OUTHOUSE

"This is my outhouse," she used to say, my mother used to.  


She was talking about the "cabin," more a shed really, built out behind the house.  Our ratty little piece of backyard lawn, overhung with pines, mossy from lack of sun and seeming to suffer, almost psychologically, from proximity to the woods bordering the property, was overwhelmed by the raw presence, thickness and press of the acres of forest and hills beyond my Mom's little white shingled haven.  


She had been a huge fan of Roald Dahl's since her formative years in Vermont and had read somewhere that he had had a shed on his property that he would write in.  Mom found the idea of a private sanctuary for an artist a compelling one and told my father so at the dinner table back in 1973.  


I was eating cereal for dinner since my mother had only had the energy to make my Dad's favorite, French Onion Soup, but not from a can, so which it was then, you see, an involved process for her since (a) she wasn't much of a cook and also (b) since she knew he (my Dad) would take it as a special treat (and thus be more likely to react favorably to her statement about Roald Dahl's writing shed and presumably more open to creating one for her) getting it right was that much more important.  In other words, she was plotting and I was eating Cherrios.  


Mom wasn't a writer though, I should say.  Her passion was painting.  Or, I guess, more "the visual arts" because she painted and sculpted, and took photographs and also enjoyed the so-called capital-F Folk arts, knitting, sewing, beading, tapestry, ever since her ashram days, if you know what I mean.  


"I read today that Roald Dahl had a writing room on his property," she sort of blurted between Dad and I while we, both of us, handled our spoons.  She nibbled on a sliced piece of bread with butter and made little distracted, but very typical, sweeps of her hair with her left hand.  Dad was figuring how to pierce the thick melt of provolone or mozzarella my mother had browned perfectly with the oven's broiler, which had sealed the bowl's super-heated contents like a nuclear reactor (my mother had had to deliver the soup in what passed for a crock to Dad's plate with the cow-themed mitts she had gotten from the thrift store.)  


"Hmmmm?"  Dad poked at the cheese.  It wasn't clear if the noise was in answer to my mother's out-of context statement about Roald Dahl or in study of the cheese vis-a-vis puzzling out an approach to eating the soup.  I had a bit of a cold at the time and had to eat my cereal breathing only through my mouth; that is, through the cereal as I chewed it open-mouthed.  The Cheerios' characteristic "oaty" smell and flavor clouded around my head although I couldn't smell it nor taste the cereal itself.  With the benefit of infrared lighting or maybe a spectral analysis of the "crock," one might've noticed tiny cracks spider-webbing through the thin coating of grease around the crock's outer surface.  


"I need a place," Mom continued, "to work.  I need...space!!"  She threw up her arms and splayed her hands suggesting a cloud around her head which she shook (her head), bulging and rattling her eyes.  Dad and I were practiced in decoding these kinds of gestures and masters also at navigating the subtle shifts in her mood, although not, first and foremost as they say, really out of any concern for her well-being or any need to understand her feelings for their own sake, but really, to be honest, as the means for keeping her happy enough to keep feeding us, washing our clothes and cleaning up our messes--perhaps this sounds a bit callous now but it was typical of your average 1970's Edith-Bunker-era American household re: issues of so-called Women's Lib., the ERA and the general lack of a mature and/or enlightened regard for a woman's role in society, a regard which would, in the years to come, of course under-go a significant period of re-thinking.  Mom's "head cloud," we knew, was what we thought of as the general wildness of her thoughts, and the influence of her artistic muse, such as it was, and even the very thing perhaps that informed her occasional whimsy.  For example, it was she who typically composed (composition here meaning the framing and balance of the shots as they were being arranged) the family photos, arranging my Dad, my sister and me according to some inner influence, a voice only she heard and listened to, as she stood there looking at us biting her lip and narrowing her eyes.  For long periods of reflection we said nothing and then dutifully moved finally as directed.  


We both stared at her now, unsure of what would happen next.  I think my Dad was actually at a loss for what was being asked of him.  My mothers sudden outburst, or so it seemed to his largely sedate sensibility, baffled him in its source and motivation.  There was also a high-pitched whine coming from what seemed like a great distance.  My father's head twitched slightly wanting both to ID the source of the sound but also to not break eye-contact with my mother since this was the only thing he was currently hanging his hat on in terms of wanting to satisfy whatever desire she was expressing, however vaguely.  He thought that at a minimum he owed her his attention until what she wanted became more clear.  


"Willy Wonka?" I asked.


I would sometimes confuse Roald Dahl with the characters he created, he was that kind of writer--the way he wrote, the subject matter, the unconventional twists, and the general feeling of menace hanging over the stories themselves made me feel like there was something unhinged about him, Dahl himself.  But so, this sudden break in the silence which had been crowding out the air in the room caused both my parents to jerk their heads in my direction right at the same time as the interior temperature of the bowl's cheese-insulated onion soup and relatively low quality of the soup bowl itself, purchased as part of some supermarket register-tape related give-away, combined to reach critical mass regarding the general integrity of the meal's ultimately flawed assembly and to seek some entropic release bursting the crock of soup right on the table in front of my father.  


"BORIS," my father yelling now, although really only startled by the exploding bowl and hot soup in his lap and his own ambient confusion over my mother's feelings and arm-waves, but making nonetheless the classic parental knee-jerk leap of logic, placing blame first on the kid, assuming anything that went wrong must be due to a child's lack of focus, as if the words "Willy Wonka" had been some kind of magical incanation.  Unfortunately, my reaction to surprise was ordinarily, and certainly in this case, to giggle, usually beginning with a kind of donkey-like hee-haw'ing sound in my stomach, only much faster.  My mouth though was still sort of filled with cereal and milk and my nose clogged with mucous.  


As I laughed and choked my mother rushed to grab a dishtowel from the handle of the refrigerator door and my father quietly fumed (alternating between "goddamit," "would you look at this" and "Jesus Ker-rist.")  There was a moment when both my father and I locked eyes in a instant of intense Oedipal rivalry as it was not immediately apparent who the towel was for, although neither of us were wholly conscious of the true nature of the eye-lock and wouldn't really be able to fully suss out the implications without intense psychoanalysis and perhaps even a few sessions of hypnosis.    My mother worked at the table around my father clearing the mess the crock (and presumably I) had made.  I continued chuckling and Dad muttering.  My mother eyes welled a bit and she made a few sounds which we knew, the two of us, approximated the words "I try so hard" which had the immediate effect of silencing my giggles and softening my Dad.  


"What was this about, a shed was it?"my father had come around to it in a kind of back-to-the-wall moment of truth, and though very little of the conversation after that is a recallable memory for me, the shed is there now, out behind the house.


Over the years my mother spent practically every waking hour in her "sanctuary," painting mostly, the products of her work stacked neatly in the basement of the house upon completion (some passed out occasionally as gifts, though, I know now, none of the really good ones) and catalogued in a richly annotated folder in a file cabinet behind her work table.  I was instructed to not "fiddle" with the paintings and I never did though I must admit it was never out of any maternal loyalty but more lack of interest.  Whenever my mother would refer to her "outhouse" I would cringe or wince depending on the company, disliking her folksy camp, her hippie-era braids and floppy bralessness, her embarrasing blasting of Bob Dylan into the night and her altogether lack of dignity, or so I thought.  


Last night I dreamed of her in her "outhouse."  I was outside watching her from the woods, from behind the trees.  The only light was coming from the windows and it was multicolored, projecting out in rays which seemed to shift as if the source inside was moving, creating...Bob Dylan played but it was as if under water.  I became aware of the animals only at the end right before I woke up.  They were coming out of the forest drawn by her.  I turned my head to look and woke up.  


I miss her terribly.