The Lost Mother

by Mary McGarry Morris

  The next morning his father was up before the sun had risen. The first light filtered through the trees along with the clear trill of a bird. Cans rattled. From under the crook of his elbow Thomas watched his father lift the pouch from the nail, then with a sigh sit down at the table. He rolled six cigarettes for the day, licked the end papers, then put them into his shirt pocket. He took out the letter. With the crinkle of the unfolding paper Thomas closed his eyes. His father got up and stood by his cot. Those few seconds were the longest agony the boy had ever endured. He tried to breathe slowly as if he were sleeping. Even through his closed lids his father’s shadow was consuming him, the way the pond’s blackness had overcome the kitten. His father knew that he had killed his sister’s cat, just as he knew he had read the letter. Now he would pay. He waited, almost straining toward the blow. The air stirred as his father walked out of the tent.

  4

  Thomas was back in his old school in Belton. All the students were taught by Miss Hall. Each grade sat in its own row. Last year for those few months they had lived in town, the school he and Margaret had attended had different rooms for each class. It had been less confusing than this babble of so many lessons going on at once, first grade reciting the alphabet, eighth graders naming presidents, but it had been boring.

  He didn’t know how old Miss Hall was. It was hard to tell with fat ladies. Fifty probably, judging from her thin gray hair. She lived in town with her shy, unmarried brother whose only job was driving her to the little schoolhouse every day, earlier on cold mornings so she could get the coal stove fired up before her students arrived. Everyone knew Miss Hall preferred girls to boys, but for some reason Thomas was the boy she liked least of all. So far this year her favorite girl was Margaret. The first day of school Miss Hall had gasped when Margaret walked in the door. “Your hair! What happened to those long ringlets?” Like so much else from their old life, Thomas had almost forgotten the bedtime ritual of his mother wrapping the long strands of his sister’s hair in rags.

  Most days now Margaret’s hair was snarled and frizzy. Her arms and legs were scabbed with bug bites and the mysterious scratches they invariably emerged from the woods with. Now that he thought of it, watching his sister from the end of the row, she was starting to look like poor Carol Pfeiffer, whose large family lived in a tar-paper shack. Carol sat in front of him. Every day the split seam on her dress tore a little more at the shoulder. Her brown, fuzzy hair was short as a boy’s. Bugs, most likely. Tracks of grime ran up the back of her neck and she reeked of kerosene. Her long fingernails were caked with dirt. Instead of shoes she wore floppy black rubber galoshes, the buckles long ago broken off. Her mother wasn’t right, crazy as a loon people said. Carol didn’t act too right herself. She swore and hit kids and was always stealing things. Miss Hall didn’t like Carol at all, though she tried to be kind, bringing her pears or apples and sandwiches to eat at school when many of the other children went home for lunch.

  The stove in the little schoolhouse was glowing. The week’s rain and cold nights had turned life in the tent raw and miserable. For the last few weeks his father kept saying he was going to look for a place to rent. They couldn’t live there during the winter, which already seemed hard on their heels. This morning had been so cold that Margaret wouldn’t get out of bed. Their father had left earlier, so it was up to Thomas. He had tried everything—bribery, threats, false promises. He couldn’t leave her alone and if they both missed school Miss Hall would tell their father. Finally, he had no choice but tip her off the cot. Margaret cried as she dressed in her damp clothes. Still wet from yesterday’s washing, her socks sagged over her ankles. She ate her stale biscuits then whimpered through the drizzle all along the puddled road. Actually, this was the best place for them, Thomas knew the minute they stepped inside the warm schoolhouse.

  The Battle of Gettysburg started on July 1, 1863. He had forgotten there was going to be a test on important Civil War dates. Studying in the tent was difficult with so little light. Now that the nights were so cold, they got into bed soon after they ate supper. Sleep seemed the only thing his father looked forward to anymore. If his mother had written again, the letter hadn’t gone into the tobacco pouch. The water-streaked letter had disappeared and his father had never said a word about it.

  Carol Pfeiffer spun around and demanded that he stop kicking her chair. He told her he wasn’t. Actually he’d only been tapping his foot, nervous that he’d be called on. Yes, he was, she said, and if he did it again she would tell Miss Hall. Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president and he was assassinated on April 14, 1865. Miss Hall rose quickly from her desk and went to Margaret, who was crying again. At the touch of her shoulder Margaret sobbed loudly. All recitation stopped. Every eye was on his sister.

  “What is it, dear?” Miss Hall bent close. “Tell me. You can tell me.”

  Thomas froze. This morning he’d gotten so angry at her bawling under the covers that he’d told her it was all her fault their mother had gone away. He told her about the letter and how in it she said she was never coming back again because Margaret was such a spoiled crybaby. Why had he done it? To hurt her. To make her feel as sad as he was inside. But he could see what a horrible mistake he’d made. Miss Hall would tell his father, who would punish him not just for his cruelty, but, finally, for having read the letter.

  “I’m cold,” Margaret cried through chattering teeth. “My socks are wet and I don’t feel good.”

  Miss Hall put Margaret’s shoes under the stove and hung her dingy socks to dry on the mitten rack for everyone to see. Thomas was ashamed. Miss Hall took a crocheted afghan from the closet, and bundled Margaret in it. Thomas tapped his foot uneasily. Margaret seemed to be settling down. From now on he would take better care of her. She had always been loyal in the big things and yet he had hurt her in the worst possible way.

  “Stop it!” Carol Pfeiffer turned and shouted.

  “Carol,” Miss Hall warned, hurrying toward them. There was a pitch Carol reached, a line few dared cross.

  “He keeps kicking my chair!”

  “I was only tapping my foot.”

  “Thomas was only tapping his foot, Carol. Now you just turn around and mind your work.”

  “Who does he think he is kicking my chair? He’s so poor he has to live in a tent.”

  “Carol!”

  “Him and his sister both. And they don’t even have a mother—”

  Apparently that was how Miss Hall learned of their living conditions. He and Margaret had to stay after school and answer a thousand questions while Miss Hall’s brother waited in his car to drive her home. Did they have enough food to eat? How long was their father gone when he went off to work? Finally, Miss Hall gave Thomas a note for his father and sent them on their shameful way.

  The next day Henry Talcott was at the schoolhouse door when the bell rang at three. It was a temporary arrangement, he explained, just until he got enough saved for a new place. He was doing his best, but with so many having such hard times it was the low man on the totem pole that got least. What could Miss Hall say to that? Especially since she was one of the few people in Belton with a salary, fifty-two steady dollars a month no matter how poor her neighbors were.

  Gladys was at the tent when they got home. Arms folded, she had been waiting for them to come.

  “What happened?” Henry called, jumping down from the truck. He hurried to her.

  “She looks sad,” Margaret said as they watched Gladys shake her head with a sweep of her arm.

  “Maybe old Bibeau died,” Thomas said. The old man had been so sick the last time they’d gone to supper there that Henry had to help him up to his bed. The next day Henry returned to move the old man’s bed downstairs. He set it up in the parlor from where the old man harassed Gladys throughout the day. At night she would be startled awake by her father’s clanging cowbell.

  The children climbed down from the truck, then lingered outside pretending to play. Alert as always for news of
their mother, they were desperate to hear what was being said.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Henry said.

  Gladys paced back and forth, her scratchy voice too low now to hear. “… Some sense into him” was all Thomas could make out.

  “Of course not,” Henry said. “It’s his land. I have no say in it.”

  “But he’s not thinking straight,” Gladys suddenly cried. “You know he’s not.”

  “But it’s still his land. And if he wants to sell to Farley then there’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “He knows my father’s confused. That’s why he’s in such a rush for this, the bastard!”

  “Get inside!” Henry ordered his children.

  The details were slow in coming, but the boy learned enough to understand if not why, at least how all the rest of it came about. Fred Farley had offered to buy old Bibeau’s land, leaving him the house and one surrounding acre. For years the old man had held him off, but Farley had finally convinced him things were going from bad to worse, and that soon the land would be worthless. This might be his last chance to sell and not die a pauper. At least he’d have something for his old age.

  The transaction took place a week later in the office of Fred Farley’s lawyer. Henry drove Gladys and her father, then helped the old man up the steep stairs. Gladys wanted Henry to come in with them, but he said it wasn’t his place. He sat in the waiting room until they came out. Thinking himself a wealthy man with Farley’s check in his breast pocket, the old man clung to his benefactor’s arm and let Farley lead him down the stairs and back into Henry’s truck. Farley shook the old man’s hand, then stepped aside as Henry helped Gladys into the truck. Never one to hide her feelings, she had barely spoken to Farley and was saying less to her father.

  “Henry,” Farley said after Henry shut her door. “Where do you think you’ll be going now?

  “I’m bringing Gladys and her father home.”

  Farley drew back his pointed chin in the pinch-mouthed scowl all the men in his family had. “I meant where will you be moving to now?”

  “Don’t know yet.” Henry climbed into the truck.

  Farley came to the window and spoke past Gladys and her father. “Have you got a place?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, Phyllis wants you to know the children are welcome to come stay with us.”

  “Tell Phyllis we’ll be staying in our own place.”

  “You said you don’t have a place.”

  “Not yet, but I’m looking.”

  “I can give you a couple, two, three weeks, Henry, but after that you’re going to have to be off my property.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” He started the truck.

  “Tell you the truth, Henry, I am worried. Worried you’re going to put me in a position I don’t care to be in.”

  In the next week and a half four new slaughtering jobs came Henry’s way. He began to think his run of bad luck was finally over. He had just finished the last job when Jim Tomkins drove up and asked if he’d come by and do one of his two cows. He couldn’t afford feed for both through the winter. Of course Henry would. In fact he’d stop by that very afternoon on his way home.

  He had found a small house for rent not too far from Gladys’s. Empty for the last year, it was dilapidated and swarming with hornets the day he’d seen it. There was a lot of dry rot in the outhouse, but it wouldn’t seem half bad after their summer using the lean-to. The well was in good working order. Henry could have it, the widow who owned it promised, but she wanted a month’s rent the day he moved in and he’d have to fix the broken windows.

  Two more dollars and he’d have the thirteen they’d settled on from her wanting fifteen and his offer of ten. This last job of the day would put him enough over the top for the rent and to buy a couple panes of new window glass. The work went well. Tomkins apologized for paying in change; he’d had to break into his little one’s piggy bank, that’s how far gone he was. He and Henry commiserated a while. Henry wasn’t a Democrat by a long stretch, but if Roosevelt thought he could do something, people ought to at least give him a chance. Tomkins said it was a rich man’s world, always had been, always would be, and that Roosevelt was just one more rich man looking to get richer.

  “You ever hear him talk, that fancy-boy accent of his?” Tomkins said, following him to his truck.

  “Be seeing you, Jim,” he said, climbing up into the truck anxious to be on his way. Even small talk was wearying lately. It was past suppertime and he couldn’t remember if this was the night Gladys was bringing supper by. Days like this fogged his brain. He was afraid he might fall asleep at the wheel. Tomkins lingered by the window complaining about the banks now. They were like cannibals, feeding off their own. Once again Tomkins bragged what a genius his oldest was. Up at the state college there in Burlington, the boy was studying to be a doctor. Tomkins didn’t know how much longer he could keep coming up with tuition. If he didn’t get a break soon, the boy would have to come home. That’d be a shame, Henry said, looking over the wheel at the handsome black-trimmed barn. It was as hard to believe they were all in the same boat as it was to feel much sympathy for a man like Tomkins, who’d been born in that big, brick farmhouse. Even the wife was having to work now, Tomkins admitted. Piano lessons; maybe Henry’s children might want to take from her. She had studied in Boston when she was a young woman. At some conservatory or something, Tomkins wasn’t exactly sure which. Henry said he didn’t think so. Well, if both children took together, Tomkins proposed, he’d only have to pay for the one.

  “They don’t have a piano,” he said. Or even a room to put one in, he thought, pulling out the choke, then turning the key, but nothing’ happened. Nothing. Not even a sputter. Must be the battery, Tomkins said, already raising the hood. Couldn’t be, Henry told him. It was new.

  “New?” Tomkins hooted.

  “Well, new for me.” Three and a half days of digging it had cost from Mrs. Cobb’s dead husband’s truck.

  “Well, it’s deader’n Cobb,” Tomkins declared and, from the looks of it, as old.

  So, that was the first setback. A brand-new battery, the biggest chunk out of the rent money. The next, Thomas was witness to. Margaret’s shoes hurt worse than ever. She had grown a lot over the summer, but nowhere was it more apparent and painful than her longer feet crammed each morning into tight shoes that rubbed her heels and big toes raw. All summer long she’d gone barefoot, but now with the cold and the walk to school she had to wear the only shoes she had. Margaret begged for new ones. Be patient, her father said. Next month after he had enough saved to move them into the house he’d bring her into town for the best pair a girl ever had. What about me? Thomas wanted to ask. His own were lined with paper and cloth, cardboard, anything he could salvage to keep from walking on bare ground. Because the bottoms of his socks had worn out, he had cut them off, but still put on the tops every morning so he’d at least look like he had socks on.

  No one wanted a house to live in more than Thomas. He was convinced that as soon as they were settled his mother would return. It had been the tent that had kept her from coming back as soon as she read his letter. Now, with enough time having passed, he was certain that he had misunderstood her letter. He wished he’d never read it. Like so much that grown-ups said there were different meanings and shades of truth a kid could never untangle.

  How Mrs. Farley found out about Margaret’s “miserable shoes” Thomas didn’t know, but “miserable” was Margaret’s word every time she jammed her feet into them. Probably from Miss Hall, he decided. He had seen the two women talking at recess one day, all the while glancing over at Margaret. He had seen Mrs. Farley there a few times before with items she’d brought for the Pfeiffer children. Last year, when the back half of the Flanagans’ house burned after a lightning strike, Mrs. Farley hauled boxes of clothes and dishes into the schoolhouse for Miss Hall to give to the family. When he wondered why she hadn’t delivered it directly to the Flanagans, his mother h
ad answered that it was to keep people from knowing of her largesse. It wouldn’t be until high school that he would discover the real meaning of that word. Yet for all the rest of his life whenever he came across the word “largesse,” it was the threat of Mrs. Farley’s pillowy roundness that would come to mind first.

  “Hello-hoe! Hello-hoe!” The cheery greeting sounded long before they saw Mrs. Farley emerge from the leafless trees. At first Thomas was confused. The large canvas bag she carried looked like a suitcase. Was she here to pack them up? One of Mr. Farley’s workers had come by last week with a notarized letter from Farley demanding they vacate the property by October 26. Thomas’s father had seemed amused that Farley had gone to so much trouble. He told the worker he expected to be in his own place in another few days.

  “Look what I’ve got for you, Margaret!” Mrs. Farley sat on the trunk with Margaret between her pudgy stockinged knees while from the bag she drew a blue and white dress which she’d smocked herself. She held it under Margaret’s chin. Next came the shoes, shiny black with silver buckles. Margaret couldn’t stop grinning. Even Thomas could tell they were special shoes. The only other girl with such a pair was Dora Tomkins, who always had the best of everything. There was also a doll, which Mrs. Farley said (and Thomas had to agree) greatly resembled Margaret with her clear blue eyes and light, curly hair. Both excited and torn between envy and the certainty of his father’s displeasure, Thomas watched from his cot. Just having a visitor was pleasant. Mrs. Farley’s perfume filled the tent and made him ache for his mother. With old Bibeau sick these last couple of weeks Gladys hadn’t come by much. His father was working long hours trying to get them into the house. You shouldn’t’ve let her in, his father would bark the minute he saw the gifts. And as always it would be Thomas who would bear the brunt of his anger, Thomas who hadn’t been responsible or strong enough. But how could he tell a grown-up lady to leave and take her things with her? The only way would be to say his father didn’t let them accept gifts from strangers. Well, people then, he’d say, because obviously she wasn’t a stranger. Now she was unwrapping a plate of butternut cookies.