THE LAWRENCE WELK FALLACY
BY LEN SOUSA
Unpublished Short Story
(Excerpt)
At least once a week, just before dinner, my mother would accuse me of ignoring her sparkling personality and jaw-dropping beauty because I was too much like my father and had gotten all of my poor character from him. This was after she’d drape herself in a long gown and a dozen ounces of designer perfume as if waiting on a suitor to come knock at the door. Since he never showed, and I was generally home, she’d be offended any time I didn’t mention her dazzling array of jewelry and color, reminding me that I was lucky to have a mother who took care of herself the way she did.
“I know all your friends’ mothers are jealous,” she’d say. “I can tell by the way they act around me: avoiding my eyes; ashamed of their own mothers. It’s almost sad, really. Although I can’t say I blame them, the poor things.”
I never had the heart to tell her that they were embarrassed for her; that they couldn’t see her the way she imagined they did. No one could. But it was easier not to admit this and just to agree with my mother. Besides, my friends stopped coming over a long time ago. It’s safer for me to go out instead of letting them come in. Not to mention the questions my mother constantly inundated them with whenever they came over—questions about their girlfriends, how they expected to treat a young woman, and why it was important to never lead a girl on.
All of this was a result of my father. He had left when I was three to live with a woman whose name, my mother always said, sounded like a cross between two shitzus playing tug-of-war with a slipper and the sound a Mexican whore makes going down on an Ohio businessman. I never really knew what that meant but, in a strange sort of way, it made perfect sense coming from my mother.
“Connie,” she’d curse. “What kind of name is that for a grown woman to have? It’s no wonder she had the nerve to steal a married man. The childish cunt.”
I’d try to remind her that they were never actually married, but it didn’t seem to help. “It was a common law marriage, Russell,” she’d say. “He knew that as well as I did. That might not mean shit in this state, but where I was raised, it was as good as any certificate from a judge. Ten years I lived with that sack of fuck, and the best he can do is run out for a shitzu-named slut.”
Of course, she didn’t start talking that way until I was seventeen. She was, after all, a good mom. She’d thrown parties for all my birthdays. Gone to my baseball games. Helped me buy my first car. I loved her. But as soon as I started shaving a few times a week, I had to deal with her sporadic spurts of anger about my father.
It got to the point where I could never bring a girl home to meet my mom, or even watch a movie in the living room when she was around. She’d go into a routine about how I’d better be treating her well, that we should only have safe sex in private places, and that she should get ready to be dumped any day now if we’d had. Even letting girls call the house was out of the question.
So it didn’t surprise me that my mother never brought other men home. I don’t know if she even knew any other men after my father. She’d been relatively young when I was born, but I suppose my father was such an overt personality that she couldn’t deal with it when he left. She dove into raising me, teaching me the best way to avoid being anything like him.
Growing up, I was told that my father had been a star football player in high school. For that reason, when I was old enough to tryout for the team, my mother forbade it. He also loved swimming. He’d worked as a lifeguard for six years and met my mother at the beach when she was only twenty-three. As a result, I’d never learned to swim or gone to the beach with my mother.
I sometimes hated my father for all that he liked to do because they ended up screwing me out of a lot of things. But, in truth, my mother’s odd beliefs were more to blame. Still, I never blamed her completely. She didn’t ask to fall for a guy like my father. And as far as I knew, she didn’t do anything to make him to leave. Although sometimes I’d think that she didn’t do anything to make him stay either.
Unfortunately, now that I’m eighteen and finishing high school, things have only gotten worse. My mother insists on dressing in these elaborate sleeping gowns as soon as she gets home from the children’s clothing store where she works. They’re long, silky gowns, straggling on the ground at least two feet, and colored like a Technicolor dream coat—deep and faint yellows, midnight and sky blues, forest and lime greens, hints of orange, and fabric softener purple all in one amazing tapestry of wonder. The only thing brighter than her robes was her make-up. She had rarely worn any when I was growing up, but soon took to wearing elaborate shades all over her face, sharply painting in her youth. It wasn’t very flattering.
“That’s a lot of make-up, Mom. Got a hot date?”
“I might,” she’d say spritzing herself with a perfume called Tame. But she never did. The only time she did leave the house was to see my Aunt Helen who lived two towns over in the mental ward of Charington Hospital. She never told me why she was there, and never allowed me to go with her to visit. It was just another thing we never talked about.
But the worst thing that came over my mother was her nightly obsession with Lawrence Welk. His 1960’s television variety show, aptly titled The Lawrence Welk Show, had been off the air for about thirty years, but she still caught reruns on public broadcast and watched them obsessively. Sometimes she'd laugh out loud at the hackneyed humor or be strangely moved by the hokey love songs they’d play. I’d try to sit down with her and watch an episode on occasion, but I could barely get through the first half hour without laughing at all the suits and songs.
“Now fans, we have a very special treat for you,” Welk would say with a long white baton in his hands. “All the way from Massapequa, Long Island, New York, it’s the sensational Libby Sunnydale performing a new song and dance number called, ‘Don’t Hide The Sunshine.’”
I had a hard time believing anyone named Sunnydale even existed, let alone came from Long Island and sang about sunshine on television. But I didn’t mention this to my mother. She seemed too wrapped up in the song. All I could really pay attention to were Libby’s legs. She wore a long skirt, but the show got interesting whenever she twirled in a circle and showed a kneecap or two. I wondered if men thought about this when the show first ran in 1965. It was the only explanation I could find for this show lasting as long as it did. Reruns running perpetually after Welk’s death because a steady group of married men, old enough to remember the Second World War, are spending their retirement years still sneaking a peak at Libby’s underskirt and imagining her secret patch of sunnydale.
But this wasn’t why my mother watched the show. The men didn’t even seem to be half as interesting as Libby. They had these plastic faces on all the time and never seemed to stop smiling—even during slow, sad numbers. Maybe it was all the bright colors on the stage that stopped them from thinking any bad thoughts. I thought this might be why my mother always wore her colorful robes around the house and why she worked at a children’s clothing store—bright colors day in and day out. Maybe this was how Lawrence Welk fit in. The men on these shows, like all the songs, were American standards. There wasn’t a spot of imperfection on them. Their make-up was neatly lined and bright, covering any kind of blemish or uneven skin tone, and their hair never had a strand land out of place, even with all their twirls and tap dances.
One night, there was a country-type crooner singing in a white suit with cornflower blue pinstripes and matching white shoes. He was singing a song that might have been sad, but I couldn’t tell that by the way he sang it. “Well, I wanna see my honey, I wanna see her bad,” he sang. “Because she's the best gal this poor boy ever had.”
As I looked at my mother watching this, I was about to say something when I noticed her holding a glass of white wine in her left hand and a balled up tissue in her right. She never took her eyes off the screen as he played. Then the hackneyed refrain hit, “Well, I've laid around and played around this old town too long, and I feel like I've gotta travel on, travel on, travel on.”
The next morning, I came downstairs early for a Saturday, and my father was sitting at the kitchen table having coffee with my mother. I wasn’t sure it was him at first because the only picture I’d ever seen of him was taken when I was two and he was sixteen years younger. This man looked about the same, but his hair was lighter, almost white at the temples, and he seemed a bit heavier. As I started into the kitchen, he looked over and grinned half-heartedly as my mother sipped her coffee.
“Hey Russ,” he said and then looked down as if unsure of what else to say. I couldn’t blame him. What could he say to me? Explain why he left us and never called or came to see me once in the last fifteen years? How I had grown up just fine without dear old Dad beside me, teaching me how to fix a car; where to go fishing; what things were like ‘in his day’; how I reminded him of himself; the sure way to deliver a defensive tackle; his favorite swimming stroke; how to balance a checkbook; where to take a date; how to drive standard; how to be any kind of worthwhile man. He couldn’t explain any of those things—he wouldn’t know where to start and neither would I. So I guess ‘Hey Russ’ is good enough. I don’t need anything else from him.
I think my mother must have sensed something in me because she spoke up instead. “Well, Russell, this is your Uncle Clyde. I’m not sure you remember him. He was your father’s brother.”
“Oh,” I said as the air fell out of my body. I wasn’t sure if I had really wanted it to be my father or not; so I was slightly disappointed and partly relieved that it wasn’t. I hadn’t met this uncle before, or even knew he existed, so I only offered what I could. “Hi,” I whispered.
“It turns out,” my mother continued. “That your dear old father has gotten himself killed in Waco, and your uncle here was kind enough to send word.” She shot a look at my uncle and then said, “Thank you, Clyde, for extending us the kind of courtesy your dearly departed brother so sorely lacked.”
“Well, Rachel,” he said pushing his seat away from the table, “I just thought you might like to know what happened, that’s all. I’ll get out of your hair now. It was good to see you, Russ. You look like your old man.”
“Get the hell out of here, Clyde!” my mother shrieked, storming behind him as he rushed out the front door.
When the door slammed shut, I came to and my brow felt heavy over my eyes. “What happened?” I asked her. “How’d he die?”
She still had her hands pressed against the door and seemed exhausted. “Some construction accident,” she said under her breath. “Crushed or run over. I don’t even know. But he’s dead.”
I was angry that she didn’t seem sure of how my father had died, but she seemed preoccupied with not knowing either. She was still resting against the door and had her eyes closed. Her lips quivered.
“Are you going to be okay, Mom?”
She nodded slowly without opening her eyes, and I could see tears start to well. She sighed and drew herself from the door. “I need to go see your Aunt Helen.”
“No, Mom. Just stay home today.”
“Russell, I have to. She expects me there every week at the same time.”
“I’m sure she’ll understand if—“
“No, she won’t,” she said reaching for her purse and keys on the table beside the door. “I’ll be back in a little while. Make yourself some breakfast.” And she scampered outside, still wearing her bright morning robe.
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