The Art of Mending

by Elizabeth Berg

  Saying that, I suddenly wondered what it really meant. Why was I so firmly entrenched in my own world? What went on in our house that made me look so determinedly away from everything but my own fantasies? Was it possible the shrink I saw in college was at least partially right, that something wrong in my family made me seek comfort elsewhere? But couldn’t everyone look back at life as a child and start blaming their parents for what was wrong with them? Frankly, I was really, really tired of that song.

  “It’s kind of hard, Caroline, trying to remember anything from so long ago. I mean, stuff from my life alone, to say nothing of yours. I remember specific moments, but whole years are just . . . lost.”

  She nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But why do you need Steve’s and my corroboration anyway? You said you know this happened.”

  “I guess it’s that I need to feel I have allies in my brother and my sister, that I’m not alone in what I need to do. If I don’t confront Mom—and Dad too, I guess—I’ll never get past all this. I have to tell them about what I remember. And that it was wrong.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Laura, you don’t know.

  “She came into my room one Saturday. I had just started third grade, and I was sitting at the window, looking out at the leaves. It was fall, and they were really beautiful. She asked me why I didn’t go outside. I said I wanted to be in. I said, Look at the leaves, they’re so pretty and they’re dying. She got sort of impatient and started messing around with the stuff in my room, rearranging it. Then she said I had to go out, that I was just mooning around and there was no reason for it, it was a perfectly beautiful day. I said again I didn’t want to, and I asked why the leaves had to die, why did things have to die, and she grabbed my arm and started pulling me out of my room. And I remember I yelled help, I yelled help really loud, and she just went berserk. She started slapping me and kicking me and saying to shut up, just shut up. And then she ran into her bedroom and slammed the door and started sobbing—I could hear her all the way in my room. I went and knocked at her door, and then I went in, and she was lying on her side holding a pillow up against her stomach. She said I made her do these things, why did I make her do these things? I remember I tried to get on the bed beside her, I was so sorry, and she lifted up her head and said in this awful, low voice, ‘Get out of here.’ I went back to my room and stayed until dinnertime, and when I came out it was like nothing happened.”

  “But . . . where was I that day?”

  “You were gone somewhere,” Caroline said. “Probably over at a friend’s house; you were a good girl with a lot of friends. You were forever going over somewhere and baking with someone and then bringing home stuff for the family. Look what I made! Little Miss Martha.”

  I pictured myself standing in Sally Burke’s kitchen, laughing and licking chocolate-chip cookie dough from beaters while Caroline sat at the edge of her bed staring at her hands, afraid to move. “Oh, Caroline. I don’t see how you can stand any of us. I can’t believe I was oblivious to all this. That we all were. Didn’t anybody ever even—why didn’t you tell Dad?”

  She shook her head. “Well, as I told you, Mom had me convinced that the bad things she did to me were my fault. She truly did. I was so ashamed of the fact that there was something in me that made her behave in this terrible way. I knew she wasn’t like that to you or Steve, so it had to be my fault. I did try to tell Dad one day, but it was useless. You know how it is; you can’t say anything bad about Mom to Dad. I’m sure he thought I was making it up. He probably thought I’d gotten in trouble for something and had been mildly punished in some way or another, then had exaggerated wildly about what happened. I was prone to drama, as you recall.”

  I refrained from correcting the tense. “But . . . didn’t you have marks or something?”

  “I had bruises every now and then. But so did you. Only yours came from another place.”

  “Well, I just . . . I have to say, Caroline, if all that had happened to me, I think I’d just walk away from our parents. Cut off relations.”

  “Don’t be so sure. I have a friend, a guy I met at my group counseling session. And once a month, on the first day of the month, he goes to see his father, who was remarkably abusive—both physically and emotionally. He goes even though he knows that every time it’ll be like getting shot in the heart. His father insults him for a while and then basically ignores him. Eddie knows what he’s headed for, but he can’t stop going. And I understand why. It has to do with himself, what Eddie’s giving himself.”

  “But what is he giving himself? He’s just sticking his finger into the light socket! There are such things as toxic parents.”

  “Yes, but . . . let me ask you something. Do you like your feet?”

  I pulled my bare feet away self-consciously. I thought she knew that I hated my feet: I have little toes that look like cornichons, according to Pete. And that’s a kind analogy. More like slugs, Anthony says. And my fat big toe curves over as though it’s trying to commiserate with the little toe. “No.”

  “Ever had a pedicure?”

  “No!”

  “Why not? It could help.”

  “Because then I’d have to show someone my feet close up for a long time.”

  “Well, why don’t you cut them off?”

  “My feet?”

  “Yeah.”

  I half smiled. “What are you talking about, Caroline?”

  “You’ve always hated your feet. Why don’t you just cut them off?”

  Fine. I would play along. “I need them to stand on. To walk.”

  She nodded. “Exactly.”

  I sat still for a moment, then said, “All right. I get it.”

  “I need Mom to admit to what she did, so I can forgive her. Then I can stand. Then I can walk to where I need to go, if I may extend the metaphor.”

  “Right. I understand.” I leaned back on my elbows. “You know one of the things that’s really hard about this, Caroline? That you waited for so long.”

  “Yeah. I met a woman who told me about how she finally came to love her mother, who made our mother look like Mother Teresa. She said she was able to love her mother when she began to get more sure of herself. And you know when that was?”

  “When?”

  “When she was fifty-nine.”

  I laughed. “Okay. Okay. So what now, then? How do I help?”

  “Well, you can start by trying to believe me.”

  “I do believe you!”

  She stood, stretched. “I appreciate your saying that. But here’s what I know. Partly you believe me, and partly you don’t.” I started to protest and she held up her hand to stop me. “That’s why you asked me about marks.”

  I looked away. She was right.

  Her voice softened. “It’s okay. It’s hard, I know. And I know this will all take time. Everything about it will take a long time. I just hope that in the end . . .”

  “I hope so too, Caroline.”

  “We should go in before we get bit up any more.”

  “Let’s go to the grocery store,” I said.

  “What do you need?”

  “I want to help you get something you need: chips and dip. I figured we’d start small.”

  “I don’t know if Rainbow is still open.”

  “I’ll see.” I went into the house and picked up the phone. “Hey, Caroline, you have messages on here.”

  “It’s just Bill. He calls every night. I’ll call him back later.”

  “He calls every night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, good. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Nothing.

  “Caroline?”

  “What.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it? That he calls every night?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s good.”

  I called information, then the grocery store. “They close in twenty minutes,” I yelled.

  Caroline came into the house, the screen door banging behind he
r. “Let’s go!” It was the first time in so long that I’d seen her look happy. And of course it wasn’t the food.

  ON THE WAY BACK TO MY PARENTS’ HOUSE, I thought of all Caroline had told me. When our family sat down together at dinner on a random Tuesday night, was it possible she was recovering from some sort of horrible event only hours before? What had been held in her silences?

  When I was a few blocks away, I turned off the radio. I wanted to think about how much I should tell my parents. I decided on as little as possible: I’d just say Caroline would be over tomorrow afternoon, that there were some things she would like to talk about with the immediate family. I had no idea what I’d do with the kids. As much as they like the fair, they don’t like to go two days in a row. I’d have to ask Pete to take them somewhere. There was no reason for him to be around during all of this. I tried not to pay attention to the pinch of resentment I felt; this wasn’t how our time here was supposed to go. We were supposed to have fun.

  When I pulled into the driveway, I saw the dim figures of people sitting outside. It was Pete and the kids, arranged in an intimate little semicircle, waiting for the fireworks, I supposed. I greeted them, dropped my purse, and sat on the grass before them. I pulled my knees up to my chest, rested my forehead on top of them, and drew in a long breath. I could finally relax. I looked up, smiling.

  “Where have you been?” Anthony asked.

  “Why? Did you miss me?” I rose up to kiss the top of his head multiple times, just to annoy him. His head smelled good, a yeasty smell. “Awww, did you miss me?”

  He frowned, looked away.

  “Laura,” Pete said.

  I turned toward him. “Yeah?” Then, my smile disappearing, I said, “What?” And then, as he got out of his chair and started toward me, his face full of sadness, “Oh, my God.”

  12

  WHEN PETE AND I HAD FINALLY GOTTEN AROUND TO making our wills, we’d talked about what we wanted done at our funerals. He’d wanted a straight service, something dignified; I wanted something looser. I’d wanted things read by friends and relatives that would entertain and inspire: essays by Annie Dillard, poetry by Mary Oliver. I’d wanted one quilt over me, another one draped over the coffin, and the one called “Water at Night,” my pride and joy, the silver and black quilt that won first prize in a national competition—I’d wanted that quilt to be given away by a raffle drawing. When everyone filed out of the church, I’d wanted James Brown to be singing “I Feel Good.”

  “You don’t want James Brown,” Pete had said, and I’d said, “Yes I do. I want people to think that’s how it is, over yonder. That you feel good.”

  “Okay,” he’d said, in that singsong way that meant I think you’re nuts.

  Of course when you plan your funeral, you do it thinking you won’t really die. It’s just a good exercise. You plan it in case you die.

  You know your parents are going to die, but they are going to die later. They are going to die sometime. But that time will not come until you no longer need them. While you still need them, or might need them, they will have the good taste and common courtesy not to leave. This was how I’d always thought of it, I see now.

  At my father’s funeral I sat frozen, holding Pete’s hand tightly and feeling absolutely nothing. The priest was standing at the pulpit, sharing amusing anecdotes about my father so we could all remember we were here not to mourn a death but to celebrate a life. Amid the sounds of sniffing and discreet nose-blowing came appreciative chuckles—appreciative or obligatory, I wasn’t sure which.

  Steve sat in the row ahead of us, Tessa leaning into him. On his other side sat my mother, dabbing at her eyes. At the end of our row, Caroline sat next to Bill but at a slight declarative distance from him. I looked around the church, at the dull sheen of old gold, the stained-glass windows. I thought about a quilt I’d once made out of jewel-colored douppioni silks, designed to look like stained glass. I remembered a time I’d sat beside my father when we went to midnight mass. The decorations were so beautiful, the music so rich, I’d begun to quietly weep in awe and appreciation, and my father, staring straight ahead, had reached over to take my hand: I know. And now the dam broke and I understood that it was true; my father had died and I was sitting here at his funeral and he would never take my hand again.

  I remembered him reading to me when I had the mumps, the same battered Little Golden Book, over and over again. I remembered him bandaging my knee on a day I fell off my bike, hugging me before I left for college, walking me down the aisle on my wedding day, how his eyes filled with tears when he told Pete in as stern a voice as he could muster, “You take good care of her, now.” I thought of riding high on his shoulders when I was three, him trying to teach me how to whistle, and how, when I learned, he’d given me a new dollar bill. I remembered the night someone stole my Halloween candy and I came home crying, and he went out for hours looking for some boy dressed as a skeleton. I remembered the first quilt show I had at a gallery, how he had come to the opening and walked up to everyone there, saying quietly, “Hi, how are you, I’m her father; she’s my daughter; isn’t she something?”

  My chest heaved and a whimpering sound escaped that under other circumstances might have embarrassed me. But now, I didn’t care about anything except the fact that my father had died and I had not been ready. I had not been done with him. I wanted him to come back for just half an hour, so I could say what I had saved up for another time. For later.

  I thought, There was a tag tied to his toe.

  I thought, His clothes were not folded and put on the shelf inside the metal locker, they were tossed onto the bottom of it, and his blue shirt was turned inside out.

  I thought, His glasses were on the otherwise empty nightstand, and his wallet was in the otherwise empty drawer, only I thought of it this way: His little glasses. His little wallet.

  I thought, He didn’t know, he had no idea, he was only trying to eat his tasteless hospital dinner thinking that tomorrow night he’d be home to watch television with my mother in the family room, his simple evening pleasure. And then his cup had fallen, and coffee had run from the side of his mouth, and despite everything they tried he was gone.

  I squeezed Pete’s hand tighter. I thought, Don’t ever leave me, let me go first. From the corner of my eye I saw the knees of my children. They were so old now, not really children anymore. Stop that, I wanted to tell them. Hold still.

  13

  AT MY PARENTS’—NOW MY MOTHER’S—HOUSE, THE living room was crowded with people who had come over after the funeral. I’d met so many strangers who knew my father, had talked to so many friends and relatives I’d known since I was a child, that I’d actually gotten hoarse. I went into the TV room, needing a break, and found Anthony sitting in my father’s leather recliner, his knee bouncing wildly.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.” He didn’t look at me. His knee slowed, stopped.

  I sat in my mother’s blue velvet club chair. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s hard, huh?” I said. “Hard to realize that one minute he was just—”

  “It’s not that!”

  “Oh.” I sat still, waiting.

  He looked at me, then quickly wiped a tear away. “It’s not that he died. People die. It’s . . . this. I mean, I think it’s really gross, what’s going on out there. People just . . . chewing their dumb sandwiches and drinking and laughing. It’s not a party! How come nobody’s talking about Grandpa?”

  “Well, some people are. Here and there. Some people are. But I think I know how you feel. When Great-grandma died, there was a lunch in the church basement after her funeral, and I remember looking around, thinking, This could be anything but a funeral.”

  “Exactly.” He looked over at me. “A celebration for someone graduating high school or something. A birthday.”

  “Yes. But I see it differently. I think what this is, is people just needing to do something, to keep go
ing and not be alone. You know? What if these people didn’t come back here? Then Grandma would be by herself. And she—”

  “She wouldn’t be alone! We’re here!”

  “Well, yes. We’re here now. But we aren’t going to be staying here. These people all live nearby.”

  The knee again. And then Anthony reached for the remote. “There’s a good baseball game on. Why don’t I just watch it?” He looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Okay?”

  I didn’t know if he was serious or not. “I suppose you could.”

  “I don’t want to watch a game!”

  “You could, though, and there would be nothing wrong with it. People . . . they have to find their own ways. Everybody has a different method of coping with grief, and no one way is better than another. You might need to watch a baseball game now. It might remind you of your normal life, of what you have to go back to. For Grandma . . . well, she needs to be reminded that people are around to help her. All these people ‘eating their dumb sandwiches’ will tell her that if she needs anything—”

  “Yeah, and most of them won’t even mean it!”

  “Some of them might not. But others will.” I leaned back and felt an edgy restlessness snaking through me. I needed to go outside. Later, I’d ask Pete to take a walk with me. I hadn’t had a chance to be alone with him since we’d arrived, and that’s what I needed. “It’s like falling off a cliff, Anthony, when someone dies this suddenly. And these rituals we have, whatever they are—watching sports or having dinner parties, or . . . oh, I don’t know, wearing a yellow tie every third Thursday—they provide some sort of support. You know what I mean? So you can watch baseball. Hannah can call her friends—Hannah is on the phone with Gracie, right now. And Grandma is in the kitchen peeling Saran Wrap off cold cuts and tossing salads and arranging cookies on platters instead of weeping in her darkened bedroom with the door closed. All of this—I don’t know, maybe it forges a new neural pathway, almost. It helps you go on in this new situation. It teaches you how. Don’t you think Grandma’s heart is breaking? Of course it is. But does she honor Grandpa by collapsing into grief? Believe me, she’ll do plenty of that. But for right now, I think it’s better if she talks to people and accepts the gifts they can offer. No one is saying Grandpa’s life didn’t matter. They’re just coming together to do what they can. They’re providing some structure, some order, to a situation that feels out of control, especially to Grandma.”