Flash nonfiction by Marta Lane
I’m sorry it took me so long to learn multiplication. A page of homework in my hand, I waited in your bedroom on a Saturday afternoon. You sat at your gunmetal desk, wearing black military-issue glasses. What’s seven times nine? I stood there dumbly. You clenched your teeth and howled at my stupidity. Tears coursed down my cheeks. I fought to catch my breath. Then you offered a nickel for every right answer. You’d catch me in the carpeted hallway, across from Mom’s bedroom, or downstairs, reading in the living room. What’s six times eight? I’d answer: Forty-eight! and you’d toss me some silver with a flick of your thumb.
Now you recline in your La-Z-Boy, eyes closed. I stand because there’s no room for me at the small table in your two-bedroom apartment. I run my hand in a circle around Mom’s back. Her sharp shoulder blades rise and fall underneath my palm. Head bent to the checkbook ledger; her grip hesitates over the calculator like a frightened cat, ready to dart at the slightest miscalculation.
“I’m sorry I’m so stupid,” she says, then erases five numbers from the “total” column. I know Hitler’s plane flies low over her memory, dropping a bomb on her schoolyard in a small Spanish town, instigating a Civil War that cannonballed her home into bits of rubble.
“Mom, you got this,” I say. I know she does because I taught her six years ago, as you lay in the ICU with a tube draining fluid from your brain.
I told Mom, during the first few days of your stroke, that I didn’t believe in her love. We had come home after a day of waiting for you to wake. It was late evening. The curtains were drawn, and the lights were off.
I sat in Mom’s recliner—where once, a summer breeze made the curtains billow as I watched the Smurfs; then Mom choked me until I kicked her off and she landed on a Tonka truck. Mom sat in your recliner, near the fireplace, the pilot light outlined her face in blue. She thanked me for coming so quickly, and said she loved me. I didn’t know what to do with her words. They would only slip down the surface of my skin.
“I always thought you hated me,” I said.
“My daughter, you are my first born,” she’d said. A tear rolled down her cheek. “I will always love you. I’m sorry I made you feel like I didn’t.” Her words rushed me like a tropical wave, filling me with a buoyant warmth.
That was four digits ago. Now, adding a fifth, makes Mom anxious. She’s not used to managing that much money.
This morning, as my husband and I drove to your retirement complex, I decided that instead of focusing on how we don’t connect, I’d look for ways we do. I’m giddy; tiny bubbles of joy burst in my belly. My feet do a small jig. I’m sorry I didn’t manage a simple shift of perspective sooner.
“This?” she now asks; her slight and spotted index finger angles toward the decimal point. I tell her yes; she types the five-digit number, again. My palm circles her back as a wholesome feeling ripples, pumps through my body: a thousand tendrils emote from my heart; swaddling Mom.
“Is that right?” Mom asks. She looks up at me. Her brown eyes soft behind trifocals. I tell her she’s got the decimal point over four stops instead of five. She clears the calculator; again. I rub her back. She types the five-digit number; again, adds the decimal point, runs her left hand down the ledger and finds the $200 check she wrote for my birthday. Her right hand hovers over the calculator. I tell her to press the minus key, 200, the decimal point, the equal sign.
“Look at Mom go!” I say as she writes the correct total. “Now do the same thing for the next check.”
Her hand lingers; she calculates the steps in her mind. I rub her back. An occasional yes or no spurs her forward. Her fingers quicken. She’s calculating without calculation.
“Her fingers move so fast they’re a blur,” I say.
You laugh, and your face gets that scrunched look when you’re overwhelmed with emotion. I’m not sorry I moved back, so I can be with you now, as tears sting your eyes and make them turn red.