FRESH YARN presents: Far From Home... by Jen Maher

FRESH YARN presents:

Far From Home
By Jen Maher

It was the summer of Helter Skelter and Fear of Flying propped up next to the fake Tiffany lamp on my mother's bedside table. Those works of sex and murder are forever intertwined with images of my mother's fleeting penchant for over-large sunglasses, at-home perms, and macramé halter-tops. I'm not sure she even read those books, the way they seemed to sit there all summer long, but they were saved the indignity of Shirley MacLaine's latest, which was shoved in the bathroom trash container under crumpled lipstick-blotted tissue and damp cotton balls. A secretary friend who was working at Capitol Records gave Don't Fall Off the Mountain to my mother, unaware that her tolerance for The New Age was right up there with her love of poorly behaved children and American cigarettes. I had lots of time to look at these books, the spines, the jackets -- the reverse-negative of Manson's face, the cover of Jong's book with its partially hidden naked woman's body behind a sheet. In the morning it was my job to bring my mother cups of English breakfast tea (the habit she refused to give up since moving to the States from London with my good-for-nothing father nearly fifteen years before), and it always took a while to wake her up. I'd scoot away the highball glass and ashtray from the night before, as well as her reading glasses (much smaller than the ones she wore with the halter tops), and set down the tea, whispering, "Mom, Mom, you gotta get up," and by the time our two cats got the message and started kneading her face, I had practically memorized the blurbs on both books.

My mother was a secretary for a jazz musician then, and taking night classes to become a paralegal. She had also for the first time (though it was a style she kept for the rest of her life) cut her hair like Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby, a film she claimed my father went to see when she was in the hospital giving birth to me. The classes and the jazz musician on their own would be enough, but together they were exhausting. Once Mom would get through a day typing up memos on a waterbed, taking the jazz musician's clothes to the dry cleaner's, and arranging to buy presents for his assorted family members and girlfriends, she had to haul herself into our old green Chevy Nova with its scratchy tapestry seats, and trek to the local community college. Here she sat surrounded by people much younger than she, with whom she had nothing in common save for a series of varied wrong life-turns that had led them all to a stifling classroom in California's San Fernando Valley from 7 to 10 o'clock three nights a week with the hopes of achieving not something great, but at least something more. By the time she got home, whether from work or classes, it was all she could do to give me a quick kiss on the cheek, ask how dinner went (or, if she was home that night, heat me up something on the stove) and sit in the living room with the lights off chain-smoking, listening to Don McLean albums and sipping gin and tonic. I knew better than to bother her and often fell asleep on the couch next to her with my book in my lap, my head bobbing when the clink of the remaining ice cubes rushing down the glass towards her lips signaled it was time for me to make my way upstairs to sleep.

The plan was that while she was at work, during my summer vacation, I was to be "watched" by my brother or my sister, who were ten and twelve years older than me respectively. Being the baby who was intended to save the marriage but probably twisted it to its eventual breaking point with my chronic asthma and insomnia, I was the afterthought at the forefront of everybody's mind. Meaning, the PLAN was for them to keep an eye on me around the pool and make sure I ate some version of lunch, but in reality my sister had gone to live with her best friend in Laurel Canyon in April and my brother's idea of babysitting was to get up around noon, slather himself with Hawaiian Tropic (back when the bottle was glass and its raised metal label connoted sultry apothecaries and a world without skin cancer) get the bong going, and sit on the wall at the back of the pool listening to Peter Tosh and sending me into the kitchen for beer after beer. I imagine that if I started to drown he would have most likely noticed it, but that was the extent of his responsibilities. And while he always took a break to watch re-runs of The Twilight Zone with me at 3:00, I wasn't especially sad when he decided to hitchhike with some friends to Humboldt to protest the logging industry. Plus, he left his reggae tapes behind and they helped me fall sleep.

With no other options, my mother was forced to decide ten years old was an okay age to stay home alone, combined of course with frequent phone calls to check up on me and cheerful morning notes about having a good day written with smiley faces on a napkin. But otherwise I was free, with the whole house to myself from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., longer if she had to go to class. At first I loved it -- I had been practicing to be an adult my whole life it seemed, and there was no better tutor than afternoon TV -- between the soap operas and the home and garden shows, by the second week I had made three batches of decorated sugar cookies and committed to memory exactly how women "made love" (with lots of make-up and the sheet pulled up nearly to one's clavicle) though I was years from my period. I also decided, after a particularly heated Phil Donahue show about the Jewish Defense League that I would forever be a Democrat, to the great delight of my mother, who thought imposing one's politics on one's children was the wrong thing to do (that I got my politics from a talk show, however, was no problem whatsoever. Men with white hair to this day seem oddly attractive to me).

But by the time the Claxtons moved in next door, I was sick to death of my daily life. Swimming isn't much fun when there's no one to play Marco Polo, or underwater telephone with, and besides I wasn't supposed to go swimming when there was no one in the house anyway, in case I hit my head or something. My first introduction to the Claxtons came when we saw Erik, who owned the house next door, talking to two adults in his driveway when we were pulling up from the grocery store. Erik was a stuntman, a romantic figure who, I would brag to all of my friends, was stunt coordinator on The Six Million Dollar Man. He was going to be "on location" he told my mother and I, and the Claxtons were going to sublet for the rest of the summer. They had two boys, Travis and Aaron; Travis was my age and Aaron was only six. They looked really similar and, oddly enough, they both also looked like me: wispy white blonde hair with tints of green from chlorine, long arms and legs, freckles and a perpetual peel. After the somewhat awkward introductions, Erik's then-girlfriend, Ellen, a woman so enchanting I could hardly speak in her presence, offered me a cookie from inside the house. She proffered it to me like I was some kind of pet or a two-year-old, bending down too far in her too-tight jeans and saying, "Wanna come in for a cookie? A real live cookie?" She hadn't had much experience with kids, which should have come as no surprise since, despite (or perhaps because of) her glittery eye shadow, she couldn't have been much more than 22 years old. Notwithstanding my shyness and previous awe of her, I caught Travis' eye halfway through the cookie offering and we both tried hard not to laugh, an instant bonding experience cut short by me being ushered into the house for said treat.

From that moment on we established a sort of cautious friendship, though we didn't see much of each other right away, what with the busyness of their moving in and all. One glorious night though I was invited over for a vegetarian dinner.

I had been inside Erik's house on a couple of occasions, briefly, mostly when my sister was buying pot, which he grew between our houses under the oleander. But Carol, as Mrs. Claxton insisted that I call her, had temporarily changed things around. She was studying for her doctorate in biology so the counters were crowded with Mason jars full of seedpods and assorted stalks, and the entire house smelled like bread. Erik was very into a spare, bachelor-pad look at the time, his living room decorated with white melamine furniture in curved shapes, a chair shaped like a giant blue plastic hand, and very little else. His waterbed, the only ornate piece he had, rested on a gnarly wood base about a foot from the floor, with edges shaped like toadstools carved on to the three steps up to the bed, which he once told my sister was nicknamed "the stairway to heaven." He covered it in a pop art American flag bedspread, with one small white pillow in the corner. But Carol changed this -- the bed now had a velveteen coverlet in shades of purple, red, and ochre, and the bedside lamp got covered with a fringed shawl. There was burning incense everywhere, which only occasionally covered up the yeasty smell. Carol wore small glasses around her neck on an elaborately beaded chain she had made herself, and half-complete beaded projects lay strewn about on nearly every surface. Travis and Aaron were instructed to refer to their parents by their first names, just as they had asked me to, rather than Mom and Dad. I was completely in love. In fact I never wanted to leave.

I soon learned that while Mrs. Claxton, uh, Carol, mostly beaded, baked, and studied, Mr. Claxton (Elliot) was out of the house every day, but only for a few hours or so at a time. Then I'd hear him returning with a treat of some sort -- leftovers from the deli, snow cones, cotton candy, garlic bagels. I didn't know exactly what he did but according to Erik, it had something to do with the entertainment industry; he referred to him laughingly as some sort of on-set "doctor," a vague description my mother wouldn't really fill in, no matter how much I bugged her.

"It's just a joke, that's all, he was making a joke," she'd answer for the 100th time.

"But is he a doctor, like a real doctor, like Dr. Minkoff?" (My pediatrician, who I supposedly asked to marry me when I was seven.)

"No, nothing like that."

"But then what does he do?"

"It's an adult thing, you wouldn't really get it."

So I had to file Elliot's work life under the rapidly accumulating "Adult Thing" collection in my brain, already packed with, among other things, deodorant tampons, the reason my sister wasn't living with us anymore, the significance of "alimony," and the supposedly hidden meaning of "Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds" which my brother had started to explain to me when my mother interrupted saying it wasn't really appropriate.

On maybe the third week the Claxtons were living next door, I was roused from my early morning TV-haze by the sound of laughter and splashing. A sort of suburban alleyway, choked with overgrown bougainvillea, separated our houses. Unattractive chain-link fencing separated our side from theirs up a sort of half-paved slope. Both of our backyards were set into the hills, spaces certainly not intended for swimming pools. Erik had gotten around this by grading the hill sideways and installing a walkway that led to a Jacuzzi and an atrium. The pool sat beneath them both. All my mother could afford to do, in her determination to have a pool after the divorce, was pay someone to dig out the concrete patio and install a staggered brick wall to hold back the hill, resulting in the early morning discoveries of half-drowned snakes we faithfully rescued with barbeque tongs and tossed back over the wall, shivering in the heat. There was little room in our tiny backyard for any deck to speak of so three steps out of the kitchen door and you'd be in the pool if you weren't careful.

At the sound of their laughter I opened the door and crept around, my ass to the outer wall of the house to avoid falling in, then up the side of the hill in my bare feet in order to look down on the whole Claxton family swimming together. I gripped the fence like a prisoner gazing out across at freedom, the bottom of my polyester nightgown brushing against the dead grass and gravel.

When they finally noticed me and shouted for me to come on over I didn't have to think twice. I ran inside, tore off my nightgown, and shimmied into my still damp (from the day before) bathing suit, rushing into it so fast I kept getting the straps around my neck all tangled up. It was a tremendous day, shiny and dry-hot, and we spent what felt like hours diving to the bottom of the pool to find rocks thrown from the roof by Elliot, riding on Carol's back like she was a seahorse, having spitting water wars, boys against girls. Playing a game with adults was a concept wholly unfamiliar to me -- my mother was too tired and my brother and sister were just old enough not to be interested in children and mostly not in the house anyway. Why they laughed almost constantly I never figured out, but even then I must have been aware enough to at least think it had something to do with meticulously hand-rolled cigarettes whose smoke smelled like cat pee that they smoked all morning long.

And thus began an almost daily habit. I'd get up early, turn on the TV, eat maybe two bowls of cereal and wait for the shouts from next door, which would signal me to walk up the side and hang onto the chain-link until one of them looked up and noticed me. I was instructed, no ordered, by my mother when she came home from work after that first day, not to "bug" them, or ask for anything, or invite myself over under any circumstance. So I just waited quietly, though aggressively, my hands gripping tighter and tighter onto the metal the longer it took them to notice me standing there.

I'm not sure when I noticed a change, or if I even did, but the time between first fence gripping and shout-out invitation seemed to be getting longer and longer. I even started coughing to get someone to look up from the water. One day, which seemed much like all the others before it, after our swim, Travis' parents went into the house and told us to play outside for a few more hours. We weren't allowed to swim without them watching us, so we trooped up the hill with Aaron trailing behind, setting up pieces of cardboard and sliding down the hill until my allergies got the better of me. Sweaty and stuffed up, I did the unthinkable, according to my mother's very British manners: I asked if we could play inside their house. Just came right out and asked. Travis reminded me that his parents had told us to stay outside for the next few hours but the mid-summer's day heat was pounding down on my chlorinated scalp, I was running out of sledding injuries for Travis to pretend-set with sticks and leaves, and the idea of that dark, air-conditioned house with the fun parents, plush bedspread and food smells was too alluring for me to let go of. He finally relented and we went around to the sliding glass door that led into the main living area. Travis cautiously called out, "Carol? Elliot? Jenny's here; we're coming in."

We walked in and found Carol and Elliot reclining on the carpet playing chess. I got the feeling I wasn't entirely welcome almost instantly because when they looked up, neither of them gave me their usual wide-toothed grins.

"Travis, Jenny. You two are supposed to be outside," Carol said, the light reflecting off her glasses and momentarily blinding me.

"She just kept asking, she just kept wanting to come in here," Travis stammered.

I couldn't believe he was blaming this all on me, though it was my fault. I felt my face get hot at this realization, my stomach drop and my hands chill, like they always did when I heard my mom and dad argue on the phone, or when my sister used to be really late picking me up from school. Before I could talk myself out of it, I ran out of the house, through the mess of plants, and into my own room, where I threw myself on my bed and cried into my pillow. I stayed there until the sun set and I heard the electric garage door opener, signifying my mother was home from work. Deciding it would be best not to tell her anything, I tried to put the afternoon out of my mind, reading Helter Skelter in front of the TV, careful to hide the cover under a pillow whenever she walked in from the living room.

But when the phone rang later that night, my feeling of foreboding returned. It was, indeed, the Claxtons, and it was, in fact, suggested in the course of the conversation that maybe I could spend a bit more of my day in my own house, at least for awhile. My mother was terrifically embarrassed, and apologized all over the place. In my fear I got up and turned down the television set, anxious to make sense of her one-sided responses and any possible defenses I could come up with for my behavior. The station was tuned to some sort of disco-vaudeville special very common on primetime TV in the seventies, called something like Ann Margaret and 100 Men, comprised of singing, dancing and bad sketch comedy starring "special guests" from Hollywood Squares. The whole time my mom was on the phone, and in between listening for her responses, I said a silent prayer to the red-haired siren on TV, and her imaginary harem. As she turned and twisted among them in her unitard-cum-tuxedo, I silently made deals with the God I wasn't sure existed: "Okay, if she kicks up her right leg next then everything will be okay; if the next guy who spins her is the one with the red carnation in his top hat, I won't get in trouble . . ." Whenever it didn't "work," (i.e. she kicked up a left leg or the guy in the cowboy hat, rather than top hat grabbed her waist) I'd just begin again: "It only counts if the seventh time she kicks up her right leg the blonde guy holds her shoe…" This was a familiar obsessive habit of mine, but one normally confined to the car where I'd make silent deals with fate: "If the light turns red before we get to it my parents won't get divorced; if the next car on the right is blue, my sister will come home," etc. Soon I heard my mother hang up the phone and open up the refrigerator. I heard the plastic bottle of tonic water hit, then bounce, then hiss its contents onto the floor. "Jesus Fuck," she said, creaking the raffia on the seat of her kitchen chair as she plunked herself down and lit a cigarette before she could even begin to contemplate cleaning up the spilled tonic with one of our Royal Family dishtowels. Plopping into the chair like this and reaching for her lighter is what she did when she wanted to signify "I just can't handle this right now goddamn it." She'd stop whatever she was doing and light up a Kent in protest of life's presently irritating circumstances, a conscious refusal to take care of things in a timely manner because it was just TOO MUCH on top of work, cooking, divorce, children, the logging industry. Just last night the cat threw up on the rug and she did the same thing. For the rest of the night every time I went into the bathroom I had to step across a series of paper towels while she blew smoke out of her nose. This time only a few minutes passed. When she came back into the den she didn't say anything to me for a while, just took her position at the head of the couch, her legs stretched out in front of her, glass in hand and clean ashtray balanced on the armrest. In silent apology I rested my head in her lap. To my surprise, by the second commercial she was stroking my hair.

"Silly girl," she said. "Why didn't you turn around and leave as soon as you noticed?"

"Noticed what?" I asked.

"That they were, you know, while they were playing chess, that they were… I mean I guess they do that all the time; Travis is used to it but they didn't expect . . ."

"Expect what? I didn't mean to, it was just so hot outside…."

My mother laughed. "Carol said your eyes were as big as saucers. I bet they were. It's a rather odd thing, you know, playing chess in the nude."

I hoped she didn't feel me clench. I didn't know what to say, confused as I was by my reaction -- that the fact that I hadn't noticed they were naked was about as embarrassing as noticing that they were.

"Well, you'll be staying in here for awhile. You've got to stop bugging them," she added.

I sort of nodded my head but my eyes felt hot and my throat went tight. I tried to concentrate on the show, realizing that TV was going to be my most reliable companion in the weeks to come. Seems in my desire to escape the adult world, to play in a pool rather than watch soap opera stars sit around one, I had simply run smack right into it again. As the television droned on I made a silent promise to myself to put my faith in its representations of people more than in those of flesh and blood. I reached behind my head with my hand cupped, the signal for my mother to let me have one of her half-melted ice cubes -- I liked the sharp tang and residual fizziness of them after they had sat in her drink for a while. In front of us the dancing continued, this time with mirrors. They were bowing, lifting, smiling up at Ann's one pure self embraced and supported by 100, 1000, maybe even a million men, their tele-prompted joy bearing her confidently aloft towards a place far from home.