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Show 2. In the early thirties my mother took up smoking. Dad argued, quarreled, and finally commanded. She kept on smoking. Before her marriage she had been a schoolteacher, a serious young woman of sterling moral character, with unassailable middle class credentials, and her smoking shocked more people than her husband. One day with his jack knife he cut all her cigarettes in half; she smiled and smoked the halves, bought another pack. So he gave in and on the tranquil summer evenings they would sit together on the front porch, lazily swinging in the porch swing, and he would roll a smoke from his bag of Bull Durham and she would light one of her Chesterfields and they would puff together. Of course, smoking led to drinking. My mother started dragging my father off to dances at Oak Grove and Cow Creek, where the ranchers and ranch hands danced, those rural westerners, and once when they came home they were so merry in the kitchen that they woke me up. I'd never heard my own mother laugh like that. Her name was Ann Marie and people mostly called her Ann, this sober young woman. But her new crowd of swingers-in circle and square dances you swing your partner-this new western bunch called her Marie. She wanted Dad to call her Marie, she even wanted us kids to call her Marie. We called her Mom, of course, and when she insisted we hung our heads and said, Yes, Ma'am. This woman with her hair curled, in short dresses and high heels, mouth vivid with lipstick, made me uneasy. The first time I smelled that smell on her breath she told me it was mouthwash. So when I heard them in the kitchen, of course I got up to go to the bathroom, which was through the kitchen. They had closed the door and I eased it open oh so softly so as |
