Temporary Shelter (excerpt)

(Originally published in the April 1988 edition of Harpers Magazine.)

My mom tried to drive me off a bridge once. I’m not kidding. The Triborough Bridge. She was in a really bad mood – really bad. She was taking me to the airport so I could visit my dad in Paris. The whole thing was her idea – I didn’t want to go to Paris anyway, and I would’ve been happy to take the bus to the airport.

Now the truth is, I think she’d been mad at me for a while – basically since I was born. But some days we got along fine. Anyway, she’s driving me to the airport and Grandpa is in the front seat. Now Grandpa was the best person I ever knew. He was nice to everyone no matter what. So she stops the car and says to him, Get out of the car. I’m going to kill her and I don’t want you to get hurt. He doesn’t really believe her. You don’t mean that dear, he says. But she insists she does mean it. She is going to kill me. And he gets out. One hundred twenty-fifth and Broadway.

Now, I don’t think I thought she meant it, ’cause I just stayed there in the backseat and didn’t say a word.
 At the time I thought silence 
was the most sophisticated approach – I mean, I was only eighteen.
 But whenever she started screaming at me, I would just shut up and look
out the window. She hated that. I don’t remember what she was saying. She always liked to discuss her impending divorce in the car.

One time on Interstate 81, in the middle of Pennsylvania, she’s yelling at me and my brother and she just stops the car – right in the middle lane. She says to my brother, I’m not going any further until you tell me who you would rather see dead-me or your father. Cars are whizzing by us, honking and pointing. My brother thinks the whole thing is pretty funny, and he says, If I promise to answer the question, will you drive? So she says Yes and starts driving and he says, You. I’d rather see you dead.

The next day she tried to run him over. That’s the main reason to keep my mouth shut. That’s what I did the whole time I was growing up – kept my mouth shut. There’s a good and a bad side to it. The bad side is it can take you half an hour to find the bathroom in a strange place. But the good side is you don’t say anything stupid, even if you are thinking it. If you keep your mouth shut long enough, someone’s bound to give you a hint.

But sometimes I can’t help talking. Probably I said something wrong. Anyway, there we were driving along 125th Street. She’s telling me about how I’m gonna get up in court and tell the truth about what a bastard my father is. Then I make a mistake. We’re just about at Lenox Avenue and I say, Look Mom, I don’t understand. What’s the point of being married to someone who doesn’t want to be married to you?

She starts screaming, floors it, and tries to drive the car right into the wall of this Kentucky Fried Chicken – she turned into two lanes of oncoming traffic. So I dive headfirst from the backseat into the brake. Her legs are jerking and she’s spazzing out. Somehow we stop and I grab the keys, screaming my head off for help. The only thing is, we’re there in this giant Oldsmobile 98 blocking an entire intersection in the middle of Harlem. She’s wearing her mink coat and all this jewelry. All these black people are crowding around the car. We look like two rich crazy ladies, and I think: I’m a liberal, but how are they going to know? And I’m afraid to open the door. I’m totally panicked. And all of a sudden my mom is completely calm. She says, Janice, give me the keys and I will drive you to the airport. That’s it. Not please, not I’m sorry, just give me the keys. And you know what? I gave her the keys.

So she starts up again and I’m in the front seat this time. We don’t talk. I just look out the window. I don’t even remember thinking – just blank. Soon she’s saying I should have a good time in Paris, because she’ll be dead when I get back. And I say something really stupid, So, who’s supposed to feed the dog while you’re dead? I mean, I know it was a really stupid thing to say, but I was thinking of the time before when she took fifty Seconals and left a note in the kitchen that said, While I’m dead, feed the dog.

By now we’re on the bridge. She starts screaming that she is really going to kill me, and she turns sharp to the right across two lanes. I grab the wheel and try to jam on the brake, and we sort of bounce off this cement embankment. And I grab the keys again.

And the same thing happens again. I’m crying and screaming, and she’s yelling and spazzing out. Two lanes of traffic on the bridge are stopped and honking at us. Then all of a sudden she’s fine, like nothing happened. She tells me to give her back the keys, she promises not to kill me, and so I do.

That seems really weird, doesn’t it – me just giving her back the keys like that.

So it was about four years later that I went and found this shrink, Phyllis. She was nice. By then my mom had died. It was like, while she was alive, I didn’t really want to talk about it too much. I mean, I guess I’m lucky she died so I could stop thinking I was the one who was crazy.

But one day I’m in there telling this shrink, Phyllis, about being driven off the bridge, and the time she tried to run my brother over and the Seconals  –  all those stories. And Phyllis is listen –  in real intently. And suddenly I think, oh my God. How is she gonna know I’m not just making this up? What if my mom was just this nice lady who baked cookies and sent me presents? How would she know? Everything she knows about me is what I say. What if I’m lying and don’t even know it, and I’m just deluded, and none of the stuff I remember actually happened?

So, anyway, here’s what happened with my mom. She finally gets me to the airport. Nobody was dead, but I have to say I was probably the least excited person with a ticket to Paris at Kennedy Airport. I don’t have the slightest idea what I said to her when I got there, but she stormed out, saying, Have a good time. I’ll be dead when you get back. At that point I wouldn’t have minded if she was dead, but I still wasn’t in the mood to go to Paris. I find out that there’s a place in the basement of the airport where you can make an emergency transatlantic call. So I go down there and I find this Air France office, and I tell the guy it’s an emergency, I have to call my father in Paris.

Now, you would think, just by the way I looked – I was crying so hard I could hardly talk – you would think someone would just make the call. But this guy says he has to know why or he can’t do it. So I tell him basically my mother just tried to kill me on the way to the airport and just left saying she was going to kill herself. He gets the number of my dad’s hotel and calls. But there’s no answer.

So he says to me in his most sympathetic voice, I’m a businessman, just like your father. And the most efficient way to handle this is for you to get on the plane, meet with him in Paris, and then, if you want to, take the next flight back. That was the most absurd thing I had ever heard.

I started to argue with him, when in walks my mother like she’s on her way to a garden party, smiling and completely together. She says, I thought you’d be here. Come on dear, we don’t want you to miss your plane.

Well, that guy just looked at me like I was out of my mind. So this must be your mother, he says. Your daughter and I were just having a little chat. He smiled at me.