Keepsake

by Kristina Riggle

  I doubted the yelling. Our father was not a yeller. I didn’t respond while I tried to marshal an argument that would make sense in her brain. Trish’s brain was a place I’d never understood, and that was before.

  “We need more people. We just do. More hands.”

  I had my own concerns about Dad’s presence, but now that I’d seen the sprawling mass of stuff and how slow our progress was—what with Trish demanding the final say over every single object—I couldn’t see any other way to make progress.

  Trish shook her head, strands of her graying hair springing out of her bandanna. Jack had accompanied his big brother into town to pick up pizza, so for now we were alone.

  I needed some kind of leverage. I held my breath and stepped into a breach I’d dared not cross in fourteen years.

  “What if I give you Mom’s ring?”

  This yanked her out of her furious, full-body refusal.

  “You mean you will bribe me, by giving me something that was mine in the first place?”

  “It was Mom’s in the first place.”

  One of the squalls that eroded our sisterhood had been the issue of the Ring, one of the few of Mother’s things to have survived. It was a simple diamond solitaire in a shape like a pointy oval, the technical name for which I never knew. The thin gold band curled up on each side of the stone. It was what my beat-walking cop father could afford, and one of the few precious items Mother managed not to lose in the rising tide of her junk.

  Our father had given it to me, reasoning perhaps that Trish already had her own wedding ring and husband. Trish swore it had been intended for her, as the oldest. My mother never made a will, so one could only guess.

  “I can’t believe you,” Trish sneered.

  “Do you want it or not?”

  “Not like this.”

  “Are you waiting for a miracle, here? How do you think this is going to get done?”

  “Next you’ll tell me to call my ex-husband. And anyway, it’s not that bad.”

  “If this is ‘not that bad,’ I’d hate to see your definition of ‘bad.’ ”

  “Maybe I don’t need your help at all. A couple weeks of working in the evenings and I’ll be done here anyway.”

  A couple of weeks? After work?

  After furiously working all day, we still hadn’t reached the outer ring of junk along the walls. The Keep tarp outside held enough items to easily fill the floor space in the room, so really all we’d managed to clear was air. And where would she put the items for “sale” until she got around to selling them?

  Trish used to rage at this kind of thing in our mother, the blinders through which she could not see reality. The funny thing about denial, though, is that you never know you’re doing it.

  I’d been wearing yellow gloves, and I peeled them off and tossed them on the nearest pile. I kicked one bag out of childish spite as I left the kitchen, swung past a fuming Trish, and made for the front door.

  Stupid of me to think that she’d take her dumb little sister seriously enough to listen. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for Jack after all. It would be hard for him to move in with his dad, but it’s not like he’d be tossed into foster care with strangers. With Ron, he wouldn’t be hurt by falling debris. He could breathe clear air, have room to play, have actual, real live friends who could visit him.

  I glanced back at the kitchen where Trish was staring pointedly at a piece of paper, her back to me. Her piles stood around her like sentries.

  Jack and Drew were coming in the front door with pizza.

  “Aunt Mary!” Jack called as he struggled his way out of his coat, one-armed, until I came over to help him. “We got mushrooms cuz you said you like ’em.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to stay after all.”

  I always wondered where the word crestfallen came from. If Jack had a crest, it fell right then. I hadn’t guessed he would care. I barely knew him. Maybe he was starved for connection outside his home.

  All the more reason he should move in with Ron, who, after all, was a good guy, as far as I ever saw. Stable job and all that.

  I met Drew’s eyes then, and he just nodded. I knew that he wouldn’t last on this shrinking cleaning crew either. He’d go to Gulf Shores with his redheaded girlfriend, and Jack would go off with his dad over spring break and maybe not come back.

  And if I left too, that would leave Trish here alone. Just like Frances.

  The boys picked their way through the junk to the kitchen where they laid out the pizza on the cold stove burners, digging through the shopping bags for plates, napkins. I watched them work at this and wondered whether my presence here made one jot of difference, or whether—as with George at the store—I was just another body, breathing the air, taking up space.

  “Call him,” Trish said at my ear, startling me badly. I nearly toppled into a pile of boxes at my elbow. I hadn’t noticed her approach.

  “What, who? Dad?”

  “Yes, doofus. Call whoever you want. Call CNN. I might as well be thoroughly humiliated.”

  “Why would you be humiliated?”

  She gave me that classic “are you a moron?” Trish glare, a combination of sneer and stare that from our earliest adolescent arguments could make me flush with embarrassed anger from scalp to soles.

  “We’re not going to humiliate you.”

  “Whatever. Call him.”

  She turned and stalked back to the kitchen.

  I excused myself to the car for the phone call, the only place I could be sure of privacy. As my dad’s house phone rang, I realized I wasn’t sure he’d come. That would be worse yet, to have Trish capitulate to me in asking him, only to have him refuse.

  Ellen answered. “Well, hi, Mary,” she said. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

  Ellen was southern by birth, though she’d been living in the Yankee north for over twenty years. Dad married her after I graduated from college, so I never lived with her. In actual fact I didn’t know her very well other than as a voice on the phone and a hostess of awkward, infrequent dinners. Sometimes I imagined she put on her accent like some people put on perfume.

  “I need to talk to Dad.”

  “Sure, honey. Let me just get him for you.”

  “Y’ello,” Dad answered. “Hiya, Peaches. What’s up?”

  “Trish wants your help,” I blurted. When I planned what to say, it never worked out any better; maybe blurting was the way to go.

  “Does she? Or did you badger her until she caved?”

  “Hardly any badgering. I only got here this morning.”

  “I’m not interested in getting screamed at.”

  “Me neither. Think of your grandson. You said you’d do it if she asked.”

  “You’re the one calling me, not her.” He paused, and I braced for his refusal, already rehearsing how I’d explain this to Trish, then enduring her subsequent rage and indignation. “But anyways. All right,” he said. “See you later then.”

  I put my phone back in my purse and found myself unable to get out of the car for several long moments. I wanted Dad to help, got Trish to agree, and he agreed to come.

  I could not reconcile this supposed victory with a heavy rhythm of foreboding drumming away in my chest.

  Chapter 11

  When I found my box of tapes, I squealed like a ten-year-old girl.

  “Mary! Look at this!”

  My sister stumbled over a sliding pile of paperwork as she forged a path to me. I’d found a cardboard box crammed with old cassette tapes, as luck would have it, next to a portable tape player, what we called back in the day “a boom box” or sometimes “a ghetto blaster,” which was hilarious for white kids who mainly played Debbie Gibson or Wham!

  Mary finished her trek to me and laughed, reaching into the box to flip through the cases. “No way.” Her te
enage phrasing, headband, and laugh . . . Suddenly I saw her as fourteen, wearing fingerless lace gloves trying to be like the cool girls. I could still cringe thinking of her announcing that she loved the song “Like a Version,” to explosions of laughter from my friends. And me, too.

  I saw twin theater masks on a cover and whooped. “Theater of Pain!”

  I scrambled through piles of stuff to uncover a power outlet and plugged in the old boom box. I fast-forwarded to my favorite song, second track, and started wailing along with Vince Neil and Mötley Crüe about smoking in the boys’ room . . .

  I leaned back against a cleared space of wall and closed my eyes in a nostalgia haze, feeling as warm as if I was making out with Bobby in his car, for real. With a little Boone’s Farm in a travel cup and my cute boyfriend beside me, everything seemed so perfect.

  This was what the rest of them could never understand. Sure, I could have sold or donated these tapes years ago. I’d have about—I opened one eye to gauge the size—one square foot of space more. But I wouldn’t have this! This moment!

  I could taste the ChapStick Bobby used, smell the Polo cologne. In the middle of my messy house, in my spongy forty-year-old body with graying hair and stretch marks, I soaked in that scary delight of first love, that top-of-the-roller-coaster feeling that is so intense and gone so fast, forever. Only it didn’t disappear for me; a physical object was all I needed. I had a time machine and fountain of youth all at once and they wanted me to throw that away?

  What I needed was to organize. A storage unit for some things. Ron had always put his foot down about that, saying it was dumb to pay rent for junk we never used, which was why it was in storage. But Ron left, so he shouldn’t get a vote anymore.

  Vince suddenly stopped shrieking, and the silence made me jerk my eyes open. My father straightened to full height above me, apparently having punched the Stop button.

  “You never could hear a thing when you played that god-awful crap.”

  “Hi, Dad.” I tried to unfold gracefully, but I’d nestled myself into a rather small space. Dad stuck out his hand and I took it, and its familiar roughness came with a pointed realization that it had been a long time since we’d touched each other.

  He pulled me in for a hug. “Hi, Patty Cake.”

  He was the only one who was ever allowed to call me Patty, much less Patty Cake, and he hadn’t done even that since before I grew boobs. In my Mötley Crüe, teased-hair, silver-skull-jewelry phase I’d put a quick stop to any and all girlishness.

  By the time I might’ve softened, he’d hightailed it out of there. Along with Mary.

  Dad let go of me and I could see Mary behind him, and the high of my time travel faded away. Thick as thieves, they were. Same fair coloring, same wiry slenderness, same judgmental attitude that let the whole world know they were better.

  I noticed that Dad hadn’t yet looked me in the eye. I also noticed the tightness of his jaw and the way he stood ramrod straight like he was at attention.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He met my eyes then. He cocked one eyebrow at me, not a single other muscle moving anywhere.

  “It just got a little out of hand,” I offered.

  “Come with me,” he commanded, and walked away, refusing to pick his way carefully through the mess and in doing so, he left boot prints on some old newspapers, a sweater, and an unidentified shopping bag.

  I followed, but I lifted my chin as I walked past Mary. I didn’t cower as a teenager, and I certainly wouldn’t now.

  Whatever he had to say—he was in my house, this time.

  I followed him out through the garage and joined him in the backyard. He stood with folded arms, legs planted firmly at shoulder width, looking out over my property like the lord of the manor.

  I stood next to him, folding my own arms and regarding the woods. My woods. “Do you have any idea,” he began, “what it’s like for me to see that?”

  “I don’t suppose it feels good,” I allowed.

  “No. It damn sure doesn’t feel good.”

  It was almost dinnertime; the sun had reached its peak, teased us with a notion of what true spring would be like, and now the air was growing cool again. An animal rustled in the distance, maybe the neighbor’s hound dog, and reminded me of Jack’s pleading for a puppy all last year.

  My dad cleared his throat. “I thought you hated living like that with Mom.”

  “I stayed, didn’t I?”

  “It would have been hard to leave your own mother.”

  “Mary didn’t find it so hard.”

  I remembered Mary packing her things at the tender age of fifteen. Mary always was more fragile, buffetted by any problem that blew through her life. Delicate, our mother always said. She couldn’t take it, so she left; they both did.

  I took it. I took it for years.

  “Point is,” he continued, “you used to tell me all the time how much you hated it. How embarrassed you were about the house.”

  I couldn’t deny that truth.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Jack got hurt?” he asked. I risked a glance at him and could see his fingers digging into the sleeves of his flannel shirt as he folded his arms.

  “It’s under control and healing nicely.”

  “That’s not the point now, is it?”

  “I’m cleaning up. You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Yep.” He turned on his heel and gave my shoulder a firm, masculine clap before he led the way back into the house. “Let’s get to it.”

  In minutes my father commandeered the helm of my ship. He created an assembly line. Drew and Mary would pick up items and hand them to me alternately, I would determine their fate, then he and Jack would cart them out to their proper location.

  In this way we got through several living room piles until we had almost reached the couch. Everyone’s faces brightened. My dad started telling funny stories from his days as a Lansing cop.

  All this was swell and should have been freakin’ fantastic, only an invisible hand was turning up the volume on my panic.

  When I said “keep” on some old paper towel rolls—they could have been used for crafts—my dad’s glare could have peeled paint off the walls. I shook my head and said “toss.”

  An out-of-style sweater passed through my sister’s hands and as she held it up I said “keep”—Ron bought that for me our first Christmas—and Drew coughed out an irritated sigh and I grumbled, “fine, donate,” and then several bags passed under my eyes but I didn’t have time to really search. If they held a bunch of papers and receipts, they’d barely slow down before waiting for me to squeak out “toss” and whisk them out of my view.

  I kept looking at the cleared carpet, thinking, progress progress progress, but my heart was thudding and sweat was pooling in my cleavage.

  I watched Drew hoisting a box to his shoulder that had held clothes of mine from several years and three dress sizes ago, and my father hauling out a box of Christmas ornaments—mostly broken—which Ronald and I had purchased together, and the room felt too hot suddenly, and I lost my sense of which way was up and then all of them faded to black.

  I opened my eyes to see my eldest son’s face, and for a moment I thought he’d taken to wearing white makeup in addition to the black eyeliner and hair dye. Then I saw how stricken he was, his eyes were reddened even, and it hit me that he thought I was dead or something.

  “I’m OK,” I mumbled, and tried to sit up and realized my dad was already propping me up.

  “Told you this place was unhealthy,” Drew murmured, the color rising to his face again.

  “It’s not the house; it’s me,” I mumbled, but my lips felt funny, half numb like at the dentist. The stars were still swimming around the edges of my vision.

  “Should I call 911?” That was Mary, from somewhere unseen.

  �
��You do it and I’ll kick you in the head,” I shouted.

  “Well, all right then,” she replied.

  I pulled myself fully to a seated cross-legged position. My dad still had not spoken. His hand was at my lower back and I shrugged it off like it was a bug. I put my head in my hands.

  “Mama, that was scary,” said Jack. He scooted close to his brother, and Drew wrapped a protective arm around him. I wanted to swoon again with how sweet that looked, despite Drew’s punk rock gear.

  “Sorry, buddy, this is a little overwhelming. I think I was going too fast.”

  “If that was too fast for you, we have a problem,” my father muttered.

  I twisted around to look at Dad, who had stood up again. He said, “I think we all need a break. Mary, could you take Jack and Drew to dinner, please? My treat.”

  Mary replied, “No, I got it, Dad. Come on, kids.”

  “No!” I clambered up unsteadily, batting away Drew’s hand and ignoring Mary’s. “They’re my kids, and I get to decide about their dinner. Andrew Dietrich, don’t you dare roll your eyes at me. I saw that.”

  My dad folded his arms. “I’m just trying to give them a little breathing room. And I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Let’s go, Aunt Mary,” Drew said. “I’ll drive because I know where everything is.”

  Drew led the way and Jack snuck in for a hug. “Bye, Mama. I’m hungry anyway. Can I bring you something back?”

  “I’m not hungry,” I replied, forcing a smile and kissing the top of his head.

  And just like I didn’t matter more than chewed-up gum on the bottom of their shoes, my sister and my kids walked out the door.

  My dad was doing his military man thing again. A stint in the army, years of the army reserves, working as a beat cop, then as a police sergeant until retirement had all taught him that discipline was everything. No wonder he was so disgusted with our mother, and now, me.

  “So.” I was shaky but standing. Good enough. “What did you want to talk about that you had to send my kids out of the house?”