All That's True

by Jackie Lee Miles

  What premature babies have to do with the severe injury of one’s hands I have no idea. But it seems to comfort Mrs. Hall. She looks up and nods and smiles. My mother asks Rosa to bring some tea. I sit back deeper into the sofa and rest my head. So that’s why Rodney hasn’t written. He can’t use his hands. I picture him with these huge bandages like boxing gloves covering him up to his elbows and burst out crying.

  “Andi,” Mrs. Hall said, “I didn’t realize this would upset you so much. Do you know Rodney?”

  I nod my head emphatically that I do. “We—we—were almost—you know sort of going together,” I say softly.

  My mother looks at me like I’ve taken leave of my senses.

  “Why Andi,” she says. “Where on earth did you get an idea like that?”—like it’s impossible for Rodney to love me. “You’re not even fourteen years old. Don’t be silly.” My mother sits down next to me and puts her arm around my shoulder. Mrs. Hall opens her pocketbook and pulls out one of those little photo albums people carry. She flips through it until she gets to one near the back.

  “Here it is,” she says and holds it up for my mother and me to see. “Her name is Sarah. Isn’t she pretty? A beautiful girl. They’ve been engaged since Christmas.”

  I want to take that album and toss it in the fireplace. Instead I hold the album closer to get a good look at this Sarah. She has long blonde hair. She has on a sundress with thin straps and white eyelet lace at the bottom. Rodney has his arm around her and is pulling her closer to him. She’s leaning in against him. She’s very pretty. In fact she’s prettier than Beth. I didn’t think anyone could ever be prettier than Beth. It’s not fair. I close the album and hand it back to Mrs. Hall.

  “I guess I was wrong,” I whisper. “Excuse me.”

  My entire future is over before it’s even begun. I run to the bathroom that’s next to the library. I make it just in time to be major sick. My life is over—absolutely, positively, totally over.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Bridget’s come up with the idea that we should head to the mall and then have a nice dinner out. Just the two of us.

  “Let’s go to Lenox. We can check out all the new stores and they have lots of places to eat. Henry can take us, right?”

  She’s trying hard to cheer me up.

  I watch as she opens her closet door and starts tossing clothes on the bed. “We’ll wear some really cool clothes and fix our hair and—”

  “I’m not very hungry,” I say.

  “But you will be.” She takes my arm and drags me off her bed. “Come on. It’ll be fun.” When Bridget gets in one of her moods to do something, there’s just no turning her down. She’ll have us out and about if she has to dress me herself.

  I decide it’s time for me to start living again. I can’t pine for Rodney forever. I’m too young. Surely there’ll be another love in my life.

  “Of course,” Bridget says. “Maybe even two, you never know.”

  Bridget—always the optimist. But it gives me hope. I tell her I’m going home to get dressed and for her to come over when she’s ready. “I’ll go find Henry.”

  My mother is reading a magazine and Rosa is waddling around in the kitchen, her favorite spot in the entire house. She could cook for an army and be perfectly happy. Henry is in the gazebo hanging flower baskets from the eaves.

  “Can you take me and Bridget to the mall?”

  He says it’s what he lives for and grins. He hangs the last basket and wipes his hands on his coveralls. I tell him I’ll be ready in an hour give or take. He’ll go in and shower and put some Brut on. It’s his favorite. “It doesn’t take much to please Mr. Porter,” my mother says and picks up a bottle at the drug store whenever she spots it. He lives in an apartment above the garage my father had remodeled especially for him. He’s very happy there. He’s very happy, period. “Life’s too short not to be,” he says. His wife died years ago. He’s been alone ever since, well, except for us. “You’re all the family a body needs,” he says. I think of Henry being perfectly happy over nothing and then realize what a dope I am for being down in the dumps over Rodney. He’s only one part of my life and he wasn’t really even a part of it, after all. I just thought he was.

  I hurry and get ready, sort of excited to be going. It’ll be fun. My mother will give me her credit card and tell me to buy something nice, but not too much, she’ll say. “Think of all the children who are wearing rags.” My not buying too much won’t change that, but she thinks it’s somehow related.

  “Your friend be here,” Rosa calls up the stairs. I bound down the steps and wave to my mother. She smiles. She’s happy to see me go. I’ve been moping around the house for days.

  We climb in the car and Henry heads to Lenox Square. It’s a great place to shop. It has three levels and there’s even a fourth level for a small portion of it. It’s got a Rich’s and a Macy’s and Neiman Marcus. But my favorite stores are those that carry makeup, which includes the department stores as they have every kind of makeup counter possible. Macy’s has a counter for every brand. And most of them will give you a free makeover if you ask. Then you just buy a blush or something as a thank-you.

  I tell Henry we’ll meet him back at valet parking at eight. He nods his head and makes the okay signal. Bridget and I are off. It feels good to be out and about. I feel like skipping! It’s amazing how well the human spirit can recover even from a major heartache. It’s probably programmed in our genes. Otherwise everyone would kill themselves and before you know it, no more people. So, it’s got to be in our genes to be happy after being sad. Which is a major relief—that day I puked in the toilet after finding out Rodney was engaged all along was the pits.

  After three hours of scouring the stores, Bridget decides she wants to see the inside of the Ritz-Carlton. It’s right across the street. “It’s got to be really nice,” she says. We wait for the “walk” light to change. “Look, they have a man to open the door in a fancy suit. Just like New York.”

  Once we’re inside a young woman at the front desk asks if she can help us. I guess they don’t want teenagers milling about doing nothing.

  “We’d like to have dinner,” Bridget says out of the blue. This is news to me. The young woman nods and points to the corridor straight ahead. The restaurant has been set up for afternoon tea. Servers are busy resetting the tables for dinner. Bridget walks right up to the maitre d’.

  “Table for two, please,” she says. He bows slightly and says, “Follow me.” I guess teenagers aren’t to amble aimlessly about the hotel, but they can have dinner. No problem. I’m anxious to see what’s on the menu. It’s a pretty cool place. The fireplace takes up one long wall and is bigger than a freight train. There are several other couples already seated at tables, but there are so many large plants and giant intricate vases that it’s hard to get a look at them. The maitre d’ tucks us into a little corner near the window and says our waiter will be with us shortly. Sure enough, a guy in a fancy black suit with a bow tie is at our side in no time. He places our napkins on our laps and hands each of us an oversized menu. Everything’s á la carte, which means the bill is going to be more than my mother counted on showing up on her credit card. I’m starting to have second thoughts about staying to eat. I ask the waiter where the restrooms are. Maybe we can sneak out.

  “We’ll need some time to make our selections,” I say. He leaves and I motion for Bridget to follow me.

  “What?” she says.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say. “He’ll think we’ve gone to the restroom. By the time he realizes we’re taking a long time, we’ll be long gone.”

  I get up and grab her arm and head toward the side door that leads to the restrooms. Bridget giggles and follows. We turn the corner and are twenty feet from the door. There’s a small table tucked in an alcove. It’s set with beautiful crystal and china. The couple before us is raising their glasses like in a toast. They’re sitting right next to each other instead of across from one anoth
er. They put their heads together and kiss. It’s a long passionate kiss, complete with tongues. Gross! Bridget coughs loudly. I want to smack her.

  The couple stops kissing and turns their heads in our direction. I nearly jump out of my clothes. It’s my father. And right next to him—nearly sitting on his lap—is Donna.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Mostly Bridget and I are in shock. Of course we knew my father and her stepmother were still doing it with each other, but we didn’t think of them as having a relationship as in going to dinner and stuff like that. When my father realizes that I saw them, he excuses himself to Donna and takes my arm and walks me outside the restaurant into the lobby and down the hall to a quiet spot. He says, “What are you doing here, Andi?” I’m thinking maybe that should be my question, but I’m too afraid to ask it. I tell him we were at the mall and how we happened to come over, perfectly innocent.

  “We weren’t spying on you. That’s the truth.”

  “Well,” he says, “the important thing is that you understand my having dinner with Donna is not something your mother should be privy to.”

  Privy. He’s always using words in sentences that if you used them alone I would have a hard time understanding, but when they’re in the middle of a sentence they’re perfectly clear—my mother is not to be told I saw him mixing tongues with Donna.

  “She’s still fragile in her recovery,” he adds.

  I nod my head and spot Bridget standing at the end of the hall. Donna is nowhere in sight. I guess she’s leaving this mess up to my father.

  “You are to go home and disregard whatever it is you think you saw. Is that clear?”

  Now he’s holding my arm much more firmly than when he walked me out of the restaurant. I look him straight in the eyes. “I’m not telling Mother,” I say. “I don’t want to be the one to break her heart.” There, I said it. I hope it leaves him with a lot of guilt. He looks worried that I’m not telling the truth. If he’s so intent on being with Donna, why doesn’t he just tell my mother himself? That’s the question.

  My father lets go of my arm. I motion for Bridget to come over. She walks down the hall like she’s on a tightrope forty feet above the ground. “Hello, Mr. St. James,” she says when she gets to us, like it’s a perfectly normal afternoon and we happened to bump into each other. My father nods his head, then turns to me.

  “I think you two should go home. Is Henry picking you up?”

  Then I realize it’s after eight and we told him we’d meet him at the valet parking at eight sharp.

  “We need to go,” I say. “Henry’s been waiting for twenty minutes.”

  My father does what my mother always does. He brushes the hair out of my eyes. There’s a look of concern on his face.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m not stupid. I know what’s at stake here.”

  “I hope you do, Andi.” He turns and walks away. He probably told the maître d’ to bring the check yesterday and he and Donna got out of there. Bridget and I walk across the street to valet parking. Sure enough, Henry’s waiting for us. He’s his normal cheerful self.

  “Here’s my girls,” he says. “I thought some space aliens got you.”

  We don’t even smile. We climb in the car and sit like zombies for the entire ride back home.

  “You don’t look like my happy girls,” Henry says, knowing something’s up, so he’s trying to make light of it. But not even his good nature can jar us out of our funk.

  “It’s getting worse,” Bridget says.

  I’m thinking the exact same thing. It’s written all over my face.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Sometimes life is on a roll. And not necessarily a good one. Sometimes it just goes downhill. Today is a perfect example. I go to Sunny Meadows expecting to see Mr. Sterling sitting up in bed yelling for someone to repeat what they said and I walk in the room and he isn’t even there. Mrs. Sterling is sitting on the edge of her bed and her face is all red. The kind of red where you’ve been crying for a long time and it leaves blotches all around your face and your eyes stay puffy. I know something bad is coming. I’m afraid to ask. And worse, I don’t know what to say or how to start a conversation. “Would you like me to read to you without Mr. Sterling?” would be really stupid. And “Hello, Mrs. Sterling” seems so cold and distant. Really I just want to put my arms around her thin shoulders and tell her everything is going to be alright, but of course it isn’t and I’m right. Mr. Sterling is dead. Joyce comes in. “He died last night in his sleep,” she whispers. Which is a nice way to go, if you have to go and it’s your time to go, but I can hardly tell Mrs. Sterling that. I search my entire brain and can’t think of one gentle thing to say that might help her.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Sterling,” I blurt out. And then I lean over and give her a hug. And that’s all it takes. She starts wailing like a baby who wants something, but not a bottle, and who knows what it is?

  “I didn’t know I’d miss the old fart,” she says between sobs. I just pat her back and stand there and don’t say a word. It seems to work. She calms down and dries her eyes.

  “He was eighty-nine years old,” she says. “That’s a lot of years.”

  “My grandfather was eighty-five when he died,” I say and wince. I just said the “D” word and I was trying to avoid it. Trying to just talk around it, but it’s hard.

  “Would you like me to maybe do your hair for you?” I ask. She’s a real mess. She keeps a cosmetic bag in the drawer of the nightstand. “Maybe put some makeup on. How about that?” I say. “Would that make you feel any better?” I don’t know what else to do for her.

  “Why not?” she says. “No sense my going to pot because Howard decides to haul off and leave.”

  I once read part of this book on death my father had when his father died. It said there are stages to recovery when a person you love dies. One of them is denial, and one is anger, and there were some others I can’t remember before the final one which I do remember was acceptance.

  “Just like the old goat,” Mrs. Sterling adds.

  She’s obviously in the anger stage. Maybe she’s skipping denial.

  I open the nightstand drawer and pull out her cosmetics bag. It has pink stripes and is heavily soiled. There are finger marks all over the outside, smudges of lipstick, three different shades of foundation and traces of purple eye shadow. Maybe I could buy her a new one and next time I come I could transfer everything into it. Mostly all the makeup inside is old and half used-up, but she seems perfectly happy with it, so maybe a new bag would be all she needs. I take out the foundation and she tips her head up. Her face is still caked with tear marks. There are fresh washcloths in the bathroom.

  “Let’s make like we’re doing a real facial.”

  I go into the bathroom and wring one of the washcloths out with cool water and gently wash her face. She leans her head back and sighs.

  “We’ll have you looking good in no time,” I say brightly.

  She holds her face up and closes her eyes tightly like a small child afraid of getting soap in their eyes. I ring the washcloth out three times and keep washing until all traces of the tear marks are gone. Next I start with her foundation. It’s the type that comes in a tube and goes on pretty smoothly, but she has so many wrinkles it starts to collect in the folds. I dab some powder over the top of it and smooth them out as best I can. Her face has more lines than a Shakespeare play, but if I don’t hold the mirror too close, maybe she won’t notice. When I’m satisfied I’ve done the best I can with her foundation and powder, I’m ready to dab on some blush. She uses the kind that comes in a little pot, rouge my mother calls it. Mrs. Sterling’s is bright red and much too bright for her skin tone. I end up using too much and she looks like a clown. I mix a little foundation on top of it.

  “That’s better,” I say. When I get her lipstick in place, I reach for her hairbrush. She keeps that in her cosmetics bag, too. If there’s one thing Mrs. Sterling still has in her old age, is a fu
ll head of hair. I brush it carefully off her face. There’s a little blue hair clip sitting on the nightstand. I pull some strands of her hair off to the side and clip it in place. It’s not really the kind of clip a woman her age would normally wear. It’s more like the kind you see second-graders wear, but it’s all we have. I hand her the mirror. And then remember to pull it back away from her a bit.

  “What do you think?”

  She studies her reflection carefully, then, sets the mirror on the nightstand.

  “I think you should definitely try a different line of work when you grow up.”

  “But you look lovely,” I say, and straighten the collar of her blouse.

  “In that case, I think you’d best get your eyes examined, too.”

  I put my arm around her and she leans in against me and we have a good laugh. Before long her laughter turns to tears. The makeup I tried so hard to put in place comes sliding off her face. What a mess. And now I’m crying right along with her.

  “Hear that Howard?” she yells into the air. “You ain’t even gone a day and already we miss your sorry deaf ass!”

  Chapter Forty-four

  I got up while it was still dark outside and couldn’t get back to sleep no matter how much I turned around under the covers. Now I’m on my knees in front of my window watching the sun rise. It’s nice that my bedroom faces east. The sun is just peeking over the horizon and it glows like it’s wearing a halo and you just know there’s a God when you see it and it’s like he’s winking at you. And that got me thinking, I wonder how many other people are watching this very same sunrise, right this very minute. Did they have trouble sleeping, too? Did some of them set their alarm clocks the night before and say, “I think I’ll just watch the sunrise tomorrow.” How about that? So they set their clocks for six a.m. and here we are. It’d be nice if we were all lined up in a row, watching the sun climb over the horizon together. We’d probably, every one of us, just suck in our breath and let out a big sigh. It’s that beautiful. It takes the air right out of your lungs. But you have to be here at just the right second, because the sun peeks out at you one second and the next instant it’s full in your face.