Coffee Klatch
Published in the June 2007 Taj Mahal Review
Mother and Daughter sat in the semi-darkness, sipping their first cup of morning coffee. From the other room came soft sounds from Father, sometimes singing, sometimes breaking into conversation with his imaginary friends. So it had been since Daughter showed up on their country doorstep like a bad penny, a crumpled version of her former self. She reeled from a searing series of events, the last being abandonment by her husband of twenty years. No new story in the modern-day world, but new to this family.
Mother tried her best to understand, but, no matter how hard she tried, she could not understand how Daughter could be smiling one moment and crying the next. Why she stayed in her room most of the time and did not get a job. They were a family of fundamentalist Christians who believed that people did what they were supposed to do. Emotions were bad taste to have, and even worse taste to express. Everyone was expected to pretend that everything was fine.
But Daughter was allowed to cry because everyone got to ridicule her for crying. She didn't want to give them the satisfaction of laughter at her expense, but she had never been like the rest of the family. She was an emotional person of artistic temperament who learned to isolate herself from the ridiculing sources. She grew a shell of protection and determined that she would live a full and rewarding life on her own terms.
No matter how bad things had gotten for her before, she had never given up. She had never asked them for help; even if it meant that she slept in her car and went from friend to friend for meals.
But this time it was different. Her six-figure income job dissolved in the dot-bomb crisis along with the jobs of thousands of others. For months she tried to get another position, but could not. Then came September 11th, and what was left of the shell of her life collapsed with the Twin Towers. She felt rage of a magnitude she could not remember. Her anger was such that she could hardly function.
She inherited this capacity for anger from Father. He was a mean and selfish man, a "rageholic", keeping the family cowed with his temper and punishing the children with his belt. The Church called him an exemplary father.
Daughter learned that she would be beaten if she "talked back", so she learned to speak with her eyes; but Father figured it out and punished her for what he read there, too. So she adapted, as all children will, by keeping her mouth shut, her eyes down, and staying out of his way. Her own voice and opinions were stilled, but in her heart, she waited for the day she could hurt Father as he had wounded her so many times. Her unexpressed, inexpressible rage turned within.
Years later as the breadwinner who had lost almost everything, she continued to look for jobs and paid the bills until the money ran out. Mother offered to buy them a house to put on the land she and Father had deeded over to them several years before, so they swallowed their pride, sold what they could, and drove rented trucks across the country. The day after they arrived, her husband left her. Within six weeks he filed for divorce, forcing her into bankruptcy.
One after another the body blows struck, staggering in their accumulated mass. She entertained thoughts of suicide, not just daily, but moment to moment. This morning coffee with Mother was her only touch with even an altered reality. One moment she would be in the "now", the next she would be somewhere else in her mind, quiet tears flooding her face. Even after all these years, the only place she could cry out loud was in her own house, at the back of the farm where no one could hear.
To an outside observer, this was a Mother and Daughter having coffee in the early morning while a demented Father whispered to himself in the other room. To Mother, her first-born child was a source of constant disappointment, entertaining only because she never knew which personality would show up. To Daughter, this was an attempt at quasi-normalcy, to which she clung by her fingernails.
This coffee klatch took place every morning at 7:30 that year, and the next year. Daughter began to regain some of her balance, and no longer thought of suicide every minute of every day. Mother had grown used to it all, but was glad that Daughter didn't cry as often. Her Daughter's tears always made her uncomfortable. As for Daughter, she had never seen her Mother shed even one tear.
Then Father died.
Daughter was glad he was gone to the Hell he deserved, and she did not grieve. Her only regret was that he died before she got a chance to beat him up, to repay the years of torture. The day of the funeral she began to speak nonsense and behave strangely even for her. The doctor said she had a mini-stroke.
But she had not loved HIM. How could she have loved him?
Mother had been married to him for sixty-one years. At first she behaved as always, but, after the funeral was over and time passed, she began to change. One day, Daughter came into the house to find her Mother weeping uncontrollably.
As time went on and their morning meetings for coffee continued, Daughter saw in Mother chunks of her own miserable self. The woman who never cried, now cried often and well.
One morning Daughter commented on this change of behavior. Mother told her, "I'm grieving". "Oh," said Daughter, "That will go on for about two years".
"How would you know?" said Mother.
Daughter replied, "That's about how long it's taken me."
"Oh."
Glenda Glayzer
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