Where I'm Calling From

in California. I’ve got friends there who care what happens to me. Nobody gives a damn here. Well, I just pray I can get through to June. If I can make it that long, if I can last to June, I’m leaving this place forever. This is the worst place I’ve ever lived in.”
    What could I say? I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t even say anything about the weather. Weather was a real sore point. We said good-bye and hung up.
    Other people take vacations in the summer, but my mother moves. She started moving years ago, after my dad lost his job. When that happened, when he was laid off, they sold their home, as if this were what they should do, and went to where they thought things would be better. But things weren’t any better there, either. They moved again. They kept on moving. They lived in rented houses, apartments, mobile homes, and motel units even. They kept moving, lightening their load with each move they made. A couple of times they landed in a town where I lived. They’d move in with my wife and me for a while and then they’d move on again. They were like migrating animals in this regard, except there was no pattern to their movement. They moved around for years, sometimes even leaving the state for what they thought would be greener pastures. But mostly they stayed in Northern California and did their moving there. Then my dad died, and I thought my mother would stop moving and stay in one place for a while.
    But she didn’t. She kept moving. I suggested once that she go to a psychiatrist. I even said I’d pay for it.
    But she wouldn’t hear of it. She packed and moved out of town instead. I was desperate about things or I wouldn’t have said that about the psychiatrist.
    She was always in the process of packing or else unpacking. Sometimes she’d move two or three times in the same year. She talked bitterly about the place she was leaving and optimistically about the place she was going to. Her mail got fouled up, her benefit checks went off somewhere else, and she spent hours writing letters, trying to get it all straightened out. Sometimes she’d move out of an apartment house, move to another one a few blocks away, and then, a month later, move back to the place she’d left, only to a different floor or a different side of the building. That’s why when she moved here I rented a house for her, and saw to it that it was furnished to her liking. “Moving around keeps her alive,” Jill said. “It gives her something to do. She must get some kind of weird enjoyment out of it, I guess.” But enjoyment or not, Jill thinks my mother must be losing her mind. I think so, too. But how do you tell your mother this? How do you deal with her if this is the case? Crazy doesn’t stop her from planning and getting on with her next move.
    He is waiting at the back door for us when we pull in. She’s seventy years old, has gray hair, wears glasses with rhinestone frames, and has never been sick a day in her life. She hugs Jill, and then she hugs me. Her eyes are bright, as if she’s been drinking. But she doesn’t drink. She quit years ago, after my dad went on the wagon. We finish hugging and go inside. It’s around five in the afternoon. I smell whatever it is drifting out of her kitchen and remember I haven’t eaten since breakfast. My buzz has worn off.
    “I’m starved,” I say.
    “Something smells good,” Jill says.
    “I hope it tastes good,” my mother says. “I hope this chicken’s done.” She raises the lid on a fry pan and pushes a fork into a chicken breast. “If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s raw chicken. I think it’s done.
    Why don’t you sit down? Sit anyplace. I still can’t regulate my stove. The burners heat up too fast. I don’t like electric stoves and never have. Move that junk off the chair, Jill. I’m living here like a damned gypsy. But not for much longer, I hope.” She sees me looking around for the ashtray. “Behind you,” she says. “On the windowsill, honey. Before you sit down, why don’t you pour us some of that Pepsi? You’ll have to use these paper cups. I should have told you to bring some glasses. Is the Pepsi cold? I don’t have any ice. This icebox won’t keep anything cold. It isn’t worth a damn. My ice cream turns to soup.
    It’s the worst icebox I’ve ever had.”
    She forks the chicken onto a plate and puts the plate on the table along with beans and coleslaw and white bread. Then she looks to see if there is