divorcing another man. A clean break was the deal, fast on these terms. My mom had no bargaining power, I’m not sure she wanted any. Just looking for a rescue from a previous bad decision. 

“Seventy-seven!” What had happened? They just skipped three. Does that mean I might get to the head of the line sooner? I asked the new man if we might get to the head of the line faster. He grunted.

“Never can tell with bureaucrats. You could be next. Or it could be another hour. Just part of being an adult. That’s what you want right?”

He had certainly nailed that. I wanted to be an adult. Out on my own.

Her recent trip to California, that had been supposedly to see a college friend who had joined the CIA, had in fact been a liaison with this new old boyfriend. How dumb I had been. She announced the trip one night at dinner.

“I’ve heard from my old friend Joanie. My old friend from college. She’s in San Jose, I’m going to go see her!”

“Joanie?” Eugene was perplexed. Mom did not kept up with old friends.

“I’ve told you about her! She and her husband joined the CIA during the 60s. I think she’s retired now. She wants to get together!”

Eugene and I looked at each other. He had introduced me to the world of espionage novels. To us this seemed both weird and plausible. Weird because it was so against type for mom, but plausible because we both thought it sounded exciting. Like our entertainment come to life. Nic paid no heed, and what were we going to do? Veto the trip? Of course that would all turn out to be a lie and the fact she lied about this still shocks me. I never imagined her lying to me.

I recognized the patterns playing out so predictably. Eugene had been a new old boyfriend as well. Unable or unwilling to cope with life as it was in the present, she simply reached back to what she thought of as an earlier, simpler, and happier time. That was silly. That time had never actually existed. As it clearly never existed for me. I will always be moving forward.

    “Seventy-six,” a woman behind the desk called. The clerks were calling people with a system that I could not possibly understand. I could not imagine being in this place every day, but I guess one could go back in time.

There was not time to consider all of that – we had to be in California by a certain date, although it was not clear to me why that date was important. Mom filed for divorce and got an expedited hearing. Eugene was not going to object. I don’t know what he was like as a husband, but the truth is he would have done anything for mom, including give her the divorce. I liked Eugene a lot. He treated me like an adult. It was not a paternal relationship, or even like brothers. We were like . . . friends. An odd dynamic with a fifteen-year-old and forty plus year old college professor. He had introduced to spy thrillers, taken me to college football and basketball games and shared his knowledge about most anything. I was going to miss him.

The day of the hearing she was a mess. Michigan law required mom to get up on the stand say a bunch of things about her marriage to Eugene. The gist of those statements was that Eugene was not a fit husband. I just started using the work gist, by the way. My new English teacher likes it and uses it a lot.

“Seventy-eight.” That’s more like it.

Mom read the statements to me before the hearing and she sobbed. She told me none of this was true, but she had to say to say those things. Here I was getting a crash course in my mother’s complicated relationship with the truth. She did, though, she got up in front of that Michigan judge and made those statements with nary a tear in her eye. It had only been hours before she was sobbing and now, she was a stone-cold killer.

Seventy-nine! Ok. Moving along here. Maybe this will happen.

School was mostly telling one or two teachers goodbye. Some of them knew my mom as she had been a long-term substitute in the school district, and they were nothing if not perplexed. They wished me luck.

“Eighty!”

Friends, if you could call them that, were much easier. After a difficult adjustment I had gotten to the point of invisibility. No one was going to ask where Jack was ten minutes before I left, much less after I was gone. The thing that felt good about having achieved the status of invisibility though was predictability.

There continued to be points though of high drama, the highest being, or maybe the lowest depending on your framing, was when my mother complained that Nic and I weren’t doing enough to prepare for the move. She did not even have a specific demand, just a complaint.  She had been so demanding, and I had had enough.

Making the mistake, that I will I guess continue to make, that my opinion counted for anything, I told my mother should count herself lucky we were doing what we had done so far.

“Mom, I don’t know what you are talking about. Nic and I have done more to help get ready for this move than any of my friends would have. You are lucky we have done as much as we have.”

 She exploded at me. "How dare you talk to me like that! I’m your mother trying to manage all of this for you! All I ever do is do what is best for my children!” After having come halfway down the stairs, she charged back to her room.

The previous summer Nic and I had spent six weeks with our biological father, and I had wanted to move back to the west to be with him. My mother had insisted that I come back to Michigan to “finalize things” whatever that meant. But when I came back and we discussed it, the waterworks were turned on and I was ashamed I had ever thought about leaving. Today that woman who could not bear the idea of her son leaving was nowhere to be found.

“Eighty-one.”

I suppose the speed with which everything had to happen overtook those events. At least in her mind. I don’t think I will ever look at her the same way though. I see through her shit now. It was not her kids. It was about her.

“Eighty-two.”

The departure from Michigan would have been comical if it wasn’t so sad. It happened on the cheap shag carpet of a cheap motel near the airport. Eugene had taken us there; we knew no one else in town well enough to ask that favor. As we stood in the lobby, everyone was crying. All this pain seemed perfectly avoidable, particularly the pain to Eugene. He cried so much, his contact lenses fell out of his eyes and into the long shag carpet. The four of us were crawling around on the floor looking for them. He was not going to be able to drive home without them and as far as I recall he did not carry extra glasses with him.

“Eighty-three.”

The absurdity of the whole situation dried the tears long enough to say goodbye. Eugene got into his old brown Ford Fairmont and left.

I doubt I will ever see him again.

“Eighty-four!”

Finally! I was going to get my driver’s license! All I had to do was pass the road test. Mom’s new man patted me on the back. Here he was trying to play the father. I wasn’t sure what to think. Since I had never thought of Eugene as a father it was very weird. A contrast to my biological father who for a variety of reasons couldn’t even be bothered.

“You will be fine,” he said.

“Here for the road test?” The tester reminded me of a teacher. That middle age that could be anywhere between 30 and 50 all of which seemed mature, knowledgeable, and wise. A short sleeve white dress shirt, a dull tie, and navy-blue slacks. A few pens in his pocket and the all-important clipboard.

“Yes sir.”

“Ok, I need your learners permit.”

I pulled out my wallet and handed him my neatly folded Michigan Driver’s Learner Permit.

“Son, I need your California Learner Permit.”

That sound you heard were my dreams of having a license today crashing. So much for Tower Records tonight. No browsing through the albums or a chance to meet the cool kids from my new school. That was going to have to wait for another day. Another evening in my room trying to catch songs on cassette tape.

“I don’t have one.” My voice had disappeared into a whisper. “We just moved here.”

“I’m sorry son, but you have to have a California permit for 30 days before you can test for your license. I can give you a permit today and then we can make an appointment for 30 days from now.” At least he was kind about it.

We left. At home mom asked how it went. When I told her she acted as if the news meant nothing to her.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“I have to wait another 30 days. I need to have a California permit for 30 days before I can take the road test.” I was in near tears but did my best to hide it.

“Well, you should have checked when we got to California. Another month isn’t going to kill you.”

Of course. It was my fault. She never had any responsibility when it came to bad outcomes.

“Dinner will be ready soon.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ll be in my room.”

“Suit yourself, but there won’t be anything to eat later.”

An idle threat. There was always a loaf of sourdough bread around. I went to my room and turned on the rock station. This Bruce Springsteen singer had released a cool song 10 days before. Dancing in the Dark? I think. Maybe I could get a good recording of it.

And at least I knew I would never get that squeeze again.