Gabriel Roth - The Unknowns

Stacey Oberfell is standing in the doorway. “Look at you!” she says. “The prodigal son returns!” The adjective seems uncalled for. “So let me see you,” she says, stepping inside and appraising the effects of eight years on my physiognomy. “Well, you’re looking more and more like your dad.”

In the living room, Mom and Stacey embrace, and Stacey meets Victoria, and we all sit down on the big matching couches and armchairs. “Here we are,” Stacey says. “The house that Eric built. Or bought, anyway.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t know how to build it,” I say. “So how are things, Stacey? How’s the family?”

“Everyone’s great. Bronwen and Pete were so jealous when I told them I was going to see you. Bronwen’s training to be a nurse, we’re all real proud of her.” I would like to learn whether she has a boyfriend and if she ever mentions me, but I don’t ask. “Pete graduated college last year, and now he’s in officer candidate school, if you can believe that.”

The thought of fearful nine-year-old Pete in uniform is hard to accept, especially with troops massing in Kuwait. “And what about Gary?” I say, as if Gary and I were peers or buddies. A sudden worry: Have they divorced? Did I hear about it and forget?

“Oh, he’s great,” she says. “His practice is doing real well, and we moved to a place in Aurora Hills, a real nice place. Not as nice as this place, obviously”—she gestures at the huge empty space above our heads—“but still real nice.”

I had thought that membership in a twelve-step program guaranteed a crowd at your birthday party, but there is no sign of a sponsor or any fellow addicts-in-recovery. I imagine my mom at a meeting, sitting alone at the back of the room, next to a big urn of coffee. It’s strange to be the only man here, a feeling compounded by the fact that Victoria is probably a few years younger than me. I am aware of some subtle pressure of expectations, as though I’m supposed to produce something. The conversation seems lost in the massive house — or maybe it’s the disconnectedness of the guests: Victoria from work, Stacey from long ago, me from biology.

Carlos begins to cry, and Mom passes him back to Victoria with a flustered look, as though she must have done something wrong. Victoria casually takes out her breast and attaches Carlos to it while I stare at the floor. “So tell me about your life,” Stacey says. “Any more million-dollar companies? You’ve got to tell us about the next one so we can invest!”

“Uh, no, I’m not really working on anything commercial right now,” I say. “I’m still doing some programming, but it’s mostly open source.”

Stacey smiles and nods to convey that she has no idea what I mean and doesn’t want me to explain. “Well, we’re all real proud of you,” she says. “I said to my kids, See, I told you you should be learning computers .”

“It sounds like they’re doing good, though,” I say. “I mean, there’s a big nursing shortage, right?”

“Oh, sure,” Stacey says, bored. “So Margo — how does it feel to be the big five-oh?”

“Well, I feel…,” my mom says, and then takes a pause that stretches out like the blank terrain visible through the window. Then she remembers her lines: “I’m just so grateful to be here. There have been so many hard things, and now,” smiling at me, “I’m here in this beautiful house, and I’m back at work, and I haven’t taken a drink or a pill in one year, four months, and six days, and thanks to you guys and God I’m on the right path.” By the end of this litany she sounds cheerful.

“We can all celebrate that , right?” Stacey says, as though distinguishing it from something else. The moment seems to call for a toast, but only Victoria and I have glasses, both of them filled with Diet Coke.

“So is it time for the presents?” says Victoria. “And is there maybe some kind of cake?” She gives me a twinkly smile, and I realize too late that I’m here as a host rather than a guest, responsible for the apparatus of the festivities.

“Uh, no, I, uh, I didn’t get a cake,” I say. Stacey’s face takes on a look of private hopes borne out. I can’t look at my mom.

“We’ve got presents, anyway,” says Victoria. Long ago it was decided that my mother liked pumpkins, and that gifts for her should involve pumpkin iconography: her kitchen clock is in the shape of a pumpkin, and her apron is decorated with pumpkins. I suspect that, for my mom, the pumpkin theme’s chief function is to minimize the amount of time other people spend thinking about what she might enjoy. Victoria has brought a ceramic jack-o’-lantern whose black eyes and mouth are cute rather than scary. As a child I felt strongly that jack-o’-lanterns were a corruption of the pumpkin idea, belonging to Halloween rather than to my mother’s birthday, but I don’t remember Mom expressing any feelings on the issue. She is more affected by Victoria’s card, which bears a printed poem titled “To a Woman I Admire.”

Stacey’s gift is a framed print, a painting of children making sand castles, that calls attention to the house’s acres of barren wall. Every minute or so I reexamine the knot of bad feeling at the back of my head and remember the cake thing. My hope is that my gift will redeem me, at least in part: a gold and topaz brooch, more expensive than anything else my mom wears but not so ostentatious as to be out of place. She extracts it from the little square box. “Oh, Eric,” she says. “Oh, it’s so pretty!” She affixes it to her sweater carefully, squeezing the pin between threads. “It’s the most beautiful thing I own.” She is trying to make me feel better about the cake, and I appreciate the attempt, although it only makes my failure more vivid.

Nothing has been planned for the rest of the afternoon. Was this my responsibility too? Drinks at some nearby Applebee’s is out. If I could leave for half an hour I could get a cake at the supermarket and then stop at Blockbuster and pick up a movie about four middle-aged women who learn to build fulfilling lives without men. Everyone works to find neutral subjects and eats chips and salsa until all the chips large enough to convey salsa are gone.

“So your mom’s been telling us all about your new girlfriend,” Victoria says, giving me a look that is like flirting but with everything sexual or romantic stripped out. Young mothers do this sometimes, mechanically recapitulating the forms of a ritual they’ve outgrown.

“Nothing too personal, I hope,” I say.

“Oh, she just says you’re madly in love ,” Victoria says, drawing out the last three words wickedly. I dodge the topic with an embarrassed shrug, out of fear that my filial affection will seem inadequate by comparison. If it were Maya’s birthday I’d have made sure there was a cake.

After another hour the shadows of the hills outside begin to spread, and the guests take this as permission to leave. On her way out, Stacey says, “I’ll get your email from your mom and give it to the kids. I’m sure they’d love to know what you’re up to.” Finally Mom and I are alone.

“So that was nice,” she says.

“I’m sorry I didn’t plan better,” I say.

“Oh no, well, no, don’t worry about it,” she says. “I don’t think anyone really likes birthday cake anyway, do they? And this,” touching the brooch, “is really special.”

Soon the central heating shudders on, and we order Domino’s and watch the news: two kids are dead in a house fire in Colorado Springs, and someone forged the evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. I try to come up with things to say about the stories, but I keep thinking about my mother sitting here alone, with a frozen dinner instead of a pizza. Tomorrow she will drive me to the airport. I had imagined some kind of dull social calendar revolving around book group and NA meetings, but there is no evidence that any such events have been skipped or rescheduled on account of my visit. The house: I thought it was the right thing but it’s too big, too empty, a consolation prize. Mom watches TV while I stare out at the last traces of light, barely enough to distinguish the hills from the sky.