Nice to Meet You

Nice to Meet You

It had been nineteen years since Boyd believed in Santa Claus. It was the same amount of time since he had believed in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.  His mother had sat him down across from her at the yellow formica kitchen table.
She looked at him for awhile.  She cleared her throat.
“Now, Boyd, honey.  It’s time that we clear up a few things.  Seven is pretty old for believing in Santa Claus, don’t you think?”
She took his hands in hers and began rubbing his scrawny wrist with her thumbs.  When he didn’t say anything she went on, “I just want you to know that you can always come to me for the truth about things...” She ducked her head to look him in the eyes, but he looked away.
She scraped her chair back and stood up.  As she began pulling out pots and pans to begin dinner he looked at his wrist where her thumb had been a moment before.    It seemed so obvious that he felt a little stupid.
Now, if you were to ask Boyd, he would say that he admired his mother for being so forthright with him.  Then he would say that he wasn’t one to live in the past and he would smile ironically.
In the evenings, when he got off the day shift he’d come home to the heavy warm smells of dinner cooking and the neon scream of cartoons.  He would take a long shower and then sit down to eat with his family.  His wife would tell him about funny things the boys had said or done or she would describe, in detail, how they had conspired to drive her crazy.  He would nod and smile or frown, when appropriate. The baby smeared food in his hair and the older boy was coaxed into eating a vegetable.  He would give the boys a bath while she washed the dishes.  This was his favorite time of the day.  He would splash dinosaurs in the water and soap up little arms and legs while his oldest told him about the newest toy he had seen on television.  As he wrapped them in towels he would put his nose to their warm, damp hair and breathe in deeply the warm scent of hay.  After the boys were in bed his wife would watch crime shows on television while he looked at auction sites on the computer.
On the nights when he worked late he would come into a gently snoring house.  The scent of garlic and onions would be released as he removed the steamy tent of plastic wrap from his plate.  He sat at the table and ate, listening to the refrigerator hum.  He would look around the small, but clean kitchen and everything was fine, really, but his heart would begin to pound like it, alone, knew that something was terribly wrong.  The doctor had told him it was a mild panic attack that he was experiencing and that he should do something to relax.  He reached into the cupboard above the refrigerator and pulled down the bottle of bargain whiskey.  When he logged on to the computer he would already have a nice buzz going.  He’d spend the next few hours looking for old punk albums that he used to own.  He had slowly sold off his collection when their first son was born and they were broke.  Now the albums were worth hundreds.

Shortly after he turned twenty-four his mother, who had mostly raised him alone, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  It had begun with her losing track in the middle of a conversation.  They’d be talking about the wasps that had built a nest in her chimney and then she would stop to inform him, “You know, one day you’re going to have to pay the piper, Boyd.”  She would look meaningfully at him, as though he would understand what she meant.  This had been her favorite expression when he was in school and he had hated it then.  He hated it much more now, as he actually was paying the piper and didn’t like to be reminded.
Boyd and his family had taken over her house and now she lived at an assisted living complex.  Eventually she would have to be moved to a home.  On her good days this seemed ridiculous as she had only just turned fifty.  Each floor in the building was staffed with a nurse and an aide who regularly checked up on the tenants.  Other than that and the large number of old people wandering the halls, it seemed like any other apartment complex.  His mother’s apartment looked like a hotel room with a kitchenette, except for the woven rugs that covered the walls.
When he was finishing his first year of high school she had begun taking adult education classes.  She had done fairly good work in painting watercolors, photography, and sculpture before settling on weaving, or “textiles” as she called it.  She had been able to support herself for awhile with brightly colored rugs that looked like they came from an island, but now she only made natural rugs that were woven out of found materials like horse hair and then strung with shells and feathers.  When he looked at them he couldn’t help but picture an old woman living in the woods, muttering to herself as she poked at the mud.  The only place that could sell them was the head shop downtown.
The day before he had visited her and she had looked happier than usual.  She didn’t normally look unhappy, just busy, but on this visit she managed to sit and even to look relaxed over their cups of coffee.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” she mentioned nonchalantly, as though this were no big deal.
“That’s great, mom!”  She had been alone for a long time.  She had divorced his dad when he was still a toddler and had, as far as he knew, not dated since.
“He reminds me a little of you, actually.  Not Oedipally, though.” She smiled as she tucked a ghost strand of silvery brown hair behind her ear.  She kept forgetting that she had cut it short the year before.
It wasn’t until he was driving home that he realized that he felt relieved of a burden, knowing that his mom had another man in her life.  If he hadn’t been so happy for her he may have felt a little guilty.

On his next visit she was wearing make-up, though it looked strange on her.  The colors were outdated and the texture a little flaky, but he could tell that she felt pretty by the way she used her hands as she spoke.  Small, graceful flourishes and a flirtatious tilt of her head as she smiled.
He teased her,  “Why mom, are you smitten?”
“Oh, I believe I am smited, Boyd.”  Tilt and smile.
“Who is this mysterious stranger anyway?  Does he live in the building?”  He pictured a man who looked a lot like Mr.Rogers putting on his cardigan to walk down the hallway and knock at his neighbor’s door.
“Oh, you know?  I don’t really know where he lives!  He just pops by all the time, so it must be near by.”
“And are his intentions honorable?” 
“I told you that you would do well on that test, now didn’t I?  We should celebrate...” and she was off looking in the refrigerator.  “Now where is that cake that we had left over...”
He was used to these disturbing shifts by now and it upset her when he forced her back on track, though the doctor had told him that he should try.  He just couldn’t stand the way her face would empty and then fill with embarrassment.  Better to just follow along where she went.  “Oh, mom.  I think we finished it last night.”
On the way home thought about his own first love.  They had met during his senior year of high school and immediately after graduation had moved into a tiny, roach-infested studio together.  The apartment was above a Chinese restaurant and they would spend afternoons laying in bed, legs tangled together, and write songs that were complimented by the metallic watery crash of the busy kitchen below.  After two years together she had crushed him under her grungy combat boot when she moved to LA with another guy.
Shortly after she left him his band dumped him, saying that they wanted to take the music in a new direction and he was too resistant to change.  He was the one who had started the band, but he acted like he wanted out anyway.  He moved back in with his mom and began working at a shiny new kitchen downtown where he began seeing one of the waitresses.  He had drunk too much one night while they sat at the restaurant bar after hours.  She had just nodded and smiled like she too had been there as he spit out all of the rage that he felt. She was cute, like a plump peach.  Later he had sneaked her into his old bedroom, which had become cluttered with all of the furniture from his apartment.  He had moved his wobbly old kitchen table to block the door, every movement exaggerated in his attempt to be quiet.
A few months later, he was still seeing her.  He couldn’t think of any reason not to.  She made him feel important, even necessary.  So when she excitedly told him she was pregnant he willingly went along with the wedding plans.  He quit the restaurant and began looking for a job with benefits.
Four and a half years passed quickly and even if he sometimes felt unsatisfied, it hadn’t been unpleasant.  Meanwhile his ex-girlfriend’s band had become big in the Indie scene and, on those nights when he needed the whiskey to relax his racing heart, he would inevitably end up on her band’s website.  Worse than his jealousy, though, was the frustration that he was just one of the many faceless fans who logged on to discuss the latest album.  A couple of times he joined the chat room to brag that he had been her high school sweetheart.  The responses were either questions such as "was he the one she wrote about in that song" (he had helped write that song) and "what was she like in bed" (he still had enough pride to not respond) to disbelieving jeers.  It had left him feeling dirty.
When he finally crawled into bed he would grab and pull at the flesh of his sleeping wife, fucking her with eyes clenched shut and his breath nearly flammable.  She attributed these sessions to his being drunk and allowed him to pretend he didn’t remember in the morning.
One night over dinner his wife asked him how his mother was doing.  He had visited her the afternoon before.
“Oh yeah,” he put down his drumstick and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, “She’s met someone.”
“Evan, don’t you dare throw that!”  The baby steered the fist of peas to his mouth, as though that had been his intention all along.
“She’s met someone!  Really?  Well, that’s great!  What’s his name?  Oh, I hope it’s not that weird old man that’s always sitting in the lobby.  Is it?”
“No, no.  I don’t think so.  I don’t know his name, actually.  But she said she thinks he lives nearby.  She seems happy, you know?”
“What if it is him?  Or worse even?  Some guy who takes advantage of old ladies.  Like a scam artist or something.  It happens all of the time.  Just last week there was this guy on my show...Darby, you eat three more bites of that before your excused.”
“Jesus, do you have to be so negative?  Let’s just be happy for her.  What does she have to steal anyway?”  Boyd resumed eating.  She got up and began wrapping up the leftovers that would be his lunch the next day.  He could tell that he’d hurt her feelings so he got the boys into the bath and avoided her for the rest of the night.
Later, in front of the computer he thought about what she had said.  Maybe he should be more concerned.  His mother wasn’t exactly familiar with men.  She would be a perfect target for someone who didn’t know that her only son had to supplement her pension to pay for the apartment.  He decided that he would go back to visit her the next day.

It was two days before he was able to stop by.  He was surprised to see her still wearing a nightgown this late in the afternoon.  As she walked ahead of him he could see white heels flashing like Chiclets under the hem.  She went to the kitchen counter where she continued to chop some mushrooms.
“Did I come at a bad time, Ma?” Boyd went to the refrigerator and opened it.  Inside there was a full six-pack of beer and he pulled one out.
“Oh, no, you’re fine.  I’m sorry I can’t sit and talk, but I’m having company over.”
“Is it your boyfriend?  Should I go?”
“He’s not due for another hour.”  She turned around, still holding the knife, “How did you know about him?”
Boyd laughed, “Mom, put the knife down.  You’re scaring me.  You told me about him the last time I was here, remember?  Did you find out where he lives?  What do you know about this guy, really?”
She turned back to the mushrooms.  “I told you about him?  Well, I did find out that he lives here, in the building, and I know that he has been a widow for years.  He reminds me of you, his eyes, I mean.  Let’s see.  He thinks that I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread.”  She looked over her shoulder at Boyd, her eyebrows daring him to disagree.
“No argument.  He sounds great.  When do I get to meet the competition anyway?”  He looked at her over the top of his can and waited for a response that didn’t come right away.
“I guess you could meet him tonight.  Do you have to get going?”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s all right if I stay.”  His mother told him to call his wife and let her know, which he did before going to sit in the living room.  The kitchen was open onto the living room and he could hear his mom opening a can.  He pulled one of the photo albums from under the glass topped coffee table.
“Since when do you drink beer anyway!”  He called in to her as he turned the pages.
“Since when do I have to answer to you!  I like one now and again.”
“Jeez, why so snappy?”
She came to the doorway, wiping her hands down the sides of her nightgown.
“I’m sorry.  I guess I’m nervous.  Things are getting pretty serious, Boyd, and I think that...”
Boyd stopped smiling, “It’s o.k., mom.  I understand.  Now, don’t get upset but I think that you forgot to get dressed today.  You look really pretty, though!”  She looked down at herself and started laughing.  She lifted one foot out and wiggled it around with the shoe then went into the bedroom and closed the door.  He let out the breath that he had been holding and smiled again as he looked back down at the pictures in his lap.
There were only a few photos of his dad, but in each one he was smiling and looking at Boyd’s mom, as though he was trying to catch her eye to share a joke.  She was never looking at him.  His father had moved to Seattle after the divorce, where he had worked his way up to manager of a sporting goods store.  Boyd had gone to visit him for a month every summer.  For the first week his dad would take him to all of his favorite restaurants and to movies and games and would proudly show him off at work.  They would go shopping on his dad’s discount for footballs, bats, and other sports equipment.  Boyd didn’t even play any sports, but while there he would pretend to be excited and would even vow to himself to join a team the next school year.  The next three weeks would be a loss of momentum and they would each retreat to their own space in the small apartment.  Eventually, he would even stop pretending to watch the games that were always on and would leave the television turned to MTV.
The next set of pictures showed him gradually growing up.  First, his ears grew, then his nose.  His hair was big and his face always puffy.  Then you could see the rest of his face growing to catch up and he lost his padding of baby fat.  His hair grew irritable under a thick layer of gel, poking up in disgruntled spikes and his sparkling smile, formerly glinting with braces, became a closed sneer.  By graduation, the sneer had been replaced with the cynical smile of someone well traveled, though he hadn't been anywhere.  One photo showed him in his purple cap and gown, leaning heavily on his girlfriend.  She was wearing a T-shirt and her combat boots, but she had put a skirt on for the occasion.  She was a year older and had graduated the year before.  She sat up in the bleachers with his mom, who had repeated all day that she couldn’t believe that he’d actually made it to graduation.  In the picture he was leaning toward the camera smiling like a game show host, while Sammie squinted up at him.
On the next page was a photo that he had never seen before.  It was dark and shadowy and the bottom half looked like a dark forest of arms and elbows.  The pit.  Beyond that was the stage and there he was, yelling into the microphone.  His body was twisted to the side as he leaned forward to throttle the stand.  He was wearing his favorite old pair of jeans and his dyed black hair was dripping down over his eyes.  He hadn’t known that his mother had ever seen him perform and he tried to imagine her paying the cover and moving through the smoky clumps of people all by herself.  He wondered if she had been scared, disturbed, or amused.  Probably a little of all three, he decided.
The next few pages were devoted to his wedding.  He started to flip past those, but stopped at one in particular, where he was standing on the steps of the church with his new bride.  Though it was cold she had refused to cover her simple white dress.  Her arms were clasping each other and it looked like she was stomping one of her red-shoed feet.  He’d forgotten those red shoes.  Her mother had tried and tried to change her mind, but she had insisted.  He tried to remember if he had ever asked her about the significance of the red shoes or if she had ever told him.  Someone had to remind him to put his arm around her for the picture.  He was looking down at her with his eyebrows raised, as though he had no idea what he was doing there.  Her face was cracking into a smile that was huge and goofy, really happy, and he felt a rush of guilt.  What kind of jerk couldn’t even manage to pretend to smile for his own wedding picture?  He started to flip back to see if he was smiling in any of them, but the only one he could find had been because his buddy  had made a joke.
“Maybe I got the day wrong or something?” His mom sat down in the chair next to the couch, now dressed in a plain navy skirt and a bright ethnic print top.  Boyd closed the album and set it on the table, surprised to see that over an hour had passed.  His mother sat with her hands in her lap and her knees together.  She looked so young and lost that it made him ache.
“He could just be late.  Or maybe he got the day wrong.”  He didn’t think that he was helping any.  It was getting darker outside and the light through the sheer curtains made everything look dry and dusty.  His stomach began the low kind of growl that you can feel before it begins and he tightened his muscles to silence it.  That never worked and the angry rumble filled the quiet room.  His mother didn’t seem to notice.
“Do you know why I left your father?”  She nodded at the photo album as if it had been a question.  She had given only vague hints before, but he had his ideas.
She was looking at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look back.  He imagined his father coming home from working a hard day, looking forward to playing with his baby boy.  Boyd could see him smiling, as he walked unsuspectingly into a room where he took too much space and was only in the way.  He tried to imagine not being able to see his own boys every night, but his mind wouldn’t allow it.  The image would bounce away like two magnets sliding away from their own invisible source of resistance.  His stomach growled, but this time he welcomed the interruption.
“Do you think that he would mind if we ate now?  I’m kind of starving here.”  He stood up and began moving towards the kitchen.
“Oh no, of course he wouldn’t mind!  I don’t think that he’s coming anyway.”  She looked at the phone as she came into the kitchen and he could tell that she wanted to pick up the receiver to check for the dial tone.
The table was already set for three.  They sat down across from each other, leaving the chair between them, and reached for the serving spoons at the same time.  They both withdrew and then reached again for the same spoon, laughing.
“You help yourself.  I’ll get the noodles,” his mother pulled a large blue bowl towards her and arranged a few strands of pasta on her plate.  While they ate he told her about what his boys had been up to, a new tooth for the baby and his older son learning to tie his shoes.  Sitting at the dinner table alone with his mother, he was feeling more and more like the child he had been.  He kept the topic on his own children to keep himself from shrinking.  He was sharing the story of something funny his oldest had said, when his mother interrupted the tentative weaving of her noodles.
“I’m sorry, Boyd, but have I met these friends of yours?”
She looked so young still, with her eyebrows arching up together, that he had to wonder for a moment if perhaps he was confused.  There were hardly any lines on her face and he imagined each wrinkle fading with its corresponding memory until, smooth and pink, she emerged as a young girl.
“Mom, my boys.  I’m talking about my kids, your grandchildren,” he reached across the casserole dish for her hand.  He squeezed her thin fingers, holding on until she made the transition.  There were the lines drawn from her nose to her mouth again.  The “becoming a grandmother” lines.  He wondered which wrinkle was his.  Maybe the one between her eyebrows.
“I know that,” she pulled her hand away and rubbed her fingers together, “Good Lord, Boyd.”  He looked down to his almost empty plate and began eating again, though he wasn’t really hungry anymore.
When they were finished he helped her with the dishes.  This simple act of combined usefulness cheered them both and soon they were laughing about the mohawk he had come home with in the tenth grade.
“Oh, I tried so hard to be mad.  Your ears stuck out and you looked just so much like an angry little chicken.  It was funny really.  And then you had a Band-Aid stuck to the side of your head and it just broke my heart.  Here you were, trying to look so tough and scary, and that little Band-Aid.”
He laughed so hard that it began to feel like he might cry, “Hey, you’re telling me that I didn’t look tough and scary?  The girls sure liked it.  At least, it was a great conversation piece.  Usually started with, “Man, your mom must have been mad!””  They laughed some more.
They finished the last few pots and set them in the drying rack.  She had a dishwasher, but rarely used it.  Mostly she used it to store the larger cookpots that wouldn’t fit in the cupboards.  He turned off the faucet and the room emptied of noise abruptly.
“I guess I should get home.”  They were walking to the front door.  “Are you going to be all right?”  He looked at her dress and her heels.
“I’ll be fine.  He’ll probably pop by as soon as I get into my ugly old scrubs.”  She smiled, “He has impeccable timing that way.”
“Well it’s his loss.  You look great.”  He gave her a kiss.
“Hey, thank you, Boyd.  It was nice having dinner together.”  She sounded surprised.
“Just like old times, Mom.  I love you.”

When he got home the kids were in bed and his wife sat on the tattered old couch that his mother had left behind when she moved.  She was watching Unsolved Mysteries and the voice of the announcer, ridiculously ominous, warned them of the danger that a young girl was in.  Without looking away from the television, she asked him about the dinner.
“It was fine, but he didn’t show.  It was just the two of us.”  Boyd came and sat next to her, closer than usual.
She pulled her feet up and turned to him, hugging her knees, “Oh, that’s too bad!  Why didn’t he make it?”  Her face, scrubbed clean, looked so concerned that he smiled.
“I don’t know.  He just never showed.  Mom thought that maybe one of them had gotten the day wrong.  She seemed o.k. with it.”
“So he wasn’t even home when she called him?  What is up with this guy?  You’re poor mom!  How sad.”  Everything she said fully echoed the sentiment behind it.  Anyone she talked to, even if they spoke another language, would understand what she was saying.  Babies seemed to love her and he suspected that this was largely the reason why.
He scooted closer to her and pulled her feet into his lap.  The reenactment of the murder distracted them for a few minutes.  He sat with his hands on her legs, as though he wasn’t sure what to do with them now that he had them.  He was like an actor whose role was to be affectionate and he had forgotten his lines.  He put her feet back on the couch, as though he had remembered something that he had to do, and got up.  She whined a little and wiggled her toes, but kept watching her show.
“I don’t know why you always watch this crap.  It’s probably why you’re always so pessimistic.” And he turned the computer on.  A few minutes later the t.v. was turned off and, as his wife left the room to go to bed, she responded uncharacteristically, “At least when I watch those shows someone is worse off than me.”
He raised his eyebrows at the computer screen and continued to move the mouse around in aimless circles.

The next afternoon, at four o’clock, after his early shift, he drove over to his mom’s apartment.  He stepped into the elevator and wondered at the new graffiti scribbled on the wall.  Maybe teenagers, bored and riding the elevator while mom visited with grandma.  He stepped off on the 3rd floor to the smells of bleach and something sour underneath.  The industrial brown carpet was more worn in the middle, showcasing the stains that appeared every few feet.  He should talk to the manager about keeping this place up.  It was a little depressing.  He got to his mother’s door and knocked.
It took her a little longer than usual to answer.  The door was metal and had a peephole much higher than an older person would be able to reach.  When she finally opened up she looked pleased to see him.
“Again?  Well, aren’t I the lucky one?”  She held the door open and he stepped in.  She closed the door.  He remained standing to show that he was only stopping by.
“How are you, mom?  I felt bad leaving you here last night.  Did your friend ever call or come by?”
“Oh, as a matter of fact, he’s here right now!”  She waved towards the bedroom and grabbed his hand and pulled, like a small child.  He stood his ground, imagining a naked man sitting in his mother’s bed with the sheets pulled neatly up.  He could see them shaking hands while his mother fussed about, folding pants onto a chair.
“I don’t want to interrupt, mom.  I just wanted to check on you, say hi and all.”
She had already moved into the bedroom, “Don’t be silly, Boyd.  Come in here.  He wants to meet you!”
He poked his head around the frame, ready to pull it back like a turtle, but the Cherry bed that had been her mother’s was neatly made up and empty.  The bathroom door was open and dark.  He came in further, but could see no one else but his mother.  She stood around the corner, in front of the matching cherry bureau that was attached to a large mirror.
“Here he is!  I was telling him all about you.”
He wasn’t sure who she meant.  She was speaking into the mirror.  He looked at her cautiously, like a mother who puts her hand to a child’s head to check for fever, but she really was looking into the mirror.  It didn’t take him long to understand as he watched her smile and run her fingers along the top of the dresser.  There was no confusion or doubt, just a sparkling light he had never seen in her eyes, as she presented to him, herself, her own image, as her new love.  She smiled proudly and looked to Boyd to say something.  Concern skipped across her face as she frowned,  “Well, don’t be rude, Boyd.  Say something.”
Without looking away from her, he managed to smile and say, “Nice to meet you.”