Atlanta to Maljamar

I never agreed to move to the middle of nowhere.  That was my mother’s idea.  After an art exhibition in New York City, she returned home and informed my father that we would be relocating.  He couldn’t understand why.  But then, they never seemed to have a relationship based on communication. 

The strange thing was that my mother rarely stayed with us at the house in Atlanta.  She’d been traveling around Europe since my first memories.  She was an art collector, constantly using my father’s money to buy canvases with grotesquely splattered paint.  She would stay at the house for about three days before hurrying off to another auction in Paris or Rome.  My contact with her had been limited since birth.  The descriptions I gave to my friends captured her physical presence, but never explained the mystery that surrounded her.  I had never had a conversation with her that decided anything more than what we were having for dinner.

The day before we moved, I remember overhearing my mother and father talking.  She was dressed up to go to a dinner being given for the patrons of the art museum.  She was always fashionable and that night she was wearing a short polka dotted halter dress.  Her auburn hair flamed under the florescent lights of the Atlanta kitchen.  Sometimes, she seemed to have never aged beyond twenty.

My father wasn’t attending the gala with her.  He was a neurosurgeon at the children’s hospital.  He was a rich and busy man with no energy for such events.

My mother was waltzing around the kitchen while my father sat with his head in his hands at the dinner table.

“It will be so much fun, Jeffery,” she cooed as I peaked into the room.

There was a cold silence before he replied.  “I suppose you’ll still get your money.  I just received word from one of the hospitals.”

“You can’t honestly mean that.  It’ll be nice to be someplace new.”

“I can’t?  You don’t even live with us now.  Who’s to say you’re going to stick around there?”

“Jeffery, you know I just want the best for all of us.  Carol, you and me.  Atlanta’s too stifling for us.”

“Since when did you care what happened to Carol?  You know, Rosie, you’re a lousy wife and abominable mother.”

My mother stopped waltzing.  He’d never confronted her before.  She didn’t say anything for a long time.  I didn’t stay to hear the rest of the conversation.  My worn copy of Pride and Prejudice upstairs was more interesting than my mother’s silence.

Since that day, I never heard my mother and father talk seriously again.  We moved to Maljamar, a dot on the map in Southern New Mexico.  A few months later, my mother disappeared.  I don’t think we miss her.  My father still works in the hospital a few towns over.  We didn’t even think about going back to Atlanta.