It should be enough, this reunion with my youngest older brother, but it isn’t. My original purpose in making the journey away from the solitary comfort of Dogtown was to see my mother. The urge to bail, to call it a day, is strong, but my spine has stiffened over the course of the past few years. “Where’s your phone?” He tells me and I hand Teddy his phone. “Tell her whatever you want, but don’t let her say no.”
“Call her yourself.”
“She won’t answer me if she sees my number.”
“I can dial, and you speak.”
“She hangs up on me.”
Teddy can’t look at me. “Really?”
“I’m not going to demonstrate it for you. Just ask if she can drop by.”
Teddy has told me that she makes a habit of dropping in, taking care of his laundry, making sure he has food in the fridge. For all his vaunted independence, he’s still letting his clinically depressed mother take care of him. He says it makes her feel better. I think that it’s part of her problem, having these chronically dependent children. She babysits her grandkids for the rest of them; for Teddy, she babies him.
“Hey, Mom. I’m good. Just wondering…” Teddy stares at me as he speaks to our mother. Just like in a dime-store novel, the look is daggers.
I flash back to our youth. Teddy in his chair, me dancing around him, wearing a towel as a cape and holding a Barbie doll in one hand, flying it past his face as if she were Wonder Woman, as if I were Wonder Woman. I see Teddy getting mad, yelling for Mom to make me stop. Defenseless against me and my mobility. My lack of deference toward his immobility.
I put my hands on his shoulders as he asks our mother to drop what she’s doing and come see him. He doesn’t have to work hard. As always, Teddy asks and Mom does.
I have paced and sat and paced and helped myself to a bottle of water uninvited, drinking it all in one long swallow, and still my mouth is dry. Teddy has said nothing. He’s set the stage and now he has left me to act out the story. He wheels himself into his bedroom, shuts the door. Stoughton and Randolph share a border, and within fifteen minutes I hear the key in the lock. My mother has her own key to Teddy’s apartment. Why am I not surprised?
Shadow is beside me, his head lowered and his ears pricked at the sound of the knob turning. I grasp a handful of his neck skin, balance my weight against him, so, so grateful to have the bulwark of his presence as I face my mother.
She is nothing like the image I carry in my mind. The last time I saw her, my mother was a new widow, bent under the weight of having cared for a terminally ill husband for the better part of a year. A year that saw repeated hospitalizations and then permanent residence in the dining room, the room she had been so proud of as a young mother. The room where she had once been matriarch over joyful family gatherings, not death. She’d looked bruised and old in her belted trench coat and Naturalizer pumps, leaning first against Paulie and then Bobby as the priest intoned the words of the committal service over the casket.
This woman is straight and slender and dressed in Ann Taylor slacks. Only the Naturalizers on her feet resemble what I remember of my mother’s sartorial habits, and even those are pretty trendy-looking. I realize that my father has been gone for almost seven years. I have been gone. It all seems to blend, one thing into another—my father’s death, Tilley’s death, Charles’s death, my deathlike existence in prison. But months, even a year or more, had transpired between each of these events. Still, it is a blur, and as I look at my mother, I realize for the first time that the bulk of my twenties were spent in separation from her, from my family. I will be thirty-one this next birthday, and no longer a girl. I wonder if she will see that.
“Rosie.” She says it almost as if she’s not surprised to see me. Almost as if she’s been waiting. I half-expect her to add “Took you long enough.”
“Mom. I’m here.”
“I can see that. Where’s Teddy?”
“In his room. He’s giving us a few minutes.”
My mother starts down the short hall to the bedroom.
“Mom. Wait.”
She rests one hand against the wall. Unlike me, she doesn’t have a giant dog to support her. I leave Shadow with a quick stay gesture and reach out to touch her.
Most people will say that their mothers have shrunk, but mine seems taller, firmer, and far more rigid. “Don’t.”
“Mom. Don’t keep pushing me away. I don’t know why you hate me so much.” I drop my hand, step back. Then I do as any good Irish woman would. I put the kettle back on the electric stove and heat water for tea. I grab three bags out of the Barry’s box and a fresh cup for her; my used mug is still on the table beside Teddy’s. I plop the bags into the cups, retrieve the milk from the fridge, and send Shadow to scratch on Teddy’s bedroom door, pointing and saying, “Go get Teddy.”
The dog does. His comprehension amazes me.
“Sit down, Mom.”
To my relief, she does.
Teddy rolls back into the kitchen area. “I’ve got cookies.”
I think that only the Mad Hatter’s tea party could be any weirder.
With tea bags dunked and cookies shared, milk poured, sugar asked for and received, we finally face one another across the table. And say nothing. So I break the ice. “When I was in prison, the only tea you could get from the commissary was Salada. You remember Salada? The boxes used to come with those little ceramic animals. You had a collection of them, didn’t you, Mom? Don’t I remember a tiny horse and a goat?” Okay, I’ve used the p word. Prison. Let’s get this party started.
“Where did you get the dog?” My mother asks this just as Shadow has nuzzled up to her, his expressive brown eyes beneath the bushy eyebrows seemingly beseeching a cookie from her, so it’s not that much of a non sequitur.
“He showed up, where I live. Just sort of joined me.”
“And where do you live?”
“On the edges of a place called Dogtown. In Gloucester. I’m the project manager for a family foundation renovating an antique house. For now, I’m living in it.”
Okay, so the conversation is like one that any two strangers might have. It’s a start. She hasn’t left the building yet. Teddy dunks his Chips Ahoy.
“I trained dogs in prison.” Again I use the word prison. Do I detect a flinch in my mother? “I told Teddy he should look into acquiring a service dog. They can be such a help. And company, too.”
“Can you imagine my shame?” Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.
“Yes. But you have to remember that I was failed by my defense.”
“I mean how you treated us. Throwing your family over for a rich snob.”
“I killed that rich snob.” I am not sorry for the words I’ve blurted, but I am a little shocked at them. “By accident, but I was leaving him. I was trying to get home that night. Brenda Brathwaite was coming for me.”
“You were our only daughter; your duty was with us during that time. You chose Europe and diamonds and the glitter of New York over being a good daughter, helping me with your father. And with Teddy.”
Teddy sits up straighter in his chair. “Leave me out of this.”
“I came. I helped.”
“Not enough. Swanning in every couple of weeks to spend half a day, that’s not helping. And then threatening our very home? Siding with that man?”
“I have told you over and over, there was nothing I could do.”
“Because he was your sugar daddy, your puppet master.”
I won’t lie; I was half-expecting this characterization of Charles. She’s not wrong, not really. I was Eliza to his Henry Higgins. He not only dressed me; he chiseled away at my flaws—as he perceived them. Duty to family. Filial love. All eyes must be on him at all times. All his needs met in exchange for the trips, the rings, the clothes, the expensive haircuts. Loyalty to him. No distractions. “You’re right. And I was very young. I’ve learned a few things since then. You have to give me a chance to mend things.”
“Your father was very hurt.”
I get up from the table. Shadow watches me but stays beside Teddy. I dump out the dregs of my tea into the sink, which is filled with dirty dishes. There is no dishwasher in this starter apartment. I grab a sponge and turn the water on full blast. I don’t want her to see me cry. I don’t want her to know that she’s gotten to me.
“Mom, that’s not a fair statement.” This from Teddy. “He didn’t know she wasn’t there. Not at the end.”
If Teddy intends this to help, it doesn’t. It just serves to hammer home the fact that I was absent when he passed and that is something no one, not even I, has forgiven me for. So I say so. “I wasn’t there, and not a day goes by that I don’t feel terrible about it.” I turn away from the sink. “But”—I point my soapy finger—“you were the one to throw me out.”
“I didn’t.”
“No, Paulie was the one to shut the door. But you never stopped him.”
Our voices are starting to rise, and I hope that the neighbors are all out on Saturday errands. I hope that the receptionist in the foyer doesn’t start to worry, or, worse, call for help. But at the same time, it feels good. Not so much the argument, but the fact that we are in the same room, facing each other. I have been so very alone. For some reason, Susannah comes to mind. She was very alone, too, except for her dog. As I have been except for mine. She’d accepted what life had thrown at her, moving into that hovel in Dogtown, making her house calls, keeping body and soul together with whatever she could find to earn or barter for. I shrug on a little of her courage and walk over to my mother, who has her teacup clenched between her hands. I set my hands on her shoulders. “Mom, I love you. It’s okay if you don’t love me, but you’re not going to lose my love.”
Teddy very quietly, for a man in a wheelchair, leaves the table and opens the front door. He snaps his fingers at Shadow, who follows him without my say-so.
My mother and I are in the room alone together. I have so few memories of its ever being this way; there was always someone else in the room, in the house. Teddy primarily. A constant presence. We were never the mother/daughter pair to go shopping together or cook together or share girlie chat. Although I was assured I was the longed-for daughter, now I wonder. Maybe I was just a mistake.
My mother lets go of her grip on the cup. She takes her right hand and touches mine, which is resting on her shoulder. Pats it. Her hand is very warm, very soft. I can smell the Herbal Essence in her hair—the same fragrance I remember from my youth. “Where did you get that awful dog?” We’re back at the beginning.
“He came to me.”
“And you say that you train dogs?”
“I did. It was a program that paired puppies to be trained as service dogs with prisoners, and, Mom, it made all the difference in my life.”
“Would Teddy really benefit?”
“Yes.”
“Will you help us look into it?”
“Gladly.” I gently squeeze her shoulders.
As I drive away, Shadow once again recumbent on the backseat, I call Meghan again. This time, she answers and I win this round of telephone tag. I quickly fill her in on Teddy and my suggestion that she come demonstrate Shark for him. “Your brother?” Meghan knows all about my family dynamics.
“Yeah.” I am filled with a happiness I haven’t had in many a year. “My brother.”
Traffic through the tunnel is thick, but I don’t care. Maybe it isn’t that I’m filled with happiness; maybe it’s closer to say that I’ve been emptied. The weight of my estrangement from my family is gone. We will never be perfect, but at least we can be together. Grievances will no longer be a wall between us. Of course, this assumes that Paulie and the rest of them will be persuaded to come around to accepting me back in the fold. By the strength of the hug that my mother gave me when we parted, I think she’ll make that happen.