MOTHER LOVE

Mother Love

Jane Finlayson

                       Phil was short, bow-legged, and thin-lipped. Unremarkable and underestimated until his big heart got him noticed. He was twice named Volunteer of the Year, once for filling bags at the local food bank and once for teaching disabled kids how to swim. Nobody would believe he killed his mother. But he knew better.

      “What do you mean you killed her? You mean she’s dead?” asked his ex-wife Carmen, puzzled and half-asleep in Vancouver when Phil phoned early from Toronto. She thought she must still be dreaming he sounded so strange, his voice high-pitched and breathless.

      “I came a couple of days ago to help her downsize and now she’s dead,” said Phil. “Right here. Sitting at the kitchen table while I was taking the garbage out. I made her toast for breakfast. Just the way she likes – liked – it. You know, peanut butter with apples slices and cinnamon. Maybe it was the cinnamon. Can it turn toxic? Poison someone?” Carmen heard his strangled sob. “But she does look kinda peaceful.” 

“Phil, Phil! You’re not making sense. You’re in shock. Cinnamon? WTF. Cinnamon doesn’t kill people. How do you know she’s dead? She’s barely seventy. Maybe she’s just had a seizure or something. You gotta get help. Did you try CPR? Have you called 911? Please, get going!” shouted Carmen. She wished she were there to slap him into action. He could be indecisive, which had always annoyed her when they were still married.

      “Yeah, yeah, I’ve already called. They’re just pulling up,” Phil shouted above the wailing sirens. “I’ll call you later. I mean, you know … after.” He opened the front door and went back to be with his mom.

“I’ll be here. Let me know if you want me to come,” said Carmen as they hung up.

Phil sat down gingerly beside his mom whose usual frazzled brow was smooth in final repose. He reached for her hand. And waited.

      No way could Phil have refused his mom’s request to help her move. It was the only thing she’d ever asked him to do since he left home in a snit thirty years ago when he dropped out of high school. She’d told him to get a job because he was going to pay rent if he didn’t get back to school. He knew he’d behaved badly, screeching at her to fuck off and storming out.

Incensed, Phil had called her bluff and spent his first truant week playing video games and eating everything in sight. After an all-nighter at a buddy’s, he staggered home to discover she’d changed the locks. His own mother! His father had been zero help since he’d swanned off when Phil was seventeen with a new wife young enough to be his own daughter, if he’d ever had one. Despite Phil’s outrage and beer-fuelled stupor, he’d admired his mom’s feistiness. Always had, still did. They never spoke of that shit time again.

“Sure, I’ll come, Mom, but what’s up?” Phil was leery and wondered what she wasn’t telling him. Since they lived at opposite ends of the country it was painless to call every few weeks and talk about safe stuff like the weather and the final Jeopardy answer from the night before. Never anything serious. Even after his dad died ten years ago at sixty, Phil’s mom always insisted she was okay when he phoned every week. He believed her; it lessened his only-child guilt, being so far away. The pandemic lockdowns had at least made it a cinch to stop making excuses for not visiting.

“It’s no big deal, I just want you to help me sort through stuff and the crap your dad left behind. It’s about time, eh? He’s been gone a lot of years after all,” she sighed. “Anyway, it just wears me out to think of tackling everything alone. Stirs up too much.”

Phil was alarmed. It was totally unlike his mom to admit to being worn out about anything. God knows, he must have worn her out, smart-ass kid that he was for way too long. Never mind his dad’s antics. But she’d never flinched or even raised her voice. Just changed the bloody locks.

“Do you want me to ask Carmen to come, too?” Phil’s ex-wife had a terrific relationship with his mom, like a daughter she’d always wanted. Phil respected that and remained friendly with Carmen after their divorce. They’d never had kids, which made it easier.

“She might have some ideas of where to take stuff. You know, charities that want specific things,” said Phil.

“How about only you and me this time. It won’t take long. I’d like Carmen to come after. She’ll be a big help then and we can have a better visit with the move behind me.”

“Yeah, she’ll get that. I’ll come next week.”

The afternoon Phil arrived his mom made his favourite Thai curry for dinner. When she was in the kitchen fluffing the rice, he wandered around the living room. She’d already packed her books and knick-knacks. Even the artwork was off the walls, the empty outlines of the frames faintly lit by late-day sunbeams flickering through the window. The room now seemed vast, devoid of memories, any evidence of family life erased. Although Phil hadn’t lived there for years, gazing around the almost-bare room triggered a weird longing for a simpler time: his childhood; the early years before he turned into an asshole.

“Dinnner’s rrrready,” his mom called out in her typical sing-song way, snapping him back into real time.

“You look like you’re ready to move tomorrow, Mom. What gives? I thought you needed more help,” Phil said as he reached for some hot sauce. “And what about Dad’s stuff? How come you still have any?”

“Truthfully, I’d kinda forgotten about it. His old papers and junk in the basement. Guess he’s hard to get rid after all, ha ha.” They both half-chuckled at the feeble joke.

“Ah, well, I did love him once upon a time even though he turned out to be a faithless schmuck, and you know what I mean,” said his mom.

Her tone too bright for Phil’s liking.

“Anyway,” she said. “Let’s just have dinner and call it an early night. We can get going after breakfast. I’m only glad you’re here.”

My mother, the enigma. Phil tamped down a twinge of irritation. He was used to her cryptic style but was left wondering what was coming next. “Ok, whatever,” he shrugged.

When Phil got up the next morning his mom was in the backyard drinking coffee and tending to her tomato plants and herb garden. A small, decorative wooden box Phil had never seen sat beside the coffee pot on the patio table.

“Hey, Mom. Ready to get at it?” asked Phil.

“Hi, sweetheart. Sure. Grab some coffee. I’ll just put the hose away and wash my hands. Be right back.”

Phil poured his coffee and studied the box that had an elaborately carved lid of climbing vines. He was tempted to sneak a peek but there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to open it. No latch or hinges. It reminded him of the puzzle boxes he’d had as a kid. The frustration of trying to crack the correct sequence of sliding the pieces apart. The eureka! moment that released the lid to reveal a secret compartment. What was the secret in this box? Phil knew he was about to find out but didn’t know why he was already dreading it.

“So, you’ve seen it,” said his mom when she returned.

“Hard to miss, Mom. So, what am I looking at?”

His mom sighed deeply as she sat down across the table from Phil. “I’ll show you. And I want you to know that I am sorry I never told you before.”

Phil watched his mom swiftly slide the pieces to unlock the lid as though she’d done it a hundred times before with her eyes closed. She carefully lifted the lid and turned the open box toward him. Inside, he saw a lock of silky, auburn hair and a tiny bracelet with pink and white beads. He looked up at his mom, puzzled. She was watching him intently and chewing on her bottom lip.

“Okayyyy, what’s this about, Mom?”

His mom hesitated and reached into the box to gently stroke the bracelet. She inhaled sharply and all in a rush said: “I had a baby when I was fifteen. A girl. You have an older sister, and she’s found me after all these years. She wants to meet us.”

Ridiculous thoughts swamped Phil’s head. Fifteen? His mom had SEX at fifteen! With his dad? No! that made no sense, they’d met at work, after college. Why was she appearing now, this so-called sister? What did she want? Maybe a gold digger! Like those romance scammers.

“And you believe it’s her?” Phil snarled. “Was Dad in on your little secret?” His voice dripped sarcasm.

He immediately regretted his reaction when his mom gasped, stood up and ran inside. Where was his big heart now? He fumed: What about my long-dead grandparents, aunts and uncles. Family conspirators, all! For decades. Get a grip, you shit, he admonished himself. Your poor mother.

With difficulty, Phil yanked his grief-stricken body, heavy as cement, out of the patio chair. He picked up the box and walked slowly into the house to find his mom. Of course he would apologize, right away.

“Mom? Mom? Where are you? I’m sorry. Really sorry. I was so surprised. I just can’t believe it. But why now? How are you sure she’s for real?” 

“DNA doesn’t lie,” his mom called out, icily, from the living room.

Phil had no idea how to begin to make amends. His gut churned as he considered whether their lives had been a big, fat lie. A sister! She might have been a pal, a confidante to ease his loneliness growing up. He was baffled: Was it possible to mourn something he’d never known?

He found his mom sitting on the couch, arms crossed and hands gripping opposite shoulders in a tight hug. Phil slumped down beside her and placed the box on her lap.

“Do you want to tell me more about her, and how she found you?” he asked tentatively, his body still tight and aching from the shock of his mom’s revelation and his heartless response.

“Maybe another time, not today,” said his mom, brushing him off. “Let’s just keep going.”

“Mom, I … I ….” Phil stumbled.

“Don’t say another word,” his mom cut him off. “I learned a long time ago to have no expectations of anybody else. Even you. Especially you.”

It wasn’t like his mom to be vindictive, but Phil knew he deserved it that day. In silence, they retreated to doing safe, mindless tasks far apart. His mom started boxing up kitchen stuff. Phil loaded her car with cartons of clothes to deliver to Goodwill. It was easy to avoid each other.

 Dinner was a shared pizza delivered just as the evening TV news began. They watched Jeopardy. In unison, they shouted “University of British Columbia!” as the correct answer to a rare final question about Canada: Say its name quickly! The Ubyssey is the student newspaper of the university of this Canadian Province. They wordlessly gave each other a high five. It was enough for Phil to believe tomorrow would be better.

“That’s enough for one day. I’m going to read for awhile,” Phil’s mom said as she got up to go to her room.

“Okay, Mom, see you in the morning.” Phil couldn’t begin to tally how many nights they’d said that to one another his entire life.       

The next day, the paramedics confirmed what Phil already knew: His mother was dead. Phil sat, exhausted, after the coroner and funeral home guys had done their thing. They’d tried to comfort him with solicitous words about quick-and-painless death, but he knew the truth. He’d broken her bruised heart. Her body was gone but her lingering presence consumed him. For many years after, Phil would moan, I should have known better.

(2,033 words)