print that tells the story of Vaughn Redford’s unusual life. He takes it from me, says thank you, ma’am, and sets it down on the coffee table without opening it.
Oh well.
Working his back molar with a toothpick, he says, “Say your piece.” He leans back in his recliner, puts his toothpick down, and makes a zipper motion across his lips. He sticks the imaginary key in the front pocket of his jumpsuit.
I explain what happens on the TV show and tell him my idea about the “most likely person to appear.” I think he gets the idea of what I expect when we go. Not that he’s interested.
“What if you could talk to Momma again? What if this guy isn’t a total fake? What if Momma has a message for you? Wouldn’t you want to hear it?”
I take one look at his face and stop talking. I put my hands in my lap.
“You done?” he says.
“Yes.”
He makes a big show of pulling the imaginary key out of his pocket. He unlocks the imaginary lock on the zipper on his lips and saves the key. “The thing is, baby girl, your momma was a beautiful woman . . .”
This is how all his memories start. He’ll say this beautiful-woman thing, then tell me some story about his wife, his bride, his partner in life, my mother. And at the end, he repeats it again, the same phrase.
He says it as if I never saw the woman while she was alive. She was a beautiful woman. As Pa, the smitten husband, tells it, she was a professional beautiful woman. By this, he means her part-time modeling career. My mom was a model for a local dress shop. The guy had advertising ambition and used her in TV ads and direct mail. It was nothing, small-time local stuff, but she was recognizable. If nothing else, her part-time job set her apart. She wasn’t like the other moms. She didn’t aspire to be the homeroom mom. My mother had other talents. She was tall and thin, and clothing hung just right on her.
Nobody mistakes me for a model. I inherited Mom’s statuesque frame but not her practiced poise or her meticulous grooming. About the time most girls get interested in those things, I rejected them. In junior high school, when I let my naturally curly hair grow long, into a wild, spectacular mass, it activated a pervasive negative commentary on her part. By the time I graduated from high school, I hated her almost as much as she hated how I looked.
After Toby was born, I regretted the conflict so acutely that I cut my hair into a pixie of soft curls I hoped Mom could see. She was right about the hair. I’m grateful for what I got from her—clear skin and high cheekbones—but I chose not to inherit my mother’s ability to put makeup over the chronic disappointments of life. So every time Pa starts a story with the beautiful-woman thing, there’s a little part of me that undervalues her perfect exterior finish.
He doesn’t. That’s the sweet thing about it. He’s not being superficial or denying anything. He knew what was underneath and genuinely appreciated her, inside and out.
It was a long time before I realized the way Pa talks about her says more about him than it does about her. I have to admit, there are times when I long for my husband to look past my faults and describe me with such consistent adoration. Hell, I’d be happy if he just stopped making fun of me at every turn.
I refocus in time to hear him finish the story, the one I already know, about how when Mom was sick, she told him she would wait for him in heaven. But he tells it the long way, and it breaks my heart to remember those days in the hospital. Pa and I have never talked about the very end, when she started to say all the hateful things the tumor squeezed out of her. Eric tried to explain the geography of the brain, tried to assure me she didn’t mean any of it, but it was hard not to take it personally.
Pa shifts in his recliner. “So, baby girl, if your momma tells me she’s gonna wait for me in heaven, then who am I to be summoning her out in order to give me
Oh well.
Working his back molar with a toothpick, he says, “Say your piece.” He leans back in his recliner, puts his toothpick down, and makes a zipper motion across his lips. He sticks the imaginary key in the front pocket of his jumpsuit.
I explain what happens on the TV show and tell him my idea about the “most likely person to appear.” I think he gets the idea of what I expect when we go. Not that he’s interested.
“What if you could talk to Momma again? What if this guy isn’t a total fake? What if Momma has a message for you? Wouldn’t you want to hear it?”
I take one look at his face and stop talking. I put my hands in my lap.
“You done?” he says.
“Yes.”
He makes a big show of pulling the imaginary key out of his pocket. He unlocks the imaginary lock on the zipper on his lips and saves the key. “The thing is, baby girl, your momma was a beautiful woman . . .”
This is how all his memories start. He’ll say this beautiful-woman thing, then tell me some story about his wife, his bride, his partner in life, my mother. And at the end, he repeats it again, the same phrase.
He says it as if I never saw the woman while she was alive. She was a beautiful woman. As Pa, the smitten husband, tells it, she was a professional beautiful woman. By this, he means her part-time modeling career. My mom was a model for a local dress shop. The guy had advertising ambition and used her in TV ads and direct mail. It was nothing, small-time local stuff, but she was recognizable. If nothing else, her part-time job set her apart. She wasn’t like the other moms. She didn’t aspire to be the homeroom mom. My mother had other talents. She was tall and thin, and clothing hung just right on her.
Nobody mistakes me for a model. I inherited Mom’s statuesque frame but not her practiced poise or her meticulous grooming. About the time most girls get interested in those things, I rejected them. In junior high school, when I let my naturally curly hair grow long, into a wild, spectacular mass, it activated a pervasive negative commentary on her part. By the time I graduated from high school, I hated her almost as much as she hated how I looked.
After Toby was born, I regretted the conflict so acutely that I cut my hair into a pixie of soft curls I hoped Mom could see. She was right about the hair. I’m grateful for what I got from her—clear skin and high cheekbones—but I chose not to inherit my mother’s ability to put makeup over the chronic disappointments of life. So every time Pa starts a story with the beautiful-woman thing, there’s a little part of me that undervalues her perfect exterior finish.
He doesn’t. That’s the sweet thing about it. He’s not being superficial or denying anything. He knew what was underneath and genuinely appreciated her, inside and out.
It was a long time before I realized the way Pa talks about her says more about him than it does about her. I have to admit, there are times when I long for my husband to look past my faults and describe me with such consistent adoration. Hell, I’d be happy if he just stopped making fun of me at every turn.
I refocus in time to hear him finish the story, the one I already know, about how when Mom was sick, she told him she would wait for him in heaven. But he tells it the long way, and it breaks my heart to remember those days in the hospital. Pa and I have never talked about the very end, when she started to say all the hateful things the tumor squeezed out of her. Eric tried to explain the geography of the brain, tried to assure me she didn’t mean any of it, but it was hard not to take it personally.
Pa shifts in his recliner. “So, baby girl, if your momma tells me she’s gonna wait for me in heaven, then who am I to be summoning her out in order to give me
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