Say the Word

by Jeannine Garsee

A blood vessel in Dad’s temple threatens to blow. “Well, you can just call her back this instant and tell her you have other plans. You have homework, I imagine.”

  “Dad, it’s Friday. And I really do want to go.” The words surprise even me.

  “Haven’t we had enough trouble out of that woman already? Isn’t it bad enough she chose to move two miles away from us?”

  She didn’t choose, Dad. You nailed Mom’s bank account, her insurance, the brownstone, and the gallery. It’s not like she had anywhere else to go.

  Omigod, can this be true? I’m mentally sticking up for Fran?

  “You are not going to socialize with her, Shawna. I absolutely forbid it.”

  I hear Mom’s mirthless chuckle. Don’t you love it when he uses the word “forbid”? What was that you called him? A tyrant?

  I have two choices: shut my mouth, chill out, and sneak away anyway, or defer to my higher power. Namely Dad.

  Dad then shocks me with an abrupt about-face. “Never mind. You can go.”

  I close my dangling jaw. “What?”

  “I said you can go. But I want you to do something for me.”

  “Kill her?” I quip.

  My smile shrinks as he snarls, “Don’t be stupid, Shawna. Just listen.” Steaming, I wait. “When your mother left, she took some things with her. Things that now, rightly, belong to you. I want them back.”

  “What things?”

  “Some jewelry, for one. Your grandmother Sorenson’s wedding set. Your mother’s wedding set, too, assuming that woman hasn’t hocked it yet.” Pause. “That was a three-and-a-half-carat diamond, if I remember correctly.”

  Three and a half? He couldn’t spring for an even four?

  “And photo albums,” he adds. “All the ones she took when she left. These should belong to you now and I want them back.”

  Oh, God. I’ve been hearing about these albums for years. When Mom cleaned out her office that night, she left nothing behind. Literally hundreds of pictures of me from birth to age seven, plus who knows how many others, vanished overnight. “Why didn’t you ask for them back when Mom was alive?”

  Dad huffs at my total lack of comprehension. “I tried. Multiple times, I might add. But since your mother was smart enough to move out of state, there wasn’t much I could do.”

  “Well,” I begin, not wanting to be dragged into this. “Since she took the pictures herself, maybe she assumed they were hers?”

  “I don’t know what she assumed, but Fran has no business keeping them. You are not her child.” Dad tosses back a deep swallow, but the liquor doesn’t mellow him; in fact, he grows crabbier. “Now, either you get them back or I’ll have to do it myself. Legally, of course.”

  Good thing he added that disclaimer, because I can picture him with a crowbar, prying his way, in the dead of night, into Fran’s aunt’s house. “So, you want me to go over there and ask—”

  Dad clicks his teeth in annoyance. “Not ask, Shawna—insist. Do you think you can manage that?”

  Maybe. But do I want to? NO.

  Wisely I avoid a straight-armed salute.

  42

  The cookies turn out crispier than planned; I didn’t notice the timer go off during Dad’s rant. I park in front of Fran’s and skittle up the icy walk.

  WHOMP! “Sha-awn-akh!” Schmule plows into me, squeezing me hard.

  “Hey, Schmule.” Wow, I hardly expected a greeting like this. I hug him back, patting his long wild curls. “Long time no see, dude.”

  “Did you bring your dog?”

  “My dog? No. I didn’t know he was invited,” I tease.

  “Rats.” With a forgiving grin, Schmule pushes me out of the foyer. “C’mon, I’ll show you my new room.”

  “Wait, where’s everyone else?”

  “Right here.” Arye saunters, unsmiling, into the living room, takes my jacket, and throws it in a closet. Although he doesn’t look thrilled to see me, at least he didn’t greet me with a butcher knife. “Shabbat shalom,” he adds with a challenging gleam.

  Oh-h, right. Friday night, the Jewish Sabbath. Grrr! Why didn’t he warn me?

  Fran emerges from the dining room, wiping her hands on the ruffled apron Arye wore in New York. Same dowdy clothes, same straggly gray hair. Fuzzy purple slippers adorn her feet instead of her brown clogs.

  “Hi, Shawna.” She air kisses my cheek. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  Awkwardly, I thrust my foil-covered tray into her hands. “I brought cookies.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  She retreats back to the dining room, and Arye says, with half a smile this time, “There you go again trying to treyf up our kitchen.”

  “What do you mean, treyf?”

  “Your cookies. Are they kosher?”

  Double grrr. “They’re Toll House.”

  “If you made ’em, they’re treyf.”

  Schmule tugs me to his room before I can get into it with his brother. This house is smaller, crampier, than the New York brownstone, but warm and comfortable in the same cluttered way. Arye and Schmule apparently share this bedroom, boundaries defined by a bookcase in the center. Schmule’s side appears obsessively tidy. DVDs and video games in alphabetical order. Bed perfectly made up with a Harry Potter comforter. No stray books, papers, toys, anything. Dad would love this kid.

  Schmule points to an old Nintendo player. “Wanna play Yoshi?”

  “What’s Yoshi?”

  “It’s a game! You never heard of Yoshi’s Island?”

  “Not everyone plays video games,” Arye says behind us. “Anyway, Mom says we’re ready to eat.”

  The cookies stagnate off to one side, so I guess Arye was right. I stare in awe at the beautifully made-up table as Fran places a scarf over her head. She lights a total of four candles and makes circling motions with her hands. My stomach gurgles. I shift nervously, listening to the Hebrew words Fran recites with her hands now over her eyes. Why didn’t she invite me over on, say, a Tuesday or something? If Nonny finds out about this, she’ll drag me to confession, wailing Hail Marys the entire way.

  The prayers end, we sit, and I eat slowly, rolling the delicious chicken around on my tongue. How do I ask for the pictures back? Drop hints? Ask her right out?

  I take the plunge after a helping of warm cherry pie. “Uh, Fran, I was wondering. Do you have any old pictures of me or my mom around?”

  “I’m sure we do.”

  Tell her you want them. Tell her! But instead I ask politely, “Do you mind if I look at them?”

  “Of course not.” Fran jumps right up, disappears, and returns with an armload of photo albums. I follow her to the living room, where she drops the books onto a braided rug. “As a matter of fact I just unpacked these today.”

  Choosing an album, I flip slowly through cellophane pages crackly with age. Wow, pictures of Mom when she was a kid: baby pictures, school pictures, and family outings with my Swedish grandparents. A prom picture, too: Mom in a ravishing black formal dress and hugely feathered hair, hanging on to some goo-goo-eyed dork.

  Then it dawns on me that this dork is—“My dad? Holy shit.” I clap a hand over my mouth.

  Fran laughs. “Never mind. I said the same thing.”

  “They went to school together?”

  “No, your father’s a few years older. They met when they both took riding lessons. Your mom loved horses when she was a kid.”

  Mom, maybe, though it’s news to me. But my dad? On a horse?

  “Penny never dated anyone else after she met your dad,” she adds.

  Except you, I think. The discovery of this previously unknown part of my mother’s life stuns me. More than that, I’m severely ticked off. This is my history, too. Something every kid knows: how their mom and dad met. I hate that I’ve been left out of this.

  You never asked me, Shawna. You weren’t interested anyway. Your father poisoned your mind for ten years.

  I shake the voice out of my head. I can’t tell if these messages are
memories, or if I’m making them up myself. I trace Mom’s face, wondering how much Aqua Net it took to cement her hair into that milehigh, utterly impossible position. Like me, she wore bangs. For some reason this makes me smile.

  “And here are some of you.” Fran pushes another album over.

  Some? Try hundreds. Birthday pictures. Christmas pictures. Pictures of me with Nonny and Poppy, back when Nonny’s hair was red, not white, and Poppy played with a full deck. Me, boarding a school bus. Flying on a sled down a snowy hill. Bouncing in a wading pool. My unabridged life for the first seven years, bound in plastic, captioned in Mom’s handwriting.

  I start to ask Fran if I can keep these albums. How can she say no? These pictures of me, the ones of Mom and her family . . . this is my history, not Fran’s. Just as Dad said, I’m nothing to her and she has no reason to hang on to them, other than spite.

  But I notice the way she pores over these pictures, as if she, too, were seeing them for the first time. Her hands caress each page, lingering on Mom’s face.

  With a sigh, I flip open the next album, one with a blue and white checkered cover. Several loose photos drop to the rug. I giggle at the sight of myself as a toddler, laughing on Mom’s lap, hugging a stuffed blue bunny. “Omigod, this is—so—darling! Can I have it?”

  A shutter smacks closed over Fran’s face. She shakes her head.

  What’s her problem? “Well, can I scan it at least?”

  “No.”

  Did she just say no, or am I imagining things? I honestly think she’s joking around—but then she pries the snapshot out of my fingers. Scooping up the rest of the loose pictures, she stuffs them back between the pages. Then she closes the album and sets it aside on the sofa.

  “Take these if you like.” She offers two of the first albums, and adds, more kindly, “I’m sure there are others I haven’t had a chance to unpack. That one, though . . .” Her eyes swivel toward the sofa. “It’s kind of special to me.”

  Special how? She didn’t know me back then. She didn’t even know Mom.

  I fume silently. Why can’t I scan them? It’d take two minutes. I’d give them right back!

  “Well, thanks,” I say belatedly, trying to hide my irritation. “And thanks for dinner, but I’d better get going.” No point in contaminating the kitchen by helping with the dishes.

  Fran climbs to her feet, stretches, and knuckles the base of her spine. “There are plenty of leftovers. Do you want to take some home?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  I gather up my purse as she scurries out—and then, casually, flip open the forbidden checkered album. One quick glance reveals more baby pictures of me, along with some older ones of Mom and the Goodmans. Impulsively, as Fran’s footsteps approach, I snatch a handful of the loose snapshots and shove them into my purse. I hope the bunny one is there. I’ll scan these tomorrow and get them back to her . .. but how? Crap. Too bad I didn’t think of that first.

  Fran breezes back with a brown grocery bag. I force a smile, she smiles back, and I see how haggard she looks. Haggard, and weary, and, in spite of the smile, very sad.

  She misses Mom. I bet she misses Mom more than I miss Mom. All evening I noticed how cheery she pretends to be. How, the moment she thinks no one is watching, her face dissolves back into a dull mask.

  “Fran?” I say softly.

  She stares, trancelike, at the sofa. Does she already suspect what I did?

  “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, everything’s fine.” Fran, back to normal, thrusts the bag at me. She bellows over her shoulder, “Arye! Schmule! Come say good-bye to Shawna.”

  Schmule wrestles his way ahead of his brother. “Hey, I thought we were gonna play Yoshi. I can teach you, ya know, in like two seconds flat.”

  “Next time, sweetie,” Fran assures him. Then, to me, “We’re having some friends in from out of town over the holidays. We’d love to have you back.”

  Schmule smacks me a high five. “Yay! And bring your dog next time. Mom, can I have a dog? You said when we get a backyard, we can—”

  Fran interrupts, “This is not the time to talk about this, sweetie. Say good-bye and go put on your pj’s.”

  I wave to Arye around Schmule’s quick hug. He waves back, unenthusiastically.

  “Thanks for dinner,” I say again. At least now I’ll have a chance to return the photos. I only hope she doesn’t miss them in the meantime. “Thanks for the pictures, too.”

  I bolt out of the house before she can pat me down.

  43

  I can’t even wait till I get home. Car engine idling, dome light on, I thumb through the photos. Yes, here’s the one with the blue bunny. Passing over a couple of shots of Arye and Schmule, I find another one of me, propped up in front of an autumn-themed backdrop, head covered with pale fuzz. Then another one of me, toddling through the snow. My blond hair fluffs out of my hood as I watch Fran twist a green scarf around a glistening snowman.

  Wait.

  Just.

  One.

  Freaking.

  Minute.

  Me and Fran?

  How long has Fran been a part of Mom’s life? At least since I was a baby, if you can go by these pictures. All these years? I can’t—believe—it.

  Did Dad know all along? Or did he not even suspect?

  Oh, my God.

  No wonder Fran didn’t want me to see that album!

  44

  Over lunch with Julie and me on Saturday afternoon, Dad asks, “Did you get the rings back?”

  Damn. The rings! I never thought of them again. “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “You forgot?” Silent, I poke at a tomato rolling around in my salad. “Well, what about the photo albums?”

  On one hand, I’d like nothing more than to heave those pictures in his face. See? See? Mom cheated on you for years! How does THAT make you feel?

  On the other hand, I’m scared of how’ll he react. How he’ll undoubtedly blame me, the bearer of bad news.

  “Shawna?” Dad’s impatience mounts.

  Reluctantly I admit, “Uh, she did give me a couple of albums.”

  “Only a couple? Let’s see them.”

  “Jack, let her eat.” Julie tosses her flippy hair and winks as if to say let’s stick together, kiddo.

  As if, Julie. You’re not my nanny anymore.

  Dad smiles thinly. “Of course. That’s what I meant.”

  It’s not that I don’t like Julie. What’s not to like? She’s sweet and she’s cute, except for that mole. She doesn’t slobber over Dad like his previous army of bimbos. And I’ll always be grateful to her for one thing: she’s the one who brought Charles to me soon after Mom left.

  But I get the impression she wants to take up right where we left off, as if she weren’t the second person in my life to dump me without notice.

  I eat rapidly, barely tasting my salad. No point trying to converse; Dad rambles about his job and his latest miracle deliveries and semi-immaculate conceptions. Julie listens with rapt attention. How long will it take her to realize how boring he can be?

  After lunch, Julie and Dad head to the den for a drink. I jump when Dad barks, “Shawna! The pictures!”

  I hear Julie’s hushed admonishment, which sounds something like: “Do you have to be so rough with her?” I miss Dad’s reply. But he doesn’t sound apologetic.

  Fine! I haul out the albums from Fran, stalk to the den, and drop them down. Dad, oblivious to my mood, leafs through one with minimal interest. “Is this all she had?”

  “I guess,” I lie, remembering the checkered one she wouldn’t give me.

  “You guess?”

  “Well, she gave me some loose ones, too.”

  “Good. Hang on to them. And next time ask about the jewelry.”

  “Where are they?” Julie sips her merlot as she peeks into the second album. “The other pictures. I’d love to see them.”

  “Oh, they’re just baby pictures,” I say, rapidly losing my nerve. “One of me in fr
ont of some tacky fall backdrop, and—”

  Dad’s glass pauses, midair. “A backdrop? Your mother never used commercial backdrops.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s a backdrop.” The fact that he’s arguing with me whittles away at my indecision. “And there’s another one of me, too, sitting on Mom’s lap. I’m holding a blue bunny. I’m, like, one or two.”

  Dad does this quirky thing with one heavy eyebrow when he thinks I’m not being one hundred percent truthful. He’s doing it now. “You never had a blue bunny.”

  “Oh, Jack, how can you remember?” Julie says with a small laugh.

  Dad points at me. “Let’s see those other pictures.”

  With a kind of grim satisfaction, I fetch them from my purse. Dad and Julie shuffle through them together, heads disturbingly close. Julie rests one hand on Dad’s hairy arm. I wonder if they’re sleeping together yet . . .

  Dad finally pronounces, “Shawna. These pictures aren’t even you.”

  “Well, some are of Fran’s kids,” I admit, squinting over his shoulder. “But these two—”

  “Are not you.” Dad slaps them down. “Your mother didn’t even know Fran when you were that age.”

  “Well, Dad. Obviously she did.”

  I wait for the planet to explode. Instead, Julie says cautiously, “No, she didn’t. I remember when they met, at a book signing, in Cleveland. You were in first grade or so.” She waves a hand over the skimpy stack of photos. “None of these are of you.”

  Flabbergasted, I peer at the snowman picture. Blond hair, snowsuit . . . a boy’s snowsuit?

  Dad picks up the bunny one and compares it to a picture of the “real” me in one of the albums. Julie grips his arm again, slowly shaking her head. “Shawna’s hair was never that curly. But the resemblance is eerie. Jack, you don’t suppose Penny . . .” She glances my way.

  “What?” I’m confused.

  Cheeks coloring, she finishes, “Well, maybe she had an affair? And this little boy—”

  I stare at the child in the snowsuit, grinning up at Fran.

  Schmule?

  Of course. Why didn’t I see it?

  “That’s ridiculous,” Dad says, and I know what he’s thinking: why would Mom leave him for Fran, and then have an affair with a man? He pops the album shut. “How old is Fran’s son? The younger one.”