Keepsake

by Kristina Riggle

  I know he wants to send me to Hope College, because it’s so close. Not that there’s anything wrong with Hope, I’m sure it’s fine. But I want to go to the Univ. of Michigan. Or maybe—dare I imagine it?—out of state? If I end up at Hope, I’ll be living at home and it will be like nothing’s changed at all. And if I meet a local boy there and get married, I might never see any part of the world except our little chunk of the lakeshore. Which would suit Daddy just fine, I know.

  Anyway, I think volunteering at the migrant camps would be a wonderful experience. I’ve spent my whole life in this little white house in Holland, Michigan, never doing anything more exotic than wearing wooden shoes in that stupid parade every year. Why shouldn’t I see how other people live? Other people who haven’t been as lucky as us? Maybe I can even learn to speak Spanish. If I’m going to be a nurse like Mom, that would come in handy.

  Wally has been hanging around me a lot lately. I think he wants to ask me to prom. I guess I don’t mind that. It would be better than sitting at home. I hope if he tries to kiss me, though, he has sense enough to suck on a breath mint first.

  I’m getting sleepy so I’ll sign off now.

  Frannie

  Mary closed the notebook gingerly, with the care she’d take with a holy relic. “I wonder why we never heard any of this. Mom volunteering at a migrant camp? That’s fascinating.”

  “She was seventeen years old. By the time we came along, it probably wasn’t important in the scheme of things.”

  “I wish we’d asked her.”

  I sat up in the chair then and looked at Mary. Her gaze aimed at the far corner of my house. She continued, “I wish we’d asked her more about her life.”

  “Oh, Mary, don’t beat yourself up. No one’s interested in their parents until they get old and decrepit themselves and start thinking about life and the past and mortality and crap.”

  She nodded, pursing her lips, and I could tell what she was thinking as clearly as if I were reading it off a screen. She was wishing we’d had the chance to start getting old with her still on this earth.

  Me, too, kid, I thought. Me, too.

  Chapter 20

  As I parked the car within sight of my town house door, I felt the knotted rope in my shoulders go slack. I’d made it.

  I had my key almost in the lock when I noticed a heavy package on my neighbor’s doorstep. The quiet inside my town house beckoned me, but instead I tried a knock on Harriet’s door. I heard rustling and a faint, “Just a minute!” I felt that I’d missed a birthday, standing there waiting for Harriet to open the door. Then I heard the many clicks of her many locks.

  “Oh! Mary, dear. This is a nice surprise on a Sunday night.”

  I pointed down to the box. “I see you have a package here. Would you like me to bring it in for you?”

  “Oh, that would be lovely, sweetheart.”

  I bent to pick up the awkward box, which reached almost to my chin. “What do you have here?” I asked as I carried it inside and set it where Harriet pointed, on her kitchen island.

  “Some things for my grandchildren. I’m going to visit them next week so I did a little online shopping. I might have bought a bit much, but then, what are grannies for?” She raised her glass to me. It was a tumbler filled with wine. “I probably shouldn’t shop in the evening when I’m having one of these. . . . Would you like a little something?”

  “No, thanks. I was just coming home from a weekend away when I saw the package and thought you might want some help.”

  Harriet started talking about her grandchildren, and as always I had a crazy déjà vu feeling in this neighboring town house. It was just like mine, but reversed, so that right was left and left was right. Like facing pages in a book. Another difference: Harriet covered every inch of her home in doilies and framed photos of the cherubic grandbabies who also wore her upturned button nose.

  So much stuff, yet it was so neat. My mother would have loved it. It’s probably what she thought she was going to achieve, each time she brought home another beautiful thing she just had to have.

  Harriet was still going. If it weren’t so late, I’d sit down and let her talk; the poor thing seemed so bored since moving in here after her husband died.

  I yawned theatrically and stood up. Harriet, bless her, took the hint and ushered me out.

  Unlocking the door to my own place again caused a wash of comfort and relief. The dim living room still smelled faintly of OxiClean. I locked my outside door, then flicked on the light in my foyer.

  The silence was pure. Not so much as a dripping faucet.

  The aching began, as my muscles remembered all the lifting and hauling I’d been doing this weekend. And I’d just agreed to do it all over again, for five straight days or more.

  I walked through my living room, drawing my curtains shut against the outside. Each time I shut out the world beyond with a snap of fabric across the curtain rod, I felt more secure.

  If someone had asked me—not that anyone would have—if I was happy, as of last week, I would have said, yes, I’m just fine. I had a job I enjoyed, a lovely home, and plenty of time to read and exercise. It wasn’t just losing my job that had me unsettled now; it was that all this emptiness that I’d found so comforting and calm just days ago now seemed painful and shrill. My ears started ringing in the silence so I flicked on the television, just for noise. I’d never been prone to do that before.

  I sat on the couch, my mouth open in wonder at this emotion. It felt just like envy, for Trish. I could surely recognize envy, because I’d felt it often enough growing up.

  But why on earth should I envy her now, with her pathological hoarding and garbage and her troubled sons and her marriage over?

  It was unmistakable, though. That little pang in the chest when I thought of her followed by a chaser of bitterness.

  “Everything’s gone all crazy,” I said out loud, and the ringing of my own voice in the still air gave me goose bumps.

  The week passed as if it were a year. With no time clock at the store and no regulation to my day, the empty hours piled on me like bricks, and each time the hour hand ticked forward I’d push a brick off, feeling relieved when it got late enough I could reasonably go to bed.

  I often caught myself wondering what George was doing now, with all this extra time. Wedding planning, no doubt. Being dragged along to cake tastings and floral selection. I imagined him relaxed in a tuxedo with a tasteful boutonniere, getting married and giving me not a second thought.

  I watched my favorite old DVDs in succession: Sleepless in Seattle, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, The Princess Bride, Four Weddings and a Funeral. They didn’t have the same allure as they used to, and for a few days I didn’t know why, just that they barely held my attention, and I started sorting through my cabinets and restacking all my dishes while I listened to the familiar dialogue. Then I reflexively imagined George sweeping me into his arms, and with a punch it hit me. I’d been daydreaming my own fairy tale every time I rewatched these sappy old things, and look what happened there.

  Meanwhile, Seth and I exchanged text-message arrangements for him to help at Trish’s house, but our conversation stuck with logistics. I longed to talk to him in detail, from small-talk boring things to asking him what was wrong, why was he not working? But he never seemed to provide a window for such talk. It had been fourteen years since I’d seen him, and other than the funeral, our talks had been airy and inconsequential. It’s not as if he would spill all his secrets even if I asked.

  On Wednesday, the phone rang and I dropped a dish on the floor. I made myself stare at the ringing phone, right there on the kitchen counter just inches from my hand, for two full rings before I picked up. It was my dad, letting me know he’d parked the camper at Trish’s house and gotten it all cleaned out and stocked up for me. I started to decline, but soon the logic of his plan made all too much se
nse. Silly to throw away my savings on a hotel when I found hotel rooms creepy anyway. It went without saying I wouldn’t want to sleep in her house. Even in Jack’s cleared room.

  Dad then reminded me of something I’d forgotten in all the fuss. Sunday was Easter, and he was inviting us to his and Ellen’s place. All of us.

  “Trish, too?” I asked, trying to remember the last time we’d all gathered for a holiday. From what I was told, once I started working all those holiday shifts, Trish began to spend her Easters and such alone with the boys, unless it was Ron’s turn to have them, in which case she ignored the holiday completely. Dad and his bride had taken to visiting Ellen’s relatives in Georgia.

  “Well, sure, I think it’s about time, don’t you?”

  “Did she say she’d come?”

  “Yep. Then Ron will pick up Jack for spring break.”

  I ticked off on my fingers: my dad, Ellen, me, Trish, Jack, and maybe even Drew if he deigned to come. “Wow, six of us. Is Ellen ready for the stampede?”

  “You know her. She’s already planning the menu and stenciling place cards.”

  I made plans to join them for dinner, then leave from Dad’s and follow Trish back to her house, so we’d be ready and raring to go come Monday of spring break.

  When the arrangements were all made, I still had too many long days remaining, especially with Harriet off visiting her children. I checked out a book from the library on hoarding and watched some of the TV documentaries Trish had dismissed as “exploitive trash.”

  I took up jogging outside, instead of just on my treadmill. I’d never done that working at the store. In the morning, it was too dark and I feared being snatched off the street by a maniac. In the evening, after work, I’d simply been too tired.

  I found that I rather liked covering ground, though I never really went anyplace, always ending up right back on my own front porch.

  Chapter 21

  I snuck back into the office, opening the door barely enough for me to squish through, like I was some kind of ninja and Angela wouldn’t notice.

  That’ll be the day, when Angela doesn’t notice.

  “Patricia!” she blared. “Are you back?”

  I bit my tongue not to retort, Nope, I’m still in my car, driving, you ignorant cow.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied. I nudged the mouse to wake up my screen and cringed at all the new e-mails.

  Angela appeared in the lobby, just at the edge of the hall. “That seemed to take a very long time for a simple doctor appointment. You will need to work through lunch to get caught up. Everything is fine, I trust?”

  “Just fine,” I answered reflexively, and I wished I’d thought to make up an ailment. I still had to find a way to stay home and clean next week.

  She looked me up and down over the edge of her glasses. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  “No!” I blurted.

  “Good. I hope you’re being honest with me. Because if you’re pregnant, obviously that’s your business, but I would need to start training a replacement.”

  “Replacement? You can’t fire someone because they’re pregnant.”

  “I meant a temp, Patricia. Don’t be paranoid. And anyway, you’re not pregnant, you said, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

  She threw a pointed glance at my midsection and stalked back to her office, calling over her shoulder, “Make those follow-up calls today!”

  I plunked down in my chair as I exhaled a sigh. So maybe I shouldn’t have told her I was going to the gyno. But I sure as shit wasn’t going to tell her the truth about the government shrink, and the gyno seemed the most likely way to head off follow-up questions. Who wants to know about what’s going on with an employee’s lady parts?

  My stomach rumbled and I sipped from my smoothie. Angela frowned on eating at a receptionist’s desk. “It’s the public face of my company and I won’t have you chomping like a cow out here,” she’d said the one time I’d brought a salad to my desk.

  On one plane, my brain cruised through the e-mails, filing them rapidly and answering the ones requiring action, my hands flying across the keys.

  On a lower, gut level, I relived my all-morning shrink ordeal.

  At home, beforehand, I’d had to fill in page upon page of paperwork about myself, ticking off boxes about how much I drink, how much I sleep, how anxious I am, whether I have persistent unwanted thoughts, whether I’ve ever been suicidal. I’d been so irritated having to spend my evenings taking my own inventory after a long day of work that I’d ripped through the paper with my ballpoint pen at times. So ridiculous. Like a drunk would be honest about how much they drink, or if a single mother ever happened to have a suicidal thought once in a while, on a really low, lonely night, she’d ever check that box for a shrink who could report to a judge.

  Dr. Tom, the man had called himself when I arrived. I’d bridled at that. Jack used to call his preschool teacher Miss Kelly. What was I, a toddler? We couldn’t use proper last names like grown-ups?

  He asked me questions about my past, how I feel on a typical day. He echoed some of the questions on the form, which made me furious for my wasted time. He got around to asking me about my living environment. I said it was messy.

  “How messy?” He tapped his pen against his lips.

  I didn’t answer, and the moment stretched like taffy until I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Very messy. It is very, very messy.”

  “How much does it interfere with your daily life?”

  “I manage.”

  “You manage easily? You manage with moderate difficulty? Severe difficulty?”

  “Moderate.”

  “Your son was injured.”

  “Yes.”

  He asked why I was so quiet, and I said I was tired. Which I was.

  Weren’t we all?

  On his office walls were framed photos of grown children with yellow-blond hair and blue eyes. The boys had square jaws with dimples. The girls had acres of wavy gold tresses. A digital picture frame near his desk rotated through pictures of their weddings, and sports prowess, and school dances.

  I wondered what kind of picture I’d hang up if I were allowed to do so at my desk at work. If I had a job with an office of my own. Look, here’s my older son, scrawling a pentagram on his sneakers. Look, here’s my younger son, reading a book hiding in a cave made of clothing.

  As I answered “Dr. Tom’s” questions robotically, I thought there should be a rule about show-off photos in the office of a psychologist whose job it is to see people whose lives are circling the drain.

  He asked about hoarding in my family history. He said “hoarding” like “measles” or “heart disease.”

  I told him my mother was also messy.

  On a scale of one to ten? he asked.

  I answered: twelve.

  You?

  A six.

  I uncrossed my legs, squared my posture, looked him in the eye, and repeated, “I’m a six.”

  He smiled mildly and jotted a note.

  What was it about these people and smiling?

  I endured more questions. I studied the spines of the books in his bookcase, wondering if he ever opened them or they were for show. To make me feel that I was in the office of someone educated and competent.

  Then there were more tests. Personality quizzes, which brought to mind the ones in women’s magazines with titles like: Are You a Lover or a Fighter? Or Take Your Bedroom Temperature: Hot or Not?

  Then I was back before Dr. Tom again and jiggling my foot impatiently, staring at the clock and imagining Angela’s growing anger. He said he’d look over my paperwork and his notes, and he’d like to see me next week for a follow-up. No, I’d told him. It’s spring break.

  “Oh, you’re going out of town?”

  “Yes,” I answered automatically. “On
vacation.”

  I made an appointment for the following week with an impossibly perky office lady, whose glasses hung from a whimsical beaded chain, the kind I used to sell at art shows.

  The phone rang at my desk.

  “Kendrick and Adams,” I answered in my office voice. “Oh, hi, Kristy, I can answer that, actually.”

  Kristy was a secretary for a banker in Lansing, Peter Mason. Peter was on the board for the Boys and Girls Club, and he was planning a fund-raising dinner. That is to say, he was making Kristy plan the fund-raiser while he did whatever bankers do.

  Kristy was asking about the centerpieces for every table at the dinner. Angela had volunteered to be in charge of decorations, which meant I was in charge of decorations.

  “No, we got those donated. Yep, gratis, every last one. And we are auctioning them off in a silent auction, too. They’re going to do gorgeous arrangements, not just carnations in a cheap vase.”

  I’d pitted area florists against one another, playfully teasing them into competing to see which arrangements would garner the most money in the silent auction.

  “Sure, I’ve got the list right here,” I said, and I opened the file drawer at my knees and grabbed the florist list. I began rattling them off to her.

  Having worked so long together on the fund-raiser, Kristy and I had gotten together for drinks once or twice after work.

  Then one day she’d invited me to join her book club and I started to enthusiastically accept. . . . Then she explained that the club meets in rotating fashion at the members’ homes.

  So much for that.

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” I said to Kristy’s gushing thanks. She told me in a stage whisper that Peter had been all over her about the decor today, grousing that he wasn’t going to have “naked tables with a doily on them” at “his” gala.

  We shared a chuckle. “His.” Right. And that night there would be a round of applause for the chair of the event “who worked so hard to make it happen.”