Mabel May

“You know, this Tuesday feels right. Mark my words, Mr. Carter will be coming.” Mom says this nearly under her breath, as one would speak of nonsense chores that need to be done.

“I’ve sent him a letter, a good one yes, with the fine parchment, the off white one you know.” Her dress is burgundy and orange, a housedress reaching nearly to the floor. It stretches taut across her small back as her hands move round the sink.

My mother, the regal Miss Mabel May, remains one of the finest women I’ve ever known. She’s small, but not unassuming; her eyes sink just slightly too far into her round face, were just a little too close together, but are always alive. Her lashes fall heavy with black mascara. This, paired with the old creases lining her mouth and eyes, show a permanent happiness and an endearing vanity. But happiness has not been permanent, and this I know. But no matter what comes and goes with the moon, she is, in the end, the one holding me and not the other way around.

Honestly, she has alway looked old to me, as mothers do. More recently her age is evident. Gravity has pulled the nape of her neck slowly closer to the ground, her back a curved cashmere hill, her rumpled neck still arching up like a turtle’s. Tinny streaks of grey have eaten up the blonde, low braid, yet she is still striking. And she knows it, and speaks all the time of her heartthrob days with the stars and presidents; her breath always has always been sour as she breathes stories into your face, but most are too in love to notice.

Mabel grew up one of nine children in the tiniest, tin-roofed house one could imagine; “these days my butt wouldn’t fit in the doorway!” She’d say each and every time she spoke of it. Mary Bates, or Granny May, had the children and forever after didn’t really do much. She more cared for the herds of sheep; in fact, she had pet names for them she’d never give her children, and so the love seemed really more directed to the herd. Her husband did much of the grunt work with the kids, the animals she wouldn’t help with, but she’d been widowed just after the ninth and final little May, that’s mom, was birthed. Mom and Gran never could get along much, though cataract-ridden Granny May was a rotten apple in every memory I’ve got. Mabel moved far from that packed rural Virginia house first chance she got, funded by siblings who saw something special in her, who’d raised her really, slept in her bed four at a time and appreciated the lack of snoring gene which every other child seemed to have inherited. Out of town, out of state, and soon enough into her small town dream, her biggest aspiration: New York City. And here we are, alone in our apartment, happy without Dad because who needs a man? Especially one who’s too coward to look at his own child. “You are all you’ll ever need. Take care of that, Sunshine, and you’ll do so fine in this world,” she’d say, deep into my eyes, trying to burn, brand, or engrave it there. Her breath was the special, awful brand I loved.

She keeps at the dishes, and soon speaks more of the President. As if there is nothing in the world more important. “Oh, what a look you’ll get when Ms. May and Mr. President Carter pick you up from the recital!” At this, at thirteen, I roll my eyes. “Again?” I’d thought, a little annoyed but mostly perplexed. How can she keep expecting these people to come?

This is the one thing I’ve never quite pieced together about Mom, and writing this as an adult, I’m still conflicted. Throughout my life mom has told me tales, or real stories (this is the confusion I struggle with) of her run ins and falling outs with fame. She’s had lunch with The Pope, she had dinner with Marilyn as a child, she’s fallen into a secret love with President Carter, she once got into a bar fight with Ringo Starr (“before he was famous, of course!”), and afterwards a lunch to reconcile. These were her bedtime stories to me, and I truly believed most of them. She’d spoken in such detail, with such a passion in her eyes I never saw anywhere else, and still does. She’d keep promising these visits, so that by the time I was thirteen, and she’d once again told me that the President was coming to see us- “an old flame, you know”- I was positioned not to believe her. And sure enough, when I waited outside Cheryll Junior High with her in an ill fitting navy suit, he and his band of black cars did not show. Again.

I just do not see any way she could’ve done all these things. She’s a kind woman, yes, but a woman of 5’2’’ with a sweet but pitchy singing voice, no knack at drama, and those slightly sunken but very alive cornflower eyes. Pretty, and utterly average in most ways; don’t get me wrong, I love her to death, and to me she is certainly extraordinary. But still, she confuses me.

And so, throughout my childhood, Mom was my one and only, a silver needle in her bitter haystack family. A woman who sold flowers by day, and volunteered at the dog shelter by night, and always came home smelling floral but mangy, like a failed perfume with too much must. Her stories streamed through bedtimes, into casual conversation, and wove in and out of sandy phone calls as I left home more and more; “Guess who I saw today...”

“Who?” I’d say, humoring her.

“Well, you see, Tyra Banks is no good at video calls, and she by total coincidence called the wrong number- get this...”

“Yours. She called you by accident.”

“Yes! What a funny lady. She’s visiting- what is it? Taiwan? Thailand? One of those. She told me her brother lives there...”

On and on and on.

I live now in Boston, away from the softer rural New York Mom moved to when I left. Two weeks have past since I started writing, and unfortunately, Mom has passed away. I don’t feel I can revel too much in all she was to me anymore. It’s too sore, I’m too tired for it.

But. There remains two more stories she’d want told.

Her death came about by the cruel hand of God, and by no moral fault of her own; in fact, it kills me how painfully Mom this is. She was driving through Syracuse, a heart doctor to see, they’d told me, when she sees it happen half a mile up: a head-on collision, Red pickup to snazzy black BMW. Everything goes everywhere, the sound can be heard throughout the forest so that the birds jump at the clatter. The BMW rolls and rolls, and she adjusts her thick, gold-rimmed glasses and pulls over to the now stopped and smoking BMW. She calls 911, phone held tight between her cheek and bony shoulder, because her hands were busy pulling the man out of the wreckage. Her arthritis never could stop a good story and good Karma. He was unconscious, and, lo and behold, familiar. “That young man from Risky Business. I forget his name,” she’d say. Tom Cruise. She pulled Tom Cruise from a car wreck. All the old bones and massive 5’ 2” frame of her. “If she hadn’t,” the nurses had told me, “he likely would have died.” Mabel May is a hero, God Bless.” She’d collapsed from exhaustion, and never woke up- heart problems, of course.

So, there’s that. A final run-in with fame. And by then, I half believed that every story was true, every single word. That may have been the worst few hours of my life, and the most darkly humored. But get this. Her funeral is something I will never stop talking about.

I wore a well-fitting black suit and gray silk tie; I held my daughters’ hands, or moreover, they held mine. I am unafraid to cry in front of them. They are my lights, and one of them has my wife’s eyes while the other has the cornflower blue of Mabel May. We go to sit right up front, and I place the flowers on the coffin but leave the dog in the car. As we settle, everything is horribly quiet- Mom would never want this. Then, two black SUV’s I did not see in the procession pull up. What could this possibly be? A fit of anger is in my future, I can feel it. If someone ruins this, I will punch their lights out; no, no, nothing that easy. Maybe Mom would want a little flare of drama, one last event. Out of one steps, synchronized, two square jawed, thoroughly built men, shaven, suits pitch black and sunglasses to match. Out of another comes President Jimmy Carter. He slinks over, and I stand up to greet him- “I am so sorry for your loss. A fantastic woman, Mabel,” in his slow but eloquent southern drawl. His voice falters a bit on fantastic. He sits behind us. I could not speak, my heart rose a little bit in hopes that this was a dream and I’d wake up pretty soon and call Mom and tell her about it. Three more cars pull into the cemetery. Moneyed cars, shiny, and clearly classics. Cars of fame. First comes Ringo Starr, walking over, looking down, kissing my wife’s hand and sitting. Then the retired Pope, so old his hair is but two tufts of combed cotton. He looks soft and sad as he settles into his chair. Then Oprah. Then about sixteen more cars. Then James Taylor. Slowly, a stream of every story, I guess now, every truth, flows into the empty seats. Beautiful person after famous person after Tyra after football player. The crowd was surging, muttering, respectfully quiet as a group of the richest folks on Earth could be. I cried and looked around and around. A wreck, you could say, and my family looked to me for an explanation I did not have. Tom Cruise locked eyes with me and nodded. I couldn’t help but become sadder and sadder with each face, each story I’d “humored her” for, pegging her as clairvoyant.

Gosh, I wish I’d snapped a photo-I’m just like mom, all talk and no show. But I swear to you, this is true. Just as Mom swore to me. I miss her terribly, and I’m regularly in contact with Mr. Cruise as well as Ms. Banks. Great people, all of them, but none greater than Mom. Regular, cornflower blue Mabel May might be the most honest person who ever lived.