Within minutes of my arrival, my mother called, asking if I’d remembered a card. “Yes,” I whispered, cupping a hand over my opposite ear to keep her reverberating in my skull. “I filled it out this morning. Slipped a twenty in. The usual, Ma, you know this.” Which was true: Never show up empty handed, especially when money could be passed from one palm to another or vice versa. The gilded lesson of her motherhood.
“Good. How’s the venue?”
“It’s…” I faltered, then gazed around. The ceiling vaulted from inches above my head to miles—that’s certainly what it felt like. Wooden outlines filled with chipped and speckled and dotted gold comprised their slope, but the walls were stark white, as were the windows. Either they were frosted or a blizzard began since my mother called, but the windows seemed clear and nothing moved outside and the windows somehow moved no closer to my line of sight than the periphery.
More notably, no other souls seemed to be in the building. I stood alone in front of unopened doors.
Finally, I replied, “The venue’s fine, Ma. It’s nice. Has this very old, very grand feel, like a gauche Gatsby.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” she answered. “What kind of party was it again?”
Try as I might, I couldn’t recall. The invitation, which I held in my left hand, was blank. I tried to check the time, all the while my mother continuing to badger in my ear about some event or other she attended recently, got hammered at, and wound up vomiting in the parking lot after. My watch wasn’t ticking. “I had a really fine time,” she said. “God, I don’t know what came over me, but the beers, they kept on coming, and I kept on drinking. Someone might’ve spiked one. I’m not too sure. I could’ve had a few too many, I suppose. But I don’t seem like that type of person, do I? The uncontrollable drunk kind? I don’t know, what do you think?”
“No. Maybe. Listen, I’ll have to call you back, Mom.”
“Okay, well, when you do, I’ll tell you all about my gallivant to Amy’s. I used to go there so much when I was younger. That was a real spot. You know, a beer there used to be half…”
She proceeded to talk about her trip to Amy’s. I pulled the phone from my ear and let her go for a minute, only hearing the muffled sound of her speaking through my pocket. Another minute, and she paused, for breath or a response, and I clicked the line dead. It always worked out better this way, letting her peter out on her own. We would have less to contend with on her next call.
A pop cracked through the air, like the room’s air pressure suddenly changed. Three people appeared before my eyes. They radiated light, a warm glow doubled by the contrast in the ceiling and tripled by the world beyond the windows. All three—what I could now see were a father, mother, and child—were clad in suits of brown tweed and tan string, complete with a matching vest and a pair of brown leather shoes and a tie, one color for each: red the father, blue the mother, yellow the son. As I continued watching, the color of the ties began to change like light in a kaleidoscope, first navy appearing on the older man, then the child, then the child’s tie bearing the mother’s inherited coral color, then once more become golden. Each became a gradient of another color, and on and on they went with every passing blink, keeping their attire fresh at every renewed glance.
“So glad you could make it,” the wife said. She tried to say my name, but it seemed to lodge in her throat, so she retreated behind a tight-lipped grin.
Peering at each of their faces, I had the strangest sense of unknown familiarity to each of them. The father’s protruding features, his ears and eyes highlighting the sunken, baggy eyes, his face as pale as the walls, the mother’s soft, full cheeks reminiscent of a Cadbury egg, and their kid’s wide-eyed, excited expression, all rang within not only a measure of truth, but of relatability. It was how I felt gazing at old pictures, at first not knowing the people captured, only to realize that they were my grandparents all along, at an age much younger than people believe their grandparents had ever been. Having seen said photos of my grandparents, I knew these were not them, and the child being neither my father nor my mother nor any uncles or aunts, but this lingering sense of acquaintance wouldn’t shake. I asked if I knew them, and the mother replied, “Of course. Why else would we invite you to our son’s birthday party?”
Hearing what the event was struck me as odd: For a grand room like this, to have so few people, and the single attendee be an adult much older than the child before me, made little sense. No signs adorned the walls, no decorations announced the occasion, only a colossus of empty space, at the shortest end of which stood four people, four people who apparently knew each other, and I who knew neither the rest of the party nor myself.
“How do we know each other?” I probed. The parents glanced at each other, then began to laugh. The temperature of the room dropped a good ten degrees. All the while, they’re staring, each of them, right at me, a glassy look over their eyes, a half-formed smile on each of their lips. Even while his forebearers shot their sly peep, the son’s eyes remained locked onto my chest. Their cheeks looked plumper and ruddier than I remembered them being, as if they were now puffed against a cold wind howling. Perhaps that was the noise now invading my sphere, that of wind slamming against the side of a building, rattling the windows in their sills, leaving a chill in the air and the spine.
The atmosphere broke; again, a phone rang. This time, from one on the wall, not my pocket. It’s a pay phone, old even for the deceased public good, encased in a wooden box identical to the type used on the ceiling. None of the family seemed engaged to answer. I couldn’t tell what they were doing, or meant to be doing, really. I took a step—only one—and found myself with the phone in my hand, and my mother on the other line.
“I thought you were going to be home by now,” she barked. “Where are you?”
“At the party.”
“Party? What party?” My vision suddenly went black. My eyes were open, I could feel, but they saw nothing. A dull roar, like the wind, only softer and more persistent, an undercurrent of sound, began to blow between my ears. My blood rushed, attempting to stop-gap the flow, and a tension built in my temples, a searing hot line straight across my forehead like a crown of thorns. Crucify me, mother, for I will sin against thee. “The party I told you about the last time you called,” I answered. “It’s only been a few minutes.”
“You haven’t called in weeks. I’ve been worried.” She sounded more irate than concerned, the latter only poking through when she pushed it. “Where are you? I tried calling work, your apartment office, even, and they couldn’t put me through to you. Did I do something to offend you?” Without realizing, I had turned to try and gaze back at the mother of the party; while not being able to see, her outline appeared to shimmer. How sleepy this stranger seemed, how soft and caring and glad, of course, to see me, the voice inhabiting the genuine emotion behind it, even with the suddenly harsh laugh she and her husband emitted, and how loud my mother seemed by comparison, her speech swaddling my every thought, every breath, making each more labored and focused on her, matching her pace. “Are you there?” she asked again. I hadn’t heard her first check-in, not clearly, anyway. Every part of me felt compressed, hogtied into discomfort.
“No, I’m not,” I barked back. “Stop calling. Please. I can’t take this.” I slammed the phone on the receiver, the plastic and metal and mechanics inside making a sharp, rattling ting, like a musical triangle, and my vision cleared. The room returned, the same wood and gold panels above the stark-white walls and windows, but the affair shrank, in area and volume. Now, I stood at one wall, only three or so paces away from the couple, now reduced to being sans child, and both having shed their jackets, the top buttons of their shirts come undone, and their ties a slurry of their previous tried, slanted lines of red and blue overlaid with specks of yellow.
“Where’s the child?” I asked. They didn’t answer. They smiled—or rather the wife smiled. Was the husband sneering, or was he in pain? His lips parted ever so slightly, trying to mouth soundless words, I believed, but his locked teeth remained a jail for the ever-so-necessary linguist: the tongue. His wife continued her stare, her face unchanging, but her eyes flickered between warm affection and cold, dreaded hatred, all beneath that glassy-eyed gaze from before.
I wondered what they did when I wasn’t around.
“Where’ s the child?” I repeated. “Where is he?”
Again, they said nothing, but they took a step forward, closing the gap between us by a third. I took my eyes off of them, only for a moment, to look for an exit. The door I believed I entered from was still there. If not, a window, into the white nothing beyond.
Nothing happened. My heart beat pounded, once, twice, three times, and the stare-down continued. Then they raised their arms, slowly, but strained, like it took all of their effort to accomplish this moment of rebellion. I didn’t blink. My eyes began to water. Their arms were leveling off. Their hands lifted. A sharp flick of the wrist, a long, low creak, and their fingers unholstered. They pointed. Pointed at me. Pointed past me. Pointed through me.
The phone rang. Behind me once more. It was a rotary, seafoam green with a coral-shaped holster and shells lining the receiver. I picked it up, said, “Hello?”
“It’s been a month. Why haven’t you returned my calls?” My mother. Again. I could hear the wet, snot-laden tears through the receiver. My cheek felt wet, from near my ear, though, not the eye. I poked it, licked it—salt. Worse than sweat. “We spoke a few minutes ago,” I answered, my teeth grinding through each word.
“No. It’s been a month. I think I’d know the last time I spoke to you. Are you calling me a liar?”
“I’m not, I’m only telling you that-”
“Don’t snap at me. Show some respect. I’m your mother, for fuck’s sake. Now, where are you?”
I didn’t know. Not the full answer. I could tell her the room I was in, but not the name of the building, or none that I was familiar with, nor the street name, nor any landmarks I might’ve passed. In truth, I wasn’t sure how I got here. It was like I popped into existence in this room. Like I was born here. My hesitation led to an exasperated sigh on her end. I held the receiver a few inches from my head, lost in my thoughtful search, but hearing that gasp of breath annoyed me. Everything became shrouded by the pain arcing once more across my forehead. Intensifying with each moment, with each word my body tuned out from my mother’s broadcast, the fire began to burn so hot that my eyes lolled, unable to focus, and when the fuel had dimmed enough so I could see again, my mother stood at my side. “Get off the damn phone and speak to me. Now.” It was an order. I threw the phone, the receiver landing nowhere near its base, and hissed, “You do not boss me around anymore.” I turned, facing her, but peering beyond, hoping to apologize to the couple, but they were gone, vanished entirely from the room without so much as a carefully opened creaky door or a hasty look of farewell and good luck. Right when I thought we were hitting it off.
“Why are you so incessantly trying to talk to me?” I growled, but when I took in my mother’s face, I could only tell it was her by her outline. Where her face should have been, two halves emerged: one a plain white sheet, flat as a board against her featureless front, while the other, a concave mass of black and navy swirls, hypnotized me with its rhythmic motions. Each wisp of dark smoke swirled like flowing water, a rushing river and a whirlpool and a leaky tap amassed into a single inviting collage.
Shaking my head, trying to reset my focus, I shifted to the left, the all-absorbent side, the one whose blank animosity made me yearn to scream. I exercised some restraint, knowing we needed to have this out, but kept the leash loosely laced between my mental forefingers. “I’m tired,” I started. My voice quivered. “I’m so tired of your belligerence. You want to know everything about me, and yet you don’t listen to a word I say. You don’t know who I am, or what I want, or anything true about my life. My life is what you assume it to be. I can’t live with you standing over me, choking out the few chances of actually doing something that I have. Please. Leave me be.”
“Oh, well, I must be a terrible mother then,” she retorted. The left side of her face, the blank side, became splattered then filled with a deep crimson, like a Rothko mural, her art being a touch less introspective and, given how far the swath of scarlet was spreading, much more on the nose. “After everything I’ve done, after all the sacrifices I’ve made, working my ass off so you could have a roof over your head, food on the table, a life to live and make yours, this is how I’m treated?”
“You did what parents do,” I shot back. Neither of our voices raised much beyond a slight influx of heat—never did we shout, but the cadence and volume picked up a tad, our knobs adjusted ever so slightly from her response and my own. I pushed my hands down, trying to force myself to relax, before continuing. “And I’m grateful you did that base duty. But you have to let me do mine. You have to let me live, and understand what that means for both of us.”
“I’m not finished.”
“For now, we are.” We glared at each other a moment, but my gaze softened into pity. Perhaps at her outburst, at my own and her response, or simply at her, I couldn’t pin for certain. Nor should I; no one wants to be pitied, as much as they don’t want to know why they’re being pitied. So I chose to leave it at that. “I’m leaving,” I announced, perhaps with dramatics in mind, then began to walk towards the door. Grabbing the handle, I turned it, and heard the click. I blinked.
At a bus station, my outstretched hand gripped the edge of the ticket counter. Behind it sat a man, an older, more raggedy fellow than the one I came to know in that room, but this one I thought I knew from a trailer park. My aunt lived there. I visited once. He was the manager, at least there, but a clerk here, his salt-and-pepper wisps of hair tied back in a ponytail, his cheeks sunken and his eyes bulging from decades of pulling on cigarettes. He couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds. The chair swallowed him whole.
“Where to?” the man asked.
“Home,” I blurted. I didn’t expect a ticket from that, but somehow, like the dreamy taxi ride at the end of an old Hollywood caper, he knew where that laid. I didn’t. Whatever bus he put me on was where I would end up. So was the twine snipped.
He handed me the ticket—a blank strip of paper that I double- and triple-checked was, as I saw, completely bare. After pointing out the bus, the lone vehicle sitting on the curb, I thanked him, and turned away. There stood my mother, a half-dozen paced away, her back facing me. I couldn’t see her face, yet I knew, the very same way I’d know if I hear her footsteps on old floorboards. The silhouette helped, but the presence was the signature.
I didn’t stand for long. She stood between me and the bus, another half-dozen paces beyond her. I walked on. She said nothing, not until I took the first step onto the bus. “Goodbye,” she said. “Safe travels.”
I refused to look back. Not to hurt her, but to help me. “See you later,” I sighed, though not loud enough for her to hear, and, frowning, my chin tucked into my chest, climbed the final three steps. A church bell, somewhere, tolled seven times.