A Mother's Love by Mary Morris Read Free Book Online Page A

been.
    My father says that everything was fine until I was seven years old and my mother, Jessica Hope Holmes Slovak, went crazy, as her own mother had. She was twenty when she had me, twenty-seven when she left. It was in her genes, my father said, which hardly made me feel better, since I share those genes. When she left, America was poised for change. Soon Kennedy would be elected—and assassinated—the Beatles would sing on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and flower children would arrive in the Haight. But already my mother believed she wasn’t leading the life she was meant to lead. In a sense she was ahead of her time.
    The light of the woman across the way shone in the darkness and I sat, transfixed by its glow. Even the drug dealers had gone to sleep. At last Bobby grew quiet and soon settled into sleep. I breathed a sigh of relief as I gazed outside. Perhaps a phonecall had also awakened her. A child had a bad dream. Now a silhouette passed through the room. Suddenly the light went out, the room went black. There was a poignancy to this, the thought of her alone in the dark, struggling to go back to sleep.

FIVE
    T HE GLASS SLIPPER, where my father worked, was on the Strip. Children weren’t allowed, but once my mother dragged us there. She drove in our beat-up Dodge from the Valley of Fire trailer park and parked it beside all the fancy Mercedeses with the California plates. She wore tight gray slacks, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
    My mother clasped our hands in hers, almost pulling Sam off the ground. Red welts swelled on my wrists, and Sam cried, “You’re hurting me,” until she loosened her grip. Whenever she was angry, I saw it in her eyes. They were dark but shiny, like two pieces of coal just plucked from a mine, and her face went stark white, all the color draining from her lips. Her tongue, which was always moving in her mouth, moved ferociously now, yether eyes were set straight ahead like a ferret’s on its prey.
    The Glass Slipper was made almost entirely of glass before such buildings were fashionable. It was shaped like a shoe, and we took an elevator in its heel straight to the Cinderella Lounge, where my mother hid us behind her as she gulped down a rum and Coke. Then she took us by the hand again into the casino, where my father dealt black-jack. She stormed up to the table and didn’t seem to care that people were standing around. My father wore a neatly pressed white shirt and a bow tie. He had on red suspenders, and his coppery hair was combed flat to the side. For a moment I didn’t recognize him. I just thought he was a handsome man.
    As she pulled us to where he stood, my father’s face went pale. “Howard, I cannot take it anymore.” She raised our fists into the air. “I simply cannot take it.”
    People playing at my father’s table slipped away. He gazed nervously around for his pit boss, then motioned for a standby to fill in. Putting his hand on my mother’s shoulder, he took her off to a corner, where they seemed to forget about us. “Jessie,” I heard him say, his hand gripping her arm. She stared at him, her features all pinched together. Even when she was angry she was the most beautiful woman he could have found. But there was something strange about her features. Withher black hair, her white skin, and red lips, she never looked quite real. It was as if she were a Disney character, someone somebody had drawn.
    â€œI cannot stand it,” she said emphatically.
    Their voices faded, and I could only see their mouths moving. There was something in my father’s face that made me know he was begging. They had forgotten we were there, I had forgotten about Sam. When I looked for her, she was gone. I looked everywhere, and then I saw her, standing in front of the bank of elevators, a little girl in a thin cotton dress. When the elevator opened, she