A Mother’s Regret

JESSE’S MOM: I think I want to write a book: How to Date a Widow. Or maybe it should be how to date someone who has lost their family in a horrible tragedy.

FRIEND: Is it that bad?

JM: Dating is bad in general, only made worse by the circumstances.

F: Dare I ask? What happened?

JM: Last week I went out with this guy for the third time and, my hand to god, he actually asked me what my biggest regret was.

F: Oh no.

JM: Oh yes. He knew my situation. We were set up by mutual friends. What on earth would possess a man to ask someone like me a question like that!? On a date, no less.

F: What did you say?

JM: At first there was the uncomfortable silence. But honestly, I am not sure he knew that it was uncomfortable. I think he thought I was just thinking about it. Which I was. I was thinking about saying, “Not staying on the phone all night with my husband the night before he died. Not forcing Randy to wake Alexia up so I could tell her I love her one last time. Every time I chose to do chores or run errands instead of play with the kids or hang out with my husband. Every minute I spent preparing my daughter for adulthood instead of just having fun and goofing around.”

F: Why didn’t you say those things? I mean, he asked.

JM: I guess because none of those things are my biggest regret.

F: What is your biggest regret, then? If you don’t mind my asking.

JM: It’s weird. I had never thought about it until he asked. So I guess I have George or Frank or whatever his name was to thank for clarifying it. A couple of days after they died, Jesse came into my bedroom late and asked if he could sleep with me. Of course I let him, and we huddled together quietly until we fell asleep. The next morning I woke up to the crush. That horrifying moment when you remember everything and it feels like you are learning about it for the first time. I started to cry. Jesse woke up shortly after and I felt his little hand on my shoulder. I was facing away from him so I wouldn’t wake him up. And it just came out of my mouth, “Why didn’t your father make you wear life jackets? Why weren’t you wearing life jackets?” God dammit why would I ask a seven year old little boy who has just lost his father a question like that!?

F: Do you think he hadn’t thought of that?

JM: I don’t know if he had or not. But her certainly does now. And more importantly he knows that I think of it, too.

F: Have you talked to him about it since?

JM: I just can’t bring it up. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And I don’t want to make it worse.

F: What did he say? Did he answer the question?

JM: He said the life jackets were in the boat and that he didn’t remember why they weren’t wearing them.

F: Jesus. … So what did you tell the guy was your biggest regret?

JM: I told him I regretted not taking typing in high school.

What ever happened to that kid...

My name is Steve Appleton and I am an alcoholic.

(Hi, Steve.)

Hello, everyone. So grateful to be here tonight. Thanks for having me. I don’t have a lot of time so I want to keep my remarks brief. Gonna try to distill this mess down to its essence.

I was a weird kid. My dad was a horrible alcoholic and the last time I saw him alive (well alive or dead, because I didn’t see him when he was dead) was when I was 6. He came to our house drunk demanding to see “his kids” and shot bullets into the locked door when my mom refused.

My mother was morbidly obese. She couldn’t take care of us because she couldn’t really get out of her chair in front of the TV. I was poorly nourished (in many different ways) and I smelled bad. And when you smell bad it’s important to not to let anyone come too close. So I was mean. Oh and I was gay. I was a gay, smelly, skinny, mean, weird little kid.

And I was ashamed. I remember being in kindergarten and falling off the monkey bars and getting the wind knocked out of me … I couldn’t breath. I thought I was dying. And at that moment the most important thing to me was pretending like everything was ok. I didn’t want anyone to know that I was not ok.

When I was 13, I had my first drink. And let me tell you … when you feel like I did and you take that first drink… everything just melts away... I had found my solution. My solution to problems I didn’t even know I had. So for the next 14 years, I did everything I had to, to stay in the solution.

Being gay I moved from the small town I grew up in to the big city to be with my people. I was going to become a part of my community. But I ended up drinking and drugging and prostituting myself instead.

It’s funny because I thought the big city would save me because there were other gay people here but really the big city saved me because there were so many recovery programs available for poor, homeless drug addicts and alcoholics. I was in and out of them for years and was encouraged to attend AA meetings. But I already had a solution for my alcoholism … alcohol!

I want to go back to my junior high for a second because something happened in junior high that planted the seed for this program.

I was a skinny kid and I used to wear these big pants that I belted up to my nipples. This was partly because we were poor but it was also because I wore girls’ underwear. One day in class my pants must have come down enough so that one of the kids noticed my lacey, pink underwear and … yeah. You get the idea. You all know what happened. The rest of the day was as bad as you could possibly imagine. It wasn’t the underwear issue that bothered me really. Or the insults or the physical harassment. It was the attention. I just hated being the center of attention. I had spent my life trying to avoid being noticed. And here I was the only thing anyone was thinking about.

This is how miserable my home life was. I went to school the next day. I showed up at school as late as possible before the bell rang and I slipped into class. But oddly enough no one said anything. Not a word. And between classes no one even looked at me.

Then as I was sitting off in my usual corner at lunch I looked up and saw this other loner kid walking into the lunch area in a dress. I kid you not, he was, head to toe, dressed like woman.

He was a loner but not like me. He was good looking, athletic, smart and strait. Everyone wanted to be his friend. But he chose to be by himself.

I was mortified … furious. But the truth was, no one said a word to me after that. This could have been the defining moment of my school years. I could have been beaten up and teased for years to come. But because this kid showed up in a dress (and he wore a dress to school for a week!) no one ever said a word to me again about it.

The reason I tell that story is that years later sitting in the Salvation Army at my required AA meeting a strange thing happened. I had reached the point where alcohol and drugs just weren’t working any more. I had barely made it through high school. I had no friends. No one in my family I had spoken to in years. And I had no solution to this empty horrific feeling that followed me everywhere I went and only seemed to be getting worse. And standing at the podium was a woman who had been sober for 14 years. She had been a prostitute on the streets. No education. Hopelessly addicted. And here she was, fresh faced, working as a counselor at a drug and alcohol treatment facility, happy and useful.

And I remembered that kid, Jesse. How he hadn’t stuck up for me. He hadn’t fought for me. He didn’t do what I needed to do for myself. He just showed up in a dress and said (without actually saying it), “You are not alone.”

It didn’t fix me. It didn’t stop the tragic trajectory of my life. It didn’t make high school easy. But it did stop it from being considerably worse.

12 years later, I am a lawyer. I am a productive member of society. I have all the same troubles that normal people have and I experience all the same joys. And I do none of that alone.

For that I am incredibly grateful. Grateful to AA. Grateful to all of you. And grateful to Jesse. Thank you for showing me what it looks like to be decent. To be considerate. To be helpful. To be kind.

When Jasper Could Fly

...it’s like that dream where I am trying to get somewhere. I have this recurring dream that I am trying to get to something or get someplace. It’s urgent. I don’t remember why. But it feels so urgent in the dream. Sometimes it’s like I have to get somewhere and sometimes it is like I am being chased. And my legs won’t move… no, that’s not it… they will move but not the way I want them to. I know these legs. I have been chasing squirrels for 10 years on these legs. Let me tell you … they can move. But in the dream, suddenly I can’t run. It almost hurts, but in a frustrating way, not in a painful way. And I am looking down and I can’t see anything wrong, but I can’t get going.

I remember when I was a puppy I had the same dream, and at some point in the dream I would remember that I can fly. I would reach out and start to soar just above the ground. And it wouldn’t even freak me out. It was like, of course I can fly! 

All those things you think you’ll regret when you’re young. The embarrassing mistakes, the precious item chewed, the baths, the piece of food on the ground you didn’t notice until the cat got it. None of that ended up bothering me. It's that dream. Why don't I remember I can fly?

Lithe Turkeys

Jesse stares at his long slender fingers and thinks about all the turkeys he has made over the years at Thanksgiving time using these fingers. Fingers he, apparently, got from his mother. When he gave his grandmother the turkey he had drawn for her last Thanksgiving, she put it up on the refrigerator with delight saying, “You got your mothers hands, Jesse! These fingers certainly did not come from my people. Lithe fingers make lithe turkeys.”

One hour and 37 minutes ago, Jesse and his mother stopped talking to each other. As she had so many times before when they fought, Jesse’s mother instructed him that he did not need to talk to her any more, but he did have to stay in the same room with her.

In that time he completed his math homework, read his favorite issue of Mad Magazine and the comics section of the newspaper, eaten a bowl of cereal and periodically stared at his hands when the distractions failed.

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…

…the sound of water dripping from the edge of the roof on the soaked ground. As he traces the outline of his left hand fingers with the tips of his right thumb and forefinger, he listens to the sound of the rain. Anything but his head.

There is a knot in his chest that has been there for the last two hours. Maybe it has always been there. Why is it there? This is what he hates most about it. He doesn’t know why it is there – does not want to know why it is there. And now he is stuck in this room with his mom.

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…

At exactly one hour and 57 minutes, Jesse cries. Not hard. Just tears. Jesse’s mother gets up and rests her hand on his head.

“What is it, my love?”

He doesn’t know what to say. He is furious at her. How could she kiss someone who wasn’t his dad? It was disgusting. He hated her.

“I don’t know,” he weeps.

“Where does it hurt?”

He curls his hand into a fist and places it on his sternum.

She walks over to the couch and sits down. She pats the space next to her, “Come lay down.”

He gets up and walks over to her and sits down. She motions for him to put his head in her lap. He lays down with his legs draped over the end of the couch. She puts her hand on his chest and strokes his hair with her other hand. Tears stream down the sides of his face, into his ears and around the back of his neck.

tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap…

Jesse rolls to his side facing away from his mother and curls up in a ball. She continues to stroke his hair.

“Are you going to marry him?”

“It was just a kiss, Jesse. Getting married couldn’t be further from my mind.”

“I hate him.”

“You haven’t even met him.”

“I don’t care. I hate him.” He curls up tightly and cries. Crocodile tears soak his mother’s jeans as he sobs into his fists.

She curls down over him and wraps her arms around him tightly. “I don’t know how to do this, Jesse. I don’t know what to say to you to make it go away. But I just need you to know that I love you more than anyone has ever loved anyone. I am not going anywhere. I will always be here for you.”

“You could die, too.”

“Yes I could. But I will still be here for you.”

“How?”

“Look at your hands. They are my hands.”

“It’s not the same.”

“I know.”

“You can’t promise me that you will never leave.”

“Ok, technically I can’t. But we can’t live paralyzed that someday I might die or that you might die. At some point we have to just say, ‘Ok, I get what you mean.’ I’m going to do everything in my power to be here for you always and there is a very good chance that I will be able to keep that promise for a long time.”

Jesse sobs and the rain falls.

“What is it, really?”

“Sometime it just seems impossible.”

“What seems impossible?”

“I don’t know. This day. This life. Sometimes I don’t think about it at all and I do my stuff and everything is ok. And then sometime I just can’t imagine how I am going to do it without him. How am I going to do it without him?”

She wants to tell him that he will do it with her. That she is strong enough but instead she is quiet.

“There is nothing to look forward to,” Jesse sobs.

With everything in her power she holds back the tears. She strokes his hair. And he sobs.

And I said...

It rains when you cry. Do you remember that? Ask the dog. Ask the birds. Ask the trees. They know. Sometimes when it is bad there is thunder and lightening. The last time we met, before you were born, you were so excited. In only the way someone who is beginning a grand adventure can be. We laid it all out. It was to be the grandest adventure yet. You woke me up to be there for you. I winced when you told me the plan. It wasn’t that I thought it was a bad idea. I knew if anyone could do it, you could. I just couldn’t bear the thought of standing by silent and invisible as you wandered about the dark, empty universe, knocking your knees on ill placed furniture, freezing and alone, screaming at the stars. Do you remember the agreement we made? I said, how will you remember me after you’re born? And you said, butterflies? And I said, too cliché. How about the rain? And you said, just rain? And I said, no. It will rain when you’re sad. That is how you will remember me. And you said, sounds kind of dramatic. And as you turned and walked away, I said, and they will name you Jesse. After me.

Pretty in Pink

Dr. Willis: That’s a very interesting outfit you have on today, Jesse. Do you want to tell me about it?

Jesse: You like it? I am not sure this is my color.

Dr. Willis: No. You look great. Really. It’s just a little out of character and I want to be sure everything is ok.

Jesse: Yeah, yeah. I know. Don’t worry. I am not wearing this because it’s my new thing. I’m doing it for someone else.

Dr. Willis: Well, I’m not going to lie to you. I am dying to hear the story.

Jesse: You aren’t the only one.

Dr. Willis: So who are you doing this for?

Jesse: Steve Appleton.

Dr. Willis: Hm. And who is Steve Appleton?

Jesse: He’s a kid at school that no one likes.

Dr. Willis: Why don’t people like him?

Jesse: It started in grade school. He smelled bad and he was mean. I used to wonder which one came first: Did we not like him because he smelled bad and so then he became mean because no one liked him or was he mean and no one liked him and so we all talked about how bad he smelled because we didn’t like him. But every time I tried to be friends with him he ended up saying something mean or rude.

Dr. Willis: Ok so the kids didn’t like him because he was mean and maybe because he smelled bad too.

Jesse: Someone once showed me the house he lived in. It was dirty and old and run down. They said his mother was really really fat and she never left the house. I wondered what it was like to live in that house. I felt sorry for him.

Dr. Willis: Do you know for sure that those things are true?

Jesse: No, I guess not. But either way none of the kids liked him. No one really picked on him in grade school that I know of; they mostly just ignored him. He was way smaller than all the boys and girls. He was bad in sports and he was picked last for all the teams in gym and he wasn’t real smart either, so it just kind of seemed like he didn’t have anything he was good at. Because he was just kind of not there, no one noticed one day when he stopped smelling bad. By the time we got to junior high he didn’t have anything that made him stand out other than that he was always by himself.

Dr. Willis: But you do that so he wasn’t the only one.

Jesse: Yeah. But it’s different for me than it is for him.

Dr. Willis: How so?

Jesse: Well… people like me. Or they really want to like me … or they really want me to like them. I don’t know. Maybe they just feel sorry for me. Whatever. People don’t mess with me. Nobody likes Steve. They usually ignore him but sometimes they pick on him. He is bigger now but he is still pretty weak and he dresses real lame. People just don’t like Steve and it seems like he doesn’t like them either.

Dr. Willis: Have you asked him about that?

Jesse: No. I’ve thought about talking to him. But he isn’t really friendly. He won’t look me in the eyes. I don’t want to be his friend bad enough to deal with that.

Dr. Willis: That’s ok. So tell me what happened to Steve Appleton.

Jesse: Ok. Well. So last week, I found out that Steve wears girl’s underwear. Pink, silky, ruffled underwear.

Dr. Willis: Oh no.

Jesse: I know. I never hear anything about what goes on at Redwood Junior High and even I knew about it the same day someone figured it out. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t even want to think about what the kids were gonna to do to him.

Dr. Willis: Poor kid.

Jesse: I know. It was mostly the boys who tortured him. I don’t even want to tell you about it. It was bad. I wanted to stick up for him but you just can’t do that. It will only make it worse. Not only is he the kid who wears girl’s underwear but he has to have someone protect him too.

Dr. Willis: Yeah I can see that.

Jesse: But I wanted to do something. I knew I couldn’t talk to him because he wasn’t going to believe anything I said. But I just wanted him to know he wasn’t alone.

Dr. Willis: That’s very nice, Jesse.

Jesse: So I was sitting in my room thinking about Steve and I remembered something my grandmother always says that I never really understand. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” And all of a sudden I think I kind of knew what she meant. I knew saying something wasn’t going to help anything. I needed to do something.

Dr. Willis: So you wore a dress to school.

Jesse: Yeah. I wore a dress to school. I asked my mom if I could borrow a dress and I wore it to school.

Dr. Willis: And how did that idea go over with mom?

Jesse: She freaked out. Of course. But I told her that it was something I had to do and that everything would be ok. And she stared at me for a long time crying and then she helped me pick out a dress that looked good on me.

Dr. Willis: That is amazing, Jesse.

Jesse: I know. I couldn’t believe it.

Dr. Willis: So did this all happen today?

Jesse: No. I figured that if it was going to mean anything I'd have to do it for a little while so I've been wearing a dress every day since Tuesday.

Dr. Willis: And how’s it going?

Jesse: It’s going ok. I mean people freaked out. But no one said anything. That first day, everywhere I went, it was totally quiet. But no one was paying attention to Steve anymore, that’s for sure.

Dr. Willis: Did Steve see you?

Jesse: Everyone saw me. I was hard to miss. He didn’t say anything. I wondered if he thought I was making fun of him.

Dr. Willis: I guess that could have been possible.

Jesse: But I can’t do anything about that. What am I going to do? Walk up to him in a dress and say, “I am not making fun of you, Steve.”

Dr. Willis: Did your teachers say anything?

Jesse: No. I just walked around school like everything was totally normal and no one said anything. I think the school called my mom and whatever she said to them, they left me alone.

Dr. Willis: How long are you going to wear a dress to school?

Jesse: A couple of more days, I guess. I think that’s enough.

Dr. Willis: Well … I have say. Pink really is your color.

Jesse: Whatever.

Dr. Willis: I’m kind of serious.

Jesse: Thanks.

Crushing on Jesse

Every day the final bell rings at 3:35. Jesse will be at his bike 3:40. So if I want to see him, I have to have all of my books and everything I need with me in my last class, which is History with Mrs. Douton. Actually, the first semester it was Social Studies, and now it’s History … American History. I love Mrs. Douton because she tells it like it’s a story, and I remember it because it’s interesting. I had a Social Studies teacher in a different city a couple of years ago named Mrs. Stevenson, and she was horrible. If I was doing something wrong she would come up to me and grab my arm and start screaming at me with her teeth clenched and point her brown, fat, crooked finger in my face. In front of everyone. I have never been screamed at by any teacher or anyone in my whole life, for the most part. I mean, yes maybe my mom or dad once or twice, here and there. But I’m kind of a quite and shy person and if there is one thing I hate, it is being yelled at. Especially in front of other people. So if Mrs. Stevenson had just come up to me and said, “If you don’t stop acting bad, I am going to yell at you in front of the whole class,” I totally would have stopped doing what I was doing and would have been as good as any kid could have possibly been. Mrs. Douton is a great teacher and I love her class. Best of all she has us take essay tests instead of question and answer or multiple-choice tests – where you have to remember names and dates  – and I love that. I love essay tests because I get to write about what I know. She taught us that the best way to write an essay test is to start with what you want to say in the first paragraph, then follow it up with paragraphs where you go into more detail about what you said in the first paragraph, and then write a final paragraph wrapping it up. So if the question were, “How did the civil war impact the south socially, politically and economically,” I would say something about how the South was negatively impacted socially, economically and politically by the civil war, and then I would write three paragraphs on each of those areas, and then I would write a final paragraph summing up what I said. I do very well on these essay tests. In fact, I have the highest score in the class. The only reason I know that is because there is another girl who wants to be Mrs. Douton’s pet, and she wants to be the best in the class, and when she thought she had the best score on an essay test, Mrs. Douton told her that, actually, I was the one who had the best score. Ever since then she compares her scores to mine. I always seem to get one or two points more than she does every time. It drives her crazy. I don’t really care, but I do get a little satisfaction watching her get so irritated. She is really pretty and has big boobs … like really big boobs … and all the boys like her. One of the reasons I like Jesse is because he doesn’t pay attention to her. But he doesn’t pay attention to anyone. I have this fantasy that if he would get to know me, that maybe I could be the one person who understands him and maybe he could be the one person who understands me. The other day I was walking to my locker and this really popular girl named Michelle, out of nowhere, yells my name. I don’t think she has ever spoken to me, so I was a little freaked out. Kids don’t really hurt each other at this school like they did at my last school, so I didn’t think she was going to hurt me. But why all of a sudden would she want anything to do with “the new girl.” I stopped and pretended like we chit chat every day in the hall and said, “Yeah?” And she says, “Are those your favorite pants?” And I say, “Yeah.” Because they are my favorite pants. My grandmother bought these pants for me right before we moved here and they are really cool. They were expensive and I never get expensive clothes because my parents can’t afford it, but she bought them for me as a going away gift, so I could start school with some new clothes. I love them because they make me look skinny and the part around my ankles is pegged the way I like them. I couldn’t believe she was asking me that question, because, yes, indeed these are my favorite pants. And then she smiled and said, “I thought so because you wear them all the time.” There were two popular boys, Tim and Sean, standing with her and they laughed and went back to ignoring me. I looked over and Jesse was sitting reading at a picnic table near by. I don’t know if he heard what she said. I can’t decide if I wish he heard her and hates her and therefore likes me because of it, or if I hope he didn’t hear her because it was really embarrassing. I mean, not all of us are so rich that we can buy enough pants that we can wear a different pair every day. All the things I could have said in that moment… none of them came to me in the moment. Later that night I kept going over and over it in my head. I decided that the best approach would have been head on. Instead of coming up with an equally nasty response, I would just call her out on being mean. I would say that my family is poor and that we don’t have the money to buy lots and lots of clothes, but that I wash my clothes and do the best I can, and then I would thank her for taking the opportunity to humiliate me in front of others and tell her that I hope being mean makes her feel really good about herself. I just want to say that I really love these pants and even if I did have 20 pairs of pants, I would still wear these pants a lot. Maybe if Jesse did hear her, he knows that I, too, do not have a lot of friends, and that because I didn’t say anything back he knows that I am quiet and shy like he is, and that because we are both that way and have very few friends we would be perfect for each other. I don’t mean we have to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe we would just be best friends who understand each other. But we are only in one class together, and I never get to see him. So at the end of the day I take all of my stuff with me to history class and sit by the door, and as soon as the bell rings, I race out the door and pace myself to arrive at the bike racks right about the time Jesse does. I walk by, paying close attention to not pay attention to Jesse, and then time my steps to be halfway down the hill as Jesse rides by. I make sure that there are no other kids around me so that when Jesse rides by, he can clearly see me. Alone. Just like he is. I wonder if he even knows my name.