I couldn’t even swear. This was beyond any bad words I knew. Tears stung behind my eyes as I inched forward and backed out again, this time not hitting anything. Still no sign of the guy, anyway, and when I paid the lady in the booth five bucks (!) for parking, there was no gray car lurking in wait on either side of this block of Wisconsin. I turned right, toward the river, then right again on K Street, with no idea where I was going. Just away from him.
So far, I wasn’t having any fun.
24
When She Was Me
“RUTH WAS THERE all along. She was in the store, and that woman, that bitch, lied to my face.”
I’d never seen Carrie this angry. She was rigid with fury, her teeth clamped, red in the face. She had her hands in fists, elbows out, she was hitting her knuckles together in time to the beat of her outraged voice.
“She was there, and Krystal lied to me, and now she’s let her go?”
“She’s prob—”
“Mama, Ruth’s driving the car by herself to Washington.”
“But she’s a good driver,” I said as calmly as I could, “she’ll be all right.”
“She’s not that good. All alone in D.C.? Anything could happen to her. She’s fifteen years old.”
“Honey—”
“And she’s in a mood. I know her, she’s feeling reckless, she might do something—Oh, that woman!” She pivoted around, looking at the floor, the door, the couch, something to kick. “If she were here now I’d strangle her, I swear to God I would. How could anybody be so stupid?”
“Why was Ruth in a mood?” I took her by the arm and tried to make her sit on the sofa, but she spun away and went to stand with her back to the rainy window. The look on her face made me decide to sit down by myself. “Why was Ruth in a mood?” I repeated, though now I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. “What did you two fight about?”
She had on yesterday’s clothes, baggy white shorts and an old T-shirt of Ruth’s with a Roadrunner cartoon on the front. She must’ve slept in those clothes. If she’d slept at all. She looked pale and limp, way beyond exhausted. “I’ll tell you,” she said, folding her arms across her middle. She opened her eyes wide, like she was getting ready to jump off a cliff. “We fought about Jess.”
“Jess Deeping?”
I jumped when she jerked one arm down and slammed the wall behind her with her palm. “Yes, Mama, Jess Deeping. Ruth came home yesterday afternoon and found us. In my room.”
I let that hit, let it come right in like a punch to the stomach. It hurt, and it rearranged things inside, but I can’t say it was any big surprise. I’d seen it coming. I got too old to fight, and he won.
“Well,” I said. “Well. I’ll take a wild guess and say you weren’t building llamas up there.”
“No.”
“What did Ruth see?”
“If you mean—us in bed—”
“That’s what I mean.”
“She didn’t see anything.”
“Thank God for small favors.” A sweaty weakness passed through me, as if I needed something to eat. “Well, well, well. Are you proud of yourself? That’s a fine example to set for a young girl. I’d say that’s probably the end of Ruth’s childhood, wouldn’t you?” Carrie turned her face away, and I lost interest in going on in that vein. You don’t need to punish somebody who’s already taken care of it for you.
“All right, then,” I said. “What’s done is done, no use picking at it, it’s over. Come over here and sit. You don’t look right.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“How could it be? My God. You haven’t married him, have you?”
She looked at me steadily, a long, searching gaze. Once she almost smiled. But mostly she looked bitter. “Mama, do you remember when I flew home from Chicago for the high school reunion? The fifteenth?”
“Just you and Ruth? I remember.”
“Jess and I got together that night. I slept with him.”
Funny, that didn’t come as much of a shock, either. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I might’ve known that all along.
“It was our first time. That probably surprises you. I imagine you thought we were intimate in high school, but we weren’t. No, I was a virgin to the end.”
She kept wetting her lips. She looked me straight in the eye, but I had a hunch if I yelled boo she’d hit the ceiling. She looked like a girl to me, scared but determined, she looked like herself twenty-five years ago. Then I blinked, and the middle-aged woman came back in focus.
“At least when it finally happened we didn’t enjoy it,” she said with a sour smile. “That ought to make you happy.” She looked down. “Sorry. The point is. Ruth…”
“Ruth? Ruth what? She was five years old!”
“I told her.”
“Dear God. Why?”
“I could’ve lied. Maybe I should’ve, but she asked me straight out.” She made her hair stick up running her hands through it. “I told you it was worse.”
“You’re right.”
“Do you think I should’ve lied?”
“How should I know? Oh my Lord, my Lord. Oh, what a mess.”
Carrie came and sat down at the other end of the sofa. “It’s not a mess, Mama. It’s not an unfortunate domestic situation. I love Jess. It’s real.”
“You don’t even know him anymore.”
“You don’t know what I know. Now or then—you have no idea.”
“Then?”
“I loved him then, too, but that didn’t mean anything to you.”
I sat back. “You know, I just had a feeling this was going to turn out to be my fault.”
“No fault. I’m just trying to make you understand.”
“Oh, I understand, I don’t think it’s that complicated. You’re having a fling with your old high school flame, and you want to say it’s love so you won’t feel guilty. Fine, but don’t drag me into it.” She just stared at me. She’d figured out about the same time I did that I was trying to make her mad. Why? So she’d drop the subject and we could forget it? Fat chance.
“You know he was more than a crush, Mama. You knew it then, too.”
“Then, then. I never told you to break up with that boy, you can’t pin that on me. I won’t say I wasn’t tickled pink when you did, but you did that all by your little self.”
Unexpectedly, she smiled. “I catch myself trying that on Ruth, too. Pretending something she’s done is her idea, when I know it’s because of me. My influence.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. Mama.” She reached across and touched me on the arm with one finger. “You were always so strong. Too strong for me. In a way, you took advantage of me. Not on purpose, but I wanted your approval more than anybody’s, and you knew it. I’m too old to blame you because I married the wrong man—”
“But you do blame me,” I snapped, stung.
“No, I don’t. I honestly don’t. Or—if I do, I know I shouldn’t. But—you put your fears into me.”
“I what, now?”
“You made me feel afraid of Jess. You did. Because he wasn’t…controllable. It was more than just his background you couldn’t stand, it was him. You thought he was wild, you—”
“He was wild.”
“But he wasn’t bad. And you knew we loved each other—”
“You were eighteen years old!”
“Old enough.”
“Say that to me when it happens to your child!”
Carrie unwound her legs and stood up. “I’m sorry. I said I didn’t blame you—”
“But you do, that’s obvious.”
“Mama, I just wish you could’ve let go of me. And it’s me I blame, not you, for making it so easy for you to hold on.”
“Oh, I see. I didn’t love you perfectly. Well, forgive me, I do apologize, I see you’re doing a wonderful job of letting go of Ruth.”
Unfair. Carrie blanched. “It’s not the right time,” she said thickly,
“for us to be having this conversation.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” She looked awful, like everything bad had hit her again all at once. It took a lot of willpower not to go and put my arms around her. “I’ll get those dishes in the kitchen,” I said, and abandoned her.
I made coffee, slamming things around, making a lot of noise. I’d put my fears into her? What crap. I hadn’t approved of Jess Deeping, and for damn good reasons, solid, motherly reasons. She ought to be thanking, not blaming, me. If it weren’t for me she’d have married that boy, had eight kids, and be living on a dairy farm. Lord help us. Deeping, what kind of a name was that anyway? I’d always hated it, it sounded backwoods and common and sinister. Van Allen, that was a name you could be proud of.
I remembered the time, years ago, when Jess Deeping first came to our house, a winter day with the trees bare and ice coating the branches. I watched him and Carrie through the kitchen window while they prowled around the backyard in their heavy coats, liking it better out there than in the warm house where I could’ve heard them. Once, by the old sandbox, he put his arms around her chest from behind, plucked her off the ground, and twirled her around and around, as fast as he could. She yelled and shrieked, hanging on to his arms, laughing so hard she lost her breath. I could hardly look at her face, or his. Especially his, excited and satisfied, full of his gleeful power. You’re mine, I can have you anytime I want. I’d pressed up close to the window, chilled and revolted. Men like that, men with “passion,” hah, passions they didn’t even know enough to hide, they frightened the life out of me, always had. I wasn’t sorry for anything. If I had saved Carrie from the likes of Jess Deeping, I was nothing but glad.
“Coffee’s ready,” I yelled.
She came in, sat down. Blew into her cup with her elbows on the table, back hunched. She’s got my shoulders; O’Hara women have handsome shoulders. But her streaky, honey-colored hair had more silver strands in it than I’d ever noticed before. Everybody’s getting old.
“It stopped raining,” she said. “Just drizzling now. It’s supposed to start again, though. Supposed to rain all day tomorrow.”
“Won’t your animals get wet?”
“It doesn’t matter, everything’s waterproof. Well—I’m not sure about the owl.” She rubbed her forehead tiredly.
The ark sails tomorrow. I could let go of being against it now, I supposed, since it had already served its purpose. Done its worst. “You still going to the sailing?”
“I can’t think about it now.”
“No, I guess not.”
We drank coffee in silence.
“I don’t blame my mother for anything,” I mentioned. “And I could if I wanted to. Negative influence, that’s what she had on me. She influenced me not to be anything like her.”
Carrie just nodded wearily.
“All I ever wanted for you was happiness, and that’s the God’s truth.”
“I know, Mama.”
“And I don’t know what you’re talking about—I did let you go. Don’t you remember, I’m the one who said yes when you wanted to go away to college? It was your father who wanted you to go to Remington.”
“I remember.”
And afterward, sure enough, she didn’t come back. She moved around with Stephen, she’d probably never have come home if he hadn’t needed a job so badly. That didn’t sound like any unhealthy mama’s hold to me. That sounded like an independent woman making her own way in the world, far away from her mother, nowhere near her mother.
As far away from her mother as she could get.
Well, there it was. We danced around it, pretended it wasn’t there, that nothing had changed since the olden days when we used to like each other. A pure kind of love—we did have that when I was young and Carrie was a girl, I know we did. I know it’s not realistic to think you can keep it, but oh, that’s what I want back, that pure love, when Carrie was all mine. When she was me.
No, I don’t mean that, not the way it sounds. You were too strong for me, Mama—but how can you be too strong? That sounded like I wanted to overpower her. Be her.
“Another thing,” I said. “Isn’t it good to be strong? Doesn’t every mother want to pass along strength to her children? And isn’t the best way by example? Yes to all that,” I answered myself when Carrie wouldn’t. “Anyway, I’m not that strong. I’m just loud. A million things scare the hell out of me.”
“Name one.”
“No.”
She finally smiled.
“All I ever tried to do was save you from danger,” I said.
“Danger.”
“But I never get any credit for that, oh, no, you had to find out on your own what scares you, you couldn’t take my common sense word for it.”
“Well, that makes no sense at all—”
“So what if I was in favor of you marrying Stephen? Why shouldn’t I have been? If you two didn’t have perfect happiness together, I don’t believe that’s my fault—and anyway, you got Ruth out of it, so you can’t call it a failure.”
“No.”
“And if Stephen was too much like your father, that’s not my fault, either. Right?”
“Right.”
Oh, she just didn’t want to fight anymore. But she thought I’d used my influence—my strength, ha-ha—to get her to marry some kind of a duplicate copy of the man I married. For company, I guess, so I could feel vindicated or something. Exonerated.
I shuddered, and spit back the last sip of cold coffee. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so old. Too old to change. If I was a bad mother, I’d have to die a bad mother. I ran my hand over the smooth top of the oak table, stripped, sanded, stained, and varnished by Carrie, and thought, Where’d she get this craftiness? Not from me, and definitely not from George. Well, that’s a blessing. Kids have gifts, flaws, quirks, streaks, whole sides of themselves that have nothing to do with their parents. That’s a big relief, isn’t it? At least you don’t have to take the blame for every damn thing.
When the doorbell rang, Carrie jolted up like she’d been electrocuted. “I’ll get it.” Barefooted, she raced out of the kitchen.
I heard a man’s voice on the front porch. I got up more slowly and went in the living room. Peering around the corner, expecting a policeman, I recognized Jess Deeping just before Carrie raised up her arms and put them around his neck.
I couldn’t take my eyes off them. He didn’t see me, he had his eyes closed, his face half buried in her hair. It was like a movie, and they were as far from me and just as untouchable as stars up on a screen. I don’t know how long they stood that way, neither one talking or moving, just holding on, as if…I don’t know what. As if they were getting blood transfusions from each other. Then I couldn’t look anymore. I walked backward into the kitchen, one quiet step at a time.
I went to the sink and ran water, squeezed Joy on my hands, rinsed. I yanked a paper towel off the holder, and over the sound of swishing paper I could hear Carrie’s urgent voice, high and full, direct, not careful, overlapping Jess Deeping’s baritone comfort. She didn’t talk to me like that, I didn’t know that tone. With me she held back. She protected herself.
The screen door slammed, and I hurried back into the living room. Empty. I pressed my face to the screen door. Jess Deeping drove a pickup truck. What else? You weren’t allowed to say “white trash” anymore, but you still knew it when you saw it, and that’s what that whole Deeping family had been, the cow farmer husband and his nutty wife and their slouching, long-haired boy. I’d detested them, Carrie was right about that. They came too close to the kind of people I’d been trying my whole adult life to get away from. I had, too.
The two of them stood by the curb next to the truck, oblivious to the misting rain. He had her hand, he was looking down at it while he talked, and she had her head up, looking full in his face. She came up to his cheekbone. He wasn’t a bad-looking man. He’d filled out since the days when he used to skulk around her like a starving crow, singed-looking
somehow, wounded, always scrawny as a pitchfork. And always with that look in his eye like he wanted to snatch her up in his beak, his claws, and fly her off to his hiding place. That boy had never wanted anything but Carrie. I knew he was the enemy the minute I set eyes on him.
He leaned down and put his cheek on hers. They were saying good-bye. It looked like they’d kiss when they straightened up, but they didn’t. He started around the back of his truck—and stopped when a little silver Honda pulled up behind it. George’s.
I told him to stay home, I said there was nothing for him to do, and here he was anyway. Was he my knight, or Carrie’s? It didn’t seem fair that she got two and I didn’t get any. He got out of the car like an old man, his tweed pants loose and ash strewn, his eyeglasses bumping against his chest on a chain. Carrie went and hugged him, but she didn’t get much back—his worried smile and some pats on the back, as if he were burping her. He kept his hand on her shoulder, though, while the three of them had a serious-looking conversation. To my knowledge George hadn’t seen Jess Deeping in twenty-five years, but if he thought anything was funny about him being at Carrie’s house, he didn’t show it.
I got tired of watching from afar. I punched open the screen door and marched out to join the party.
Carrie watched me come like I was Sherman bearing down on Atlanta. I saw her take a deep breath and lift her chin, girding herself. Lord, was I that formidable a character? If she only knew. That what I wouldn’t mind right now was somebody, preferably my husband, to fold me up in his arms and hold me tight and tell me everything was going to be just fine.
I stood next to George and interrupted him. “What’s going on?” He didn’t touch me, but I wasn’t surprised; I even saw it from his side for a change. You don’t hug a woman who punches and marches and interrupts. You move back, out of the way.
Jess Deeping bowed his head to me. “Mrs. Danziger,” he said in his low, sympathetic voice. You’d’ve sworn, if you were an outsider, that he didn’t despise me. He’d always been that way, I remembered, soft-spoken and respectful. He’d treated me, and George, too, with a funny kind of gentleness, in fact. It always put me on my guard.
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