A Mother's Regret

As soon as I arrived I knew something was strange. Only a single window in the house was lit. Normally Mom kept every room ablaze because the dark made her “nervous.” Nervous was the word she used, when really, she meant the dark frightened her.

Lots of things frightened her.

I grabbed a bag of hamburgers from the passenger seat and climbed from my 1969 Chevelle. The Chevy once belonged to my father. He was a classic car enthusiast and wanted to share his hobby with me, except he died when I was twelve and didn’t have much of a chance.

One evening Dad had a heart attack and died before the ambulance reached him. Mom started acting strange after he passed on. Though strange could easily be replaced with crazy.

I had driven across town to visit Mom for our usual Sunday dinner, but now that I was here I was reluctant to see her. Seeing her once a week was too much sometimes. I paused and took a good, long look at the house I had grown up in. It was a rambling Victorian with flaking white paint and a lawn in need of a mow. Unfortunately, the house didn't inspire many good memories.

That was when I heard it – a blast of loud music. I grimaced and clutched my ears, but the din continued without losing volume. The music was blasting inside my head.

At first it was so loud it was difficult for me to tell what it was, but after a tick I recognized the piece. It was Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor. I knew because Mom often listened to it on her record player.

Before I could well and truly panic the music went silent. With heart pounding, I tried to figure out what could have caused Mozart to blare in my head. Perhaps I imagined it. Or maybe the fillings in my teeth picked up a radio signal. I thought the latter was an urban myth, but what I had just experienced was very real. Wasn’t it?

Whatever caused the music, I couldn’t stand outside for the rest of the night. Gripping the bag of burgers with more force than necessary, I followed the stone path to the porch. Several bizarre items hung from the awning – chicken feet, polished rocks, egg shells, dried herbs, and bleached animal bones. Mom believed they would protect her from evil spirits. I made a face at them before I entered the house.

The foyer and connecting corridor was shadowy, and my footsteps echoed with an eerie resonance. More than once I thought this place would make a perfect set for a horror film. The wood floors groaned miserably anytime someone walked across them. The air was often chilly, and cross drafts sometimes made doors slam, seemingly of their own volition. Lights flickering from aged electrical wiring only added to the creepy atmosphere.

No lights were flickering now, however. In fact, it was dark enough I would have needed a flashlight to navigate if I didn’t know the house by heart. “Mom?”

“In here!”

I followed the voice to the sitting room and found Mom standing by the fireplace. In her arms was a stack of black spiral notebooks, which I recognized immediately. My eyes widened as she tossed the notebooks onto the flames.

“What are you doing? Your poem!” I cried.

By the time I reached her she had already gathered up a second armload of notebooks and was about to throw them into the fire as well. The coffee table behind her was covered in piles of them. How many had she already incinerated?

I grabbed her arm and blinked with surprise. She was as cold as an ice cube. But my touch had distracted her, and I was able to wrestle the notebooks away before she could destroy any more.

“Aren’t you the one constantly reminding me that I need to stop obsessing over this poem?” she asked.

Yes, I had told her that on a number of occasions. I sighed. “I never said you should burn it. You’ve been working on it for years.”

Since Dad died, to be precise.

“Exactly,” she said. “I’ve been working on one poem for ten years. I spend months anguishing over a single word. A single word, Celia. It’s not healthy.”

My brows furrowed. She sounded much too reasonable. Usually she fiercely defended her right to work on the poem, and yet, here she was torching her notebooks like she no longer had any use for them.

Taken aback by her peculiar behavior, I gave her a thorough once over and realized there were other differences about her, too. This was a woman who rarely changed out of her pajamas, and yet she wore a blue dress and matching heels. Even weirder, she had donned an apron, one of those cheesy aprons with KISS THE COOK written across it.

The more I scrutinized her, the more her appearance reminded me of a fifties housewife. Her short hair was curled in the style from the era. She was even wearing bright red lipstick and a string of pearls around her neck.

She hadn’t dressed up since Dad’s funeral.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Never felt better,” she said, and smiled. “I have a whole new lease on life. You’ll see.”

I had heard this before. Contrary to popular belief, people diagnosed with severe depression weren’t constantly depressed. Occasionally they tried to have normal lives…but with Mom, it never lasted long. In a week or two she would be back in her wrinkled pajamas, with no desire to crawl out of bed.

This was why I didn’t get my hopes up. I had gotten them up too many times as a kid, only to have them dashed. For brief periods she would act like a real mother. She made me breakfast before school, walked me out to the bus, helped me with homework, took me for ice cream…and I always hoped this good mother would stay.

Of course this never happened. Sooner or later she would revert to the way she was before - there in the flesh, but somehow a million miles away, and always obsessing over the accursed poem. In her eyes the poem would never be perfect, and she was trapped in a constant loop of writing and rewriting.

Meanwhile, I had to fend for myself. Sometimes my Aunt June, Mom’s older sister, stopped by to make sure I was properly fed and clothed, but otherwise I was on my own. I had to pay bills and grocery shop and call workmen when the house needed maintenance. It was a lot of responsibility for a girl in middle school.

“Why did you bring burgers?" Mom asked, and gestured to the bag I’d towed in. "I told you I cooked. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Your favorite.”

“You told me that last week when I canceled our dinner.” Guilt bubbled in my chest. I had made other plans last Sunday, even though she’d called, sounding bizarrely chipper, with the news that she cooked for the first time in years. Usually I brought food over for our Sunday dinners, since she had an aversion to the kitchen. “You cooked again? Mom, are you sure you’re alright?

She rolled her eyes. “You think something is wrong with me because I’m not acting like a mental patient. I’m up and out of bed and I’m happy for the first time in…well, since I can remember. I thought this is what you wanted.”

“It is what I wanted."

But it won’t last, I thought, and bitterness swelled in me.

“The meatloaf is almost ready.” She dropped a hand to my shoulder and squeezed. “I’ve made a pledge that I’m going to be the mother you always wanted, Celia. I’ve had problems in the past, but I plan to make them up to you tonight. Starting with dinner. Go wash up.” That said, she practically floated from the room.

My gaze dropped to the stack of black notebooks in my arms, and my curiosity was pricked. I had never read her poem; she forbade me from reading a single word. What was the poem about? Was it even any good?

She would have burned every version if I hadn’t stopped her. Surely if she meant to destroy her writing, she wouldn’t mind if I had a peek. I started to open one of the books, but shut it again. As curious as I was I wouldn’t invade her privacy. Instead I dropped the stack of notebooks onto the coffee table, where all the others were.

But as I walked across the hall, I questioned if I had made the right choice. How many times had I wondered what she was writing? How many times had I thought about reading it?

Inside the bathroom, I washed my hands and splashed cool water on my cheeks. Just as I was about to dry my wet skin with a hand towel, Mozart’s Requiem began blasting in my head again. The rising cacophony was like razors slicing at my brain matter. It was actually painful; I could imagine the sound waves shattering my skull from the inside.

As before, the music abruptly went quiet, and I was left reeling. I wasn’t sure how long the music had tormented me, but it seemed to have been an eternity. A dull throbbing pulsated in my temples, and my stomach flipped and flopped. I was afraid I would be sick.

Eventually the discomfort passed and I lifted my head. When I spotted my reflection in the mirror above the sink, I screamed.

My face was horribly deformed. The eyes were twice too large, and all black with no whites. The nose was long and sharp, the mouth was nearly lipless and twisted into a sneer. The chin was impossibly pointed.

I rushed out of the bathroom, with the memory of my hideous visage haunting me. I trembled, and my heart bashed against my rib cage. Was I going as crazy as my mother? Mental illness ran in families. Maybe she passed some of her defective genes to me.

Hesitantly I touched my face, half expecting to feel the long pointed nose, the freakishly large eyes, the lipless mouth, but my face felt as it normally would.

Surely there’s a rational explanation, I thought. You aren’t crazy. You AREN’T crazy. But I seemed to be trying to convince myself rather than merely stating a fact.

Before I could brood over it any further, Mom interrupted. “I heard a scream. Is everything okay?"

I managed to nod.

If someone asked me to confess my greatest fear, I would say I was terrified of becoming like my mother. Granted, to my knowledge she never hallucinated, but she certainly wasn’t the poster child for mental health. And here I was, hearing sounds that weren’t actually being made and seeing monsters when I looked in the mirror.

She pulled me into a hug, and her hands were cold enough I could feel their temperature through the fabric of my blouse. “I bet you’re starving. Your troubles won't seem as bad once you have a full stomach."

A full stomach wouldn’t help, but what else could I do but allow her to drag me to dinner? Perhaps I should have rushed to the phone and called a shrink, but really, if I had gone this mad I figured there was a padded cell somewhere with my name on it. I would be talking to a shrink soon enough.

As we neared the dining room I began to hear a sort of buzzing. I worried I was hearing sounds that weren’t really there, until Mom guided me over the threshold. The long table was set with her finest china and platters of food. Only the food was spoiled and teeming with flies. The flies skittered across rotting meatloaf and moldy bread. They buzzed round bowls filled with putrefying mashed potatoes and gravy.

Mom pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit as though nothing was amiss. Her smile widened, growing almost clown-like, and a chill rocketed down my spine.

“How long has this food been here?” I blurted.

“What do you mean? I cooked it for you tonight.”

Was I hallucinating again? I shut my eyes, and when I opened them the rotten food was still on the table. The flies were still buzzing. And Mom still had that unnerving, clownish smile on her face.

“Oh! I forgot to light the candles. You sit, and I’ll go get a lighter,” she said. “I want everything to be perfect.” She glided out before I could stop her.

Speaking of the candles...there were three in silver candlesticks, but they had burned to nubs. White wax had melted down the sides and pooled on the table near their bases. At some point she had lit the candles, perhaps when she first set the table, but judging by the condition of the food that was days ago. Was it last Sunday when she told me she’d cooked for me? Had this meal been sitting out on the table for a week, left to rot because I made other plans?

I stood there gaping at the table for an indeterminate period, and gradually became aware that Mom had been MIA for a while. I went in the direction she had gone and ended up in the kitchen, terrified I might see something even more disturbing than the scene in the dining room.

Mom was kneeling on the ground with her back to me. I thought she might be praying until she grabbed a tiny, white ball from the floor -  a pearl. Several more pearls were scattered around her bent legs.

“My necklace broke,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t even touch it.”

“Let me help.”

She waved me off. “I’m fine. Go back to the table. I’ll be there in a second.”

But I was already approaching.

“Go!” she said, and I heard real panic in her voice.

And then I heard something else…something I had been hearing throughout the evening. Mozart’s Requiem. Only this time it wasn’t blasting inside my skull. This time it was actually playing. The sound was faint and muffled through the cellar door.

“Don’t go in there, Celia.” Suddenly Mom was standing in front of me, blocking the way to the basement. “Please don’t go in there.”

“What are you hiding?”

Her shoulders slumped. “I guess the time has come then.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I said I wanted to be a good mother to you tonight, I meant it. Why don’t you forget about the cellar? We can eat a nice meal and talk. I don’t want you to see yet. I made a mistake. A very big mistake that I regret terribly. I don’t want you to hate me.”

“What’s in the cellar?” I asked. I reached for the door handle.

She snatched my hand from the air before I could make contact. “Please don’t go in there. Not yet. Let me make amends first.”

But I yanked away from her and opened the door. There was a brief landing and wooden stairs that descended into the blackness below. Mozart’s Requiem was louder now. And I smelled something…a horrible reek that made terror shoot through me. I covered my nose, and bile seared the back of my throat.

My knees were a bit wobbly, so I held onto the railing as I moved down the cellar stairs. There was a light bulb alit, but it was not bright enough to scare the darkness away. I couldn’t see much of anything until I reached the foot of the stairs.

The basement was unfinished. The stone walls glistened with moisture, and the ceiling was crisscrossed with exposed piping.

Dangling from one of those pipes was a body. The feet hovered several inches over the concrete floor, and a small stool was overturned nearby.

In the dimness the body was but a silhouette, a suggestion of a figure. I crept closer, each step taken with extreme reluctance. I don’t want to see, I thought. I don’t want to see. But still I closed in, hoping it was a mannequin no matter how unlikely it was that Mom would hang such a thing in the basement…

Finally I was able to make out the face…the bloated face of my mother, frozen into a grimace of pain. A thick rope was wound around her neck. She wore a blue dress, and atop it, an apron that read, KISS THE COOK. Her hair was curled, and a trace of red lipstick was smeared on her decaying mouth.

I scrambled back, but in my panic I tripped over my own two feet. I fell to my bottom and my teeth cracked together. I covered my eyes, praying that I was crazy, praying that I was hallucinating again.

A moment passed, and then another. It can’t be true. I was just talking to Mom! I’m seeing things again. She’s not dead.

But the smell. How do I explain the smell?

I forced myself to take a second look. She was still there, dangling from the pipe. I turned my face away.

Tears blurred my vision, and through the blur I noticed an object within reach – her old record player, which had been playing Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor over and over. Who knew how many times the song had repeated.

I pounced to my feet. I ran up the stairs and into the kitchen as fast as I could. “Mom!”

There was no answer, but I began to search for her anyhow. As I charged through the kitchen, I noticed there were no pearls on the floor. Not a single one.

She wasn’t in the dining room, though the rotten food was. She wasn’t in the bathroom where I had seen a monster instead of my own reflection. She wasn’t in the sitting room, either, but there was an item waiting for me. Minutes before, dozens of her notebooks were on the coffee table, but now there was only one. I grabbed it and pressed it to my chest like it was a protective talisman.

The fireplace was bare and dusty. It looked as if a fire hadn’t been made in years, when a few moments ago a fire had been crackling away. I had watched her toss the notebooks into the flames.

“Mom?” I whispered.

Nothing but silence in return.

I could still smell it, that horrible death smell. How had I not smelled it before I went into the basement? The stench was so cloying it was difficult to breathe. I dashed to the front door and out to the porch, gulping in lungfuls of fresh air.

Was Mom really dead? How had I spoken to her? She had touched me…we had hugged…how was any of this possible?

Desperate for an answer, any answer, I tore open the notebook and read the first page, which was lined with her tiny script. When I finished the first page, I turned to the next. The words in both versions were almost identical, save a few changes here and there. Horrified, I flipped to several pages at random, and the pattern repeated itself. I was certain that if I examined her other notebooks the same would hold true.

Mom’s “poem” was not a poem at all. What she had been writing for the last ten years, over and over, was a suicide note.


Word count: 3267