“Jane,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t put a damper on things, but I needed to know. “What’s the real reason you’re here?”
“What do you mean?” she said, frowning. “You and Kelsey have been hounding me to move home for years. I’ve retired. I’m here. It’s a surprise that I’d hoped you’d be happy about.”
“Of course I’m happy. I never wanted you to leave in the first place, remember?” I said. “It’s just so . . . sudden.”
“You don’t have to read anything into this. I made a quick decision, and here I am. Period.”
“But I just—”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come.” Jane scowled and shook her head. “It’s partly your worrywart ways that drove me off to start with.”
One minute I was basking in memories of kissing her boo-boos—proof that I’d been a good mommy—and the next I was chided for being overprotective. My daughter had been home less than an hour and I’d already riled her up. “I apologize, Jane,” I said. “I want to enjoy our time together now that you’re home, I do.”
She snorted. “Sorry for snapping. Old habit, I guess.”
I touched the pocket of my smock, knowing I had stowed two tissues inside—I counted everything, from buttons on blouses to each egg in the fridge. But I didn’t want to get weepy. My best friend, Pauline Irving, gone a year already, once jokingly called me the poster child for self-control. She was one of three people who’d truly known me, though, who’d known the pain I concealed from most.
Jane said, “Really, Mom—I never intended to hurt your feelings.”
“Honey, we all do and say things that we regret. You. Me. Everyone.” I could have added, including your father. But I was thinking, especially me.
It was eerie. Before she’d arrived, I’d been remembering that fateful phone call long ago, when I was a young wife. What my daughter didn’t know was that when she was twenty-three, I’d tried to tell her what I’d learned on that call. I’d tried to explain about the woman with the beauty mark . . . and the album hidden in my basement. But our conversation had escalated into something else so ugly I was incapable of going on. That’d been the morning after news anchor Walter Cronkite said the Supreme Court had decided Roe v. Wade. Jane had been living in Arizona at the time and had come back to town for a wedding. I was standing in this very room, nervous as a kid sent to the principal, when I broached my subject with her—but before I could get to the point, Jane blew up. Out of nowhere she accused me of things I’d never done. One could argue, though, that what I’d tried to confess was far worse. There’d also been the time I’d tried sitting her down months after Dennis had passed, but Jane was hurting too much to listen. I may as well have been talking to the walls. Then I worked up the nerve once more when she came for my birthday five years back. That day she had told me she loved me for the first time in ages, and I couldn’t go through with it. I hadn’t wanted to sour the mood.
Our relationship was like that: forever one of polar extremes. And the only thing that I could predict was that I could never predict where we’d land next.
Now, as I approached what my granddaughter called my “big nine-one,” if I could be granted my life’s last wish, I knew what it would be. Not that I was the kind of girl, nor the kind of old lady, who put much stock in wishes. Never had. As a child, while I might’ve gotten a cake for my birthday, it never had candles to make a wish upon. Mama couldn’t afford them. And never did I believe in genies in bottles. But perhaps with Jane home, I’d finally be able to tell her what had happened all those years ago. I’d get her to understand me better—why I am the way I am. And maybe I’d come to understand her.
If I could be granted my life’s last wish, it would be that Jane would forgive me.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
December 26, 1944
Mama had just finished curling my hair in the corner bedroom upstairs that had once belonged to my fiancé’s sister. This room with the 1920s rose floral wallpaper had a slanted ceiling beneath the Glenns’ farmhouse roof and was to be my marital bedroom. Mama had styled my hair in a straight-back pomp, à la the Andrews Sisters. The curling iron’s metal tongs, made hot from the stove in the kitchen, were now cooled and their scorched scent scarcely noticeable. Mama teased my hair above my forehead and smoothed it back high. Then she swept my sandy-colored, longish rolls up on both sides with pins.
“I love it, Mama,” I said, and she smiled. “Will you bring me my veil?”
The veil of ivory netting hung in the bedroom where Mama would stay the night. Opa, my maternal grandfather, had a guest room, too. I’d lived with them both in a tiny two-room flat until that morning—when we’d awakened to the shouts of neighbors who had eight people residing in rooms the size of ours. Our home was only an hour away, but Mama and Opa had come early to help with the wedding and to meet my future in-laws.
I twirled around like the ballerina in a music box I’d seen on display at Pogue’s, feeling lovely in my slim satin gown of ivory. Mama had said the fabric was cut across the grain, which was why its fluid drape clung to my body, its shiny folds falling gracefully from my knees until the hemline brushed the floor. Mine was not a secondhand gown; it was a thirdhand gown from a thrift shop, its style ten years old. But it was the dress of my dreams. I loved its slim sleeves that fitted close at my wrists and ended in sharp points near the knuckles of each hand. Mama had taken needle and thread to the cuffs’ buttons, twelve in all, to ensure they wouldn’t pop off. She’d spent her life sewing for herself and for me—and for others, too, to feed our family. Mama was wrapped in her purple rayon sheath she’d made two years before. It was the closest thing to a dressy-dress that she owned, but she carried herself like a woman of means.
The man I was to wed was the only Glenn kid left at home, and he was on a farmer’s deferment from military service. Dennis and I would live with his folks until, as Papa Glenn put it, “the newlyweds got on their feet.” We all knew that would wait until after the war was over—when farmers could cut back on raising crops for our troops. But no matter our accommodations, I couldn’t wait to marry Dennis, to sleep every night with my one true love.
The wife of Dennis’s brother slipped into the room with their one-year-old, Margaret, toddling beside her. “We’re here,” Abbie pronounced. “Your honorary flower girl is ready.” Abbie had striking Irish eyes of hazel and a wide-set mouth, but her pretty face didn’t warm to me. She gave my gown a once-over without so much as a smile. Abbie and my fiancé had grown up on neighboring farms, eating beefsteak tomatoes warm off the vine and sharing a shaker of salt, so I wanted her to see how happy I made him. I hoped Abbie would become my friend, too.
“Margaret is precious, Abbie,” I said. The velvet of the child’s emerald-green dress, which Abbie had fashioned from a length off an old gown, was as soft as the wings of a fairy. “I can’t wait,” I said, “to have lots of little girls of my own.” I’d been an only child and had always wanted siblings like the other families I knew.
“Well, then, Millie Kraus,” Abbie said, grinning and wrinkling her nose at the same time. “If you’re to have a big family, I guess it’s a good thing you’re not a working girl anymore. Especially down in the city.”
I winced. The way Abbie stressed working girl felt like a slap, and so that was a slap in my mama’s face, too. Thank goodness Mama hadn’t heard it.
Dennis’s mother joined me as Abbie was leaving. I wiggled my fingers down low at my sides to shake off Abbie’s air.
Mother Glenn’s hair, piled into her usual bun, was so thick that her tresses, if freed from their bands and their pins, would fall in ropes down her back. She might have looked years younger were it not for that bun, though today she’d wound it with blue ribbons that matched her midnight-blue dress. She delivered my bouquet of fir branches and twigs with berries that she and Mama had gathered from trees on the grounds.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said. Abundant red ribbon wrapped the bunch, with strands th
at hung down long. The satin ribbon had been a splurge for my wedding. I’d paid for it myself with money I’d earned at Kroger before I’d quit to move here. That ribbon was more than an embellishment: it represented how productive I could be, how useful.
Mama stepped in and gingerly draped my veil atop the back of a chair.
“I’ll leave you two for now,” Dennis’s mother said. “It’s a big day in a mother’s life, not just the bride’s.” She hugged us and added, “Sylvia, you raised a great girl. Smart. Kind. Pretty. Hard-working.” Mama’s face grew pink as she squeezed Mother Glenn’s hands.
I felt myself turning pink, too. I wanted so badly to fit in.
Mama took my arm and guided me to the sleigh bed that was so high it required a stepstool to climb up—a far cry from the fold-out cot I grew up sleeping on. “You know, I’ve been fretting,” she said, “that these people would be highfalutin.”
My mother’s apprehension was understandable. All my life we’d lived in two-room flats. The Glenns’ house had four bedrooms upstairs and three large rooms down. The farm had 144 acres off old Reading Road, land Dennis’s family had worked since before the Civil War. But neither of our families had reveled in the prosperity of what some already called the glorious Roaring Twenties. The men in my family had long been brewers of beer. Opa had once owned a home, and as a girl, Mama had worn new shoes and had her own room. But they’d lost their entire livelihoods during Prohibition. Dennis’s family had suffered in a glutted farmer’s market after the Great War, when prices on food plunged. Then came the Crash. Then the Depression. Then another war. Our families weren’t so unalike after all.
“The Glenns are wonderful to you,” Mama said. She slid her palm along my leg, savoring the smooth cloth of my gown. “They’re good people, Mil. I can tell. But you’ll always be my daughter.”
I leaned and kissed her temple. “Of course I will.”
A great ruckus emerged from down below. The remaining Glenn nieces and nephews had arrived. I could picture them dressed in their Sunday school finery as their high voices drifted through the cracks of the boards below Mama and me. “Uncle Dennis is getting hitched!” the children sang. Their little feet pounded across the wooden planks.
Then Mother Glenn’s voice rang out above the clatter. “Children, children, shhh. We must prepare for the bride.”
“Best be putting on your veil,” Mama said.
Soon she was stepping back to appraise me, her expression filled with maternal pride. She fluffed the veil, making its scalloped edge dance about my elbows. “I’ll go down and join the others. Opa will be along soon to escort you,” she said. “I’m happy for you.” Her voice weakened for the first time. “You will remember what I taught you?”
“Yes,” I said, but she was compelled to tell me again all the same.
“You have to have a means of earning,” she said, just as she had when I turned six, and had said in each of my fourteen years since, “lest you find yourself without a bed or a soupbone to your name.”
I nodded agreement. “I love you, Mama.”
“I love you, too, my daughter,” she said, and she turned to leave.
I gazed into the oval mirror above the walnut dresser. I had something old, my gown; something new, the ribbon that tied my bouquet; something borrowed, a bottle of perfume; and something blue, my eyes. I applied a fresh coat of Tangee Red-Red lipstick, too. The tiny stone on my ring finger glinted as if it were a queen’s jewel. Dennis had saved up his funds, and his father had loaned him the rest.
Dennis’s great-aunt began playing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on the upright piano downstairs. It was almost time. From the dresser, I picked up the fan-shaped bottle of Shalimar, the golden perfume Dennis’s oldest sister had let me borrow. I removed its ornamental stopper and dabbed silky dots high on each end of my collarbone, left and right. I inhaled the Oriental notes of jasmine and musk. Then I bent to the mirror one last time to make sure my face was picture-perfect. And there in the mirror’s reflection stood my grandfather. My beloved opa would give me away today. My father had died of rheumatic fever when I was less than a year old. Too young for me to remember him.
Despite Opa’s bum leg that made him limp, he stood tall and proud, nearly filling the length of the open door. I swiveled around. I’d never seen him wear a tie before.
“Ready to marry your beau?” Opa said. He was smiling his classic closed-lip smile with its deep, crescent-shaped ruts. Opa’s eyetooth had been missing since before I was born. When I was young, he’d said he could never see out of that tooth anyway. He stepped closer and took one of my hands in his rough ones. “You’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen,” he said. It was a line that all grandfathers told all granddaughters on all wedding days, I was sure. But coming from my opa, I knew he believed the words to be true. I hoped my groom would agree.
Opa and I descended the narrow, enclosed stairs. His arm was looped tightly in mine, and I could feel him shaking. The melody of “Wedding March” made my skin tingle, and the room at the foot of the steps glowed as if it awaited us.
Downstairs, Opa walked me along the pretty little aisle the Glenn nieces and nephews had fashioned with sprigs of fragrant greenery. The women had lit votive candles, and the men had hung evergreen boughs across the mantel and windowsills. A fresh-cut tree glittered with handmade ornaments, strings of popped corn, and the Glenns’ few treasured glass bulbs. Family members and friends gathered around the room, straining to get a peek as Opa and I passed. I felt as if I were walking in a magical storybook tale.
Then I got my first glimpse of him. My Dennis. He was standing between the two high, paned windows darkened by dusk, hands folded together in front of him. He wore a two-piece pinstriped brown suit with crisp creases running up each leg. His gaze was intent upon me, and I felt our love in my heart and in my bones and in all my skin.
As I progressed slowly toward him in the candlelit room, Dennis smiled in his boyish way that said: You’re dazzling. And you’re bowling me over, girl. Come. Let our lives together begin.
When the time came to exchange our vows, I faced my man and repeated after the minister: “to love, cherish, and obey . . .” and the last word suddenly struck me as odd. I had grown up obeying Mama and Opa. I was a woman now and had someone else to obey? But Dennis’s heavily lashed eyes were locked with mine, and one dimple peeped out just for me, and then my discomfort evaporated. This man loved me. He loved me for who I was—no matter that I had been an impoverished girl from the slums. And I loved him.
Then it was his turn to repeat his vows. Dennis would love and cherish me, too, and—as the traditional words went—in lieu of obeying me, he would endow me with all his worldly goods. Out of the periphery of my vision, I caught Mama’s face flush. She raised her chin. I would not forget her lessons; I would earn my own sum. It was important to me regardless of her opinion.
Dennis and I kissed beneath the mistletoe before the crackling hickory logs. And with Dennis’s strong hands on my back and the spicy scent of his cologne, the sweet taste of his lips consumed me. I felt ecstatic. Charmed. We belonged together until death did us part.
Dennis’s great-aunt commenced to playing a hymn I didn’t know, but it sounded tinkling and joyous and bright. Dennis and I turned to face our loved ones, and given Mama’s expression during the vows, I was relieved to see elation in her face. It matched my opa’s. Dennis’s parents, too, were grinning broadly for this happy occasion.
“Congratulations, baby brother. You’re a lucky guy.” Nathan slapped Dennis on the back and winked at me. “Try to keep this fella in line, will ya?”
I blushed. “I’ll do my best.” Nathan’s wife, Abbie, forced a smile.
Mother Glenn led us to the refreshments. “Make way, please,” she said to the well-wishers crowding around us. “The bride and groom must go first, so everyone else can dive in.”
She’d set a long table in the parlor beneath the map of Europe with white and red pushpins
showing where our troops were moving in the war. Lovely linens covered the table in what Dennis’s younger sister had called a cloth of white damask. The two Glenn sisters ladled punch out of the largest clear glass bowl I’d ever seen. They’d soon slice our four-layer red velvet cake that they’d piped with white icing—a luxury, given they’d used more than a week’s worth of sugar rations. The banquet included finger sandwiches with hand-cut biscuits, ham, turkey, and yellow cheese. Everything was arranged on plates of varying heights. There were plenty of relishes: home-canned pickles, pickled red beets, and deviled eggs served on glass plates with indented cups that cradled each half. Mother Glenn had brought out a tray of sliced breads, too—pumpkin bread, date nut bread, and bread with red and green cherries. She’d baked with honey from the farm when sugar supplies ran out. And a ball of churned butter rested in an etched glass dish. There were two short-handled spreaders dunked into the center and tied with tiny red bows.
I’d come a long way since the days of my getting one orange for Christmas. I sometimes feared my good fortune could never last.
My husband—how strange it was to think of him as that—and I fed each other food and kissed between bites. We welcomed the guests with their hugs and kind words. Then the Glenn sisters started clapping their hands, getting everyone’s attention. What was this? I held tight to my cup of punch. The Glenn grandchildren—two boys and three girls in all—squirmed and laughed as they gathered around their mothers’ knees. They looked so sweet in their red-and-green sweaters and spit-shined shoes. And such rosy cheeks.
The room quieted to a murmur, and Mother Glenn stepped to the fore. “All right, children. Are you ready? One, two, three.”
“We love you, Uncle Dennis and Aunt Millie,” they said in unison. Tears welled in my eyes. It was official. I was now their aunt. I had never felt so honored.
“We love you, too, you precious little ones,” I said, bending down to their height.
I saw my mother smiling at me. I wanted Dennis and me to have children like these. Four or more of our own at least—enough babies to fill a whole birthday party with ice cream and cake and lots of lit candles.
Millicent Glenn's Last Wish: A Novel Page 2