His Mother
Starkman, Elaine Marcus
HIS MOTHER What happened when she came to stay ELAINE MARCUS STARKMAN Just this one compromise he asks: accept his mother's presence. For whatever reasons—the heat, losing my teaching job, the...
...Thank God for Amy who bakes with her some Fridays...
...I mailed postcards to Helen and Arnold...
...Good children, good children," making no distinction between the grandchildren and us...
...Or maybe Maury will come with—if ever we can leave Ma...
...Okay, I'm nasty, I'm a bitch anyway because I asked Ma to wash a few plates last night...
...Every day was, 'Good morning, Hilda, how are you, Hilda.' Now I do not have a penny in my purse...
...My mother clucks her tongue...
...You know her body doesn't look bad for a woman her age...
...But I'd be accepting, repaying Maury for his years of kindness to me, my side of the family...
...October 2 I haven't taken Ma for a walk since August...
...She's not here to do your housework...
...She hangs between the two of us, her "sweet, good children," our own offspring watching with silent reactions to her foreignness, her smell, her age...
...Ma, we're going...
...Will they have a rummage sale...
...The self-pitying anger returns...
...That's why I married you...
...I'm trying to compromise...
...I do not write checks...
...I don't need to do more...
...I eat more than I have in years...
...Every step I take she makes me feel guilty...
...Then when she sleeps until eleven I'm upset...
...You want to be nasty...
...I began to cry myself...
...A regular tourist I am...
...None of us wants to help her, and he says it's not right, that he, a man, goes in when she's undressed...
...Maury says what do I expect from someone her age that's been displaced...
...You're good to have her...
...Now she needs full-time nursing care...
...How he used to mop floor and do diapers before male household help was fashionable...
...She's ashamed, she wants to please you," he says...
...She's got a huge house...
...He was trying to break me in gently...
...Today I gave Sara a lecture on how we sometimes get mad at old people, and that's even okay, "but we can't throw them into the street, can we, we have to be patient...
...Don't rush back, Maury...
...October 27 We took Ma to the Jewish Home to see about day care...
...I'd never asked him...
...Come with us today," he begs...
...When the building burnt down...
...As for me, I'd like to go somewhere alone this summer, leave Texas, maybe go to the West Coast, or to Italy or Israel...
...We'd been away from family for a long time...
...At least they're respectful toward her...
...Bring her...
...Lila told me elderly parents can live memories for years...
...We don't want you to live here...
...Finally I hear from Helen...
...I won't want to go anywhere when you return...
...Just look at this bathtub full of hair...
...Don't you ever tire of it...
...I help her once or twice a week but refuse to do it every night...
...It's not fair...
...Going...
...1 must accept this responsibility, put aside my personal gratification that comes from writing...
...Maury finds reasons for everything...
...Ma laughs...
...I know about these things...
...Relatives teased, "A professional man, yet...
...It doesn't matter, I tell myself as I avert my eyes, it doesn't matter...
...I will...
...I should have never let her go to Arnold's...
...And Grandma...
...I'll be glad when this vacation ends...
...She knows it's time to go to the JCC today...
...Your loving mother, Hilda Then Maury smiles, draws her bath water and puts her to bed while I stay in our room...
...Sara answered in her shrewd 11-year-old manner, "You're not patient when Grandma watches daytime TV...
...Although Maury is professional about other people's problems, he was upset with himself in trying to handle his own...
...I never wanted a house at all...
...His brother I discount...
...Grandma is the transmitter of our heritage and culture...
...He jumps out of bed and is off fixing her breakfast, giving her her medicine...
...And then a deep bursting sound, "I'll look for something tomorrow...
...Even though everyone's grumbling about the heat, just last night she wrote this letter: Dear Children Helen and Arnold and Grandchildren, This is a beautiful place...
...You won't remember her as the beautiful, young, capable woman who could do everything...
...I lie there thinking how Ma's become the scapegoat, the catalyst of this struggle between us...
...Then I didn't know that Maury would spit with bitterness, "The only time she'll leave here is in a coffin...
...Not one of my friends saw Ma's coming in a positive light...
...My dad calls...
...They've been married 30 years...
...This time the children take his side...
...On week-ends Maury and I no longer eat together...
...That's not so...
...Do you think you can tell your mother not to put on her shoes at 7 a.m...
...Don't you like the people, Ma...
...Lila, of course...
...Is that when my feelings changed...
...That's my work...
...When did my feelings change so drastically...
...My mother calls long-distance...
...Says the home is the finest in the country, has planned activities, takes its residents to films, concerts...
...I'm not like the old mentschen here...
...I sensed she was entrenched in our house for good...
...And wet towels all over...
...Let them know...
...that's my work...
...I've been trained to deal with the elderly...
...let it end with your dictating a letter in Yiddish to Helen and Arnold, monitoring every word she writes: My dear children, I am fine with Maury and Claire...
...Get it over with...
...Then sighing, "I should have gone before...
...He always was a devoted son...
...Leave already, will you...
...I was no better than Lila...
...Put her in a home...
...You'll be happier with her...
...Just once...
...She laughed all night...
...Something nice for Claire...
...When we returned Dr...
...What about me...
...Again and again...
...your thinking about it is too negative...
...Others warned me, too...
...I even had Lila bring her suits for alterations...
...Her eyes brighten...
...I've grown indifferent to both of them, Maury, whom I once loved, and his old golden mother...
...She doesn't help in the house...
...At last I discovered her staring at the shelves in the pantry...
...You'll tell Ma she's going to an apartment with you...
...I'll try to come back early if you want to do something together later on...
...Come on...
...Once when I returned and couldn't find her anywhere in the house, I panicked...
...In the car Jonathan and Amy are all over each other like babies instead of teenagers...
...It had 15 flats...
...I can't bear to send Ma to a home...
...Don't be a fool...
...You do whatever you want...
...Maury with tears in his throat...
...Let Helen take her for the summer...
...it's only right," 1 said...
...My subtle friend Lila...
...The situation is Maury's fault...
...How sickened he was when he went to St...
...I'm neither...
...I'll use the money I didn't spend on household help...
...I judged others "too self-absorbed," unable to foresee that in a short time I'd be unwilling to give of myself...
...Will you clean up your room, Amy...
...I'm too exhausted even though she looks helpless standing there in her nightgown...
...All those years he never-cared about our leisure, all those years he was too busy either working or studying...
...I remember her arrival last spring...
...I will sit in the yard...
...She won't use it...
...Why should I be after she goes through my things...
...Maury says, right after she came...
...Let this deadly Sunday end like all the other Sundays, the two of you watching TV, Ma barely responding to whatever horror is on...
...She's so passive at home...
...I hope you're not depressed...
...What's wrong with Helen...
...She was so independent...
...Arnold could never understand the emotional needs of the female psyche...
...Look, why don't you get help in the house...
...You only want her to do the dirty work...
...So it's a little dirty...
...Ma took it good-naturedly, but Maury was beastly about it, feeling Ma was offended...
...Sara, so pretty, like Arnold and Mary Alice's girl, my new grandchild, her name I forgot...
...Everything will be fine...
...And I for the first time: "Yes...
...We both had such terrible headaches, we didn't speak to each other...
...A career woman who works in a lab...
...And now it's only fair that his mother stay with us...
...N "Why don't you move in with Lila...
...And Amy, quiet with blue eyes like her mama...
...The first time I use that word...
...she watches everything I do...
...Let your mother get her own food...
...She must hear us arguing...
...I didn't know then the mornings we'd pass each other silently in the hallway, her teeth out, her hair uncombed, her slow, staggering manner a constant reminder of my own aging and all the years I'd been waiting for my freedom...
...She could stay in that new residential home...
...Amy's closet is already stuffed with all the clothes she brought from St...
...She lies on the edge of Amy's bed, her glasses smashed into her nose, stockings and shoes on, fully dressed, trying to make herself inconspicuous...
...Lila put her own mother into a home when she came from New Jersey two years ago, to live with her...
...She told me today how her ex-husband was nervous around Ma...
...These days she appears fragile, vulnerable...
...I know it's your bedroom now, but that doesn't mean you can eat there...
...The whole family is talking about how wonderful he is...
...You're home now, Ma...
...I'm the one in the family who knows how to handle Ma, who wants to...
...His one demand in 20 years of marriage: Ma must remain here...
...I hang up remembering my grandfather...
...Poor Hilda...
...I have my head...
...I tried to find tasks for her so she'd feel useful...
...And I hear that low monotonous tone, "Maury, take my money and buy something nice for Claire today, a silver set, some goblets, nice ones for the holidays...
...Ma rarely stepped outside that room...
...He rearranges his schedule so he can drive her once a week to eat lunch with the seniors at the JCC...
...Neither of us leaves...
...I didn't think your mother would come to live with us...
...We'll pay a fortune for nothing, for two women to get in my hair...
...And then whispering to me, "It'll take time, but we'll all adjust, you'll see...
...And I, off in the laundry, mumble to myself, "Don't worry, Ma, Maury won't touch your money...
...I hadn't seen any indication of his terrible need to have her here in her last days...
...Maury's new loud voice...
...A year ago...
...Go get an apartment like your women friends...
...She never hung them up...
...But in Maury's presence she's alive...
...I don't talk...
...It rains today but tomorrow it will be sunny again...
...Meanwhile, Maury begins trying the techniques he learned when he worked at the clinic: He writes the date on the blackboard...
...If you can get her into the back yard, she won't do it anymore...
...Maury said she was afraid to help, afraid she'd do something wrong, like the time she burned Mary Alice's pot, and then we wouldn't want her anymore...
...A man in the prime of life...
...I'm handling it, Mother," I lie...
...His anger mounts...
...He's worried we'll break up...
...Daddy, everyone can hear you...
...Oh, he gave her a place in the basement of his new home after he'd remarried...
...Mother, you know you can't spoil Hilda...
...At whom to rage—him, her, the family...
...your mother is pacing the hall...
...Dad asked you to go out...
...The expert...
...In a way I'm glad to see she still has a mind of her own...
...I didn't want a bigger house...
...I'm never rude, but she must know...
...The bank holds everything...
...You're not happy with me, anyway...
...That's your answer...
...You wouldn't like him telling you what to do with your mother...
...December 12 Tonight I went out by myself...
...I told you I'd pay for it...
...Either you're a fool or a saint...
...You're in Texas now, Ma...
...Just let Maury do what he wants...
...Don't write and don't ask her to take Ma...
...The environment won't be good for either of them...
...I'll hire a full time housekeeper, move her and Ma into an apartment the first thing tomorrow...
...But Helen: why couldn't she live with Helen at least part of the time...
...When she walked in, she spoke to no one...
...she's not working on a novel...
...Occasional shopping was her only activity...
...The grandchildren are nice to me...
...He asks too much...
...We take her...
...Maury's spoiling her...
...Maury, softly to me...
...Then her inevitable question—"Is Hilda bathing every night...
...And they're gone...
...But every Saturday Maury and Ma at synagogue, every Sunday Maury and Ma at the JCC...
...her voice cracks when she finally speaks...
...Right...
...Louis to bring her here after the fire and a year with Arnold...
...You're seeing the country," in his new loud laugh...
...A vacation's coming to me...
...This is my only way out...
...Don't you see that...
...Ma never interferes with you...
...Maury says she's aware her memory's slipping...
...must have reminded him of some unfinished business with his own mother who lives in Miami...
...I'm taking her out for you so that you'll have some time to yourself...
...Buy for yourself...
...And Ma, who knows what the next year will bring...
...Don't bring me anything, Ma," I snap...
...What unspoken words, what family secrets have passed between Helen and Maury...
...There's nowhere else I want to go...
...There's no external recognition offered for taking care of one's mother-in-law...
...A modern American grandma like the kids at school have...
...Where we going...
...I swear if you pay for one, I'll call Helen and tell her your mother is not staying here any longer...
...I owned a building...
...I read late at night in the kitchen, Jonathan blaming me, "You don't have to be a martyr...
...dirty never hurt anyone...
...Lila thinks you're a selfish bastard...
...In the beginning she'd say, "Don't aggravate yourself, Claire darling...
...Poor man...
...A full year...
...My business, my life, is no one else's business...
...She's willing, but it's not her fault if Maury says no...
...I waited until Helen called...
...I was hurt when people found her slow, unpleasant...
...Maury wakes her at six for breakfast before he leaves for work, until I have a fit, shouting that he should let her sleep...
...June 21 Lila's wrong...
...I feel her eyes follow me as I run into the laundry room in a pair of jeans Amy left behind when she went to college...
...Barnes told us Ma had run outside and wouldn't speak to anyone...
...Later she said nothing b,ut cowered and went to her room while I raged...
...Just because she had a little cold—" "What do you want me to do...
...I like to help...
...I know what they're like better than anyone else...
...was a landlady, a working lady, people knew me everywhere...
...Ma's quiet, passive presence looms over every aspect of my life: work, rest, play, sex...
...When's the last time you let her cook...
...It's her mother...
...Will it really kill Maury if...
...You can be more objective, accepting...
...her kids are gone...
...I'm not asking her to live there all year round...
...I didn't know that the prayer from the Yom Kippur liturgy, "Do not cast me out in my old age," would come to me...
...More than from me or any textbook...
...Louis, but Maury insists buying is good therapy for her...
...I'm shocked at the sound of it...
...We almost lost her this week...
...She's not young and poor anymore...
...While he records her stories on his cassettes, I sit at my desk filling out teaching applications, her strong, full tone finding its way through the walls...
...She sleeps for hours...
...Devoted he'd been, but not a mama's boy...
...Old Country habits that have never left her...
...But con fused, disoriented...
...Jon is more defensive about Grandma than the girls are...
...We thought you'd like to visit here once a week so you'll have someone to talk to...
...She forgot she's been waiting two hours, sitting dressed up in her black suit and long white beads...
...Louis...
...A full year...
...Not one complaint all the way to Corpus Christi...
...For whatever reasons—the heat, losing my teaching job, the children's rudeness—I cannot...
...There, she slept on the basement couch, her clothes lying all over...
...No one was here, and I knew Maury wouldn't want to leave Ma alone at night, without one of the kids...
...She's not going to die like my grandmother did...
...Why not...
...Claire is a good wife...
...I told Sara about my pet chicken when I was a girl in Europe...
...Everything's "fine" when Jonathan disappears for a few days before his high school graduation...
...My mother puts my father on...
...Don't act like a princess," they shout at me while they remain indifferent to Ma...
...The kids are learning a lot from her...
...You'd rather do that and break up the family than let her go to Helen's for a few months...
...Don't worry, it won't go on much longer...
...Under my politeness I grow irate at the sight of the two of them at the table, he jumping up to cut her food, she throwing it back into his plate, afraid, always afraid Claire doesn't have enough...
...I've helped her a few times...
...For you it'll be easier...
...Why should I? She's an old, powerless woman...
...She's not so powerless...
...Eventually they turned away one by one...
...Yet her mind is constantly thinking...
...when she's alone with him, she bursts forth with long monologues...
...Voila...
...Senility takes different forms and shapes...
...You make yourself guilty...
...He never has...
...And Maury crying, "I'll never put her in a home...
...I told you we needed a bigger house," Maury wailed...
...But beyond that silence she's always thinking...
...Only if we go alone...
...I listen...
...I asked...
...Do you think she's senile...
...Maury removes her babushka...
...When I came in, he was reading in bed...
...I get pleasure from serving her...
...she was afraid to come to Texas, and she had a roof over her head, didn't she...
...Ma's building had burnt down in St...
...He'd rather see Arnold's wife spend it on a new car...
...Besides, she's not the interfering type...
...Louis...
...She goes into the bathroom, but I don't think she actually gets into the tub...
...Ma began to cry, "I see good...
...We left her for an hour and went for coffee...
...I've begun to dislike all the traits in him I once found admirable...
...I was a coward...
...She's willing to take Ma, really she is, even though there's nothing for her to do in her small town...
...Why don't you go to your women friends or go work on your novel...
...Sara keeps whining, "Could I have a piece of the salami Grandma brought, could 1?" My forehead tightens, "Sara, you know I don't like you eating salami...
...She bobbed down the ramp with her son...
...To her everything's "fine" when Sara complains she has to sleep in the dining room, that she's the only kid in her whole school who doesn't have a bedroom, that Grandma wakes her up clumping around in the kitchen on weekends...
...Still pretty: her even features, her small beautiful nose, her dark eyes...
...She hadn't done a thing all day...
...Lila scoffs...
...he's a fine man...
...I turned my anger on the kids...
...It's his mother...
...Says he'd rather die than outlive his usefulness, become a burden to his children...
...Lila says just my keeping her here is enough...
...After our trip I began using the children as bargaining chips...
...The atmosphere isn't at all depressing, she says, but of course the cost is astronomical...
...So why now...
...write Helen and ask her to take Ma next summer...
...She's never seen anything of this country...
...I begin to move away when Maury touches me...
...Don't bring that up again...
...Sara, stop eating in the dining room...
...I need time and space alone...
...Is she incapable...
...He volunteered...
...I go to my room and bang the door...
...Or of Pa, whom she thinks of with more kindness now than while he was alive and dependent on her business sense...
...Wearing her old gray winter coat over a green-flowered acrilan dress with all of her jewelry, a sign that she was not a poor woman, her green babushka, her feet with their enormous bunions jammed into her walkers...
...Jonathan, you're already a man...
...The director, Jane Barnes, who has a PhD and wears tight white pants, treated her perfunctorily...
...Ma laughs too so that her small frame and thin legs shake...
...At least he went out by himself on weekends...
...When Amy left for college that fall, Ma got her room in earnest...
...They're really nice...
...Everyone is good to me...
...People asked if she was hard of hearing...
...How self-righteous, how pure I was...
...Suddenly she looks mar-velously alert...
...I wouldn't tolerate this another minute...
...When I wasn't in the mood to cook, I pushed myself for her sake, to busy her...
...Why this unwillingness to share the responsibility with his sister...
...In the beginning I wrote in my diary: April 26, 1980 I must remain more detached if I'm to handle Ma and do my share...
...it comes and goes...
...My mother adds sorrowfully, "A mother can take care of ten children, but ten children can't take care of one mother...
...His eyes persist: "I know what I'm doing...
...Helen "can't handle her...
...her thin white hair blows about her head, showing its shape and scalp...
...She gives him the unconditional love I never could...
...There are flowers and birds in the yard...
...I balk...
...On Thursdays she waits for me to come home from exercise class and drive her to the Senior Center in town...
...I'm sorry for him—trying to please both his mother and me...
...It burnt down...
...Eating with her fingers or pushing the vegetables onto her fork with her thumb, her head hunched between her shoulders, studying her plate lovingly...
...And to her, "After 60 years in America you've finally flown on a plane...
...If I'm trouble, I'll go back to my building in St...
...Don't let Maury down...
...Because of what your mother's presence is doing to you...
...He looks more comfortable with her than with you...
...We'll have to buy you a sun dress...
...she should have her own place...
...She's not going to a home...
...Remember how Grandpa lived with us for years...
...He asks to take her with us on our vacation...
...She's told them stories of her brothers and sisters—Anna, Pincus, Itche, Rose—of the village where she'd lived, her early days in America, first as a dressmaker and storekeeper, then as a landlady whom everyone knew...
...He'd left for school, for the army, for marriage and children, for holidays and careers...
...You'd be surprised at what she remembers...
...What will a woman do here all day...
...August 2 Last night Sara refused to sleep in the same bed with Grandma...
...She won't remember...
...Why can I handle her and Helen can't...
...You can't share, can you...
...The pleasure Ma gets just from sitting outside and watching the dog bite his fleas or a jay steal crumbs from the dog's bowl...
...I see Mexican families with their grandmas, Japanese families with their grandmas, but it's not working for me...
...Barnes took me aside and implied we all were overly-concerned with Ma, that she probably would do just fine at one of Maury's siblings who could certainly share the responsibility, that Maury himself had some problem in not being able to let Ma go...
...Go, you're free...
...I wonder if her passivity is a sign of hostility...
...Soon I'd ignore her, sitting in the leather chair day after day, meekly looking through any magazine that was around, Jonathan's Penthouse or Amy's Western Horseman...
...I cried silently all the way to the center...
...Ma, we want you...
...I eat by myself after he and Ma finish...
...Besides, she is sweet and loving...
...I could never outguess her...
...Withdrawn, going to bed early...
...Don't exaggerate...
...Watch Ma sleep, read...
...July 26 Sara handed Grandma a sport hat in the car...
...Listen, I saw the way Bamey looked at Ma across the table when I went back to get her...
...I hear good...
...She doesn't know the benefits of having an older person around...
...How old he's made himself with her, imitating her behavior...
...she's not your mother...
...Why don't you leave...
...Jonathan is not getting a new car for graduation...
...If she fell or got hurt, it would be my fault...
...Just the summer to give me a break...
...Maury talking so loud that Sara looks at him strangely...
...Remember, the just aren't always rewarded...
...on Sunday morning...
...And Helen had her share when she was young and poor...
...I'd hoped Ma would take a hint, pitch in, but she never did...
...It's only fair," he said each time, after Jonathan, Amy and Sara were born...
...you can't go back to your building...
...That night I angrily write in my diary: July 16 Societal attitudes toward the elderly indicate just how much the family is falling apart...
...he puts a plastic chair into the tub for Ma to sit on...
...She's part of this family...
...To the JCC...
...she must never leave our house until death takes her...
...Whenever I felt she wanted to have something to do, she'd walk out of the kitchen in the middle of making a potato kugel...
...I expect more generosity and understanding from you...
...Helen can't handle her...
...And friends still offering advice: Don't blame Helen...
...Your loving mother, Hilda...
...life drags on...
...the ritual repeated day after day...
Vol. 8 • January 1983 • No. 2
