Chapter 17: Dell
Driving up to the dilapidated trailer that my family has lived in for forty years isn’t easy.
I’m not sure trailers like this are even supposed to last that long. When I was about ten, before Donovan was born, Dad tried to make our home more “permanent” by adding a short wall of cinder blocks around the base to give it the feel of a foundation.
Mom found the whole thing hilarious. She called it putting lipstick on a pig. But when he added a little front deck with a roof where she could sit and smoke outside, she bought into the idea.
I helped build that deck and that roof. When I last saw it over a decade ago, it was still in decent shape.
So when we pull up, I’m more pleased than I want to admit to see the deck still there. The roof has problems, the corrugated metal warped and coming up in places. Maybe Donovan and I can do something about it after breakfast.
I look over at Arianna to judge her reaction. She’s not like me. I grew up here. Humble. Southern. Poor. She has only known Manhattan, Milan, Paris. Fancy lives and money.
“Why are there tires on the roof?” she asks.
Hell of a first question.
“Trailer roofs will rumble in the wind, and eventually leak if you don’t.”
She nods.
We open our doors and I circle around to unlatch Grace. Even though I got the most basic SUV I could, it still stands out in the trailer park, shiny and new among the rusting battle-axes haphazardly sitting along the gravel lane between the rows.
“Is that a 1995 Cadillac DeVille?” Arianna asks. Her hands are on her cheeks, like she’s flushed.
I pick up Grace and turn to look. Two trailers down is a rusting, sagging silver Cadillac.
“Probably,” I say. “This is the sort of place old Cadillacs go to die.”
She walks toward it. “This is the first car I remember my father owning,” she says.
I glance up at my parents’ trailer. Nobody has noticed our arrival, so I follow her over to the car.
Arianna runs her hands along the side. “I remember it because I was finally big enough to open the door myself.” Her fingers fit under the metal handle and she lifts.
It opens.
“Oh!” she says, surprised to see the door pop toward her. “It’s not locked!”
“Nobody’s going to steal it,” I say. It probably doesn’t even run.
She quickly closes the door, looking around anxiously. “I loved that car.”
When no one comes outside, she peers into the backseat. “Oh, those seats! I used to get imprints on my legs from the seams.”
She straightens. “I guess it’s silly. I just didn’t think I would ever see one again.” Her hands smooth the skirt to her subdued slate blue dress. She has a simple cardigan on over it. She looks classy but not flashy. Her hair is a loose halo of curls today. It’s perfect. She’s perfect.
“Let’s go up,” I say. We dodge several overturned flower pots, their contents long ago spilled out, and head across the sparse dead grass to the deck of the trailer.
The steps are still solid. I bounce on each one to test its strength. From beneath the roof, I can see where the metal has pulled away from the boards. Easy fix. Just need a hammer and some fresh nails. Although screwing them in would be more sturdy.
I’m still assessing it when the screen door opens.
“There’s that grandbaby!” Aunt Marge says. “Give that beautiful girl to me.”
I pass Grace to Marge. Grace’s baby hands immediately reach for the tufts of fuzzy orange hair Marge has pushed back with a headband.
We follow her into the house. It smells of cigarettes and lemon Pledge. The latter was probably hastily used this morning. The scarred coffee table has a shine to it. Probably Marge’s idea. My mom never was much on housecleaning.
There’s a couple afghans thrown over the sofa and love seat that I don’t recognize either. I’m guessing also Marge, trying to cover stains and cigarette burns.
It’s hard to look at this place. I try to find some familiar comfort in it, but it’s difficult. The carpet is rumpled and ragged. The striped wallpaper I remember so well is dingy, one big bright rectangle showing its original colors where a picture must have fallen recently.
It’s so small and the ceiling is so low that I momentarily feel claustrophobic. I can’t believe I lived here for eighteen years.
“Your mom is cooking up some eggs,” Marge says. “Travis is out back with Donovan.” She lifts Grace up in the air. “How is that perfect baby? We don’t have near enough babies around here.”
I glance over at Arianna, wondering how she’s taking the place. Her eyes have fallen on a row of family pictures in cheap frames. She walks up to them. The first one shows my parents and me, still a baby. Dad has a mullet, which was a pretty good look for 1981. Mom’s hair is big and puffed out. She’s got bright green eyeshadow and a billion bracelets on her arm.
They’re young, younger than I ever remember them being. I guess they were barely twenty when I was born. It’s never struck me before how hard things must have been for them.
And they never got much better.
“I see Grace in you,” Arianna says.
With that, Mom comes out of the kitchen, scooting past the dining table to walk up behind her. She’s back in her signature tank top, even though it’s November, and jeans that are ragged on the bottom.
“I saw it too, the minute I laid eyes on her,” she says. “Same nose. Same expressions.” She turns and grabs my ears. “Your ears changed, but they were just like your baby’s when you were little.”
She smells of coffee and cigarettes, but only faintly. Underneath is something familiar, a scent that is so basic, so intrinsic to who I am that I’m momentarily lost for words. It’s the smell of her. My mother. My home.
I have to shake it off. My home is a penthouse in Manhattan. And that’s when I’m not in Switzerland, where I have a chalet. Or LA, where I have a condo.
It’s not here. Not in this seedy, rundown trailer with sagging walls and wrecked carpet.
I step back, unable to handle the proximity of the proof of where I came from. I spent thousands of dollars and a decade getting it behind me.
Now that Mom is close, I see a new addition to her tattoo collection. This one’s on her upper arm. Jesus, Mom. It’s a little dog, a terrier maybe. And it’s humping a palm tree.
The back door slams, and Donovan and Travis trudge in, stomping their feet.
“Don’t make a mess!” Marge admonishes them, but Mom just waves her hand.
“Don’t worry about it. Bring a little of the outside in.”
I remember her saying that when we were kids. My friends’ moms had a fit if we had muddy feet or dirt on our jeans. Mom was chill. Her other favorite phrase was “A clean house is a sign of a wasted life.”
Mom stays close, examining my face. “You look like something the cat drug in,” she says. “You not used to late nights and drinking?”
I want to say I’m not used to secondhand smoke and cheap beer, but I bite it back. I can’t find my rhythm here. Everything seems off kilter. “I’m past all that,” I say.
“Uh-huh.” She seems unconvinced.
A jingle draws our attention. In the corner, a tawny greyhound lifts her head. She’s sleeping in an oversized dog bed.
“Who’s this?” Arianna asks, heading for the dog.
“That’s Take Your Bets,” Mom answers. “She just retired last year. We call her Betsy.”
“I heard you took in greyhound rescues,” Arianna says. “We have one named Maximillion.”
“Yes, sometimes we have two, but these days, it’s just Betsy.” She looks over at me. “Old Blue died a few years back.”
I nod. We took in Old Blue a year before I left. He was a good one. They all were.
“Wynona, I think your eggs are burning,” Marge says. She’s still jiggling Grace, beaming at her like she’s the princess of Birmingham.
“Oh, shit,” Mom says, hurrying back to the kitchen.
“I told ya so,” Uncle Travis says. He and Donovan have settled on the sofa.
Donovan takes out his wallet and passes Travis a five-dollar bill.
“What’s this?” Marge asks.
Donovan shoves his wallet back in his jeans. “I bet Uncle Travis that Mom would actually succeed at cooking something this morning.”
“Stupid bet!” Mom calls from the kitchen.
I take Arianna’s hand. She’s the only thing that makes sense to me right now, the grounding to my new life, not this old one that knocks me off center.
The smell of charred eggs blocks out all the others. I shake my head. Mom wasn’t much of a cook either. She could make a mean Red Draw, though, beer and tomato juice. She had me drinking them from the age of sixteen. Now I cringe at a Bloody Mary. I take my alcohol straight.
Arianna and I squeeze past the Formica-topped table into the kitchen. Smoke rolls up from a pan on the stove. Mom turns off the burner.
“Well, damn it,” Mom says. “I guess we’ll be eating honey buns and grapes.”
“It’s fine,” Arianna says.
“We got the good stuff still,” she says, pouring orange juice from a pitcher into six glasses. She adds some grenadine to each glass. The drink turns red on the bottom, graduating up to dark orange and light orange on the top.
“How pretty,” Arianna says as Mom hands her one. She takes a drink, then coughs, her hand coming to her mouth. “Oh, wow, what is it?”
“Tequila Sunrise,” Mom says. “I might have gone a little heavy on the tequila.”
“It’s ten in the morning!” I say.
“This is a breakfast drink!” she shoots back.
“Hand me one of those,” Marge says, shifting Grace to her hip. “I do love a good Tequila Sunrise after a night of drinking.”
Mom flashes me an “I told you so” look and hands a glass to her sister.
Arianna sips it again. “It is pretty good, once you know what you’re drinking.”
Mom laughs. “I think I like her better than you,” she says to me. Then she grabs my head on both sides and drags it down so she can kiss my forehead. “You dumb lug. Spoilsport. My kid.”
Donovan and Travis come into the kitchen to get their glasses. My brother passes one to me. “You can take the boy out of Alabama,” he says, “but we can pour the Alabama right back in.” He clinks my glass. “Chug-a-lug.”
I sip the drink. It’s not horrible, despite the cheap tequila.
We settle around the table. Mom has added a stool and a rocking chair so it can seat six. She dumps the burned eggs in the trash and plops a box of store-bought honey buns in the center of the table, each in its own shiny package.
Arianna sits close to me. “We should have stopped at a bakery on the way,” she says.
I shrug. There’s no telling what will delight or insult my family. Mom sets a bowl of grapes on the table.
This is where I come from. And navigating my time with them is just as bewildering to me now as it was thirteen years ago.