Last night my favorite former professor told me and my friend that it was better to have an interesting mother than a dull one. She said, “You know, you have the saint,” she gestured to me, “And the sophist,” and then gestured to my friend.
My friend is an actress named Piper. Her face is constantly framed by delightfully unruly wisps of natural blonde hair, brighter than the halo of a hundred vanity bulbs and ten times warmer. She has a round leonine face with a smile that kind of takes over whenever she whips it out—false or genuine, it’s just too big and laugh-snorty to dismiss. I once saw a girl, a dark little acquaintance of ours, try to socially deride her by mocking the honk in her laugh, but Piper only laughed harder, and proceeded to dominate the evening with her charm and wit. The girl looked so helpless under the heat of such untamable sunshine, I almost laughed myself, ten minutes later, as if at the height of a properly matured joke.
Piper is an only child. Her mother had her very young with a bad boy several years older than her, a man she described as loving so much that “they were often seized by the shared sensation of wanting to inhabit each other’s skin.” They departed as mutual aliens and Piper’s mother promptly took her away to live a life of romantic adventures and unpaid electric bills, with pockets of assistance from Piper’s grandmother. She describes her grandmother as “all craft, no power,” and her mother as, “all power, no craft.” They’re a family of witches, you see—a maternal line markedly devoid of male domination or that long-suffering taint you usually see in the female branches of the family tree. But when I look at a crumpled photo of Piper’s father, the only one she owns, I see her face: poised, coy, and dangerous.
I had the kind of family that girls like Piper grew up dreaming about: mother, father, sibling, pet(s). We lived in a big house with a black-bottomed pool in a wet Florida forest not unlike the one Piper and I visited that night. Dad worked all the time, a good Irish Catholic provider, but my older brother and I dreaded his return home almost every night. We never knew if he would be too tired to do anything but sit in his chair and watch the news or if he’d be frustrated enough from his pressurized dayload to take it out on us. My mother never fought him, except if things came to blows, but such dramatic occasions were rare—no, it was mostly a slow simmer of embittered barbs and cold misery that she accepted as part of a deeper, cosmic suffering, a Woman’s Burden that was passed on from her own mother and grandmother the way heirlooms are stuffed into a chest and surreptitiously locked in the attic without anyone’s consent because no one has the sense to just dump the shit. I spent much of my childhood in silent suffering, or so my most potent memories would have me believe. Despite the numerous vacations, the big houses, and the steady flow of horse camp and doll houses, there is no amount of money that can overshadow violence in the house. When he comes to stay, love grows mute.
Peg, my childless former writing professor with theories of motherhood she could only vicariously grasp, focused primarily on Piper during our discussion at her home on a grassy airfield that may as well have not existed at all in that black December night. Peg’s focus on my friend wasn’t unusual—Piper turned up two hours late, wearing what everyone agreed looked like a modernized version of Maria’s dress from The Sound of Music and holding a giant wicker basket she could barely shoulder full of patchwork blanket and God knows what. She also wore a black lace shawl I’d given her a few months back. Not every outfit of Piper’s was a costume (the line had long since blurred) but I had time to cultivate these deeper observations while she flirted with Peg’s British pilot husband and waxed Wiccan philosophy during dinner. I barely spoke to the old codger, though he was hilarious and interesting and I’d fallen in love with him immediately—I’ve seen the pain of a wife coping with a flirtatious husband far too often, especially now that I’m living at home, so I subject myself to those psychically-drawn emotions like I do every fleeting aura that fills up a room. I absorb feeling through my big pores and translucent skin and never release until I get a few moments alone to wring myself out.
Earlier I took a brief house tour with Piper, looking at Peg’s hundred dozen collectibles and knick knacks, disjecta membra of a life well lived: empty vessels of exquisite glass, compasses with no needles, books packed together like merchandise that must go now, art whose only unity was their obvious Peg-ness, at least two impromptu shrines and a dozen photos of a beautiful curly-haired actress named Margaret with a strapping British pilot and some old silvery bomber from World War something. A monument of smaller photographs worshipped the central masterpiece, a silver frame of golden willowy branches that encased the image of Marilyn Monroe mixed with Mary Pickford: Peg’s mother, Diana. Her long neck and delicate ears awash with diamond fire, her platinum coif in dollish curls above her unforgettable eyes, her silk black dress just a suggestion of fabric over a very real human costume—I balked, and refilled my wine glass.
Now it was just Piper, Peg & I, out on the porch, a collection of witchy memorabilia accumulating in front of Piper’s placemat while I tried to describe a man I’d met to Peg, whose attention couldn’t help but wander to and from my more luminous friend. Turns out the wicker picnic basket held items necessary to cast a spell, one for Peg and one for me: a clear crystal, two candles of different color (god and goddess), a hollowed out rock for incense, a Persian mat depicting two lovers in a garden, a few magic wands (interesting twigs) and a book that Piper said was full of her own unique rituals. It’s only powerful if you design your own. We were discussing motherhood because Piper was anxious to find the father of the children she’d been dreaming about since forever, but the topic had been refined by the passing hours. Now we spoke of our mothers’ influence, and with that came the usual flyaway questions, careless inquiries that had hour-long answers but demanded a pithy response if any engagement or connection was to be had: Did you compete with your mother? Does she still love your father? What was she like in times of trouble? When you look at her, what do you see?
I made the mistake of smiling widely and offering up my sincere love and gratitude for my mother, the Saint, but unwisely disguised my deep-seeded contempt for all religious figures, particularly saints, whom I felt (and thought this was obvious) were the worst sort of idols—mythical martyrs who neglected earthly contentment and enlightenment for Promise Divine, granting nothing to their followers but a map for a path over a cliff. I did express my mom’s deep dissatisfaction with life and her vague, often disheartening advice that poured from a fountainous wisdom too deep for my human issues, things like, “You have to make yourself happy, Monica—no one else will,” but I couldn’t read any judgment or comment in Peg’s wide eyes and Sphinx mouth. I never really know what people think of me, nor my effect on them.
After spending most of my life hiding any and all facts of my childhood, fearing them either too trivial or too damaging, it was difficult to bring them into such an open forum as this—a late night discussion with two intelligent women I had only ever admired from afar, in the middle of a cold black swamp wood. But in the union of wine and pleasant, warm theater folk, one does and says things never imagined externally, never experimented beyond the mental plane, emotions far away and yet too close, like a diary entry from when you were ten and fanatically in love. I could see my mother, her big smile and bright blonde hair, in the shrewd and happy face of my actress companion, and don’t hate her for the attention she receives. A spirituality beyond my comprehension unites these two people in my thoughts and heart, like mated fireflies backlit by the homestead lamp. Maybe my childhood wasn’t so bad.
Before we depart, Piper and I walk out to the airfield. A waxing gibbous moon brightens the endless grass just enough for us to let go and bolt in opposite directions, as fast as we can, trying to lift off from the ground like diaphanous seeds with no vision of the horizon or even what lay right in front of our dashing feet. I spread my arms, the laughter gives me superhuman powers of breath, and I feel something push underneath my hips, bolstering some ascent I was not yet ready to take. I run back, Piper races towards me at the same time, and we pass with mere centimeters between us and we grab arms and we twirl and twirl before crumpling like loose stalks. Looking down at my legs in that black & white world, I see a patch of soil that could be blood, and whine as if wounded until Piper brushes it off my thigh.
At the space between our cars I try to remind her of a passage she once wrote in a notebook she’d purchased, scribbled one sentence in, then promptly abandoned at my house. It was something like, “In ancient times, when a kiss was everything and nothing.” She doesn’t remember, but I kiss her anyway, pinning her against her Jeep and looking for her tongue like we’re about to live out the finale of an epic feature film. A funny noise provides her enough distraction to laugh and politely settle me down. Then she gives me delicate church kisses before recalling her early wake time and sending us both to bed.
It’s an hour and a half drive back to my parents’ house, but soon Piper and I will be moving to the same big city, in separate cars and at separate times and to separate homes, but with the same primordial idea between us that we both keep looking back at and wondering about.
