Part 20 (1/2)
”Of course I don't, but that doesn't mean I don't want to sleep there when I come home.”
My mother sighed. ”We made some changes,” she murmured.
”Yeah, I noticed. So what's the big deal?”
”We, um... well. We kind of got rid of your bed.”
I was speechless. ”You got rid of...”
”Tanya needed the s.p.a.ce for her loom.”
”There's a loom in there?”
Indeed there was. Tanya stomped up the stairs, unbolted the door, and stomped back downstairs, looking sullen. I entered my room and saw the loom, a computer, a battered futon, a few ugly pressboard bookshelves covered with plastic walnut veneer, containing volumes with t.i.tles like Smart Women, Foolish Choices, and Courage to Heal, and It's Not What You're Eating, It's What's Eating You. There was a rainbow-triangle suncatcher hanging in the window and, worst of all, an ashtray on the desk.
”She smokes?”
My mother bit her lip. ”She's trying to quit.”
I inhaled. Sure enough, Marlboro Lights and incense. Yuck. Why did she have to plant her self-help guides and her cigarette smells in my room? And where was my stuff?
I turned toward my mother. ”You know, you really could have told me about this. I could have come down and taken my things with me.”
”Oh, we didn't get rid of anything, Cannie. It's all in boxes in the bas.e.m.e.nt.”
I rolled my eyes. ”Well, that makes me feel a lot better.”
”Look,” she said. ”I'm sorry. I'm just trying to balance things here”
”No, no,” I said. ” 'Balance' involves taking different things into account. This,” I said, sweeping my hand to indicate the loom, the ashtray, the stuffed dolphin perched upon the futon, ”is taking what one person wants into account, and completely s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the other person. This is completely selfish. This is absolutely ridiculous. This is...”
”Cannie,” said Tanya. She'd somehow come up the stairs without my hearing.
”Excuse us, please,” I said, and slammed the door in her face. I took a perverse pleasure in listening to her work at the door handle after I'd locked it with her lock.
My mother started to sit down where my bed used to be, caught herself mid-sit and settled for Tanya's desk chair. ”Cannie, look. I know this is a shock”
”Have you gone completely crazy? This is ridiculous! All it would have taken was one lousy phone call. I could have come, gotten my stuff...”
My mother looked miserable. ”I'm sorry,” she said again.
I wound up not staying the night. That visit occasioned my first- and, so far, my last- stint at therapy. The Examiner's health plan paid for ten visits with Dr. Blum, the smallish, Little Orphan Annielooking woman who scribbled frantically, while I told her the whole crazy-father-bad-divorce-lesbian-mother tale. I worried about Dr. Blum. For one thing, she always looked a little scared of me. And she always seemed a few twists behind the current plot.
”Now, back up,” she'd say, when I'd segue abruptly from Tanya's latest atrocity to my sister, Lucy's, inability to keep a job. ”Your sister was, um, dancing topless for a living, and your parents didn't notice?'
”This was '86,” I'd say. ”My father was gone. And my mother somehow managed to miss the fact that I was sleeping with my subst.i.tute history teacher and I'd gained fifty pounds during my freshman year of college, so yeah, she pretty much believed that Lucy was babysitting until four every morning.”
Dr. Blum would squint down at her notes. ”Okay, and the history teacher was... James?”
”No, no. James was the guy on the crew team. Jason was the E-Z-Lube poet. And Bill was the guy in college, and Bruce is the guy right now.”
”Bruce!” she'd say triumphantly, having located his name in her notes.
”But I'm really worried that I'm, you know, leading him on or something.” I sighed. ”I'm not sure I really love him.”
”Let's go back to your sister for a minute,” she'd say, flipping faster and faster through her legal pad, while I sat there and tried not to yawn.
In addition to her inability to keep up, Dr. Blum was rendered less than trustworthy by her clothes. She dressed as if she didn't know there was such a thing as the pet.i.te section. Her sleeves routinely brushed her fingertips; her skirts sagged around her ankles. I opened up as best I could, answered her questions when she asked them, but I never really trusted her. How could I trust a woman who had even less fas.h.i.+on sense than I did?
At the end of our ten sessions, she didn't quite p.r.o.nounce me cured, but she did leave me with two pieces of advice.
”First,” she said, ”you can't change anything anybody else in this world does. Not your father, not your mother, not Tanya, not Lisa...”
”... Lucy,” I corrected.
”Right. Well, you can't control what they do, but you can control how you respond to it... whether you allow it to drive you crazy, or occupy all of your thoughts, or whether you note what they're doing, consider it, and make a conscious decision as to how much you'll let it affect you.”
”Okay. And what's thing two?”
”Hang on to Bruce,” she said seriously. ”Even if you don't think he's Mr. Right. He's there for you, and he sounds like a good support, and I think you're going to need that in the coming months.”
We shook hands. She wished me good luck. I thanked her for her help and told her that Ma Jolie in Manayunk was having a big sale, and that they made things in her size. And that was the end of my big therapy experience.
I wish that I could say that, in the years since Tanya and her loom and her pain and her posters moved in, that things have gotten easier. The fact is, they haven't. Tanya has the people skills of plant life. It's like a special kind of tone-deafness, only instead of not hearing the music, she's deaf to nuances, to subtleties, to euphemisms, small talk, and white lies. Ask her how she's doing, and you'll get a full and lengthy explication of her latest work/health crisis, complete with an invitation to look at her latest surgical scar. Tell her that you liked whatever she cooked (and Lord knows you'll be lying), and she'll regale you with endless recipes, each with a story behind it (”My mother cooked this for me, I remember, the night after she came home from the hospital”).
At the same time, she's also incredibly thin-skinned, p.r.o.ne to public crying fits, and temper tantrums that conclude with her either locking herself in my ex-bedroom, if we're home, or stomping away from wherever we are, if we're out. And she dotes on my mother in the most annoying way you could imagine, following her around like a lovestruck puppy, always reaching to hold her hand, touch her hair, rub her feet, tuck a blanket around her.
”Sick,” p.r.o.nounced Josh.
”Immature,” said Lucy.
”I don't get it,” is what I said. ”Having somebody treat you that way for, like, a week would be nice... but where's the challenge? Where's the excitement? And what do they talk about?”
”Nothing,” said Lucy. The three of us had come home for Chanukah, and we were sitting around the family room after the guests had gone home and my mother and Tanya had gone to bed, all of us holding the gifts Tanya had woven for us. I had a rainbow-colored scarf (”You can wear it to the Pride Parade,” Tanya offered). Josh had mittens, also in the gay-pride rainbow, and Lucy had an odd-looking bundle of yarn that Tanya had explained was a m.u.f.f. ”It's to keep your hands warm,” she'd rumbled, but Lucy and I had already dissolved into gales of laughter, and Josh was wondering in a whisper whether such a thing could be dropped to the bottom of the pool for a little summertime m.u.f.f diving.
Nifkin, who'd been given a little rainbow sweater, was in my lap, sleeping with one eye open, ready to bolt for higher ground should the evil cats Gertrude and Alice appear. Josh was on the couch, picking out what sounded like the theme song from Beverly Hills, 90210 on his guitar.
”In fact,” said Lucy, ”they don't talk at all.”
”Well, what would they talk about?” I asked. ”I mean, Mom's educated... she's traveled...”
”Tanya puts her hand over Mom's mouth when Jeopardy comes on,” said Josh morosely, and switched to ”s.e.x and Candy” on the guitar.
”Ew,” I said.
”Yup,” confirmed Lucy. ”She says it's obnoxious how Mom shouts out the answers.”