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November 22, 2007

Mom

I haven’t celebrated Thanksgiving since 1995. It has very little to do with the political ramifications of the holiday—though I must say that I am against anything that glorifies that massacre of Native Americans—but with the idea that this holiday is for family. I left my family and, although I have a band and a wife, I’ve never regained that sense of family. However, it occurred to me that we really are like a family—every rehearsal with Abysmal inevitably ends with one person in tears and another shouting, “I’ll see you cocksuckers in hell!” That’s like having Thanksgiving every day.

I wanted Renal to see what a real family get-together is like. All she’s had for her whole life is a promiscuous mother whose idea of Thanksgiving dinner was a quart of milk mixed with a bottle of Budweiser. Granted, I’ve had Thanksgivings like that, but I grew up in Iowa. Things are different there.

First, I invited the entire band over. They lead pathetic lives—none of them, except for Carl, have families. Riffs’s family is still alive, somewhere, but they all moved out of Santa Rosa a decade or so ago and left no forwarding address. Mikey’s parents were gunned down “execution-style,” presumably by the Madera Verde cartel as payback for what they perceived as a double-cross. He has no siblings, and he refuses to speak with any of his extended family. It’s quite a complicated situation.

In 1999, Margo’s parents, sisters, and most of her extended family were killed in a long con largely adapted from a Stephen J. Cannell novel. Unfortunately, the real-life problems with the con made it a little less of a sure thing than expected, resulting in much more bloodshed than the Atwater clan is used to.

That just leaves me and my semi-estranged mother. For years, I blamed her for killing my father. Admittedly, he died of a heart-attack, and while he ate steaks at every meal, she is the one who buttered them. We finally reconnected in late 2005, at which time I discovered she had been boning my best friend (and current bandmate) Carl Davenport. Carl had to choose sides, and eventually he chose me; neither of us have looked back, which seems to have upset her.

However, I felt inviting Mom to Thanksgiving was the right thing to do. Now that I have a daughter and things are good with Margo again, I thought the time was right to extend the olive branch. When I called her last week, she sounded cautious but excited when I called. I made all the travel and hotel arrangements. Our apartment is way too small to have another person staying there, even for a short period, so the plan was to have Mom stay at the Days Inn in Glendale and rent a conference room for the Thanksgiving Day meal.

Picking her up at the airport was sort of awkward. Since 9/11, nobody’s allowed to go meet people at the gate, but the folks at LAX took it one step further. Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security has me on some kind of list, possibly a result of all that stuff I did overseas, that prevents me from coming within 50 feet of the airport proper. We had to park in a short-term garage and leave Mom to her own devices in the airport. She’s only flown two or three times in her entire life, so I was afraid she’d get lost or something. After maybe 45 minutes, she came sauntering out of the elevator in the garage. Margo, Renal, and I leaned against the minivan, waiting.

“Mom!” I called when I saw her.

She set down her suitcase as I went over, so she could give me a hug and a peck on the cheek. She looked a little frailer than when I saw her two years ago, but nothing too severe. Probably still suffering the aftershocks of Carl leaving.

“How was the flight?” I asked, awkwardly taking hold of her bag.

“I’ve missed you, Matty,” she said.

“I told you never to call me that,” I said, casting an uncomfortable look in the direction of Margo and Renal. Margo didn’t really care—she already knew my real name—but Renal snickered.

“Fine,” Mom sighed. She looked Renal over. “So…this is the daughter I’ve heard so much about.”

“Mom, this is Renal,” I said.

Renal grinned.

“Good gracious, Matty, she’s adorable. And you say you impregnated a Mexican—her skin is so fair. You lucked out, kiddo.”

After an awkward pause, I said, “Yeah.”

I shoved her suitcase into the back of the minivan, then we all hopped in and headed for the freeway to Glendale. We rode pretty quietly, with Mom staring out the window at what little she could see of the city.

“So this is L.A.,” she sighed. “What a hole.”

“It’s technically Inglewood,” I said, “and yes. Wait ‘til we pass through downtown.”

If anything, she seemed less impressed by downtown L.A. All that majesty and wondrous, box-like modern architecture is lost on her purebred Midwestern mind. We didn’t say much more for the rest of the trip.

We checked her in to the hotel, and by that time I was already sick of her. I kept the small talk to a minimum and said, “We should let you get settled in.”

“Oh no, that’s okay. I don’t need much in the way of—”

“What I mean to say is, I have a very important meeting. I’ll…see you tomorrow.” I gave her a peck on the cheek, gestured for Margo and Renal to back out of the room as quickly as possible, and when we were out all three of us, mentally in sync, bolted for the stairwell.

That evening, we all agreed to take Mom to the In-N-Out at the Galleria, but when I called the hotel, the desk clerk said the occupant wasn’t answering.

“I wonder if she has a cell phone,” I muttered, then dialed Carl.

“Hey man,” Carl said.

“Hey, does my mom have a cell phone?”

“What?”

“I brought her to L.A. for Thanksgiving—”

“You what?!” I knew I should have cleared this with Carl.

“—but now we’ve lost track of her.”

“Jesus,” Carl whispered, barely audible over the phone. “Uhh…yeah, yeah. She had a cell phone, but I don’t know if the number’s still good.”

I wrote down the number he gave me, then asked, “You’re still coming tomorrow, right?”

“I…yeah, I guess so,” Carl said. “I just hope it’s not too awkward.”

“What could be awkward about it?”

Carl sighed, then hung up.

I shrugged, then dialed the number he gave me. I got VoiceMail—definitely Mom’s phone, but she wasn’t answering.

“Maybe she went sightseeing,” Renal offered.

“Dammit!” I snapped. “We brought her here because it was supposed be about being together, as a family.”

“Hon…” Margo said softly. “If it was all because of family, how come you ditched her as soon as we got her situated in the hotel?”

“Fuck off!”

“Just saying… For all we know, she’s probably sitting in that hotel room right now, by herself, refusing to take any calls because her only son invites her to California, then treats her like shit. I know it’d piss me off.”

I sat down on the couch and sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Go and talk to her,” Margo said. She glared at Renal. “Alone.”

“Fine,” I grunted. I hopped in the minivan and drove over to Glendale.

On the way, Renal called my cell on her new iPhone. “See what she did,” she said from what sounded like a crowded place—a restaurant or club or something. “It’s just like I said—you have to stand up for yourself, Dad. Make your own decisions.”

“I will,” I barked, “but in this case, she’s right.”

“If you say so…” Renal hung up.

When I got to Mom’s room at the Days Inn, I pounded on the door but nobody answered.

“Come on, Mom, goddammit!” I yelled, pounding my face against the door. From inside, I could hear the quiet cadences of television—indistinct dialogue, canned laughter.

I went down to the front desk, showed them my driver’s license and receipt, and demanded that they let me into the room. I made kind of a scene, which turned out to be unnecessary since I did, after all, put the room in my own name. Either way, I got what we wanted. Their security chief took me up to the room and opened the door with a master keycard.

Inside the room, I could see Mom on the balcony, looking down at the pool in the courtyard below. In one hand, she held a bottle of José Cuervo; in the other, some kind of margarita mix. I watched her take a sip of the mix, then a sip of the tequila, gargle, and swallow. I choked back my disgust and went out on the porch.

“Mom…”

It startled her so much that she almost dropped the tequila bottle. “Jesus, Matty, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Can I sit down?”

“I guess.”

I sat in a chair made of hard, white plastic. A small dog yapped from the balcony of one of the long-term apartments across the courtyard.

“Listen…” I said but couldn’t think of anything else.

“To what?” Mom asked.

“Jesus, Ma, why does everything gotta be so hard with us?”

“Matt, I didn’t make it like that,” she said. “I don’t blame you for Daddy’s death, I didn’t freeze you out because I was dating Carl, I didn’t run 2000 miles to get away from you…”

“Mom…”

“You’re such an asshole, Matty. Fly me out here, then ignore me. Why would—I’m asking, why do you want me here? Why are you making me face Carl? Why are you rubbing your great life in my face?”

“Great life.” I chuckled. “Christ, Ma, you don’t know how bad the last year was. You ever read my blog?”

“What the fuck is a blog?”

I looked at her for a moment, shocked.

“I’m kidding, Matt.” Mom laughed in that musical way that brought back the memories of a thousand thrill-seeking summers. “I know what a blog is, but no, it’s…well, it’d be as hard to read as it is to come here. Is it always this warm this time of year?”

“It’s usually warmer,” I muttered. Look, Ma—slam, bang, beginning of the year, I lost my record label.” I snapped my finger. “Just like that. Gone.

“I’ve worked so hard on this new record, we’ve recorded it literally three times in a row, and I just…I can’t get it right. After trying and failing three times, we finally gave it up, like…three weeks ago, I want to say.

“We tried to pump things up for the release by touring, but fuck, nobody in the entire United States will book us, not even the Whisky. That’s what happens when you wait five years to put out an album.

“So we went to Europe and Japan, to places where we’re still popular enough to get booked. I wasted almost all of my money, out of pocket, on this fucking tour—so much that we had to travel in goddamn coffins at one point—”

“Coffins?”

“They’re surprisingly comfortable, but it’s still humiliating. We were trying to exploit some kind of shipping loophole—dead bodies ship free or something. Doesn’t matter. On the whole tour, we played a whopping two concerts. We had like ten shows booked—all of them fell through, for one reason or another.”

“I’m sorry, Matt.”

“I just don’t know what to do anymore. Now I have this daughter, and of course I love her, but do you think I was expecting this. Financially, emotionally—I’m unprepared.”

“Did you invite me here to ask me for money?” Mom asked suspiciously.

“No, no,” I said. “Trust me, I got money. I just want this year to end on a good note, right? Family and all that…for Renal’s sake.”

“Who in their right mind would name a girl ‘Renal,’ anyway?” Mom wondered.

“It means something different in Spanish,” I said quickly.

“What?”

“Um…’rose petal’?” I said.

“Sure, son.”

“Anyway, I don’t mean to be mean. I’m not trying to rub anything in your face. I didn’t mean to ignore you. It wasn’t like we were doing anything glamorous. I guess I’m just still not used to, you know, being around you. You wanna go get some In-N-Out?”

“Is that…did you just proposition your own mother?”

“No, Ma—it’s a burger place.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize they ate meat in California,” Mom said. “Sure, fine—lead the way.”

I nodded, smiling. “You gotta leave the bottles here.”

“Ah, son of a bitch! They don’t have a drive-thru?”

Written by Girth McDürchstein on November 22, 2007 9:18 AM
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