Bulbs
September 14, 2007
Marsha fell because the light bulb box was much higher up than she thought. She considered grabbing a stool but climbed up on the counter instead because she was impatient, and the Gidney’s were on their way. Jack had insisted that she switch over to these Halogen bulbs, and look where they’d landed her. She loved her son for his conscience and his easy affection and his warm face, but God did she hate it when he looked at her in that way and said things like, “Ma, they’re just as bright, and it’s an easy way to make a difference.” As if she couldn’t stand to make a difference in this world if it weren’t easy.
She lay there on the ceramic tile, staring up at the un-budged box on top of the fridge. Her buttocks-bone was burning from the fall, and she thought of calling an ambulance but decided to wait it out instead.
“Just wait, Marsh,” she whispered, and then she felt silly. She took long breaths in through her nose and let them out through her mouth. She thought of Jack, who was probably just getting home from the city, kissing his girlfriend on the cheek or maybe giving her a pat. Marsha didn’t care much for the stringy dance teacher, but her son said he felt like he was dreaming it was so good. And that’s what mattered.
Then the Gidney’s arrived, and in they came without knocking because they’d all been friends for years, and the two of them insisted that she call an ambulance. Marsha had gotten up off the floor by then, thank God, but she was lying on the couch, buttocks up. “No, don’t be silly,” she said. She didn’t want to sound like a martyr. She wanted to sound fine. “I’m a bit of an ass, aren’t I?” she giggled. But the Gidneys’ faces were crinkled up with pity. Gillian had Gary’s fingers entwined in hers because the two of them liked to show off their love, but they were so entangled that Gillian had to reach out awkwardly in order to feel Marsha’s forehead for a temperature.
After no time at all, Gary said, “We should go and let you rest,” and Gillian put a book, a glass of water, and the portable telephone down on the coffee table, and Marsha would ring if she needed a single thing. Marsha did not yell, “No!” or grab their wrists to pull them back. And so she was left with a humming silence and the carved, curved legs of her Tuscan coffee table to study.
She didn’t bother to trek up to her room. Instead, she let her arm hang off the edge of the couch and drifted in and out of sleep. Each time she woke, her buttocks-ache reeling her out of some dream, she half expected to feel Frank sitting at her feet with one hand on her back and the other flipping channels. She thought she might feel her face bathed in the easy glow of the television screen.
Stripes of sun came in through the blinds the next morning. One light strip settled over Marsha’s eyes, and she blinked until the living room wavered into place.
She would get up. She would get up.
She hobbled over to the blinking answering machine.
“Hey Ma, I want to come give you a visit after church on Sunday,” breath in, “With Diane,” breath out, “So prepare yourself all right? Right. Nothing fancy on your end, but I’m gonna bring some wine. Call me for red or white.” She went into the kitchen to make breakfast. “What if I can’t have you over on Sunday, Jack,” she might’ve said.
Marsha’s rear was still suffering by the weekend, and she had to postpone the gardening she had planned. It was mostly weeding that needed to be done, but it was no easy job, and Marsha was a fanatic. She jerked the weeds out of the earth methodically, one after another, as if she were yanking pages from a diary.
But she was tender with the seeds. She tapped them out of their paper pouches and pushed them gently, one by one, into the ground. The flowers flooded her yard —bowing red Tulips, regal purple Delphinium, spherical bunches of Hydrangeas and Hyacinth, exultant, buttery Chrysanthemums and Freesia.
Marsha started gardening after Frank left her. He’d been fading away from her for months and then one day he disappeared. It was the summer after Jack turned six, June twentieth. He finished painting the front deck as he’d promised, and then he vanished. The following day, Marsha made her first trip to the local nursery and spent a good two hundred dollars on tools and seeds.
She used to let Jack help her in the garden when he was still little and wanted to be with her; she thought it might be therapeutic. But he was much too careless. His chubby thumbs shoved the seedlings deep, deep down, one right up next to the one before it, and she usually wound up recovering and replanting the seeds while he was at school. But when those flowers sprang up she’d say, “Look Jacky! Look at the beautiful color you put on our earth.”
Marsha was suspicious about Jack’s Sunday visit. They hardly ever drank wine; there weren’t many occasions for it. There weren’t even any wine glasses in the house. She feared an announcement, but she wouldn’t state her suspicions aloud, even when Gillian called her and asked about the tremble in her voice. “I’m still a bit shaky from the fall,” Marsha told her.
When Jack’s car pulled into the driveway Sunday afternoon, a momentary panic washed over Marsha. Her heart dropped to her stomach, and she limped as quickly as she could to the bathroom and locked herself in. She sank down to the floor, gripping the sink above her with both hands. She heard Diane’s fierce knocking, and so she ran her fingers through her hair, roughly rubbed her eyes, and went to let them in.
Marsha took the bowl of chicken salad that she’d made out of the fridge and grabbed the breadbasket, pulling the cloth napkin off the top. She poured three cups of iced tea and plunked a bright pink straw in each of them. It felt like summer.
The two women sat across from Jack—achy mother and petite girlfriend. Before the dance teacher had lifted her first forkful, Marsha said, “Can you scoot down a bit, dear?” She liked to look her son straight in the eyes when she talked to him. They shifted over, and Jack started up a conversation, reflecting on the priest’s sermon that morning. They discussed altruism and selflessness. But was it natural, Marsha wanted to know, to look out for others’ interests over your own? Diane nodded vigorously, but didn’t say much of anything. Jack said fairly that it wasn’t the most natural thing, but often it was necessary, and humans, who all had so much in common (“the human condition,” he said, and Marsha sighed), owed it to each other to step away from themselves and reach out to others.
As the conversation dwindled, Marsha got nervous. She got up and busied herself, washing off the plates and getting dessert ready. She brushed crumbs from the counter into the trashcan. She wrapped up the left over chicken salad. She would not go back to that quiet, waiting table. When she had nothing left to do, she started writing out a grocery list on a post-it note; half the things on it she didn’t need.
“Have a seat, Ma,” Jack told her. He got up and took cups out of the cabinet for the wine. They had brought Merlot. Marsha didn’t care much for Merlot. She winced as she eased her buttocks down onto the seat. Jack poured the wine and sat down. He was silent. He scratched his jaw hard then studied one of his nails for several uncomfortable seconds. Marsha could feel the growing distance between her and her son, as if the table were getting wider and wider, pushing them outward, away from each other. She felt anxious, and then frantic, and she thought of jumping across the table and swallowing her big son in her arms.
Diane scowled at Jack. She turned to face Marsha. The dance teacher’s little face was mostly forehead and chin, so that her eyes, nose, and mouth were bunched up into a horizontal strip of sharp facial features that ran from ear to ear. The disproportion troubled Marsha, but of course it wasn’t the girl’s fault.
“We’re getting married,” Diane said deliberately. The three words sounded like a dance teacher’s count: 1, 2, 3. By the tone of her voice she might as well have followed with “So there.”
Marsha fiddled with the paper napkin in her lap. She said congratulations with as much spirit as she could scrape up, but the happy word cracked somewhere in the middle, and she could feel Jack’s disappointment, even disgust, surging toward her from across the table. But she did not look at her son, and she did not look at the dance teacher. She looked out the window at her colorful garden. She wanted to go out there. She wanted to fall to the ground and immerse herself in the flowers.
Jack thrust himself away from the table, his chair screeching awfully on the tile floor. “Let’s go,” he said to his fiancé. The dance teacher rose gracefully from her chair, and started to gather the cups of wine to bring them to the sink. “Just leave them there, dear,” Marsha told her. The couple got their coats from the pantry. And Jack generously kissed his mother on the cheek. “I’ll call you later this week,” he said, but he couldn’t look her in the eye. As they walked out, Marsha did not run after them. She wanted to be left alone. She wanted them to abandon their half-empty plastic cups of wine. She wanted them to leave their impressions on the kitchen seat cushions and walk out of the house.
Marsha didn’t even wait a full hour before she called her poor son to beg forgiveness. But it was Diane who answered with a tired hello. “Is Jack there?” Marsha asked. “Yeah, hold on a sec.” She was casual. She was impolite.
“Hey Ma.”
“Jacky. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about before. I was just caught off guard. That’s all. Do you think we could talk somewhere? Just you and me? I need to get out of the house, and I can’t go over there. Can we go to the park maybe? Would you meet me at the park?”
He hesitated. “Sure,” he said finally, “Yeah, Ma. I’ll meet you in ten.”
Marsha drove quickly. She wanted to get there before he did. She didn’t want to look desperate. She wanted to look collected.
She would tell him not to marry the dance teacher. And Jack would trust her because he was her child, and when his father up and left, she was the rock, the constant, the unblinking unshakeable unwavering source of love in Jack’s life. The dance teacher was just a flitty-eyed girl.
She was sitting on a park bench when he pulled up. They used to sit and read children’s books together there on that very bench. When Jack sat down, he left a good foot between the two of them. Marsha put her hand on his knee, but he didn’t move toward her or hold her hand—nothing. “Jacky,” she said, “I just don’t know if this is the best idea. Do you really think it’s a good idea?” she asked, “Right now? You need to get married now?” Jack let his head hang with his chin against his chest.
Marsha’s breaths became quick. She bent down to duck her head under his, and her eyes pleaded with him. She felt she might melt into a puddle and spill off the edge of the bench.
She got hysterical. “She’s such a skinny, little thing, Jacky,” Marsha heard herself cry. “Just a stupid little dancer!” Her voice cracked, spit sprayed from her mouth, and she realized what a spectacle she was. Her cheeks were wet with tears. Her chin was wet with saliva. Covering her face with her gray hair, she crumpled up in Jack’s lap. She rolled off the bench to kneel on the concrete beneath her son. “Oh, oh!” She was like a baby. “Oh, such a skinny little nobody!” Jack stood up suddenly and sent his mother flying onto her back. He walked away briskly without looking down at her.
Marsha quivered on the concrete. She stared up through her tears at a bright white sky, and the heavens gazed down at her shuddering frame. And God did not shake his head at her or point a solitary finger. He did not cast dark clouds across the sky or unleash torrents of rain. Instead, he filled Marsha’s heart with drunken warmth that seeped out in rivulets into her boiling blood, until her eyelids fluttered closed and she slept.