Page 48 of Torn
His mom was a good example of his heart. Tom took me to meet her one Sunday, the day she typically had him over for dinner. She and Tom, he’d informed me before we met, had been a “me and you against the world” unit while Tom was growing up. “My dad threw her out when he found out I wasn’t his.” The story went that Tom’s mother, Linda, who’d plied the bartender trade all of her adult life, had found a man at the bar she worked at back in Idaho before Tom was born—a man who could take her mind off the husband who beat her and the two screaming kids he did absolutely nothing to help care for.
“She thought she was in love with this guy. Thought he was gonna ride in on a white horse and take her away from her shitty life, the husband who cheated and drank like a fish, the ungrateful kids, the roach-infested apartment they all lived in.
“Ma really loved my dad, I think. Not so much that bastard of a husband.
“But when he found out he’d knocked her up, he took a powder. Mom never saw him again, and she won’t tell me who he was. Says he doesn’t deserve to know what a fine son he has. She was miserable and thought about giving me up, but she soldiered on, working and taking shit from her hubby and the kids. When I was born, I guess the truth came out. Her husband got suspicious. He’d heard things, and even as a baby I looked nothing like him or my half-sibs. So he demanded a paternity test.
“And Ma and I found ourselves out on our asses. A blessing, man! We came to the South Side of Chicago to live with her ma, my grandma.”
Tom had shrugged. “It hasn’t been a bad life. She did her best with me. And I could be a challenge. Believe you, me!”
That last admission didn’t surprise me. Tom drank, I feared, like his mother’s ex-husband, even if he hadn’t inherited his genetics. I’d seen him consume worrisome amounts when we went out to the bars together. It didn’t surprise me when he told me the story of his DUI and his scary night in jail.
Anyway, I’m getting off track here. I wanted to tell you about Tom’s sweetness as a son and how it pulled at my heartstrings.
Linda Green and her mom lived in an old brick apartment building in a neighborhood on Chicago’s Near South Side known as Bridgeport, within view of the spires of All Saints-St. Anthony Catholic Church, which Tom told me Linda and her mom, Viola, attended regularly. Bridgeport was famous in Chicago for its pizza, breaded-steak sandwiches, and being the home of something like five of the city’s mayors. Despite the latter distinction, it was mostly a hardscrabble working-class neighborhood, one of the most ethnically diverse in the city (along with my own Rogers Park).
Linda’s building was a four-story walkup, with a little Korean-owned grocery store and a pool hall on the ground floor. Tom and I entered through a door off the small parking lot at the rear of the building.
When Linda opened the door to us, you’d think this mother and child reunion was taking place after years of not seeing each other, instead of a mere seven days. They hugged for a long time, and I was amazed to find that when they finally pulled away, clinging to the other’s hands, tears stood in both their eyes.
Linda sniffed, looked at me, and smiled. She was beautiful but careworn, with a halo of bleached-blond hair, soulful brown eyes, and cupid’s bow lips that reminded me shamefully of her son. She was a tiny little thing, clad in tight jeans, a cropped pink angora sweater, and heeled boots. If it weren’t for the lines around her eyes and mouth that told a tale of a hard life, I would have imagined she was at least a decade younger than the late forties I knew she was.
Her dark eyes drank me in. And then her gaze moved toward her son. “You told me he was handsome, but wow.” She laughed, and I could hear the young girl she had been. She took my arm and guided me into the apartment. I could smell a roast in the oven, and it made my mouth water.
“Oh my God, that smells great.”
Linda shook her head. “It’s nothing. Chuck roast, potatoes, carrots, water, and an envelope of Lipton’s French Onion soup mix.”
The apartment reminded me of Tom in that it was neat, but economically furnished. Most of the stuff, from the early American living room suite to the laminate dinette set in the kitchen, appeared to be either decades old or secondhand. Still, the walls were a cheerful yellow. These were hung with pictures of Tom from babyhood up to what I guessed would be his senior picture from high school. It was a little like a shrine.
I better never do this guy wrong, I thought, or I’ll have Mama Bear to contend with.
An older woman sat in a recliner near the front window. She got up as I moved farther in. Like her daughter, she was very thin and only a little over five feet tall. Her hair was dyed a similar auburn shade to Tom’s, but was in a tight perm. She also had dark brown eyes.
“This is my mom, Viola.” Linda thrust me a little toward the older woman, who held out her arms.
A little awkwardly, I hugged her. She smelled of talcum powder and cigarettes.
We stepped away, and she said in a deep, raspy voice I wasn’t expecting, “It’s very nice to meet you, young man. Tom has told us all about you.”
“All good, I hope?”
She waved me away. “If it was all good, I’d know him for a liar.” She winked. I liked her.
The afternoon was delightful and made me a little homesick for my own family back in Ohio. Tom was such a dutiful son and grandson, helping with the mashed potatoes, setting the table, making sure his mom never carried anything too heavy, and, in general, jumping in wherever he could lighten someone’s load.
He and I washed the dishes at the meal’s end.
And when we left, I knew I’d want to come back again. In just one visit, they’d all three made me feel as though I belonged, that I was part of the family. I could see sitting at that laminate table at Christmas or Thanksgiving.
I think that feeling led me into the beginning of falling in love with Tom. Here I was seeing a family not rich at all in material things, but very wealthy in terms of bottomless reserves of love.
Tom and I went to sleep that night in each other’s arms and, for once, didn’t make love.
But I felt curiously, yet completely, at home.
Chapter 16
