Elizabeth Berg - We Are All Welcome Here

Contents

For Pat Raming
and
Marianne Raming Burke

Theres the wind and the rain
And the mercy of the fallen
Theres the weak and the strong
And the many stars that guide us
We have some of them inside us

Dar Williams,
The Mercy of the Fallen

Authors Note

In September 2003, I received a letter from a reader named Marianne Raming Burke, who had an idea for a book she wanted me to write. She began, I dont know if you ever do this kind of thing. My first thought was, I can tell you right now, I dont. I dont like to take ideas from anyoneit goes best when I work alone.

Marianne went on to say that she would like me to tell the story of her mother. Pat Raming was given up for adoption to parents who died before she was five, so she spent most of her growing-up years in foster homes. She contracted polio when she was twenty-two years old and pregnant with Marianne, and gave birth to her in an iron lunga medical miracle. Her happiness was tempered by her learning that she would no longer be able to move anything but her head and would require almost continual mechanical assistance in order to breathe.

Pat was divorced by her husband. He offered to adopt out their children before he left, but Pat refused. She spent three years in an iron lung, then came home to raise her family. Later, after thirty years of being away from school, she went back to the classroom and earned a degree so that she could become an addictions counselor. She was also an activist for the disabled.

Impossible for me to attempt this, I thought. Im a fiction writer. I would never try to tell someone elses true story. But Marianne had enclosed a photo of her mother, and I was captivated by the image. It showed a beautiful young woman in a wheelchair wearing a portable respirator, her little curly-haired daughter standing behind her. Both of them were smiling. There was something so strong and clear in that young mothers face; I couldnt stop looking at it. There was not a trace of self-pity there. Instead, there was a kind of joy.

I called Marianne and told her that if I wrote about her mother, the story would be completely fictionalized, that her mothers circumstances would serve only as inspiration for a different story that I made up. I suggested that if she wanted her mothers real story to be told, she should find a nonfiction writer, or she should try to write the book herself. She said she wanted me to do it, in whatever form I chose. I told her Id try.

Over many months, we exchanged e-mails, mostly with my asking questions about technical matters, although we once got into a discussion about pies. Marianne was remarkably patient and willing to provide me with any information I requested, no matter how intimate that information might be. She told me over and over that she was happy for me to have complete freedom with fictionalizing; her only request was that one real thing be represented in the book: her mothers love of Scrabble.

We Are All Welcome Here is indeed fiction, but it is absolutely true in this respect: Pat Raming inspired it. She endured extremely difficult circumstances from the time she was born, but she never lost faith, never lost her desire to learn, her feistiness, her sense of humor, her good looks, or her love of life. It was her spirit I imagined when I created the character of Paige Dunn, and it was in honor of her memory that I attempted this novel in the first place. While writing it, I often felt as though Pat were sitting beside me, urging me on. Say what you will about such supernatural events; I say I felt a presence nearby. I am deeply grateful to Marianne Burke for doing her own kind of urging, for writing to me with a hopeful suggestion that led to the creation of this book.

Prologue

O ftentimes on summer evenings, I would sit outside with my mother and look at the constellations. We lived in a small town, far away from city lights, and our skies were inky black and so thick with stars it felt as though somebody ought to stir them. I would stretch out beside my mothers chair, and she would lean her head back and gaze upward, smiling at Orions Belt, at the backward question mark of Leo, at the intimate grouping of the seven daughters of Atlas. Sometimes I would pick some of the fragrant grass I lay in to put under her nose. Ummm! she would say, every time, and every time there was a depth to her appreciationand a kind of surprise, toothat made it seem as though she were smelling it for the first time. When I once commented on this, she said, Well, it might be the last time, you never know. And if youre aware it might be the last time, it feels like the first time. She was always saying things like that, things you needed to replay in your mind one more time. Life is the cure for life, and death is the cure for death, for example.

She was a bit of a philosopher in that way, my mother. She was also a bit of a psychic, skilled in reading tarot cards and tea leaves, eerily accurate in random, off-the-cuff predictions. She knew lots of things other mothers didnt: the laws of thermodynamics, how to write a song, the place for chili powder in chocolate, the importance of timing in telling a joke, how to paint Japanese anemones, personality quirks of George Washington. She taught me things about nature and about peoples psyches that have served me well my entire life.

She could also make me fear her. Until the age of eighteen, I did exactly what she told me to dootherwise, she would discipline me in her odd way, by biting my finger, oftentimes so hard it bled. Then she would instruct me on how to disinfect the wound before I covered it with a Band-Aid. She had been a nurseshe could measure with extreme accuracy the degree of your fever by putting her lips to your forehead.

I brought her presents: wildflower bouquets, drawings and stories from my own hand, occasionally something from a store that I had saved for. I never felt the full pleasure of any accomplishment until she had acknowledged it. I was jealous of her attention to others. But I also punched pillows, pretending they were her, and talked between my teeth about her, hard-edged words full of frustration and deep, deep anger.

I played paper dolls at her feet, and she played with me. Mine wants to go out to dinner tonight, my mother once said. She wants to wear the fanciest dress she has. I held up the elegant long blue dress, the one used so often the tabs were barely holding on. No, my mother said. The pink one. I held it up, the sparkly one that came complete with a white fur stole and diamond bracelet. My mother sighed and said, Yes, thats the one. Now light me a cigarette. She took a deep drag, then closed her eyes. I thought I knew what she was seeing: Herself, in that dress. She pulls the generous yardage in and around her after she is seated in her dates car, and he closes the door carefully after hershe hears the satisfying, muted click. She insulates herself into her stole, breathes in the scent of her perfume, which lingers there. At the restaurant, she orders steak Diane and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. There are gold-tipped matches on each table, and a small lamp, lit romantically. A band is playing for those who want to dance, and my mother does, right after she finishes her second dessert. She will powder her nose, then hit the dance floor and not stop dancing until the band stops and not even then, for she will dance out to the car.