I never understood what drew them to her - she wasn't pretty or thin or very bright but rather stocky, with a foul mouthed ability to curse like a sailor. She told dirty jokes with relish, chain smoked, could drink any of them under the table, and drove her pink Ford convertible like the devil was on her tail. Her flirting was suggestive and crude with a malicious edge and her temper, always close to the surface, could explode without warning. She was married with three young children, a chip on her shoulder and a nasty inclination to stir up trouble. Yet the men came. The three I remember most vividly were Jimmy, Freddie and John.
Jimmy was a tall, silver haired, rail thin pharmaceuticals rep. He smiled a lot and drank martinis, smoked long, thin cigarettes with a shiny black holder. He was a nervous sort, chattering on about nothing at all for hours at a time and always being meticulous about keeping his distance from her if the kids were home. After school, we would find them in the living room, drinking and playing cards. He was partial to pink gin and lived with his mother somewhere in Maine. John was wheelchair bound, enormously fat and very pink - his hands were swollen and his laughter often turned to a coughing fit which turned his pudgy, jowly face dark crimson. He had gone to high school with my mother, so she said, and then been in a car accident which left him paralyzed. He drank beer
in huge quantities then needed help to the bathroom. I didn't dare think what might be going on behind the closed door, he was a touchy-feely type with a loud voice and he made me want to wash. Freddie was a Cambridge homicide detective, a leathery faced, hook nosed and narrowed eyed man from the North End of Boston. His teeth were frightneningly white against his olive skin and his dark hair was always uncombed. He spoke in rough street language and his voice was coarse with a hint of an accent. He drank beer from a bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He wore a wedding ring and a diamond pink ring, dressed mostly in black and always carried a gun. He and his wife were working things out, my mother said and he was the only one that my daddy knew separately and who would sometimes linger until suppertime.
A therapist once asked what I thought my mother might have been looking for in these odd relationships - love, drinking buddies, approval, scandal. I never knew and by the time I left home had come not to care. In a way, I think we all summon our own demons and have to deal with them alone. Some of mine were not the men in my mother's life but the aftermath, the late night arguments between my parents and my mother's slurred denials and her repeated protests of We're just friends. My daddy, so slow to anger, would rage at her with questions she couldn't answer until he was defeated and then a deadly silence would come over the house. The demons were beaten back but would come again another night. They had a standing inivtation.
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