BOOKS OF AND ABOUT ROMANCE
Rear View Mirror The Contemporary Romance Novel
CHAPTER SIX: GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER
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- Ashford Washington Near Mount Rainier
C. Callinsky
PART ONE: TRUE LOVE
Chapter Six: Get Your Shit Together
It’s 1987, I’m a senior, a very good student, and hold a 3.4 Grade Point Average. I play sports, am in the band, and I’m a cheerleader. I can play the violin, clarinet, French horn, and saxophone. I don’t skip school; I actually enjoy it a lot. I take all the advance placement classes I can and work with the mentally handicapped as one of my electives.
My mom is a wonderful person, but she has her vices. The relationship between her and my father has been non-existent since I can remember. He comes home from work and is asleep upstairs by himself before seven, usually. He is up and headed for work by three or four in the morning. He does this so he can attend any games my sister or I will be participating in.
My mother’s bed is the 1970’s couch in the living room. It isn’t because my dad is a butt. It’s because Mom, my sister Angie, and I are all up way past the time Dad has to go to bed.
My dad used to drink heavily, as well as my mom. That was when I was a really little. I remember a few really bad fights. The majority of my life my father was clean and sober as they say, but when I was around three I remember my mom and my dad fighting one night. My mom was really drunk and it was when my dad was still drinking, too. I was hiding under the kitchen table and I don’t think they knew I was there. My mom was really mad. She took off her boot and headed for my dad. She swung her boot back getting ready to beat the shit out of Dad with it so I ran out from underneath the table to stop her. As she swung the boot she missed Dad and connected with me. The impact sent me across the kitchen and I slammed into the refrigerator. I don’t remember a lot, but I remember that they stopped fighting.
My mom still drinks to this day. She’s a weekend drinker. We have a beautiful place in Ashford, Washington. It’s about two miles before the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park. It is a lush playground of tall blades of grass and wildflowers surrounded by beautiful mountains. We have a place on the property to stay that we label “The Cabin” which sits on eight acres. My mom loves going to the cabin. She goes almost every weekend because my dad is home. They can’t stand being around each other for that duration. Besides, my mom likes to listen to country music, drink orange juice and vodka, and hash over how bad my dad has done her.
When I was younger, I liked to go. As I got older, I began to hate it. My younger sister would go because my mom would make her feel guilty while I would stay home and hang out with my dad. I love them both a lot, but I can’t understand why Mom is still with Dad when she is as miserable as she informs us she is every time we go to the cabin. I can’t stand her talking so bad about Dad. Maybe he was bad at one time, but he isn’t anymore. She should forgive him or move on.
I don’t want to make her sound terrible. She was the one that had the sex talk with me when I had my first boyfriend. She lectured me on safe sex and told me that if I decided to have sex, she would take me to a good doctor… yadda, yadda, yadda. The problem was that I wasn’t even close to having sex at the time so it made me very uncomfortable.
The most amazing thing about my mom is her creativity. She can do anything she wants. She’s extremely smart. She taught herself to knit and crochet. She collects antiques. We raised angora rabbits and she learned to spin their fur and would knit or crochet beautiful sweaters from their spun fur. The end product was totally from scratch.
She’s a beautiful poet. She has a way with words that is haunting. I guess this is where we connect the most. I love to write poems and songs, stuff like that.
When I was younger, probably around eighth grade, I loved Lionel Ritchie. It seems funny now, but back then I loved the words that accompanied his music. I would spend hours in my room listening to the words in his songs, decoding them, and taking them to my mom so she could read them.
One day I decided to write my own song. When I was done I took it down to the kitchen to show her. She said, “Wow, I really like that one. I think that is his best one yet?”
“No Mom, I wrote it.”
She acted like she was taken aback. I don’t know if she really believed me or if she knew it was mine and was just trying to inspire me.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Mom starts acting kind of funny in October of 1987. She’s having episodes where she is blacking out and having memory lapses. One time we were getting ready to leave the cabin and we were packing everything up into the new Ford pickup to leave. My sister and I go back in the cabin to get more stuff. When we come out, Mom’s leaving. We scream and holler at her chasing her up the drive, but she doesn’t hear us or she is ignoring us because she continues up the driveway and leaves us there.
My sister and I are freaking out. We don’t know what to do. There’s no phone here. If it weren’t for our mom leaving us, it could be fun, but the fact is that we feel abandoned. We are both very scared at this moment.
After a while, Angie and I start getting logical. We can always walk down to the Country Store and call Dad. We really don’t want to do that unless we have to because they fight enough as it is and he will be mad. At least now we know that it isn’t the end of the world, no matter how we felt a few minutes ago.
We hang out and try to figure out why Mom would do something like this.
After about an hour, Mom walks into the cabin as if nothing is wrong. We try to figure out what the hell happened. She keeps saying that she thought we were in the truck. I know that years ago, before Angie or I were born, the family went on vacation and they left my brother Kenneth at a gas station by accident. They had to go back and get him. That was different though because they had a station wagon still full of kids. There was no one in the truck with Mom. How could she not know that we weren’t there?
We are just happy that she is back. I write it off thinking that she was either really hung over or really drunk.
About a week later, she goes to see Terry. Terry is my sister-in-law. Mom has been known to down a few with Terry. As she is leaving she blacks out and hits the pavement. She busts her head pretty bad and ends up at the family doctor. No one thinks anything is wrong. We all think that it was caused from drinking, including the family doctor.
Mom swears up and down that she hadn’t touched any alcohol at Terry’s and that she hadn’t drunk the day we left the mountains. Finally, we all start analyzing it. We realize that the wounds that she received during her fall at Terry’s are not typical. The natural instinct a person has is to brace themselves, drunk or not.
She makes another appointment and this time Angie and I go with Mom to the doctor. We actually meet with the doctor by himself and tell him about the episode at the cabin and our thoughts on her fall at Terry’s. He agrees that she should see a specialist.
I feel better now. Whatever this is, let’s see if we can get it fixed.
When Mom finally gets in to see a specialist, Angie and I don’t really think much about it until Dad comes into the room and says, “Girls, we need to talk.”
Dad sits on Angie’s bed and pats it to get us to sit next to him and we oblige, one of us on each side of him. Dad puts his arms around us. As he looks back and forth between the two of us, he says, “I don’t know how else to tell you girls this other than just tellin’ you. Mom has a brain tumor.”
Oh my God! Both Angie and I absolutely lose it. Neither of us was expecting this. We start bawling hysterically. Dad tightens his grip on us and says, “She is going to start chemo tomorrow. It might help. We all need to hang in there together and be strong for her. She needs us now.”
We continue to bawl for a very long time. All these bad thoughts are going through my head. I haven’t been there for her. I have distanced myself from her. I haven’t treated her like I should have. Oh my God, I can never make up for all those times I didn’t go to the cabin with her. I can’t make up for all the fights. I want a do-over, now! Please God, let me do it over! This can’t be happening. This is so unfair. Angie and I, both in high school, sleep together in the same bed that night because neither of us wants to be alone.
When Mom starts her chemo it isn’t too bad at first. She is handling it fairly well. Then, on her birthday, we hear her screaming from the bathroom. Everyone is already on pins and needles so both Angie and I run in screaming, “Mom, Mom, what’s wrong, what’s wrong?”
She is in the bathtub crying like I have never seen her cry in my life. She is naked, vulnerable, and clasping huge clumps of her hair in each hand. She is gasping for air because she is crying so hard. She manages to spit out between the gasps, “Mm… my ha… ha… hair is fa… fa… lling out!”
She is rocking like an upset three year old. Both Angie and I grab her and start crying with her as she is rocking. We hold her with the intention of never letting her go.
When everyone has calmed down as much as possible considering the circumstance, we call my older sister Kay Kay. She is the rock. We decide we will go get a wig tomorrow and we do just that. Although Mom feels bad, we drag her out to look for the perfect wig. Neither Angie nor I can drive at this point. Mom said we couldn’t get a license until we are eighteen so Kay Kay is the one that takes us.
Mom feels a little better for a short time, but soon we are told that the chemo isn’t working and the tumor is getting bigger. It’s about the size of a baseball. They have to do more radical chemo to have a chance and the chances don’t even look good.
Mom’s a fighter though. I can say that about her. I knew that she wasn’t just going to give up. She won’t go out without fighting tooth and nail. Her life has been difficult and although my dad has supplied the money, our mother has played a huge role in raising us.
I think the hardest thing for Mom was when she lost one of her children. His name was Gary and they never knew for sure what happened, if he was sick, or if it was pneumonia or what. I think that is why she has drunk so much over the years. That had to have been unbearably difficult to live through and when Gary’s birthday or death rolled around, she was miserable for weeks.
When she got pregnant with both me and Angie the doctors said that she was too old to make it through another delivery and they strongly suggested that she abort us, but she wouldn’t do it.
Regardless of the hard times we’ve had, I owe her my life and that’s a fact.
By Thanksgiving, Mom is pitiful. She is in the hospital hardly able to hold on. She makes it through that dilemma and we take her back home. She has her good days and bad days. My junior high/high school sweetheart would come over some nights and share the old ugly green and yellow rocker with me in the living room. We would watch after Mom late into the night and early into the morning.
The fact is that he can’t really handle it. He lost his father when he was very young. I’ve always been the rock in our relationship. He really can’t stand up and be the rock when I need him the most. At this time, I know that we can’t remain a couple. If he can’t hold me up when I need him after I have held him up all of these years, how can we ever get through life together?
Mom makes it into December although she is really sick. We only get a glimpse of our real Mom on seldom occasions. At this point it has gotten so bad that my older sister Kay Kay is pretty much living here. We have had to get a portable potty that is on coasters and Mom can’t even get on it by herself. We have to lift her up and put her on it and her pee is totally full of blood. At this point, all we can do is try to take care of her the best we can, stay strong around her, and cry ourselves to sleep every night alone so she can’t see it.
Mom is back in the hospital through Christmas and into January. She keeps asking about my older brother Mark. He lives in Anchorage, Alaska and is supposed to be coming home, but we are not sure when he will be able to come back. He is having a really hard time getting away from work.
My mom was born and mostly raised in Alaska. She loves it there and has always had a calling to go back. You can always hear it in her voice when she speaks of her home.
The doctors say that Mom only has a little while left. In the middle of January, we make the decision to take her home so she can die in peace. I know it’s the hardest decision any of us has had to take part in up to this point in our lives.
She isn’t Mom anymore. She is just a really white lump of skin that is draped over bone. She lays on the couch hardly moving. By this time, the cancer has spread through her whole body and she is in constant pain. The only time she does move, it is accompanied by horrible moans. That is how we know to get more morphine and put it under her tongue.
One night we are sitting there when out of nowhere Mom says, “I want to be buried with a heater. I don’t want my bones to get cold. I hate it when my bones get cold.”
We all smile sadly trying so hard not to cry. That is so like Mom. When we were young she used to say that she would get so cold that it made her bones cold. Once her bones were cold, the only way she could warm them up was a scorching hot bath.
Kay Kay calls Mark that night and he says he can’t make it home. There is no way that he can get away from work right now. We carry Mom into the spare bedroom that has been transformed into a makeshift hospital room. My sister Kay Kay tells Mom that Mark can’t come. All of us know it is over because Mom was only hanging on to see Mark one last time.
A while later, I see Kay Kay come out and talk to Dad and I know at that moment that Mom is gone and I become hysterical. When Dad’s off the phone I grab it and take it in the closet that is connected to the hallway off the bedroom that my mom just died in. I call my high school sweetheart. I’m losing it when he answers. I tell him and he sits there in pure silence while I bawl in his ear. He doesn’t know what to say, and now I just feel so alone. But, a connection, no matter how silent or far away, is better than nothing.
I hear sirens approaching. I envision all the lights spinning in front of the house. I’m already hysterical when, through a slight crack from the closet door not being completely shut, I see a stretcher roll through the hall. A few minutes later I see the stretcher coming back out with a person’s body totally covered from head to toe by a white sheet. That’s my mom. I want to run after the stretcher, climb onto it, lay down with her, and be buried with her. I’m screaming in my head, Mom, Mom, Mom, please don’t go! My life will never be the same ever again.
My sister Kay Kay is brave. That early morning on January twenty-first, she held Mom in her arms like a baby when she died.
The funeral is horrible. I have never been to one in my life and I’m now attending my own mother’s. We are behind this tinted glass in an area that is secluded from everyone. I can see so many friends from school. I see Darien and it breaks my heart. A couple of years back I had such a crush on him and him me. He is black and my mom was too embarrassed to let us date. She told me how much she liked him and that she thought he was a really good person, but she was from the old days and it just isn’t what you do. What will the neighbors think?
We had remained good friends over the last few years, but seeing him here hurts badly. He has been there for me through some rough times. I used to sneak out of my house and ride my bike all the way out to his house and we watched music videos until the wee hours of the morning. Then I’d ride my bike back home and sneak back into the house. I have so much respect for him that words can’t express it. If it was me, I don’t know that I could have come. I know he is here to support me and I’m stuck in this room behind tinted glass. I want to go out there, stand by him in front of all of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances and scream at them, “This is what makes a man.”
After Mom dies, I barely make it through school. I skip all the time. I start getting drunk and high all the time. I break down in the middle of typing class in front of everyone and they have to send me home. It’s a horrible time. I don’t want to feel anything. I pray for numbness. The only reason I pass is because I’m so damn smart and my grades were too high prior to Mom dying to flunk. I was taking mainly electives at that point, too.
I make it to graduation; however, unlike most, I don’t value, or really even remember, much of my senior year. I only had one good month in school before my life went down the toilet.
I never get used to coming home to an empty house. On the few rare occasions when things seem almost normal, I would arrive home, bounce in the door, and look for Mom to share the day with. Then it hits me that she isn’t home and won’t be coming back. I immediately leave the house and stay out as long as I can, getting as numb as I can. Honestly, it’s a miracle that I live through most of the stuff I do.
I go on like this for a long time. Probably close to a year after graduation, I have that rock bottom moment. I’ve just driven home from Old McKinley Park after drinking a fifth of Bacardi and smoking so much pot I don’t remember even driving home. I somehow get in the house and Dad is waiting for me. I’m so out of it that I can’t even see anything. I can hear Dad. I know he’s there talking to me, but I can’t see him.
I make it to my room. I don’t recollect how. Next thing I know, Kay Kay is in my room trying to talk to me. I can’t see her either, and can’t make out what she’s saying. I just know that she’s there.
After that, I’m sick for two days. I feel like I’m going to die. I think about how I got home. I know that I drove. I know that losing my mom was hard on me and I think about the fact that I could have easily killed someone. It’s a miracle that I didn’t. I decide that this is it. It is over. I have to get my shit together and move on with my life. My family doesn’t need this shit on top of everything else that they have been through. I need to stop being so fucking selfish.
I then spend the following year cleaning myself up. It is a year of reconstruction, but I do it. My energies are now refocused on my hobbies like classic cars and football. I start dating again. I left my high school sweetheart when I figured out that he couldn’t ever be there when I needed him. Once he realized we wouldn’t be getting back together this time around, he enlisted in the Navy.
I start to enjoy life again although the guys that are present in my life are just time fillers. I can take them or leave them. The minute they give me flack, they are so gone. I told one guy to take a hike because he got jealous when I cleaned and polished my Mustang. Give me a freaking break. If he wanted to spend quality time with me, he would have grabbed a rag and helped. It’s part of my medicine. If he doesn’t get it, then, oh well. He needs to move on. Fuck him. I have my own mind and a free spirit. Anyone that wants to be with me needs to respect that.
There were a couple of important things I learned from my mom’s death. One is that life’s short. You can’t waste time. It’s far worse than throwing thousands of dollars in the trash. The other is that I refuse to compromise who I am. Mom did that her whole life at the cost of herself. I especially won’t do it to create a mirage for someone else so they will think they are in love with me. Compromising about a toilet seat being up or down is different than compromising who you are inside. I don’t want to seem like a total bitch, but I am who I am, and I’m not ashamed of it or what I’ve gone through. Hey, I’m still standing.
© C. Callinsky 2006 to Infinity
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Photo Alexander’s Country Inn and Restaurant
