The Crazy Cookie Lady

I laid there in bed last night remembering that I had forgotten to call her. Again.

I had remembered because Jay and I were having a discussion about our moms.

How they were similar; how they were different.

I had realized that my mom had had a pretty lengthy history at pursuing unavailable men and then becoming pseudo-suicidal over her failure at making these men fall in love with her.

We talked of our moms' cooking habits and how mine was an awful cook, but a pretty fantastic baker.

Aside from the freakish and very wrong penis lollipops she made, which put me in therapy and surely played a part in my choosing Psychology as a major, she had a gift with the oven.

She baked the most detailed cakes and cookies.

Crafts, cakes, and cookies were the only times someone could prove that my mother's patience was not merely urban legend.

The other children on the block were frightened by her.

She had cookie molds for every holiday and not only would the cookie be the correct color (pumpkins were orange, black cats were...well...black cats) but she flavored the glaze so that orange had a slight orange taste and black tasted like licorice.

While in my adult years, I realized that this really isn't all that special...especially in the Midwest...but this was Brooklyn, NY and my mom was not particularly fond of children.

She always took whatever I had to sell for school to her job at the hospital and sold the shit out of it.

I was always in the top 2 in my class when these little sales drives occurred.

I used to think that one day she just sort of "snapped" and decided she didn't want to be a parent anymore.

As I grew older, I realized that she never did.

Children were tokens. Pawns. Reasons to make men stay. Bargaining chips to get my grandparents to buy her things. Baggage to make strangers pity her.

It must have come as a true shock when she realized that children need nurturing.

That you cannot simply put them in a kennel with a food dish.

The bigger difficulty was surely the love.

How does a loveless individual give that which she does not possess?

*shrugs*

She doesn't.

She gets on a plane and leaves.

She leaves her little girls, 10 and 3 years old, and heads to the beach.

She replaces her children with horses and men.

There will always be time for horses.

Always time for the man she "fell in love with" who was of course dating someone else when she "fell".

Always time for suicide notes, phony attempts at a very dramatic death, and hospital visits.

One afternoon, upon arriving home from school when she convinced me to move away from my beloved NY, I will hear sadness escaping from her bathroom.

As I entered the room, I saw the note written on the mirror with the lipstick she never wore.

The note was to "him".

No note or goodbye to her children or the parents who cleaned up her every mess.

No thank you for the love we gave her regardless of her cruelty.

I felt my lip drop like a toddler.

I had never seen a "note" before.

She was hunched over the toilet vomiting the alcohol that she never drank...which washed down the pills that she did always take...

I did not notice the revolver at her side and clenched lightly in her hand.

I simply asked her if she was OK.

Panic was clearly in my 14 year old voice.

In slow motion, or so it seemed, she raised the revolver at the doorway in which I stood.

In her mind, I do not believe she thought it was me, but I could be wrong.

I stood frozen and looked at her with eyes certainly wide enough to fill the void of love in that room.

Terrified.

This would not be one of those times that I should utter a sound.

There would be no talking my way out of her madness.

If it were a movie, you would hear a clock slowly ticking in an eerily amplified and distorted way.

Or you would hear my heart beat. Loud. Fast.

You would not hear me breathe, for I held it.

Her eyes were glazed and bloodshot from tears and her failure to embrace the family legacy of alcoholism.

She was bad at drunk.

Her green eyes glistened with pain and insanity.

She was simply not there.

She pulled the trigger.

*click*

I closed my eyes and I wondered if I would feel it.

How much would it hurt?

Would she still hate me when I laid there lifeless with my blood pouring on her white ceramic tile?

Would the sound of the shot snap her out of it?

Would she try to save me?

Would she instead kill herself?

Would she let the mortician put black eyeliner on me or would she make me wear some stupid little girl dress and put me in a plain box?

Would I have a face left?

This is taking a really long time...

I opened my eyes slowly, afraid that a bullet would hit my eye.

That would suck.

She was slumped over and crying on the floor.

I wanted to go to her and hug her. Help her.

I didn't.

Hello!

The crazy bitch just fired a gun at me! What would you do?

Me?

My pussy ass ran out of the condo and down to a neighbor...a friend of my mother.

Penelope.

Penelope called 911 and bravely went to check on my mom.

The police came.

The ambulance took her away.

I called my grandparents.

At the hospital there was hell to pay.

I had humiliated my mother by getting Penelope.

It mattered not that she fired a gun at me.

We were both stupefied as to why it misfired, as the chamber was not empty.

We never discussed this.

I think it freaked her out.

It was not long after her return home that she kicked me out.

She never forgave me.

Never let me forget it.

She bought more horses.

She sought and disbursed her revenge on me when she saw fit.

She would go to my grandparents' home and ransack & destroy my room with claims that I was doing drugs and having wild sex.

I wasn't. She just liked to punish me when she was pissed at the boyfriend who wouldn't love her.

In the ultimate betrayal, she made a bid to adopt a child when I was 18.

I was sure that a psychological evaluation and background check would be ordered.

In my mind, a judge would ask for testimony from her two existing children.

I felt that Jennifer and I would seal the deal that this women need ever be around other humans, let alone helpless children.

Apparently, when you are crazy, you can guilt your mom into helping fund your cuckoo and certain things can be made to go away if a little "monetary love" is thrown around.

The adoption went through a few years later.

Six months later I chose the least likely destination for my beach-happy family to visit and moved away from Florida forever.

For three years she would believe me to live in Mississippi, though that was due to her own confusion that Missouri and Mississippi were indeed two different states.

In 1999, she will call me when my aunt tells her I am scheduled for a mastectomy.

She will say the worst possible words at that time.

"I tried the best I could but things just never worked out for me."

Bullshit!

Victim!

"Goodbye, Denise."

I hung up.

20 years after she left, I would have a relationship with her.

It will be parent and child.

I am the parent.

She, still the eternal child.

Sweeter, but still a bit dead on the inside.

So dead that she will not even realize when she hurts others.

I will learn to feel simply sad for her.

One day, she told me about a new job that she got in the tiny town to which she had moved to escape the harsh reality of society.

To be alone with her many horses and her adopted son.

I will ask her if she has added me to her "Emergency Contact List".

She will tell me that she hasn't. That [name of adopted son here] gets everything when she dies, so why does it matter?

Hmmmm.

With all that she inherited and lost...

With all that she lost and found again...

In the end, it is still the money that crosses her mind.

At 57, she has learned little in this life.

At 57 and raised in a corporation rather than a family, even as the poster-child of failure, she will still chant the corporate mission statement...even as her position has been reduced and the board has taken away her power.

I am forced to play her game and consider the R.O.I. on this relationship...

I hover on the brink of terminating her position in my life...

...and realize that to complete that act, would make me equally wrong.

I sigh and pick up the phone and call her.

"Hey Mom. Calling to check in. What's shakin'...?"

I listen with an amused smile as she relays to me the miseries of her week.

I am not my mother's daughter.