by Ruth White
“She’s not?”
“No, she’s real sweet and good-natured.”
“Then can you explain why she has kept you from me all these years?”
I can’t answer that, but I feel like I have to defend her. “She’s been the best mom in the world, and I miss her.”
Later, when we return home, I come up behind Dad sitting at the picnic table in the backyard. I can see that he is studying the snapshot of Mom, and his face is sad.
Suddenly I hear in my head, Lost love can be found again!
I stop dead in my tracks, then slip away before Dad knows I am there.
I manage to keep my mind off Silver almost all day long. But when darkness comes I think of him and wonder how far he has traveled today with his dad. They were not leaving until after that two o’clock wedding. Would they be in Lorain, Ohio, yet? Probably not. Sleep is a long time coming for me.
24
By Monday afternoon, I’m beginning to wonder why I have not received the money from Mom. I’m on the front porch writing another letter to her, a long one this time.
Dad wanted to get a look at Uncle Otis’s business, so a little while ago he rode with Poppy up to the shop. The boys are playing in the backyard, and Aunt June is in the kitchen starting supper.
I gaze at the mountains, trying to find the right words to tell Mom about Silver. A long Greyhound bus comes around the curve and screeches to a stop in front of Richards’ Grocery. I am so absorbed in my letter I am not paying much attention to who is getting off that bus, until suddenly there she is—Mom!
As the bus moves on, she looks with uncertainty toward the house. She seems so small standing there beside the road holding a suitcase.
“Mom!” I yell, and drop everything where it is.
She sees me and smiles and waves.
I run to the edge of the road and stop, because this is a road you do not rush into, no matter who is on the other side waiting for you. Mom sets the suitcase down. When all is clear I run across and straight into her arms.
“Oh, Mom! Mom! I have missed you so much, and I’m so sorry!”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she says as she hugs me tight. How good it feels to be in her arms again.
We are both crying and hugging and talking at the same time.
“I should have called you that night. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry I left you here to fend for yourself among strangers!” Mom says. “I knew how hurt you were when you didn’t write, or call me back that night.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve had a big old time. These are good people.”
“I know they are. Otherwise, I couldn’t have left you here.”
Mr. and Mrs. Richards both come outside the store to see what they can see. About the same time Mrs. Mays comes out onto her porch.
I grab Mom’s suitcase and nudge her across the road before they can detain us.
“I’m actually glad now,” I try to reassure her, “that you brought me here. It’s been fun.”
“That’s good, but I’m here to fetch you,” she says with a smile.
We reach the porch.
“Mom, you didn’t have to go to so much trouble and expense. I did write to you the day after you called. I told you to send me the money for the bus. Didn’t you get my letter?”
“No, I got nothing from you, but no matter. I’m here now. I borrowed money from Grace to come up here before I start my new job, and this way you don’t have to ride that bus all the way to Florida by yourself.”
Now I ask her the big burning question. “Why did you let me believe that Dad knew about me?”
She is absolutely quiet, and she won’t look me in the eye. I’m puzzled that she doesn’t answer. Did my mom lie to me after all?
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you, and I don’t have a good enough answer for you.”
“But, Mom! All these years I have believed my dad knew I was expected, and that he didn’t want to see me, that he didn’t even care if I was a girl or boy.”
“I wanted to get back at him,” she says so softly I can hardly hear her. “He didn’t deserve to know you, and I didn’t want to share you. And I was so angry and hurt when I found out that he ran off with that … that person.”
“But he didn’t! He didn’t!”
“Of course he did … but—” she interrupts herself. “What do you know about it?”
“I’ve met him,” I tell her.
“No kidding?” she says, then looks at the front door. “Is he here now?”
“He’s not inside right this minute, but he’ll be back soon. He came home a few days after you called.”
And now I can’t read my mom. I thought I knew her every expression. But the look on her face is one I have never seen before. And I can tell she is shaken.
I try to calm her. “He’s been real nice to me.”
She covers her face with her hands. “I should go, Garnet.”
“Go where? What are you afraid of?”
Aunt June comes out wiping her hands on her apron.
“I thought I heard someone out here,” she says, then exclaims, “I’ll declare! I’ll declare!”
“It’s Mom,” I say.
“It sure as the world is!” Aunt June cries. “What a nice surprise.”
“Hello, June,” Mom says. “I came on the Greyhound to get Garnet.”
I carry the suitcase for Mom as we go inside.
“Come on in the kitchen and have a glass of iced tea,” Aunt June says to Mom. “You must be worn out. How many hours were you on that bus?”
“Too many,” Mom says. “But I’m not going to put you out. I can find a place to stay tonight. And we’ll get the first bus we can catch tomorrow.”
“Nonsense!” Aunt June says. “You’ll stay right here. You can sleep with Garnet. Your bed is big enough for two, isn’t it, Garnet?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s plenty big,” I say.
We leave the suitcase in the hallway and go into the kitchen for tea. Although Aunt June is well into cooking supper, she insists on fixing Mom some crackers and cheese for right now with her tea. Mom accepts the snacks gratefully. She has not eaten since breakfast. I can’t wait to tell her about Silver, so I do it while she’s eating. She seems surprised, and her mind is taken off Dad for a few minutes.
“My little girl,” she exclaims. “How grown-up you are! When did it happen? And look at your clothes! Where did you get that pretty outfit?”
I tell her about Poppy and Uncle Otis pitching in to buy me new things. She doesn’t say a word about that, and I wonder if it makes her feel bad that somebody else had to buy me clothes.
Then I hear car doors slam, and I know it must be Dad and Poppy coming home. I decide I’ll just go warn Dad that Mom is here so it won’t be such a shock when he sees her. I run through the dining room to find him coming in the front door.
“Hey, Rosebud!” he says to me. “Is this your stuff out here on the porch?”
He’s referring to my letter-writing material.
“Yeah, but, Dad, listen …”
“You better pick it up before the wind gets it.”
Poppy enters and barges right on to the kitchen. Dad starts to follow him, but I clutch his arm.
“Dad!”
“What? What is it?”
“Mom’s in there, Dad.”
“In there?” He points toward the kitchen like he does not believe me.
“Yeah.”
“Right now?” he croaks.
He looks at the suitcase sitting in the hallway, and I watch his face go pale again as it did on the morning when he first realized who I was.
“Yeah, she just got here on the Greyhound bus, and she’s nervous to see you again, so be nice to her.”
He stares at me blankly, but he does not go toward the kitchen again. He rubs one hand across the back of his neck. He turns toward the door as if to leave. I can almost see his mind racing. Then he looks at
the stairs, and bolts up them two at a time.
25
In the kitchen Poppy and Aunt June are being very attentive to Mom, trying to put her at ease, but in spite of all their efforts, Mom seems agitated and uncomfortable again. I sit down beside her.
“I told Dad you are here.”
I watch Mom’s fingers flutter to her throat. She takes a long, deep breath.
Aunt June is working as fast as she can on supper, and Poppy pitches in to help. They try to keep up a steady stream of conversation as they work together, but nobody mentions Dad. I keep watching the door, expecting him to come in at any time, but he does not appear.
After a while, the boys come in from the backyard and Uncle Otis arrives home from work. They are all very pleasant to Mom, and Avery tells her she is prettier than Shelley Winters.
When food is placed on the table, Dad still has not appeared, and Mom says uneasily, “I think maybe I’ll just go and rest for a while. I’m not very hungry anymore.”
“Oh, no, Mom,” I protest. “Please eat supper with us. We have so much fun at meals.”
“Oh, yes, we do,” Poppy says. “You don’t want to miss a meal at this table.”
“Garnet, go find your dad, and tell him supper is ready,” Aunt June says.
I go slowly through the dining room and up the stairs. Dad’s bedroom door is open but he’s not in there. I hear water running in the bathroom, so I tap on that door.
“Dad?”
No answer.
I tap again. “Dad?”
He mumbles something.
“Dad, Aunt June sent me to fetch you for supper.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I wait for a moment, then ask him, “Are you coming down?”
“Yeah. In a minute.”
I go to the front porch and collect my letter-writing stuff, then wait for Dad at the foot of the stairs, but he does not emerge. I go back to the kitchen.
“He said in a minute,” I tell Aunt June.
I sit beside Mom and touch her hand. She tries to smile at me. When everybody is seated and there’s nothing left to do but wait for Dad, silence falls over the kitchen. Then we hear him on the stairs, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Oh, there he is,” Aunt June says, and I can tell she is relieved too.
When I first see Dad walk into the kitchen, I am thunderstruck. You can tell he has showered, as his hair is all wet, and he has changed into fresh clothes, but the shocker is that he has shaved off that wild beard, and now you can see the bare handsome face from the photo on the mantel. There are a few razor knicks on his neck, but other than that, he has come through his brush-clearing bloodless.
Of course everybody is staring at him with open mouths, but to my relief nobody mentions that he has shaved.
“Betty,” Dad says politely to Mom, and nods his head in her direction.
“August,” she replies just as politely.
Dad sits down across from me and Mom, and Aunt June says the blessing. As the food is passed around, the tension melts a little for the rest of us, and we begin to eat and talk all at once, but Mom and Dad are quiet as they peck nervously at their food. They don’t look at each other or exchange comments at all.
I realize this supper is not as much fun as I told Mom it would be, and when we’re done eating, everybody lapses into silence again. It’s just too weird for words, and I start thinking ahead. How will it be with Mom and Dad here in the kitchen for the after-supper get-together? Will we still have laughter? Or will the mood be spoiled? But Mom has been on a bus for hours. She will probably want to go to bed early. And tomorrow? My spirits sink. Yes, early tomorrow we’ll be gone from here, maybe forever.
Then Dad startles me right out of my thoughts.
“You should have told me!” he exclaims. And it’s clear that he’s talking to Mom and nobody else.
“Told you what?” Mom replies, although everybody, including her, knows exactly what he means.
“About Garnet. I could have helped.”
Mom’s face is scarlet, but she manages to answer calmly. “We got along just fine.” And I’m thinking now it’s her turn to cross her fingers. “Besides, you were not there to tell, remember? And I didn’t know where you were.”
“You could have contacted June,” he says.
“Well, I did contact someone—your old buddy, Jake,” Mom says, “and he informed me that you left town with Brenda.”
“Brenda who?” Dad sputters.
“You know who!” Mom sputters back. “The carnival singer!”
“I never knew her name,” Dad says. “I told you then and I’ll tell you again, there was nothing between me and that carnival singer. But that Jake Farmer!” Dad laughs a funny bitter laugh. “Jake was in love with you! Of course he wanted you to think I ran away with that girl. He figured with me out of the picture, he might …”
Dad pauses and looks around the room at all the faces watching him and listening, and he suddenly appears embarrassed and self-conscious.
“Go on,” Uncle Otis says to him, like he can’t wait to hear what’s coming next.
“Well, I did hitch a ride with the carnival because, if you’ll remember, I didn’t have a car,” Dad continues, “but I didn’t see that singer again a’tall. I was with—I don’t know how many people, scrunched up in the cab of a truck. I rode all the way to Louisville holding a redheaded midget on my lap!”
Small explosions escape from Emory’s mouth, and he covers his face with his hands. That’s when all my nervous tension bubbles to the surface, and I fight back my own giggles. To hide a smile, Uncle Otis acts like he’s picking something up off the floor. But Mom is not smiling, nor is Dad.
“I turned eighteen the day we got to Louisville, so I joined the army and went to war,” Dad goes on.
“Eighteen!” I cry. “So how old were you when you got married?”
Dad and Mom glance at me, but neither one answers.
“They were both seventeen,” Poppy volunteers. “I had to sign for them.”
“Only three years older than I am right now!” I say. “And, Dad, you think I’m too young to—”
“Anyway,” Dad interrupts me. “I was sent overseas.” He clears his throat and changes positions. “You knew where I was when you got my allotment checks, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Mom says, “you were about as far away from me and Garnet as you could get—across the ocean.”
Dad clears his throat again and goes on. “After a year, I was wounded and sent home.”
“Yeah, he got shot in the butt!” Avery explains.
That’s just too much. Emory and I lose it.
But Dad seems rattled, and Mom’s face looks like it might crumble.
“I’ll declare,” Aunt June says. “Aren’t we being rude? Here y’all are trying to have a serious conversation, and all we can do is laugh. August! Betty! Come with me right now!”
She gets up and starts out of the room, then turns and motions for Mom and Dad to follow her. They both protest mildly, but Aunt June will not take no for an answer.
“Come on now, right this way,” she says.
They follow Aunt June from the room, and I follow at a distance. She leads Mom and Dad to the log room, opens the door, which magically seems not to be locked for once, and motions them inside.
“Now, y’all go in there and talk it all out,” she says kindly. “Nobody will bother you.”
Reluctantly Mom and Dad go into the log room together, and Aunt June shuts the door behind them.
26
Aunt June shoos me back into the kitchen where she puts an arm around me and says, “They have a lot to work out in private.”
For the next half hour we hear an occasional muffled outburst, but mostly there is no sound from the log room. We begin, one by one, to wander into the TV room. When it’s time for pop and candy I get up to go to the store with Avery.
“Y’all be careful crossing that road,” Aunt June hollers her usual remi
nder.
In the hallway I tiptoe to the door of the log room and place my ear to the crack beside the latch. Avery comes up beside me as we both listen.
I hear Mom saying, “You know as well as I do there are no jobs here for women. Men get all the breaks.”
I can’t make out Dad’s reply. When Avery and I get back from the store, I take drinks and candy to Mom and Dad. First I listen outside the door again. I don’t hear anything. I knock.
“Come in,” Dad says.
I go in. They are standing across the room from each other.
“I brought you some treats,” I say, and set them on the table beside the rocker, along with a bottle opener.
They say nothing. I can tell their minds are totally absorbed in their conversation, and they are barely aware that I am in the room. I back out slowly.
“Thanks,” Mom remembers to say as I leave.
Again, I listen at the door.
I hear Dad say, “I should have contacted you to see if you needed anything.”
Now, that sounds encouraging.
I go back to the TV room.
“How goes it?” Aunt June says to me.
“Good, I think,” I say, and smile.
Then we all become involved in watching George Burns and Gracie Allen, and for a while I forget everything else.
It must be around eight-thirty when the phone rings. I think briefly of Silver, but no, his dad probably won’t let him call me long-distance. Aunt June answers the ring. In the TV room you can’t normally hear a phone conversation from the October room, but suddenly I do hear Aunt June cry out, “Oh, no!”
Uncle Otis and Poppy exchange glances. Uncle Otis leaves the room. Aunt June stays on the phone for a few minutes longer. When she hangs up, I can hear Uncle Otis talking to her, but I can’t hear his words. Then Poppy leaves the room too.
“Where’s everybody going?” Avery wants to know.
Nobody answers him.
Now my curiosity gets the best of me. I go into the October room where I find Aunt June, Uncle Otis, and Poppy huddled together, whispering. When they see me, they stop abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Who was on the phone?”
Aunt June’s eyes are shiny with tears.