No, I don't live in Arizona. I live in California in a nice, orderly, middle-class home. At least it used to be. When I say my mother died in the Phoenix fire, I don't mean died exactly. Actually, she ran away. It's a trip, sorting it out. One thing is certain. Things have changed around here. And I do mean changed.
I guess I should have seen it coming, but it was gradual. I didn't notice at first. I mean, she was a good mother. Overtired and harried, maybe, but what can you expect from someone who's trying to do it all?
Mom may have been this professional woman in polyester pantsuits and a shag haircut, but she always tried to put Dad and Liz and me first. I guess that made quite a load what with shopping, cooking, the house and all, too, but she said that's the way most women did it who came of age in the fifties.
It was several years ago when I first remember her saying, "Ever since I was a teenager I've had this dream. I've wanted to write."
It blew me away. I'd never before realized she's had a dream apart from us. Well, it took her three years to work up courage to do it and when she quite the Probation Department you would've thought she'd been paroled or something.
I didn't pay much attention at the time. When you're a high school sophomore you have more exciting things on your mind. You know what I mean.
Liz – that's my older sister – got married about then. For six months the wedding was the center of everything.
Afterward, Mom turned Liz's room into a study and started disappearing for large chunks of time, holed up in there with only the tappity-tap of her typewriter filtering through the closed door. Or she'd bury her nose in a book, always a little guilty when she wasn't center-stage being Gil's wife or our mom. Doing her own thing was pretty foreign to her then.
Our basic way of life didn't change much in the beginning. Meals were on the table at the right time. Clean clothes in the closets. The house attractive and orderly. And Mom was always there to talk when we needed her.
Then I graduated from high school. Eager to leave the nest, against Mom and Dad's advice, I moved away to the city with a friend, got a job, and tried flying on my own. It didn't take long to discover what I'd taken for flight feathers was really only a little downy plumage.
That's when I decided college wasn't such a bad idea, after all. Carrying suitcases stuffed with belongings and a heavy case of the guilts, I moved back home. You see, Mom and Dad had been through this scene with Liz three times before. They already converted my room into a guest room and a retreat for Dad, so it was no small disruption.
Still, Mom said at the time, "Don't give it a thought. We're glad you're back. It shows how mature you are, doesn't it, Gil? It takes maturity to recognize a mistake and correct it while it's still easy to do."
I don't know about that. I'm not sure what maturity means or how fast it's acquired. I mean, take Mom, for instance. She was forty-six when she flew the coop. Now I ask, is that a mature thing for a grown woman – and a grandmother by that time – to do? But that's getting ahead of my story.
I noticed right away how she'd changed in my absence. She'd slimmed down, taken to wearing jeans and casual tops. She seemed younger, too, even lighthearted, but I guessed that was because she'd finally sold some things.
Those weren't the only changes. Not by a long shot. When she was in the middle of a writing project she'd let the house go. Sometimes she'd be gone and dinner would be late. And when something came up that she wanted to do, she just went ahead and did it.
In one way I thought it was great. To be truthful, I'd never envied her role. It seemed to be carved in stone. But in another, it made me uneasy. I sensed it unsettled Dad, too, though he didn't say so.
The two of us, Dad and I, were pretty used to doing whatever, whenever. We had been the spokes that go round and round. She'd been the hub, reliable, always there where the hub's supposed to be.
But it was the hairdo that really rocked me. I'd just gotten home from classes one day. She wasn't around, so I fixed a snack and kicked back. The next thing I knew, she waltzed in, beaming like a lighthouse on a foggy day. All I could do was rear up and gasp, choking on my coke.
"Mom! Your hair . . . " It came out a squeak.
"My hair," she affirmed, fluffing it lovingly and still dancing. "How do you like it? Without waiting for my reply, she gave her own and she sang it like a song. "No hair spray," she crooned. "Wash ‘n wear. I love it. It feels so free.
It had grown long and, of all things, she'd had it permed. It haloed from her head, long and loose, in a million little kinks, kind of a nature-frosted version of Cher's at the Academy Awards a few years back.
You would have had to know my mom before to appreciate the full impact. She'd been tailored and coiffured and hairsprayed within an inch of her life. Sort of sprayed into place. Into her whole life, I mean.
"It looks . . . it looks . . . great," I had to admit. What I didn't say was that it made me very uncomfortable. I was beginning to feel like parent to her child.
Then she blossomed out in Indian dresses, exotic tops and fringy vests to go with her jeans. She looked ten years younger. Some salesgirl even mistook her for Liz's sister, which pleased Mom no end. I don't think it did much for Liz though. Anyhow, it was like watching a wren turning into a peacock.
Dad, usually quiet, became even more so. I thought I saw fear in his eyes.
They were murmuring in low voices late one evening when I came in.
"Hi," I said, looking from one to the other, wondering at their sudden silence.
"Guess what?" Mom said, a note of strain in her voice. "I'm going away for a while. I have this wonderful opportunity to housesit a place by the sea where I can concentrate on my writing." A growing jubilation was edging out the strain. "Gil says you two can manage on your own."
"Your mother's going to Big Sur," Dad said, his face expressionless.
"Big Sur!" California's mecca for artists, individualists, and radicals. I couldn't believe it. I'd been there several times and it was beautiful, a rugged remote land of soaring hills and cliffs dipping redwood studded toes into the Pacific. All the colorful characters every novelist dreams of must live there. In form it might be only an hour from where we lived, but in content it was a world away.
Dad and I muddled along that first time she was gone. For awhile it was the pits. Then we found we could do things, I realize now, we should have been helping with all along. After all, she was trying to write full-time, but she'd done them without complaining much. Looking back, I guess she was that grateful for being able to follow her dream at last.
In the evenings I watched Dad from the corner of my eye. A big man, in every sense of the word, he wandered around like a little boy whose best friend has just moved away, a lost look in his eyes. A weight like a heap of wet laundry sagged behind my ribcage when I thought about how things had changed.
"Does it seem strange to you, Lucy? Mom going off like this?" Liz asked. "It's not like her."
I knew Liz felt abandoned, too, in a way. She was used to Mom being here when she needed someone to talk to or when she wanted a babysitter.
The pattern of our lives had been undone, like a jigsaw puzzled knocked to the floor, the pieces scattered. I think we all wondered if key pieces hadn't been lost forever.
But after two weeks Mom came back loaded down with yellow legal pads stuffed with scribbling, a tan that wasn't marred anywhere with white, and effervescing as if she was carbonated.
She threw herself back into wifing, mothering, and grandmothering. Was it guilt that propelled her? Gratitude? Or something else? I couldn't help but speculate.
Then she left again. In the following months she was gone almost as much as she was home. It was a strange time. Dad called her every evening. Afterward he seemed reassured somehow. Some weekends he spent there with her. He always came back looking oddly thoughtful.
Finally I dared ask, "Are we losing her, Dad?"
He was silent for a long time. "No, Lucy. I don't think so." I wasn't convinced though.
I wanted to ask if he felt her absences were betrayals of their promise to each other when they got married. Instead, I said, "Does it bother you, having her go away like this?"
He stroked his chin pensively. "Well, it takes some getting used to. But it's something she needs to do. She was never on her own, you know. She went directly from being a daughter to being a wife. She worked so I could finish college, got her own college at night school while she was working and we were raising you and Liz. Do you know that this is the first time in her life she's ever been alone?"
I could tell it still surprised him she liked being alone. Maybe it scared him, too.
"She's finding out what she's made of," he concluded. It was easy to see that so was he.
The next time she came home I guess she could see all the questions behind my eyes, hear all the words stuck in my throat. I could feel her eyes following me. It was right before she left again that she made the casual suggestion.
"Gil's going to be away for a business conference next weekend. How would you like to join me at Big Sur?"
"I'd love to." This was true. On the other hand, it was spooky. Was this her way of breaking bad news to me?
The following Saturday morning I lit out with the sun, the map Mom had drawn on the car seat beside me. Excitement mixed with dread weighted my foot on the accelerator until the narrow, winding ribbon of Highway One made speed impossible.
It was still early when I found it, an enchanted little cabin of redwood and glass that grew out of a sheared off cliffside as naturally as a Monterey cypress. It was tucked at the foot of a steep drive, away from the curious eyes of highway-goers. Semicircled by towering Monterey pines and masses of flamboyant geraniums and nasturtiums, it overlooked the Pacific as sea stretched silver to the horizon.
Dressed in a flowing Indian caftan, her long kinked hair tangled by ocean breezes, Mom met me at the door. She stood there braless and barefoot, her face free of make-up her nose pinked by the sun as if this remote place had stripped her of all but the essentials. She was, I suddenly suspected, a woman who had finally found the little girl in her, perhaps for the first time.
Anticipation and merriment surfaced in her eyes as she swept me inside. "Welcome to my temple by the sea." She smiled saucily.
My discomfort dissipated when the magic of the place got to me. Exotic objects from all over the world overflowed shelves and tables. Tibetan blessings hung over every door and incense spiraled a sandalwood prayer toward the skylight. Small figurines of Buddha, Shiva, and Kwan-yin sat among shells, sand dollars, and polished stones from the sea. Presiding over all of it like a primitive priestess was this suddenly strange, metamorphosed woman-child who was my mother.
We small-talked while she showed me around and that afternoon we sunbathed on the deck. I couldn't blame her for her enthusiasm,. It was so beautiful, suspended as we were between sky and sea. Sea gulls embroidered great arcs and loops in the air, sea otters barked far below, and endlessly the ocean pumped against the sea stacks like the heartbeat of the planet.
While we barbecued hamburgers that evening, we danced at the edge of conversational deeps like swimmers unwilling to test their toes in water they feared was freezing.
After dinner she broke out a bottle of sparkling apple juice. We returned to the deck to watch the sunset a while.
"You're really happy here, aren't you?" I asked at last.
"Yes, I am," she said quietly. "This has been the best year of my life."
My apprehension rose. How could she say such a thing?
"It needn't frighten you."
"It does." But the sea wind whipped up right then, swallowing my words, stinging us with salt and sudden cold. Shivering, we moved inside before the fireplace.
"There's nothing to be frightened of, Lucy. Really."
Questions I'd been biting back for a long time suddenly pushed past my teeth. "But what about Dad? Do you still love him? Aren't you happy with our family anymore? I mean, don't you want to be at home? Are you getting ready to leave for good, Mom?"
Her mouth fell open, her eyes widened, she tilted her head, disbelief rumpling her brow.
"Of course I still love your father." Her voice fell, her face was solemn. "If anything, I love him more for not begrudging me these new freedoms. Not every man could, you know."
"You can say that again." Impatiently I waited for more answers.
"As for being happy at home . . . " She rose to stoke the fire, then turned and looked down at me. Bending, she took my face in her hands, searching my eyes intently, hers liquid with a spreading softness. In the firelight I saw watery images of myself wavering there.
Suddenly her hands dropped and she returned to the sofa, curling into a little clump at the far end.
"I want you to know I don't have any regrets, Lucy."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean about the years before . . . about having Gil and Liz and you . . . about being a late bloomer." She looked down at her crumpled caftan and passed a hand over her flyaway hair.
"But everything's meant to bloom sooner or later," she added with a little shrug. "I do love you all, you know. Very much. And I do like being at home."
"You're talking in circles, Mom."
"Circles . . . Yes," she echoed, regressing. "I do have a regret, Lucy. It's that I didn't show you and Liz earlier on that it's a good thing to have a dream and to go for it. Yes." She hesitated a second, groping.
"You might say I missed a stage of my life. Not really missed it. Just misplaced it. That's it. What I've been doing . . . what I'm doing now . . . is completing the circle."
She had me bamboozled and she saw it.
"I've learned a lot in the last few years. Things I want you and Liz to learn, too. The sooner, the better."
"Things like?"
"Things like love is giving to give, not to get and not to keep. Not even to keep your husband's or your daughters' approval and love."
Those words sent pulses of fear down my spine.
"I don't think any of us can give real love to others ‘til we've learned to give it to ourselves. Real love allows you the freedom to be who you are, to do what you must, to follow your dream. If you don't love yourself enough to go for your dream – and that's being true to who and what you are – you can't love anyone else without extracting a terrible price from them. Do you see? Everyone needs a dream that's not all bound up in even one other person. Then the love you give is real and free. It doesn't bind those to whom it's given. I finally figured out that's the greatest gift I can give myself. It's the greatest gift I can give Gil and Liz and you, too."
It was a long speech, even for her, and I was still trying to sort it out. "But are you coming back home? To stay, I mean?" I asked in a small voice.
"Of course I am." She took a sip, smiled, a faraway look entering her eyes. "Do you know the legend of the Phoenix?
"Vaguely . . . "
"Well, the Phoenix was a mythic bird who lived hundreds of years in the wilderness. In the end it burned itself on a funeral pile. But then it rose from the ashes – reborn – to live again. I may never write the great American novel, Lucy . . . " She paused, lifting her hand to embrace the room and her eyes to meet mine – woman to woman. "But it doesn't matter, because the past few years and this – all this – have been my Phoenix fire."
Suddenly the little girl who had met me at the door earlier in the day was gone. The firelight flickered, its flames highlighting the gray in her hair, its shadows etching upon her face the encroaching lines of age.
"Better late than never," I whispered, finally beginning to understand.
I'll never forget that weekend. It's like I said right at the beginning. My mother died in the Phoenix fire. But what I didn't say was that she rose again. And I don't mind telling you, the lady she is today is one woman I really admire. Totally.
"My Mother Died in the Phoenix Fire" was first published in Student Series: Short Story International, Volume 9, Number 35, September 1989 International Cultural Exchange.
