The Breakup

by Debra Kent

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 12

  Speaking relatively, today was perfect. In the morning, I took Mary and Pete to church. Mary wasn’t familiar with the liturgy, but she seemed completely connected to the services, enchanted by the music, riveted to Reverend Lee’s sermon (topic: is it serendipity or divine intervention?). After church we went out for bagels (Mary had two), then hit the mall, where I bought her three pairs of shoes and let her go wild at Claire’s, that girly doodads place in the mall. Then the three of us squeezed into one of those little photo booths. When the picture slid out of the slot, Mary grabbed it and kissed it. “My family,” she said.

  It was a pleasure to watch her act like a real teenager, and I wondered whether it was a mistake to want her to go through the pregnancy.

  According to today’s paper, the Heirloom Roadshow—those earnest and overweight traveling antique experts—are coming to town. Lynette wants to go, and she wants me to come with her. “Come on, Val, it’ll be a kick,” she said excitedly. “I’ve been dying to get an expert opinion on my grandmother’s old plates.”

  At first I demurred—I couldn’t imagine a worse way to spend a Saturday afternoon, packed inside the mildewed National Guard armory with hundreds of locals and all their dusty old junk. Then I remembered my rapidly dwindling checking account. But what would I sell? My family wasn’t big on heirlooms—my mother had given me her old Corelle plastic dinnerware when I got my first apartment and a cheap silver bracelet her grandfather gave her on her sixteenth birthday. Typical. My family has successfully slashed and burned all its geneological ties. Lynette had traced her own roots back to the Civil War. A couple of years ago, my sister Teresa made a halfhearted effort to trace our family history and came up with a potato farmer named Seamus.

  “You could bring that sculpture, the one Roger gave you for your birthday,” Lynette suggested. “Didn’t he tell you it was in his family for generations?”

  I’d forgotten about that sculpture, a bronze cowboy affair I kept on the mantel. Roger hinted that the piece was extremely valuable. In fact, he said it once belonged to Franklin Roosevelt. If it was worth a few thousand dollars, it would cover my bills for a couple of months in a crunch.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 14

  Yesterday morning I brought a breakfast tray into Mary’s room but her room was empty. I reflexively looked under the bed—a child’s hiding place—and while I didn’t find Mary, I did discover a crumpled supermarket bag. Inside, brown glass bottles and a sticky teaspoon. Tinctures and oils, and a Ziploc bag of something that looked like tea. I recognized the names on the labels. These were the herbs Mary had asked me to buy for her, the herbs she thought would end her pregnancy.

  I had a terrible premonition, the absolutely certain sense that Mary was in danger. I left Petey with Lynette and drove wildly through the streets, screaming Mary’s name. I went as far north as Mercer, as far west as the highway. Mary was a strong girl. She could have been anywhere. Sweating, crying, desperate, I drove home and searched the house again, the basement, the attic. I stumbled outside, and something pulled me toward the ravine behind the house, a tangle of brush and trees, weeds, timber, and flat rock. I shuddered as I looked into its depth. Mary was down there, puking into the creek. She was wearing my old “I Fish, Therefore I Lie” T-shirt.

  I yelled for help. Lynette ran onto the deck in her pajamas. I told her to call an ambulance. By 10 A.M., Mary was in the hospital having her stomach pumped. By 11:03, her kidneys had shut down. At 11:09, Mary was pronounced dead.

  When I got home, I found her Aunt Esta’s phone number by the phone in Mary’s bedroom. She was stunned when I told her Mary was dead.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded. “Didn’t you know those herbs could kill her?”

  Esta then confessed that she knew virtually nothing about herbs. Her “specialty,” she said, was tae kwon do. She said she found the herb information in an old handbook lying around the house. She said she had only wanted to help her niece.

  I told her that I would arrange for Mary’s body to be sent back to the Philippines, and she promised that she would accompany the casket from Manila to Ilocos, even though it meant facing Mary’s parents. “This is all my fault, and I will tell them that,” she said. “I take full responsibility.”

  I asked Esta to tell me everything she knew about Mary, and she did. I spent the hour listening to where this young girl had been, where she’d come from, and how she’d become my husband’s other wife.

  Mary was of the Ifugao people, industrious, clannish farmers known for engineering magnificent rice terraces in the steep Luzon Mountains. Her kin were among the poorest in the hamlet, and they subsisted primarily on the sweet potatoes they farmed on a small hillside plot; potatoes, and the meager cash they earned selling chickens for ritual sacrifice. Her parents planned to marry her off to the youngest son of a more prestigious family of rice farmers when she was twelve.

  In the year of her twelfth birthday, Mary befriended a sociologist from Berkeley, a graduate student who had come to Hapau to study the microeconomy of Ifugao weavers. Mary convinced the student, the earnest daughter of a minister, to take her along to Manila, where Mary had a distant cousin. The student dropped her off at a post office, as Mary had requested. But the cousin never arrived, and Mary lived on the streets, panhandling with the other street kids. She was clever and hardworking, and became skilled at scrounging food in the trash bins behind restaurants. She made no attempt to contact her family in the mountains.

  Two years later, a friend introduced her to H. Wilhem Prost, an enterprising American who said he had a way for poor girls to find happiness and security in the United States. When he said he ran a mailorder bride business, Mary balked—she’d heard about girls who were unwittingly “sold” into the sex industry—but Prost assured her he wasn’t actually selling girls, just making introductions. “The men aren’t buying you, silly,” he said. “They’re paying for the privilege of meeting you. It’s all very legal. Romantic, even.” Prost gave her a good Christian name, put her up in a cramped apartment over a Laundromat with four other young women, and gave them enough money to cover their expenses. Mary was grateful for the shelter and food.

  Against enormous odds given the tightly woven fabric of the Ifugao community and the dominance of its patriarchy, Mary had made her way to Manila, traded her native Austronesian tongue for English, and became one of Prost’s CLIT girls, posing in a chaste white starched shirt for his catalog. She’d lied about her age, and he pretended to believe her. Within two weeks of posting her photo online, Mary had her first offer, from a man who said he was a famous American playwright. He courted her by mail, sent her pictures of his home (my house!) and photocopies of newspaper reviews of his play, Basic Black. One of her roommates helped her translate the letters, and they were beautiful, poetic. But Mary was frightened and she decided to abandon the whole scheme. The other girls prevailed, urged her to take the risk. They said that Mr. Tisdale seemed like a nice man. Besides, she wasn’t compelled to marry him, just meet him. What would be the harm?

  Once Mary made it to America, Roger insisted that she had no choice but to marry him. He told her she would live like a princess, that she would want for nothing. When she hesitated, he changed his approach. He told her that what she had done was illegal, and that the American government had special jails for girls like her. Mary was as gullible as Roger was convincing, and over time she decided she would have to make the best of it. She learned to like the pale American who disappeared for days, even weeks at a time, and eventually, began even to love him. He let her have a cat. He promised to send her to school. She hoped to become a nurse.

  I can’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling now, the disgust about Roger’s scheme, the horror and pain of losing Mary, the wrenching feeling that I somehow led her to death. Why hadn’t I paid closer attention to the herbs she’d wanted me
to buy? Why hadn’t I secured the house? Where did I get the neocolonialist notion that I should take charge of this Filipina’s life, as if my own wretched existence was something to admire and model, as if I could manage her life any better than I’d managed my own? I have now been awake for twenty-six hours and I’m starting to hallucinate flies on the wall.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 17

  Reverend Lee just left. I called him last night, woke up his wife (who seemed irritated). He slept on the couch in the family room. He brought Pete to school this morning. He comforted and counseled me, prepared tea for me, held me, prayed with me and prayed for me until I was finally able to fall asleep. I told him everything about Roger, Mary, my father, the unedited version. And through it all, he never judged, or blamed, or shamed. He listened with an open heart, and when I was done, he held my hand and helped me pray. What did I pray for? The power to face another day, to be the kind of mother my son deserves, to honor Mary without blaming myself. And I prayed for the strength to face new challenges: coming to terms with my father’s dying, surviving the divorce proceedings, and starting a new life as a woman alone.

  Reverend Lee wanted me to pray for the power to forigve Roger, but I’m not there yet.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 25

  Lynette called at 7 A.M. to remind me about the Heirloom Roadshow. “We should probably get there no later than nine if we want to get out stuff appraised.”

  My eyes were still crusted shut. I didn’t think I could wrench myself from bed, but Lynette would not relent. “Come on, Val, you need to get out. Curtis will watch the boys. Besides, you wanted to get that sculpture appraised, didn’t you?”

  I roused Pete, slapped a cold Pop-Tart on the table, and put new makeup over my old makeup.

  As I’d expected, the armory was packed and hot and smelly. There were four video cameras trained on four appraisal tables. Lynette and I chose the table with the shortest line, presided over by a big-boned silver-haired woman who identified herself as Sally. She wore a bright red linen blazer, a long black twill skirt, and those beige leather orthopedic shoes the manufacturers of which try to pass off (unsuccessfully) as sneakers. An hour and five minutes later, it was Lynette’s turn. She put her box of plates on the table. Sally quickly examined them, pushed her glasses farther up on her nose, and thumbed through a small reference book. She gestured toward the camera, and it glided toward her. “Lynette, you told me that this china was a gift from your grandmother, yes?”

  “Yes, it was a gift from my mother’s mother,” Lynette answered. “It was a wedding present.”

  “Do you know where your grandmother obtained it?”

  “Um, I think it was her mother’s.” Lynette’s voice was high and gurgly, like a contestant’s on Let’s Make a Deal. I think she sensed, as I did, that her granny’s old plates might be worth something.

  “Well, Lynette, your grandmother’s wedding present is a very fine example of Flow Blue dinnerware. Flow Blue started production in the early 1800s and remained popular for about a hundred years. It’s believed that this style was invented by Josiah Wedgewood. Lynette, you’ve heard of Wedgewood china?”

  Lynette shook her head excitedly. “Yes, oh yes!” Lynette turned around and threw me a wild-eyed look.

  “Well, Lynette, you may be interested to know that Flow Blue china was produced with a technique known as transfer printing,” Sally droned on, in a flat but authoritative voice. “The ink was forced to bleed through the china when a volatizing agent was added, usually ammonia. Early Victorian Flow Blue, which is what you’ve got here, Lynette, was the first style produced by the company. Lynette, based on the oriental pattern, I believe that this set was produced between 1835 and 1850. Lynette, do you want to know what your grandmother’s dinnerware is worth?”

  “Yes, oh yes!”

  “Lynette, your grandmother’s Flow Blue dinnerware has an estimated value of $200,000.”

  Lynette jumped to her feet and clutched at her chest. “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” She waved her hands in front of her face to stave off tears of joy. “Thank you so much!”

  “You are most welcome, Lynette,” the woman said, signaling for me to sit down. “Your name?” she asked.

  I cleared my throat. “Valerie Ryan.” I tried to angle my head so I wouldn’t appear to have more than a single chin.

  “Okay, Valerie, let’s see what you’ve brought us today.” The camera moved in as I pulled the piece out of my canvas tote bag. Sally bent forward and pushed her glasses back up. “Tell me about this piece, Valerie.”

  “Well, this was given to me for my birthday. It’s bronze and I have been told it was in the family for a while. I think it originally belonged to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a gift from the queen of England.”

  The woman turned the piece in her hands, ran her index finger over it. I felt light-headed. I couldn’t wait to cash in.

  “Well, Valerie, this is an interesting piece indeed,” she began. “It was a gift, you say?”

  “Yes, a gift from, uh . . . it was a gift.”

  Sally looked at me over the top of her glasses. “Well, Valerie, have you heard of Frederic Remington?”

  I nodded slowly. Oh my God, Roger had given me a Remington?

  “Valerie, Frederic Remington was born in 1861 in Canton, New York,” Sally began in her flat way. “Remington’s illustrations, paintings, and bronze castings captured the wild adventure of the American frontier. Valerie, your little cowboy here is an example of the Remington style. I believe it was produced sometime around 1975.”

  I assumed she meant to say 1875. I didn’t interrupt her.

  “If this sculpture had been bronze, it would be worth perhaps a thousand dollars, maybe more. Your piece, however, is painted plaster, Valerie, and actually a very nice example of painted plaster at that. Because your piece is in decent condition, Valerie, I would place its value at about thirty-five dollars.”

  “I’m sorry? Thirty-five dollars?”

  The woman turned to the cameraman and gestured for him to cut. “Valerie, your piece is what we in the business call a WPOC.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “A Worthless Piece of Crap, Valerie.” She scratched a small spot on the back with her fingernail, exposing the white plaster beneath. “I’m sorry, Valerie.” On line behind me, a burly old man in red plaid shorts snickered. Everyone else pretended they hadn’t heard Sally’s appraisal.

  I stood up. “Thank you, Sally.” I grabbed my plaster cowboy off the table and chucked it in an empty metal trash bin. I peered inside and was happy to see that his head had cracked off.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 26

  I’m finally starting to feel like myself again. I found the strength to clean the house, and it felt good to pack up the rest of Roger’s things. I was aware that I felt no longing, no sadness, not the slightest wistfulness. Just a gratifying sense of completion as I rolled the strapping tape across the boxes and marked them with a black Sharpie: R. Tisdale. Right then I was glad that I hadn’t changed my name to his.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 27

  Spent the morning with Omar Sweet. According to the laws in our state, Roger is guilty of third degree “criminal sexual conduct” if he engaged in penetration with someone under sixteen. But Mary obviously can’t testify, and it would be hard to prove they had sex unless there was a witness. Since it’s unlikely that Roger sold tickets to the deflowering of his virgin “bride,” it looks like I’m the one who’s screwed now.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 29

  I had a nightmare about Roger. I dreamed that he was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding out a red rose. When I reached out to take it from him, the flower turned into a crow. It snapped its sharp beak down on my fingers and wouldn’t let go, and the pain was unbearable. I tried to shake it off, but
it wouldn’t release me. I woke up sweating and crying, and couldn’t get back to sleep until four in the morning. I really feel and look like crap now but I’ve got to get myself together for Pete’s school carnival. I have been assigned to staff something called the “toilet toss.” I have no idea what that is, but given my appearance and general state of mind, it seems appropriate.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  March 30

  The toilet toss involves a real porcelain toilet and a bucket of beanbags. The toilet was provided by a Mushroomhead whose husband owns a plumbing company. I’m trying not to make any paranoid assumptions about how I was chosen to staff that particular game.

  ’Til next time,

  V

  April 1

  As Pete and I drove to the mall, a police car came screaming up behind me. I was sure it was after me (busted brake light) but when I pulled the Jeep over, the car sped past me and pulled into the Arby’s parking lot. Close behind, two firetrucks and a second police car.

  As we passed, I saw an elderly man on the sidewalk, facedown and motionless. The two ambulance drivers knelt beside him. “What’s going on, Mom?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t know, honey.” I reached back and squeezed his hand. “I don’t know.”

  Pete was quiet for a long time. Finally, he asked me, “What is death, Mommy?”

  Oh boy. I wasn’t ready for this conversation. “Well, nobody really knows, sweetheart,” I began. I talked about the concept of the spirit, the soul. I briefly described how death was viewed in other cultures and civilizations, like the Egyptians. I talked about heaven, rebirth, the circle of life. I reminded him about his goldfish, and the parakeet. “Even though we don’t know for sure what it’s like to be dead, sweetie, a lot of people are pretty sure that it’s not an ending, but a kind of beginning, of a new kind of life.” I was rather proud of my response to Pete’s question, considering I hadn’t even prepared.