The Mother/Son Synapse
Driving mother home after the second stroke, past the oaks and hawthorns that lie about their age as if age is ever true, I listen as she talks in fragments, things that can never be melded except with dream and super glue: cuckoos and hawks are really the same bird in summer, the nurse on the day shift reminds her of the tragic actress who married a score of men but died alone, claims that her husband had such strong hands, remembers how he could fix anything until he himself broke, died waiting for a shipment of someone’s far-away-heart, donated to strangers with needy and numbed fingers. She speaks about him as if he is around somewhere raking leaves or tossing grease-stained rags into the old washing machine that still knocks and wheezes like an octogenarian who was warned to stop smoking but won’t.
Looking up at the mostly bare telephone wires, birds scattering, the subtle shift of clouds, I try to put her words together, as if making a train that will take us from South Jersey to Brooklyn without the need for further connections. She keeps speaking about this imaginary man with such deft hands and her young son who could add five digit numbers in his head while scooping layers of incredibly rich ice cream. Truth is I was always hanging upside down from trees and my real father couldn’t glue a paper plane. And just as this car sputters and dies– leaving us stranded in the middle of no man’s Jersey, me, clumsy with flashlights, inspecting car parts without knowing their proper names or true functions… how I wish that I had the strong and smart hands of the father my real father wanted to be.
Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. His work has been featured in Spork Press, Disingenuous Twaddle, Juked, Deuce Coupe, and others.
