The Mother of Eight

When the doorbell rang a few days later, I went for the saltshaker,
figuring Mr. Simmons was looking for a refill. I stood at the top of
the stairs and looked down, but instead of finding Mr. Simmons, Dave Hamilton stood there. Wedged between the half-opened screen door and the door jamb was the large painting Margo created during her Orange period, the one of the tree with orange leaves that grew in an isolated clearing surrounded by woods.

“How about a hand with your new painting?” he asked.

Dave inched the huge panel further inside the door before I had a
chance to refuse it. He slid the painting to the first tread, then angled it up the stairwell. It was as large as a piece of wall paneling. I helped carry it to the top of the stairs and stood it up again on the landing, corkscrewing it through the door opening.

“Where you want it?” he asked.

“By those King Crimson records, I guess.”

I held the painting. Dave grabbed stacks of records, In The Court of
the Crimson King, and moved them. The living room had a lower ceiling that angled into the stairwell. The painting was so big it touched against the ceiling.

“Just right,” Dave said.

The gift of the painting and Dave’s upbeat mood. My exile was over.

“I need a favor, Wilbur. My neighbor has looked high and low for her
husband’s anniversary present. Nothing appealed to her until I said
something about our old waterbed. She jumped at it, ol’ buddy. Now,
I’m right in the thick of this anniversary situation, and I don’t like it. That’s where you come in. She’ll talk your head off and slow you down some, but she’s basically a nice lady,” Dave explained.

​”Let me guess. She has a good personality too.”

“Nah, but it’s the eight kids,” Dave said. “She’s gotta be on some
heavy duty tranquilizers. I would be too if I had eight kids, or I’d
be knocking down a bottle of Jack Daniels every day.”

He shook his head.

​”She’s buying a used waterbed as an anniversary present. After
some of the things Margo and I have done on that waterbed. I don’t
know…”

We drove to Dave’s house to get what remained of the waterbed we
delivered to Abner Neeley. Dave watched as I backed a new van out of his driveway.

“Her name is Gwen Connolly,” he shouted then disappeared inside his
house.

A few houses away three boys with identical cereal bowl haircuts stood to the side. Their tall, thin mother stood in front of a palm tree,
smoking a cigarette in a rock garden of rusty-colored pebbles and
large pink and gray rocks. She wore a dark-blue blouse and white mini shorts that only a teenager without wrinkled legs should have worn,
not a middle-aged lady with graying hair.

“C’mon back, c’mon back,” she yelled.

I watched both side mirrors for obstructions, having learned my lesson from the mishap at the Stuarts’ house.

“Move the bicycle, Peter! Pull that hose back, Anthony,” she barked.

I eased the van as far as possible into the driveway behind a faded,
red Volkswagen.

“What’s your name?” she asked after I got out.

“Wilbur.”

“Will you need that hose, Wilbur?”

“Well…”

“We can hook it in the back yard or in the house or just leave it
right there. What do you want to do with it, Wilbur? Peter, you do
what Wilbur here says. He’s the expert.”

She finished her cigarette and flicked the butt into the rock garden.
That’s when she noticed the Volkswagen.

“Mary Beth just parks that heap of hers in the driveway. She comes in late at night. Oh my God! I forgot! I’ve got to get her up, she’s late
for work. You’d think she’d at least do that right. I’ve got to wake
up the Queen of Sheba. If she loses this job, I’ll cream her. I don’t
understand kids these days, and I’ve got eight of them.”

​I backed the van out and waited until her daughter hurled herself
into the Volkswagen. It sputtered and coughed like Mr. Simmons did
after a few licks of salt. She drove it into the street, then slammed
the door when she got out.

​“There!” she screamed.

Her mother had already lit another cigarette. The ash on it was the
same gray that streaked her hair. The three brothers stared at the van like it was from outer space.

“Do you want them to carry anything? You don’t want to carry all
that stuff yourself, do you, Wilbur? They’d be glad to help you.
Peter, Anthony, Patrick, you three get over and help him. You do what he says, hear?”

The three boys lined up.

​”The minute they start bothering you, let them know. Peter, are you
going to just stand there? Grab that box,” she ordered.

​Peter carried a box, but quickly lost interest and dropped it inside the front door.

“Do you think God was an astronaut?” he asked.

​”Not now, Peter,” she said.

​His mother stretched the hose across the carpeting. Water leaked onto the rug leaving dark, damp spots.

“I was just seeing if it would reach the bedroom,” she said almost in tears, looking down at the rug.

​Her daughter stood nearby, talking on the telephone.

“You bought a waterbed? That’s disgusting,” she said. “Daddy won’t
like a waterbed.”

“Get off the phone and get to work. It’s his anniversary present. He better like it and what do you know about waterbeds?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“I bought a vibrator for it too,” Mrs. Connolly added.

​”I’m going to be sick.”

A distraught look covered Mrs. Connolly’s face.

“You think he’ll like the waterbed, Wilbur?” she whispered.

“Yeah, he should like it,” I replied.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have bought it. I don’t know. I didn’t know what to buy him.”

​I glanced at the garden hose.

“We don’t need the hose in here right now, Mrs. Connolly. It’ll get in the way.”

“I was trying to help,” she said.

“Do you want the bed where all that laundry is piled?”

​I pointed to a huge, multi-colored dune.

“She just throws it on our floor. Mary Beth!! Get in here and get all your laundry off the floor!”

​”Do you want me to be late for work, Mother?” Mary Beth asked.

She strutted to the front door.

​”Later,” she waved.

We heard gears grind. Mary Beth was gone. Peter pointed at the box he dropped on the floor.

“The mattress is in there?” he asked.

Peter is the intellectual in the family,” Mrs. Connolly explained.

Peter lowered his eyes to the floor and scrunched up one side of his mouth.

“He can look at something and figure it out, just like that. He could probably help you set up his father’s waterbed if you wanted him to,” Mrs. Connolly said.
​
Peter looked me over like I was made of plastic and transparent with
all my body parts exposed. She looked me over too, measuring my
shoulders with her outstretched hands.

“You know,” she said, “I bought my oldest son, Jake, a nice, summer
sports suit, and it’s beautiful, but he doesn’t like it, and he’s never going to wear it. Can you believe that? I hate to just see it hanging in the closet. I bet it would fit you.”

​Mrs. Connolly scampered across the living room and disappeared down
a hallway before I could say anything.

​”Did you go to college to learn how to set up waterbeds?” Peter asked.

“I went to college, but I studied how to read stories. You want to hear a story?”

​“Tell me a story.”

“Archimedes lived over two thousand years ago on the island of
Sicily. There’s a city there, Syracuse, and that’s where he lived.”

“I thought that was in New York,” Peter said.

“Yeah, but there was one in Sicily long before,” I replied.

“King Hieron of Syracuse was Archimedes’ friend. He ordered a new
crown to be made of gold, but when he received the crown, he wasn’t sure it was pure gold.”

Peter’s eyes sparkled.

“It looked like gold, but he couldn’t be certain, so he handed the problem over to Archimedes.”

​Peter’s eyes enlarged like doubloons.

​“Archimedes submerged the crown in water and was able to show
the King that even though his crown looked like pure gold, he had been deceived.”

​“Deceived?”

​“Yes. Pure gold displaced a certain amount of water. This crown didn’t. It wasn’t pure gold. He figured it out soaking in his tub. The water in the tub rose when he sat down in it. That gave him the
idea. It’s called Archimedes’ Principle. It’s appearance and reality.” ​
His mother returned with a tan, checkered sports coat. It had wide
lapels. The material was lightweight and coarse almost like corrugated
cardboard. I hated it.

“There’s matching slacks too. If you only wear it once, it’ll be more
than my son, that ungrateful so and so. I could cream him,” she said.
​I slipped on the jacket.

“It fits!” she said.

​Peter stood nearby with a mournful look on his face.

“Are you going to ask Dad about what I asked you to ask him?”

“This poor kid. His older brothers, Jake and Gary, and his sisters are driving to Chicago, and he wants to go. I don’t think Jake should be driving.”

​Peter hung his head.

​“I told him we’d pay his way on the bus, but he read a story about a bus crashing.”

​Peter pivoted from side to side.

“So I said, we’ll send him on an airplane. He’s read about them crashing.”

Peter rolled his head back.

“I said, we’ll send him by train. He’s read stories and seen pictures
of train crashes. He wants to go with his older brother, Jake, who’s
about to lose his driver’s license!”

Peter lowered his head and stared at the floor.

​”Can I sleep on the waterbed when he finishes?”

“The ‘Waterbed Rule’ is: NO CHILDREN ON THE WATERBED!” she shouted.

“Mom…”

“If I catch you on the waterbed, I’m going to cream you. Oh my
God! They think it’s a toy! These things don’t leak, do they?”

​She looked desperate and ready to collapse.

​”What do you do if it leaks? Tell me, they don’t leak.”

​Her color changed to ash. She lit another cigarette.

“There’s a patch kit with the mattress,” I said.

I reached into the mattress box and pulled out a small patch kit.

The directions were miniaturized and barely readable.

​“My husband can read it. You read it too, Peter,” she said.

After the bed frame was set up with a bookcase headboard on it, Mrs. Connelly wrapped a yellow ribbon and tied an elaborate knot around it
that looked like a flower. She stood there admiring the ribbon.

“I can use the hose now,” I said.

She returned with the hose. A few minutes later she came in with
sandwiches and a drink for me. She was no longer a mother of eight. I was a stray that wandered up, and she was now the mother of nine. And like a good mother, she pointed to another corner of the bedroom.

“Our oldest daughter got that paneling for an apartment she was
living in before she moved back here, and there it is,” she said.

Next to the laundry were five sheets of dark cherry paneling.

​”Do you need any paneling? I’d love to get rid of it,” she said.

​I took a slow bite of my bologna sandwich and tried to clear my air
pipe.

​“She wants five dollars a sheet for it. You think you might want it? Maybe you know someone who can use it?” she asked.

​”I don’t need any paneling,” I said, especially with Margo’s painting standing against the ceiling in the living room.

​“Are you sure?” she asked. “I’ll pay her the money to get rid of it, if you’ll just take it out of here.”

She looked at me with sad, doe-like eyes. Her mournful look got to me.

A new son couldn’t refuse a mother’s look like that especially on
her anniversary. She helped carry the sheets of paneling to the van after the mattress was filled. I wanted to get out of there before she offered me anything or anyone else – her children, especially Jake, the one with all the speeding tickets.

​”Don’t forget this,” she said.

​She grabbed the leisure suit with lapels as wide as the mud flaps on
the van and followed me outside. She flicked the cigarette she had
puffed down to a nub into the rock garden.

“Happy anniversary,” I called out to her from the driver’s seat.

Everything was copasetic until I got a few blocks away and saw a
convenience store circled in thick, yellow ribbon like Mrs. Connolly’s
anniversary present. Holly Winslow, the beautiful television reporter
– beautiful from the waist up, she had ankles like cypress stumps –
was there with her camera crew because a convenience store just got knocked over by bandits.
​