Peter Jensen: A mother-daughter twosome

The divorce proceedings had been short, and unprotected. Tom had been just as willing Ann to break off their obvious mismatch. She had been awarded a small alimony, but most important of all for her, she had been awarded custody of her child, Lani.

The insistent blaring of a horn gradually broke through the curtain of Ann's memories, and she looked up to see that traffic had again begun to move on the Bayshore. She quickly moved ahead, and gradually picked up speed until she was going a relatively brisk 45 miles per hour. Her mind was somewhat at ease now, pacified by the turn her thoughts had taken in the direction of her daughter.

Ann smiled again. Lani had been such a beautiful baby, had hardly ever cried, had walked before she was 18 months, and was talking by the time she was 2 old. She was Ann's one joy in life, and had become gradually over the years her only real reason for living. After the trauma of her marriage, Lani had formed the cornerstone of her sanity, and for a year after her divorce, the two of them had constituted a self-sufficient entity, with little or no contact with the outside world. Without that time with her child, alone, to recuperate from the wounds which her marriage had left upon her, Ann might very well have broken down completely.

But while Lani had been able to salve those wounds with the simple fact of her presence, she had not been able to heal the scars they left on Ann's personality, and on her sexual being in particular. Anything that remotely reminded the young mother of the traumatic experience she had been through with her immature husband was avoided, shoved into the far recesses of her mind to lie hidden behind an almost neurotic wall of repression. She had been hurt irreparably, and she had subconsciously placed the blame for all her troubles on the sexual side of her nature. She feared any kind of intimate involvement, and rejected coolly all advances made by the scores of men drawn irresistibly to her, with the result that, as the years passed, her sexual frustration increased. And as it increased, her fear of her own sexuality increased as well, and she expended more and more energy to keep that sexuality hidden, disarmed, incapable of leading her into relationships that might prove painful or destructive.

And so she moved from place to place, thinking she was avoiding entanglements that would divert her attention from her young daughter, but in reality simply trying to escape the undeniable pressures exerted on her by her own seething sensuality. She had begun by moving around the east coast, from Delaware to South Carolina, and then her fears had driven her west. Each time she would move into a city, find a dull and usually poorly paying job, and try to settle with Lani into some kind of routine that resembled stability. She knew, instinctively, that her daughter needed that stability, and that she herself needed it as well. She would slowly make a few friends, and begin to come out of her shell slightly, and then she would find herself being drawn to one of the many men who pursued her with stubborn persistence.

At first those men would seem content with a purely platonic relationship, and Ann would perceptibly bloom on the release of having someone to talk to, someone with whom she could break through the icy walls of her self-imposed aloofness. But then, inevitably she would find that those men began to make demands on her, sexual demands, demands that showed either an unwillingness or an inability to understand her reluctance to become intimately involved. And then would come the inevitable conversations that stretched painfully into the middle of the night, and then the arguments, and then the final break. Sometimes the break was clean, and Ann would be able to stay where she was, though more confused and frustrated than before. But at other times, the men in her life would not give up. They would be able to sense the restrained desire, the hidden but burning sexuality that twisted the young woman with its force, and would try to help her bring it out into the open, to deal with it, to come to terms with herself. And it was then that Ann fled, terrified, not only from their offers of help, but from herself as well.

The tired young woman left the freeway, and began to make her way up the small streets to her apartment. The houses all passed by her with a hypnotic sameness, colored in nauseous shades of dirty pastels, squeezed together as though trying to impress the curious observer of their solidarity with one another. But there were no curious observers in South San Francisco, and their solidarity had long since atrophied into mere congestion.

Turning into her parking space, the beautiful secretary cut the motor and wearily eased her voluptuous body from behind the steering wheel. She didn't bother to lock the car, but made her way toward the common entrance she shared with the 8 other apartments in her building, fill cramped cubicles exactly like her own. She stopped by her mail box hopefully, but it offered her nothing more than an old circular she'd never bothered to remove. She sighed, and turned to the stairs leading to her apartment.

"Well, Mrs. Walker, nothing again today?"

Ann stopped but didn't turn around. If there was one thing she didn't want to do now it was talk to Mrs. Pinchley, perhaps the most unpleasant neighbor she had ever been unfortunate enough to have.

"No, Mrs. Pinchley, nothing again today."

Without turning to confront the prunish old lady, Ann again started for the stairs. She didn't reach them, however, nor did she really expect to.

"Well that's a shame," came the irritating voice from behind her, "but you know it's just what I was saying to you the other day, Mrs. Walker, about young people today. They just don't seem to have any consideration, any common courtesy even. Why, I remember when I was young, I used to write my family at least twice a week! Sometimes three times! If I were you, Mrs. Walker, I'd give that child of yours a talking to. Now I don't want to butt in, of course…"

Then don't, you decrepit old bitch, Ann thought to herself impatiently, wanting only to get upstairs and pour a relaxing drink for herself.

"… but it seems to me that that daughter of yours has no respect for her elders. That's what it is. And those friends of hers, those hippie people, why I don't believe they've taken a bath in months, Mrs. Walker, and that's a fact! And now she's gone to live up there on that hippie commune! Well, deary, I know you must be sick with worry, and without any letters from her at all…"

Ann turned to the babbling old woman abruptly, and glared down on her.

"Mrs. Pinchly, I am not sick with worry, I do get letters from my daughter, and I'll thank you to keep your…"

"Yes, Mrs. Walker, but how many letters?" the old hen cackled, "two in the last three months! Why when I was young, I used to write my family at least twice a week! Sometimes three times!"

"Mrs. Pinchley," Ann said harshly, her patience at an end, "I'm sure you did. In fact, I'm constantly amazed that you can find anything more to talk about."

Ann turned on her heel and walked quickly up the stairs, leaving the old woman open-mouthed in the hallway below. She unlocked the door to her apartment, and went inside, closing it behind her. Goddamned old gossip, she thought to herself, and moved to her small, meagerly supplied bar. She poured herself a drink, and took a long swallow, letting it wash the tension out of her with its soothing warmth.

She turned to the small air conditioner that made life just bearable during the summer, switched it on, and moved across the room to the hallway leading to the kitchen. She walked slowly along the hall, stopped in front of the second door, opened it quietly, and stood leaning against the door jamb, looking into the room sadly.

But Mrs. Pinchley is right, Ann admitted to herself, I am sick with worry. If Lani would only write, and tell me what's happening…