Lies about Lives

The hospital was decorated with teal accents on a sterile speckled white floor. The hallway was antiseptic. I waited my turn to speak to my mother after her horrific accident. A car hit her in a crosswalk and fled the scene. No one saw the car well enough to report it; they were all focusing on the woman in a long black cloak flying in the air and landing on her face on the sidewalk.

My father oversaw crowd control in the ICU. I was up next. He motioned with his hand, keeping his emotions buried deep so he could focus on a single task that wasn’t watching my mother pass away. I went to her bedside and held her hand as it laid almost lifeless by her side. Her eyes were swollen shut and her respirator kept her nose blocked. She was barely able to get words out. She turned toward me after I whispered, “Its Mike” and mashed her lips together. She summoned all her strength to whisper back to me; I lied.

When I was 10 my mother came home from work as a quality control specialist for the local Abbott Laboratories facility and sat on the couch by the stereo. She didn’t look at any of us and sat with her head down, dejected. Dad came home 3 hours early and took her by her hand to the master bedroom and locked the door. She had been laid off when the facility manager announced its closure. It was her entire identity, and she was quickly falling apart. For the next week, she tried to pick herself up and find a new job. Days turned into weeks, weeks to months and nothing was working. Finally, she gave up and took up smoking pot on the couch and listening to Tracy Chapman CDs.

My brother and I didn’t know what to do or say. We retreated into our respected vices. Mine, the Boy Scouts, his, drugs and porn. Our family only joined in trying to scavenge for what food was left in the kitchen after dad had gone to get groceries for his own appetite. Lots of raw onions and lemons were to his liking, not a lot for us to do with that.

Soon my mother started getting cuts on her arms. We didn’t really notice at first because she was wearing sweatshirts like a JC Penny’s model. One day during the summer when there wasn’t school to keep us kids preoccupied, she wore a t-shirt to ward off the sweltering heat that an 80-degree Seattle summer would lay on its weather spoiled denizens. Her scars looked new and wide as if they had been cuts that had grown. She had been picking at them. There were 5 of them; 2 on her left forearm, 3 on her right. I was shocked but couldn’t show it for fear of making it worse. I tried my best to ignore the pain on her body and went camping with the other toe headed freaks going through puberty together.

Mom started talking on the phone to someone for hours and hours after we got home from school. She would extend the cord on the phone from the kitchen through the dining room and the hall to the bathroom a good 50 feet away. We all had to use the single toilet and no sink in the basement and limbo around the phone cord to make it work in the house. We never had anyone over. Anytime my brother would open his door, a cloud of smoke would billow out of a black light illuminated bedroom he used mostly for drugs and masturbation. I would keep a militaryesque look to my room with my stereo modestly place next to a few opera recordings and classical works that I learned to play on my violin and later my bassoon. I was determined to be the best little boy in the world and hide the chaos at home.

My mothers phone calls were to her new paid best friend; her therapist. Those days $100 an hour was a steep price which my mother seemed to think her life was worth more than. Every day she had to be racking up $300-$400 in fees. Finally she snapped. She drove the family truck to the local beach and sat in the parking lot and slit her wrists and waited. The police regularly patrol the beach so she was found out and saved in short order. She was taken to the hospital and patched up then committed for suicidal tendencies. I was in high school when this first happened. The shock of it kept me away from school for drips and drabs of days then weeks at a time. I didn’t really care about high school, it was beneath me. I had the boy scouts- they would lead me to greener pastures. One of my high school friends would cut class and roller blade to my house so I could make him a sandwich and we could masturbate together in the middle of the day.

Mom tried suicide a few times and we were never given much detail. Then my father called a family meeting.  We knew it was serious because of his ominous tone. “Ok guys, look- your mother has been having a lot of problems and its time you know that she has recovered memories that are kind of shocking.” Mom looked miserable sitting there, a thin ghost of a woman now with white scars up and down her arms from her many attempts to end it all in admittedly inept ways. Horizontal, not vertical. She took a shaky breath. “Your grandfather raped me.”

It was sort of soothing to have been given a reason behind what was causing my mother to lose her mind. A touchstone for insanity that we could wrap our heads around. Naturally, we wouldn’t have a relationship with that monster anymore and we never had to tell him why. He raped our mother. What greater betrayal could there be?

She lied she laid back and drew her last breath. Grandfather was already dead. I was the only one she told. I chose not to tell my father and my brother. The truth is just too awful.