After my mother’s death, it rained for a long time and after a while a lush green moss like a rash of sadness settled over the town. Loud sounds dissolved quietly beneath the constant hiss of drizzle. The clouds paused above us as if they had indefinitely canceled their travels. The drip of water replaced the ticking of clocks.At first I thought the weather so loved my mother that it draped over us like black bunting. But the lethargy has continued over Mount Pleasant, long past the etiquette for mourning. You can feel the town exhale as it slumps forward like something hungry and tired. It seems to be sadly weighing its worth, which is not much. The rain continues.
People are poor. Business is poor. And both are getting worse. Plans have been discussed to invigorate commerce and give Main Street a face-lift to restore its former glory. But there is no funding, and the town seems to be fighting for its
life. The vital young people leave to make plans in new places, and those who stay seem to resent themselves. Without opportunities, the townies mill around and wish for things they want but will never have. They fight over the corpse of the place—gravediggers against vultures. Even crime is mismatched. It takes too much risk for too little reward.
However, the old people still stick together, steadfastly remaining to be buried where they had always planned. Each day the ones who are able inch down the wet sidewalk toward the pharmacy with a cane in one hand and an umbrella in the other. Their lives are propped up on medication like fake cowboy towns on movie sets. And for those who can’t make it to the pharmacy, I deliver their prescriptions. I even pour them glasses of water. I read their mail out loud and feed their pets. I clean out their refrigerators and take out their trash. I wash their sheets and clip their nails. Many are so thin their skeletal postures are studies in how armatures should be constructed in taxidermed subjects. Sometimes, as I read to them, they stretch out on the couch and fall asleep. The overhead lights transform their thin, dried-out noses and shallow faces into sundials. They have so little time left. I can only wish that science will hurry up and discover ways to keep them alive, make them vital again and young with laughter. Ab was right; it is our job to help those who can’t help themselves. That mission has now become my calling. To help and to offer hope to others. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do.
Because Mother died of head trauma, there was nothing I
could do to help her. If she were diabetic, I would have given her a kidney. If she had leukemia, I would have hoped to be a perfect match. I would have given of myself whatever she needed. Now, I have to wait for science to provide the next step. I have saved her genetic material for the future. There are many things to fear about the science of cloning. We still have fetal attrition, tissue overgrowth, and poor survival after birth. But biotechnology is progressing; we are finding solutions. Already you can have your pet cloned for fifty thousand dollars. You can clone personal “savior babies,” from which you can harvest your own stem cells for future illnesses. There are countries with advanced laboratories that are already working on crafting designer babies.
I can have Mother’s genetic samples altered. She did always want to be taller, so that gene could be added. She could have better eyesight, a stronger memory, no freckles, more acumen for languages, a faster metabolism. When the time comes, there will be a lot of improvements to consider. However, I always found her interest in the weather charming, so I would leave that alone. Eventually her designed genetic material will be implanted into my egg, which first would have had my genetic material removed. Then my mother could become my baby. And someday, when I get old, I can become her baby. Then she will be mine. And I will be hers. We will take the men out of it altogether. It will be pure mother love. Just me and her and me and her forever.
Now when I look back on why I had the Rumbaugh curse, I
can see that I am the beginning of the future. In the past the mother love needed men for biological reasons. But no more. Science has caught up to our desires. The Rumbaugh women won’t need them anymore. We’ll store their necessary tissues in a genetic bank and be able just to keep to ourselves.
When I hold her hands and warm them with my own, I think about keeping my preserved mother close to me. I don’t know why more people won’t do it. I suppose they think it has to do with religion and respect for the dead—to allow their souls to rest in peace. But upon death the soul is instantly gone from the body and lofted toward the hall of judgment. No amount of prayers can ever reach the judges’ ears to sway their considerations between heaven and hell because judgment takes place the second death occurs. We can really only hope that they made it to heaven, and if they went to hell, well then, the prayers are useless, unless you take the point of view that prayers are really a way that the living express their grief. In which case, prayers are very therapeutic.
But I don’t need prayers because I have created heaven in my own home. Having my mother by my side is a comfort. I don’t know why anyone would think that a three-dimensional image would be any different than a painted portrait, a home movie, or a recorded voice. It is no different than keeping your mother’s jewelry, good china, and silver keepsakes. So having my mother to talk to, to dress, to move around and keep company is so uplifting.
She is a saint to me, a beautiful relic. She doesn’t at all look
like one of those grotesque European relics—a fragment of bone, or an eviscerated head secured in a glass-and-gold-filigreed box, or a lock of hair or decayed tooth. She looks beautiful. Hand-painted, and honestly, at first glance you would think she was alive. Her joints move back and forth just as I had imagined as a child. Each day I adjust her poses, and I often give her a window view so she can follow the weather. I can even detach limbs if need be, and put her in a special case and take her with me if I travel. I did not motorize her, but I have an office chair I can sit her in to wheel her from room to room. After all, she is a bit too heavy to carry.
For a lot of daughters, the dead mother is a moral curse judging each and every move they make. Nothing the daughter says, or does, or doesn’t do is good enough or proper enough or wise enough or pleasing enough to the memory of the dead mother. But not for me. What kind of life could I lead if my mother existed only as idealized perfection lording over me? It would be as if I could never make any mistakes or have any faults that her memory wouldn’t judge harshly. Instead of her memory being a comfort to me, it would be a haunting. That unforgiving attitude belongs to the gothic past. I prefer to think of my mother as a mother who has nurturing qualities and depth—a mother I could have a dialogue with, a mother who could disagree with me yet even in death would love me unconditionally no matter what I did.
But even unconditional love has its boundaries, so there are times when I don’t tell my mother everything. Like Mrs. Rumbaugh,
my mother did not want to advance the love curse to another generation. This creates a conundrum for me: Do I follow my mother’s orders and never allow myself to be trapped into having the mercy sex she did? Or do I follow the curse that runs through my veins and have a baby? Sometimes I think if I had just done what my mother had done, she would still be alive. Had I carried out the Rumbaugh curse with Ab or Dolph, I would have had a baby and my mother and I and the baby would have lived together like three links of a chain, locked in our own impenetrable triangle. But instead I planned to go away, which threatened the logic of the curse and set into motion a series of tragic events.
Now I know what my mother meant when she asked if the Twins had “touched” me.
It was as if the curse had to get my mother out of the way so I would return to the Twins. Just as the boys couldn’t carry on the curse until their mother died, I couldn’t carry it on until mine died. She died so that the curse could live, and if I don’t carry on the curse, she will have died in vain.
Recently I felt I had to honor her sacrifice. She always wanted to know which Twin she had slept with. She had called it her “unfinished business.” Out of respect for her, I thought it was business that should be finished. I knew I would have to confront the Twins, and to give me courage I put her real hands deep into my overcoat pockets. Holding them was always a comfort.
I was working at the pharmacy now that I owned a third of
it, so I left the hotel and walked across the street. Ab and Dolph were sitting at the soda counter eating ice cream.
“So,” I said, unleashing my plan, “which one of you is my father?”
“Not that again,” one said impatiently, and slumped over his bowl.
“Come on,” I said in a joking way. “Just stand up and pull down your pants. Let’s get this over with.”
“No,” said the other, crossing his arms and stiffening his back.
“Never,” his brother insisted, puffing himself up.
“Then let me put it to you this way,” I said directly. “If I’m going to perpetuate the Rumbaugh curse, it should be with the one of you who is not my father.”
Their eyes seemed to pulse like something electrical about to burn out. They turned and looked at each other for a moment and communicated in that silent way they did.
Finally, they reached some decision and faced me. “Okay,” they said as one. “Pull the shades.”
I did.
Then both of them stood up and slowly unbuckled their belts and tugged down their pants; then they lowered their boxer shorts just a bit. I walked around them, and to my surprise they both had red A’s on their left cheeks. I was stumped.
“Mother said there was only one A,” I said. “It makes sense that the doctor would mark only one of you if he was trying to distinguish the difference. So what happened?”
“Your mother was wrong,” one explained as they both
pulled their pants up. “The judge checked both Dolph and me, and we both had the letter scar, and on the left cheek.”
“The doctor had marked me when I was a baby,” said Dolph.
“But while we were separated as boys, I gave myself an A in order to feel closer to him,” Ab said. “I cut myself with a razor.”
“So my mother was wrong?” I pondered.
“Doubly so,” replied Dolph. “She also made a mistake saying it was on the right side when it was on the left.”
“Because of the mirror,” added Ab, shaking his head. “She saw it backward.”
At that moment I felt so sorry for her. I reached into my pockets and caressed her hands. I knew she would be so embarrassed by having made such a silly mistake. But I couldn’t just stop.
“So whichever one of you did it, why didn’t you marry her?” I asked.
The thought was incredible to them. “We couldn’t marry your mother,” Dolph explained. “We already have one.”
“And then we have each other,” Ab said, pointing to Dolph. “One of us couldn’t get married. We can’t split up.”
“And,” said Dolph, “you turned out to be a girl, which seemed all wrong.”
“So,” I asked again, “which of you is my father? I have to know, because if I’m going to carry on the curse, it can’t be with him.”
Dolph was defiant. “I’m not telling,” he said.
“Then I’ll flip a coin,” I replied coolly. “Turnabout is fair play.” I fished one out of my pocket. “You are heads,” I said to Ab. “And you are tails,” I said to Dolph.
I flipped the coin, caught it, and slapped it onto my forearm. “Heads it is,” I announced. “Let’s go, Ab.” I pointed upstairs and grabbed his arm.
“I can’t,” he said, lowering his eyes and tugging against my grip. “I can’t do it with you.”
“Why?” I pressed.
“You know why,” he stammered. He pointed at Dolph, who looked terrified. “You’ll have to do it with him. It’s his turn.”
That was all I needed to know. Now I could go home and tell my mother it was Ab. It would be a comfort to her.
“Keep your pants on,” I said to both of them, dropping Ab’s arm and stepping away. “I just wanted to see which one of you it was.” I thought they might be annoyed with me for pulling such a stunt, but they actually looked relieved.
From when I was a child, I had thought it would make a difference when I finally knew. I wanted to say “Father,” but the word was surprisingly hollow after all the years of saying “Mother.” Besides, he was just the Twin who won the coin toss.
“Remember, you are a Rumbaugh,” Ab said. “It’s in your blood to somehow pass it on.”
“I will,” I said. Then I hesitated for a moment, as if I needed
to say something more, as if there was still an inchoate thought lurking inside me like a second curse that wanted to reveal itself now that the first had been put to rest. But no further thought came to mind.
“Good night,” I said, feeling puzzled.
I turned and walked out of the store. I took another step, and then that inchoate thought turned out to be something after all—one curse had given birth to another. It bubbled up from the dark recesses of my mind and became perfectly clear. It would be easy enough. My mother had done so, and I was as much her as I was myself.
This thought stopped me in the middle of the street. I turned and looked back toward the pharmacy. The shades were pulled down. The Closed sign hung in the door. Then, from Dolph’s second-floor parapet, I saw his pale arm reach out toward me and beckon me closer with his hand. Was he reading my mind? Did he too have second thoughts? Was he too now thinking of creating an heir to the curse? Was I to provide him with the same mercy my mother had provided his brother?
“Yes?” I called out. I took a step toward him and then another, as if I were a bride marching toward the altar.
The pull of the curse was in the palm of his hand. He was waving me toward him the way you wave a toy boat to shore. The current of the Rumbaugh curse tugged at me, and I could feel the desire of wanting a child to love me as much as I loved my mother. I didn’t want to be alone forever. I wanted someone to hold my hand, too.
“What can I do for you?” I called out.
He leaned forward. “Say good night to your mother for me,” he whispered in his sweet old voice, a voice that banished my previous thought back to the shadows of the unthinkable.
“And to yours,” I replied warmly. Then he turned and opened the door into his sitting room. It was his night to have his mother’s real head. Ab would not sleep well, but Dolph would sleep like a baby.
“Good night,” I said behind him, then quickly crossed over into the Kelly Hotel. I took the elevator up to the third floor. I walked down the hall, removed my keys, and unlocked the door. I closed it behind me and twisted the knob on the dead bolt. Then I called out gently, “Don’t worry, Mom. It’s just me.”