by Maren Foster
“Yeah, of course,” I said.
The Rope
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Evanston, Illinois
I promised Vi that I would come home to go through my old things that were still in boxes in her attic, since her house was already on the market. She wanted me to decide for myself what memories to keep and what to toss.
While I waited for my flight to take-off, I opened Instagram. At the top of my feed was a post by Julia. The headline read, “Just found the most fab wedding dress ever thanks to @Serafina Can’t wait for the big walk! No peaking yet! #ad” In the accompanying photo, she posed in a white slip in front of a room full of wedding dresses. Every delicate ripple of her silky slip was in focus, while the dresses behind her faded into a creamy patchwork. The post already had a little over 10,000 likes and a bunch of comments, which probably all went something like, “Can’t wait!” or “Wow, you look amazing!” I didn’t need to look. Instead I couldn’t help myself and clicked on an article next to the post titled, “10 signs he may be cheating.” I got to number three, put my phone down, and closed my eyes.
I took a car from the airport to Vi’s house, feeling a bit nostalgic as the driver turned off the highway in Evanston and took Sheridan Road which followed the curve of the lakefront and offered the best views of the stately homes that lined the North Shore of Lake Michigan. It was an exhibition of 19th and early 20th century architecture: Italianate, Colonial Revival, Federal, Tudor Revival, a number of Chateauesque monstrosities, and even a Greek Revival.
It had been twenty years since Vi had bought the gorgeous, late 19th century Painted Lady on a little street tucked away near the beach, and she had tended to it meticulously. She oiled the oak banister every year, not with products from the local hardware store, but with olive oil that she bought in bulk at the discount grocery. We teased her about her old world ways, but appreciated the traditional cooking skills that she had begrudgingly picked up from her mother. It was always an unexpected treat to walk into the foyer after she had been at work on one of her projects. The warm peppery aroma of olive oil would permeate the spring or fall air despite the open windows.
My driver pulled up to the house and I saw Ali’s car parked out front. I let myself in through the side door. Ali was sitting at the kitchen island cutting up an apple. I walked in and set my purse on the kitchen table.
“Hey,” she looked up and smiled.
“Hey, where’s Vi?” I asked.
“She ran to the hardware store to get some dust masks. When we pulled open the attic door it rained dust on us. I’m sure she hasn’t been up there in ten years.”
“Ooooh, maybe we’ll find some interesting things then.”
“Maybe.”
“What if there’s an old sketch by Max in one of your high school notebooks and we can sell it and all stop working!” I didn’t know exactly how much Max’s painting sold for these days, but Ali had said he was doing extremely well in New York.
“Only you would want to stop working!” she replied. “Mom loves her work. She has enough money, you know that. She could probably retire now if she wanted to, but she doesn’t because her career gives her purpose. I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”
“You say purpose, I say an excuse to be alone.”
“She didn’t want to marry. Leave her alone. She’s a grown woman.”
We sat silently and I watched as she fidgeted with the label on a glass jar, wedging her thumb nail under the corner and slowly peeling it back.
“Anyhow, what are you guys up to tonight?” I asked.
“Well, it’s Soren’s birthday, so I made dinner reservations for seven at La Fattoria. I have to hit the road around four-thirty to make sure I’m back by then and have time to get cleaned up.”
“And then a romantic evening at home?” I teased.
“I have my period, so probably not!”
“Eh, that’s okay, you can make it up to him.”
“Make it up to him? Like I did something wrong?” Her disgust was palpable.
“Well, not wrong, but you know. When you can’t have sex.”
“I am a hundred percent against it when I have my period. Won’t do it. Never. Not even on his birthday.”
“You can’t be serious? Don’t you worry that someday, he’ll go looking for it somewhere else?”
“If he can’t wait one week, then he’s already looking.”
“Hmmmmm.” Fair point.
Vi walked into the kitchen and over to the island to give me a hug.
“What are you two girls talking about?” she asked.
“Blow jobs,” Ali said.
“You two are so lucky to have each other!” Vi said and turned to me. “How are you, Freddie? How was your flight?”
“Fine. It was fine. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m good. I am gonna miss this old lady when I move, but it’s time. It’s too big for me now that you two are gone. Should we go up and get started?”
“Yep.”
We followed her up the wide front stair case of the old Queen Anne, and I couldn’t help thinking about all the times Ali and I slid down the ornate banister when Vi wasn’t around.
“So, when do you close on your new place? And where is it?”
“Last week.”
“Oh, it’s final already?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think I’ll move until I have an offer on this place. My agent says it’s easier to sell a furnished house.”
“Where’s the condo?”
“It’s in Streeterville, downtown, near the lake.”
“I can’t believe you’re selling after all these years. You love this house.”
“I know. You were so young when we moved in,” she said and squeezed my shoulder.
Vi and Ali had set-up shop on the second floor landing, which meant the old speckled canvas tarp was spread across the landing, the wooden ladder to the attic was down, and two mugs of cold coffee sat on the lowest rung.
“Here’s a mask.” She handed Ali and me each a drywall mask.
Vi put her mask on and led the way up.
“Watch your step,” she yelled down as she gracefully maneuvered up the final step and into the attic.
There was one small round window in the attic that faced west and was little help at this hour. A single lightbulb hung on a cord in the center of the attic. Vi had always talked about turning this into a useable space, but now that I was finally in it, I realized why that impractical idea, among many others over the years, had never come to fruition. It was dark and smelled a bit like sweaty socks, and each step kicked up enough dust to cause a sneezing fit. Vi pointed to two boxes in the far corner, one of which had “Ali” and the other “Freddie” scrawled across the sides in her elegant script.
“Start there. I consolidated your things when you left for college into just a few boxes each. Anything you don’t want to haul home goes in here,” she said as she pulled a garbage bag out of her pants pocket.
Ali and I pulled our boxes into the middle of the room and began to dig through an assortment of memories, filled with people we hadn’t seen in ages and fashion that hadn’t been popular in over a decade. Sifting through time was more difficult than I had imagined it would be. Things that should have been thrown away years ago were mixed in with welcome memories that had been all but forgotten. Looking through stacks of photos of the young, naïve girl that I was before that night in the frat house made me immeasurably sad. The happiness and optimism in the kind eyes staring back at me didn’t exist anymore.
“Really Mom!” Ali said, holding up an array of beautifully colored swimming ribbons: ninth place, sixth place, eighth place. Ribbons weren’t supposed to be pink, purple, yellow, and green, but neither of us had been particularly athletic.
“But you were so cute in your little swimsuits,” Vi replied.
“Garbage,” she said as she threw them across the attic. Only a few landed in the plastic bag.
“Yo
u’ll regret that someday. I promise,” Vi said.
“Yeah, your kids won’t know what a swimming star their mom really was,” I teased.
“What kids?” She said.
“Oh, Ali. Never say never,” Vi said tenderly.
A comfortable silence permeated the musty attic while we sorted through our childhoods.
An hour later, we were still wading through yearbooks and prom photos.
“Garbage is full,” Ali declared.
“Great, that means you’re making some progress!” Vi said.
“Well, I am.” Ali said, looking in my direction.
“I don’t see why I should throw any of it out. I have space at the house to store it,” I said, as I paged through a high school yearbook.
My eye caught the note next to a photo of me and my chemistry lab partner, the most handsome boy in our graduating class. “Thanks A bunch,” it read, referring of course to the A we both got in the class, thanks to my hard work. It wasn’t that I was particularly good at chemistry, but rather that Vi ran a tight ship and studying came before sports or clubs or any other activity for that matter.
“You live in New York. How do you think you’re going to get all that stuff back there?”
“I don’t know. Ship it I guess.”
“Not worth the money,” Ali snickered.
Ali finished going through the last of the boxes that had her name on it and ventured toward the stack of boxes that Vi had been slowly working through. She picked up a small box marked “Letters”.
“I’ll go through that one,” Vi said. Her tone made it clear that the contents of the box were private.
Vi got up and pulled the garbage bag loose from its perch.
“Anyone want anything to drink while I’m downstairs?” She asked.
“Iced tea,” I said.
“I’ll have one too,” Ali said.
“Let me help you with that,” I said and began to get up.
“Got it, thanks!” She looped the garbage bag handles around her wrist and slid gracefully back down the ladder.
I picked up a medium sized box with no markings.
Ali looked up at me. “I still don’t understand why you would do that, it’s so degrading.”
I knew her so well, that I immediately realized that we had jumped right back into the midst of the blow job debate that Vi had interrupted hours earlier.
“Sometimes you surprise even me,” I said. “You sure you like men after all?”
“Funny. When was the last time he did that for you?”
I deflected. “He hasn’t lately because I’m off birth control,” I lied.
“What?” She looked confused.
“Yeah, well, you know.”
“No, I obviously don’t. You aren’t trying to get pregnant already are you?”
Oh, this will be fun! “Of course we are. We’re married and I’m not getting any younger.” I do want to have kids someday and I don’t want to be an old mother, but not with Nate of course. It was always fun to rile Ali up a bit.
“But you are so young,” she said. “What about your career?”
“You mean my job?”
“I mean your career. The thing that gives you freedom,” she said. “Security. Makes you someone. Someone who has done something.”
“I don’t need a career to be someone who has done something. I can be a wife and a mother. You know, having kids is sort of important too. Contributes to the survival of our species and all. Isn’t that the most important thing we can do?”
“You can’t really count having kids as an accomplishment. Literally anyone healthy can do that, it’s the default option in life. The definition of mediocrity if you will,” she said. “Is that what you want in life now, to be mediocre? What happened to your dreams? You used to say you wanted to be famous. Remember? You used to want to be a dancer, or an actress, or something.”
“I wanted to be on the Real World, and I was sixteen.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right!” she laughed. “You wanted to be a reality t.v. star.”
“Yeah well, Vi said she wouldn’t pay for college if I studied acting or art or whatever.”
“Good thing too! I mean, come on, you don’t need a college degree to be a reality t.v. star. That’s a joke.”
“No, you don’t, but you do need connections. Something to set you apart. An education doesn’t hurt.”
“So what happened?”
“It just didn’t work out exactly like I planned.”
“It usually doesn’t.”
If only you knew. If only I could tell you what he did to me. How he changed the course of my life.
I opened the box in front of me. Old family photo albums were stacked on top. Vi’s father, Theo had been a prolific documenter of his young family’s life. The result was piles of photos, yellowing around their wavy edges, many of which looked identical to the untrained eye. Vi in a cowboy hat, boots, plaid shirt, and denim skirt. Vi in her high school band uniform, dark brown hair curled at the ends. I pulled out the albums and loose photos and piled them in front of me, worried that Vi wanted us to do the culling. A weathered black leather bound book sat at the bottom of the box. I pulled it out and was pleased by the smell of aged paper and ink as I thumbed through the thick pages. The pages were filled with dates, followed by diary entries in a tidy cursive hand that could only have belonged to my mother, when she was young.
I didn’t know a lot about Vi’s childhood or family. She had always been very secretive. I did, however, know that her parents were both second generation Americans. Their families were both of French origin and had lived in New Orleans. I knew that her dad had been a mechanic in the Airforce, stationed somewhere near Shreveport, after marrying Vi’s mother, Ana. I knew that Vi was an only child and that her father died quite young. She kept a faded, black and white picture of her parents in a simple silver frame on the fireplace mantel while I was growing up. It was one of the fixtures of my childhood.
I knew Vi went to college far from home after her father died, and that she had been more or less estranged from her mother after that. I understood that they had a fraught relationship based on the few comments Vi had made when I was younger, and I sensed that things had only gotten worse after her dad died. Vi took us to her mother’s funeral when we were young, but I didn’t remember ever meeting her before she died. What I did remember was Vi making a strange comment at the funeral, about how I reminded her of her mother. I knew, from a few other off hand comments Vi had made over the years, that her mother was very traditional and quite conservative.
I flipped back to the first page of the diary.
July 14, 1984
Shreveport, Louisiana. Mom didn’t talk to me all afternoon while she made Beef Bourguignon. This morning she asked me to go shopping with her, but who wants to spend Saturday being hurried from store to store downtown, especially on a glorious day like today. It was a perfect summer day to be out on the river, not too humid. Dad and I went out early and caught four fish. Mine was the biggest! He did have to help me reel it in a bit at the end, but I think he was proud. When we got back to the riverbank, he set up his new Kodak camera on a picnic table, set the timer, and took a photo of us together, holding the fish together with the boat and the river behind us. He said that when he was young cameras didn’t have self-timers. He’s so old! When we got back to the house we fixed the old lawnmower together. Dad says I’m really smart and should be an engineer or a lawyer someday. He says that I’m good at arguing like my mother which would make me a great lawyer. After Mom got home she hardly said a word for hours so I made her favorite cheese Galette to cheer her up. By dinner she seemed to have forgotten that she was upset and even brought us fresh squeezed lemonade while we sat on the back porch, watching the sun set.
I flipped ahead through the yellowed pages. The handwriting took on more of a forward slant and became decidedly more mature looking with narrower curves and tidier arcs.
December 20,
1986
Shreveport, Louisiana. Mom demanded that I go to town with her to get the last few things for Christmas. We took the streetcar, had lunch at Antonio’s and then went to the department store. They had Converse All-Stars and I’ve been saving my allowance for months to buy them, but Mom said they’re boys’ shoes and I should get a pair of girls’ shoes instead. I told her no. Dad says I can buy whatever I want with my allowance. She raised her voice and told me to do whatever I wanted but no wonder none of the boys in the neighborhood ever came by the house asking about me. She told me that when she was young all of the best looking boys in her neighborhood would stop by asking about her. It’s 1986! No boys would come stand outside my window! How old fashioned! I bought the shoes despite her protests. I don’t care what she thinks! What does she know anyhow? All the boys in our neighborhood and at school are dumb. I wouldn’t want them to like me! Well, there is this one older guy who hangs around downtown sometimes in the afternoon. I’ve seen him a few times on my way home from school. I think he graduated last spring. He’s so hot! He rides a motorcycle, and not the lame kind that dads ride, it’s a cool, fast motorcycle. Mom would die if I ever got on a motorcycle!
“A little help” was more of a command than a request. A round silver tray with three glasses of homemade rosehip iced tea, the kind Vi had been making since we were little kids, popped up through the opening in the attic floor. I quickly hid the leather diary inside the box with my yearbooks. Ali jumped up, grabbed the tray, and set it down in the middle of the room. She held out her hand and lifted Vi’s petite frame up over the opening.
Vi placed the tray on a box and handed us each a glass.
“Freddie is trying to get pregnant,” she announced almost as nonchalantly as if she was talking about the weather. Ugh, I probably should have known that Ali would say something.
“Ali!” I said.
“You think you’re ready for that?” Vi asked.
“Why do I tell her anything?” I mumbled under my breath. “It’s not always easy, you know. Not everyone gets pregnant right away naturally. It can take months or even years.”