Where I'm Calling From

her again.
    I look over at my mother. She stops talking. Jill raises her eyes. Both of them look at me.
    “What is it, honey?” my mother says. “What’s wrong?” Jill says.
    I lean forward in the chair and cover my face with my hands. I sit like that for a minute, feeling bad and stupid for doing it. But I can’t help it. And the woman who brought me into this life, and this other woman I picked up with less than a year ago, they exclaim together and rise and come over to where I sit with my head in my hands like a fool. I don’t open my eyes. I listen to the sprinkler whipping the grass.
    “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” they say.
    “It’s okay,” I say. And in a minute it is. I open my eyes and bring my head up. I reach for a cigarette.
    “See what I mean?” Jill says. “You’re driving him crazy. He’s going crazy with worry over you.” She is on one side of my chair, and my mother is on the other side. They could tear me apart in no time at all.
    “I wish I could die and get out of everyone’s way,” my mother says quietly. “So help me Hannah, I can’t take much more of this.”
    “How about some more coffee?” I say. “Maybe we ought to catch the news,” I say. “Then I guess Jill and I better head for home.”
    Two days later, early in the morning,
    I say good-bye to my mother for what may be the last time. I’ve let Jill sleep. It won’t hurt if she’s late to work for a change. The dogs can wait for their baths and trimmings and such. My mother holds my arm as I walk her down the steps to the driveway and open the car door for her. She is wearing white slacks and a white blouse and white sandals. Her hair is pulled back and tied with a scarf. That’s white, too. It’s going to be a nice day, and the sky is clear and already blue.
    On the front seat of the car I see maps and a thermos of coffee. My mother looks at these things as if she can’t recall having come outside with them just a few minutes ago. She turns to me then and says, “Let me hug you once more. Let me love your neck. I know I won’t see you for a long time.” She puts an arm around my neck, draws me to her, and then begins to cry. But she stops almost at once and steps back, pushing the heel of her hand against her eyes. “I said I wouldn’t do that, and I won’t. But let me get a last look at you anyway. I’ll miss you, honey,” she says.
    “I’m just going to have to live through this. I’ve already lived through things I didn’t think were possible.
    But I’ll live through this, too, I guess.” She gets into the car, starts it, and runs the engine for a minute.
    She rolls her window down.
    “I’m going to miss you,” I say. And I am going to miss her. She’s my mother, after all, and why shouldn’t I miss her? But, God forgive me, I’m glad, too, that it’s finally time and that she is leaving.
    “Good-bye,” she says. “Tell Jill thanks for supper last night. Tell her I said goodbye.”
    “I will,” I say. I stand there wanting to say something else. But I don’t know what. We keep looking at each other, trying to smile and reassure each other. Then something comes into her eyes, and I believe she is thinking about the highway and how far she is going to have to drive that day. She takes her eyes off me and looks down the road. Then she rolls her window up, puts the car into gear, and drives to the intersection, where she has to wait for the light to change. When I see she’s made it into traffic and headed toward the highway, I go back in the house and drink some coffee. I feel sad for a while, and then the sadness goes away and I start thinking about other things.
    A few nights later my mother calls to say she is in her new place. She is busy fixing it up, the way she does when she has a new place. She tells me I’ll be happy to know she likes it just fine to be back in sunny California. But she says there’s something in the air where she is living, maybe it’s pollen, that is causing her to sneeze a lot. And the traffic is heavier than she remembers from before. She doesn’t recall there being so much traffic in her neighborhood. Naturally, everyone still drives like crazy down there. “California drivers,” she says.
    “What else can you expect?” She says it’s hot for this time of the year. She doesn’t think the airconditioning unit in her apartment is working right. I tell her she should talk to the manager. “She’s never around when you need