WHEN FLOWERS DON'T CUT IT

Artist's Date #43: One Mother's Day

For Mother’s Day, I wanted to be seen as something other than a mother as my gift. Unwrap that, my body, my unruliness, a lost friend, some fantasy lover. My other mother friends and I couldn’t quite put our finger on this while we talked during the day, probably because of the contradiction in terms. Instead, we talked about dinner and what we were eating.

I planned to eat mussels, my mom’s favorite meal, at the little place with the red door across from the bookstore. During my wait, where I put my name down [emily, 1] with an erasable pen, I popped into the bookstore as if I were going to buy something to read at dinner, knowing full well that I wouldn’t read anything during dinner since I have my phone.

At the front was a section with recommendation cards below select books, handwritten by people who worked there. I love these love notes written to books and potential readers, and read some of them carefully without feeling drawn to any in particular. I was going to ask the guy behind the counter what he had read lately, but I knew that whatever he said wouldn’t matter – I wouldn’t buy what he said. From the corner of my eye, I saw parts of him – thick hair, round face, a thin tee-shirt, slightly revealing the frame underneath, but that’s all I caught. I left the way I knew I would leave — empty-handed.

Across the street, I sat at the bar by myself and devoured things: a huge pile of leaves on a plate, well dressed, a bowl of mussels, one by one, until a pile of black shells lay clattered together, a bagette dipped in butter, softened by warm springtime air, a glass of wine I selected from others, the various tasting glasses still on the counter.

Then I went back to the bookstore, and this time the guy from behind the counter was sitting in the aisle, with a book in his hand.

That’s when I asked him what he was reading.

He showed me the cover, and I came up close to it, which must have looked weird, but I took in that book like he was showing me something so special and important, like I knew that it mattered. Then he got up and went back behind the counter, and I felt that maybe I had made him feel like he should be working.

“Sorry if I disturbed you!” I said, and then I told him everything.

“I wanted to ask you what you’ve been reading before when I came in, but I thought it would be strange, and now you had a book in your hand, so it was easier to ask.”

I felt the words fall out of my mouth as if they were physical objects I’d held in for so long. Embarrassed by my eagerness and unable to put them back in, I turned and walked toward the south end of the store, the fiction section.

This is when I noticed what a gem this store was. Each book on the shelves was carefully selected. You could tell just by scanning the titles that someone very savvy was behind all this: the authors were so specific, and even the titles by each author were ones I knew had been recommended to me sometime, somewhere.

When I saw Severance, by Ling Ma, I grabbed it and sat on the stool in the aisle and opened it to the first page. I stretched my legs out and put my feet on the shelf across the aisle. I noticed my pleasure at opening the pages and putting my feet on something I shouldn’t – taking up space in the aisle, slightly drunk, the taste of the white wine still on my tongue. I saw my body was just out there in front of me and I noticed that I never fucking do this anymore - make myself big. Stretch out my time. Luxuriate. The music was some kind of punk-noise, likely a Brooklyn-based combo, but in a way that I liked, and it matched my feeling of a restless person who can eat things alive.

There were other thoughts. Something about that kid behind the counter, whether he was cute, or if I had just not looked in his direction.

The book, it turned out, was about the end of the world and how, if the narrator were to survive, she would have been among a group of other people like her who were unskilled at best.

We were brand strategists and property lawyers and human resources specialists, and personal finance consultants. We didn't know how to do anything, so we Googled everything, she writes on the first page. I very much identified with that group of people.

I remember when I lived in LA, after one round of fires, my neighbor knocked on my door with a piece of paper. It was a signup sheet for the neighborhood where the resident listed their skills next to their address and phone number. Medical knowledge, technical skills, building or growing, things that would become important, should structural things break down, and we were forced to rely on each other. What did I have that I could add to the list? I searched my mind and came up so short that I just thanked my neighbor and sent her away. Could I put “parent” on the list now? Surely, children deserve care at the end of the world.

This book would come home with me, and I brought it to the front to check out. There, my eyes shifted around, not making contact until the last moment when I felt how he looked at me with the same kind of attention I had used to look at that book in his hands.

Why had he looked at me in that same way? Was it because I was so strange? Or was this a vibe? Or was this a vibe because I am so strange? I can’t tell you the urge I had to do more irrational things after that. To not make sure at every moment that children have snacks, that children have snacks, that children have snacks.

Is this story about wanting, for Mother’s Day, to be seen by a man? If so, then I hate that mothering has brought me to this. Why would doing things men ignore make me seek legitimacy from the same eyes?

Or is this a story about wanting to catch myself in the act? About the pleasure in seeing oneself as an unreliable narrator.