Tom Mendicino - Probation

I tell myself I’m overreacting, surrendering to my predilection for crepe hanging. It’s probably just Christmas. She’s just pushed herself too hard. My sister spent the past four days cataloguing every burner left lit, every door left open, every toilet unflushed, every pair of eyeglasses misplaced. She inventoried my mother’s medicine cabinet and recorded the labels of every prescription bottle to look up in the Physicians’ Desk Reference. If she doesn’t understand the entry, she’ll consult her gynecologist. My mother denies that anything is wrong. Regina has been insistent, a battering ram. There has to be a reasonable explanation for the pallor of our mother’s skin and the dark pouches below her eyes. She’s going to get to the bottom of this. There’s nothing to get to the bottom of, I told her. She’s getting older. It’s what happens to people when they get older.

“Bullshit. She’s not even sixty. My doubles partner is seventy-five years old and has a better backhand than me!”

Fucking Christmas. Thank God it’s over for another year.

Hard to believe that, once upon a time, I started counting the days until December 25 on the October afternoon I came home from school to find the Spiegel catalogue had arrived in the morning mail. I’d sit at the breakfast table for weeks, thumbing through the well-worn pages, changing my mind two or three times a day, never settling on a present for Gina until my mother announced it was time to send in the order.

It didn’t matter that by New Year’s Eve, parts would be broken, pieces missing, instructions lost, pages ripped, because I knew that she loved every doll or game or book I ever gave her. She couldn’t help that she was clumsy, awkward, and forgetful. Just the opposite of me, who carefully preserved the DC and Marvel superhero comic books she gave me every Christmas, reading each one carefully, no folds or tears, then slipping it in a plastic envelope for posterity.

“Do you like them? Do you really?” she asked every year, needing to be reassured she’d made all the right choices despite having tagged along on my weekly visits to Woolworth from January through November, watching me cherry-pick the same titles from the comic book rack.

Damn, we loved Christmas back then. Neither of us was ever disappointed after all the build up and anticipation. And Christmas night was the best-no Midnight Mass to attend, flannel pajamas instead of my bow tie and her tights, no limit on the number of Christmas cookies we could stuff in our mouths. Mama let us stay up until we were exhausted and longed for our beds, both of us already counting the days until Christmas rolled around again.

Her own kids could barely summon enough enthusiasm to crawl out of bed on Christmas morning. Michael, the oldest, had to be threatened with bodily injury to tear himself away from messaging his friends long enough to come to the table. Jennifer and Dustin rolled their eyes and sighed at every comment or question, mimicking the bratty “tween” queens of the Disney Channel. The only real pleasure the three of them seemed to get was taunting their father, a combustible sort like our old man, but without his redeeming qualities of fidelity and reliability. I suspect the rock he presented my sister on Christmas Eve is reparation for his latest flight attendant or Pilates instructor. Family honor says I should hate him, but he’s a nice guy despite his philandering and occasional outbursts, unimpressed by his own Olympian status, someone to watch hoops with, arguing over who’s the best point guard in the ACC while we ignore Regina’s battle with her surly brood over the ridiculous “festive” holiday sweaters she bought them to wear for the video she wants of our happy Christmas dinner.

“These kids are too goddamn spoiled to appreciate anything,” she complained last night. “Do you remember how you’d light up every time I gave you a pile of damn comic books on Christmas morning?”

Yeah, I do. What shocked me was that she did too.

The tension headache I’d been nursing for days started to fade as their SUV backed down the driveway. We got through the holiday, but only after endless hours of vigilance, waiting for Regina to bite through the tip of her tongue and violate the unspoken Nocera Family Agreement to rewrite history, erase the past, and expunge any trace of a major character from the story: Have you heard from Alice? Alice? Alice who? I don’t know any Alice. You must have me confused with somebody else. Wonder of wonders, the moment never arrived, thwarted, no doubt, by my mother’s steely gaze each time she saw temptation flicker across her daughter’s face. I don’t know what you were so worried about. I told you I wouldn’t bring it up, I overheard Regina say as the SUV pulled away.

My mother takes a deep breath, fortifying herself for the afternoon ahead. I ask her if she really wants to go. Of course, she says. She’s been looking forward to this all week.

“This” is the farewell reception for the bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte. On January first, he’s being retired to a community for elderly prelates in New Mexico.

Maybe the forecasters are right. In just the few minutes since we’ve come downstairs, the sun has disappeared and the daylight has turned dishwater gray. The noisy winter birds have gone into hiding. The neighbor’s cat streaks across the driveway, headed home to wait out the storm. My mother blesses herself as I back the car into the street.

I expect that she, like my sister and me, is desperately seeking a simple explanation for all the many ways her body is betraying her. She hopes all she needs is one good night’s uninterrupted sleep. Maybe all it will take is the right combination of vitamin pills. Maybe her eyeglass prescription needs to be adjusted. Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow she’ll spring out of bed, those heavy sacks of rocks she’s been carrying for too long now tossed aside somewhere along the highway of her dreams, and she’ll greet all the familiar little aches in her joints like old friends. My sister insinuates my “situation” is the reason our mother has taken up smoking after twenty years of abstinence. That’s easier than accepting the fact that she suspects it can’t hurt her anymore.

My mother and I drive in silence. We have to make a quick stop at the cemetery. I insist she stay in the car, that it’s too cold up on this bleak hill. I don’t want her to see that the grave wreath, locked in the trunk over a week ago, has wilted. My mother’s name and date of birth are already etched into the granite. The old man is biding his time, waiting for her to join him. The sky seems to brighten as we arrive at the bishop’s residence. Maybe the forecasters are wrong.

The door opens before we have a chance to ring. Only a bishop can get away with having an ancient black man in Gone with the Wind livery greet his guests. He welcomes my mother as if she were visiting royalty. Merry Christmas, Nathaniel, she says, was Santa good to you? Oh, the best, Miz Nocera, he chuckles, the very best. I’m dumbfounded she knows his name and that she is a familiar face here. I’m shocked by what I don’t know about her. We both have our secret lives, my mother and I.

Nudging my way to the punch bowl, I speculate there wouldn’t be a wealthy Catholic left in all of North Carolina if a bomb fell on this place…and then it hits me, hard.

Good God, why hadn’t I thought of it before I let a stranger spirit away our coats to the hidden recesses of this too-big house? A quick escape is out of the question now. Why hadn’t she thought of it before accepting my offer to drive her here? Maybe she had. I hate being suspicious of my mother. No, obviously it hadn’t occurred to her, otherwise she would have told me to stay home and relax in front of the tree and she would get a ride to the party with one of her cronies. She couldn’t have an agenda. This wasn’t a Saturday night dinner at the club where she could ever so genteelly force the truly disgusted or the downright amused or the blissfully unaware to acknowledge my ongoing existence. This was J. Curtis McDermott, Jr., the King of Unpainted Furniture himself. The largest donor to Catholic Charities in the entire state, certain to have received the coveted invitation, probably the first name on the list.