Pisgah Road Read online

  “Hate you? Of course, not! Why would I hate you?

  She opened her eyes and said: “Jane loved to dance. She was a great dancer. Do you remember, Sweetheart?”

  We were not done. It was our backward way of dealing with life: distraction. The dancing memory was to give both of us a moment. It worked. I remembered them dancing. They would go out to town to dance and would come back in the wee hours of the morning. My mother loved to dance but my father was an accountant. He was too busy to spend his summers at the farm. He didn’t like Auntie G. He hated dancing.

  “Boys…. Those boys… They all wanted to dance with Jane but she’d shoo them away. She only wanted to dance with me.” My mother looked at me, and her eyes shone with a sense of pride that had not diminished after so many years.

  “I remember her dancing. She was a crazy dancer.” I was more than happy to play her game.

  “She was, wasn’t she? She had great moves,” my mother said.

  She had other moves too. After the incident in the tomato fields, I started to follow Jane at a more discreet distance. I would try to sneak a look through the keyhole or I would spy on her when she worked in the barn. The book that she had left me was supposed to educate me but it only made me more curious. I wished it hadn’t, because my inquisitiveness only taught me about life’s sharp edges.

  IV

  It was a quick steal of a kiss. That’s the first time I saw them together. As soon as they walked in the barn they embraced each other warmly, their bodies rocking gently to a music that only they could hear. They held each other without talking and after a moment of hesitation they kissed, a light gentle kiss that could never bring any accusations. They parted slightly and smiled, and then moved in for another kiss, but Auntie G’s holler from outside of the barn startled them and they scurried back to the house.

  But I saw that and more, even though I wasn’t sure what it was. It was both scary and exhilarating at the same time. It was not like a static picture in a magazine, but a real three-dimensional world with full color. It gave such an intensity and weight that I felt it on my body. I was only fourteen and definitely naïve for my age, and perhaps because it was my own mother I dismissed it. It’s crazy, right? I had never seen my mother being kissed that way, not by my father. My parents were very patient and cordial to each other but very guarded with their intimacy. But witnessing this unabashed, though momentary, passion was indeed troubling.

  “Mom?” I had so many questions and I wanted to ask them now that she had given me an opening. But she wasn’t ready yet.

  “Your father hated dancing.”

  I played along. “He’s a horrible dancer so you’re lucky that he hates it. But Mom…”

  “We didn’t mean for it to happen. You understand?”

  “Yes, of course…But…”

  “We were friends for a long time and then without either of us wanting it, we were in love. Can you understand, Sweetheart?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t want to respond because I thought I’d be condoning it, not that it mattered anymore. We were not having a normal conversation. It’s not a kind of conversation a parent ought to have with her child. But she was dying and she was emboldened by her mortality. I couldn’t deny her that, could I?

  “When?” I asked, not that it mattered anyway.

  “I don’t know. Long time ago.”

  “Before you were married?”

  She laughed like one does when faced with an absurd question. “Don’t be silly, Sweetheart. Jane would have been what seventeen or eighteen? We were just good friends then.”

  I could have called her out on the feigned moral outrage but there was no point. They may have started that way but it clearly evolved and when it did, they became careless. I tried to deny it ever happened and until that moment, I had excluded the episodes from my mind.

  “Did you hear me, son?” My mother asked clearly annoyed by my intermittent reveries.

  “Yes, Mom. I heard you. I believe you.”

  “It wasn’t intentional. We grew up together and we started as just friends.”

  “I know, Mom. I guess the when doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Do you hate me?” she asked again.

  “No, Mom. It was a long time ago.”

  “But I still love her.”

  She was acting like an insolent child. She had a point to make and she was going to make it. I looked at her but she had her eyes closed, refusing to return my gaze. She knew she was going to die soon and that made her not angry, but disappointed and perhaps fearful. That was her confession to me. She wanted to clear the air between us. She wanted to die knowing that I knew. She didn’t want her love for Jane to be forgotten. She wanted me to hear it, though, not my father. I didn’t want that role though. It wasn’t right. It’s not natural. I had suppressed those thoughts for a reason and now she was bringing them back.

  “Do you still see her?” I asked.

  My anger must have come out in my tone because she finally opened her eyes and said, “No!” She was no longer embarrassed. Her secret was out and she was happy. She was proud.

  I wondered if my mother had kept in touch with Jane. She must have but I didn’t really want to know so I asked, “How did you manage it then? What about the rest of the year? Didn’t you miss her?” I was walking into strange territory. I don’t know why I asked about things that I didn’t really want to know. But then again, I was interested. How does one do it, three months with one and nine months with another? Is it possible?

  “It was hard, but Jane would come to see me once in a while.”

  I was afraid of that. Now, I could look back at those years and remember the nights that she said she was taking a class or little trips that she took with her friends. It must have been all Jane. I didn’t want to know more except one final thing. “What happened, Mom?”

  “We were caught,” she replied immediately.

  “What happened?” It seems that’s all I could ask even though if I had thought about it I’d know what had happened. There were so many other more important questions to ask, but I was stuck like a broken record.

  “What happened?” She echoed my question perhaps buying some time but then she replied, “Auntie G caught us. Can you imagine? Auntie G standing there, looking at us, you know….” she trailed off and I was glad she didn’t tell me more. She may be dying but there was a definite limit on how much honesty I could take.

  “Anyway,” my mother continued, “she told Jane’s mother. They were very religious. You remember, right? They thought we would all burn in hell. They worried about a scandal. That’s what they kept saying, `Think of the scandal. Think of the scandal.’ That was the last thing on my mind.”

  I remember that summer, summer of 1983 and our last stay at the farm. The first month was fine and I was busy with my friends, but then there was an explosion of emotions. There were angry whispers, and stern lectures, followed by lonely cries behind closed doors. There were silent dinners and I was told to stay outside all day and go to bed right after dinner. And then as if everyone had declared a truce, it all stopped. The angry whispers and demanding lectures transformed themselves to a brooding silence.

  Jane packed her bags and came to my room and held me for a moment. “I’ll miss you, kiddo,” she said before leaving and that was the last time I saw her. There were no explanations. My father showed up without warning. He looked as bewildered as I was, but as always he had little to say. He simply yanked us back home. My mother cried, the whole way back, but wouldn’t tell us anything.

  “What happened?” I asked trying to put the pieces together.

  “Your father came and took us away and then we moved to London.”

  “He knew?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied and then with more certainty, “No!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “So Dad never knew abo
ut Jane?”

  “It was a different time and place, darling. There was no room for being different, not in that world, not in a small town like River and not for our generation.”

  I wasn’t going to play the game anymore. “Why didn’t you run away with Jane?” I wasn’t sure what I was saying but I needed the distraction. It was getting too uncomfortable. I would have never forgiven my mother if she had done that when I was only sixteen. Then I realized what she had done. “You gave her up for me?”

  She closed her eyes again and I couldn’t stand it, “Mom?”

  “Don’t be melodramatic, son. I loved Jane, but I loved you more. We had to make a choice. We’d delayed it long enough. It was inevitable.”

  “Why did you marry Dad then? You could have gone with Jane before you had me.”

  She laughed bemused with my naïveté but didn’t say anything. It’s easy to be benevolent when one’s mother is on her deathbed. I’m sure even my father would have agreed to anything at that moment. I imagined my mother talking to Jane and agreeing that it was impossible to continue their affair. They both would then cry and hold each other tenderly until it was time to go. Auntie G would not tell my father anything knowing that my mother would not either. My father would only be happy to have her back early, certain that my mother had finally come to her senses about Auntie G. He would not have the capacity to imagine anything else. My mother had made a choice to be with me rather than with the person she had loved.

  “Did you ever tell…?”

  “Your father will believe what he wants. There’s nothing to tell.” She shook her head slightly as if shedding the nagging doubt and then added firmly, “He’s a good man.”

  “Do you love him?” I had no right to ask and I didn’t really care. It was their life and it no longer mattered.

  “Of course, I love him. What a silly question. It’s just a different kind of love.”

  “You must have been so lonely.”

  “It was very difficult but life goes on, doesn’t it?”

  “But…”

  “Now, you know, Sweetheart.” We were silent for a moment and then she asked, “What about Gabrielle? I thought she was back in your life?”

  “Back in my life, Mom? No. You asked this earlier. She’s not back in my life.”

  “Oh. I thought…”

  I didn’t want to talk about my life. I really didn’t want to talk about hers either, but if I only had two choices then mine could wait. “Dad should know,” I said.

  My mother didn’t push the point either. We were good at that. “It’s in front of him. He’ll see it when he’s ready,” she said, as she stared at her little book of poems. Then she asked, “What’s today, son?”

  “Today?” I looked up on the calendar that was hanging next to her bed, the kind where each month gave a quotation from a famous person. “Thursday, March 5th. Just another day, like any other day, Mom.”

  “No, not today. Today is Jane’s birthday.”

  “Oh! What happened to Jane, Mom?” I asked absentmindedly as the quote on the calendar had caught my eyes. It was by Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher, or at least that’s what it said below his name. I hate people making more of some random quotes from so-called famous people, but his taunted me. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced,” Mr. Kierkegaard declared authoritatively from his place on the month of March.

  “…I think she is happy.” My mother finished but I didn’t hear anything.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. What?”

  “I was saying, Jane understood my situation and now she has her own life and I’m sure she’s happy.”

  We weren’t going anywhere. “Does she know about your illness?”

  “No.”

  “Shouldn’t she know?”

  “No!” Then more softly, “It’ll break her heart. She’ll know soon enough. Promise me…”

  “What are you promising?” asked my father, as he walked in the room with another white bag full of medicine.

  “Nothing,” she said quickly.

  That was my last private conversation with her. She died later that night. I had told her that day was like any other day. I was so very wrong and so was that bastard Søren.

  Ten days later, my mother received a notice in the mail from a woman, a young girl, who from the content I surmised as Jane’s daughter. She had addressed my mother as Dear Auntie and informed her of the death of her mother a week earlier. She was asking my mother to attend the funeral and was apologizing for not calling personally because of the strict instructions by her mother. There was no date on the note but the date on the stamp told me that Jane might have died a day or so after my mother. I hated the idea of the possibility of anything but coincidence, and yet kept the letter in my pocket for three days knowing it would comfort me if it were true. I don’t believe in the afterlife, but despite my own admission I was hoping my mother was finally with Jane. I thought at least one of us should be happy.

  There was no phone number in the letter so I wrote the woman back to inform her of the death of my mother, trying to present the same eloquence as she had shown.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I

  We lived in London from August 8, 1983 to July 1, 1988. Both dates are etched deeply in my memory, like the deep grooves on a well-tended tombstone that no amount of time can polish away. That was ten years ago.

  We lived on Goldborne Road, W11, across from Portobello Road in Ladbroke Grove. Portobello Road has the largest antique market in the world but we lived on the far side of the road, away from the weekly masses of tourists. I used to take the number six bus to school.

  We arrived at Heathrow on a Wednesday morning. There was a car waiting for us when we exited the airport. My father sat in the front and started a conversation with the driver. I sat in the back with my mother. Halfway to our destination, my father turned around and asked, “Are you happy?” I wasn’t sure if he was asking my mother or me. My mother looked at me and gave a sad smile. She was still not over the summer’s trauma that at the time was still a mystery to me. “It’ll be grand, you’ll see,” assured my father.

  “I think people are more tolerant here, Sweetheart,” my mother added pointlessly.

  My father was unjustifiably concerned and my assurance that I was happy with our sojourn ironically added to his anxiety. He was confused by my apparent apathy towards leaving our home. He’d been worried about me for weeks, believing that I was mad at him for taking us away from the farm prematurely. I wasn’t mad at anybody. He’d tried to explain to me why we left so abruptly but it was clear that he knew very little.

  My mother’s crying subsided after a few days, and in the noble tradition of my family we simply decided to ignore the issues and silently proclaim that life was back to normal. That was our only common trait.

  My father received his promotion and London was his prize. My mother stopped crying and went back to her writing. My father never asked why. The farm was never mentioned, as if it never existed. We’d moved to London and that was our new life. It never occurred to me to confront my mother. I’m certain it was the same with my father. It took fifteen years and cancer for me to learn the truth. I still wonder if my father ever did.

  My parents had rented a flat in a Victorian on Goldborne Road; a narrow building that was painted navy blue with a shiny black door. I don’t recall the number of the house anymore, but it was in the middle of Goldborne. The flat had two bedrooms downstairs in the basement and the rest of the house was on the first floor. There were two other flats on top of ours.

  “Your school is only a few blocks away,” my father told me as we walked towards the house. He’d told me that several times earlier so I simply nodded but didn’t say anything. It seemed I had to mope a bit to make him happy — it allowed him to assure me. “Think of it as an adventure.”

  “Are you tired, darling?” my mother asked. I shook my head without saying anything, trying to play the role of
the brooding teenager. “Great,” she continued, “Let’s go up and say hello to our new neighbors.” That was my mother’s thing. That was her escape. She had to know every neighbor. She didn’t ask my father to join us. She knew the answer. He hated socializing with the neighbors. He sat on the couch and grabbed the newspaper that he had bought from the airport.

  The first visit was a disaster.

  I couldn’t understand a single word Mr. and Mrs. Verity-Osborne, our top floor neighbors, said and then in my attempt to be nice, and with a lot of prodding from my mother, I tried to serve tea, but dropped the expensive looking china on top of their white couch. The three of them just stared as if mesmerized by the dark and ever expanding map on the white couch. The expensive teapot — in shatters on the hardwood floor after tumbling off the couch — and the army of tea leaves that traced the teapot’s path from the couch to the floor all pointed to my ineptness. It felt like a lifetime and then there was a flurry of activity, mainly by my mother, who ran in the kitchen to get a towel. Mr. Verity-Osborne looked at the stain and then at me and then at the stain again and I could tell that he wasn’t angry. He simply accepted the fact. But this was not true of his wife. There was nothing to do but smile, apologize copiously and walk back downstairs, leaving the mess for my mother. On the way down I came face-to-face with our second floor neighbor. He was taking his dog out for a walk.

  “Are you the chap from the States?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Mr. Pearman.”

  “Okay.”

  “On occasions, you may walk my dog,” he said and then to add some warmth, “that is, if you wish.”

  “Okay,” I said and walked passed him without touching the dog. I didn’t see Mr. Pearman for another month. He had a serious job and was never home. I never took his dog for a walk. It looked like a distasteful job given the size of his dog.