“It looks like the picture was taken in front of the house I’m staying in.”
“That’s because it was their home. When Tilda turned up pregnant, her parents disowned her. Burneel and Carter took her in.”
This is an unexpected development. “My grandparents weren’t married?”
She raises one eyebrow. “Your mother never told you that she was born out of wedlock?”
“My mother never discussed her past.”
Fritter pauses, seeming to consider the implications of that statement. “Interesting.”
“Is it?” I ask.
She clears her throat, but doesn’t reply. She’s looking at my hand, at the next picture, the one with the young man standing by a car.
“Is this my grandfather?”
I pass the photo to her and she sets it in her lap. Her mouth curves up a bit at the edges, a small smile.
She nods. “Wasn’t Eugene handsome? All of us had our caps set for him.” She’s quiet for a few seconds, still looking at the photo. I bite my lip to stay silent, hoping she’ll say more, and finally she does.
“It drove a wedge between us, you know, Tilda and me. It’s not easy for friends to share a crush.”
“So what happened?”
“He chose Tilda, of course.” The old woman shrugs her rounded shoulders. “She was beautiful—blond curls, big blue eyes. She sang like an angel and played the piano like it was on fire.” She hands the photo back to me and picks up a book, fanning through it as if searching for her next words. “I grew up next door to Gene; he and my older brother Jonah were friends. I spent my childhood tagging along behind the boys, but summers of playing hide-and-seek don’t count when everyone starts falling in love. I had no claim on Eugene at all. None of us did.”
Fritter slams shut the book in her hands, and I jump at the sound. Lifting it up to inspect the spine, she says, “I guess I was the lucky one. Being an unwed mother in 1959 was no fun.”
“So Eugene just knocked up my grandmother and left town?”
“No.” She sets the book down and picks up the next. “He died.”
I watch as her age-speckled hands move around and around on the book, and I take a minute to consider what she’s just told me. My mother never met her father; he died before she was born.
Fritter seems not to notice my surprise, or perhaps she’s giving me a moment to recover, because she pointedly keeps her attention focused on the book in her hands. She must find some moisture in it as well, because she puts it with the other damaged ones. When she shakes her head and says, “A terrible tragedy,” I’m not sure if she’s talking about the book, or my grandfather’s death.
“So what happened?” I finally ask.
“Your grandmother did the best she could in the circumstances. She moved in with Gene’s parents and raised your mother in their home.”
“And named her Genie.”
Tilda nods. “That was a kindness. Burneel and Carter had lost their only child. I think your mother growing up in that house helped to mend their broken hearts.”
“So what happened to them?”
“What happens to everybody. They got old and died.”
I think of Eugene, who must have died in his twenties, and of my mother, who died at fifty. Not everyone gets old.
Fritter holds her hand out for the last photo, the group shot of my mother with friends. She touches one face with a bony finger. “That’s your mother.”
I nod. “Her hair looks blond.”
“Your mother was a blonde.”
“She bleached it though, right?”
The old woman shrugs. “It’s certainly possible. She dyed my dog.”
“Excuse me?”
“I once made the mistake of asking your mother to watch Frida, my miniature apricot poodle, while I was away for a weekend.”
The scowl on Fritter’s face is the only thing keeping me from laughing at this point.
She continues, “I came home to an animal with irritated skin and sickly yellow fur.”
I swear I don’t laugh or even smile, but something in my eyes must reveal my struggle to keep a straight face.
“It’s not funny, young lady,” Fritter says to me. “She was so ashamed . . .”
“My mother?”
“Frida.”
At this I do smile. To my relief, Fritter smiles a little, too.
“Oh, I was so angry. I don’t know what possessed your mother to do such a thing, but I do know that Harden girl was also in on it.” Fritter taps the photo again, this time pointing to the girl standing next to my mother. “That young lady was trouble on a stick.”
“She’s Karleen Meeker now,” I say. “I met her at the church yesterday.”
When I tell Fritter this, she glances up at me. She looks alarmed, but trying to hide it. “I should have known she would frequent a soup kitchen.”
“No, no,” I’m quick to explain. “She works at the church.”
“Regardless of employment, trash is trash.”
“She seems nice enough—”
“Stay away from that woman,” Fritter says, perhaps a bit too forcefully. She must sense that she’s gone too far, because her tone is now one of feigned nonchalance. “I don’t know if you planned to go back to that soup kitchen, but I think it’s best if you don’t. You ought to associate with persons of a higher class. Besides, you can’t take such long lunch breaks. If you’re short on food, I’ll have Tawny pack you a lunch tomorrow.”
I have a feeling I’d end up with a lugie sandwich so I refuse the offer, but I do agree to stay away from the church. It’s a promise I’m reluctant to make, not so much because I enjoy dishing up slop, but because Fritter’s weird insistence that I stay away from Karleen makes seeing her again irresistible.
Apparently satisfied with my sincere-sounding assurances, Fritter lowers herself off the high stool, and then gathers up the stack of damaged books.
Before she leaves, I say, “Was it an accident?”
“I don’t think so.” She frowns at the damp books in her arms. “I think those hoodlums discard their soft drinks in the night depository on purpose.” Her voice is shaking with emotion—this from a woman who takes rogue library turds in stride.
“I meant my grandfather,” I say. “Did he die in an accident?”
Fritter pauses, then replies, “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Well, what would you say?”
“I would say, if you’re finished in Periodicals, can you please go help Tawny in Children’s?”
“There’s no doubt that I can,” I reply. “Are you asking me if I will?”
Her mouth curls into a thin smile. “Actually, I’m not asking at all.”
CHAPTER 26
My mother wasn’t going to tell me. I don’t remember how I learned that she was sick and bleeding, or of her doctor’s appointment. It could have been from Queeg, but they’d been divorced for years, and he was no longer a reliable source of information about my mother. Or I could have noticed something at the studio. I was working there at the time; a life dedicated to the pursuit of happiness—and by happiness I mean kick-ass parties and badass boyfriends—makes it hard to maintain steady employment, which is how I ended up working for my mother. Of course, by working for her I don’t mean to imply that we saw much of each other. She just took more jobs and farmed out some of the easier ones to me, so we tended to go our separate ways.
Actually, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I found out because of the Malibu. The car had suffered yet another nervous breakdown, and at the last minute my mother needed a ride to her appointment.
The doctor’s office was on the seventh floor of a tall, mirrored building near the hospital. I followed my mother to the receptionist’s window, then to a set of empty chairs. Sun streamed in through the wall of windows, potted plants glowed with green health, and the chairs were filled with women whose bellies swelled with promise.
I looked at my mother as she sat filling
out forms and noticed for the first time that her belly, too, was swollen. Not the soft pooch of a menopot, as my mother called the potbellies of middle-aged women, nor was it the thickened middle I had come to associate with her alcoholism. And certainly it was not the happy roundness of the mothers-to-be around us. No, my mother’s bulge looked low and firm and, judging from the way she shifted the clipboard as she tried to write, uncomfortable. How long had she had this? Nobody had said the word cancer yet, at least not to me, but still I felt a knot of fear in my own flat stomach.
I didn’t say anything, but my mother must have sensed my worry. She leaned over toward me and whispered. “It’s just a D and C. They’re no big deal.”
I could smell the booze on her breath.
“You’ve had one before?”
“I never said that.” She turned her attention back to the forms in her lap.
I remember wondering if she’d had an abortion at some point in her life, and if so, if it had been before or after she had me. And I wondered if she wished she’d had one instead of having me. I didn’t say any of that to her.
When a nurse came out and called her name, my mother stood and then I stood. She looked at the nurse and then at me.
“Are you crying?” she asked.
I shook my head. “It’s just too bright in here.”
She reached in her purse and pulled out her ridiculously large Jackie O sunglasses and handed them to me, watching expectantly until I slipped them over my eyes.
“I’ll be right back,” she said and then followed the nurse through the door.
The only reading material available was parenting and pregnancy magazines and, surprisingly enough, a few bridal magazines. I picked up one and was thumbing through the photos of frothy gowns, when a strange squeaking and clanking noise made me look up. From the left side of the room a roped platform appeared outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Inch by inch it lurched farther and farther along the wall until finally the man standing on the platform became visible. He wore heavy coveralls and a thick harness around his waist from which a rope extended to a clasp on the platform railing.
Squeegee in one hand, sponge in the other, bucket at his feet, he smeared fluid in sweeping arcs, then pulled it off with the rubber blade. Back and forth, up and down, then a pause and the platform eased over a few feet, stopped, and he repeated his motions. The man wore wraparound mirrored sunglasses that in turn reflected the mirrored windows, which gave his face the illusion of being two sections of flesh divided by a strip of sky. I pulled the painter’s name from a distant memory—Magritte. I could still remember the breathless feeling in art class when our teacher showed slides of his work. Painting after painting of people who were not quite whole, their missing pieces filled with blue and clouds.
I stood and walked to the window, stopping when the man and I were less than three feet apart. Wet and wipe, across and down, he never paused, never acknowledged me standing there.
“It’s mirrored,” a woman behind me said. “He has no idea what’s going on in here.”
“Lucky him,” I replied.
CHAPTER 27
This afternoon I am operating under a theory I deduced at an early age: it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Once Fritter leaves to spend the afternoon with her brother at the nursing home, I encourage Tawny to take the first lunch break. When she returns, I tell her I’m going to walk to the diner for lunch, then I snag someone’s apple from the fridge and go out to Tawny’s truck. Just as I expect, the keys are in the ignition. Unfortunately, the seat is still jammed all the way forward and the adjustment lever seems to be rusted in place, which leaves me driving hunched over with my legs spread and the steering wheel practically touching my ribs. Ah well, needs must when the devil drives.
I approach the small gray brick building with apprehension, and when I step through the clinic door, the medical disinfectant smell within weakens my knees. Nothing good has ever happened in a place that smells like this. I actually consider leaving, but the receptionist notices me standing frozen at the door, and gestures me in.
“Sign in.” She pushes over a piece of paper and a pen with a plastic flower taped to the end. Her nasal voice sounds familiar; she must be the same woman I spoke to when I made the appointment yesterday. She asks if I have insurance, and I tell her no. With a Tawny-worthy eye roll, she pushes herself up out of her chair and crosses to a filing cabinet against the far wall. I notice that though her legs and arms are thin, her middle is round and tightly packed. I smile, finding comfort in the knowledge that this rude woman will someday be one of those unfortunate old ladies shaped like a tick.
I fill out the required forms, and before long I am escorted to an exam room. A few minutes later, sporting the paper vest and drape de rigueur, I am flipping through an illustrated pamphlet on the latest and greatest STDs when the door opens. A woman of average height, in her mid-forties, I’m guessing, with short salt-and-pepper hair and a white coat, enters.
“Ms. Wallace? I’m Dr. McDonald.”
When we shake hands my paper garments rustle.
“So what seems to be the problem?” She looks down at the pamphlet in my hand.
“Not an STD,” I reply without thinking it through. In all honesty, I have contracted the ultimate sexually transmitted disease.
“I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
I shake my head. “Pee test.”
We go through the expected questions regarding my last period, then she has me lie down on the paper-covered table, place my feet in stirrups, and scoot, scoot, scoot to the edge.
The fluorescent light overhead hums and has a flicker that I sense more than see. There’s a constellation of dead bugs in the fixture’s plastic covering. The Bug Dipper. I squint my eyes and try to decide which one is the North Moth, the moth by which I could find my way home.
After a few minutes of intimate poking and prodding, the doctor tells me to sit up, scoot back onto the table, and lie back down. She lowers the paper blanket covering my middle and squirts some slime onto my lower abdomen. It’s cold and I startle a little as it hits my skin.
“Sorry,” she says, not sounding terribly sorry, and then she reaches into a drawer and pulls out a plastic gadget with what looks like a thick pen attached by a twisty cord to a walky-talky base. She puts the walky-talky speaker to her ear and the flat end of the pen into the goo on my belly and starts moving it around. A few seconds later she pulls the speaker away from her ear and turns up the volume dial with her thumb.
There’s a roaring static noise, but underneath that a fast, rhythmic whooshing. The doctor’s eyes meet mine. “There’s the heartbeat,” she says.
I look away.
After turning off the machine, the doctor wipes my belly with a Kleenex and tells me to sit up. She looks at my paperwork, then pulls a small cardboard wheel from the pocket in her white coat and fiddles with it for a few seconds. “I put your due date in mid-December.”
It’s either my sigh, or the look on my face, that prompts her to put a hand on my arm and say, “Why don’t you get dressed and come visit with me in my office,” rather than “Congratulations.”
A woman in scrubs leads me to Dr. McDonald’s office. The room is small but cheerful, with white walls and a narrow clerestory window behind her desk. A bookshelf holds comfortingly large medical volumes on the lower shelves with a top shelf filled with photos of young children displayed in matching silver frames.
The doctor smiles at me. When I sit down, she pushes the box of Kleenex on her desk closer to me.
“I’m not going to need that,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she replies, but she leaves the box where it is.
“You don’t happen to have a farm do you?”
She shakes her head. “About this pregnancy. I get the impression that it wasn’t anticipated.”
“Correct,” I say.
“Would you like to spend a few moment
s discussing your options?”
“I give birth or I get an abortion. Doesn’t that about cover it?”
“Well . . .” She picks up a pen lying on her desk and clicks the button a few times before answering. “I would have added adoption in there.”
“That would certainly be a part of the give birth process. For me anyway.”
She clicks her pen a few more times. “If you do decide that an abortion is the right decision for you, I’m afraid that it will have to be surgical.”
“Surgical?”
“Before eight weeks it’s possible to do what’s called a medical abortion. Oral medication is used to induce a miscarriage. I think you’re around ten weeks, possibly eleven.”
“So the surgical one is what, like a D and C?”
“Exactly. It’s very safe.”
“You think so?”
“You don’t? Have you had one?”
My mother was the one lying on the paper-covered table while I sat in a waiting room hiding my eyes. Of course getting a cancer diagnosis wasn’t what killed her; hell, it wasn’t even cancer that killed her. But that doesn’t stop my heart from skipping a beat as we discuss the procedure.
“No” is all I tell the doctor.
“Don’t worry.” She sets down her pen. “It’s a simple procedure performed at a clinic under light sedation. The decision you need to make shouldn’t be focused on the procedure itself. A surgical abortion is ten times safer than childbirth; I can show you studies to that effect. But terminating a pregnancy brings with it certain ethical implications and a number of emotional issues. That’s where your focus needs to be.”
“I shouldn’t be anybody’s mother,” I tell her.
She nods. “I understand how you feel.”
I glance up at the photos on the shelf and then back at her.
She answers my unasked question. “I have children. But I still worry about being a good mother.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that, so I don’t. She’s not too far from the age my mother was when she died. I wonder if this woman waited until her late thirties to start a family; that wouldn’t surprise me. Or perhaps she just prefers to display photos of her kids as young children, before they began to disappoint. That wouldn’t surprise me either.
The Art of Crash Landing Page 15