though a line has to be drawn between my father’s world and my mother’s. Like the horizon in that
Seascape
, or the door between the finished part of the basement and the unfinished part.
The finished part has a pool table no one has ever used, the orange vinyl couch with black patches of gummy tape addressing its old wounds—something left over from my parents’ poor, early married days. On weekend evenings when Phil is busy with his mother, Beth and Mickey sometimes come over, and we drink Boone’s Farm Apple Wine down there, look at those
Penthouses
. That wine tastes like something sour squeezed out of a May day, and after a few glasses it burns greenly behind the eyes.
The unfinished part of the basement is our family’s personal wasteland: cement floor with a drain hole like a navel leading directly from our home to the sewer, the Chagrin River, then into the huge, burning cesspool of Lake Erie. Just the washer and dryer—water and air, those elements tumbling their fuzzy stars and flowers with our underwear, our socks, our soggy monogrammed towels—and a horizontal freezer full of meat and cookie dough waiting in wax paper, waiting for Christmas, waiting for my mother to bake. Fifteen cubic feet of limbo.
As we sleep, that appliance purrs beneath our beds, kicking on and off inside its strange private life like a big, dangerous pet. The great, white, humming brain of our house.
For sixteen years we have lived quietly in our suburb, with some elegance, some ease, but nothing out of the ordinary. When my mother disappeared, when I said to my father that we ought to call the police, the first thing he thought to say was, “Let’s go to the station. We don’t want them to come over here for all the neighbors to see. Your mother wouldn’t like it.”
And, of course, he was right.
My mother would have wanted to disappear without making a scene, without giving anyone anything to talk about. Every day, she worked hard to keep passion and its violence subdued in our house. From room to room, the tasteful carpet, the sturdy furniture, the neutral walls—nothing exotic, nothing bright. Even a little would have been too much, would have stood out, homely, sad, telling the story of her discontent, letting guests know she’d wanted—once imagined—more.
A Chinese vase, a rug of embroidered roses, even a peacock feather would have revealed my mother—naked, longing—for the whole world to pity. She knew this because she’d been to houses like that, the houses of women who served European teas, though they’d never been to Europe, and if they ever did go to Europe, they would see it through the tinted windows of an air-conditioned bus, watching the castles and the Alps roll by, too blurred in the distance to appraise.
There’s only so much beauty women like that can bear. You see them at the Grand Canyon, the Pacific Ocean, Niagara Falls, holding the hands of their bored children—who, having been presented with some wonder of the world are drop-jawed with awe at something altogether wrong: the hot dog that fell on the ground, roiling with red ants, or the retarded man with unzipped pants, or the metal railing that surrounds it, fences the awe itself, keeps the tourists from falling in. They want to make a balance beam of that, to walk the space between death and their safe American vacation, and who could blame them?
The children are just bored, but it is their mothers who can’t bear to look at the thing itself.
Not out of fear. No. They’re too far removed for fear. There are signs to tell you when you’re too close to the edge, bronzed lifeguards blowing whistles when you’ve swum too far. There are rangers in uniforms—and, below you, the
Maid of the Mist
, drifting into the cool kiss of it, then veering back just in time.
Fear would make sense. But it’s something else. A taboo. An inhibition. A kind of modesty imposed on the natural world by women. Their husbands might be gawking
Seascape
, or the door between the finished part of the basement and the unfinished part.
The finished part has a pool table no one has ever used, the orange vinyl couch with black patches of gummy tape addressing its old wounds—something left over from my parents’ poor, early married days. On weekend evenings when Phil is busy with his mother, Beth and Mickey sometimes come over, and we drink Boone’s Farm Apple Wine down there, look at those
Penthouses
. That wine tastes like something sour squeezed out of a May day, and after a few glasses it burns greenly behind the eyes.
The unfinished part of the basement is our family’s personal wasteland: cement floor with a drain hole like a navel leading directly from our home to the sewer, the Chagrin River, then into the huge, burning cesspool of Lake Erie. Just the washer and dryer—water and air, those elements tumbling their fuzzy stars and flowers with our underwear, our socks, our soggy monogrammed towels—and a horizontal freezer full of meat and cookie dough waiting in wax paper, waiting for Christmas, waiting for my mother to bake. Fifteen cubic feet of limbo.
As we sleep, that appliance purrs beneath our beds, kicking on and off inside its strange private life like a big, dangerous pet. The great, white, humming brain of our house.
For sixteen years we have lived quietly in our suburb, with some elegance, some ease, but nothing out of the ordinary. When my mother disappeared, when I said to my father that we ought to call the police, the first thing he thought to say was, “Let’s go to the station. We don’t want them to come over here for all the neighbors to see. Your mother wouldn’t like it.”
And, of course, he was right.
My mother would have wanted to disappear without making a scene, without giving anyone anything to talk about. Every day, she worked hard to keep passion and its violence subdued in our house. From room to room, the tasteful carpet, the sturdy furniture, the neutral walls—nothing exotic, nothing bright. Even a little would have been too much, would have stood out, homely, sad, telling the story of her discontent, letting guests know she’d wanted—once imagined—more.
A Chinese vase, a rug of embroidered roses, even a peacock feather would have revealed my mother—naked, longing—for the whole world to pity. She knew this because she’d been to houses like that, the houses of women who served European teas, though they’d never been to Europe, and if they ever did go to Europe, they would see it through the tinted windows of an air-conditioned bus, watching the castles and the Alps roll by, too blurred in the distance to appraise.
There’s only so much beauty women like that can bear. You see them at the Grand Canyon, the Pacific Ocean, Niagara Falls, holding the hands of their bored children—who, having been presented with some wonder of the world are drop-jawed with awe at something altogether wrong: the hot dog that fell on the ground, roiling with red ants, or the retarded man with unzipped pants, or the metal railing that surrounds it, fences the awe itself, keeps the tourists from falling in. They want to make a balance beam of that, to walk the space between death and their safe American vacation, and who could blame them?
The children are just bored, but it is their mothers who can’t bear to look at the thing itself.
Not out of fear. No. They’re too far removed for fear. There are signs to tell you when you’re too close to the edge, bronzed lifeguards blowing whistles when you’ve swum too far. There are rangers in uniforms—and, below you, the
Maid of the Mist
, drifting into the cool kiss of it, then veering back just in time.
Fear would make sense. But it’s something else. A taboo. An inhibition. A kind of modesty imposed on the natural world by women. Their husbands might be gawking
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