NONFICTION

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Me and My Mom
by Mary Heldman

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One morning, in April 1977, my mother took a sip of the coffee I’d ground, dripped and filtered as a surprise for her, and immediately spat it out into the kitchen sink of my apartment.
 
“What is this? It’s disgusting.” 
 
“I thought you’d like some really good, real coffee,” I spat back.
 
The unexpected, and out-of-character insult had caught me off guard. I hadn’t wanted her to visit, and right now her sloppy bathrobe and foul morning breath were undermining my efforts to be pleasant.
 
“What’s wrong with taking a job as a secretary? Or work for a temp agency until you decide what to do for a career. You’ll probably get remarried . . .”
 
“It just seems I can’t do anything right—no job, no career, no boyfriend. What am I even on earth for?” 
 
I was coming unglued, and blurted out, “I don’t know why, but every time I think of you and Dad I feel like a piece of shit.”
 
I didn’t mean it literally . . . or did I? I suspect part was for shock value.
 
A moment of silence, disbelief. The space between us was thick with mutual wariness. I apologized for the cruel remark. Then I broke into sobs.
 
Mom held me close until I calmed down.
 
Eventually I made her a cup of instant coffee, and we never again referred to this moment.
 
That night my brother Michael was coming over from Cal-Berkeley where he was in his senior year. My plan was to take them to a restaurant I really liked in the Castro. I thought the place would give her a taste of really good food . . . and of my good taste, as well.
 
Mom complained. “Do we have to go out? Can’t we just make something here or order take-out?”
 
“But you’ll love this place.” 

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Mom acquiesced. It took 20 minutes to get to the restaurant; and we drove around for 20 more minutes looking for a place to park.
 
“I’m really hungry, Mary. Can’t we just go to some other restaurant where you can park? What’s the matter with the restaurant at the end of your block?”
 
“Okay, okay, I have another place we can go.” Another 30 minutes passed before we arrived and found a nearby place to park.
 
Conversation over dinner was stilted. Things just weren’t meshing. Mom pointedly asked Michael if all his friends wore an earring like he did. Michael actually had a girlfriend but he wouldn’t give our mother the satisfaction of knowing that he wasn’t gay.
 
“Can you pick me up at the front door when we’re through?”
 
“Mom, the car’s only a block away.”
 
“You dragged me all the way out here, so why can’t you go get the car and pick me up. Michael can stay here with me.” My brother and I exchanged eye-rolls.
 
The day Mom arrived, she’d huffed up the stairs to my fourth-floor walk-up, stopping twice between each landing. After dinner, she also took a long time climbing the stairs. I was impatient, disgusted with her refusal to take care of herself, with her having gotten so fat and puffy. She’d always hated to walk anywhere, even to the market a block away. How could she be so lazy? I couldn’t connect her with the “other” mother I’d known, who made up funny stories extemporaneously, took me with her to learn to knit and watercolor, and played the piano without making any mistakes.
 
I knew, of course, that we are all full of overtones and undertones—things that are unspoken or un-vocalized, but not unfelt. My mother, Ruth, was a bundle of these: sharp yet kind, sad yet funny, and prone to puzzling innuendos—a master of the mixed message.
 
Once, as a teenager, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I challenged her with: “If I’m so wonderful, how come only ugly boys ask me out?”
 
“Honey, someday you’ll learn that beauty is only skin deep.” A few seconds’ pause: “And anyway, in the dark, all men look alike.” I knew she was trying to comfort me, but what exactly was that message? And how did she even know that? 
 
Or the time she told me that in college boys were more interested in a girl’s intelligence than in their looks. I didn’t believe her. 

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​Trained from childhood to be a concert pianist by a perfectionist mother whose first child was mildly retarded, my mother studied piano for at least eight years, and then either rebelled or her parents ran out of money for lessons. When I was very young, she’d tell me a story about a girl whose parents couldn’t afford a piano, so she had to learn on a long strip of paper with a drawing of the 88 black and white keys. I can’t remember whether this was a story about her or one she made up. Maybe I never knew.
 
She didn’t pick up the piano again until she was 40, taking lessons from the same teacher I had. The first time I heard Mother play, I was mesmerized and wondered why she had waited until she was 40 to start playing again.
 
She played Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” over and over. Its crescendos and haunting harmonies tumbled forth like the imagined cataracts of the Nile. I unconsciously ascribed her expressive playing to the over- and undertones of her childhood, which I knew had been hard, but of which she rarely spoke.

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 Mom tells me timidly, testing the waters, “I started to play piano duets with a new, very lovely woman in the neighborhood. But she’s just learned that her cancer has come back, so I don’t know if she can play much longer. I’m feeling so sad for her.”
 
I didn’t know this woman, but I too felt horrible.
 
Then my mother added, “And actually it’s getting too hard for me to read music because of my cataracts—you know how I can’t drive at night anymore. They still aren’t “ripe” enough to operate.” We both laughed at the word “ripe.” I was visualizing wet black olives, and I’m sure she was also.
 
She had worn glasses since she was 9—glasses that were dizzyingly thick, in an era when eyeglasses weren’t sexy unless you were Marilyn Monroe.
 
I felt sad at her predicament, but didn’t know how to express it; most communications within my family were indirect.
 
After four days, a friend picked up my mother for a three-day visit in Berkeley. They were dropping me off downtown for another day of job-interview skills workshops. Mom was in the passenger seat; I was in the backseat behind her. A few blocks before I was to hop out of the car, she twisted around in her seat, gesturing for me to hold her hand. I did. 

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​“You’ll see, it’ll be okay. Things will get better.”
 
“Uh-huh.”
 
“I love you,” she said
 
“Me too,” I managed to mumble, trying to hold back tears.
 
I was relieved when she was gone, but feeling miserable at how I’d treated her. I was even feeling a bit lonely. Three days later, during a break from accounting class, I phoned to say goodbye just before her friends would be leaving to take her to the Oakland airport to return to LA. I waited until the last minute to avoid having to say much more than “Have a safe trip home, and I enjoyed your visit.” Or did I even say this last bit?
 
Then, the perfect conciliatory gesture occurred to me. I’d find a large-print edition of the book of classical piano pieces that we both used until the aged pages began to fall out. I called several music stores in the Yellow Pages with no luck. Finally, I took the bus to a piano store downtown and they told me where I could find a copy. I can’t remember where, but I bought the book and mailed it to her. On the inside cover I wrote: “I hope you can read and enjoy this book, which we both have loved. Mary”
 
Two weeks after her visit my brother called to tell me mom had had a heart attack. Later I learned that she’d had one before, which she hadn’t mentioned to anyone. She was only 63.
 
I flew to LA to visit her in the hospital; the attack was light; she was going to be okay.

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Then, two weeks later she had a second attack, this time a massive one. In 6 months she was dead.
 
I arranged to have “Moonlight Sonata” played at her funeral.
 
She never got to have her cataracts fixed. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

​Mary Heldman is retired from a career in medical school administration, computer programming, and business systems analysis. She grew up in Los Angeles but lived in Palo Alto, Washington D.C., Cambridge, and Stony Brook, New York before settling in San Francisco in 1974. She tutors at a local high school, studies piano, and designs costume jewelry. From time to time she writes sardonic prose for her friends. Mary wishes she lived with a chocolate lab or a golden retriever, but she doesn’t.

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