Tom Mendicino - Probation

We never talk about why I’m here. I’d called her from exile, a thirty-bucks-a-night motel near the Greensboro airport, drunk and crying, spilling my guts. The next morning I was on her doorstep. Every picture of my wife had already disappeared from my mother’s home. Her only comment was it’s a crying shame when things don’t work out and we should be grateful we hadn’t started a family yet. I moved in, nowhere else to go, nowhere else I wanted to be.

She paid the fine and the lawyer, suggested a priest for the counseling, made the arrangements, and never mentioned it again. My father-in-law was also my employer. He contested my application for unemployment benefits and won. He made sure that no North Carolina furniture manufacturer would hire me, but I got work soon enough with the help of an old fuck buddy who worked in facilities for the national department store chain that is Shelton/Murray’s biggest account. It beats being put on the payroll of Nocera Heat and Air, the company my mother inherited after my old man died.

I never get personal phone calls. The only mail addressed to me is from divorce lawyers. I sleep through my days off. At night, my mother and I watch old movies on the cable channels. Saturday nights we go to the golf club for dinner. Over time, she is reacquainting me with each and every member. They look embarrassed, mumbling about how little I’ve changed. She won’t allow anyone to excuse themselves until they have shaken my hand and welcomed me home. The strain shows around her mouth. I know that she and my sister Regina have had words, arguing about my “situation.”

I imagine my sister is feeling triumphant, gloating over my sudden, ignominious fall from grace. I should be sympathetic. I understand it’s always been difficult, no, impossible, competing with the little prince. Her life would seem to be a success by any measure, at least if no one looked too deeply or asked too many questions. She has a thriving real estate business and the marriage to the golden boy, a bronze medalist in the giant slalom who’s become the most successful contractor in south Florida to have never been indicted or slapped with an IRS tax lien. The perfect couple lives in an umpteen-square-foot hacienda in Boca Raton ’s most exclusive gated community. Yet none of it seems to satisfy her. Something lives on, a nagging resentment from our childhood, nurtured by her stubborn refusal to accept that there is one competition she can never win, not even after bearing the three children who ensure that the DNA, if not the family name, will endure for another generation. My little sister, precious Gina, loved as she may be, can never depose the firstborn son.

And much to Regina ’s chagrin, my mother refuses to see my hobbling back to the nest as a failure. She says it’s absolutely wonderful having me home. She’s happy to have someone to talk to. About my niece and nephews, about the neighbors, about the recently deceased and the long dead. About everything and everyone but me. Which suits me fine.

We’re very comfortable here in the zone between questions left unasked and answers never offered. She’s made peach cobbler-my favorite-and serves it piping hot with vanilla ice cream. I squeeze it into mush like I’ve done since I was old enough to lift a fork. My mother sighs and tells me that my youngest nephew does the same thing. We’re so much alike she finds herself calling him Andy.

Dustin is his name. His goddamn mother practically willed him into being a little fairy by calling him that. Boys need names like Bob or Bill or Mike. One syllable. Not something that’s a synonym for Tinker Bell.

The both of you always have an answer for everything, my mother says, both of you too smart by half. That’s not the only resemblance she sees. He’s quite the sissy and refuses to touch a ball or a bat. A lonely little kid who does all the voices for his action figures because none of the boys want to play with him. She laughs, telling me some wiseass comment, wry beyond his years, he made to his mother about his favorite television actress. I grunt and squirm, trying to conceal that the obvious parallels make me uncomfortable and that the kid’s fey mannerisms, his refusal to blend in, his insistence on being different, embarrass me. I resent her obvious agenda, her assumption that I, of all people, should be sympathetic, willing to reach out and support the boy. Why him? Why aren’t I expected to forge some special relationship with his rough-and-tumble older brother, who’s showing the first signs of sullen adolescent rebellion, or his little sister, prosecutorial in her insistence that all things go her way? But for my mother’s sake, I feign a little interest, assure her he’ll turn out all right.

I’ve promised her I would mow the lawn. She fusses it’s too hot, wait until the cool of the evening. She says I’ve just eaten. She’s right, so I just lie down in the grass. She’s at the kitchen window, listening to Sinatra, meaning she’s thinking of my father, missing him, while she tackles her greasy pots and pans. I light a cigarette, hoping the nicotine will revive me. But my arm is heavy with sleep and the cigarette drops from my hand. The last thing I remember before drifting off is the hiss of grass scorched by the ember.

La Crosse, Wisconsin, doesn’t have a lot to offer after ten P.M. There’s the late-night talk shows or basic cable or, as a last resort, the Million Dollar Movie if the opening monologue and tracking weather patterns in Timbuktu don’t strike your fancy. I doubt that a million bucks pays the catering bill on a movie set these days, but tonight’s feature presentation is a classic. Charade. They say Cary Grant was a big old homo. It may be a matter of common knowledge in our enlightened times, but the very idea is blasphemy to my mother. When I was a child and did something chivalrous like open the car door or help her with her jacket, she would tell me I was her own little Cary Grant. Little did she know.

The more Audrey Hepburn bats her eyelashes-well, not exactly bats, more like flutters-the more standoffish he seems. He seems fixated on her flat chest. Maybe it’s wishful thinking that he’ll pull the cashmere over her head and discover she’s really a little boy. You can hardly blame him for not wanting to jump her bones. Let’s face it. She’s not exactly the type of babe to make Woody Woodpecker spring into action. Elegant, chic, thin, European, yet no more threatening than the All-American Girl Next Door, she’s an ideal most men are indifferent to, but many women aspire to be.

Including Alice. Granted, an alabaster icon seemed an unlikely idol for my freckle-dusted wife. It’s hard to imagine Alice posing for the Breakfast at Tiffany’s poster with a three-foot-long cigarette holder dangling from her lips. Givenchy would have blanched at her ample Irish hips. Alice is more Kennedy than Hepburn, with an open, toothy grin rather than a sly smile, incapable of seeming coy. Her angular beauty is of a different sort, not coarser, but certainly more substantial. And her graceful gait is more athletic, more suited for racing down the soccer field than descending a staircase in a designer gown. One thing they do share is a soft voice, without harsh edges. Alice ’s is bit deeper, but, whatever talents Hepburn may have had, she couldn’t touch Alice when it comes to singing the mezzo parts of a Bach cantata. All in all, stand them side by side and I’d choose Alice. Hands down.

I know this fucking movie by heart. This one and the musical with Fred Astaire and, of course, Tiffany’s. Please, please, please, just one more time, Alice would plead and I had to concede, quid pro quo for forcing her to suffer through countless evenings watching chain-saw attacks on nubile flesh. This motel bed feels so fucking empty without her. That’s the hardest thing for me to accept. No more long nights buried under a mountain of down, drinking wine and eating popcorn, watching movies and falling asleep in each other’s arms. This is better than sex, Alice would say.