Ma raised me on her own. She had some help from Gram and Pap. More Gram than Pap. Pap didn’t much interest in me until I could work. In fact, he told me on my first of work, “Now, you’re interesting.” That was also the year Gram died.
Ma was tough like Pap. She refused to take charity from anyone, so when she was 19 and I was born, she gave up her plans for college and took a job as a teller at the Berwick Trust. She was already a bartender at the Berwick Tavern. She’d been a server for three years before the promotion. After I was born she continued to work three to four nights a week as she felt she couldn’t give up the money. Some nights when she left for the Tavern I’d see Gram shake her head and mutter, “That’s where it all started” as the door closed behind Ma.
I’d ask Ma why she kept working the two jobs, even after she’d been promoted to head teller and was making enough to care for both of us and chip in quite a bit to Gram and Pap.
“You never know what might happen. There may be an emergency of some sort; Pap or Gram might get sick and we might need the extra money. It’s always good to have a back-up plan.”
If Pap was around he’d pipe up with disdain, “or any plan at all. Remember the Five Ps.” This was one of Pap’s favorite slogans: preparation prevents piss poor performance.
Gram would shush him, but not before a look of anger would flash across Ma’s face. “I also do it because I enjoy it,” Ma said.
I think she did like the job, and I know we needed the money, but I think she also liked the attention she received behind the bar and the escape it provided from Gram and Pap’s house.
It was never spoken of in my presence, but you could feel the rooms of the small house were thick with it in the early years of my life. My birth was a cause of some contention between Ma and Pap. Gram loved me, but the tension between Ma and Pap sat heavy in the air.
Pap thought I was a parasite or some sort of infectious disease. Whenever possible, he would steer clear of me. If by some chance we were in the same room together, he might upgrade my status to that of a dog by asking me to “fetch a Bud from the fridge” for him. When I’d left the room, I could hear him talking to himself about “the planet’s overcrowded enough without another mouth that can’t feed or do for itself.”
I suspect another reason Ma worked two jobs was so she wouldn’t have to accept anything from my grandparents, who didn’t have much. They lived in the caretaker’s cottage next to the cemetery. That was the biggest part of Pap’s pay: the rent-free housing. Gram didn’t work. She volunteered at the library and the church.
Ma also had a point to prove. Neither one of my grandparents was pleased when I came along – Ma being just 19 at the time – though Gram got over it the fastest, telling Ma, “this is a great thing, we will get through it together.” Pap, harder to please and more upright in his sense of what was proper – despite his rebellious streak – was a different story.
He’d take any opportunity to poke at Ma about my birth. Pap was irate when he found out Ma was pregnant, his anger increasing when she wouldn’t tell him who the father was. Over the years I heard the hint of rumors throughout town, but by the time I understood what they were, Ma had squashed most of them.
She worked two jobs to prove to Pap we could make it without his help. I think she succeeded. By the time I went to work for him in the cemetery, Ma was paying all the utility bills, car payments for both her and Gram and Pap’s cars, all the groceries and whatever other upkeep was required around the house.
It’s easy to see now how much like him she was, though she’d never admit it. Her stubbornness came from him, as did her rigidity and sense of what was proper. I’ve tried to point it out to her, now that I’m older, but she always steers the conversation in a different direction.
Because she worked the two jobs and was caring for me the rest of the time, Ma never had time to go out with friends or go out on dates. I think that’s why she liked the attention working at the bar brought. She needed to interact outside of the stuffy environment of the bank and the cottage. The bar kept her feeling young and in touch with her friends. Everyone in Berwick spent a night or two at the Tavern, unless they were regulars at the Tortoise.
