She’s four foot eight and the world wants to rule her with its ways, putting all of its weight on her, but sometimes she strikes right back with her tiny iron fist, in her own ways.
She’s been through a lot. The loss of her parents, albeit both at ripe old ages. The loss of her husband, seventy years old but who by looking at him seemed to be in the prime of his life. A terrifying hurricane, named after her. She’s been through her share of those, but this one, she says, you have never seen anything like this one and she hopes she never does again. She says on occasion that she only believes in electricity because she sees the lights are on. That entire ordeal she spent praying with others, praying hard. Never seen anything like it. Nunca, she says. In this case, it took three months for her to believe in electricity again.
Don’t get me wrong. She has a relatively comfortable life. She went to college and did her time as a professional in the Puerto Rico Department of Labor. Her husband was a truck driver for Nabisco for about thirty years and made some great moves, although he could have had some beachfront property if not for her and her tiny iron fist. Oh, he usually did his thing, but in this case he, too, obeyed. And no beachfront property.
Her daughter, who works different shifts at a hospital, moved in with her after a long stint in New Jersey. They get along and they fight, but she’s not alone in that way. She has a merchant marine son in Florida and another one who’s a music teacher nearby, and grandchildren near and far, who come to visit or who talk to her when they can, and she’s happy to see them and to hear from them.
I used to have long, long conversations with her, weekdays after coming home from high school, in the kitchen as she cooked. I can still smell the chicken fricassee and the sopón and even the corned beef, which, incredibly, I have come to miss—explain that one. But I am the farthest away now. The conversations are still long and involved but they take place over the phone now.
Still, she has to cope. She says that she hated it, becoming a senior citizen, listening to advertising on the radio, on television, ads directed at her when at first she didn’t realize that they were directed at her. When she first realized it, she didn’t like it. She really didn’t like it at all. She couldn’t believe, when she matched her age to the ages they were talking about, that she fit in the category. But that was in the beginning. Now she says that she has gotten used to it and will take it for all it’s worth. She takes the discounts and she cuts in line. Anybody has a problem with it, they can take her senior citizen attitude and deal with it. She’s earned it. Give her what’s hers, get out of the way, and don’t give her no lip.
She has to pass the time, and she does what she can. She can be reclusive, but she still drives. She’ll go to Walmart. She sews and she has done a few paintings. She reads the newspapers from front page to back, except for the sports, I’m guessing. She can read the papers for hours at a time, and does—sometimes the entire morning or the whole afternoon. She listens to the radio, a lot of politics and gossip. She turns on the radio and listens to the fools bickering, sometimes an entire morning or the whole afternoon. She watches television and now she talks back to it, to the people being stupid inside of it, in their own lives, I’ve seen it, once when I was visiting, that she talks to the television and to the people there, almost as if they can hear her but they won’t take her advice, the fools, the idiots, listen to me, she says, leave him, she tells them, don’t let him treat you that way, she tells them, don’t do that to your life, she says, whatever it may be, whatever people may be going through, pick the thing that is ruining their lives, and she has advice for all of them and she tells them through the television screen but they don’t ever listen. Sometimes they really should. If only they could. She keeps telling them, I know it.
And she watches movies.
My mother loves movies the same way that I love movies. She used to go to the movie theaters very often, when we were all a lot younger, and then often, with her husband, but then, after, she very rarely goes and so she watches her movies on the television. She still enjoys movies very much, especially crime movies, and we discuss them, voices on the phone, as often as we can. She has questions about endings, hates it when the endings are not black and white, clear like Hitchcock’s, hates it when they get too cute, when they don’t just wrap things up like she knows they should.
Did he die or didn’t he?
Did they stay together or didn’t they?
Why didn’t they show him dead or alive, then?
Why didn’t they just kiss, then?
She doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like that at all. Sometimes, I start to explain, filmmakers want to—
Whatever, she says. Why don’t they just finish it so that it’s clear?!
Tienes razón. You’re right. She’s right, and why shouldn’t she be? She loves movies and she’s the audience.
This new thing, though, and it’s been going on for months, was brought on by a miniseries. I’m always saying that I don’t have the time and so I don’t watch, but this here miniseries I had to find the time to sit down and watch all six episodes with my wife. My mother made me. On account of the muchacho—the leading man.
One night on the phone she says that she had started to watch this thing. Happenstance.
The Night Manager, she says. The muchacho is an actor by the name of Tom Jí-dels-ton.
Name of Tom Hiddleston.
Ay, qué hombre, she says. What a man, this Tom Hiddleston.
I know who he is, I say. British, such and such, this and that. He’s good, he’s real good.
Pero qué hombre, she says.
Sí, I know who he is, good actor. Seen him in some things, like him, so what about . . . ?
Tom Hi-ddles-ton, she says, picking up on the pronunciation, trying to perfect it. Like she’s perfecting his name, in her mind, in her lips.
Hiddles-ton, she says.
Yes, I know. He—
Well, she says, he’s the night manager.
The way she says night manager . . .
That’s him, she says. He’s the night manager in this miniseries that I started to watch, he’s the muchacho.
I’m about to say something else but by this point I finally realize that this is not the usual involved but casual conversation about movies or any of their related subjects, that this is involved but doesn’t sound casual. It sounds . . . it sounds . . . It’s like something that maybe a son doesn’t want to hear his mother talking about but I sense that it’s too late, that she’s enthralled somehow, and I won’t hang up, it’s my mother, and maybe I want to hang up but it’s my mother, and her voice comes up here through the phone again and except for my occasional interruption it’s almost all her from there.
Bueno, she says, this Mr. Tom Hiddleston is not like any of the others. Well, he is and he isn’t. He’s not a doll like Rock Hudson. That was an incredible-looking man, Rock Hudson. Tom Hiddleston is not good looking in that way, not a perfect mold of a man, but there is something . . .
Paul Newman, I say. I once wrote a poem about Paul Newman’s eyes on account of her. So she’s been infatuated before but I don’t want to think about it too much.
Oh, sí, Paul Newman. Those eyes. Tan azules. So blue. It’s a shame artists should have to get old. It’s not fair, she says.
Huh.
But . . . Tom Hiddleston’s eyes are not like that, they’re not so . . . but, the thing is, they are . . . they are . . . he is . . . ay . . . no sé . . .
Struggling for words? My mother? A son doesn’t want to hear any more sometimes, but the conversations have always been long and honest and fairly unbridled and I remember that it’s mostly all her and I won’t hang up. This Mr. Hiddleston is not like the others.
No, she says, not like Rock Hudson or Paul Newman. He’s good looking, very good looking, but just different. Sometimes, she says, I think his face might be a little different looking, maybe it’s the British in him, but then again I just look at him in this miniseries and I just can’t stop looking at him. You have to watch this miniseries.
I don’t have the time.
He’s so . . . You can just tell he’s a nice man. The way he looks, the way he looks at people, the way he shows concern for this woman he’s involved with, and he’s trying to help her. You have to watch it. The way he . . .
Please don’t say the way he looks at me. She doesn’t. She continues for a little longer and I have to go and we hang up but the next time we talk the thread of her infatuation is picked up again, I pick it up as she unspools it and I wrap it up into a knot and then into a ball on this side of the line, wondering what to do with it, just holding it in my brain, as if I could hold it with my hands, my ears wide open, my mouth half-open, saying things, agreeing with her, listening, but also giving her information, which feels like fanning the flames.
He’s done other things, I say.
¿Ah, sí?
Sí. He’s Loki in that Thor movie.
The superhéroe movie?
Right.
Which one is Loki?
El malo. The bad guy.
Oh.
He has long hair in that one.
Haven’t seen it. Don’t much care for superhéroes. But I’ll check it out now.
If I find a cheap DVD, I’ll send it to you. And then I tell her that as I find some of his other movies I’ll be sure to send them to her. Plays a vampire in one. Plays F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gets it on with his own sister and ends up as a ghost in another—del Toro movie.
¡Fantástico! she says.
This goes on for days, every time I talk to her, and then for weeks and now for months. Every time I call, it seems that she has either just finished the miniseries again or that she is again in the middle of it, episode three, or four . . . Seven times, she says at some point, then nine times, then she loses count and I stop asking, or I stop asking because she loses count, I don’t know what that man has done to me, is doing to me, she keeps saying, can’t stop looking at him. Vieja pero no pendeja. Old but not stupid—kind of. I still have good taste, she says.
He’s been dating a very famous singer, I inform her. I tell her who it is and she doesn’t know her and she has my sister look her up on the internet. My mother takes a look and says that the young woman has good taste.
I say, Wait till you see him in uniform, in a Spielberg movie, the one about the horse. I tell her that I didn’t recognize him at first and warn her that he comes to a bad end but that I thought he was great.
Send it, send it!
I’ll find it on DVD. Wait until you see him in uniform.
Ay, sí, mijo.
There’s an old photograph of my father in uniform hanging on a wall in their house and I wonder what he would have thought about all of this, being that he was the jealous type. Then again, there was a time when, in his old age, he really took to telenovelas. My mother says that when they came on, the ones that he was really into, you couldn’t bother him for anything, that it was like someone was going to give him a test after each episode, that he was always there and right on time and it was like he was hypnotized. Some of those women in those telenovelas are gorgeous, and God only knows what this old fool’s thinking about, she would say. Maybe she thinks of that and figures it’s her turn, or I figure it’s her turn. I wonder what he would say . . .
Mr. Hiddleston is in the new King Kong movie, I say, trying to stay on the subject but trying to change my own train of thought.
Oh, but the muchacho in that one is King Kong, she says.
Yes, but it looks like Hiddleston is playing it very macho, a lot of action.
I’ll see it.
And he also plays Hank Williams in another film. I have to explain who Hank Williams was.
He must have a beautiful singing voice, she says, and by he of course she means Hiddleston. This guy can do no wrong.
To finally change the subject while at the same time trying to stay on the same subject, I mention Tom Hardy and she knows who he is, really liked him in that movie The Drop. She says, He looked muy zángano in that movie, I didn’t get it at first, but then I realized that was the way he wanted to play it, because in the end he’s really not dumb at all, that must have been exactly what he wanted to do, what a portrayal, tremendo actor, great actor. And then she says, But he’s not Tom.
Tom really must have a beautiful singing voice, she says, coming back to him after a while, and it’s like she’s talking to herself. Over here, I stare at the phone for a moment and I’m sure my mouth is open and the jaw is just hanging there. A matter of time until I start referring to him as Tom, too.
I saw him in this fantasy-ish movie, a kinda strange . . .
That’s not my thing, she says, that ciencia ficción, with all those aviones flying around.
There are no planes flying around in this one, really, and then I tell her, and I don’t know why, talk about fanning the flames, that they show him naked, everything but the pipí.
It doesn’t take her a second—¡Pues échala pa acá! Send it over, then! she says.
But it takes three months for her to believe in electricity again and when it finally happens the first thing she does is start the miniseries again, to get her fix of Tom. I keep trying to find some more of his things, even the Shakespeare stuff from England, but I must admit I’m taking it slow, maybe for fear that they will see my mother even less, or anymore, as she has become more reclusive than usual.
And I guess, with me, a sort of resignation has set in. I wonder if it’s natural. Tom comes up in conversation just about as often as family members do. I suspect he’s become a constant presence in her life. Not a dominating, forceful entity. More like a benevolent being somewhere out there, completely outside of my mother’s world and yet intertwined perfectly with her current existence. A son might hate to admit this, a thing that Freud or Jung may have a thing or two to say about, and that I would hate to think would have my father turning in his grave, or maybe not, for he, also, is a benevolent being: Tom has been good for my mother, has been good to my mother. An artist who, through his craft and image, with his ethereal presence, makes the relatively comfortable yet difficult life of a septuagenarian Puerto Rican widow more passable. That’s got to be all good.
A son can’t be, or shouldn’t be, jealous of that. Nor should he feel guilty for being an enabler.
A departed husband could be, but maybe shouldn’t be, jealous of that, even if he was the jealous type. But he was his own man and he can decide later on, or not decide at all, even if only in my conscience, how he feels about it.
And—and I don’t see it coming yet—there is always the possibility of a kind of divorce for these two, for my mother and Tom. She sure loves movies and she watches a lot of them, and someone else might come along. Not that I wish that. Whatever or whoever makes my mother pass the time more pleasantly in this son of a bitch of a world, and this is an optimist saying that here, I’m all for it. Any son must be all for it.
In the meantime, to each mother her own, and rightfully so. And, a Puerto Rican widow’s got to cope, Tom. She always has, and she always will.
