My Mother Savior of Men

Chapter 1-30

About Judith G. McNeil and Contact

Back Jacket Notes

MY MOTHER, SAVIOR OF MEN

Chapter I

I came home early, having delivered a whole batch of furniture to the Wimsley Hotel. On my kitchen table was what appeared to be a large flowered cushion. The cushion moved, a head with the face of my mother turned, mouth open, not happily surprised. As she shifted, her boyfriend, Sydney, came into view and cleared his throat with the grace of grating automobile gears.

Hi, Chuck. He tried to sound cheery but the nodes and mucous on his vocal cords plus the fact that I hate being called Chuck added to my irritation, and I wanted to smack both of them.

What are you doing home so early? My mother was attempting to move her chubby behind off the table. It creaked as she shifted her weight. Another super annoyance as I had designed and built the table. The variety of woods were expensive, and here she had the audacity to have her behind on my masterpiece. She and Sydney, smooching, a picture I wanted to erase from my memory bank.

This is my house, I do believe. This is my house in which you are a guest. I could have added more, but my natural editing instincts prevented me from expounding. I just wished she’d wait to do her cuddle-snuggle as she calls it, at night, in a motel somewhere where I wouldn’t have to see it.

Sydney got up awkwardly, making a macho deal out of zipping up his fly. His bus, complete with the nodding seniors, was parked in front of the house. He kissed my mother on her forehead, and paternally patted her arm, said he’d call, and left. As the bus, equivalent in age to the oldest senior on it, farted several times before getting into gear, my mother, Marie Ludden, went to the window and waved as though her love was leaving for the war.

So-- I began trying to think of what to say. So-o-o, now awkwardly. I wanted to talk with Mom about the living agreements we’d made one month back when she needed temporary asylum while regrouping from a serious bout of just-short-of-a-stroke high blood pressure. Her doctor wanted her to stay with someone who could monitor her for a few months until it could be stabilized. My sister, May, the middle child who was to be unfettered from parental expectations and closest to my mother in her free spiritedness, was off on a music tour with an R & B soul-sister rap group. My brother Leslie and his hypochondriac wife, Carol, well they’re another case. Too conveniently, the other members of the family were all in various stages of regrouping, so the duty fell to me.

Mom…ah…we have to talk.

About what, dear? Oh-- and she was off and running about not having taken anything out of the freezer for dinner. It’s only one o’clock. We have plenty of time.

Then, what? She tried to look unaware of what I wanted talk about, looking at the floor for lint and pieces of paper that had escaped the vacuum.

Mom, please, don’t make this any harder than it is. Now I was looking at the floor for lint, pieces of paper that had escaped the vacuum. Okay, here it is. I wish—I wish you wouldn’t bring dates to the house.

But what am I supposed to do, dear? Sydney doesn’t have his own place.

I was removed from my center. What do you mean he doesn’t have his own place? Where does he live? He’s got a job, so why doesn’t he have his own place?

He lives with his mother.

I choked on phlegm that came from my negative emotions. Mom walked over and slapped me gently on the back.

He’s had to take care of his mother who’s as old as Methuselah, who speeds around in a wheelchair, and is as domineering as Queen Victoria. I mean that woman is really something. I sure hope I have her zip at ninety-five.

You’d better hope for the zip without the domineering part or Leslie, May and I will put you away.

Mom laughed with a disbelieving look on her face.

But back to what we were discussing. Doesn’t have his own room at his mother’s house?

Of course, but she rarely sleeps. Says she wants to snatch up whatever is left of life as her time is getting very short.

I was getting impatient. First of all, I was hungry, but knew if I made any move off the subject, Mom would be on the phone or out of house and it would be days before I could draw her back into the issue at hand. So you’ve met her?

Once. She shivered. Oh, that was so bad. So humiliating. She moved over to the window and looked out. Sydney and I were in the middle of fu---making love, with the door closed, mind you, and in she wheeled with the computerized wheelchair she has. Called me a slut and told never to bring me back to HER house. Mom shivered again, this time more violently, like she had the flu or something. Never, ever again.

I could see that this would not going to work the way I wanted it, so I tried another approach over my growling stomach and crispied nerves. Well, why don’t you guys go out dancing, and later chip in for a motel?

Mom froze me with one of her own imperious looks.

And who are you to tell me how to conduct my affairs, Charles Ludden? She always called me by my full name when she was pissed. I happen to be your mother and a woman over fifty years of age and I do think that should earn me some respect.

Mom, it was--

She went to the hall closet and got out her coat.

I’m going for a walk. She left, closing the door not with a slam, but with a firmness to indicate her displeasure. Whenever we reached these impasses, I wound up feeling like a jerk.

My mother, Marie Ludden, fifty-two years of age, looks a good ten years younger, in spite of the thirty extra pounds she refuses to shed. Her face, voice and walk are that of a much younger woman and it mainly stems from the fact that she rarely even thinks of her age, unless it is dragged up over some other issue. She and my father were as opposite as okra and ice cream. No one in their right mind would ever have made a bet that they would’ve gotten married. But that seemed to be a pattern that ran through her relationships. My big brother, Leslie, used to say that Mom used men like men use mountains; they’re challenges and once the challenge is met, they move on to a more difficult challenge. My mother seemed to think it her mission to save those members of the male human species from themselves. Interestingly enough, she had two sons whom she babied and one daughter who practically brought up herself. Marie didn’t give much leeway to women. She figured they had enough common sense to get through whatever problems they attracted. She was a conspicuous example of that truth.

Supposedly, this is a mutually beneficial arrangement. I’m a furniture designer and builder. Been in business for myself right out of school with some startup money from my dad, a graduation present. Probably more like guilt money due to the fact that he was always in some other part of the world, a career officer in the Air Force. He and Mom realized early on, not early enough to prevent the birth of three children, that they weren’t meant for the eternal bliss of my maternal and paternal grandparents who are still puttering around, holding hands like they are in junior high and each others’ best friend. Dad, Daniel Ludden, was happiest when he was in the air and in another country. Long- term relationships never fascinated him. He had been an only child of wealthy parents who traveled constantly. He never lost the bug to do the same. We’d see him a couple times a year, and we had many postcards from all over the world. We still get cards from him about four times a year. I’ve used many of these postcards in my work. But I’ve strayed from my point.

I’m in serious trouble with the IRS. I’m twenty-eight years of age and I’ve never paid taxes. Why? Because I’ve never filed taxes. It has been seven years that I’ve been in business, and while I’m not financially well off, I’m not starving, either. Most years, I break even with a little extra. It was Eric Dunphy, one of Mom’s former boyfriends, who lived with us for a couple of years who told me I never had to file unless I made a substantial profit. Eric was one of those peripheral people who managed to walk a thin legal line, well, back in the day, that is. He had a little illegal scam going on in the kitchen when we went to bed and he thought we were asleep. There were the scales he thought he’d hidden on the upper shelf of the linen closet and a peculiar-smelling guy who would come by every Tuesday and Saturday. We’d hear him close the kitchen door almost silently, our pre-auto boom box ears keen as a wild animal’s. He and Mr. Peculiar would be talking away about the number of people’s money they were gonna get. Leslie and I would park our heads on our hands, arms raised from the elbow, in the dark and make up stories about how he was embezzling and selling drugs, and may have been a member of the MOB. We’d do these things to erase these uncomfortable feelings, which we’d forget when he’d take us fishing.