Orbitals

An orbital is a three-dimensional description of the most likely location of an electron around an atom.

It’s a Tuesday in August 2002. I am in my hometown. In the home where I was raised. It could be anywhere really, except it's mine. Mom lived almost ten years longer than Dad but has been gone three months. There is a presence of absence that swirls in the silence. The house has been emptied of its contents except for a few remaining items, placed in a plastic container. The way it is arranged reminds me of the surreal boxes by the artist Joseph Cornell. Especially the one of Lauren Bacall in a Penny Arcade.

The remaining chair, an old rocker with a pillow placed over the exploding spring, is still strong enough to hold my weight. I sit in the middle of what we called the great room beneath the more recently added skylights, thinking things a parent collects become the responsibility of the child to give away.

“You will need to paint. Can’t you smell it?” the realtor asked when we met the other day.

“Smell what? I asked.

“It’s acrid, like Sulphur,” she noted pointing to the yellow corners of the ceiling as if they were someone’s fingertips. “I knew your mother Evelyn, you know, when we were much younger. So sweet. A real beauty.”

After she left, I found the cigarettes buried in a box of talcum powder, and I still couldn’t believe she had picked them up again. Was I not paying attention? Pacing back and forth between her bathroom and the kitchen I noticed how the carpet had worn predictably and I think to myself, we miss the obvious like the smell of nicotine and tar.

This morning though, I sit rocking as the old chair creaks. Staring at the ceiling fan reminds me how Mom and I watched the hummingbirds gather at their feeder to sing “look at me, look at me, here I am” and then fly away, their wings like miniature cellos playing them off the stage. Then we would watch the fan spin, sip coffee, and giggle.

Everywhere I look, patches of spackle remind me of what used to be before the workers  come later today to sand and smooth away the evidence of the past. Even the wind chime outside the front door is missing a piece of metal. Imbalanced the melody plays on. It triggers my need to understand things. If an issue is simple like recognizing that the missing plate in a wind chime fucks up the chord, it would be so much easier. But relationships, the way my older siblings Senna and Sean interacted was like physics.  

_________

“You are such a bi-bit-bitch Senna. Who says such things to their mother? What the fuck do we have left if you feel we are not a family?” my brother Sean screamed!

I notice a spot that is more spackle than wall. It is what remains of our last family fight. It, too, will be sanded away.

“We have each other,” Senna whispered pathetically to his rage.

Sean’s response was a rejection of everything that came before. “You mean like you had your husbands back while you were fuck-fucking his best friend?”

“You don’t know what you are talking about, Sean,” she continued. “You smell like a god damned bar. You only have two fucking friends. Gin and Tonic and Dos Equis. You’re nothing but a drunk.”

Mom sat silent with her legs folded beneath her, head down and massaging it with her fingers. I was by the phone in the kitchen across the great room from Senna who was looking at things on the maple shelf. Sean was behind her on the couch.

This was always what happened. Mom and I would get quiet. But this time her eyes met mine and her face crumbled. We were always relieved when we were not mocked, but that day the truth that was never spoken, that Sean was a forty-six-year-old alcoholic and Senna a forty-eight-year-old adulterer, was confirmed. Together we resisted the urge to be pulled into their raging orbit and we were able to hide our true emotions, her fear and my relief, as we stood watch.

Sean’s eyes were red and protruding like bee stings. His bulbous nose oozed years of alcohol indulgence. It was surprising, but he formed the next words without hesitation. “You cunt!” Each letter bounced between us.

Snot and tears streamed as he slobbered, “I am not per-per-perfect, but at least I tried. 

What the fuck did you ever do? I am done with your shit,” and he slammed the door with a force that tore the drywall from the two by fours and the screws loosened the shelf. The Hummel’s crashed in pieces around Senna’s feet.

I don’t know what it is about certain words or actions, but whether it was the hard k of cunt or the force of Sean’s arm slamming the door, Mom just floated in her tears. There is a profound sadness to this memory, but there was relief in the mail a few days later.

“My Dearest Aaron, I am so tired. Senna never accepted that we adopted the three of you. I think she was eight, when she started to be sarcastic about our choices. It was as if she didn’t think it counted or mattered. Why do people refuse love? I always think of your Dad’s advice dictum that, “gravity is trust, it is the glue that holds families together.” For Senna and Sean trust was evasive. The other day reminded me of a time when they were fighting, and you were caught between them. Sean raised his hand to slap her, but hit you instead. He didn’t mean to, but it stoked his rage toward Senna. It is clear, isn’t it, that nothing has changed over the years?  It is obvious, my dear Aaron, that you have been the glue… I know that you were not able to count on me as much as I have counted on you.  I wish I had shown more respect for your choices. I hope you will forgive me and let me make it up to you. Yesterday, I made the decision to sign the house over to you and make you my medical power of attorney. Your brother and sister will be of no use to you. Love you, Mom.”

I read the words over and over; saw the faltering beauty of her script. Remembered her editing my pedantic poems. Thought about how macular degeneration was taking away her ability to see clearly. There was no longer the precision that hid her disappointments under the words. 

_________

She was already on life support when I got to the scene. The helicopter blades were chopping so fast as I got out of my car, the force of wind pushed me down to my knees. Someone grabbed my arm and shouted, “Aaron. Aaron, you can get in with your mom.” I saw her white Buick had shot into the tree like a rocket and heard the police radio say something about a “seizure.” 

Then the sight of her. There was an incision at the base of her neck for the intubation tube where they connected a bag valve mask to force air into her unresponsive lungs. I had to resist the urge to pull a sliver of glass from her cheek. She looked like a collection of moon rocks from a shattered asteroid, inhuman.

Simple words like “grab” “push” “pump” had new meaning. Finally a phrase of relief came. “The machine is working.”

A brief moment of calm. Inside there was a hum-whirl that replaced the chopping of the propellers, but never let you forget you were in flight. Instead of looking at Mom I focused on the Medivac team, watched them execute their specific jobs. I started to wonder about what it would have been like if we had ever functioned as a family. Regret is more like a strait jacket than a parachute, so soon I was wallowing in fear and anxiety. I tried to trick my mind into believing she had escaped the crash. 

The helicopter, however, thrust me forward. I made direct contact with her lifeless body. I felt suffocated by sadness but thought about what she would say. Aaron the minute you think the word happy, you are sad. You cannot draw attention to either, it is better to live somewhere in between.

Once we arrived at the hospital, Mom was quickly moved into intensive care. Despite the presence of the respirator, the quiet was unnerving. My own breathing was rattled and strained. I gasped. The ability to breathe seemed dependent on her once soft smile, the lilting brown curls, and the endless possibilities in her eyes, but they were already gone. I was at odds with my emotions. I wanted to take all the slivers of glass I had seen in her face and place them in the palm of my hand. The thought of squeezing until I bled gave me power. If I could cry or scream, at least I would not be numb. Reduced to a child again, I wanted to inflict pain so I did not have to feel pain. 

Waiting and watching are strange things. I made Dad into an imaginary friend. I asked him to read to us, and we talked about electrons as if we had never heard of them. He was explaining how orbitals exist within an atom but never really touch. I heard him say almost the same words that Mom had included in her note. Gravity keeps us together, holds us in the same space, spun round in my brain until it landed with me trying to piece together Mom’s wishes.

“Aaron, if I’m ever on a machine, you have one job. Turn it off! The idea of people watching me drool makes me nuts. I swear I will haunt you till your dying days.”

I believe all of us will come to the moment when the living greet the dead. Mine had arrived, and I knew it was my responsibility to take away her gravity, the thing that held her in my orbit. The nurses were looking at me just as I had looked at my Mother so many times before. After a few seconds, I motioned, and they pulled the plug.

I left the hospital an hour later. An attending nurse handed me Mom’s last possessions. Soiled underwear. A partial of false teeth I never knew she wore. A cheap silver watch. Faded jeans and striped top with little flowers stitched into the collar. A pair of comfortable shoes. A wallet and a check cashing card that read Evelyn Audrey Warner. All folded neatly into a bag that I dropped in the garbage can. In the time it took me to walk to my car, three helicopters had landed with new patients.

_________

But that was three months ago. The morning has passed, and I am still sitting in this empty house, and realize I may have not been completely fair. I did not let you in on my secret. The one I was able to hide away for years behind my family as they fought. It wasn’t like everyone didn’t know that I was gay. It was the lies I told to keep me from being hurt by those that didn’t understand. I was a coward. Senna and Sean must have seen me that way too. Must have thought of me as a mama’s boy. I remember how suffocating my life had become in this town and that I needed to get some air. There was a feeling if I did not leave, I would die. Maybe they felt the same way too. I will never know. The difference is I took care of myself, figured some things out and returned to help my mother. They have refused to stay involved.

The painters arrive. I can hear the doors open and ladders being pulled from the truck. I grab my box, step outside on to the front porch and greet them. After they enter the house, I sit down on the steps where Patti, the realtor, and I had spoken a few days before.

“You know Aaron, it is all about staging. We can get this place in shape quickly.”

I watched her light up a cigarette and take a long drag. Noticed it was the same brand Mom had smoked. “It’s a perception game, isn’t it,” I asked rhetorically.

“Exactly.” She paused. “I heard about your Mom when I was at the bakery the other day. My partner Kat and I talked later that day about how I knew your Mom. I told her how we called her Evy with a short e sound. My parents had hired her as our family babysitter. She always let us know she loved us, and we loved her. 

I had heard the gossip about Patti and this woman Kat when she  moved from the nearby city to our little town. Patti had chubby cheeks and bleached blond hair. She rubbed the filter of her cigarette with her thumb, and you could see that her nails had not had any attention.  She looked nothing like Mom, but it was the story behind her eyes, despite the blue eye shadow, that made me want to trust her. Something in my gut, not my mind. 

“Do you know who Lauren Bacall the actress was?” I asked abruptly.

“Yeah. The one that married Humphrey Bogart, right?

“Yep. I always thought Mom looked like her. Out of the ether I thought of Bacall when I had to decide whether or not to turn off the life support. She had said once, “Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.” I jumped without a parachute in the moment by deciding she was no longer alive.

“Aaron, people believe what they want, don’t they? Not necessarily what is true. Sometimes your Mom had to yell at us for breaking the rules. Her reply was always the same though, ‘The only thing people can do is try to be fair because the world isn’t.’”

She was referring to Sean and Senna, and I knew it so I quipped. “That’s even more true in this small town where everyone knows everything.”

“Ah, yes, yes, yes,” she stated with a long, slow exhale. 

“Patti, I did try for a long time to do the right thing. I really did. But I want to understand all this, this shit with Sean and Senna. I want a moment to come where it all makes sense.”

“I get it. The only thing I understand is houses. People buy what they see. Some love what they see, others see what they don’t like and talk of improvements. I suspect all of them hope they will create something special. I approach each sale knowing all I can do is create an atmosphere of possibility. I have had successes and failures. Every situation is different. 

“I’ll try to get the painters out here in the next few days.”