Part 3 (1/2)

DON'T DO IT

That was my father-in-law's advice in a nutshell He was not an unkindand, like everyone else, he'd witnessed her fragile condition and sensed how near she was to unraveling It would also have been clear how dependent she was on me, that if I ever left the room she'd nervously watch the spot I'd disappeared frohter told him that my mother wanted to move in with us until she could find a job and start a new life in Tucson, he warned her that it would be a terrible mistake ”If you let that woman in,” he said, ”you'll never be rid of her”

She'd telephoned thatin the throes of a full-blown panic attack There was a three-hour time difference between New York and Arizona, and she'd waited as long as she could, but it was still early and also a Saturday, so Barbara and I were asleep I'd been expecting the call for days, actually My ularly, so I knehere she was in the never-ending cycle of her anxieties So so some of the pressure a ive herself a good talking-to, and thereby avert colued ”Can't you understand?” she'd sobbed ”Doesn't it ht to a life, like anybody else? How long aain 36 Helwig Street, where she'd been living for a couple years Phoenix had gone well for a time, but ultimately badly She'd fallen in love with a man who looked like Sam Shepard and was about as laconic He wore jeans and cowboy boots and drove a pickup truck Then suddenly he was gone, and she was devastated The story she told otten too serious, too quickly He had no desire to gether That last part didn't sound like the man in question, and a friend of hers later confided that he hadn't left Arizona, or even Phoenix, or, for that hborhood He'd bolted once he discovered how intenseto another apart someone else When my mother spotted his truck in the lot, it sent her into a tailspin Had she mentioned, her friend wondered, that she'd lost her job at U-Haul? Well, no, she hadn't, but she did the next ti that it was okay, that she'd hated the job fro like the old GE in Schenectady, which for her always represented the gold standard of e to leave it? she wondered out loud Just iine if she'd stayed How ine her salary

It didn't take her long to find another job, though it was no better, and she had no safety net if so her nervous Her doctor had agreed to up the dosage on her Valium, but she didn't like the way itthe pills entirely, she needed the was a and gay at the beginning, but the parties had turned dark, and there were drugs now (By then it was the -the traffic, the heat, the lack of air-conditioning Soe, or she'd suffer a nervous breakdown

Then, tocowboy, there was suddenly another er and recently divorced, he was clearly crazy about her I'd ht She was always a sucker for style, and the men she was usually drawn to-like itive-were invariably handsoer, a boyish, self-destructive char for hiht actually be good for my mother if she could learn to see past his unromantic virtues

”Well, I think he loves you,” I said when she asked my opinion about what she should do ”Do you love him?”

She didn't answer, so I said, ”It sounds like you have a decision to reed that she did Neither of us needed to articulate the exact nature of the dilemma: she could marry a man she didn't love or return to Gloversville

The e lasted a couple years, one in Phoenix and another in San Francisco, then crashed and burned After the split she moved to nearby Pacifica, which sat under a per Her apartment was situated on a cliff, and fro on the beach below, and there she went about the business of once again putting herself back together She had no job, though, and noone I'd inherited the Gray Death when she and Russ went to San Francisco and illing to give it back, but she said no, she was through with driving

So, when the money fro to do but return to upstate New York It was rad school, but I stole a few days and flew to San Francisco, where I rented a truck, packed her books and other possessions, put thee, and prorandparents found money for a one-way plane ticket to Albany My aunt and uncle picked her up and drove her to Helwig Street, where randparents had evicted their upstairs tenant to make room for her She arrived in Gloversville with two suitcases and an official narrative She had not failed toto Arizona had not been aho fast, on oxygen all the time and for the most part confined to his ar health on herto help out As with so ned for people who knew better-her parents, her sister and brother-in-law, me She never cared whether people believed her, simply that her version of events was never publicly questioned

Being back in Gloversville worked for a while She found a job and bought sorave, and for a while her own problems paled by comparison My mother had always adored hiot mended Further disputes were now out of the question; he had all he could do just to draw his next breath For over a year she and asps until finally they stopped Then they were alone in the Helwig Street house, torandfather lived, they'd ed to coexist; neither had wanted to upset hione the conflict resuunsolicited advice-was added another, far randfather had been Tohusband, a model of responsibility and duty, the kind of man who quietly endured what could not be cured; to my mother he'd been a rebel, trapped just as she was in a town he hated, in roles as husband and father he'd never wanted but from which he could never escape On top of all this, a recession hit, and my mother was laid off, and there wasn'thours except to take stock: once again stuck in Gloversville with no friends, no money, no future, no life All of which had led to that Saturdaywas expected to live in a cage There was only one person in the whole world who really cared about her, who understood and could help her, and that was , but she could hardly do it by herself, with no one to call her own

At the ti in a fourteen-foot-wide mobile home that we'd parked in a remote trailer park on the outskirts of Tucson, where rental spaces were cheapest It had two bedrooms, one on each end, the architectural wisdom of which we didn't fully appreciate until rand, probablyStreet, and tosurad school stipend paid less than two grand for teaching two sections of freshman composition per se electronics firineer frohes Aircraft They'd called the cootanother year For those reasons I'd hoped, right up until we closed, that the finance coood look at us, come to its senses, and refuse us the loan

”She'd only be with us until she finds a job and can afford her own apartment,” I assured my wife ”She doesn't want to live with us”

”There's a recession here, too,” Barbara pointed out ”What will she do in this trailer all day e're gone? Hoill she get to job interviews? If she gets a job, hoill she get back and forth to work? Who's going to hire soood questions With no answers anybody would want to offer

I didn't even recognize her getting off the plane Too poor to travel, we hadn't actually seen each other in the year and a half since the wedding, by far the longest we'd ever been apart She had to say my name, and I had to connect the sound of her voice to the frail, elderly woray, but it wasn't that She seemed about half the size of the woman who a few short years before had climbed behind the wheel of a car she only half kne to drive and pointed it toward Phoenix and the new life she was betting everything on Had she been like this at the wedding? Caught up in the event and my own happiness, had I failed to notice? When had she beco at her with new eyes? After all, I was now married At least symbolically my mother's place in my life had been diminished But, no, it was more than that The way she came toward me had less to do with how I saw her than how she saw herself In her own eyes she was about half her former size When I held outinto my embrace ”Ricko-Mio,” she said ”Always there Always my rock”

SHE WAS IN terrible shape, shattered and barely functional Deteret back on her feet as soon as possible, my mother immediately scoured the help-wanted ads but on le call, unable to control her voice, barely able to hold on to the phone because her hands shook so badly On better days she'd set up interviews aroundresponsibilities, then cancel them as the time approached and she became too nervous I'd seen her in bad shape before, but this was new It was as if her world had gotten smaller, or the part of it she felt safe in had For Barbara and me the trailer was suddenly too small, its common areas, especially the kitchen, too cramped We were constantly in one another's way That hat my mother seerandfather's death, she'd been living by herself in our old flat with the few pieces of furniture she'd bought and could no longer one by, she told me, when she never heard the sound of another human voice The fact that ere so crowded in our trailer was having a healing effect She was no longer alone

It also seeone for more than a few hours Barbara had a nine-to-five job and left for work early, butout what she'd try to get done in our absence, and in the evening we all ate dinner together I gave her ot out and roughly when to expectunexpected came up at the university, because each afternoon she positioned herself at theand waited for the Gray Death (yes, still alive) to pull up beside the trailer Norraded s ranGradually, her condition did improve She was able to cut back on the nu, and the tremor in her hands became less pronounced She set up more interviews and actually hworse She was finding reasons to stay later at work, and I couldn't blaht there were three of us at the dinner table, but mostly my mother talked to otten I was married, that this extra, unnecessary person was irlfriend I'd soon tire of, or vice versa She certainly didn't dislike or resent Barbara and often re up her home It was my wife's existence she couldn't quite account for, as if she were a hologram, and when I asked Barbara a direct question, , after we'd done the dishes, Barbara and I retreated to our bedroohts we crawled into bed and whispered all the things we norined ive us her input We could no longer have friends over and felt guilty (or at least I did) if ent out soone outwas then in its death throes, sometimes unable to make its payroll One month Barbara was paid in office furniture, and she had little choice but to start looking for another job It was against this stark financial backdrop that we began to make weekend trips to places like FedMart to start furnishi+ng the kitchen of the apartment my mother didn't yet have It see pan or a set of cheap cutlery cheered inative focus the day when she'd be officially back on her feet and living, as she liked to put it, independently It wasn't just for her that we did this, of course Buying the pan also allowed Barbara and h, I went too far and put toocart, as if to hasten its arrival, and when I looked up Barbara was gone I found her in the car, in tears I'd spent money we simply didn't have Nor could we borrow it Her father hadn't drawn a salary in months, so her parents' situation, withat home, was as dire as ours There was simply no one in either of our faether And of course Iwe'd been fools to ever buy the trailer, and the look on my wife's face conveyed clearly what she was too kind to say We'd been fools, all right, but not about the trailer Even if we assumed the day would finally come when my mother had recovered sufficiently to live on her oould be left of us?

But eventually, that day did coreat many others, and somehow there was still an ”us” for my wife and me to protect and cherish Indeed, over time our trials would appear to illustrate the old saw that what doesn't kill youby in Tucson, both financial and eined They would need to be

THE FURNISHED APARTMENT my mother finally rented in Tucson reminded her of the one she'd loved in Phoenix, and she found a job she could get to by bus Weekends I took her to the grocery store and wherever else she needed to go Otherwise, Barbara and I returned as best we could to the routines of our young married life and told ourselves that maybe it would all work out But then su heat My mother's apartment was several blocks from the bus stop, and the buses weren't necessarily air-conditioned, so she often arrived at work already wilted, with eight hours still to go She ate lunch at her desk, there being no restaurants within walking distance, at least in the midday heat, and there were no sidewalks anyway In July ca oot off work, and the downpours, though brief, were apocalyptic Sheher, because by the tiot hoain and stea from the asphalt, the air not just hot but humid ”What an awful, awful place,” she la in Phoenix after learning she wouldn't be working for GE any her in was neither Tucson, with its heat and monsoons, nor the job she hated (her new co like GE), nor the fact that she'd made no friends, but rather the return of her emotional equilibrium One of the ironies of my mother's condition was that her periodic tranquillity was usually a ht cause her to spin out of control, but once she got her bearings again, she could see beyond her own torrab at a fulfilling life hadn't allowed her to iine what that would be like in Tucson It had to be better because it couldn't be any worse In hershe saas on a Gloversville scale, only better She pictured ht around the corner But Tucson was like Phoenix, a sprawling city of identically ugly intersections, where you were always half an hour away from anywhere else It was a sea of cars, and she didn't have or want one Being ”close” in Tucson wasn't ten er if you were living, say, in a remote trailer park

Worse, her failure to accurately predict her own life in Tucson was compounded by her inability to understand ours She had no idea how hard orking,us while I did Even before my mother's arrival, we'd been stretched thin in virtually every respect As short as ere onpapers, and on Friday and Saturday nights, for extra cash, I was a singer in a popular restaurant Barbara's large faations But whenever so unexpectedly came up in my mother's life, I always did my best to accommodate her, and she could tell it wasn't easy ”You're always there when I need you,” she'd said one day, gratefully patting my hand in the dentist's office after she'd chipped a tooth The plan we'd developed back at the trailer was intended to restore her independence, and its major components were now in place She had an aparth, was that none of this was sustainable The truth was that she neededthat could work in the long run would be a version of the old Helwig Street model in which each of us was central to the other's daily existence But eventually, Barbara and I would have children, and as a father I'd have even less time to devote to her And when I finished the PhD, in, and who knehere that would take ht have seeraphy, by all those miles, but now she understood that our separation was not onlyto get worse

By the tiood talking-to Co to Tucson had been aover in her midfifties ell, too late She hated Gloversville, God knew, but ht place for her, maybe the only place Her ain They would si Toward that end, she had a new, better idea Instead of living upstairs in our old flat, she'd move into the spare bedroom downstairs, and they would share expenses The upstairs flat could be rented, further bolstering their botto financial stress completely out of the equation And, to put my worries to rest, she pointed out that it wasn't like we'd never see each other again There were far es and universities east of the Mississippi than west of it, so I'dsoether She'd worked it all out, just as she had that long-ago plan to co me in on the details only after her own ht of the decision, simply infor to Tucson had been a bad decision, as she said, but returning to Gloversville would be another What I couldn't give voice to wascertainty that hts and i to escape theGloversville randfather's fear I re Street when he'd watched froen tank, asnation in the face of his daughter's tidal determination, but when my eyes met his I didn't yet understand the true nature of his concern He orried about ould become of my mother, of course, but also ould become of me Even if he'd had the desire, he lacked the breath to say all this, and anyway it would have been a terrible betrayal of the daughter he couldn't stop loving, regardless Probably less har-established family narrative My mother suffered from nerves So did lots of people