Magnetism Read online

  Mom then tells Pastor David that it’s nothing to be worried about, just a little hiccup, that she really doesn’t want him to be troubled with it.

  By now I am the only one sitting, so when I say, ‘I’m useless,’ I am shadowed by all of them and I don’t think anyone hears.

  ‘You know you can’t base a marriage on deceit,’ Dad says above me.

  Mom comes back within a millisecond with, ‘Oh, yeah? You think so?’

  Pastor David says he thinks that perhaps I, the bride, could do with some calm, rather than stress, so maybe we should try having a little time of prayer. I shut my eyes because at least one of my parents is about to tell him to fuck off. But they don’t. Neither of them says anything and Pastor David starts to pray.

  I’m not listening to whatever Pastor David is saying, but his voice is soothing. The air stills and, when he winds up, it feels as though all the pressure has gone from the room. He leaves after patting me on my shoulder.

  In silence, Mom fixes the veil: pulls the lace down, so that it falls in front of my eyes. My parents become blurry for just a moment before I find I can see through it okay. Dad and I watch as Mom uses the mirror on the wall to put her hat on and freshen up her lipstick again. She tells Dad to go and fetch Truck, and when it’s just the two of us she tells me to put it all out of my mind. ‘The doctors haven’t said one hundred per cent, have they? We’ll find you that egg.’ Then she puts her face very close to mine, speaks at me through the veil and says, ‘Trust me, it’s no big deal. It’ll be fine. Just put one foot in front of the other and keep going. That’s the only way to handle life.’

  Truck and Dad appear and Truck takes Mom’s arm ceremoniously. They leave to go up the aisle before us.

  Now it’s just Dad and me alone again. Pastor David’s secretary will tell us when we are supposed to come out.

  Dad straightens his tie in the mirror. He won’t look at me. When the secretary puts her head through the doorway to tell us everything is set, he finally speaks to me. He says, ‘We can delay. Honey, you don’t have to do this. Do you want to speak to him first?’

  ‘It’s okay, Dad. It’s time. He’ll be okay with it. Please?’

  I take his arm and we walk up the aisle looking straight ahead.

  Pastor David says the who gives this woman line and Dad takes my hand and puts it into Chip’s. Chip is beaming at me.

  Even as I smile back, an uneasy sense of loss runs through me. It sends out its tendrils and tangles its roots around my bones. I remember two things: how Dad, in the car, said Chip was ‘a poor sucker’, and how Mom has always told me, ‘No one will ever love you as much as I do.’

  Pastor David is addressing us while I am hoping my parents are both wrong.

  1981

  The Idea of Sushi

  Mom parks the car at the strip mall near the doctor’s office. It’s nearly two o’clock, but the Japanese restaurant is still open. Inside, the entire wall which overlooks the parking lot is made of tinted glass, and through it the colour of the car outside changes from silver to brown. The tiny waitress shows us to a table covered by a stiff white linen cloth. Everything looks more manageable from here. The light was so white outside, it is a relief to be indoors. My head has been hurting for days.

  I am depressed. Last month I decided that talking about being depressed was only making me feel more depressed so I quit my therapy altogether. I haven’t told Chip yet about any of the stuff that was going on in my head, nor that I’ve quit therapy, but I did tell Mom. She said that before I gave it all up I had to see this psychologist she knew of. She made the appointment and I went along with it even though it was a waste of time.

  Maybe the guy sensed I didn’t want to talk about how I am feeling, because I don’t, but he should have tried to get me to spill the beans. That’s his job. Instead, I was doing all the running, and I don’t think he was interested at all. Without emotion, to fill him in and save time, I outlined my situation.

  ‘I’m told I’m bipolar and I can’t stand my meds. I have issues with my parents, both of them. My mother is controlling and hypercritical. My dad is passive and distant. There’s more but it’s not relevant. I’ve been seeing someone seriously, but two months ago I found out that having a baby might be a problem. I want kids. I haven’t told anyone about that. I’ve mainly been on lithium and tricyclics. I hate both of them; I hate the pills, not my parents, or maybe I do hate my parents too. I’m hoping to get into tourism. It’s a growth industry.’ I tried to end on another upbeat note. ‘And I like sex, a lot,’ I said. ‘That’s got to be a good thing, don’t you think? In fact, I just love sex.’

  All the doctors I’ve seen before are writing stuff down constantly, and they love to hear any mention of sex – it usually elicits copious amounts of scribbling. But he didn’t take any notes.

  When the waitress comes over now with the menus, Mom says, ‘Don’t know why this place is always empty. Everyone loves sushi.’ She says she knows what we’ll have, there’s no need to look at the menu, and she orders for the two of us.

  When the waitress has taken the order and left, I say, ‘I don’t love sushi, Mom. I don’t even like it. No one does, really. People like the idea of sushi.’

  She looks disappointed. ‘You were hungry. It was close.’ She glances around. ‘Wish this place were busier. Makes you wonder.’ She chews her bottom lip, rubbing off her lipstick completely. ‘Use the chopsticks. These people like people to try to use chopsticks.’ Then she pauses and looks excited. ‘So tell me, what do you think of the doctor?’

  ‘I won’t go back.’

  ‘He was nice, though, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He wasn’t a great shrink. He said to sit wherever. He made me choose a chair. There were five different chairs and a sofa. What kind of a guy makes you choose a chair like that? Who has a Goodwill warehouse for an office?’

  We are interrupted as the food arrives quickly, but I guess if it’s raw fish there’s no cooking involved. I have to admit, it’s very pretty, but there’s not much of it. ‘Is this it?’ Six tidy pieces of sushi encircle a pair of minuscule shrimp sitting astride cucumber strips. The green of the cucumber matches the colour of the napkins exactly.

  ‘It’s sushi. It’s healthy. No one pigs out on sushi.’ Mom aligns her chopsticks by tapping them on the table. Then she rearranges her plate quickly, sliding the centrepiece to the edge.

  ‘I guess that’s why you don’t see any fat Japanese people.’ I wish I’d had a cigarette before we got here. I don’t want to eat this cutesy fake food. What I’m craving is McDonald’s and a hit of nicotine. I tap my fingers on the table.

  She reads my mind. ‘I wish you’d quit smoking. Did the doctor let you smoke in his office?’

  I shake my head. ‘Patty was chain-smoking yesterday. You don’t tell her to stop.’

  ‘It was a fashion show. They can’t eat. What do you think people do at fashion shows?’

  ‘There were No Smoking signs up everywhere.’

  ‘Those aren’t for the fashion shows, it’s for the rest of the time.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mom. Why did she say you were the same age? Patty has got to be over fifty.’

  ‘She’s entitled to an opinion, isn’t she?’

  ‘Age is not an opinion.’ I’m always trying to force my mother to give me straight answers to questions and she won’t. She says things like, ‘Life isn’t black and white, sometimes two and two make seven.’ The latest nonsense slogan she’s been throwing around is ‘re-framing the past is the path to the future’.

  ‘Why do you always ask questions?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t. You do.’

  ‘Do I?’

  I’ve never told her that what I really want is for us to be standing in the same place, to face things together. I want there to be starting and finishing points to things. I want things to be either this or that. But she can’t understand. Sometimes I have the feeling that her past just floats away like a dream behind her,
that there is nothing fixed anywhere. How Dad has put up with it for so long, I’ll never know.

  Then she says, ‘What’s the point of smoking?’

  ‘You used to smoke. You did. I remember you smoking.’

  She pours us each a glass of water from the jug on the table. ‘Did I?’

  ‘You know you did. Be honest, Mom. Stop denying everything. That’s healthy.’

  We have finished our food. She waves her hand at the waitress who brings the check and when she fishes out her credit card to get ready to pay she says, ‘Not much.’

  ‘Yep. I’m going to be hungry again soon.’

  ‘I meant it was a bargain. Cheap,’ she says. ‘Sushi isn’t like that. Did you think it was supposed to fill you up?’ We are out in the heat again, walking across to the car when she says, ‘Do you think he’d make a nice dad?’ She passes me a mint before I can dig out a cigarette to smoke.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The doctor, who else?’

  ‘Has he got kids?’

  ‘Do you think I should marry him?’

  I spit out the mint that I’ve just put in my mouth and it pings on the ground.

  ‘Do you think it’s a crazy idea?’

  I feel I have to point out to her that she’s already married, to Dad.

  ‘Some people should never have got married in the first place. If a marriage is not meant to be, then once you find a way out, surely you should take it? How long do you think a divorce takes in this state?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about divorce.’

  This is not the first time my mother has told me that she married the wrong man. Only last year she tried to kick Dad out, and six years ago, when I was fifteen, she waved a book at me. It was called How to Love. ‘Now this is the man I should have married,’ she said. The picture on the back was of an overweight guy with long hair and a bushy moustache and beard, as different from my skinny, bald dad as white from black. ‘He’s understanding and understands the importance of everything, including a woman’s perspective on intimacy.’

  ‘You mean he’s gay,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not gay.’

  Now I say, ‘You don’t even know this guy.’

  ‘Don’t you remember telling me I should see someone, professionally? Don’t you remember me telling you that Patty recommended someone?’

  ‘God, Mom. It’s not real, those feelings that you get for someone taking care of you.’ I know that this sort of thing happens. It’s a stage to do with the treatment, this attraction between client and therapist. ‘It’s transference.’

  She’s annoyed. ‘What would you say if I told you we’ve been physical?’

  ‘I’d say he could go to prison.’ I’m not sure if this is true, but it sounds like it should be. Stupid Patty has recommended a dipshit shrink who tried to get my mom into bed.

  ‘He has feelings. He’s a man with feelings. We kissed. We cuddled,’ she says. ‘Can you imagine feeling so loved? We — ’

  ‘Don’t!’ I interrupt. ‘I don’t want to hear.’

  We are now at the car. She throws me the keys. ‘Why don’t you drive? Let’s go to the drugstore for ice-cream on the way home. There are negative calories in frozen yoghurt. You use up calories warming it to body temperature. Did you know that, Miss Know-it-all?’

  ‘I can’t believe you’d do this to Dad. He loves you. Dad loves you.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘But is it enough?’

  ‘You are not Ali McGraw.’

  We fall silent as I drive over to the drugstore. I think over what the screwed-up shrink who wanted to screw my mom had said to me earlier. He said, don’t let sex confuse things. That sometimes you might want to sleep with someone just because you want to be close; that a lot of people confuse sex with intimacy. That people even sleep around because they want to connect with someone and they don’t know how else to do it.

  Maybe he knows he’s inadequate at his job. His compassion hit tilt or something. Maybe it was a hint. Maybe he wanted out of this business with Mom; maybe he could see he’d stepped over the line and was trying to excuse himself so that he could end it. I try to remember in what context he’d said this thing about sex. I think it was in relation to my describing a dream I said I had a couple of nights ago. It was a fabrication – I gave him the dream to start a conversation, to get some response. I have no desire to sleep with my dentist. I try to ignore his fingers when they’re fiddling about in my mouth. Sex with my dentist is not something I fantasise about.

  At Walgreens we go straight to the ice-cream counter. I order two scoops of pralines and cream ice-cream, not yoghurt, for each of us. Mom tells me the calorie count, then tells me we can ignore it because it’s been a long day and we only had sushi earlier. We eat the ice-cream outside, spooning it with minuscule pink spoons from little cardboard tubs.

  In the shade it’s not so hot, and the ice-cream is smooth and delicious. The familiarity is soothing. We’ve been coming here for years, just for this.

  I ask her if she’s said anything to Dad and she says that it’s possible he’d understand.

  ‘You are off this planet if you think he will. Does Patty know?’

  ‘No.’ She shrugs. ‘I don’t think she knows.’ Suddenly my mother looks very tired, and sad. ‘Things don’t turn out the way you want them to, sometimes. It’s just incredibly sad. Can you believe that?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. I see that her life has probably had lots of closed doors and I guess if one is open, or at least ajar, she might not want to walk right past it. Maybe she’s just trying this on now, like the clothes yesterday. A person needs to peek inside, or to see if something might fit, so I say, ‘Are you seriously considering leaving Dad for this jerk?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know. Maybe I am.’

  ‘Well, he did an unprofessional thing,’ I say. ‘It’s really bad, Mom.’

  ‘People do. Things get the better of them. It’s life, and I’ve got to tell you, Mark’s chairs never bothered me,’ she says. ‘It’s not a test, choosing the chair. Things don’t always mean something else. It’s very limiting to be so restrictive. A person doesn’t have to choose. Anything. The world is bigger if you don’t try to box it in.’

  I have no idea what she’s talking about but I don’t feel like either arguing or asking. Then, with a rush of excitement, I remember that the certificate on the wall said Matthew. A different disciple. ‘Was his name Mark or Matthew?’ I ask. ‘Which one?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘How many times did you see him?’

  ‘He’s been married a few times before,’ she says.

  ‘How many times?’

  ‘Three or four, maybe more.’

  ‘Wives, or times you went?’

  She shrugs again.

  ‘So, are you going to leave Dad? Are you going to let him know? He deserves to know before you leave him.’

  ‘Probably not. Maybe you could tell him?’

  ‘Mom, this guy is a complete deadbeat. I don’t think you even know his name.’

  ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ she says. The tired tone in her voice tells me she won’t see Matthew or Mark or whoever he was again. I understand that she just wants me to know that she’s not just my mom; she’s always been a person with possibilities. I go over the whole rainbow from being angry about the set-up today to feeling sorry for her. Although it was selfish, it was a really pathetic move. But she’s never had a career. She didn’t have any more children. Her bipolar disorder is worse than mine and it’s always just been her and me, and Dad. She hasn’t got anyone else. This is it.

  She doesn’t entirely belong to me, but to all of her past as well as her present, even the parts and people that I don’t know about. Because I am her daughter, we are forever part of each other. It’s different for us because our lives overlap. We are in it together. We’re in that Japanese restaurant and outside this drugstore together forever.

  I don’t hurry to speak. The ice
-cream here in the shade is suddenly helping my depression. I tilt my head back to rest it against the brick wall of the store. She’ll drive us back to her house and I’ll have a cigarette in the car on the way home. I will offer her one and she’ll laugh.

  I’m scared of the responsibility of being the one person who knows this big sad thing about her. But I really don’t want to feel sorry for her. I want to make this thing today small, as small as a joke. As we walk back to the car to go home. ‘Hey, Mom,’ I say, ‘is he the one who turned you on to sushi? Did the two of you go to that place?’

  ‘I think he likes it.’

  ‘It? Or the idea of it? Or because it’s close?’

  ‘Why does it have to be one or the other? I really liked him,’ she adds.

  ‘They should yank his licence. Report him. You’re way too good for someone like that.’

  She’s back in the driver’s seat and now she starts the engine. I lower the window and blow smoke out into the heat where it disappears. For a moment I want to tell her that I think Chip and I are really serious; he wants us to move in together. But that news won’t help. If I say anything there will be more to say and I sense that neither of us would benefit from a conversation that might potentially eclipse the present crisis.

  She can be looking straight at me, and even through me, but I never know what she’s thinking about me. She can read my mind sometimes. I’ve noticed that if I catch sight of her in profile my mother looks like a total stranger. Someone completely hidden from my understanding. I’m small in comparison. She’s the sun and the entire universe combined.

  ‘He’s a total shit,’ I say. ‘To make a move on you. You deserve better. That’s what I think.’ And it’s true.

  1980

  The Kokopelli

  ‘So, here’s the thing, Dad,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what’s up with you and Mom, but something’s cracked.’ I pause. ‘Have you seen what she’s done to her hair this week? You might want to take a look.’