Marvin's Mother

Marvin’s Mother

5/15/2004

The silver coffee service had belonged to his mother. He watched Gloria polish it with an old t-shirt of his, years of tarnish removed under her vigorous hand. He was touched that Gloria was giving such care to the coffee service; maybe she wanted to display it with her other treasures as an honored heirloom.

“What’s it worth, do you think?” she said suddenly, holding her arm out to admire her work. “A few hundred? I think eBay would bring in more money than a pawn shop, don’t you?”

Marvin was startled. She wanted to sell the coffee service? He thought of his mother, lying quietly, cold and alone, waiting for day they would commit her spirit. And what Gloria was thinking of was not her dearly departed mother-in-law but the money she could get from selling her heirlooms? It was unthinkable. Marvin reached over and snatched the sugar bowl from his wife’s plump fingers.

“We will NOT sell this coffee set!” His voice was harsh. “It was Mother’s. She wanted us to have it. She wanted us to have all of this.” His hand swept around the small kitchen, including the table at which Gloria sat, the Formica-topped dinette with the chrome frame.

“Wanted you to have it,” Gloria snorted. “When did she say that? She was hording everything in this house, never threw out or gave away a thing. What makes you think she cared about that coffee service? Why should I care about it?”

“Because it was hers,” Marvin retorted stubbornly. “She got it for her wedding in 1954.”

“And probably kept it in that damn box the last fifty years,” Gloria snapped. “I knew her for twenty-five years, Marvin. If she wanted me to have that coffee service, she’d have given it to me instead of letting it tarnish in a box.”

“Why are you bothering to polish it now?” Marvin asked sullenly, idly playing with the tissue in the box at Gloria’s elbow.

“I wanted to see if it was worth anything before we took it with us. I’m telling you, Marvin, ninety percent of this junk will be hauled to the Goodwill before we go home!”

Marvin sat down and eyed Gloria with resentment.

“These are Mother’s things,” he said evenly. “We will go through them with the care they deserve, even if it takes all weekend. This is all I have left of her.”

“Stop being sentimental, Marvin. Most of it is junk.” Gloria’s eyes surveyed the countertops, loaded down with boxes and stacks of old dishes and piles of ragged towels and washcloths.

“Anything of collectible value, I’m putting on eBay,” she continued. “The rest can get dumped.”

Marvin was silent. He didn’t like this, not one bit. The dollar signs in Gloria’s eyes were distinctly unattractive. Collectibles? Sell Mother’s things on eBay? How could Gloria be so heartless? It was true that his wife had never really gotten along with his mother. They had grudgingly accepted one another’s presence as a part of Marvin’s life, but he had no idea that Gloria would be so ready to erase his mother’s very existence.

“This probably will take all weekend,” Gloria grumbled as she rummaged in a boxful of 1960s Melmac dishes.

“We’ll stay over,” Marvin said firmly.

“Here?” Gloria asked. “You want me to sleep in your mother’s room? The sheets are probably still warm.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“You can use the guest room if it’s that distasteful to you, Gloria,” Marvin responded primly.

“And what about that bathroom? The plumbing is out again! I’m supposed to stay in a house where the toilet doesn’t flush?”

“I’ll take care of it, Gloria. Don’t worry.”

Gloria continued to putter in the kitchen, occasionally muttering under her breath unflattering comments about her mother-in-law’s housekeeping and her taste. She tossed piece after piece into a large box she had marked “junk.” A few things were set on the table next to the silver coffee service, Gloria evidently intent on selling them. Marvin wondered what she would do with the money she made off of the trappings of his mother’s life.

“No taste at all,” Gloria grumbled. “Junk, most of it. Not even worth an estate sale. Gas station premiums. Did she get all of her ‘good china’ as gas station premiums? Not even a single piece of Mikasa. No Fiestaware. What a waste of time.”

Marvin got up and wandered through the house, leaving Gloria to her sorting and her grumbling. The house still held the sense of his mother’s presence. Her scent was in every room. He fingered the pictures on the wall, pictures of him as a child and a young man. One large frame held a tiny picture from each of his years in school in a circle, and in the middle was his high school graduation photo from 1974. He noticed there was no copy of his wedding photo in evidence anywhere; no pictures of Gloria. He and Gloria had had no children, and so his mother had no pictures of grandchildren displayed. For as long as he could remember, there had been no pictures of his father either. He had never understood what had happened to his father when he left, but his mother had raised him alone from the time he was five years old. Maybe that’s why the coffee service was in a box. Maybe it reminded Mother too much of Father and the memory was painful.

He went into the bedroom and closed the door, sitting on the rose chenille spread that adorned her bed. The room smelled of perfume and sickness, and it held the air of her death in it. He was sorry he hadn’t been able to care for her better. He was sorry she had wasted away and he had been unable to stop it. He was sorry now that Gloria didn’t have a greater respect for the dead and the pieces of property that kept him connected to his mother.

Gloria would want to sell the house too, he expected. He had grown up in this tiny house, and before too long all the remnants of his childhood would be gone, auctioned to the highest bidder and Gloria counting the cash his mother’s death had given her. He shuddered, his thin shoulders shaking as he tried to fight back the tears.

“Mother, what will I do without you?” he cried, receiving only the steady ticking of her alarm clock in response. He stood, walking over to the dresser and running his hand along the doily that lined the top. She had made that doily herself, like the others in the house. Hand stitched it. Made the lace. Women didn’t do that anymore, he thought with a frown. Women weren’t the homemakers they used to be. Gloria could use a few lessons in the fine art of homemaking herself.

He opened the jewelry box, nearly empty except for the pearl necklace and the pearl earrings in the heavy gold setting. Mother hadn’t worn them often. She complained that they pinched her ears.

He picked up the necklace and earrings, slipping them into the pocket of his jeans.

“Gloria won’t sell these, Mother,” he whispered. “I’ll keep them as a memento of you. Gloria is so wrong, Mother. She wants to erase you from our memories. I think she’s glad you died. I think she’s glad to be rid of you.” He laughed bitterly. “I had no idea my wife was so cold, Mother. I’m sorry about that. Maybe you were right all those years ago. Maybe I shouldn’t have married her.”

Marvin sighed heavily, his despair pressing in on his chest. He didn’t want to divide his loyalties between his mother and his wife. Gloria had been a good wife, if somewhat distant, and he needed her to understand how important his mother’s things were to him. He needed her to understand he couldn’t just get rid of them. He couldn’t get rid of his memories.

With the pearl necklace and earrings safe in his pocket, he made his way back to the kitchen, where Gloria’s “junk” box was overflowing. Gloria was nowhere to be seen.

“Gloria?” Marvin called. “Where are you?”

Her response was muffled, coming from the basement below.

“I’m down here!” she answered, sounding cross. “So many boxes down here…Marvin, didn’t that woman ever throw anything away? Come down here and help me!”

Marvin was reluctant. He didn’t like the basement. It was poorly lit and dank, and it smelled of mildew. The stairs creaked under his feet as he descended. The mildew odor assaulted his nostrils. The basement had never been finished, and the hard concrete floor felt cold even through his shoes. The washer and dryer were down there, next to the furnace and the water heater. There were boxes piled everywhere. Old clothes, mostly ruined from age and damp, hung from the pipes across the ceiling.

“I need some trash bags,” Gloria said as she looked up and saw Marvin standing next to her. “Almost everything down here is ruined. We’ll have to pay someone to haul out all of this mess. Didn’t your mother know the basement had water damage?”

“I don’t think so,” Marvin answered. “She rarely came down here. She did her washing in the bathtub.”

“Damn shame,” Gloria muttered. “Some of these things might have been valuable or collectible. She must have saved every piece of clothing she’d ever owned since the 1940s. All ruined now. Ruined.”

Marvin felt his mother’s presence swirling in this room. She was here. It was palpable. Some of the dresses he saw hanging up were unrecognizable, but some of them held the image of their original condition. He remembered the housedresses she wore when he was a little boy. He could see her in them now, forty years melting away inside his brain, the ghosts of his memories ringing in his ears: Marvin! Put that frog outside! Don’t bring that filthy thing in here! Marvin! Stand up straight. Comb your hair! Do you want folks thinking I don’t know how to bring you up? Marvin! Don’t get trapped by a girl. You stay away from those town girls! Nothing but trouble! Marvin! Don’t you marry that Gloria Lowry! She’s trouble. I can tell! You leave her be and stay here to take care of your poor old mother. Marvin! Marvin! Marvin!

Marvin put his hands to his ears.

“What in heaven’s name is wrong with you?” Gloria looked at him curiously. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Marvin shuddered again. He felt strange. His voice sounded hollow inside his head. “I’ll get those trash bags for you, dear.”

He turned and walked back up the stairway into the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. He found the trash bags on the counter next to the sink and picked up the box. With his other hand, he reached into his pocket and rolled the pearl necklace between his fingers.

“I’ve tried to do right by you, Mother,” he said sorrowfully. “I’m sorry your things were ruined. I’m sorry Gloria is so angry.

He closed his eyes and leaned against the counter, his grief coming to him in a torrent. Dimly, he heard Gloria’s footsteps on the staircase.

“What’s keeping you?” she snapped, crossing the top step and entering the kitchen. “I have to bag up most of that garbage in plastic so they’ll haul it away.” She snatched the box from Marvin.

“You’re no help,” she complained when Marvin didn’t move or open his eyes. “Useless. I’m left to do all this by myself. That woman was a packrat. A filthy packrat. Did her washing in the bathtub? No wonder nothing seems really clean. Damn shame she let all those old clothes go to ruin…that fool of a woman…” Gloria continued her tirade as she headed back to the basement to stuff the contents of rotting cardboard cartons into the trash bags.

“Just like his mother, not a lick of sense, and nobody thought to check the basement? She must have been senile for years, don’t know what….” Gloria’s voice was broken by a scream piercing the heavy air.

Marvin’s eyes flew open. Gloria was screaming. Why was Gloria screaming? He pulled himself from the spot near the counter and went around to the staircase. His eyes widened as he saw Gloria at the bottom of the stairs, her body contorted in a grotesque tableau. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, and her glassy eyes stared upward, seeing nothing.

Marvin’s heart pounded and he felt his mother with him again. He fingered the necklace in his pocket.

“It’s a shame, Gloria,” he said, shaking his head sadly at the figure below. “It’s a shame you had to push Mother so hard. You had to know she’d push back.”