Jumping Into the Deep End

The following story was written during a writing workshop in Italy in the mid-1990s. It's based on truth.

Melanie awakes to the sound of the toilet flushing.  Her mother, Francis, turquoise nylon nightgown catching on the seams of her size 42E bra, opens the door to the bathroom.  Seventy-five watts of light rip a narrow seam in the dark motel room.  Francis has worn a bra to bed for as long as Melanie can remember.   

Melanie remembers when she was eleven timidly asking her mother if she could get a bra.  All the other girls had them. In the girl’s room at school they’d pull up their sweaters and adjust their bras just to show off.  Francis had taken Melanie to the pre-teen shop the next Saturday and told the saleswoman behind the counter with a sideways glance of conspiring amusement, “My daughter would like a bra.”  The woman looked at Melanie’s chest, her red mouth smiling over large white teeth, and suggested a padded bra.  Melanie had hoped the angel of death would find her right then and there.

 “Time to get up,” Francis says. Melanie pulls the sheet over her head hoping for a few more minutes of darkened peace but feeling like she’s back in her old bedroom in Wichita, her mother flapping around, opening the curtains, telling Melanie she’d better get up or she’d be late for school. 

Reaching the motel window, Francis searches for the cord in the folds of the drapes.  “It’s nearly six,” Francis says, pulling the cord to reveal yet another blue swimming pool surrounded by stacked plastic chairs.  “Time for breakfast.”

Melanie had flown to Wichita from New York three days before to visit her mother, now 85 years old.  It was her first visit in four years.  The excuses about why a visit was impossible had finally run out.  Melanie was climbing the walls by the start of day two.

 “Let’s drive somewhere, Mama,” she’d suggested.  “Let’s drive to New York.  We’ll rent a car and take the backroads.  We can stop in the small towns along the way.  When we get there, I’ll put you on a plane back to Wichita.” 

Melanie felt like she was convincing a small child to jump into the deep end of the pool, but driving somewhere, anywhere, was preferable to sitting in her mother’s hermetically sealed house with the odor of Great Outdoors air freshener battling the odor of old dog pee from her mother’s recently deceased incontinent pet.  Even the bath towels smelled.  Melanie remembered opening the bathroom window one warm summer morning during her last visit.  In the time it took to cross the hall to her bedroom to get her hairbrush and return, her mother had shut and locked the window.

 “So how about it?” Melanie asked Francis again.  “Want to go?  We could leave this afternoon.” 

 “Oh, I don’t know,” Francis said.  “I’d have to find someone to get the flowers for church on Sunday.  And then there’s the laundry.”  She sat down on the high backed stool next to the kitchen counter, arms crossed, rubbing her elbows. “I don’t know.  How long would we be gone?”

Her mother finally agreed to the trip and they started off after lunch, phone calls and laundry completed. The first night they’d stayed at a motel on the outskirts of Topeka.  “Heated Pool” announced the flashing blue neon letters.  The pool was dry, a large crack slicing through the shallow end.

Last night they pulled into the Drover’s Inn and Motel soon after turning off I-90 somewhere north of St. Louis.  Black letters beneath an orange arrow promoted the “Swimming Pool.”  A thin slick of green algae ringed the phosphorescent blue interior at the water’s surface.

“I wonder what the temperature is today?” Francis asks.  Melanie raises the sheet slightly, watching her mother move toward the radio on the table between the beds.  The temperature has become a recurring topic throughout her mother’s day. The minute they get in the car, even to go to the grocery store, she turns on the radio, dialing until she reaches a weather report.  “Hush for a minute,” she’ll say, “I want to know what the temperature is.” 

 “How do you turn this thing on?” Francis asks, picking up the radio and turning it over.  “These darn things.” The Rolling Stones suddenly blare out of the brown plastic box.  Francis loses her grip, the radio hits the table.  Melanie tosses back the sheet, picks up the radio and turns it off.  Adjusting the volume, she turns it on again and hands it back to her mother who looks at the radio like it  landed in her hands from outer space.

 “Here’s the tuning knob, Mama.”  Melanie points to the side of the box and goes back to bed, pulling the sheet over her head again.

Francis turns the dial from one end to the other.  Unable to find the weather report, she turns it off.  “I’ll find it later,” she says, putting the radio back on the bedside table.

 “Just leave it on,” Melanie says from under the sheet.  “The news’ll be on in a minute. You can hear it then.” 

 “Huh?” Francis grunts.  Her hearing had started to go a few years ago and that grunt had become pure habit from asking everyone to repeat themselves.  “What did you say?  I can’t hear you.”  Francis shakes Melanie’s bed. 

“Come on, get up.  It’s getting late.  I’m going to make coffee if I can figure out how to use this thing,” Francis announces, moving toward the dresser, circles of prior cups of coffee imprinted on its worn surface.  Francis stands in front of the one-cup coffeemaker, her bare fleshy arms hanging at her sides, fingers twitching.  Melanie sometimes catches her own fingers twitching like that.  She’d found a greeting card once and sent it to several friends that said, “Florence knew it was all over when she saw her mother’s hand coming out of her own sleeve.”

“I don’t know why no one can make a decent cup of coffee any more,” Francis says, tearing at the corner of a little packet of coffee with her teeth.  “I still use the same drip coffeemaker and it works just fine.  How in heaven’s name do you turn this thing on?”

Melanie pulls the sheet away from her face, a few more minutes of sleep clearly not an option.  “Fill up the pot with water and flip the switch on,” Melanie says a bit too evenly.   “Jesus,” she thinks, rolling her eyes, “She can’t do the simplest thing.”

Francis turns suddenly, one steadying hand on the dresser, and plants the other fist on her hip.  “I know you think I’m an ignoramus,” she says, narrowing her eyes,  “but I just asked a civil question and all I want is a civil answer.” 

Embarrassment feels like the incoming tide on Melanie’s face.  Her mother picks up the small glass pot and walks into the bathroom to fill it with water, the odor of her house follows her.

When they’d left Wichita, Melanie had handed Francis the map.  “Here, Mama, you be the navigator,” Melanie said.  “Where should we go first?”

Francis looked over her trifocals.  “Well, let’s see.  Where are we?” she asked, opening the map.  “Where are we.  Let’s see now.”

Melanie had thought of the trips they’d taken when she was little.  Her mother would pack the bags while her father packed the green Chevy station wagon.  Francis was always the navigator, reading out the numbers of the roads, one polished red fingernail pointing at the line on the map until they’d made the next connection.

 “Remember when we went on those cross country trips when I was little?” Melanie asked her mother as they left Wichita.  “The time we drove all the way to Canada and back?”

 “When was that?”  Francis asked, one finger searching the map for something familiar.

“I was about 10, I think.  We stopped to see your cousins, Elsie and Max, in Colorado Springs.”

Francis looked at Melanie. “I don’t remember that trip.  Huh.  No.  Don’t remember.”  She went back to studying the map.

“This darn thing.  I can’t seem to find where we are.”  Francis twisted the unwieldy paper, folded it in half, turned it front to back.

Melanie had glanced over, wanting to rip the map out of her mother’s fumbling hands and do it herself. Why couldn’t her mother take charge like she always had?  She’d been the president of every woman’s club in town it seemed when Melanie was little.  Had been the leader of her Girl Scout troop.  Hosted bridge parties and backyard cookouts.  And now she can’t even read a map.

 “I don’t know where we are,” Francis had repeated.  Melanie glanced over again.  Her mother had looked small and frightened, the map crumpled under her shaking hands.

The thin cotton sheet suddenly feels heavy against Melanie’s body. Melanie looks at the hump of her mother’s back as she waits for the water to boil.  When did her mother get so small?