Read Online Stuffed by Patricia Volk - Free Book Online Page A

Airport so she can catch the three-fifty back to West Palm.
    “You do, Ma?”
    “It’s a ruin. It’s like visiting the Colosseum or Pompeii.”
    She’s sitting next to me on the front seat. Maybe I should say
folding.
Her body is curved inward, and her head is down so low it’s almost touching the seat.
    “Ma, why are you sitting like that?”
    “It’s nothing. I’m a little nervous the way you drive. Really, darling, it’s nothing.”
    The way
I
drive? The last time I was in Boca, Mom drove up on the median three times and kept going left when she meant to go right. “Why are people flashing their lights at us?” she said, ticked until she realized her headlights weren’t on.
    “When we get to the house,” I told her, “I’m going to kiss the driveway.”
    She gasped. “You think I’m not a good driver?”
    Mom aims for perfection. Most times she gets a bull’s-eye. She’d like to pump some perfection my way too. To that end, she makes lists. The latest one reads:
    MOTHER’S LIST
    Reupholster couch
Take care of IRA
Fix shelf in Polly’s room
Get round kitchen table and six chairs
Get large colorful object for coffee table
     
    I have her recipe for “How to Wash Your Face” written in perfect Palmer script:
    Cleanse with Pond’s cold cream
    Use toner without alcohol, i.e., Nivea, Avon, etc.
    Night—Orlane Extrait Vitale on first, then Nivea cream
    Day—Wash with water, use Orlane Extrait Vitale, then Clinique moisturizer. NEVER SOAP.
    “You’ve got to fix that kitchen,” she says. “Your daughter will be bringing boys home soon.”
    Does she mean, Gentlemen callers may one day look at my kitchen and think, How could I marry a girl whose mother has unevenly laid floor tiles and an uninstalled fridge?
    Okay, so she’s right. The kitchen does need work. Okay, so it looks like a George Booth cartoon. Thanks to a flood upstairs, a cord dangles from the ceiling light fixture and plugs into a wall socket. The broiler hasn’t broiled in seven years. That’s why we bought the toaster oven, but now that broiler’s broken too. (“A simple wiring repair,” Dad diagnoses from Florida. “Expose the elements. Clean the contacts. You got a digital multimeter?”) My dream fridge arrived three years ago but why install it if I’m planning to redo the countertops and it would have to be taken out again? The inside of the G.E. dishwasher is so rusty I’m calling the internist to see if we need tetanus shots. Yup. Mom’s right. The kitchen looks like hell. But do I want my daughter to marry a man who won’t marry her because of my kitchen?
    Mom stares at my auction find, a portrait of Lord Townley attributed to Romney. (
Attributed to
means
Definitely not done by.
) “You really should have that frame repaired,” she says.
    Walking into my bedroom: “You still have those lampshades?”
    Waiting for the elevator: “Your hair looks so much better today than it did yesterday.”
    Something snaps. “I have no control over my hair, Ma. It does what it wants to. Every morning I wake up, look in the mirror, and say, ‘What the hell?’ I never know what’s going to stare back at me. I got this hair from you and Daddy. I didn’t luck out in the genetic crapshoot. Or maybe they gave you the wrong baby.”
    “You have
beautiful
hair.” Mom looks at me like I’m crackpated. “Something happened that summer in camp when you cut one side off with manicuring scissors.”
    Coming out of my bathroom where the tiles from the floor repair were never relaid, she shakes her head. “I don’t get it. I don’t get it.”
    What I see as patina, Mom sees as worn. My mother has never owned anything faded. If it’s chipped, frayed, or dated, out it goes. She has twenty-eight filled hangers in her closet. If something new comes in, something old gets handed down. Dad cleans her sneakers with bleach on a toothbrush. You could eat off her floors if you don’t mind the taste of Pine-Sol.
    My apartment needs work. Me