Da Doo Ron Ron

The cab drops me at the entrance of the long term care facility where my mother spent the last eleven years spewing vitriol on staff and patients alike. I climb out to spring air, fresh from last night’s rain and a mid-afternoon lawn mow. New green leaves dot the hedges and in the cluster of oak and maple overhead, robins sing. 

It’s a different story inside. The sandalwood and soft tones of the funeral home replaced by blips and clangs and ugly artwork hanging from institution green walls.

Her room is stale, bedsheets stripped, mattress stained. First thing I do is open the window. Fresh air breezes in, but her scent is on the curtains and fills the room. I turn away, hand to my nose. It’s not a bad smell, merely hers, and that is why it repels me.

I glance around and take stock of what is left of her life. A time capsule, sealed until the date of my return. All that’s missing is the overflowing ashtray. They wouldn’t have let her smoke in here. I can only imagine how well that went over. 

On the night stand sits a lamp and the bible she liked to thump. God’s wrath was the only thing she feared and she turned it on me often, as if it were her own.  

The chest of drawers is utilitarian. Bras and panties, elastic shot, fill the top drawer. Faded nighties. Threadbare socks. Years of washing have taken their toll; if her underthings weren’t grey to begin with, they were grey now. Money wasn’t the problem, she’d hit the jackpot with her last husband. She just couldn’t resist a good deal, and good deals were often cheap.

None of her clothes are fit to donate. I snap open a garbage bag and shove everything in. 

The bottom drawer is the deepest. Inside I find her favorite authors: Sidney Sheldon, Colleen McCullough, Mary Stewart. I can see her now, propped on her pillow, pink net over the curlers in her short, short hair and a cigarette dangling from her hand. The memory sucks the air out of the room. 

Enough.

There must be a hundred packages of saltines, swiped from cafeterias at every opportunity, meant to see her through the apocalypse while the rest of humanity starves. Her purse is hidden under a hand towel to foil potential thieves. Her wallet goes into a paper bag which I will pass to her executor. The purse, like everything else, is trash. Until I come across a leather bound album. 

I sit on her bed, her album on my lap, and peel apart the gold-rimmed pages sticky with the adhesive that holds the photographs in place. Candles on a birthday cake, presents beneath the tree. Typical family poses that belie the tears before and after the shutter clicked. Glossy memories she clung to even as she pushed her only child further and further away.

My cheeks are damp. I wipe my hands across my face and blame it on the afternoon sun beating on the window.

I open a second bag and kiss all of it goodbye. The crackers, the books, the photo album. Everything. I lug the bags to the door and take one last look to make sure I haven’t missed anything. The heels of her slippers catch my eye. I get down on all fours and fish them out from under the bed, spot a cardboard box and drag that out, too. The flaps are soft. Flipping them open is like walking into an old bookstore.  

Her record collection lies flat, Tom Jones on top of Petula Clark on top of Sonny & Cher. A treasure for the right collector. Though it can’t possibly matter, I continue flipping. Engelbert Humperdink, Harry Belafonte, Frank Sinatra. The sense of nostalgia makes me smile. Vicky Lawrence, Tony Orlando & Dawn. And then my smile fades.

Sunlit hair, boyish grin. The smile that filled my daydreams, the cardboard lips I kissed good night. I babysat five Saturday nights in a row to earn Shaun Cassidy’s self-titled album.

This was my record. Mine.

I existed on the periphery of my mother’s notice. Time together was spent on her terms. If I didn’t object to Wheel of Fortune, we could watch television together. So long as it was Gin Rummy, we could play cards. 

Shaun Cassidy’s cover of Da Doo Ron Ron brought us together. We played it over and over, her singing lead into a soup ladle while I belted harmony into a wooden spatula. We made up our own dance, all jazz hands and grapevines, added an air-saxophone riff. Just thinking about it makes my head bob.

Da Doo Ron Ron Ron, Da Doo Ron Ron. Da Doo Ron Ron Ron, Da Doo Ron Ron. 

In 2 minute and 50 second intervals, she acted like my mother and embraced me as her child. Then one day, the bursts of dancing and singing and connection was gone. My one and only record album disappeared.

For weeks I blotted out the obvious. Searched high and low and every space in between. I wouldn’t let up about where it could have gone until one day, our console stereo disappeared, too, given to a co-worker she always said she couldn’t stand—the push I needed to accept that she’d taken it. Thrown it away for no other reason than because she could.

It never occurred to me that she had hidden it away and kept it for herself.

To any normal person, it was ridiculous. Hiding the record in a box and shoving it under the bed meant she couldn’t enjoy it, either. My mother wasn’t normal. Having the record all to herself wasn’t the point. What mattered was that I didn’t have it and she did—a toasty little secret to keep her warm at night.

I shove the slippers in the bag on top of the crackers and books. I tuck the box of records under my arm and drag the bags behind me by their red drawstring ties. Down the corridor, past the nurses and residents and into the parking lot. I set the box beside the dumpster and toss the bags in. One, two, done. 

God and heaven are just two more things she stole from me. Instead of looking at the clouds, I look up at the one thing I can rely on to bear witness and record my testimony. The all-seeing, all-knowing eye fastened just below the long-term care facility’s gutter.

I pick up the box and hold it open. Shaun’s sunny face smiles at me from his new position at the top of the pile. Nothing personal, I tell him, then turn his smiling face to the security camera, hold the box over the dumpster for the count of ten, then let go.