“Fine, I suck. I’m a selfish bitch living in denial. I’m also a horrible mother and a disgusting person.”
“You’re not a horrible mother.”
I rolled my eyes. Thanks for that much, Mary. “I can’t turn back time. I called you, didn’t I? I told you about it today, at least. I didn’t have to do that; I could have put it away again and never breathed a word.”
“And I could have gone home to my nice clean house and refused to take your call today.”
“Well, aren’t we both a couple of freakin’ gosh darn holy saints, then.”
This made Mary laugh, and I smiled, too. She was so pretty when she laughed, her pale face flushing with rosy color, her light hazel eyes crinkling up, shining bright. Pity she laughed so rarely.
Her chuckle subsided and she looked at the diary again, the mirth falling away from her as she pondered it, thinking of our mother. I wondered if Mary was doing what I often did: calculating what her age should be now, mentally slipping her into family events past and future. I imagined her helping to blow out the candles on Jack’s last birthday. I imagined her clapping as she watched Drew cross the stage in his cap and gown next year.
Conjuring up my mother was impossible, though, without thinking of her clutter, and for that matter, the smell. When I finally moved out, she took in the first cat. At least I drew the line at animals.
Some line, though. I stared around at my partially excavated living room. The curtains were open in here for the first time since well before Ron left, and the natural light should have been refreshing and cheerful. It was always so bright this time of year, before the trees leafed out and shrouded my home with their cool shade.
The light was an indictment. I couldn’t imagine the piles as vague shadows at the fringes of my vision anymore. Every shopping bag and piece of paper could be seen in bright color, high-definition 3-D reality.
“Are all the pages full?” Mary said, brushing the notebook with her fingertips. “I’m tempted to sit right down and read it all.”
“I’m afraid to,” I said.
“Why?”
“I’m afraid . . . I’m afraid we don’t know our mother like we thought we did. I’m afraid of what we’ll learn.”
“Mom probably didn’t even know she gave it to you. She never knew where anything was. She could have looked inside the top of the box, seen a bunch of her old clothes, and handed it off to you.”
“I don’t know.”
Whether a premonition or a paranormal event or just a hunch, I felt that cold bubble of air settle on me again.
“How about this,” said Mary, folding her hands on her lap and turning to me like a schoolteacher. “We parcel it out. Reading it can be an incentive for cleaning. We clean, we read a few pages. We clean some more, we read a few pages. It will be easier for you if we don’t read it all in one go, and for me it will spur me on.”
“Spur you on? You’re staying?”
“I guess I am. I hope you promise not to hit me again, though.”
Mary startled as I reached for her, but I only wanted a hug and to say I was sorry again. She was stiff in my arms, finally relaxing on my shoulder for half a heartbeat before releasing me and smoothing down her hair.
“Can I ask you, though?” she ventured, fussing with the hem of her T-shirt. “What is it about that room?”
I shook my head and would give no other answer.
“Shall we read an entry, then?” Mary said, reaching for the notebook. “Just to get us started?”
April 4, 1961
Dear Diary,
Lots of girls here are getting pinned, but I don’t seem to be asked out very much. If anything, a bunch of us go out to the diner and I always end up sitting by Wally. I think he’s got a crush on me, but I just think he’s nice is all. I don’t feel any of this powerful emotion that other girls seem to. Well, Mom always said I was a late bloomer. Anyway, I feel like I’ve known these boys my whole life. When you’ve seen a kid wiping snot on his sleeve in third grade, it makes it hard to think of him as attractive in eleventh grade.
This is exciting. My mom has started going to the migrant camps to help Doc Wilson vaccinate the children. I guess he started hearing about little Mexican kids getting really sick with preventable diseases, so he decided to do something about it. They don’t have cars, and don’t like going into town, so he’s going to them, in a little trailer he pulls behind his truck. My dad is not so sure about this. He said she’d be “vulnerable.” Mom scoffed and told him she’d be with the doc and would be perfectly safe, and anyway, what about the children? Why should they get sick? Mom said. It’s the Christian thing to do. And that got him. He couldn’t argue with that. It was exciting to see Mom standing up to my dad like that. Mostly she doesn’t argue with him, just nods and lets him ramble on. I know for a fact, though, that she voted for Kennedy. She told me, when I asked her, but said not to tell Daddy because she didn’t want a fight.
I’ve been thinking about what I want to study in college. I think my dad just wants me to find a husband and get married and he thinks I can find a better type of man in college than I can working as a secretary. And I do want to find a husband, eventually, somewhere, and have beautiful babies. But as long as I’m there, I want to learn something! Maybe I’ll be a nurse like my mom. She loves caring for people, and so do I. Or a teacher. I could be a good teacher. I just really like kids. I mentioned this to Daddy, and he said a woman shouldn’t work after marriage. I know it was sassy, but I couldn’t help but point out that Mom works. Daddy scowled and said if he had a better station in life, there’s no way his wife would work and that he wants me to improve over the quality of life we’ve led so far. That’s what every father wants for his children, he said. A better life.
I snuck a look at Mom and she was very carefully cutting her meat into teeny tiny pieces, not looking up. I think she’s glad she has to work.
That’s when Margaret, of course, had to pipe up and agree, saying to be a wife and mother was plenty work enough for any woman. But she’s only a kid, so what does she know?
I dropped the subject to keep the peace. I could see Daddy getting riled, and a funny vein was standing out on his head. I think he felt we were criticizing him by saying he didn’t make enough money. I didn’t want to make him feel bad. He really is a good father. He takes very good care of us.
Good night for now,
Frannie
Mary was a faster reader, always had been, so she was sitting back with her hands in her lap while I was still getting to “Frannie.”
“Wow. I didn’t know any of this,” she said.
I finished the entry and sat back on the couch, my eyes still drinking in our mother’s handwriting. We got a glimpse of her again, but she’s still gone to us forever. I tried to remember mentions of our grandma Joan ever even having a job, much less as a nurse, much less volunteering to vaccinate children of the Mexican migrants who picked blueberries and cucumbers.
Mary said, “Mom didn’t go to college, right? We would have known that, if she did.”
I shook my head. “No, she didn’t. She went to a secretarial school, I think. She did shorthand and whatever until she met Dad.”
“I wonder what happened.”
“I’m surprised Grandpa would have been able to even think about sending her. It’s not like they had much money.”
“Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe they didn’t have the money, in the end.”
“She thinks she has a chance, though, here.” I sighed for my optimistic teenage mother, blissfully ignorant of what lay in store for her years later.
“She sounds like a whole different person.”
“Weren’t you? When you were seventeen?”
I caught a rueful smile, almost a sneer, on Mary’s face. “Yeah. Maybe.”
Mary and I invited no one else over to
help. Neither of us suggested it. I suspected Mary was uncomfortable around angry Drew, and our dad was watching Jack, and who else could we approach? Coworkers? Hardly. I had only my pint-size bitch-on-wheels boss, Angela. Neighbors? No thanks, they didn’t need to see how I lived in here.
I could tell Mary disapproved of the large Keep pile growing outside. She said nothing, but she’d press her lips together firmly each time I said “keep” even for perfectly usable things, things still with tags on, some of them. And a broken vase could be glued.
My phone rang at almost lunchtime, and I couldn’t get to it as I vaulted over piles. The caller ID when I finally reached the phone was for my dad’s house and I dialed him back with a lump the size of a baseball in my throat, wondering if Jack was OK.
When I got him on the line, I was almost crying. “Dad? Is Jack all right?”
“Sure he is, Patty Cake. He just wanted to say hi.”
“Hi, pal!” I exclaimed when he got on the phone, burying my fear with cheer. “Are you having fun?”
“Yeah, I guess so. We had tin roof sundaes and watched Star Wars and then this morning we played Wii.”
“We what?”
“Wii, you know, Nintendo where you wave the thing around to play. Ellen says she bought it cuz her daughter has one and it’s really cool.”
We couldn’t have a Wii. Not only did we have no money to spare, there was no room in here to be swinging our arms around. These were all things that make up a kid’s idea of paradise on earth, but Jack sounded flat.
“What’s wrong, pal? All of that sounds really fun. Does your shoulder hurt?”
“Nah, not really. I just miss you lots.”
“I miss you too, pal, but you’ll be back tonight. You’ll have school in the morning. It won’t be long.”
“I guess. But Grandpa asked me if I wanted to stay. For a while. He said he could take me to school.”
I had to force the words out; my throat felt swollen and thick. “Would you want to, pal?”
“It’s pretty OK, here. I’d miss you, though.”
Rage burned through my limbs. I gripped the phone harder, concentrating on choosing my next words.
“You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want to, honey. Of course you can come home if you want.” I made myself say the next words: “Or you can stay at Grandpa’s if you want.”
“Grandpa said we can go to Chuck E. Cheese tomorrow after school. That would be kinda fun.”
“Pal, can you let me talk to your grandpa? I need to straighten this out.”
“Yes?” my father said when he picked up the phone, relaxed and casual, like we’d been discussing a round of golf.
“You cannot do this,” I hissed. “You cannot bribe my child away from me with Chuck E. Cheese and Wii and ice cream. He is my child and I want him home.”
“I’m trying to help,” he said coolly. “Jack is little, and he’s injured, and he needs tending to. You have a big job ahead.”
“Spring break is coming. I can work then.”
“And in the meantime Jack is still having to stumble over things and breathing in all that dust.”
“Do you want me to beg? Is that what you want to hear?”
“I want to hear you put your child’s interests ahead of your own dependence on him.”
“On him? I’m dependent on him?”
“You damn sure are. I think he doesn’t sleep in his own bed because you want the company. I think that’s why you’re in no hurry to clean up his room.”
“You son of a bitch. I’ll show you. I’m going to clean up his room tonight and you will bring him back to me or so help me I will call the police and demand that you bring him back.”
“You’d subject your child to that kind of scene?”
“I wouldn’t be the one subjecting him. You are the one who has him and are refusing to give him back to me.”
“He’s not a toy to fight over.”
“It seems I’m the only one who knows that. You’re using him to punish me.”
“I’m trying to protect him so he doesn’t get hurt anymore. It’s him I’m thinking of. Dammit, Trish, don’t you get it? If that stuff landed on his head instead of his shoulder, he could have been killed.”
I gasped, and my father continued, his voice cold and even. “This thing killed one person I loved, and I will not let it take anyone else. Do you hear me?”
Do you hear me? His famous words delivered at the end of a lecture on not smoking, on studying hard, on my above-the-knee skirts making me look like a streetwalker.
I concentrated hard on breathing so I wouldn’t faint with my suffocating anger. “I will clean out his room and you will return him to me because his own room will be clean and the living room has enough space to walk through comfortably. If I have to get Ayana to use her resources—including cops, including a judge—to make you give him back, I will do it and don’t think I won’t.”
“Only if the room is clean. If it’s not, I’d say it’s likely Ayana would be on my side, don’t you think?”
I banged down the phone, and as my breathing slowed I hoped that my father had had enough sense to move where Jack couldn’t hear him for that little exchange of ours.
The phone rang again and I picked it up with a curt, “Hello.”
Jack shouted into the phone, “Oh, Mom, please don’t get rid of Scruffy!”
I recovered my calm Mom voice with effort. “Oh, honey, I wouldn’t; I know how much he means to you. We’re only going to get rid of junk. Clothes that don’t fit, broken toys, toys too little for you . . .”
“But, Mom, what if you have another baby? My baby brother could use those toys.”
I clenched my fist, glad that Jack couldn’t see me. “Honey, I’m not having any more babies. But look, let’s not talk about this now. I promise not to get rid of anything really special.”
“Pinky swear?”
“Pinky swear in the air.” I waggled my curved pinky in front of the phone as if he could see.
“Love you, Mama,” he said, and then just before hanging up he asked, “If I come home tomorrow, can we still go to Chuck E. Cheese?”
“We’ll see,” I said, my hand over my hammering heart. “We’ll just have to see.”
Chapter 16
Trish gripped a stuffed animal. It was a frog and was wearing what seemed to be a tutu. The green of the frog was frosted with a layer of gray, reminding me of volcanic ash, like those news segments about the Mount Saint Helens eruption I remember seeing as a kid.
Jack’s treasured preschool-era Scruffy we’d already given a place of honor on the couch in the living room, that cleared space now to serve as the staging area for the emergency cleanup of Jack’s room.
“He is not staying there another night,” Trish had pronounced, fairly sprinting down the hall as she said so.
Trish’s face contorted now as if she were suffering physical pain. Her knuckles were visibly white. I wondered how special this frog was, resting as it had been under Jack’s bed. The edges of its little frog feet seemed to be flecked with mildew, but other than the dirt it looked almost new, that is to say, unused. Not well loved and snuggled like Scruffy, whose eye had fallen off and whose plush had been worn thin with love. And what little boy wanted a frog in a tutu?
“I bought this for him in his frog phase,” Trish said, answering my unspoken question, or maybe just talking to herself. She seemed barely aware of my presence. “I knew it had a tutu but I thought Jack wouldn’t mind. Or that I could snip it off and he’d never know. He had frog jammies, and frog toys for the bath, and a toothbrush with frogs on it. Even Ron brought home a notepad from a customer once that had a frog design on it. Jack used to put throw pillows on the floor and pretend they were lily pads and hop between them.” Her eyes misted over.
“But Jack never played wi
th this one.”
Trish’s head snapped up and she glared at me. I recognized the demon flickering in her gaze. “He loved this toy because he loved that I bought it for him and encouraged his interest. It sat on his bed for years.”
I looked at Jack’s bed, piled with clothes and stuffed toys. Trish followed my gaze and flinched away.
“Why is this so hard?” she moaned, still holding the frog in one hand and propping her head in her other hand.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
She snorted, and then said, her voice thick, “I wasn’t asking you. Do you know you always answer rhetorical questions?”
“Yes.”
It took me a minute of listening to Trish’s half-sobbed giggles to figure out what was so funny. I had to allow a smile. Oh yes, a rhetorical question I answered.
Trish regarded the frog again. “What would Jack say if he were here?”
“Is that one rhetorical?”
“No.”
“He’d want to keep it.”
“You seem awfully sure.”
“Remember the coloring pages? The only stuff he was OK with pitching out yesterday were things of yours. Anytime we happened across something of his, we put it in here.” I pointed to a small mound near the door, with less dust than the rest of the room.
“So I should keep it,” Trish said, but she sounded unsure.
“Is he likely to remember this particular frog?”
“You would not believe this kid’s memory about where things belong. I swear it’s photographic, which is the only way he can find anything in this jungle.”
“We can’t keep it all.”
“It’s only one frog.”
“Any one thing is only one thing.”
“He’ll hate me.”
I wished for Seth. He might have known how to walk this knife edge, being tough on her without making her shut down. Or attack.
“How will he feel if he can’t come home at all?”
“He likes Dad’s house. Dad can get him to school.” Her earlier determination was gone from her voice.
“I don’t mean that. I mean, if he can’t come home, ever. If the social worker comes in here and sees this and . . . they take him away from you.”
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