The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet Read online

  Anger

  To be avoided and/or maturely processed whenever possible. When not possible, best used, as per the suggestion of John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), as a kind of “energy.”

  Assholes

  “All dentists, as I’m sure you know, are vicious psycho-assholes.” She describes her dental and medical problems to me over and over, in great detail. David says he doesn’t know why I listen. I don’t either, except that I sometimes imagine it might help. Imagine that by talking about my mother’s “medical” issues, I’m really helping her talk about what her father did to her when she was a child. I’m pretty sure, though, that she doesn’t think of it that way.

  Avoidance

  Tracy keeps buying them for her, so that by now my mother owns five, maybe six, cell phones. But at the moment only one of them works because in attempting to disable their tracking devices, she broke the others. On my own phone I’ve assigned my mother a distinctive ring tone. It sounds like a duck, and I rarely pick up when my phone starts quacking. In fact, I almost never touch my own cell phone because on it I frequently find text messages from my mother, and these often contain photographs I don’t want to see. Occasionally, these photographs are innocuous—the sky outside her living room window or a flower near her parking space—but mostly she sends me selfies. My mother has always been fond of photographing herself, and the pictures she texts are often dramatically lit shots orchestrated to emphasize her high cheekbones or her large green eyes. I find them spooky. Also, she sometimes sends me photos documenting some of her more mysterious health problems. For example, one night when she was supposed to come over for dinner (she lives just one town away, in a subsidized apartment), she called our home phone a few hours after we’d already done the dishes and put the kids to bed to ask if I’d gotten the pictures she’d sent. “Check your cell phone,” she said.

  I did, and on it found a series of photographs she’d taken of her mouth. The accompanying text explained: Driving to yr place this happened. Some kind of reaction. Had to turn home. Srry.

  In the photos her lips were three or four times their normal size, pink, nearly red, and completely smooth. They looked like enormous clown lips attached to her otherwise gaunt face. Seeing these images, I felt, as I so often do when dealing with my mother, an instant unraveling. Like vertigo, only backward. Instead of a sensation of falling through space, I feel space collapsing inside of me, something shutting down with incredible speed, telescoping, evaporating. I showed the pictures to David, who said, “Don’t look at those,” but it was too late.

  B

  B—, Massachusetts

  The handsome Boston suburb where I live with my husband and our two children has excellent libraries, exemplary schools, a lot of very pretty public parks, and two good bookstores. There are also a few decent restaurants, a yarn store, three great bakeries, and a responsive police force. The children in B— are generally well behaved. Some of the adults look sour, but this is a problem everywhere. Unfortunately, B— is barely affordable on my husband’s and my combined salaries (David is an architect, while I cobble together a patchwork of teaching gigs and freelance graphic design work).

  We rent an apartment off the back of a large house on a busy street. To get to our place, you have to walk down a narrow concrete pathway that’s crowded, in the summertime, with azaleas, hydrangeas, pale roses, leggy cherry tomato plants, struggling squash plants, and a raggedy box hedge. At the end of this path is a wooden gate—crooked but functional—and once you pass through this, the street almost completely falls away: everything is suddenly quieter thanks to the towering white maples that surround our yard and absorb the city’s noise. Chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, skunks, and even, occasionally, a wild turkey or two wander through both day and night. Just past the sculpture of awkward concrete pilings (made by our landlord in his grad school days) is our porch, crowded with a grill, a table and chairs, potted plants, various rackets, balls, bats, gardening tools, bikes, shoes, and scooters.

  Though small and on the ground level, our apartment is very bright. When people first see it, they often say, “What a great space.” It has concrete floors, which years ago I stained and stenciled to look like marble tiles but which are now scratched in those areas that get the most traffic, and there are dark patches under each one of our dining room chairs. Instead of walls, we put up bookshelves (often crammed two layers deep) that also serve as room partitions. There’s a wood-burning stove and a big white ceiling fan to circulate its heat, three skylights (two of which leak), and a bank of seven tall windows that look out onto the yard—a space that now, in late October, is still green and lush, boasting jubilant displays of mahogany-colored dahlias, white chrysanthemums, pink geraniums, and countless orange rosehips. The four of us sleep in lofts suspended above the main living area, which, with a ceiling height of eighteen feet, is the apartment’s real glory. The height of this space manages to make everything feel light and airy, at least when things are tidy—though to be honest, that’s not often because our home is cluttered most of the time by an ever-changing, overflowing mix of bills and paperwork; bowls of bananas, apples, tomatoes, lemons, and other fruits in various states of ripeness; children’s art projects; yarn and knitting needles; computer chargers; yoga props; Legos; baking pans; library books; blankets; shoes; board games; coats; hats; and always, for some reason, a sock or two that didn’t quite make it into the hamper.

  Sometimes I worry that our unconventional living space and cramped quarters create an odd burden for our children, whose friends—many of them—live in the large, beautifully appointed homes that are the pride of B—. But at other times it seems fine, even good, to live like this. The other day, for example, when Isaac found me clicking through old photos on my computer, he stopped me at an image of him and Isabella playing dress-up. In this photo, taken about three years ago, he wears a plastic crown and a pink-and-white chenille bedspread draped like a king’s cloak over his small shoulders. It trails after him in a luxurious swirl. Isabella is dancing, laughing, her teeth softly illuminated by a ray of sunlight. She wears a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and a black straw hat inherited from my mother that’s pure glamour: its disklike brim is more than two feet across. Looped around her neck is a lavender feather boa and on her feet a pair of my high heels. Behind the children tower the seven windows, and beyond the windows there is nothing but green: a wall of overgrown grass and sun-shot leaves from the forsythia bush, the rose of Sharon, the bittersweet vines, the little blackthorn tree, and the white maples. These seven windows and the ever-shifting but essentially constant view they frame create the stage set of our lives. All the goings-on in our small apartment happen against this backdrop. “Stop!” said Isaac, putting his hand on top of mine, which was hovering over the trackpad. He put his face up very close to the computer screen, peered a little longer at the image on it, then said, “Everything about that picture is perfect.”

  Black Oxalis

  My mother sometimes signs off her friendlier text messages as “LuLu LaBloom.” There are many variations on this name. For instance, sometimes she’s “Mere Lulu,” and sometimes she’s simply “LaBloom.” Occasionally, she is also “Gleimug Czysvlos,” but I don’t what that means.

  Look at how fabulous the black Oxalis U gave me is doing! Next I’ll kick your African Violet ass! LuLu LaBloom (qui est soulement le jardinière le plus formidable de le monde!)

  How would you like it if I moved a little closer 2 U?

  Punkins, please text me your recipe 4 lime/ginger/honey salad dressing ASAP. Have a huge freshsalad mix losing freshness vit! Thanx, Lulu la B!

  Kimmy: Be on safe side & empty Fiji water bottle I left on porch—vit vit—B4 one of kids takes swig! Luv ya. ~ Gleimug Czysvlos

  Hey kids, Thelma & Louise is on right now channel 7. Ta ta, LuLu.

  Hi kabimps! Had GREAT time & hope U R glad I made it. I know my screwed up hearing/balance is a drag & must thank U 4 rolling w/it. Mere Gleimug. />
  Blanket

  There was a time when my mother wasn’t yet addicted to prescription drugs. When she was already broken but the cracks didn’t show—unless, perhaps, you looked very closely. But my father didn’t. He saw only the pretty face, the long legs, the green eyes, and the shiny, chestnut-colored hair. At least I don’t know how else to explain it.

  They went to the same high school. He was two years older. They dated a couple of times, but when he made a comment about her being “broad in the beam,” she refused to see him for several months. When she eventually agreed to another date, he borrowed a friend’s convertible to pick her up. Because she was ashamed of her house, she walked down the road to meet him. I know this story because my mother once told it to me and it burned itself into my brain. My grandma Ellen had just bought a white blanket that day, and my mother had taken it with her, wrapped around her shoulders, because it was the nicest thing she could find to wear. I grew up with this blanket, took it to college, still have it in fact. Made of some kind of super-sturdy synthetic material, it remains a blanket, though just barely: frayed and dingy, the weave has so expanded with age, you can fit your fingers through it. But back then, on the night I was conceived, it was still new—still fluffy and soft—and my mother wore it over her shoulders as she walked toward my father because, she told me so many years later, it made her feel pure.

  Blocked

  By “blocked” she means blocked from going about her life. Blocked from working, blocked from making friends, blocked from happiness, blocked from normalcy. There are people behind this blocking. Sometimes they talk to her directly, over the television. Other times they answer the phone when she dials 911—only it’s not the “real” 911; it’s the “fake” 911 because she’s blocked from the real 911. The police block her, and store owners block her; the post office and AT&T and her local Peapod delivery service all block her. Dentists and doctors and the Department of Mental Health block her, the internet blocks her, also the Department of Motor Vehicles and Medicaid—they all, she insists, work hard and ceaselessly over the phone lines, through cables, and sometimes even on late night TV ads, to block her.

  Blue Tea-Length Dress

  In the jumbled box of family photographs my mother once gave me, there is an ancient, yellowed clipping from a local newspaper announcing my parents’ wedding. Illustrated with a half-tone reproduction of her high school portrait, the title of the blurb reads, “Student Is Bride Elect.” Technically speaking this is incorrect because by the time of their wedding my mother was already four months pregnant with me and had dropped out of high school. There are no surviving photographs of the event itself, but she once told me that it was a “modest affair” and that she wore a pale-blue, “tea-length” dress.

  From my father I learned much more recently that after the ceremony, his parents invited his new wife’s family over for a celebratory meal. We were making stuffed peppers (my grandma Bella’s recipe) when he told me this story. He’d come up for a visit from New York City, where he’s lived ever since he stopped drinking. He was mincing garlic, and I was cutting lengthwise slits into each of the peppers.

  “Wait. You met her father? What was he like?”

  “Strange.”

  “Strange like what?”

  “Just strange.”

  “Dad! Details.”

  He looked up from the cutting board and said: “Not like the mother. I mean, it wasn’t like you could tell right away that something was wrong just by looking at him. He was almost charming. Friendly. Joking around. But he gave off a cold vibe. I don’t know what else to call it. He just seemed sort of sneaky.”

  Blur

  I—, New Jersey, May 1966

  The trees are just starting to come into leaf—it’s early May. The sky is construction paper blue, the clouds at the horizon lofty and bright as meringue. The border of this photograph has yellowed, and there’s a large fingerprint—a closed-loop type—in the upper left corner. There seems a quiet stateliness to the scene, although I realize this is just the way time translates the glossy finish of old photos. Standing in my grandparents’ driveway, between two taupe-colored sedans, my mother, in checked pants and a dark sleeveless turtleneck, holds a newborn me. My face is a pink blur, her arm a white bar.

  Big-Time Fraud

  It’s complicated. I don’t understand the intricacies. But basically, Medicaid has something to do with the bank, which is stealing millions of dollars in her name. Big-time fraud is how she puts it. Also, the FBI is involved. So she doesn’t want Medicaid anymore. She wants Medicare because Medicaid won’t let her see doctors out of state, but Medicare will, which is obviously a necessity if she’s ever going to find proper treatment. This is why she’s unenrolled herself from Medicaid. When I tell her this worries me, when I say that I don’t think she should be walking around uninsured, she says it’s called strategy and asks if I’ve ever heard of it.

  Bogeyman

  I never met my mother’s father, have seen only a single photograph of him, and heard his voice just once, fleetingly, over the telephone when I was fourteen: his oddly singsong Swedish accent (“Izyur muh-der-dare?”). For these reasons he has always been a kind of bogeyman to me, an almost mythological figure.

  Although long dead by now, my grandfather still manages to occupy an enormous amount of real estate in my imagination, so I suppose it’s not surprising that occasionally I dream about him. In these dreams he is always very short and dark, his skin curiously taut, and he almost invariably appears in the same setting: an enormous public lavatory full of clogged and overflowing toilets—dozens, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of broken and doorless bathroom stalls arranged in a senseless labyrinth. These dreams tend to last a long time, although my quest in them is simple and never varies: I am searching for a non-filthy stall, either for myself or for one of my children. At some point I stumble across my grandfather crouched in a dark puddle or perched on top of a black steaming heap—a tiny, nearly dwarfish creature, mocking me without even raising an eyebrow, without even looking at me.

  Boots

  Recently I told David about the heavy boots and he nodded. He said he knew what I was talking about. Then he said that actually, he thought they were kind of a cliché. But my husband doesn’t own a pair of heavy boots, so he’s no judge. Invisible yet weighty, the heavy boots work this way: you put them on in your childhood and drag them around with you for the rest of your life. Unless, that is, you find some ingenious way of kicking them off.

  Borderline Personality Disorder

  One of the more frequently cited of my mother’s many psychiatric diagnoses (others of which include bipolar disorder, psychosis, hypomania, PTSD, paranoia, Narcissistic personality disorder, conversion disorder, and Munchausen syndrome). According to the Mayo Clinic website: “With borderline personality disorder, you may have a severely distorted self-image and feel worthless and fundamentally flawed. Anger, impulsiveness and frequent mood swings may push others away, even though you may desire to have loving and lasting relationships. If you have borderline personality disorder, don’t get discouraged. Many people with this disorder get better with treatment and can live satisfying lives.”

  Or not.

  Boundaries

  A word my mother puts in air quotes.

  Bright Vermilion

  For the first few years of my life we lived in a small apartment in the basement of my paternal grandparents’ house, a split ranch at the end of a quasi-rural road in I—, New Jersey. My father worked in a gravel pit (his first job out of high school), and my mother studied for her GED, helped her mother-in-law keep house, and took care of me. As a family, we spent much of our time upstairs, with my grandparents and my father’s two teenaged sisters. We ate most of our meals up there, and watched television upstairs too. But I still retain a few memories of our apartment in the basement. For example, I remember that the linoleum floor tiles were tan imprinted with a design of thick black lines meant to look like wood gr
ain. I also recall a large, futuristic-seeming bottle sterilization machine that took up most of the kitchen counter. In the living room there was a striped couch, a shag rug, a small television with a battered antenna, and a reading lamp made of stainless steel. Though I slept upstairs in my grandmother’s sewing room (which had been converted into a nursery), my parents’ bedroom was in the basement. I can still remember their room—a gloomy space with north-facing windows that looked directly into a dense yew hedge. It was only the kitchen of that apartment that was a little more cheerful, illuminated as it was by two large sliding glass doors near the fridge.

  Beyond those doors lay the world: first the concrete patio and, beyond the patio, Grandpa Joe’s garden, which, in summertime, was full of tomatoes, eggplants, shell peas, enormous zucchini, and other somewhat less absorbing vegetables, like chard and spinach. There were, of course, worms in the earth and, despite my grandfather’s best efforts, snails in the garden. There were tiny, almost invisible mites—bright vermilion—crawling everywhere if you looked closely enough: on the tomato vines, on the chipped concrete of the patio, over the pine-green shingles of the house, on acorns and chard leaves and yew berries and even individual blades of grass. There were sparrows and blue jays, cardinals and robins, ladybugs and daddy longlegs and two German shepherds—Jackie and Flicka—who let me ride on their backs. There was a tricycle, a tea set, a bouncy ball with a handle. I had two feet and two legs, two knees, two hands, a large collection of Richard Scarry books, and at a certain point I even had a sister. It was, in short, all a child my age and disposition could possibly want.