Parents Without Partners
1980
Matthew and I were still in our pajamas, sprawled on our bellies shouting prices at the television. Our weekend ritual was to watch The Price Is Right or Let’s Make a Deal to witness regular people like us win prizes that would bring them never-ending happiness. We memorized the games so that one day when we were old enough to drive, we’d gun it all the way to Hollywood, get on the show and Make It Big—so big we could buy a mansion with so many rooms we’d lose track of them all. Every room would have a waterbed, too.
After several years of dedicated study, I could recite within pennies the going price for almost anything, from a Corvette to a bottle of Clorox. On the screen a schoolteacher was trying to guess the combined cost of a trip to Hawaii and a Jeep, and despite my vigorous coaching from the sidelines, she was way overshooting it. I was so focused on the television that I didn’t hear Mom walk into the living room.
“Who wants to go bowling?”
We peeled our eyes away from the Showcase Showdown. Mom impatiently shifted her white faux leather purse from one shoulder to the other. It was discombobulating to see her out of bed during the day.
“What? Why are you looking at me funny?”
We were in the middle of our sixth year of living with Granny and Grandpa, and by now Mom had become more like an older sister, tolerating us when she had to, but mainly avoiding everyone with a restless impatience. Our father had held true to his promise, and flew my brother and me out every summer for visits, but Granny had taken over as our full-time caretaker, and in that way Mom was insulated from the drudgery of adulthood. She was still without work, without friends, without motivation to get out of bed. My brother and I were so unaccustomed to taking direction from our mother that at first it didn’t register that she was inviting us somewhere.
“Bowling?” I repeated, still stunned.
She let out an exasperated sigh. Her skin was so pale that blue veins showed through at her temples and wrists. She was wearing polyester yellow pants with an elastic band to accommodate her waistline, which had expanded considerably since we’d moved in.
“That’s what I said. I don’t have all day, here. You kids coming or not?”
I felt like we should be asking Granny for permission first, or perhaps Granny should come along as chaperone in case anything went wrong. I was dubious, but too curious to say no.
The closest bowling alley was an hour away in Salinas, and during the drive Mom explained that she had recently joined something called Parents Without Partners, and we were going to a bowling party for people like her.
“Ladies without husbands?” Matthew asked.
Mom rolled down her window a crack and let the wind suck the ash off her cigarette. “Men without wives, too,” she corrected.
I wiggled my eyebrows at Matthew and leaned toward him. “Dating,” I whispered. I pretended to make out with the palm of my hand, kissing it ferociously until he broke into a spasm of giggles.
“What’s so funny back there?”
Mom’s eyes snapped at us in the rearview mirror. All she saw were two cherubs sitting on the back seat of the Gremlin. I discreetly pinched my nose to stifle a laugh from slipping out. “I need you both to be on your best behavior. Don’t do anything to embarrass me.”
We promised to be good, although I didn’t understand how we could embarrass her by throwing a ball at some pins. I looked out the window and saw rows of spinach and strawberries flicker past, blurring together like someone was shuffling a deck of green cards. Salinas was flat, and the fields lined up in military formation, as if God had first drawn the city on graph paper before creating it.
When we got out of the car, the air smelled of manure fertilizer, overpowering Mom’s Charlie perfume. Her hoop earrings bounced as she hustled Matthew and me toward the entrance, but as we got closer she slowed her pace. She stood before the glass door as if she had had a change of heart. Mom fixed her lipstick in the reflection and tucked a few wisps of hair behind her ears. She adjusted the waistband of her pants. She had started dieting recently, eating mostly grapefruits and cottage cheese following the advice of a celebrity doctor named Scarsdale.
“Do I look fat?” she asked, turning sideways in the window.
Her tummy pooched out, but her legs and her arms were still regular size so she looked a little like she was pregnant. Matthew and I did not say any of this. We assured her that she was skinny.
“You really think so?” She looked over her shoulder to try to see her backside in the glass.
We nodded enthusiastically.
She bit her lip and looked back at the Gremlin, like she was trying to choose between curtain number one and curtain number two. One choice held diamonds; the other a donkey. She sucked in her stomach and held her breath. Then she let it out again and frowned.
“You’re not just saying that? You really think I look okay?”
Other kids were running into the bowling alley, swinging the door open wide and letting out a heady smell of french fries and greasy pepperoni pizza. She grabbed our hands and squeezed. “Now listen, you two, don’t ask me to buy things because you know I can’t afford it,” she said.
Matthew and I promised. She pushed open the door, and I heard the hollow clatter of crashing pins followed by jubilant cheers. My mouth watered at the smell of cotton candy, and a bank of pinball machines called to me with blinking lights and perky chimes. After the clerk handed us our leather bowling shoes, Mom walked Matthew and me to a lane where a group of sullen kids sat on a curved bench made of molded orange plastic. These were the sons and daughters of all the partnerless parents, forced to play together and clearly wishing they were someplace else.
“I’ll be over there,” Mom said, indicating four lanes over where the adults were mingling. Her purse bobbed on her hip as she speed-walked away from us. A strike boomed from the neighboring lane, and a group of men cheered and raised their beer mugs. The player who had just thrown the ball did a little air guitar move and stuck his tongue out like KISS.
Matthew and I looked back at our new companions and found a half dozen pairs of eyes boring holes into us. One spat sunflower seeds onto the floor near my feet, which most definitely was on purpose. The one with the earring said something in Spanish, and his buddies snickered.
“Hi,” I said.
No one answered. I could sense all of us were the kind of kids who sometimes just wanted to hit something. More pins smashed nearby in a thunderclap, and I startled. I tried to cover it up by faking an itch and scratching between my shoulder blades, then I casually walked over to the bowling ball carousel and reached for a red one, but a girl snatched it away first.
“That’s mine, puta,” she said, tilting her chin up like I’d seen the boys do at school when they were about to pick a fight. I didn’t know what that word meant, but I could tell it was bad, something to do with poo. Defeated, I sat on the bench next to Matthew. I put my hand on his back and his muscles were rigid.
“Gonna play?” I asked.
“Yeah, right,” he said, covering his ears to the exploding pins. He hated it here. I got up to give it another try, being careful not to take the red ball. Once Matthew saw me playing, he would probably want to join me. But as I approached the lane, one of the boys blocked my path.
“What do you think you’re doing? This is our game.” He pointed up to the electronic TV monitor hanging from the ceiling. “You have to pay for your own.”
I flopped back down next to Matthew, who was starting to cry silently. I tried to shush him quietly, but the mean boys smelled the salt water of his tears and pounced. They mock boo-hooed with sissy voices, and I stood in front of Matthew so he couldn’t see them, shooting invisible death rays with my eyes. Unimpressed, they kept sniveling and chattering in Spanish, overjoyed that they had the power to scare a little kid. Matthew hugged his knees to his chest and curled into a ball. And that unleashed my inner tiger. I walked over to the boys.
“Now you’ve done it,” I said. “I’m getting my mom.”
The tyrants were suddenly silent as I swiveled on my heel and marched toward Mom, not sure exactly what I was going to tell her. She was sitting before a panel of illuminated buttons that controlled the scoreboard, cheering for somebody on her team. She glowed in a happy way that I’d never seen, and I forgot, for a second, why I had come over to speak to her. It was like I was watching someone I didn’t know, someone with so much laughter inside her that she passed it around to all her friends. I called out to her, and as she swiveled around in her seat, all the joy evaporated from her face.
“What’s wrong? I can tell something’s wrong.”
I explained we had a bully situation going on at lane two. So bad that Matthew was crying.
“What do you mean Matthew is crying?”
“Those kids are being mean to him,” I said. “And they won’t let us bowl.”
She jackhammered her cigarette out in an ashtray built into the console.
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“We need money to play by ourselves.”
Her hand whipped out and she grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me close. Her words came out like a hiss. “What did I say about asking me for money?”
“I know, but...” Before I could finish, she was on her feet. She slammed her purse under her arm and practically stampeded toward the kids’ lane. I watched the mean boys’ eyes widen as she approached, but she went straight to Matthew, leaned over him and shouted at the back of his head.
“Why are you crying!”
I felt my face go hot as twin flames of fear and embarrassment licked my cheeks. This was not how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to protect Matthew from being bullied. Now his tormentors wore expressions of vindication, quietly ecstatic that the runt of our group was being scolded by his own mother. It would be open season on Matthew the second she walked away. Sensing this, he crumbled in defeat, sinking farther onto his knees.
Mom turned toward me and shook an accusing finger.
“You two will NOT ruin this for me! We drove all this way, now you are going to stay here until I’m ready to go. Do you hear me?”
Matthew stopped holding back and sobbed openly. Mom yanked him off the bench by his arm, and he hid his face in his hands, trying to make both her, and the whole bowling alley, disappear. The men in the next lane put down their beers and turned to look. The crash of pins silenced. The Spanish-speaking kids held their breaths. The bowling alley became library quiet.
I ran.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Mom hollered. Pinball players twisted away from their games to watch the commotion. I found my legs taking me to the bathroom, the one place I could hide from the ruins of our fake family outing. I locked myself in a stall and crouched on top of the toilet seat, in the futile hope that Mom wouldn’t see my shoes and somehow miss me. Then I heard her pounding footfalls and I squeezed my eyes shut, held my breath and cowered.
Mom stomped into the bathroom like a bull, and pushed open each stall door with a loud boom, searching for me. I saw several pairs of feet scurry out of the bathroom, and I cringed: I had a mother who was so scary that strangers ran from her. I wanted to tell those other girls that she wasn’t going to hurt them, that they didn’t need to flee like that. But as Mom slammed her way down the row, I had another horrifying thought: maybe those girls had good instincts. I was the dumb animal that had cornered itself without an escape plan.
I saw the top of Mom’s head when she stopped before my stall. A vein was pulsing in her forehead. She pounded on the metal door, sending tinny vibrations through the walls.
“Meredith, I know you’re in there! You get out here right this minute!”
She flung her arm over the top of the door and grasped for the sliding lock with desperate, clawing fingers. It was safely out of reach.
“You need to OPEN this right now!”
She clasped the top of the door with both hands and shook, trying to wrench it open as I watched the flimsy latch strain against her force. My nerves sizzled as I tried not to think about what she would do if she reached me. She slapped the door again, and I flinched. Granny and Grandpa were far away and couldn’t save me. I hugged my knees tighter and told myself it was just a bad dream.
“Answer me!” Mom roared.
I opened my mouth, but there were cotton balls lodged in my throat. It was dry like that time I got tonsillitis and all that came out was a weak rasp. I wanted to scream for help, but I was too ashamed to beg strangers to rescue me. It was just Mom; she wouldn’t really hurt me, would she? I had never been afraid of her until now, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the newness of that. She was scaring me, yes, but that was private information, not to be shared with polite society. I was frozen with indecision and whimpered helplessly.
Suddenly the stall stopped shaking. It was quiet for a few beats, and then Mom slammed her whole body at the door like a football player, trying to break it with her shoulder.
“Mom, stop,” I whispered. “Please.”
“What’s wrong with you two kids?” she screamed. “Now BOTH of you are crying? You two need to grow up, that’s what!”
She kicked the door.
“You don’t call the shots around here. I do!” she said. Her breath was coming out fast, like she had just run a mile. Then I heard the flick of a cigarette lighter, and the crackle of burning tobacco as she inhaled. A cloud of smoke rose from the other side of the door. We stayed in our silent standoff for I don’t know how long. Then I heard a man’s voice.
“Ma’am. Excuse me, ma’am.”
Mom regained her conversational voice. “You can’t come in the ladies’ room,” she pointed out.
“Correct, that’s why I’m going to need you to exit the bathroom unless I need to call the police.”
“And who might you be?”
“Manager. Is somebody with you in there?”
I saw the cigarette stub drop to the floor and flatten beneath her bowling shoe. She sighed heavily and left me. I waited a few minutes until it seemed safe, then lifted the latch and crept out of the bathroom. Matthew waved me over from where he was sitting on a bench outside an office with windows. He pointed inside the room, where I could see Mom gesturing wildly with her hands, explaining something to the manager who stood with folded arms. I took a seat next to Matthew, waiting until the manager opened his office door for Mom and swung his arm wide, palm indicating the exit.
“C’mon, we’re leaving,” Mom said, taking one of our hands in each of hers. We jogged to keep up with her as she hurried for the door.
“Happy now?” she said, as she slammed the car in gear, stomped on the gas and zoomed away.
We knew the question was rhetorical, and didn’t answer.
“I could’ve met someone today, but you two certainly screwed that up good! That’s the last time I take you kids anywhere.”
I just wanted the whole day to disappear. I was sorry for being me; I was sorry she didn’t have a husband and had to go to stupid bowling parties. I was sorry my brother was always the one getting picked on because he refused to fight. But most of all, I was just sorry that right now everything was wrong. Mom had emerged from the bedroom a different person from the one who went in. She had gone from a mouse to a mountain lion.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember what Mom used to be like before California. It was hard because I was a little kid then and now I was almost in middle school, and so much time had passed that I was forgetting Rhode Island things like snow and running through leaf piles and the lyrics to Beatles songs. Only a few memories of Mom were still clear in my mind—the bunny-shaped sheet cake we made for Easter once, decorated in white coconut with thin licorice for whiskers. I remembered watching the movie Charade in bed with her, trying to figure out where the treasure was buried. I can feel her hands on my back pushing me in a swing. There must be more.
When we got home, Mom was still fuming. She went back to the bedroom and got into bed, and we knew without being told that we should stay out of her sight. Matthew and I went outside to pick blackberries, and as we passed the honey bus on the way to the garden, we couldn’t help but notice that the back door was ajar. We pulled it open and found Grandpa sitting inside with a five-gallon Wesson Oil tin wedged between his feet.
“Go find two small rocks,” he said, as if he was expecting our company.
We returned, and he tied each rock to a piece of foot-long string. He dipped the rock and about half of the string into the tin of hot beeswax. He lifted it out quickly, held it until it hardened and submerged it again. With each dip, the candle got larger. He handed the wicks to us, and we copied his movements. We sat in silence together as the sunlight slanted into the bus, slowly making candles and pausing every once in a while for Grandpa to reheat the wax over the outdoor propane burner. Matthew’s candle was starting to form a curve. Grandpa took it from him and rolled the taper in his palms to straighten it, then he handed it back. It occurred to me that I had never asked Grandpa how bees make wax.
“Little flakes come out from underneath their abdomen,” he said.
“Whaaaat?” Matthew said.
Bees naturally produce wax flakes from their own bodies, Grandpa explained.
“Then they pull the flakes to their mouth, chew and mold them into honeycomb shape,” he said.
Some bees are wax makers, and others are wax builders, Grandpa explained. When the bees get ready to build wax honeycomb inside an empty wooden frame, they suspend themselves from the top bar and hang together like a cluster of grapes to generate heat. When the temperature rises high enough, eight snow-white wax scales emerge from pockets on the underside of their abdomens. One of the bees will emerge from the pack, crawling over all the rest to reach the top of the wooden frame, where she will bite, bend and chew the flakes, mixing it with her saliva until she’s satisfied with the consistency. The bee will attach the small blob to the top of the frame and leave. Bee after bee will do this, until there’s a small block of formless wax the right thickness to be sculpted into honeycomb.
Next come the builder bees, Grandpa said. They scoop and pull at the wax, taking turns carving hexagon cells. The first honeycomb cell they make sets the mathematical pattern for the rest of the honeycomb, he said.
“Cool,” Matthew said, holding his candle up so he could watch the hot wax slide down it and drip back into the can. My nerves settled down with the slow, repetitive movements of candle making, but still I couldn’t push the bowling alley all the way out of my mind.
“Grandpa?”
“Mmmmm.”
“We got kicked out of the bowling alley.”
“Mom got in trouble,” Matthew said.
We told Grandpa everything that had happened while he held his candle aloft, forgetting to dip it, and it turned from white to a mustard yellow as it cooled. I saw the muscles in Grandpa’s jaw tense as he listened. He set his candle down on an empty hive box and leaned toward us.
“Your mother isn’t going to change, so it’s best not to upset her. Stay out of her way, and be patient. One day when you’re older you’ll be able to live on your own.”
I told him it was hard to avoid her when we shared a bed.
“Just do what she says and don’t talk back to her. Hear me?” He waited for our answer, to make sure we were listening to instructions. We promised to do as he said.
But I didn’t tell him that I was afraid of her. It now seemed possible that Mom might actually hurt us.
When the candles were finished, Grandpa cut away the dipping strings, handed us each a pair and told us to bring them to Granny for the dinner table. The delicate yellow tapers were still warm, and smelled of honey butter on fresh biscuits. Granny inhaled their scent and her eyes fluttered. She asked me to fetch her silver candlesticks from the credenza, and then showed me how to carefully polish the heirlooms with a purple paste until they shone.
That night she put one candle on Mom’s dinner tray, and three on the dining room table. As Mom dined alone, the four of us ate by candlelight, the flames casting a festive glow over the room as Granny discussed politics, explaining to Grandpa why he, and every other American in their right mind, should vote for Jimmy Carter.
I furtively rolled my eyes at Matthew sitting opposite me, and he giggled conspiratorially. Then he reached his right foot under the table and found my left. We pressed the soles of our sneakers together and pushed our legs back and forth in a seesaw motion, our version of a secret handshake.
We grinned at each other through the pretty candles we’d just made, and for a fleeting moment the day was forgotten.