Fiction: Every Mother's Day by Mark Tulin

Photo Source: Free Range

It’s Mother’s Day, and you come to visit me again. I hear your voice. You come to me as an apparition. Then you return to your wooden box of ashes in the living room, the spirit of your burnt remains on a dusty shelf.  

            Now that you’re dead, I can hear your words more clearly. There are no crazy, garbled words or bizarre accusations flying over my head. There is no telling me to sit up straight in a chair, read the business section of the Sunday paper, or chastise me for wearing the color blue in the house. Colors don’t mean anything anymore. You are transparent—without color.

            I hear your voice coming through the floorboard, Mom. You are no longer screaming with tears running down your face. You are no longer talking in riddles, playing the victim, or complaining about things nobody cares about or understands. I see our past—your torment, my turmoil—shaming the day the sun rose.  

            Today, on Mother’s Day, there is only silence without breath. Light without darkness. You hover around the wooden box and watch me prepare dinner: pasta in red sauce, a baguette, and a bottle of sparkling water. You keep me company, my ally, and my honored guest on the second Sunday. When I interact with my wife, you eavesdrop on our conversation, when I play with my Spaniel, you start sneezing. Why is it that your allergies still exist even after your death? Why must time stand still? Shouldn’t you have moved on from your body’s ailments? 

            The wooden box has a candle burning above it, and a trail of black smoke rises to the ceiling. Whenever I see that candle flicker, I hear your voice breaking the flame. You ask me why I left you in the nursing home to rot. I told you many times that you had dementia, that you couldn’t stay in your home any longer—but you never accept my answer even if I am sincere. Instead, you keep haunting me with your accusation that I didn’t love you enough, that I abandoned you. I don’t know how many times I explained that the decision was to keep you safe—it wasn’t about love or your perception of abandonment. When will you realize that? Must I go on repeating myself?  

            Next to the burning candle is the image of you as a teenager, posing on a stoop with long brown hair, wearing a high school letter on your sweater, and resembling a young Elizabeth Taylor with a closed-lipped smile. You were surprisingly beautiful and had the world at your fingertips. You wanted to write brilliant stories that would make people see the world from a more compassionate place. But after high school, the realities of the world took over. You had lost your dreams. Your stories were replaced by a man who convinced you that he loves you. You had a baby with that man and the baby became everything you ever wanted, or so you told yourself that.

            “I don’t blame you for wanting to put me away,” you say.

            I’m never going to win an argument with my mother, so I give up and just listen. Her visit only lasts for one Sunday a year in May. I spent most of my life trying to convince her of one thing or another. She was barely five feet tall, but she was set in her way like a big behemoth of a person. She never backed down from anyone. I remember when a neighborhood bully named Ronnie was harassing me, you came outside and launched Coke bottles at his head. When a neighbor walked on your flowerbed, you broke his car window with a baseball bat. Despite your diminutive size, you were as fearless as a pit bull while I felt weak and small despite hovering over you most of my life.

            “You are stronger than you think,” you told me. “You have the strength and courage to write stories, beautiful stories when I never had the courage. I was too concerned with failure, but you push on, ignoring your slim chances of making it.”    

            “No. I don’t write because I have courage. I write because I have to. I either write or the stories stay in my head and overpower me—scream and yell to get out.”

            “Please think of me always,” you say. “Your father never cared about me, especially when my beauty faded. He said he married Elizabeth Taylor and got Mamma Cass.”  

            I stood motionless, lightheaded from hearing my mother’s voice.

            I see our past. She is opening a can of tomato soup to go with the grilled cheese sandwich browning on the skillet. I see her riding with me down a snowy hill in a red and white sled, squeezing me tight, trying to keep me safe. She takes pictures of me in the swimming pool while riding a float, sliding into third base under a tag, and standing awkwardly in my Glen Plaid suit at my high school graduation. With her black, boxy Kodak, she captures all my sacred events and then neatly pastes them into an album, chronicling my life’s story.

            Mom was the only person who knew my story, yet I pushed her away.

            I stood before the wooden box as Mother’s Day slowly faded away. I should have been a better son, and she should have been a better mother. My father was too busy for any of us to have an impact on our lives.

            If only I could make it up—bring your body back to life. I’d die for a second chance at being a good son.

            The orange flame of her candle burns out. There is nothing in the glass jar except melted wax. I often think that my mother should be resting in peace instead of paying me her yearly visit and having intense conversations with her son—but as I said, my mother is stubborn and doesn’t know when to quit.

Mark Tulin is a former therapist from Long Beach, California. A publisher compared his work to artist Edward Hopper on how he grasps people's peculiar traits. Mark's books include Magical Yogis, Awkward Grace, The Asthmatic Kid and Other Stories, Junkyard Souls, Uncommon Love Poems, and Rain on Cabrillo. Mark appeared in Beatnik Cowboy, White Enso, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Spank the Carp, Defenestration, and others. He is a Pushcart nominee and Best of Drabble. Find Mark at www.crowonthewire.com. Twitter: @Crow_writer.