Chutes and Ladders: A Short Personal Essay
It is the early 70s on Cape Cod. I am no more than four or five years old. In photographs I sit on a bright beach towel wearing my moss-colored floral bikini, digging in the sand with a square yellow plastic shovel I use to fill the kelly green plastic bucket beside my mustached father, my little pudgy belly protruding. My father looks relaxed as he leans back on his elbows, lounging in his red plaid swimming trunks. My mother does not appear in the photos with us, presumably because she is behind the camera lens capturing our carefree sunny beach day bliss in various angles of overexposed sunlight. If I close my eyes, I can see my mother in her faded lime green bikini and her big Jackie O. sunglasses.
After a day at the beach, some hesitation washes over my parents, their mood becoming subdued, slightly more somber as nighttime reluctantly falls. My mother packs in haste while my father shows me my first-ever brand new board game, called ‘Chutes and Ladders.’ He says we’ll be playing together this evening ourselves because Mommy has to leave tonight, but she will rejoin us here in our rented beach cottage in a day or two.
I am confused. We have just arrived on Cape Cod. Why is she going somewhere without us? Isn’t Mommy going to stay and play with us too? ‘Chutes and Ladders’ is colorful and fun. You roll the dice to see if you land on a square that allows you to move ahead by climbing up a ladder or forces you to fall behind by sliding down a chute.
My father explains, “Mommy can’t play with us; she’s leaving for Washington, D.C., to say goodbye to her older sister, Auntie Margaret, the one with the red hair, who is dying of breast cancer.”
I remember Auntie Margaret. Because she scolded Cousin Bridget too severely when I ran onto the porch screaming and rubbing my watering eyes, after Bridget accidentally poked my eye with fingernail polish while attempting to paint my toenails for Cousin Jimmy and Meri’s wedding. Out of my good eye, I see Auntie Margaret, regal and imperious like Queen Elizabeth the first, whose portrait I study reverently in Mommy’s book on England from our muted orange family room armchair at every opportunity.
My father and I play this game of ups and downs for a long time before it’s bedtime. Dozing off to sleep, I decide I secretly feel sorry for Bridget, who is like a big sister to me, and hope that wherever Auntie Margaret is going, she can’t yell at Bridget anymore.
***
In the early 80s I hide behind that same orange family room armchair, using the lid of my wooden toy box as a tabletop on which to write a story about woodland fairies when I hear the rising and falling pitch of my parents’ voices arguing from the kitchen. Mom says, “Bernard, It’s been five years; I can’t take it anymore. We’ll have to get divorced if you don’t find another job soon.”
I stop writing abruptly, catching my breath so as to make myself as silent and small as possible. What will happen if Mom and Dad get divorced? Have they forgotten about me? I am crying silent tears that erupt into loud sobs as I crumple up my stupid fairy story and explode into the kitchen like fun snap thrown between them on the floor. “Are you and Dad really getting a divorce? Please, please, please don’t, Mom. Don’t. Let’s make a Whoolery sandwich!” I grab my mother and father, pulling them together on either side of me, holding them both in my arms until the three of us are hugging in the middle of the kitchen floor. My mother looks pointedly at my father, “Nobody’s getting divorced,” she reassures me, her tone stern.
That evening my mother cooks beef teriyaki using cheap chewy strips of beef marinated in La Choy Soy Sauce for so long the beef tastes like salty rubber served over plain white rice. She alternates serving beef teriyaki and thinly sliced pork chops doused with ketchup all week long. I’m afraid to complain for fear of hearing another divorce threat from her, so we eat mostly in silence at the kitchen table.
On Thursday, Cape Cod arises as a possible destination when my mother tells me a little too brightly that she and I will be taking our first ‘vacation’ without my father. We will be going to Wellfleet, where we will meet up with the notoriously single neighbor Mr. Taylor and his two youngest children, Karen, who is my age, and her older brother Patrick. The Taylors will be camping at nearby Nickerson State Park. We will stay at the Inn at Duck Creek.
“Why isn’t Dad coming with us?”
“Your father has work to do. Maybe he’ll join us for the weekend.”
Wellfleet’s The Inn at Duck Creek is just as it sounds--an historical inn beside a friendly duck-filled creek. My mother starts acting ‘funny’ once we arrive. Perhaps she doesn’t have a proper reservation, or maybe she can’t afford a big enough room for the two of us because soon we are attempting to squeeze in one quaint old-fashioned lumpy twin bed.
“Look at all the period antiques.”
Stretched out with one leg braced on the worn floor, I slide off the bed all night long while my mother keeps me up with her snoring.
For breakfast, I long for some bread to fill my empty stomach. I ask my mother for an English muffin, but my mother orders me a fruit cup instead.
“I’ll have a cup of tea, and she’ll have the fresh fruit cup,” my mother tells our waiter.
I look down at my empty plate and out the window to my left at the creek.
When our waiter returns with the fruit cup, I discover it comes with cut-up grapefruit which is too sour for my liking. My mother tells me to remove the grapefruit, and eat the fruit I like, but the bitter juice has saturated the entire cup, and I eat only a few bites before giving up on it altogether. My mother loves grapefruit, but she is too proud to finish it herself.
“I miss Daddy,” I venture softly, tears stinging in the corner of my eyes. I blink hard to keep from crying. If I am well behaved, maybe my mother won’t want to divorce him anymore.
My mother purses her lips as if in effort to maintain her composure.
We wait in the white gravel parking lot for the Taylors to arrive.
“Remember to wear your seat belt,” my mother cautions gently as she motions for me to climb in the backseat of Mr. Taylor’s car next to Karen and Patrick, who bob up and down excitedly beside me. They are definitely not buckled in, but I heed my mother’s instructions.
“I’ll meet you at the beach later,” she reminds me on parting. Where is she going without me? What is she doing here alone?
“You characters ready?” Mr. Taylor says, giving the car gas, and throwing it violently into reverse. Our heads jerk back. Patrick and Karen grin impish grins of glee, but I’m worried about this ride in Mr. Taylor’s car.
Mr. Taylor drives fast! Patrick and Karen egg their father on, gripping the headrests in front of them. With the car windows rolled completely down, I can hardly hear their thrilled shouts above the rush of incoming wind. I try to relax, but I am clinging to the backseat with all my might.
My mother meets us at the beach in her faded lime green bikini and Jackie O. sunglasses. I’m so glad to see her, I forget to ask her where she’s been.
***
In 2000 my father requests my help going through my mother’s wardrobe two weeks after her death. I begin with her closet. An English Instructor at Northeastern and Brandeis Universities, my mother always dressed impeccably in professional skirts and suits. A familiar red and charcoal grey checkered wool skirt hangs at the forefront of the closet, just beside her long purple velour bathrobe, as if she had intended to wear it soon.
Frugal and thrifty, she kept nearly every outfit she had ever owned. Her style was timeless. A white summer skort made of printed fabric splashed with over-sized red and green strawberries, hanging toward the back of the closet, catches my eye. I remember how, on hot summer days she wore this skort with her red leather Dr. Scholl’s sandals, accentuating her long legs as she stretched out to sip her homemade sun-brewed iced tea from a green glass in a lawn chair on the back deck my father built, reading the latest Joyce Carol Oates or Anita Brookner book from the Goodnow Public Library.
Next I tackle her chest of drawers. Surprisingly her underwear, much of which is handmade by her sister Jane, is tattered, and her bras appear worn from overuse. Never forced to go without new underwear each fall, suddenly I’m humbled by my mother’s sacrifice.
In the top drawers of my mother's dresser are her unfamiliar thin nightgowns, usually hidden under her bathrobes. Next drawer down I find her lightweight summer cable knit cotton sweaters. I unfold and inspect each one. They have held their shape well. My mother has rolled up the sleeves of the peach-colored one, and a crumpled tissue escapes as the sleeve unrolls during my inspection. Was my mother crying the last time she wore this one? The question looms in the air as I hold this sweater up in front of me at roughly my mother’s height. The sweater loosely maintains the shape of her bosom and her delicate shoulders. It is unbearable how the empty garment conjures up her absent figure. I smell the sweater, and it is indeed laced with the trace of the clean fragrance of my mother’s Mary Kay face cream. Overcome with grief, I sit on the edge of my mother’s side of their double bed.
Just when I think I can’t take this task any longer, I stumble across those white textured shorts with the stretched-out waistband, at the bottom of the lowest, deepest drawer. She wore these very shorts whenever she washed and waxed the kitchen floor on her bare hands and knees twice a year. Or whenever she hung out the laundry with wooden clothespins on the backyard clothesline in the hot summers. Or whenever she polished the bedroom furniture. Or walked our English setter Maggie Thatcher to the graveyard a mile down the road to the historical Sudbury Center.
Tucked underneath these shorts, neatly folded, I discover the faded lime green bikini my mother wore on Cape Cod so long ago, a reminder of the summers of loss, slim pickings, my parents’ almost-divorce.
***
My father sells the Sudbury house and moves to the island of Martha’s Vineyard. He lives there just shy of twenty years.
When he passes, I dread cleaning out his closet. I know it will bring up so many memories. In his highboy dresser there is mostly underwear and t-shirts and a few sweatshirts stained with house paint and wood stain.
His closet tells another story, however. Tasteful paisley silk ties, wool dress suits, khaki pants, and navy blue blazers line the three sides of the walk-in cedar closet belonging to my father, whose wardrobe reflects both the practicality of a sensible bookkeeper and the aspirations of a corporate certified public accountant, I salvage many of his suits for the local Boys and Girls’ Club Thrift Store.
When I am nearly done, I notice two white plastic milk crates my father used as extra shelving at the back of the closet. There, buried under some cotton sweaters and his blue and red terry cloth beach shirt with the over-sized white zipper, I find a familiar pair of red plaid swimming trunks. The sharp cry I utter is audible.
My father had acquired a long scar on his left leg from falling under the railings of a banister and scraping the skin off his shin late at night. So he preferred not to be seen in shorts of any kind. Knowing this sends an eerie chill up my arms, as I touch the fabric, because it begs the unfathomable question, why would he keep those swimming trunks all these years?
Maybe I know the answer: What saved my parents’ marriage was that they stayed afloat on waves of loss together, and, riding out their ups and their downs, they played out their own version of ‘Chutes and Ladders’ until the very end. Never letting go of their shared past, they knew just what to keep: Her faded lime green bikini, and his red plaid swimming trunks, touchstones of their love and remembrance.