Silver Threads

by Bette Lee Crosby

  The tears filling Brooke’s eyes spilled over and again ran down her cheeks. Drew gently pulled her into his arms and tried as best he could to comfort her.

  “The doctors tried to save your mama,” he said, “but they couldn’t.”

  Brooke continued to sob, holding tight to him just as he held tight to her. With her small body so close, he could feel the tiny heart shattering. He wanted desperately to say something that would be of comfort, but there simply was no comfort to be had. Not for him, nor for her.

  They remained locked together for a long while, but in time her sobbing slowed to a broken-hearted sniffle. When that happened, Drew led her to the bathroom and wiped a cool washcloth across her face. He kissed her forehead and promised he would always be there for her.

  “I know I’m not your mama,” he said, “but I’ll do the best I can.”

  “What about when you’re working?” she asked. “Who’s going to take care of me while you’re working?”

  It was a question that caught Drew off guard.

  “We’ll work something out,” he answered.

  “Please don’t make me go live with Miss Marta.”

  “You won’t have to live with anybody but me. How’s that?”

  With her blue-green eyes still watery, she gave a somber nod.

  Drew knew then his life was never going to be the same. He could no longer go town to town calling on clients, attending industry conferences or flying to Chicago to check on a press run. He now had a responsibility greater than all of those things. His daughter, a tiny lookalike of her mama, was now his sole responsibility.

  There was no one else.

  Jennifer’s parents lived in California, and both were still working. They’d come for a week, maybe two, but in time they’d return home. They were lawyers with a life of their own.

  His dad was a bachelor and not someone who could be counted on. Drew’s mom died the year he turned fourteen, and he could still remember the cloud of gloom that settled over the house. His dad wrapped himself in a cocoon of sorrow and ventured out only to go to work. In the evening he’d sit on the sofa and drink beer as he cursed the fate that had brought him to this point. It was as if Drew had ceased to exist along with his mom.

  Meals, when there was one, consisted of Chinese food scraped from a container or canned spaghetti. Although Drew felt the loss as much as his dad, there was no one to turn to for comfort. Those were bad years for everyone. Drew, then a freshman in high school, got mixed up with a wild crowd. The night he got arrested it was Margaret Thompson, his history teacher, who he called for help.

  Brooke deserved better. He had to make it better. Somehow, someway he had to learn to be the kind of parent she needed.

  That morning as they sat across from one another at the breakfast table, Drew told his daughter that she was the most important thing in his life.

  “I won’t be traveling anymore,” he said. “I’m going to find a way to work out of the house, so I’ll be here every afternoon when you come home from school.”

  She pushed a few Cheerios to the side of the bowl and looked at him with an expression he knew as Jennifer’s.

  “You swear?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Cross my heart,” he replied.

  ~ ~ ~

  The week that followed was a frenzy of activity. The house was filled with people, and Drew’s cell phone never stopped beeping and buzzing. Those who didn’t call texted message after message. “How can I help?” they asked. “What can I do?” He tried to keep up with answering the messages, but before long it became impossible.

  Jennifer’s parents flew in and Drew’s dad came with his latest girlfriend, a woman twenty years his junior. Marta whirled in and out a dozen times a day, and each time she arrived carrying something: a casserole for supper, clean sheets for the guestroom, a stack of freshly laundered towels.

  “You really don’t need to do this,” Drew told her but she poo-pooed the thought and left, promising some sweet rolls for the next morning’s breakfast.

  The neighbors came in droves, and they too brought food: cakes, pies, trays of cheese and sandwich meat. Lara Stone, Ava’s mama, brought a chicken dinner complete with mashed potatoes and gravy.

  “I knew Jennifer had a migraine that morning,” Lara said through tears. “I should have offered to pick Brooke up and drive her to school. If I’d done that Jennifer might still be alive.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Drew replied grimly. “I’m the one who should have been home instead of off in Atlanta.”

  It seemed everyone owned a piece of the guilt for what happened, even Brooke. Sitting side by side with her friend Ava, she whispered that it was her fault for not taking the school bus. When Drew heard that, he took Brooke aside and told her it was absolutely not her fault.

  “Your mama drove you to one place and another because it gave her joy,” he said. “She wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

  Alyce Abrams, Brooke’s teacher, was one of those who came. She knew Jennifer, apparently quite well. She took Drew’s hand in hers and spoke about how Jennifer frequently helped out on class projects.

  “She was someone I could always count on,” Miss Abrams said. “And the children, why, they absolutely adored her.”

  This was yet another part of Jennifer’s life that he knew nothing about. She had so many parts. Helping hands, a loving heart, a giving soul. He had known only one small part of this woman he’d loved: the part that was his wife. He’d missed knowing the woman that these other people had known, and now he was left to fill the emptiness of a spot he knew so little about.

  Before Miss Abrams left she knelt and hugged Brooke.

  “Don’t worry about your schoolwork,” she said. “I’ll send this week’s lessons to the house, and your daddy can help you to get caught up.”

  Drew heard this, and it added to the enormity of the tasks he seemed to be inheriting.

  For him the loss of Jennifer became more pronounced with every day that passed. Long after everyone else had retired for the night, he circled through the rooms, picking up a forgotten dish, emptying one last ashtray, doing the small everyday chores he’d seen her do a thousand times. As he wiped the kitchen counter or straightened the bathroom towels, he remembered her doing these same things, only for her it seemed so easy. She did it with such nonchalance. A single stroke and the counter glistened, whereas he’d sponged it three times and still there were odd spots of jelly or ketchup.

  On the day of the funeral, Brooke clung to him with a ferocity he’d never before seen. Throughout the service and even at the graveside, she’d not said a word. At the very end she’d held to his hand as they moved forward and placed the two roses atop Jennifer’s coffin. That’s when she began to sob hysterically. Drew lifted her into his arms and carried her back to the car.

  That night she climbed into his bed and slept beside him, in the exact spot where her mama had once laid her head.

  The Weeks that Followed

  Sorrow is a thing that, when shared, becomes less bitter. In the early weeks following the funeral, a constant flow of Jennifer’s friends and neighbors stopped by the house. They came and dropped off a casserole or a few grocery items they thought Drew might need. They stayed for a cup of coffee and chatted. They messaged Drew, asking if Brooke need a ride to the Brownie meeting or a pickup for dance class. They listened with a sympathetic ear as he spoke of how he found it hard to accept she was gone, and oddly enough having those strangers fill part of the day somehow made his sorrow more tolerable.

  But as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, they stopped coming and returned to the busyness of their own lives. Little by little the text messages, phone calls and visitations became the exception rather than the rule.

  The only ones who still came were Brooke’s friends, little girls who needed milk poured and snacks prepared. Once they arrived he’d have to set aside whatever he was doing to microwave some popcorn or cut the crust from a pe
anut butter and jelly sandwich, or fix the broken door on a dollhouse, or find the string kite they’d played with last summer.

  When Brooke was at school, Drew had the emptiness of the day to face alone.

  He’d gone back to work a week after the funeral but no longer traveled from town to town seeing customers. Instead of face-to-face meetings, he called or video chatted. He dropped Brooke off at school, then returned to the house and sat at the kitchen table wearing jeans and a tee shirt. The table became a desk of sorts with folders stacked on top of each other and sticky notes stuck to the wall. His business day began when he opened his laptop to discover what new crisis or complaint was waiting, and he cringed when the doorbell chimed in the middle of a call.

  “Aren’t you at the office?” customers would ask, and then he’d have to explain the situation all over again.

  The button down shirts and sport jackets he once wore hung in the closet and gathered dust. There was no more wining and dining the buyers; no more entertaining them with clever stories and jokes. There was only a brisk phone conversation or, worse yet, a video conference where someone mentioned the kitchen sink in the background and laughed. He once might have chuckled himself, but now he’d lost the ability to laugh at such things or make idle chatter over football games, world events and groundbreaking new technology.

  “Are you happy with the spring catalog?” he’d ask, but inevitably there would be some small sticky point that presented a problem. The blue was too blue, the black not sharp enough, the overrun too large or the delivery a day late.

  “We missed having you at the print run,” they’d say. Then Drew would again apologize and explain that he was still trying to work things out.

  “I’ll be there next time,” he’d promise, but he generally wasn’t. The closest printing facilities for Southfield Press were a day’s drive away, and when it was a rotogravure run it meant a flight to the west coast. Even if he was willing to hop on a plane and fly back on the red eye, there was always the problem of Brooke. She had gone from a giggly little girl to a solemn child who rarely smiled.

  “I miss Mama,” she’d say a dozen or more times a day.

  “I miss her too,” he’d reply, and even though he was in the middle of trying to estimate the price for a full color sixteen-page newspaper insert, he’d find himself rethinking that day and feeling the pain of it all over again.

  Every morning he drove Brooke to school and was always there to pick her up at the end of the day.

  “How was school today?” he’d ask, and she’d answer with little more than a shrug.

  As they drove home in silence, he often thought back on the little girl who used to greet him when he returned from a trip. Back then—back when they still had Jennifer—Brooke was always full of chatter about the things they’d done and places they’d gone. Before the dirty clothes he’d carried home were dumped in the laundry basket she’d be telling him about a visit to the library, a spelling test or some weekend event Jennifer had planned for the three of them.

  Now Brooke had almost nothing to say. In the evening she sat at the dining table with her school books open and her mind elsewhere. She’d sit in the same spot for hours doodling circles or squares in the notebook where she was supposed to be working through math problems.

  Several times Drew offered to help, but after their initial experience she grimaced and shook her head.

  The first time he’d offered she’d nodded. He sat alongside of her explaining how to find the sum of 486 and 637 by adding the six and seven together then carrying the one over to the next column.

  “We’re not supposed to do it that way,” she said and burst into tears.

  In between her huffs and puffs of frustration, she finally explained that they had to break the numbers into hundreds, tens and ones, then add up all the components. Not only did she have to come up with the right answer, but she also had to show the thinking she’d gone through to get to it.

  This breaking numbers into digital units thing was foreign to anything Drew had ever known, and the process seemed extremely unwieldy.

  “But why?” he asked. “Why would anyone go through all that when it’s so simple to add two numbers together?”

  Her answer was another bout of tears and the complaint that he was only trying to confuse her.

  “Mama knew to do it like Miss Abrams told us,” Brooke said through angry tears. “How come you don’t?”

  Drew could do nothing but give a baffled shrug.

  All those years Jennifer had led him to believe he was the backbone of their family, when in truth she was. She alone held the secret to making everyone happy.

  Before three months had passed, the hours of doing homework had grown into a gigantic bone of contention. With her mouth pulled into a pout, Brooke sat on one side of the table pretending to study while he sat on the opposite side scrolling through emails on his phone or leafing through a newspaper he’d already read.

  “When you finish your homework, we can have a bowl of ice cream,” he’d suggest, but even that was to no avail.

  Finally when the clock struck ten, he’d tell Brooke it was time for bed and say she could finish in the morning. Of course she never did, and in early May Miss Abrams sent a note home saying she’d like to meet with Drew.

  “It seems we have a problem in that Brooke’s grades have fallen dramatically,” she wrote.

  The following Thursday he picked Brooke up at school, drove her home and then asked Marta to come over and stay with her while he went back for the meeting with Miss Abrams.

  “I’m eight,” Brooke complained. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Trying to humor her, he said, “I know you don’t. Marta is only going to be here in case of an emergency.”

  Brooke’s chin dropped as her mouth opened in a huge O, and her eyes grew big and round. “What kind of emergency?”

  “I didn’t mean a real emergency,” Drew replied quickly. “I just meant in case you wanted her to fix you a bite to eat or help with homework. Something like that.”

  “She doesn’t know how to do math, and I don’t like what she gives me to eat.”

  Drew raised an eyebrow and gave her a look of questionable belief. “You used to love Marta’s cookies.”

  “No, I didn’t. I just pretended so I could be polite.”

  “Well, keep pretending and be polite for a while longer, because I have to go to this meeting with Miss Abrams.”

  “Why can’t I go with you?”

  “Because she wants to speak to me privately.”

  “I’ll wait in the car. I can bring my book and study while I’m waiting.”

  “I’m not going to leave you in the car all by yourself.”

  He kissed her cheek and said he’d be back in no time at all, but as he started to go he saw the fear in her face. He turned back, hugged her another time and then wrote a number on the inside cover of her notebook.

  “This is my cell phone number,” he said. “If anytime, not just today but anytime, you get frightened you can call me. When you do, your name will flash on the screen and I’ll answer no matter where I am or what I’m doing.”

  She gave an apprehensive smile. “Honest?”

  “Cross my heart,” he said and kissed her again.

  That afternoon Miss Abrams had little to say other than what she’d already said in her note. Brooke’s grades had taken a dive.

  “She used to love reading and writing, but now she has no interest in it at all. In fact, last week she didn’t even turn in her essay on zoo animals.”

  Miss Abrams ultimately suggested Brooke might benefit from seeing a psychologist.

  “We as lay people have no real concept of the psychological trauma a child goes through with the loss of a parent,” she said.

  “Actually I think I have a pretty good idea,” Drew replied. “We’ve gone through a lot together, and somehow we’re managing.”

  “Managing for a child isn’t the same as thrivin
g. Until recently Brooke was always an excellent student, so I have to believe this drop off is because she’s still suffering the trauma of losing her mother. Maybe if she spoke to someone who could rationalize this—”

  “Rationalize?” Drew echoed with a note of sarcasm.

  “You know, explain that such feelings are normal.”

  As she continued Drew drifted into his own thoughts. The painful truth was that normal no longer existed for them. Their little world had slid off its axis and spun out of control. The best he or Brooke could hope for was to simply hang on, and perhaps sooner or later life would right itself.

  Until then he was all she had, and he would be there for her. If he had to learn the new way of doing math he would. He would try to be both mother and father for Brooke. He would learn to cook the foods she liked, start sorting laundry by colors and do all the thousands of other things Jennifer had done.

  Somewhere deep within his heart he knew Brooke didn’t need a psychologist; what she needed was a mother. But the problem was he had no idea of how to be one.

  Drew

  Last night after Brooke went to bed, I sat up for a long while wondering what I was doing wrong and how I could best fix it. I know Brooke misses her mama, and I don’t have Jennifer’s way of comforting her. I try, but it’s not the same.

  Sometimes I do something the way I think Jennifer would have done it, and Brooke gets upset. That’s NOT how Mama does it, she says and stands there with her arms folded across her chest and a mad look on her face. It would be easy enough to think she’s angry with me, but that’s not really it. What she’s angry at is the unfairness of life, and I can’t really blame her. I’m angry at it myself.

  It was after midnight when I remembered that incident when Brooke was just a baby. Jennifer had the flu and was so sick she couldn’t even get out of bed. I was tending the baby. That evening Brooke started crying, and I just couldn’t get her to stop. I walked the floor with her for hours, patted her back, changed her diaper, jiggled a rattle in front of her and did everything I could remember seeing Jennifer do, but she wouldn’t stop crying.