Creative Writing
Mom comes home from work after Beckett and I eat dinner. She has a big job at a big company, but she says her job is no fun anymore. I do not understand what Mom does at work. She changes into her pre-pajamas, and slouches on the couch eating leftovers straight from the fridge. She is at the YMCA on the stationary bicycle while Dad gets us ready for school, much to our dismay because Dad doesn’t put nearly as much sweet strawberry jam on our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Her demeanor is urgent as she click-clacks in little heels and nice outfits to her Times Square office, but quickly turns giddy when she can take her earnings to Bloomingdale's. Sometimes I tell her she is too easily influenced by the capitalist agenda. She shrugs.
Throughout my life, Mom has always appeared exactly the same. Shoulder length black hair, slightly layered. She tells me that her hairdresser, Pablo, cut her bangs the day she walked into his shop. The bangs levitate above her forehead. I cannot recall a time I have not seen her bangs made imperfect; somehow she defies laws of water and air. Mom does not defy the shelter of my secret life, though. We talk often, yet know little about what happens behind each other’s closed doors. We are on our way to the New Jersey Transit terminal in Port Authority. It’s humid outside, and in record time I feel droplets of sweat break the seal of my Old Spice two-pack deodorant. The MTA part of the Port Authority is angry. Angry commuters who missed their train, angry performers whose guitar cases are filled with pennies, the young woman– kid strapped to her back– angry when you don’t want to buy a churro in cling wrap. My mom angry because I took too long packing, making us late to the bus. But this is all very peripheral, as I am stuck in my thoughts (my mother always says, "get your head out of the clouds!” I tell her she is far shorter than I so this is easier said than done). We board the bus, most seats full of lawyers and half-awake accountants, ties loosened, with a briefcase filling the chair next to them. Their briefcases are new black leather, shiny and in perfect condition. Through my elementary years, Dad walked me to school. One hand in mine, the other clutching his briefcase. His was brown and scuffed up though. The one time Mom walked me to school she held a designer bag. But I do not resent her, she built her own American dream: from complimentary tote bags to Prada.
We finally discover an empty row of seats, free of overworked men in suits and their briefcases. The bus pulls out of angry Port Authority, and I slouch in the patterned fake velvet chair next to the window because Mom likes the aisle seat. We barrel to Atlantic City, the nearest bus terminal to the house of my mother’s parents. I love their house. Red brick and white siding. Shiny tablecloths on the porcelain porch table. Wicker furniture. Giant fern in the corner. Mom doesn’t love their house as much as I. It contains the yellow bedroom that Mom tried so desperately to get away from. Away from the talons of her stay at home mother that I always secretly wanted. Strange. Strange is the route to Toms River. Strange is the way my mom’s mouth falls open, bottom lip jutting out, as she reads her magazines on the bus. As she pursues the perfect glossy pages of celebrity glamor, I see her turn soft.
I know I love my mom, everyone loves her. Or they are completely terrified of her– she is a lion at work. I call her Carol “big guns” Levine. The people who are terrified of her don’t know that she cried when George Michael died. The night after she heard this devastating news, I stood in the doorway, staring at her knocked out in bed. For the first time ever, she looked small. I wanted to scoop her up and put her in my pocket. I tucked her dark, wiry hair behind her ear (she says we have the exact same head of hair). I gave her two pats on the cheek.
Mom has a handbag collection that rivals any store's inventory. She likes expensive shops, everything pristine and folded, sales associates to assist her. I adore dollar days at Goodwill; there is nothing more rewarding than uncovering the perfect tank top after digging through piles of crap. As much as she might mask it, Mom bathes in insecurity. She is trapped in the advertising of every other brand that sells face goop, promising to make the user look twenty years younger. I believe that I am possibly as close to perfect as one can get. Mom eats salad and almonds, I eat cotton candy. Every Wednesday I go to Dr. Alexandra's office. I sit in the waiting room on a matted gray sofa, staring at the generic photo on the wall of Manhattan all zoomed out. There is a vague scent of pasta, although there is no way a pot of spaghetti could have made its way into these wallpapered walls. Dr. Alexandra says that I am frightened of my mother’s success, and believe that there is no way I could top my mom’s accomplishments. Dr. Alexandra is always scary right. But I also think that women spend their whole lives trying to become the opposite of their mothers, at least that’s what my mom did. And her mother. And her mother’s mother.
Occasionally I still stand a pace away from Mom’s bedroom door frame, watching my little quilted, cocooned Carol as she sleeps. Her thin bangs are stuck to her forehead, and the blankets rise and fall as she breathes. She has sun spots on her cheeks and arms, and is wearing pink striped cotton pajamas. She is a little baby when she is swathed in her comforter, maybe similar to the baby who was ripped from her stomach, now standing in the doorway.