How to Write As If Your Mother Is Not in the Next Room

Skip the less glamorous details of your burgeoning adolescence; the mid-summer afternoon you shaved your entire pubic hair off and the harsh regret you felt for the next two weeks, the skin down there shuddering in its sudden disturbing nakedness; or the snow-stormed evening you discovered how to masturbate, your fingers floating down into the verbena ether of your bath, and the accumulating, frantic bubbles you made in the water as you brought yourself to climax. This is not a story for her to know. This is not a story for you to tell her. Leave out the treacherous tale of your first blackout, on a visit to a friend's college dorm room at age 17, the heady taste of rum still clinging meanly to your lips the morning after, and the astonishing epiphany that 12 whole hours were lost to you, a great chasm in your memory, and a story you were told of the evening shenanigans, your flirtation with a pair of pimply hallmates, the tilt your head made against a stranger's legs just moments before you passed out from the 5th shot. Don't mention this. It'll embarrass you. It'll open up a dusty shelf for a mother just dying to have a swipe there with a washcloth. Dim the lights on these scenes. Keep your secrets.

Avoid topics of unhappy or unhinging marriages, since you still sense the disturbance there, the arc of her thoughts, the way her mouth curls down at certain doomed memories, and because you will sound glib about it, having never been married, and wondering if, in fact, you will ever find yourself married, you will sound glib or cynical because you don't have that kind of history with anything. You are not an expert on marriage. You are not an expert on relationships. You are not an expert. Face it. Deal with that reality. Remain humble. Be subtle. Don't, in your writing, make assumptions about anyone. You don't know as much as you think you do. Don't write about the divorce until you are goddamned good and ready. You'll regret it. It is premature to say anything about your own shatteredness, the things you've yearned for, the implausibility of happy endings. Do not write about the phone call with your sister when you were 16, that unfathomable weeping, the things you were clinging to, a filmy and tarnished catalogue of plans you were making for a future you were then forced to unmake. Do not write about the hope you carried for years, the fantasy of a serious sit-down talk of "we've decided to try again" and "we made a mistake" and then an impromptu meal of take-out Chinese and the video rental of "The Sound of Music," which you used to watch annually and sing warbly parodies of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" to during the commercial breaks. Do not refer, in writing, to your secret and totally reasonable fear that your mother was in love with someone else. Do not write about blame. Do not write about tiptoeing upstairs during the long winter silence. Do not write about pressing your ear to a closed bedroom door. Do not write about the hunt for clues. Do not write about watching detective shows and holding up mysterious envelopes to a sharp light.

Instead, write about the sinless, gilt-edged memories of getting your first bra, mom on the other side of the dressing room door, then inside it, and the revelation of your body before her for the first time in years. Write about basketball. Write about the meal with your German grandmother and the standoff in the kitchen. Write about your first good poem. Say something poignant about hers. Describe your brother in great detail. Pockmark your family stories with ambitious reenactments of an older sister's autocratic punishings. Write impressive sestinas that display your verbal agility. Do not get ahead of yourself. Do not mistake an opening for opportunity. Stick to your deadlines. Don't show her the first drafts. Or the second. Show her the book at its completion.

Do not even think about writing about sex. What I mean is, don't write about specific sex, the sex that happened last week, before she arrived, the sex in your living room, the late hour, the mad scramble for a condom, the squeak of the couch, what it felt like, after the dinner party, to forget about the dishes, to simply ignore the mess in the kitchen, and to leave the lights on, and candles burning dangerously, and what sex feels like at 1 in the morning, after a dinner party, after playing hostess, the kind of release that sex involves, the disheveling of the poise required to make decent hors d'oeuvres and to set the table tastefully, the permission you give yourself, finally, after hours over the stove, after following the muted directions to simmer and stir, after a day steeling yourself against the possible catastrophes of miscalculated baking times or late guests or not enough to drink, the permission you give yourself, at last, to be entered. Do not even think about writing this down, your mother in the next room, even if she knows, has heard you say, has witnessed in other things which she's been proud of you for writing, has been grateful, even, for the words, the dexterity of them, and the truth-telling you fantastize becoming famous for, she isn't ready for this kind of story, and you aren't either, the rug under that couch still grooved from the slight shift in the legs, an image still fresh of your own legs on the coffee table, and a fresh body entering yours, and the ludicrous swivel you had to make with your hips, and sound escaping your mouth, sounds you'd kept quiet all day while water boiled and a cake was doing its chemical magic in the oven, you were so quiet, tidying the kitchen after the upended flour, the tender washing you gave the vegetables, the careful recycling of used tins, the order you were keeping in that room, and the disorder just hours later, guests gone, the house suddenly pulsing with unquiet syllables spilling of your lips. Do not write about this.