Barbara
Few girlfriends gain such favorable rapport with their boyfriend's mothers as I did with Geoff's mom. Barbara took me in like her own baby duckling. She did things like that in general. It was in her second nature. She fed and housed orphans, adopted children, donated gifts and money and time to charities, and in her day-job, worked with children who had special needs. And she became my specially needed mom for ten years.
My first impression of her was that she was too short to be Geoff's mom. And that she didn't speak right. There was an accent I couldn't place.
"Hi, I'm Bah-brah, so nice to finally meet you, Geoff has said such nice things, let me take ya coat."
Was she from Boston? Long Island?
"Hi I'm Erin. Nice to meet you too!"
"So come on in. You can leave ya shoes offo on, doesn't matta ta me. Geoff can show ya around. I'll show ya what's ta eat though."
She showed us what was leftover from dinner. There were some Mike's Hard Lemonades in the fridge which Geoff pointed at and raised his eyebrows when Barbara opened the door and I grinned at him from behind.
"Guy's upsteah's workin but he'ahs the clickah for you two if you wanna watch TV in the kitchen or Geoff you can show her both living room TV's but downsteah's TV is bettah since Dad is up and he has a deposition hearing tomorrah."
Barbara handed us the remote and poured two differently colored Mike's Hard Lemonades into a glass of ice she had sitting on the counter then scuffled around the kitchen island in her velvety slide-on slippers, and up the stairs she went to leave Geoff and I alone, as we slid into the booth-table and turned on the TV.
"So where's your mother from?"
"Um, she's from, uh, whatchamacallit, Warwick, Rhode Island, yeah."
"Oh, I could tell something like that cause of her accent. I was thinking Boston at first."
"Oh yeah. Yup. She gets that a lot."
"So what she was drinking looked tasteh." I poked my finger into Geoff's ribs to tickle him.
"Oh! Yes. So 'mazin. Indeed." Geoff slid out of the booth and went to the cupboards for glasses, then filled them with ice from the inside of the freezer as to not make noise with the ice machine. He brought the glasses and three hard lemonades to the table. I poured.
"Does your mom still have family in Rhode Island?"
"Yep, she goes there quite often. Her sister Jeannie and brother-in-law Bob, and her mother all live together in Matunuck Beach, and she has a sister named Rita who lives not far from there. She goes down several times a year." Geoff let out a laugh. "She's always begging the rest of us to go with her but nobody ever wants to."
"I want to! A beach? Why don't you want to go?"
"Well, it's a beach but mostly it's a bunch of older people sitting inside a house and smelling the salty beach air and listening to the sound of the beach waves." Geoff let out another laugh.
"Well we should go and WALK on the beach and go SWIMMING in the beach!"
"Yeah I will mention it to my mom. She would love that. My dad would love it too, so he doesn't get dragged down or made to feel guilty for not going." We both laughed.
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Barbara came to me in the guest room of her home as I prepared for my job interview. I'd only been out of college for two months. I held my English Teacher Certification shakily in one hand, seated on one of the twin beds, whilst penning at my resume on a clipboard with the other. Soon I would print out a final copy of my cover letter and resume, and turn in everything altogether the following morning when interviewing for my first teaching job.
The job was for teaching tenth grade English, at Saranac Lake High School. Barbara wrote me a blushing letter of recommendation two weeks before. I had another letter from my student teacher advisor, and another from a writing professor at St. Lawrence. All my ducks were in a row. All that was missing was an outfit. And somehow Barbara knew.
She came to me and asked me if I had anything to wear. I worried that she was going to take me on some kind of mother-daughter shopping spree, and I'd have to politely-awkwardly decline, since she'd already done too much for me all these years, and this was really my own mother's job, but one my own family could not afford, nor would afford me, even if they could.
"Erin I have something, an old outfit, you probably wouldn't even care to wear it, it's so dated, but you might want to try it on, just in case you like it. It might fit you. I outgrew it a long time ago-"
"-I'd love to," I interrupted.
"You can just give it a try, and it might be over the top, or not right for the occasion, or it might not even fit, but-"
"No, no, let me try it, I just need something, anything to wear-"
"Okay, let me go check my closet, I think I know where it is, just gotta pull it out, I know it's clean-"
"Yes, thank you so much."
Barbara came back within a minute with a beautiful vintage jacket and skirt suit in hand, covered in fitted plastic, which Barbara laid on the twin bed opposite me. She promptly removed the plastic from the hanger and then the hanger from the jacket, and detached the skirt as well. The jacket had a nipped-in waistline and seven buttons, and a delicate collar that folded naturally down. Nothing was masculine or bold, yet the jacket said, "I am assertive, I have fashion, I demand respect." This outfit was a winner, and I felt it would win over my interviewers the following morning.
I gave Barbara a hug, and asked her for privacy so I could try it on right away. She hesitated, as to show me where a clasp was hidden above the zipper on the skirt, and then left the room. I stripped down to my undies and put the thing on. There was no mirror in the guest room so I flew out of there and into the adjacent bathroom to get an almost-full-length glimpse, and caught a lovely torso-up view. Then I flew up the stairs to Geoff's sister's room to see the whole thing. Without shoes and with my muscular bulging calves it seemed slightly awkward, since the pencil skirt cut at my knees, but I knew with the right shoe this outfit was a hole-in-one, and so was I.
I flew down the stairs to the guest room and Barbara was waiting in the hallway and she smiled. She read my face. I put my hands on my hips and did a half turn in each direction.
"So you like it?"
"I love it."
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I never did get that teaching job, so Geoff's parents bought a home in RI and helped us move there and start a new lease on life. It was meant to be a hopeful new future. A fresh start.
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There's just one thing I'll hold to forever, there's just one little glint in your eye...
Barbara's eyes bent downward and sparkled, a melody her gaze cast upon the dinner table sang volumes louder than the momentary laughter that followed. Geoff's eyes matched hers, their smiles a mirrored image from a generation past. I imagined over dinners shared at the Hayward household, Barbara nursing Geoff from birth, her firstborn son, watching him grow, her good one, searching his eyes as a baby, before he could speak, how he'd speak with his eyes, and smile with them, as she smiled back. That mother-baby talk. How maybe I'd have a baby like Geoff, those glinty smiling eyes to look back at me someday.
Barbara passed the long string beans around the table once more, almost begging someone to finish them. I obliged. She knew I was a healthy eater, loving my veggies. Geoff and his father took seconds on mashed potatoes and gravy. Scraps of meat fat and even some good cuts I noticed Guy sneak off the serving platter to the dogs as they begged at the dinner table, come end of meal...
...The last time I saw Barbara was at her workplace in 2013. I took some time off to spend with my family that year, and worked part time as a substitute teacher. One day I got called to substitute for Barbara. She met me in her classroom before leaving for an in-house meeting. It was nearly two years since I'd seen or spoken to her, and I wanted to throw myself into her arms and unleash a well of tears into her goosy neckpit and explain everything I'd felt and held inside all this time. But that's not how our encounter went.
How do you explain? Explain to the mother of her dear boy she raised from birth, that he disappointed you by making you wait a decade for an engagement ring? That he complained about the wedding details as I planned our special day, alone? That he didn't seem to want to marry me at all, after he asked?
But I couldn't explain, because I knew, all too well, that I hardly deserved him in the first place. I'd never fully remained faithful to Geoff. There was a flirtiness in me that had gotten me into trouble on at least two occasions. And Geoff knew. I'd confessed. Partially just to hurt him. I was mean to him. Impatient. Ungrateful. Spoiled.
I couldn't complain to Barbara. She had raised a good son. There was no venting to her. I'd already done enough damage by leaving.
There really was nothing to say. Just sadness and pain stood between us like an invisible third party stranger. Barbara handed over her sub plans to me like she would to any other substitute teacher. All businesslike. She was decent and pleasant but not overly so.
She handed over the plans. That was the last I saw of Barbara. A stack of papers handed from her hands to mine. A forced smile and a shadow in her eyes where a glint used to be. I knew this would be one of her last years of teaching and perhaps the last time I saw her.
She would retire two years later and have some time to finally embrace her life. Enjoy her family and children and the grandchildren she already had, and future grandchildren Geoff might bring her with his new present girlfriend, since I was unable to bring her the ones she'd probably imagined having by now, as I write about her from my empty bedroom at home.
If she reads this someday I hope she knows how special she is to me and that I love her as deeply as anyone can love a second mother.
