Gifts from Maggy

Lucy, my dog, sprawls across my bed, and I'm nearly swallowed by a small mountain of down pillows. I'm waking up, sipping my second mug of espresso with two tablespoons of sugar and hot milk. Smoking my second cigarette. Not exactly the breakfast of champions, but I like it. The Young and the Restless is on TV, and Nick Newman is thinking of sleeping with his slutty secretary, Grace, when Lucy springs up.

She comes to full alert all at once, from flopped down, snoozing dog to a tall standing, hackles up, silent attack animal, with only a slight rocking of the bed. Her dog tags tinkle gently.

I lean over and look out the second story window of my bedroom to the yard, sidewalk, and street below. Nothing. No dog walking by, no mailman, car, or pedestrian. Then, before I settle back into the pillows and take my second bong hit of the day, I hear the unmistakable sound of the UPS truck's slight screech as it rounds the corner, and pulls to a stop in front of the house. The minute it rounds the corner, Lucy is off the bed, down the stairs, at the door and waiting when the UPS guy hits the porch. The second his hand touches the screen door she barks once--deep, loud and authoritatively. He still has to open the screen door, cross an enclosed porch, ring the bell, and all the time Lucy growls and barks ferociously. It's the confident bark of a very competent watchdog. Both participants know this ritual. She acts tough. He believes her, drops his package, hits the bell, and runs like hell. It's always the same.

I have a cold that's gone bad and a modeling booking day after tomorrow. I dial my doctor's office and get a busy signal. Hit off. Redial. A commercial comes on and I go down to retrieve the box. It's a big one. I heft it to my hip and grab a knife from the kitchen on the way back upstairs.

I know the package is from Maggy before I look at it. She sends at least two a month. Thanks to Maggy, Lucy and the UPS guy get to play their ritualized game. Now I have to play the same sort of game with Maggy--different rules, different players, but no less ritualized. After I open the package and sort through the treasures, I will have to call her and comment on each piece with interest and enthusiasm, but most importantly I will have to express gratitude and it will have to sound genuine enough to fool my skeptical mother.

Today's box is stranger than most. First off when I open the box the unmistakeable smell of shit blooms in the air. I back away from the box in revulsion. Lucy gets unusually interested. These are Maggy's rejects from her past weekend's garage sale purchases. It's her obsession, her occupation. She has always washed and pressed every sweater before sending. This is the part of her that I can love, the caring women who sends only clean second hand clothes to her aging daughter. There are five old cashmere sweaters each rolled into a baggie. Not one of them stinks strongly of shit. (I probably have fifty or sixty such cashmere sweaters. I keep the best and pass on the rest of them to friends.) This box also contains a pair of Gianni Versace beige suede pants, size ten (I’m currently a six). I check them carefully for stains or stink. I'll either give them to one of my skinny friends or donate them to the thrift store. There's a moth eaten beaver top hat (no shit there). Two pair of new and boxed glitzy clip-on earrings. Even the earrings are out of character. She knows I prefer clip-ons, but these just aren't her style and certainly not mine. Then I get to the two pairs of ugly shoes size 7 1/2, (her size, not mine) and this is where the shit smell is located, and oddly it isn't on the soles. The fake leather tops of one pair of beige pumps have dark stains that reek. She's always had such a delicate and acute sense of smell. How could she have packed these? Where did they come from? She never used to buy ugly shoes. Usually Maggy’s leftovers smell like her cedar lined drawers. But the dark, rank smell emanating from the shoes sets off an alarm in my amygdala and I feel like running away. How will I be able to spin this nasty stink into gratitude and enthusiasm?

She's always had the power to wipe me out--mistress, as she is, of the eviscerating tongue-lash. I know she's just an old woman, opinionated and imperious, alone and hardly much of a threat to me, really. Without me she has no single, aging daughter. Without me she’ll have no one to take care of her when she can't take care of herself. Because of her I have no child to love me or hate me. Without her I'm home free.

Much expensive psychotherapy has taught me I can give Maggy the power to hurt me, or not. But all the rationality in the world can't make me not fear her, though I still wish it were so simple, since it's hard to love someone you fear. And I do want to love her. The best I can manage is to love her most satisfactorily at a distance. The greater the distance, the more I love her.

Once or twice a year I wish her dead. Not painfully dead, but dead, nonetheless. I'd just like to outlive her long enough to know what it is to be free of the need to suppress my true feelings, to be nice, to bite my tongue, and keep my feelings to myself. I’m so tired of being told I stink and that I talk too loud. She has always expected me to share her passions and her prejudices. (She hates fat people, and feels entitled to berate them for their food choices in line at the grocery store, while I try to pretend I don't know her.) In person, she requires my undivided, adoring attention. If I don't get that just right, it ends in her extravagant crocodile tears, door slamming and recriminations. I must endure her long rambling critique of everything--from my fiscal irresponsibility to my poor housekeeping skills and my garlic eating habits. When I object, whatever the tone of my voice, she says, "Please don't yell, your voice hurts my ears and your breath stinks." It's often the only thing she says, but there is waiting, in case I open my mouth and suck in air, as if to speak, the next thrust, "Why must we always talk about the past? You'll never be a grown-up if you can't stop living in the past. Get over it. Move on."

Last time she came to Salt Lake to visit me, my first impulse was to kill myself. I called the therapist I keep in touch with for just such emergencies. It cost four hundred dollars in therapy sessions, canceled bookings (and a pissed-off agent), doctor's visits, anti-depressants, and I still spent a month in bed recovering after she left.

Lately I’ve been able to anticipate her impulse to drop in on me, and beat her to the draw by scheduling a short visit to Santa Barbara. I stay in Yankee Farm with my friend Jack.

I'm not proud of this pathetic fear of my own mother; it's such a loathsome admission, and not entirely the truth. What I feel for Maggy has never been simple fear, and it's certainly not uncomplicated. Maggy has never been just my mother. We've been rivals since my conception. I worship and fear her as only a powerless rival can. To most people she's a fabulous creature. She was to me too before I got to know her.