Mother and Son: A Duet
“I thought at first of swarms of bees covering her white hat and net like a buzzing brown rug. My mother walks toward me, her arms stretched out to hug me. Behind her in the apple orchard, four wooden hives teeter on the hillside, waiting for her to pull out their honey-heavy combs. When I look up from my Time magazine, I see not many bees, but two flies circling desperately in the glow of the television.”
“If I fix wide-open eyes East in this golden fall sunset, I can see him in his small bare room, reading, humming, perhaps rubbing a green apple against the rough blue ridges of his pants. The bees are still. I have stolen their life’s work in a day. I miss my son’s strong hands beside me, his laughter like a bell waking my heart.”
“This is how we make our way home, in twilight dreams, in lonely rooms, on nights hollowed by our mistakes. When I lived there, in the warm California hills, she fed me toast with amber honey on thick pale butter. I cannot drive home to see her. My heart presses into itself. My mouth is dry. I take a sip of bitter water and see her in my mind, the curly hair, the coffee-brown eyes marked by a hundred lines pulling her skyward. I smell her grass-clean scent, and it fills me with longing.”
“I slipped so quickly I had no time to be afraid. I fell into the yellow grass and the earth became my bed. (When I was a child, I used to lie like this, in the evening, waiting to catch the exact moment light ceded to darkness.) It is so cool here. I know he feels the same coolness. A wisp of fog lifts off the ocean and drifts past me, a careless cloud that has lost its way. Perhaps he thinks of me. My thoughts are strong and calm and distant, like the night he was born when the pain was so great I shook it free and felt the universe open inside me. The night when joy and fear began.”
Maia Madden 