Rémy looked to Bitsi, who clasped his hand. With her at his side, he was more confident.
“I have an announcement,” he said.
This was it. They were engaged. Bitsi’d had trouble meeting my eye because she’d been keeping a secret. Well, it was no secret! I lifted my wineglass to congratulate the couple.
“Yes?” Papa grinned at Bitsi.
“I’ve joined the army,” Rémy said.
Maman put her hand to her mouth. Papa went slack-jawed. My arm remained frozen midair. The cold defiance, the finality in Rémy’s tone hurt me. It felt as though he’d emptied a canister of bullets onto the table, into our water glasses and what was left of the gravy. I didn’t realize I was shaking until I noticed the wine quivering in its glass. Only Bitsi remained serene. Rémy had discussed his plans with her. She clearly approved. Perhaps she’d encouraged him.
“What?” Maman said. “But why?”
“I can’t just sit home,” Rémy had said. “Someone has to do something.”
“I want to make a difference.”
“Do something here.” She gestured to Papa. “Join the police.”
I could read Rémy’s thought: The last thing I want is to be like him.
Papa pushed himself from the table. His chair scraped across the floor and fell over.
I expected him to attack with the arsenal he had at his disposal. Derision—how could you possibly be a soldier? You can barely stand up straight. Contempt—if you refuse to help me chop down a Christmas tree, I doubt you can fell a man. Guilt—what will this do to poor Maman? Machismo—do you think the army will take a weakling like you? They only take real men like me. Fury—I’m the head of this household. How dare you enlist without informing me!
Without a word, he left the room. A second later, the front door slammed. Maman and I exchanged bewildered glances. Bitsi whispered something to Rémy. He regarded me.
Well? I heard him say.
He waited for me to give my blessing, but all I could get out was, “Don’t…”
There was hurt in his eyes. He’d trusted me to support him.
I didn’t want there to be distance between us. Not now. “Don’t you know how much I’ll miss you?” I said with forced cheerfulness. “We’ll have to make the most of our time together before you go.”
“I leave in three days,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Papa has contacts everywhere, and I didn’t want to give him time to find someone who’d kick me out of the army before I even made it to the base.”
Maman rose and righted Papa’s chair.
CHAPTER 12
Lily
FROID, MONTANA, MARCH 1984
MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL was on the first day of spring. At the front of the church, red roses smothered her casket. It was hard to believe that Mom was in there instead of at home, perched on our window seat. Dad and I hunched in the front pew, Odile and Mary Louise next to us. My lower lip wouldn’t stop trembling, so I covered my mouth with my hand. Odile clasped the other. I didn’t want her to let go.
Dad looked everywhere but at the casket—to the faded painting of Jesus, to the stained glass windows that wouldn’t let us see out. He resembled someone who’d boarded the wrong train and ended up somewhere completely unexpected. Behind us, I saw Dr. Stanchfield, his satchel beside him like a faithful wife. Robby, between his parents. Mary Louise’s dad with wintergreen snuff tucked into his cheek. Sue Bob swearing under her breath. Even Angel came. So did every teacher I had ever had.
With wobbly voices, women read scripture. Then, one after another, Mom’s friends spoke. Sue Bob said she had the best sense of humor. Kay said Mom was the softest shoulder to cry on. Snot leaked from my nose, spit wallowed in my mouth, grief churned in my gut. Trying to keep it in, I choked and started coughing. Mary Louise hit me on the back. Hard. The pain felt good.
The braying organ signaled the end of the service; its mournful moans ushered us out. The congregation crossed the street to the hall. Usually, men complained about taxes; ladies complained about one another; and freed from the fetters of Mass, kids shouted and roughhoused. This time, we walked in silence. Angel slipped a mixtape into my pocket. Dad’s boss put his arm around his stout wife, as if worried she could be taken, too. Robby drifted over. He wore black Wranglers instead of blue jeans. He held out a handkerchief. I took it. Fists jammed into his pockets, he returned to his parents, who nodded their approval. I guessed they were teaching him how to be a man.
A long table was laden with food. One of the ladies sat Dad and me down; another made up plates for us. Slices of roast, mashed potatoes, and gravy. He hadn’t organized any of this. The ladies, old hands at death, did what was needed, serenely, efficiently. They cooked, they served, they cleaned up. Behind the buffet or in the kitchen, they did all they could to make the worst day of our lives go smoothly.
Around us, people talked, trying to act like life would go on.
“A nice service.”
“So young…”
“What’ll he do about Lily?”
Afterward, Father Maloney, Dad, and I followed the hearse to the cemetery. At the grave site, as Father said the blessing, I was glad that it was just me and Dad for this quiet moment with Mom. A few feet away, a robin pecked at the grass. When Dad noticed, he put his hand on my shoulder, and my tears fell.
* * *
WE WOKE TO darkness. Mom had always been the one to thrust open the curtains, so I’d wake to a kiss on the forehead and sunlight streaming in. Since the funeral, Dad downed his coffee and I ate cereal in a gloomy fog. It simply did not occur to us to let in the light.
Once, our home had felt full and loud. Dinner club. Mom and her girlfriends giggling on Saturday afternoons. She’d always been there when I got home from school. Now I returned to a silent house. When I walked down the hall to bed, no one called out, “Sweet dreams!” At school, in front of the row of lockers, kids stepped back when they saw me, scared that what happened to me could happen to them. Teachers never asked about homework. On Sunday, as Dad and I straggled down the aisle to our pew, God didn’t say a word.
Every day, I came home with so much to tell Mom. I missed her questions about my day, I missed her. I ran my finger along the rim of her cup, nestled in the kitchen cabinet. Afraid to break her best thing, I never used it. I wished I could go back to that last moment. I would say, You were the best mom in the world. I need you. We need you. I loved the way we watched robins and hoped for hummingbirds. I wished we had one more morning. One more hug. One more chance to say I love you.
* * *
I SPENT WEEKENDS lounging on beanbag chairs at Mary Louise’s house. As usual, we complained about the only things we knew, school and family. “Dad can barely open cans of Campbell’s Soup,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Neither can you doofuses,” Angel said as she slipped on her satin jacket.
“If you’re such a genius, why are you flunking math?” Mary Louise asked.
“At least I have a life, unlike you.” She stomped out.
Their bickering was better than the silence at home. Only Mary Louise’s mom treated me the same as always. It was a strange comfort to be told, “Don’t be so damn lippy.”
The whole town pitched in to feed Dad and me. He bought a deep freeze to store the casseroles. At dinner, we barely spoke—the news anchor, our constant companion, did the talking. Our conversations were stilted, and pauses lasted as long as commercial breaks.
When school let out for the summer, Angel introduced Mary Louise and me to Bo and Hope on Days of our Lives. Their soap-opera love story let me forget my loss for an hour as I absorbed its lessons: love is longing, love is agony, love is sex. I imagined Robby and me, our bodies and souls entwined.
My soap-opera binge lasted a month. When the thermometer hit one hundred degrees, Dad took off early from work and came to get me at Mary Louise’s. He looked past us to the television, where the lovers were locked in their signature tongu
e-on-tongue embrace.
Dad’s brows shot up, then settled into a scowl. “I came to take you out for ice cream,” he said. He had meant for the invitation to include Mary Louise, but now he was mad, blaming her for a choice I’d made. She saw that and stayed put. I stalked out to the station wagon and pouted the whole way to the Tastee Freez. A strawberry milkshake did nothing to cool my temper.
“Why can’t I watch what I want?”
“Your mother wouldn’t like it,” he said, the best way to silence me.
When we got home, Dad marched over to Odile’s. Leaning on the haunch of our car, I listened to him complain about the perils of daytime television and Mary Louise’s permissive parents. Towering over Odile on the porch, he opened his wallet and held out some bills. He thought everyone was as interested in money as he was. She shoved his hand away.
“I need someone to look after her,” he said, adding the caveat, “no soaps.”
“I don’t need a babysitter!” I shouted.
The following morning, I found myself right where I’d always wanted to be, at Odile’s, but the reason I was there filled me with resentment. She understood and stayed busy in her garden. Over lunch, I tried to remain sullen, but the ham-and-cheese sandwiches she served broke down my reserve. We ate the croque monsieurs with our forks and knives, since there was a layer of bubbling Swiss cheese on top. Everything about Odile was elegant, even the way she ate her sandwich. In Froid, she stuck out like a sore thumb, but maybe in Paris, she was just an ordinary finger. I longed to see her world. Would she ever go back? Would she take me with her?
As we washed the dishes, she asked me to teach her to make my favorite dessert—chocolate chip cookies. Surprisingly, she didn’t know basic things, like the fact that you’re supposed to lick the beaters clean. That’s the whole point of baking.
Mom had let me eat as many cookies as I wanted, but Odile let me have two. When I tried to take more, she replied, “Two feed your stomach, the rest your soul. We’ll find another way to soothe your heart.” She handed me a book. “Literature, not sweets.”
I groaned and plunked myself down on her brocade couch. She sat in what she called her “Louis the fifteenth” chair. Its carved wooden legs made it seem expensive. Maybe she’d been rich, and when she was my age, her governess made her walk around the castle with the musty family Bible on her head. I’d lived next to Odile forever, well, my forever, and knew nearly nothing of her life. I eyed the drawers of the buffet and wondered what was inside. Maybe I could sneak a peek.…
“Read,” she ordered.
The Little Prince began with a boy who made simple drawings. When he showed them to adults, they didn’t understand. I knew how he felt; no one understood how much I missed Mom. “Jesus needs her in heaven, hon,” the ladies said, as if I didn’t need her down here. I continued reading. “It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears”—the words from a dead aviator comforted me more than trite phrases from folks I knew. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” The book carried me to another world, to a place that let me forget.
Odile said Le Petit Prince had been written in French and that I was reading a translation. I wanted to read the original, to understand the story the way it had understood me. I wanted to be eloquent like the Prince, elegant like Odile. I told her I wanted to learn French. “I’d love to teach you!” she said. In a notebook, she wrote: le mariage, la rose, la bible, la table. When I asked why there was a “le” or “la,” she said French nouns were either masculine or feminine.
“Huh?”
“Let me put it another way. They’re either… boys or girls.”
“In France, tables are girls?”
She laughed, a pretty, tinkly sound. “Something like that.”
La table? I imagined tables wearing dresses. A denim miniskirt or floral gown that grazed the ground. It seemed silly, but then I remembered Mom combing her hair at her vanity, knees brushing its gingham skirt. The idea of a table being a woman made sense.
It had been four months since Mom died, and for the first time, I didn’t feel heartbroken when I thought of her.
* * *
IN THE EVENINGS, I was alone: Dad shut himself away in the den. At my desk, I revised each day’s French lesson, repeating the words until they no longer felt foreign. Odile got me my own French-English dictionary—an orange is une orange, but a lemon is un citron Je voyage en France. Je préfère Robby. Odile est belle. Paris est magnifique. Basic sentences, simple pleasures, one word at a time, every sentence in present tense, no sadness of the past, no worries about le futur. I loved le français, a bridge to la France, a world that only Odile and I knew, a place with mouthwatering desserts and secret gardens, a place I could hide away. I could not master heartache—too dense, too overwhelming—but I could conjugate verbs. I begin—je commence; you finish—tu finis. In this secret language of loss, I spoke of my mother: j’aime Maman.
* * *
ON THE FIRST day of school, Mary Louise and I yawned amid the mustard-yellow kitchen units. Our homeroom was home ec, mandatory for eighth graders. I prayed Robby would be in our class, and sighed with relief when he walked in.
Consulting her clipboard, Mrs. Adams paired up students. “Lily and Robby.”
I elbowed Mary Louise, unable to believe my luck. Inching toward him, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Not “How was harvest?” Not even “Hi.” He kind of smiled at me. It was enough.
When Mrs. Adams held out a recipe card, neither Robby nor I moved to take it, so she placed the card on the counter next to the canisters of flour, sugar, and salt. Side by side, he and I read the instructions, and I felt the heat from his body. I measured the ingredients, he stirred them together with a beat-up spatula. We spooned the batter into the molds, then like proud parents, we peered into the oven to watch the cupcakes rise.
When they were golden brown, I pulled them out. Though they were hot, Robby bit into one. He chewed twice and said, “Gross!”
“Quit goofing around.” I popped a piece into my mouth. It tasted like a moldy sponge drenched in salt. I spit it into the garbage. “I must have mixed up the salt and sugar.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Are you kidding?” I said, practically in tears, mostly from the way the salt burned, but also because I didn’t want us to flunk.
“You’re worried about your 4.0.”
Robby scarfed a cupcake, barely chewing before forcing it down. His eyes watered but he grabbed another. I shoved one into my mouth, too, gagging on the yellow lump.
Mrs. Adams complimented Tiffany and Mary Louise on their masterpiece before moving on to us. She held up our empty pan. “How am I supposed to grade you?”
Grimacing from the sharp taste of salt, Robby and I shrugged.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” she said. “Start cleaning up.”
At the sink, we plunged our hands into the warm, soapy water to wash the pan and utensils. A tiny bubble rose in the air, and we watched it float away. I’d never been so happy.
In social studies, Miss Davis bristled about the Soviet boycott of the Olympics in LA. “Probably afraid their athletes would defect! How are we supposed to win the Cold War if they won’t compete?” Barely listening to our teacher’s bitter soliloquy, Mary Louise and I passed notes. “I’m starving,” she wrote. “Cheese fries for lunch?”
At my locker, I slathered on some of her lipstick before we crossed the street to the Husky House. I pushed open the smudged glass door, and there in the middle of the diner sat Robby with Tiffany Ivers balanced on his lap, her turquoise cowboy boots dangling an inch from the floor. I felt my eyes widen as I stopped dead.
Mary Louise crashed into me. “Hey!” Then she saw what I saw: Robby squirming; Tiffany Ivers’s triumphant smirk.
“Why him?” I asked. “She can have anyone she wants.”
“You don’t choose who you love,” Mary Louise said.
&nb
sp; “Why are you always defending her?”
“Why do you let her get to you?”
The salt gave me heartburn. Or maybe it was seeing Tiffany Ivers on Robby’s lap. “I’m going home.”
“Don’t let her win.”
I ran to Odile’s and let myself in. “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked. “Did something happen?”
I was a sweaty mess. “I saw something… and now I’m sick.”
While she got me a glass of water, I flipped through her French-English dictionary. I took a gulp, then asked, “What are the worst French words to describe someone?”
“Odieux, cruel. Odious, cruel.”
I’d wanted “slut” and “bitch,” but guessed those would do.
“Why focus on the negative, ma grande? Does this have anything to do with that boy you moon over after church?”
Jesus, did the whole congregation know?
“Well?” she said.
When I told her, she said, “Sometimes we misread signs. I assumed much about Paul, my first… boyfriend, but I was wrong. Perhaps Robby squirmed because she made him uncomfortable.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I crossed my arms. “I’m done with him.”
“Don’t close your heart.”
I thought about the loved ones she’d lost and felt foolish complaining. “You made it through a war; I can’t even make it through junior high.”
“We have more in common than you think. Let me tell you which words describe you. Belle, intelligente, pétillante.”
I felt better. “What’s the last one?”
“Sparkling.”
“You think I sparkle?”
She smiled wryly. “You came into my life like the evening star.”
* * *
IF ROBBY WANTED to be with Tiffany, fine. In class, I watched the teacher the whole time. I wouldn’t look at him. I couldn’t. Mary Louise passed me a note, whispering, “It’s from Robby.” Probably an invitation to his wedding. I tossed it in la poubelle Je déteste l’amour Je déteste Tiffany Ivers. Je déteste everyone.
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