As if to cover my tracks, I paused by the stove. “That looks great.” When my mother didn’t reply, I asked, “Did you like the Cones? What did you think of Sheba?”
My mother put the stirring spoon on a ceramic holder the shape of a giant spoon and went to the refrigerator. “That entire crew certainly admires you.” She removed from the fridge a bag of Wonder Bread, butter in the glass butter dish, and a stack of individually cellophane-wrapped slices of Kraft cheese.
“Do you want me to make the cheese sandwiches?”
“You use too much butter.” She put everything on the counter and then went to the silverware drawer and pulled it open. My heart dropped down to my stomach like a boot into a pond.
My mother stared at the disarray for a moment. Quickly, she righted all the silverware, pulled out a knife, sliced off a pat of butter, put it in a frying pan, and turned on the flame.
“I’ll try to use less butter next time.” My voice was quiet, hesitant.
“And you definitely oversalt.” Mom laid three pieces of bread in the pan.
“I can be more careful.”
“One should never be careless or haphazard when cooking. Particularly when it comes to butter and salt.” She unwrapped the Kraft slices and laid them on the bread.
“Did you like Izzy? Don’t you think she’s cute?” I felt desperate for my mother to understand the magic of the Cone house.
“How did those people eat before you arrived? They talked about you like you were Gandhi feeding the starving masses.”
Was there anything I could say that would shift my mother’s focus from disparaging the Cones to appreciating them? Or, at the very least, maybe she could appreciate that I was an integral part of the family? “Well . . .” I paused as I tried to answer the question without betraying the family. “Before I started cooking for them, they picked up a lot of prepared food from Eddie’s. And sometimes they ordered Chinese or went to Little Tavern.”
My mother looked at me like I’d told her they ate dog poop off the sidewalk. “That poor, poor child.” She turned back to the sandwiches. “There’s something wrong with that mother.”
I opened the cupboard and took down three plates and put them on the counter near the frying pan. “What do you think is wrong with her?” My curiosity was sincere.
“The way she was dressed. That she doesn’t feed her child.”
“But she loves Izzy so much. I think she just doesn’t want to be a housewife.”
“Use paper napkins and fold them in thirds.” My mother nodded quickly toward the yellow plastic napkin holder that always sat on the kitchen table. “If she didn’t want to be a housewife, then she shouldn’t have had a child. And she definitely shouldn’t have put that child in danger with those people in the house.”
“I was in charge of Izzy.” How could my mother not know that? What did she think I’d been doing all summer? “She was never in danger.”
“You shouldn’t have been in charge. You’re a child. You should have been a helper.” My mother used a spatula to turn the sandwiches over. “I never should have allowed you to take that job.”
“Mom.” I felt strangely choked up. I wanted to tell her that I was pretty sure that I’d done a really great job being in charge of Izzy and taking care of the house, too. And I also wanted to tell her how much I loved cooking for the Cones. How cooking for people you love feels less like a chore and more like a way of saying I love you. And, really, I got that from her, the cooking, the child-rearing, and the housekeeping. My mother had been such a good mother to me in so many ways. She’d taught me so much. And she’d been excellent company. Until she wasn’t.
“Mom,” I said again.
My mother didn’t respond. I pulled out a napkin, folded it in thirds, and put it under the first spoon. Then I folded the second and third napkins. Once they’d been placed, I picked up the soup bowls and took them to the counter near the stove. I was trying to anticipate my mother’s directions before they left her mouth.
“Mom,” I said.
“Spit it out, Mary Jane.” My mother banged the soupspoon on the side of the pot and then placed it in the holder.
“You did a really good job teaching me how to keep house and how to cook. Everyone was amazed by my cooking and I learned all that from you.” I blinked rapidly to keep my eyes from filling with tears.
My mother started ladling soup into bowls, then handed the bowls to me without ever looking up at my face. We were both silent as I walked back and forth, placing the soup bowls on the table, one by one.
“I don’t understand why Sheba’s with that drug addict,” she said at last.
“He’s recovered.”
“The tattoos look so dirty. I wanted to take a Brillo pad and scrub them off.”
The urge to cry vanished and I actually laughed. “It’s weird how quickly you get used to that stuff. I don’t even see them anymore. It’s like Karen Stiltson at school. When she first showed up at Roland Park, she had this lisp, like she said shoe lay-shesh instead of shoelaces.” I took two plates with grilled cheese back to the table.
“Don’t be mean.”
“No, I’m not being mean. I’m just saying that I noticed that lisp when she first came to school. But by the end of the year I didn’t hear it. My ears just stopped registering it.”
My mother brought the third plate to the table. “I hope you never said anything to her about it.” She was half scolding me, but her tone was lighter. Maybe I was being forgiven.
“No, Mom.” I went to the cupboard, took down three drinking glasses, and placed them on the table. “But it was the same for Jimmy’s tattoos.”
“I wish you didn’t call those people by their first names!”
“Okay. Well, it was the same with the tattoos. I didn’t see them after a while. And I didn’t see Sheba—Mom, she legally dropped her last name; she doesn’t even have one. . . .”
My mother shook her head. She put the frying pan in the sink to be washed after we’d eaten.
“So with Sheba, I forgot she was a big star. She became just a lady. She’s super kind and caring, Mom. She doesn’t hate anyone, not even drug addicts and not pastors or politicians. She loves singing and she loves the church.”
My mother pointed at the table. “Milk for me. You can have orange soda today, if you’d like.” Now I knew forgiveness was coming.
I took the orange soda from the fridge and poured two glasses, one for me and one for my father. Then I got out the milk and filled my mother’s glass. It was so thick, it looked like wet paint. I thought about the day Jimmy, Izzy, and I had drunk milk straight from the carton.
When I returned the milk to the refrigerator, my mother was standing by the stove staring at me. I could see that her bottom lip was quivering.
“Mom,” I said, and now my lip was quivering.
“I just don’t understand why you lied to us.” A tear ran down my mother’s face. My stomach lurched. My body stilled. I wasn’t sure what to do.
“Um . . .” My chest rose and fell as I tried to breathe. “I really wanted to work with the Cones. I loved the job and I knew you wouldn’t let me if—”
“Exactly, Mary Jane. You knew you shouldn’t be in a house like that.”
“No, Mom. I knew you wouldn’t approve of it. But you were wrong. They’re wonderful people. It was the best summer of my life.”
My mother stared at me and I stared back. We both were breathing hard, as if our lungs were twinned bellows. I had never before told her she was wrong about anything. And until this summer, I had never thought she was wrong about anything.
“Go tell your father lunch is ready.” My mother wiped the tear away and re-formed her face into a placid downturn. She sat at the table and I went to fetch my dad.
14
My home jail sentence was to continue, but with fewer restrictions, until school started. I could now leave the house with my mother, though I still couldn’t see the Kellogg twins, who had returned from
camp. I was surprised by how little I was upset about not seeing them. I didn’t feel lonely; I was busy in my head—thinking, remembering, daydreaming. Working out who I had become after spending so much time with Sheba, Jimmy, and the Cones. I figured I’d find my way back to the twins soon enough.
My mother and I did all the usual things: shopping at Eddie’s, having lunch and tea at the Elkridge Club, preparing meals, working in the garden, and going to church on Sunday. After our conversation in the kitchen, my mother no longer seemed angry. She filled the air between us with directions, commentary, and general chatter about the house, the garden, the meals, the neighborhood, and the neighbors.
It wasn’t until the final two days of August, which I knew were Jimmy and Sheba’s last, that I considered sneaking down to the Cones’ only so I could say goodbye. I was grieving the fact that this wonderful summer was behind me, would never happen again, and the only souvenirs I had were the thoughts in my head. The clothes and records Jimmy and Sheba had bought me, along wth the Polaroid I’d kept, were still at the Cone house. By now they were likely buried under other clothes, records, dishes, dishrags, shoes, boxes, and junk mail.
Over those two days, I was desperate for an accidental meeting with someone from the Cone house. I scanned the aisles at Eddie’s, looked out over the pews at church, and kept my eyes on the sidewalks as we cruised down the roads of Roland Park. My mother hadn’t driven past the Cone house since the failed kidnapping. She took parallel streets instead.
When it was time for back-to-school shopping, I knew there was no hope of getting a goodbye moment with Jimmy and Sheba. Izzy seemed just as out of reach, as I assumed Mrs. Cone either didn’t do back-to-school shopping or did it beyond the bounds of the northern Baltimore corridor that roped in my family. Still, I searched the shops as we entered, even our traditional final stop, Van Dyke & Bacon, where my school shoes had been purchased each year since kindergarten. My mother was convinced that because I wore flip-flops, which had no restraint and exposed my feet to direct doses of vitamin D, my feet expanded a bit every day in the summer. She liked to wait until this sunshine-growth period was mostly over before we purchased my regulation school shoes (black-and-white saddle shoes or brown oxfords with only three grommets on each side).
At Van Dyke & Bacon there were only shoes, salesmen, and mothers and kids similar to my mother and me. I flopped down onto the red leather bench seat with a weighted sadness over the fact that my summer was now absolutely, and entirely, over.
My mother grabbed a salesman and brought him to me. He wore a green apron and had a mustache that made him look like a walrus. In his hand was the flat silver foot measure.
“Right foot,” he said, laying the measure on the floor before me.
I kicked off my flip-flop and stood on the cold metal runway. The salesman outlined my foot with the sliding fins. “Uh-huh,” he said. I stepped off and he flipped the plank around and waited for my left foot. “Uh-huh,” he said again as he measured.
“She’s grown this summer,” my mother said. “Did you see how her toes hung off the edge of the flip-flop?”
“I didn’t notice.” He patted the red leather bench seat. “Sit.”
I sat down and he slipped a small nylon sock on each of my feet. His hands were almost as cool as the measuring plank.
“It’s the sun,” Mom said. “She started out with her toes way back there.” She picked up a flip-flop and put her finger in the spot where she imagined my toes had been at the beginning of summer. I couldn’t remember if she was right.
“Uh-huh.” The salesman wasn’t interested. “Roland Park Country School, right?” he asked me.
“Yes,” my mother said, and he walked away. Each private school had their own shoe requirements. As far as I’d seen, Van Dyke & Bacon was the only shoe store in town. Though I wondered if, like Night Train Records, there were amazing, hip, fun shoe stores in Baltimore that my mother would never enter.
“Let’s get you new church shoes too,” my mother said. “You could wear them to the homecoming dance as well.”
“Um, can we get those later?” I asked. My trips to Van Dyke & Bacon in the past had seemed uneventful. It was easy to find shoes I liked. But now that I had been shopping with Sheba, I saw the stock differently.
The salesman returned with two boxes and sat on the the stool in front of me. Just as he was slipping the saddle shoes onto my feet, Beanie Jones entered the store. She was wearing a bright pink headband that pulled her thick blond hair away from her face. The headband was the exact pink of her dress, a honeycomb-patterned shift that fell above her tan knees. Her fingernails and toenails were painted the thick white of whole milk. The pink band of her sandals crossed her bronzed feet. All I could think was I’ve seen you naked.
“Hello, you two!” she said.
“Oh, hello!” my mother said, too cheerfully, I thought. When I didn’t respond, she shot me a look.
“Hi, Mrs. Jones,” I said.
“Are you getting school shoes, Mary Jane? I hear this is where everyone gets the latest fall styles.” Beanie Jones picked up a pair of oxfords on display.
“Mary Jane’s at Roland Park Country; the girls there can only wear two kinds of shoes,” my mother said. I doubted Beanie Jones was interested.
The salesman double-tapped the back of my calf like I was a horse that needed prodding. I jumped. I’d forgotten he was there. “Stand,” he said.
I got up and walked in a circle.
“I remember the saddle shoes I had to wear at Rosemary Hall.” Beanie Jones looked down at my feet, smiling. Then she put a hand on my mother’s upper arm. “Oh! Did you hear?”
“Feel good?” the salesman said to me.
“Hear what?” My mother glanced between my feet and Beanie’s face.
“Yes, perfect,” I said.
“Though I don’t know why I should be shocked, considering what went on at the Cones’ this summer,” Beanie half whispered, like she was trying to keep a secret but not really.
The salesman bent down and pushed on the tip of the shoe to see how much space there was between there and my big toe. “Now the oxford.” He horse-tapped the back of my calf again. I sat while he removed the saddle shoes. I couldn’t take my eyes off Beanie Jones.
“Oh, dear. What is it?” My mother took a half step closer to Beanie.
“Bonnie packed up, took Izzy with her, and moved into one of those dinky little row houses in that Rodgers Forge neighborhood.” Beanie shook her thick blond hair as if to let dust fly off it.
“Up.” The salesman calf-tapped me again. “Walk.”
My head and my stomach felt thick and curdled as I walked a slow, close circle around Beanie Jones and my mother. Beanie Jones pooh-poohed the row house Mrs. Cone and Izzy lived in as well as the idea that Mrs. Cone would leave Dr. Cone all alone in that big house. And then she said, “I’m pretty sure there was some canoodling going on between Bonnie and Jimmy.”
My mother gasped.
“That’s not true.” I stopped and faced Beanie Jones. My face was red and hot. My eyes felt like I’d sprayed perfume in them. “You know that’s not true.”
“Mary Jane!” My mother jerked her head forward, like a hen pecking corn. “Watch your manners.”
Beanie Jones pushed her face into a smile. “Darling, don’t be upset.” She put her hand on my arm. I wanted to shake it away but was afraid of what my mother would do if I did. “Sometimes the grown-up world is too complicated and messy to understand until you get there.”
I thought of Dr. Cone looking for his car keys, with no one to help him out. Izzy suddenly removed from the bedroom that was safe from the witch, the bathroom with the footstool under the sink, the kitchen with the window nook to sit in, the dining room with the records on the floor, the family room with the ironing board, and the living room with all the books we’d so carefully alphabetized. My heart hurt. My head hurt. And my pride hurt a little too, in knowing for certain that after the Starsky and H
utch kidnapping, everyone had given up on me.
“These are good.” The salesman was pushing on my toes again. Then he tapped the back of my calf and I sat.
“We’ll take them both,” my mother said.
“Poor Izzy,” I said.
“I heard she’s being enrolled in public school up there.” Beanie Jones said this as if public school in Baltimore County was like special ed for the serial killers in a prison system.
“We reap what we sow,” my mother said, and I knew she was trying to end the conversation.
“Have you heard from any of them, Mary Jane?” Beanie Jones ignored my mother and beamed her giant smile on me.
“Oh no, Mary Jane has nothing to do with any of them now.” My mother motioned with her fingers for me to stand. The salesman was headed toward the register with the two boxes of shoes.
“Of course,” Beanie Jones said to my mother, and then she winked at me, as if to say she knew better.
I turned and started toward the register.
“Mary Jane,” my mother said firmly.
“Oh, sorry.” I turned around. “So nice to see you, Mrs. Jones.” I pushed my mouth into a big, painful smile. I hoped she would think I was pen pals with Jimmy and Sheba, that a day didn’t go by without a fresh letter with fresh news. Beanie Jones was the only person I knew who understood how energized and dazzling it felt to be with Jimmy (and Sheba). She was the only witness to my secret summer. But she was someone with whom I wanted to share none of it.
15
A couple of weeks into the school year, Mr. Forge asked if I would join the grown-up choir, which took over the Sunday services once summer had ended (relegating the children’s choir to special performances on holidays). At fourteen, Mr. Forbes said, I would be the youngest voice the adult choir had ever had. The only person I wanted to relay this news to was Sheba. I imagined her face, how happy and proud she had looked when she watched me sing at church.
Mary Jane Page 24