Keepsake

by Kristina Riggle

  Mostly I wanted to savor this last time he would ever touch me.

  “You’ll be OK,” he said. “I’ve written you an amazing letter of reference. I’ll talk to my connections; maybe we can get you a position with one of the publishers, as a sales rep or something. Anyway, you’re better than this store. You’re brilliant.”

  “Brilliant,” I muttered, now, out loud in my silent home. I scrubbed in the OxiClean, pushing hard and taking pleasure in the white foam squirting up around my paper towel.

  George was wrong. I’m not brilliant in the least. Brilliant things shine, stun you with their glow. Whatever intelligence I have is the manila envelope of smarts: perfectly adequate and unnoticed.

  I stood up from the carpet spot after wiping it dry with another paper towel and then stood back to survey the dining area carpet. Yes. Definitely gone. I tugged off the gloves and laid them carefully next to each other on the kitchen counter to dry.

  With this I retreated down the hall to my room, with its neatly made bed and organized bookcase. No one from work had ever been in my room. They’d no doubt be stunned at the neatness of my shelves. Everyone was always complaining about the avalanche of advance copies we get and the books bought with our discount. I’ve always been careful about what I bring into my home, however.

  I peeled off my work pants and my lilac blouse and dropped them in the laundry bag in the adjoining bathroom, yanking the drawstring tight.

  Having slid into my after-work uniform of yoga pants and a big T-shirt, I returned to the living room, sweeping my eyes across everything, catching on the out-of-place box.

  In the dining room, my eradication of the dirt blob had created a new problem. Now that part of the carpet was distinctly lighter. I looked away and looked back, to see if it had been a trick of the eye. No, it definitely was lighter there. Now the whole rest of the carpet in my whole entire front of the town house was clearly a dingy gray, and I hadn’t seen it before. Thank goodness Andy brought in that dirt.

  Well, I told myself, time to abandon my plans for the evening and get out the carpet cleaner.

  As I wrestled the machine from the closet I reflected on that: plans. What plans? No schedules to figure out, no job applications to review, no inventory to order, no work e-mail to answer.

  I filled the reservoir of the carpet cleaner with soap solution at my sink and pondered what I’d earlier said to my nephew about Trish. That I couldn’t just drop everything and fly to her side.

  Well, now I had no job. I’d have to find a new one eventually, but with unemployment benefits, the severance pay that George was able to provide, and my own savings—having no one in my life to spend money on, I quite simply didn’t spend it—there was no urgency to that effort and I didn’t relish starting. In my town house I had no pets—urine, pet hair, dirt tracked in from outside, no thanks. Not even a houseplant.

  As I plugged the cleaning solution into the machine and fired up its whirring, sucking motion on my dingy carpet, it occurred to me that in actual fact if I spontaneously combusted at that exact moment, the most significant impact would be the mess on the floor.

  The machine sucked the solution back up off the carpet and I noticed all the dirt swirling around. Aha! I told an invisible someone who was telling me that cleaning my carpet for one piece of dirt was stupid and crazy. Look at all that filth!

  Filth like what Trish would be living in, or more to the point, little Jack. Filth bad enough to cause my teenage nephew to scrounge up my address from somewhere, drive himself all the way here, and lie in wait for me.

  Chapter 3

  Jack bounced his way out of the school doors, with his backpack flopping off one shoulder, and my heart got its daily shot of joy at seeing him so happy to see me.

  “Mama!” he shouted and grabbed me around the hip with his one good arm.

  I settled for a kiss on the forehead and an awkward squeeze around his middle instead of my usual bear hug, which would hurt him right now.

  “Hey, pal. How was your day?” His day was not only a full day in school but a couple of hours at after-school day care in the building. I worried like any mother about all the time away from me and his adultlike schedule, but what else could I do? Unless my ex decided to swoop in and marry me again, or I won the lottery, there was no choice to make.

  Thinking of Ron reminded me of those text messages and voice mails I’d been ignoring. I shoved down thoughts of the man who left us, and I smiled at the one boy in my life who still loved me.

  Jack dropped his gaze. “Fine.” I craned my neck to try to get a peek at his face.

  A parent honked in the carpool drop-off behind me, and I stuck out my tongue at her. Jack giggled. “That’s Olivia’s mom. I don’t like Olivia very much because she says I’m weird.”

  “Sticking out tongues isn’t very nice, I know. But what do we always say?”

  “Mommy’s not perfect!” we sang out together as I helped him into the car, buckling him since he couldn’t do it himself.

  I pulled my beat-up Chevy Malibu into traffic, the rattly exhaust making it too hard to talk while I accelerated.

  Out on the road, I tilted the mirror to see Jack’s face. He was nibbling on his fingernails again, just like his brother. “Pal, fingers out of your mouth.”

  “They’re not in my mouth.”

  He put his hand in his lap, but within moments his hand drifted up again.

  “Jack, so what happened in school today? You seem a little down.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama, I didn’t tell anyone else about it.”

  “About what, pal?” I asked, even though I knew.

  “The stuff in our house. I just said I fell.”

  Just yesterday he’d told that social worker the full story, and now, after talking to me, he was already editing the story for public consumption. What kind of mother . . . Car taillights, far too close, grabbed my attention. I had to stomp hard on the brake to avoid rear-ending a truck stopped for a left turn.

  Jack cried out, and when I looked back, he was bent over, free hand on his hurt shoulder. I pulled the car over and released him from the seat belt. I sat on the grassy outlawn of a strip mall, hazard lights on in my Malibu, holding him as he cried for his sore, broken shoulder, pinched painfully by the shoulder belt. We were still ten minutes from home on a patch of brown grass in a cloud of vehicle exhaust, but I ignored all that. I rocked him back and forth, as my car chimed ding, ding, ding to tell me my door was open.

  I hurried through the front door, glancing back over my shoulder before I closed it, looking for people on the road who might see inside my house. But it’s spacious out here, and wooded. An easy place to keep secrets. Also, easy to get lost.

  Hot, panicky rage bubbled up again at the memory of Ayana’s visit, her interviews of my children without me even knowing, calling my ex. Eventually I’d have to take his call and deal with the shitstorm this Ayana girl had started. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to do that at my desk at work.

  To think they could take my son away, and for all things, a messy house! Maybe the TV guys were right, the government really was out of control, now threatening to take away my child if I didn’t do what they said, not to mention making me see some shrink who might decide I need medication. As if the government had any right to decide what I put in my body. That was only yesterday, but it might as well have been a whole other era. B.A. for Before Ayana.

  I reached out to help Jack step over some clothes on the living room floor, but he shrugged off my hand. “I can do it, Mom,” he protested, voice spiky with irritation. He sat down on the couch and took out his homework, arranging it in his lap, and reaching into his bag again for a pencil.

  Without asking if he needed it, I grabbed an old record album—Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi—and slipped it under his papers so he’d have a hard surface.

  He was already stari
ng at the paper, his brow creased with deep thought about first-grade math.

  I found my cordless phone on the recliner arm, and my heart quickened.

  Two new messages.

  I ran my thumb lightly over the phone buttons and reviewed my options again, same as I did last night after Drew stormed out. I could hire a lawyer. With what money? And how would I find one anyway, in the Yellow Pages under “bad mother attorneys”?

  Run away. Pack a change of clothes, close the door behind us, and never come back. A tempting fantasy, but I’d never do that to Ron and the boys. I’d never split them up, whatever had passed between us as adults.

  Clean up. The only thing left to do.

  A glance around the whole of my house made my throat close up, so instead I turned to the pile on the kitchen counter in front of me. I would need this cleaned up anyway, to get dinner ready.

  The first paper was Jack’s spelling test. His teacher had written, “Great work!” though Jack had written a couple of his letters backward. I reveled for a moment in his penmanship, how carefully he formed the “w” with its precise little points, and fingered the scratchy brown school paper. Many things had changed, but they still used that grainy brownish paper . . .

  I shook my head. This would never do. Concentrate, Trish.

  I put Jack’s schoolwork on a pile on the kitchen table behind me for saving. Someday he’d be a grown-up teenager like Drew and not take spelling tests or draw stick figures or ride a bike anymore. This scratchy brown paper was a snapshot of time. A keepsake.

  The next thing was an announcement about a field trip coming up next week. I glanced around, and then slipped that one on top of the microwave. Would have to keep that handy so I’d see it and remember to send him with a sack lunch for a trip to the zoo.

  School newsletter. It had some calendar dates on it, which I’d have to put in my datebook.

  Where’s my datebook? It might have been in the car, because I called that stupid shrink on my cell while cowering in my car so my boss wouldn’t overhear. But I could have sworn I brought it in . . .

  I left the pile and started to rummage in the table papers, which then fell in a swoosh onto the floor.

  The phone ringing made me yelp a little. I couldn’t see the caller ID number from here.

  “Mama!” called Jack from the couch. “The phone’s ringing!”

  I snatched it up quickly, scrunching my eyes shut as I answered, “Hello?”

  “Hi, um, Trish?”

  I opened my eyes. “Yeah? Who’s this?”

  “It’s Mary.”

  “What happened? Is Dad OK?”

  “Nothing. He’s fine.”

  “Oh. Are you OK?”

  “Yes, I’m perfectly fine.”

  “Well, then. That’s good.”

  Jack had turned on the TV. Had he whipped through his homework so quickly? Some days I thought I should homeschool him, because he just flew through his work so fast like he never even had to think about it. . . . But I’m a single mother. I’ve got to work. Anyway, where would I find space for homeschool stuff?

  “So, Trish, is everything OK?”

  “Fine, why?”

  “Um. Andy came to see me.”

  “What? Why in the hell would he do that? How does he even know where you live?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask him. He told me that Jack got hurt.”

  My knuckles burned as I gripped the phone. My own son, turncoat and traitor. My first baby whose diapers I changed and who I nurtured alone after his father . . .

  “Trish, are you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He said you need some help. Do you need some help?”

  My instinct was to scream no and hang up on her. My sister was always one to criticize even when things were better.

  I looked at the papers in front of me, the piles not at all smaller, only shifted, and the new avalanche that had cascaded from my kitchen table. I still didn’t have my datebook. But Mary? The perfect one, coming in here to scrutinize this? That’ll be the day, I thought, but said, “Things are fine here. I can handle it.”

  “How about if I come over? I’m free tomorrow.”

  “Not here. But maybe we can meet for dinner. You are my sister, I guess.”

  “Dinner would be nice.”

  I told Mary I’d get back to her about the time once I figured out what to do with Jack. I had a distinct feeling I wouldn’t want him eavesdropping on whatever it was Mary would have to say. I hung up and stared at the phone with its “two new messages” blinking at me. I clicked a few buttons without listening and made the blinking go away.

  How long had it been since I’d even seen her? I tried to think. . . . When Jack was born. Almost eight years ago. She’d come to visit, bringing with her a picture book called Love You Forever, which would become one of Jack’s very favorites, and mine, too, truth be told. But that day, she spent the whole visit as close to the door as she could, only peeking at her infant nephew, declining an offer to hold him. Something about her seemed desperately uncomfortable, and as full of the hormone storm as I was, aching from the birth and the sleepless nights already, I was in no mood to dig through her defense mechanisms. Some old friends from high school dropped by then, and she slipped out with barely a word.

  My house was only run-of-the-mill messy at the time. Baby equipment, new diapers, wipes, receiving blankets, boxes of nursing pads. All over the place, yes, like someone had ransacked Babies “R” Us, but I’d just given birth! Was she expecting me to clean up for her while I was still bleeding, for God’s sake? That would be the frickin’ day.

  If we were a normal family, I might have still seen her at holiday dinners, but after a few strained and painful gatherings in the wake of Mom’s death where we all exhausted ourselves faking family unity, Mary became too busy at the store to break free for a Thanksgiving meal or a Christmas Eve church service.

  I texted Drew to call me.

  “Jack, honey, what do you want for dinner?”

  “Pizza.”

  I turned the oven on to preheat and was glad I didn’t have to use the burners tonight.

  On the kitchen wall calendar I saw a date circled in black. Spring break was coming, creeping up on me. That meant a week without Jack. Ronald would take him to his parents’ place, a condo along the lakeshore. Jack would tell me how bored he’d get in an old people’s place where they had hardly any toys and how he wasn’t allowed to bring much because they didn’t have much space.

  That’s where Ronald would always go with Jack. He never did know how to be alone with his son, so he would make his mom do the motherly type things I always did. Pauline had raised her own kids with a “let them entertain themselves, toss them in the playpen” school of thought, so I know damn well that Jack wandered through the rooms and cried himself to sleep every night, though Ronald always tried to sugarcoat it and pretend being on the lake made it all better, and that Jack liked his grandma Dietrich’s cookies.

  Every time I dropped off Jack at Ronald’s place, we’d all have these huge, sad eyes and I’d think, what are we doing this for, anyway?

  If Ronald would come home, we could put an end to it. He can’t, he told me.

  Can’t. Bullshit “can’t.” He meant “won’t.”

  My phone chimed. Drew texted back, What.

  Dammit. I’d get him on the phone if I had to make his phone ring every five minutes for the rest of the night. He’d better not be getting that girl pregnant.

  I was throwing the pizza in when Drew picked up, sounding a little breathless. “What?”

  “Don’t ‘what’ me, I’m paying for that phone and when I tell you to call me, you better frickin’ call me.”

  “So cut off the phone, then you can’t harass me when I’m busy.”

  I closed my eyes, pu
t the phone to my chest, and mouthed a blistering streak of swear words at the ceiling before putting the phone back to my ear.

  “Drew, why did you go see my sister?”

  “You know why.”

  “Well, now she wants to talk to me, so you have to watch Jack.”

  “What? I’m busy! I’ve got studying!”

  “So study while you watch him. He’s not that high maintenance.”

  “I’m not coming over there.”

  “You mean your home?”

  His voice dripped with derision. “That’s not my home. It’s a box filled with garbage.”

  “I did not raise you to talk to me that way. Do you enjoy hurting me, Drew? Do you have any idea what it does to me to hear you say these things?”

  A part of me knew that wasn’t fair. That maybe it was dirty pool to manipulate my child, but it’s not manipulation if it’s true. He killed me every day.

  He’d been silent a moment. “I’ll pick him up and we’ll go somewhere.”

  “Not to Miranda’s!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I said so. Take him to the library to do your homework, both of you, and when you’re done, you can take him to McDonald’s or something. I’ll pay.”

  “No, I got it.”

  Drew had started a side business building websites and was making quite a bit of money, for a teenager.

  “Fine. I’ll text you with the time.”

  I pulled out the pizza and balanced the pan on a box resting on top of the stove burners. Slicing it on this unsteady surface was tricky; the pan shifted and singed my arm.

  “Shit!”

  Jack appeared in the kitchen entry. “What, Mama? You swore.”

  “I know. Mommy isn’t perfect. I just burned my arm a tiny bit, hon. Grab the paper plates, OK? If you can?”

  “Yeah, I can,” he said, sighing heavily. He’d already gotten pretty good at moving around one-handed.

  He fished some paper plates out of a grocery bag near the garage door. I finished slicing and grabbed us each a Sprite from the fridge and we returned to the living room.