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What I hadn’t known until too late was that I was following her, all those years ago. I am the one who can’t let go.
The drive from her childhood home to mine takes less than a minute, but to me it feels like a shift from one world to another.
My grandparents’ old rental house looks different than I remember. The side yard is torn up; there are mounds of landscape debris piled in the middle of dirt fields. Before, giant juniper bushes had shielded the rambler from view. Now someone has ripped out the shrubs but not replaced them with anything, leaving piles of dirt and roots mounded in front of the house.
I can only imagine what I will find inside. In the thirty-some years of my adulthood, I have seen my mother a handful of times, always—only—when I have gone in search of her. In the late eighties, when Johnny, Katie, and I were the three musketeers at KCPO, I stumbled across my mom living in a campground in Yelm, a follower of J. Z. Knight, the housewife who claimed to channel a thirty-thousand-year-old-spirit named Ramtha. In 2003, I’d taken a camera crew and gone in search of her again, thinking—naïvely—that enough time had passed and maybe a new beginning could be forged. I’d found her living in a run-down trailer, looking as bad as I’d ever seen her. Starry-eyed with hope, I’d taken her home with me.
She’d stolen my jewelry and run off into the night.
The last time I’d seen her, only a few years ago, she had been in the hospital. She’d been beaten up and left for dead. That time, she sneaked out while I slept in a chair at her bedside.
And yet here I am.
I park the car and get out. Holding my laptop like a shield, I pick my way across the torn-up landscaping, stepping over trowels and spades and empty seed packets. The front door is wooden and has a faint green furring of moss. Taking a breath, releasing it slowly, I knock.
There is no answer.
She is probably passed out on the floor somewhere, dead drunk. How many times had I come home from school to find her lying on the sofa, half on and half off, with a bong not far from her outstretched hand, snoring loudly enough to wake the dead?
I test the knob and find that the house is unlocked.
Of course.
I open the door cautiously and go inside, calling out, “Hello,” as I go.
The interior is gloomy and dark. Most of the light switches I find don’t work. I feel my way into the living room and find a lamp and turn it on.
Someone has ripped up the shag carpeting and exposed the dirty black floorboards beneath. Gone is the seventies furniture. Instead, there is a single overstuffed chair positioned next to a garage-sale side table. In the corner a card table plays host to two folding chairs.
I almost leave. Deep inside, I know that nothing will come of this meeting, that once again I will get nothing but heartache and denial from my mother, but the truth is that I have never been able to walk away from her. Not in all our years together, not with all the times she’s abandoned or disappointed me. I have spent each of my forty-eight years aching in some small way for a love that has never been mine. At least now I know better than to expect something different. That is a help, of sorts.
I sit down on the rickety folding chair to wait. It is not as comfortable as the other chair, but I am not certain of the fabric’s cleanliness, so I choose the metal chair.
I wait for hours.
Finally at just past eight o’clock in the evening, I hear the crunching of tires on gravel.
I straighten.
The door opens and I see my mother for the first time in almost three years. Her skin has the wrinkled gray cast that comes with years of hardscrabble, drunken living. Her fingernails are brown with dirt. Clawing your way through life will do that.
“Tully,” she says. It surprises me, both the strong, even tenor of her voice and the use of my nickname. All my life she has called me Tallulah, which I hate.
“Hi, Cloud,” I say, standing.
“I’m Dorothy now. ”
Another name change. Before I can say anything, a man comes into the house and stands beside her. He is tall and whipcord-lean, with wrinkles in his tanned cheeks that look like furrows. I can read his story in his eyes—and it is not a pretty one.
My mother is high, I’m pretty sure. But since I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sober, how would I know?
“I’m so glad to see you,” she says, giving me an uncertain smile.
I believe her, but I always believe her. Believing her is my Achilles’ heel. My faith is as constant as her rejection. No matter how successful I become, ten seconds in her presence will always turn me into poor little Tully again. Always hopeful.
Not today. I don’t have the time—or the energy—to step on that Tilt-A-Whirl again.
“This is Edgar,” my mother says.
