I Should Be Laughing: Wyatt Imagines Barbara

Black coffee, an oil slick in a cup. Wyatt, bored and alone, stared into the reflection of the water-stained ceiling floating in the slick mirror on top of the coffee. It was, perhaps, the only sullied, dull and blemished spot in the entire house. Every time Wyatt refilled his cup, this was his fourth, he set it down in the same spot on the table so he could analyze the water spot. It was like trying to find faces in clouds, or images of the Virgin Mary in the dented fender of an old Ford. Wyatt was by himself now; Renny had vanished upstairs with her orange juice and vodka; and Harry…Well, he had simply disappeared altogether, even though the rental car was still parked beside the fence. Wyatt had no idea where Harry had gone although he most certainly knew why.

This was painful for Harry, returning to a house where the memories of his mother were too agonizing; coming home after so many years away simply to bury her. The past was a scar that, although appearing healed, nevertheless ached whenever it rained, or the winds grew cold; or his mother’s birthday came around again. This particular scar wouldn’t ever fade away, no matter how many years slipped away, because Harry never had a chance to confront his mother for what she had done to him, to Renny and Jimmy; he never had the chance to look at her and say, “Mother, I’m gay.”

Memories too uncomfortable to hang onto, yet they itched beneath the surface of his skin. A mother who, on those nights when she had been too inebriated to sleep, would pull her son into bed, and hold him close, refusing to let him go until she drifted off; even after all the years Harry still gasped for air when he passed her room. A mother who begged and pleaded for her boy’s help, but shoved him out of her life the first time he truly needed her.

Not only had Harry returned to a house full of horrific memories, but there was a great deal of sadness, too, when he faced Renny and Jimmy again. He had often wondered what might have happened if they had banded together all those years ago; would they have been able to survive life with Barbara at the end of nowhere? Would they have decided to run off together and form their own family, one of love without pain? Renny, Harry and Jimmy, each one carried their own recollections of abuse and neglect, the heartbreaking silences and earth-shattering rages, open palms and closed hearts. The abuses of Barbara’s life visited upon her children.

Wyatt swished his coffee around the mug and the water stain skewed into abstract. He had his own vision of Barbara Seaton—a woman he had never met, and never would—gleaned from snippets Harry had told him over the years. The half-noticed asides Harry uttered while reading newspaper articles about abandoned children; the wincing Harry endured the night they watched Bastard Out Of Carolina on cable; the times Harry’s eyes teared up because a mother screamed at her son in the market.

For Wyatt, Barbara was a terribly lonely, angry woman who suffocated her daughter and sons with meaningless acts of love whenever someone watched, and then retreated to her room and her bottles when the front door closed. Wyatt, the artist, envisioned Barbara as a three-armed monster, each hand clutching one of her children, the elbows remaining locked. Barbara held Renny, Harry and Jimmy in an iron grip, and yet kept them at arm’s length; she saw to it that they never truly got away and, better still, never got too close.