Kathleen

Not long after my mother died, she began to visit me frequently. There are many common misconceptions when it comes to, & pardon me for using this term, “paranormal activity” & one of them is ghosts, spectres, wraiths, phantoms & what-have-you only visit @ night. Or they arrive, when they do, w some cryptic message, some mystery for us to solve, some wrong to be righted. My experience has been a little different. I mean, there is a storytelling element here & there is certainly a trunkful (or two!) of wrongs that need to righted. She comes around, I think, mainly, to goad me into action. I believe, & this is probably the illusion or fantasy of all writers, that she wants me to tell her story. To get it right. Not the one we know. But the real one. The one lying underneath. It’s the same with me you know? I’ve been telling you the same thing about me for some time now…but I, eventually, am going to have to get to the real thing.

So, this is what it’s like since my mother left her physical body: I’m eating breakfast (alone) in a diner & she appears. She’ll sidle up alongside me (not across) & grab a menu & start talking about how to cook the perfect egg or the culinary attributes of the beet or remind me of her famous cactus & pork chops dish or the fried bread doughs w sauce. She’ll remind me how I enjoyed dressing up & being dressed up by my older sisters as a woman named Lucy. My favourite accessory was a faux string of pearls.(!!) She’ll say, “I went crazy. Yes I did. I didn’t want to & in moments of clarity late @ night, smoking a Newport with my legs tucked under me reading a detective novel I felt like I knew who I was. I was a girl from Jersey City. I fucking liked smoking Newports. I liked detective stories. It was the only time I was me, late @ night when everyone else was squared away & resting. I couldn’t sleep because I needed to feel like myself, I needed that time, because I had to take care of fucking everything. I lost myself. I lost myself in you. You became the thing & I wanted to make you happy because I couldn’t be happy anymore. I just couldn’t. & I’m sorry pal, I am, because, in my own way, I loved you & your sisters & even your father. & I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t make it happen. & I loved food.

My mother, let’s call her Kathleen. Because that’s her name. She was born Kathleen Louise Kearns. Kathleen was an opinionated woman. I don’t know what she was like as a child or even a young woman…which I think is very important here. I think she wants us to know. I know I wanna know. There are, of course, the family photos & Kathleen, when she was young - now hang in there, I’m sure all mama’s boys think their Mother was beautiful & to some extent have a crush on them…Thank you Mr Freud. - *Interesting side note: I’ve been informed by my eldest sister Franny on one of our late-night phone calls when I was describing the incomprehensible behaviour of my wife, my sister, usually devoid of irony said flatly, “You know Marc, you married your mother.” Kathleen, pre-mom, looked a lot like a young Judy Garland. Her eyes, even through her cat-eye rimmed glasses, you could see, possessed a sultry nature. Dare I say it? She was sexy. My father was handsome. They were thin…they looked: cool. This is not how I remember them. I remember my father as severe &, as I like to say, w out poetry. Kathleen was fun & psychotic & tender & jovial & heavily opinionated & given to wrath. I never knew what would set her off & once I had done so…she would erupt into extreme fits of violence & rage or even worse, she would go silent. I received my worst beatings, not from my father who was consistent with his doling out of corporal punishment, but from Kathleen. 

Kathleen hated religion. Hated it. I think I have this right. She believed religion, in our case, more specifically, because this is what we were subjected to, christianity, was a negative & corrosive device used by men to subjugate & control women & the poor. “…the Bible is a book written by men for men!” she would blurt out acidly whenever someone was trying to peddle their belief around her. & in our neck of the woods, Fresno, Ca. , that was often. Franny in her twenties fell in w a “youth group’ as they call them, & turned her life over to Jesus. It was honest & sincere. I have never known Franny to be anything but. Some would liken these movements to Jim Jones or Marshall Applewhite’s Heaven’s Gate. I dunno…? She was, like we all are, searching. - Christ…I, myself, played guitar on a “worship team” on Sundays & played in a christian folk-rock group for years in my attempt to do spiritual battle with Mr. Sorrow. I even @ one point, drawn by the academic nature of it, considered the seminary!! Alas, cocaine got the better of me, Thanks again Dr. Freud! - Anyhow, in her zeal for her newfound belief & desire to share “The Good News” Franny came home & made the mistake of telling Kathleen her soul was in jeopardy & without action, she would be confined to the flames of hell for eternity…maybe not in those words, but that is, the gist. Not very receptive when it comes to matters of the soul, or any advice really, Kathleen didn’t take this too well. After much screaming & yelling & crying & gnashing of the teeth, so to speak…Franny became, in our family, the victim of, I believe, the longest & cruelest, silent period ever recorded. 

I’m in class. A poetry workshop. As you could imagine there are many empty seats. In walks Kathleen & sits down beside me w a “pffff…” & looks @ me w raised eyebrows. We are reading Frank Bidart’s Stardust. She grabs the slim volume from my hand & reads:

“Understand that it can drink till it is

Sick, but cannot drink till it is satisfied.

It alone knows you. It does not wish you well.”

She stays for the rest of the class: Rapt.

Like all fatal flaws, it ain’t the flaw…it’s something else. Kathleen’s downfall was food. It killed her. The very thing that sustains us. Can you imagine? The paradox! The irony!! The Tyranny! What a cook! What a mother!! I always had the best bag lunch of the group. I was the envy of the playground. Two salami sandwiches stacked w meat & cheese. Two pickles. Two twinkies! A bag of chips. I’m not kidding. That was every day. Every day! When I got home, something was on the stove. There was a snack while I waited. My father (on the weekends, made breakfast) everything else was Kathleen’s domain. & she did not hold back. All of her love & affection & desire & ambition, I know now, went into it. We all got on board (except the Old Man…he saw through the ruse). She was sedating herself & the rest of us. It felt really good. 

During dinner, Kathleen would often talk about how she wanted to remodel the front of the house. She wanted to remove the numerous paneled windows that looked out from our dining room & replace them w a Big Bay Window. Thats how she described it: A Big Bay Window & she would illustrate the grand design w a sweeping gesture of her enormous arms. She had this way of talking about things & looking off into the distance w a smile on her face, one light blue eye smaller than the other. I was on board. Sure. A Big Bay Window. Let’s do it. We never did it. & that’s it isn’t it? That’s the thing. Not doing it. It never happened. Just like she never moved back to New Jersey like she always threatened to do during fights w my father or tirades directed @ us, her selfish children. She should have. I wish she fucking would have! I do. Fucking Fresno? What a death sentence. I would have even gone with her. I would have.

“I like this class.” She says & gets up & walks out. Outside in the parking lot she is waiting for me. She is sitting in the passenger seat of my Subaru. She has the music on & she is listening to Nat King Cole. “I know how you feel” she says. “When I was a kid in New Jersey, my mother used to hide my father’s whiskey bottles. He would pay us kids a nickel if we found one of them. He drank himself to death. You look & act just like him: Nick. From the side you look just like him. Do you know that? My mother, Paula? She died the exact same age I did. 60. She ate a lot too. She was beautiful & violent. She once threw the family doctor down the steps of the fire escape. We were living in the projects. She did it because he said I wouldn’t recover from my illness @ the time. He said I was going to die. I don’t know what happened to him. It was a rough place. Jersey City. There was a lot of fighting & a lot of gangs. The black girls & the Italian girls would fight a lot. The Puerto Rican girls. Some of them were my friends. I was afraid a lot. I had to fight. I loved my mother. She was everything to me. I never should have left, y’know? I met your father & he was so handsome & funny & charming. I just wanted to be with him. Being a wife & being a mother blind-sided me. I thought I wanted that, but it wasn’t what I expected. I felt like a stranger in California, I never got used to it. The lifestyle didn’t suit me. I like to curse. I like to fight. I like to tell jokes & drink Vodka. I love Bloody Mary’s. I like to drink & smoke Newports. I love to cook & eat. I love the water. I love the ocean. You’re father…it seemed like he didn’t love anything. Even himself. It’s not his fault really. You remember John, his father? He was a hard man. I know how you feel… Keep reading. Thats a good thing. I’m glad you are not drinking anymore. When you cook an egg use medium heat. If you wanna put a new window in, put it in. Don’t think too much about it. Be nice to your daughter. Play a lot. Read a lot. Remember how much fun we had? All the movies & the books & the lunch dates? When you’re wife is acting crazy, go easy on her. Try to do something nice. It’s hard to be a mother. It’s hard to be.”