The Art of Mending

by Elizabeth Berg

  I’d lain still for a moment. Then I’d said, “Go back to your own bed. You’re creepy. You’re so creepy. I’m telling what you said.”

  “No, you won’t,” she’d said. And she’d been right. I’d always let her bear her peculiar burdens alone.

  IN THE ICU WAITING ROOM, Steve was hunched over a magazine, one leg draped over the arm of his chair. “Where’s Caroline?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care.” He looked up at me, shrugged.

  “She just told me something really incredible.” I repeated for him the story Caroline had told me about our mother. When I finished, he straightened in his seat, put down the magazine. “Jesus.”

  “I know.” I supposed he was thinking the same things I had: How did I miss this? How could the mother I had be the mother who did such things?

  The door to the lounge opened and a somber-faced woman entered and sat on the chair closest to the door. She was wearing blue-jean shorts and a sleeveless white blouse, a pair of sneakers with no socks. She carried a large straw purse, and lying across the top of it was a battered teddy bear. She nodded at us, her eyes shining with tears.

  “Hi,” I said softly.

  “Hi.” She picked up a magazine, stared determinedly at it, shivered slightly in the air-conditioning. The room was rich with a unique kind of silence that was full of things that needed to be expressed but couldn’t be. I looked at Steve, pointed to the door, and he followed me out.

  “She must have a child being admitted,” I said. “My God. Can you imagine your child being in the ICU? I’d go crazy if one of my children had to be in there.”

  “Where do you think Caroline went? Speaking of children.”

  “Beats me.”

  He leaned against the wall, crossed his arms. “Well, now I feel like a real jerk. But do you think . . . don’t get mad, okay? But do you believe her?”

  “Oh. . . . No. Probably not. That’s why she left, because I made her feel like I don’t believe her. I’m sure it’s not literally true; Caroline always exaggerates everything so much. But if she—”

  The elevator dinged, the doors parted, and we saw my mother coming down the hall. I watched her, trying to see if there was something about her that would confirm or deny what Caroline had just told me. But she was only my mother, the woman signing my report cards, applauding my first ride on my bike without training wheels, chopping onions with a match held between her teeth to keep from crying, carpet-sweeping the living room, standing at the foot of my bed to hold Anthony as a newborn, her hand protectively cradling his head with great skill and care. I had to talk to Caroline’s husband. If not her therapist.

  My mother had changed clothes, combed her hair, regained her regal bearing. But as she came closer, I saw a look on her face I couldn’t quite decipher. “I just saw Caroline on the way out,” she said. Neither Steve nor I said anything back. “She’s going home, she said. She’s not coming back.”

  “Ah,” I said, as though it made perfect sense. As though it were what I’d been waiting for.

  “I do not understand that child,” my mother said. “I never have and I never will.”

  “She’s going home to her house?” I asked.

  My mother nodded. “I’m going in to see your father. I’m going to tell him something came up for Caroline at work that she’s got to go home and take care of. He doesn’t need to know she didn’t care enough to see him come out of the hospital tomorrow.”

  “Well, she’ll be over, I’m sure,” I said.

  My mother looked at me, angry. “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll go over there. I’ll go to her house and talk to her.”

  “You want me to come?” Steve asked, and I shook my head no. I pressed the button for the elevator. “Tell Pete where I went. I’ll see you later.”

  10

  ANTHONY WAS RIGHT: I HAD TO GET A CELL PHONE. I was standing at a bank of phones in a hall adjacent to a road-stop restaurant. I was squeezed between two callers: one a young dark-haired woman hunched over the receiver who apparently was attempting to have a secretive conversation, the other a wiry trucker sucking hard on a cigarette and yelling that he couldn’t possibly arrive on time, no, he could not possibly arrive on time; where was Phyllis, put Phyllis on the line, she was the only one in the whole place that knew what was really going on, where was goddamn Phyllis?

  On the way to Caroline’s, I had suddenly wanted to talk to my friend Maggie, to hear a voice from home saying that everything there is fine, everything there is still the same. I thought if I could hear her voice, I would be better able to visualize my house: the late-afternoon sunshine that makes an ellipse of light against the living room wall, the folded piles of fabric on my sewing table, the wooden spoons standing at attention in my kitchen, the doors to the kids’ rooms open halfway. I’d be able to see the hydrangea blossoms heavy on their bushes in the backyard, the treehouse that Hannah reads in. In addition to comforting myself with such images, I wanted to tell Maggie what had gone on, to ask her what she thought I should do. She was very good in situations like this.

  But she wasn’t there.

  If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s being in dire need of talking to a girlfriend and having her husband answer the phone and say she’s not there. Then you have two problems: the person you so much need to connect with is not available, and you have to rearrange your emotions to converse with a man. There is not a thing in the world wrong with Maggie’s husband. Doug is affable and generous and a good cook to boot. But he is of the Y-chromosome school of emotional receptivity. So instead of trying to tell him what was going on, I took in a deep breath, turned down the anxiety flame, and said, “Okay! Well, I’ll just try later.” And then, in as friendly and even a tone of voice as I could muster, I said, “So what are you doing home in the middle of the day?”

  “It’s Saturday,” he said.

  And I said, “Oh. Right.”

  When I hung up, I stood for a moment in front of the phone, my arms crossed. It occurred to me to call Caroline and leave her a message letting her know I was on my way, that I’d be there soon after she arrived. But I didn’t.

  I got back in the car, started the engine, then turned it off. I rolled down the window, rested my forehead against the steering wheel, and closed my eyes. I’d only wanted to come home and go to the fair, just like always. Instead, I felt like I’d walked into a room where the door had slammed shut behind me, then disappeared altogether.

  A FEW BLOCKS AWAY FROM CAROLINE’S HOUSE, I pulled into a 7-Eleven. I’d decided I did want to call before I showed up; it seemed only fair. But when I tried her number, I got her voice mail. It was possible that she hadn’t arrived yet, but that seemed unlikely. It seemed more appropriate to imagine her lying in bed, fully clothed down to her shoes but under the covers, the way she sometimes was found after a bad day in high school.

  I bought a package of Twinkies, always our favorite as kids, and a National Enquirer. A little joke, ha-ha; here you go, Caroline, now let’s finish talking and get this over with.

  I pulled into her driveway and parked behind her car. Caroline lived in a beautiful old Victorian that she’d bought when it was a wreck—raccoons had been living there. But she’d loved the bones of the house and saw its potential immediately. Now it was the nicest place on the block.

  I went up to the front door and knocked quickly, then tried opening it. Locked. I called her name once, twice. Nothing. I rang the doorbell; then, shading my eyes, I looked in the uncurtained windows of the living room. And there she was, sitting in a chair with her purse at her feet, staring right back at me.

  “Open the door,” I said.

  She didn’t move.

  Louder, I said, “Caroline! Open the door!”

  She got up slowly, came to the door, and opened it. Then she went back to her chair.

  I came in, closed the door, and moved to the sofa near her. The mantel clock ticked loudly in
the silence. Ticked questioningly, I felt, speaking for Caroline: What–do–you–want? I leaned forward, touched her hand lightly. “Hey.”

  Nothing.

  “I brought you something.” I pulled the Twinkies out of the bag, the National Enquirer.

  She wouldn’t look.

  “Want a Twinkie?” I asked, and then realized the stupidity of it. The unkindness, really. “Caroline,” I said gently. “What’s going on?”

  “I tried to tell you. You called me a liar.”

  “I did not call you a liar.”

  She looked over at me, smiled bitterly.

  “I didn’t call you a liar! I simply asked you if you were sure. Come on, you told me this incredible thing, and I just was having trouble . . . I mean, you seem to think you can just—”

  The phone rang and I stopped talking, grateful for the interruption. But Caroline made no move to answer it.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?”

  “No.”

  The phone rang twice more, stopped, then immediately started again.

  “Maybe it’s important,” I said.

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to answer the phone.”

  “Well, then, I will.”

  I started to get up and she said, “Don’t! This is not your house. You are not allowed to use the phone.”

  “Caroline. Dad’s in the hospital. It could be about him.”

  “Dad is fine.” The phone stopped ringing again.

  “I’m calling home, goddammit.” I went into the kitchen, dialed my parents’ number. My mother answered immediately. “It’s me,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here at Caroline’s and the phone rang and we didn’t . . . we missed it. It wasn’t you, was it?”

  “No, it wasn’t. What’s going on there? Is everything all right?”

  I looked toward the living room. “Yes. It’s fine. We’re just talking.”

  Caroline came into the kitchen, took the phone from me and hung it up. She turned the ringer off. Then, facing me, she said, “I told you not to answer the phone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. Including you.” She headed upstairs, and I heard a door slam. I stood still for a minute, then angrily followed her up. I opened the door to her bedroom and found her sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, her hands folded in her lap. Her closet door was open; I could see that Bill’s clothes were gone. It was true, then; they were separated.

  My anger faded and I sat beside her for some time, saying nothing. Finally, she looked over at me, and I put my arm around her. It occurred to me that this might be the first time I’d ever done this. Her body was stiff, unyielding. Actually, mine was too. Some part of me wanted to stop then, to get up and leave. Drive back to my parents’ house and talk to my children about what they did that day, sit in the backyard that night to watch the crayon-colored fireworks that would be shot off from the fairgrounds. I wanted to shrug off all the things Caroline had said in the way I might an unpleasant encounter in a parking lot. But I saw the wrongness in that.

  “I’ll wait,” I said finally. “Okay? I’ll wait right here until you’re ready. And then I’ll listen to you. I promise.” She nodded, and she might as well have been transformed into that sad and mysterious little girl who shared a family with me but who didn’t belong—not then and not now, either.

  It is taken on Easter Sunday. My mother, a study in perfumed agitation, had hustled Caroline and me outside the house before church, saying we had to have our picture taken together in our identical outfits because our paternal grandmother had (sigh) insisted. Nana had sent us dresses made out of a filmy powder-blue-and-white polka-dotted fabric, as well as beribboned hats and white patent leather purses. We have been made to hold hands, and the expression beneath my smile is pained; I am holding only Caroline’s thumb, rather in the way you might hold a thumb you found on the ground. Caroline smiles her usual sad smile and holds her other hand up to her eye, her fingers fashioning a grip around her own imaginary camera. She, the one being photographed, is the one recording the truer image.

  I remember that the moment the photo was taken, I dropped Caroline’s hand and ran toward the car. “Wait for me!” she called, but I did not. I claimed a coveted seat by the window and then wiped the hand that had touched Caroline against the skirt of my new dress, first front, then back, over

  and over again. I think I might have used my purse to try to block anyone from seeing, but I can’t be sure that is not just my horrified adult self, editing.

  Well, yes. That is what it is. Because now I remember that when Caroline got in the car she was carrying both her own purse and mine, which I’d left behind. She held mine out to me, all hope, saying excitedly, “Here, Laura, you forgot this! You forgot our new purse!” “I don’t want it,” I said, staring straight ahead. “I don’t even like it.” It was the possessive pronoun I objected to. From the corner of my eye, I saw her hesitate, then put the purse gently down on the seat between us. I saw her straighten it just the tiniest bit, then struggle to move herself into a comfortable position without disturbing anything.

  11

  CAROLINE AND I WERE SITTING OUTSIDE ON HER BACK porch steps, eating salad and drinking Diet Pepsi. “What I really want is potato chips and Lipton Onion Soup dip,” Caroline said. “It’s the fair. It makes you want only junk food.”

  “We can have that,” I said. “Let’s go and get some.”

  “No.” She reached down to slap her ankle. “Damn mosquitoes.”

  I looked at my watch. I’d been here now for almost two hours. “Caroline—”

  “I know.” She finished her Pepsi and set the can down carefully, as though it were made of crystal. This opposed to my having crushed my own can with one hand, after which I’d burped and said, “See that? Supergirl.”

  “All right,” Caroline said. “I’ll try to tell you. I’ll try again. Maybe it would help if I give you some background.

  “A few months ago, I’d come to the point where I was beginning to feel paralyzed about doing anything for myself. It’s always been hard for me to take . . . well, to take. But it became extreme. Bill and I make good money, we own the house and our cars, I pay my credit card bills in full every month, and yet I find myself standing in a store holding up a blouse and wondering why I’m even looking at it, because I know I won’t buy it for myself.”

  “Well, I do that too, Caroline. I think everyone does. You look at something you want to buy and feel guilty that you’re getting it for yourself. Especially women; we think it’s selfish if—”

  “But it was more than that. It was this feeling that . . . it was the feeling that the world is not for me. Life. It’s not for me.”

  I stared out across her backyard, watched two yellow butterflies chasing each other in circles. Look at that, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Inside, I could hear my child voice saying, “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “I kept feeling worse and worse—I couldn’t work, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t read—I’d just look at the same sentence over and over. Things were terrible with Bill, and finally he’d just had it. He couldn’t help me and he couldn’t listen to me anymore, and frankly I don’t blame him. He said he wanted to be apart for a while, that then maybe I’d get some help. He’d been asking me to go and see someone for a long time, but I couldn’t.

  “When he left, though, I finally did call a shrink. One of the things she told me to do was to find something to do with my evenings, to make sure I went out at least once a week. I signed up for a free class, memoir writing—something they were offering at the library. And it was the oddest thing. I found I couldn’t write my real life. I could only make things up. I felt afraid of telling a single fact, as though I couldn’t be depended on to get it right. Finally, I thought, Well, you know where you lived, for God’s sake. You know what the house where you grew up was like. And I’d start to write about it, but then I’d stop and I’d think, Wait. Were there trees along the boulevard in fron
t? Was my bedspread blue? I talked to my therapist about this, week after week, and suddenly I realized where it was all coming from, all this self-doubt, all this censorship.

  “We’d talked one day about the concept of shame, and I told her that every time I heard that word, I had a visceral reaction to it: I could feel my stomach clench, my heart start to race. She said, ‘Well, let’s explore that.’ And I sat there on her couch and I all of a sudden felt this rush of something awful coming, this freight train of emotion. I just came completely apart, started bawling. And then I began remembering things that happened to me. Triggered memories, they call it. They just kept popping up.”

  I was quiet for a long time, thinking. Then I said, “I wish, for your sake, that I could remember her doing something like that. But I can’t think of one time she ever behaved that way. Which is not to say I don’t believe you, Caroline. I just don’t remember anything.”

  “She didn’t do the worst stuff in front of you,” Caroline said. “I know that. But what I wanted to know from you and Steve is if you remember . . . smaller things. General things. If you can, it will help me to keep going. I just want to know that you saw something too. Do you understand? I don’t doubt what happened, but I seem to need something else to help me do something about it.”

  I leaned back on my elbows and stared up at the sky. It was getting dark out. Clouds were stretched thin as gossamer, and stars were appearing behind them. Whole galaxies above us, whole galaxies within us.

  I thought back to our growing-up years, trying to remember a time when Caroline was purposefully slighted by my mother. But I really couldn’t. I’d been aware of the fact that, after a certain point, Caroline’s attitude toward my mother switched from idolatry to contempt. But that had happened with all of us when we went through adolescence; with Caroline, it had just been more dramatic—no surprise there. Finally, I said, “I guess I didn’t pay much attention, Caroline.”