by Ann Pearlman
“I know that being happy is the best way to carry Troy’s life and love into my future.”
“Yes,” she says. “You get to decide what you do next. You’ll feel more and more powerful as time goes on.”
I call Tara on the way home. “Hey,” I say, “I love you.”
She laughs. “I love you, too. So what’s up?”
“I’m just glad we—you and I—are where we are. And I’m grateful to you, Aaron, and Smoke. You guys accepted my crying, miserable weird state. Somehow on the road, things became clearer. And I got to know you.” I clear my throat. It’s funny how things fold together and end up determining your path. “I’m so proud you’re my sister.”
She laughs and says, “Me, too.”
“And I’m so glad that Levy and Aaron are part of our family.”
Life doesn’t work out the way we want, the way we expect, or the way we plan. But I still go on. I’ve been loved. I’ve loved.
I smile to myself.
It’s a new life of my making, just beginning.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cookie Party
Tara
I MUST BE out of my mind. Why did I think that a three-year-old could do this? Pieces of dough are ground into the cracks in the linoleum floor. The rolling pin, my grandmother’s, is covered with gooey flour. You can barely see that it is wood. Levy laughs happily, pushing the pin deeper into the batter, and grabs a wad, sticking it in his mouth. “Yummy, Mommy.” Then he snatches more, rolls it into a ball, and then another and another, stacks them on top of each other, and pronounces, “A snowman!”
This is all fun, but it’s not getting ten dozen cookies baked. And it’s making a gigantic mess that will take me all afternoon to clean, so I need a different plan. First I kiss him and tell him how cute his snowman is. The head rolls off and I put it back on.
“You have a great idea. Snowmen. Let’s see how we can make it work.” I pick out three round cookie cutters of different sizes.
“But I have a trick that’ll make it easier. And it’s a fun trick,” I tell him. “Look.” I sprinkle flour over his hands.
He giggles as the powder floats over his fingers.
“Now watch.” I sprinkle some on mine and then rub my fingers together. “It’s magic no-stick-’em. The dough won’t gum up and it’ll be easier to roll.”
Sure enough, it works. Levy presses the cutters into the dough, I gently lift them and overlap the circles so that three are lined up, the largest at the bottom, and press the dough together. I only need to make ten dozen cookies and I’m going to count each snowman as three. Four complete snowmen for each guest family.
Levy concentrates on rolling the dough and pushing the cutters, rubs his hands in flour, puts some on his face. “See Mommy, my face is magic no-stick-’em, too.”
I kiss his nose. “Nope. I didn’t stick. Didn’t stick to my Smidgen.” I realize we seldom call him that anymore. He seems too grown-up now.
He laughs. It’s so much fun making him happy.
The kitchen is already such a mess, but I don’t care. Tonight I’ll clean it all up.
While Levy takes his nap, I finish baking the other cookies. It isn’t snowing yet. The sky is the white it gets when it’s trying to decide what it’ll do. Snow? Blow away and show us some blue? Hang there shielding us from the sun, moon, and stars? There’s only one other house on the street that isn’t boarded up now. Sissy’s BFF, Darling, lives there. But she’s moving right after Christmas to where her daughter lives. Sissy still lives around the block, trucking back and forth to the hospital on the bus in her nurse’s uniform. But she only works part time now.
“Come with me, honey. You can be a nurse there,” Darling says to Sissy. “They have churches there, too, sweetheart. Get out of this ghetto.”
“Ghetto is a state of mind. This isn’t no ghetto to me, it’s my community!” She points her finger at Darling and then at each of us. “Motown will come back again. Just you watch. Different than it was. No more millions of people. More parks, maybe. Urban farming, maybe. That’s it. We’ll grow healthy food for the people! We’re going to be the prototype of green living, a new community.” Sissy nods emphatically. And she’s not all talk. She is always trying to get Aaron and the crew to join the coalitions she’s created with her church, city hall, and various business leaders. “We need money. But more than that, people. That’s all. I know we can do it. Jesus did it with only twelve.”
“We’re going to buy a house, maybe in the ’burbs.” Aaron says. “Why don’t you come?”
Sissy shakes her head and her short dreads flutter. “You better watch it, boy. You leave here and you might lose your inspiration.”
Aaron laughs, “I thought my inspiration was from you. Aren’t you still gonna be my moms?” I adore how much he loves his mother. And I love how much Sissy is devoted to the big D.
“I have a dream. It’s a dream of reclamation and abundance. Of a phoenix rising from the ashes. Just you wait. We’ll see it.” She leans back and smiles.
“You almost make me believe you, Sissy,” I say.
“Me, too,” says Darling, “but I’m still going to be with Baby Girl.” Darling looks at Sissy and her mouth turns down. We all see how hard it is for Darling to leave Sissy.
The cookies are cool by the time Levy wakes. Luckily an apron kept the flour and dough from caking on his clothes, but there are bits in his hair. I have pots of frosting ready. I hand him milk and apple slices. We sit at the table, covered with pages from the Sunday News, and we decorate the cookies with the frosting. We color coconut black, brown, red, and yellow, and then dab frosting as bonding for the hair.
“They all have curly hair,” Levy notes.
“Guess so.”
He helps for a while and then plays the drum that Smoke made him. He turns on the TV and pushes buttons on the remote until he finds a program he wants to watch. He’ll be three on Christmas day. Amazing to think he can do all this. Sometimes he doesn’t seem like a kid but a miniature man. And then sometimes he’s my baby again.
I look at all my snowmen. “Hey, Levy, whaddya think? Come see.”
Levy starts arranging the cookies. He pulls out a man, a woman, and a small one. “That’s us.” He adds two others and says, “That’s Big Ma and Nana.”
I pick out two more, and say, “Sky and Rachel.”
He looks at our family of three and Sky’s family of two. “What happened to Rachel’s daddy?”
“Don’t you remember? He died. When we were in L.A.”
“I know. I mean what happened?”
“You don’t know what ‘died’ means?”
“Daddy says it means the body ends.” He repeats nodding his head, puzzling over the words. “And you don’t get to be with the person anymore ’cept in your heart.” He points a finger to his chest. “No, what happen he go like that?”
So I explain Troy’s illness, try to explain about germs. Levy listens, though sometimes I can see his mind wandering when his eyes shift from me to our snowmen and he moves them around on the parchment, forming little groups.
He interrupts me. “Is that going to happen to my daddy?”
I hear again Sky’s screaming curse. I hug him. I don’t want him to worry, but I can’t tell him a pretty lie. So I say, looking into his eyes, my palms on either side of his face, “Probably not. You understand that word, ‘probably’?”
He shakes his head.
“It was very unusual for Troy to get sick and die. People usually don’t die when they’re so young, but wait until they’re very, very old. Older even than George.” George is the oldest-looking man Levy knows. He plays chess outside of Mr. Charlie’s down the street, pulling a penny out of Levy’s ear and handing it to him when we enter the store. I point to the forty snowmen lined up on the table. “Imagine this entire room filled with snowmen standing so close to each other you can’t even see the floor. Hundreds and hundreds, thousands, millions of snowmen.” I widen my eyes and sw
eep my hand over the living room. “So so soooo many it would take days to count them. Of all those snowmen, only one would die young like Troy. Only one from some disease.” There are auto accidents. Homicides. I can’t help thinking about the ways people die, but I stick with Levy’s question. “It’s very unlikely that Daddy is going to die. We’ll probably be old like George, still rapping in rickety voices.”
When Aaron comes home, Levy pulls him to the display. “Look, Daddy, snowmen, snowwomen, snowbabies.”
Of course I’ve made a few extra for us to eat. They taste just like sugar cookies.
Levy shows him our family, and points to “Sky” and “Rachel” and says, “You not going to die like Rachel’s daddy. Not probable.” He trips over the word.
Aaron says, “I’m tough. I’m not going anywhere. Staying right with you and Mommy. We’re a family.” He picks out more snowmen and says, “Red Dog, Smoke, and T-Bone.” Smoke is the biggest, and T-Bone has a jaunty air, if a snowman cookie can have a jaunty air.
“Can we keep our people?” Levy looks up at me.
“We can only have four,” I tell him. “But we can give them to Sky and Rachel, how’s that?”
“Sure,” he nods emphatically.
I put four snowmen in the ten white boxes with little plastic windows, labeling the one for Sky, giving her Mom and Smoke. I make one for Brooke with Molly and Tyler, and, thinking about the fourth, add T-Bone. The next day, Levy draws—well, scribbles—on the boxes with red and green markers.
We meet on a Friday night. Brooke is spending the night with Sky. Aaron, Smoke, and T-Bone drive with us in our van. They’re going to the Blind Pig, listening to a crew they know. I wonder if they’ll get up and do some songs without me. Probably. But that’s okay, too. Aaron will be hit on by a bunch of college students. Will I ever quit worrying? Probably not. My dad taught me men cheat. Maybe, too, jealousy is part of loving somebody so deeply we fear losing that person.
I understand something new about Sky. She believed worrying was preventative. I don’t, though. So I might as well quit and remind myself, it’s inside Aaron. His father never cheated, he just wandered. Hopefully, the road tours will be enough roaming for my Aaron. What did he say—“I’d lose myself if I lost you”? I sit next to him considering this as we drive west on I-94 to Ann Arbor.
“There it is. That’s our exit.” I point to the sign saying JACKSON RD. when we’re right beside it.
“Sorry, I was lost in thought.”
He frowns at me.
“Thinking about you,” I say, smiling.
He rubs my thigh.
Sky has a sparse artificial spruce—a Charlie Brown tree—decorated with multicolored lights and some of Mom’s macramé Christmas ornaments. Cookie cutouts beautifully decorated and tied with red ribbons hang from some of the branches. Cranberry and popcorn garlands drape in crescents. Micro lights twinkle around her living room window and, in her bedroom where I place my coat, I see a miniature Christmas tree on her dresser. A candle glows beside the photo of her and Troy, his ashes have been moved. Sky has followed Mom’s pattern of decorating the house for the party.
She’s so like Mom, and that’s okay. I don’t feel left out anymore. It’s just the way my family is. Mom doesn’t ask questions much; she waits for you to tell her. I interpreted that as lack of interest. She interpreted my not volunteering as pushing her away. We show and want to receive love differently and we missed each other. So we spiraled away, and our disappointment heightened to anger. Now, I just tell her what I want her to know and she’s thrilled. She calls me up, and I know it’s because she wants to talk with me even if she doesn’t ask me anything about me. Those feelings of being left out, like I didn’t fit with my own family, are eased.
Sky’s kitchen table has been covered with a red and green plaid tablecloth, and shining cookie cutters placed in clusters.
“Got to say, Sky, you got it together. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks,” she says, as if my compliment was only to be polite.
“No. It’s beautiful and amazing what you’ve done in just a few months. Moved here, settled in, started a new job, got Rachel in day care, and got this together. Feel proud of your strength.”
“I did what I had to,” she says.
“You’re strong, like Mom. No matter what, Mom kept the practical going. No matter how devastated, hurt, or angry she felt.”
“We all are strong,” Sky says.
Baked Brie in a pastry with caramelized pecans, a huge platter of veggies, hummus, cheese and crackers, and bowl of fruit are already on the table. I add sushi picked up at the grocery.
Molly runs out and hugs Levy, grabs his hand, and shows him how to dip carrots in hummus. “It’s my flavorite,” he immediately pronounces.
Paul reads Rachel a story, while she cuddles on his lap. Marissa and Andy arrive with Jennifer and her twins, Karen and Kevin. I haven’t seen Marissa and Jennifer since Sky graduated high school. I was nine then, and they gush over how I’m grown up, and tell me it makes them feel old, exactly like Mom’s friends do.
“Have we changed that much?” Jennifer asks.
“You look the same. Well, a little less made up. You guys were the eye shadow and mascara queens. I copy some of your tricks every time I go on stage!” They carry bags of cookies and place them on Sky’s bed.
“Wow, Tara. We’re so proud of you. I remember when you used to eavesdrop on our sleepovers,” Marissa says.
“Yeah, our words could be lyrics in her songs,” Jennifer warns.
“I’m a fan,” Andy adds. Andy follows us on Facebook.
And then Sandy and Robin come in together. They’re both home from college and excited about living in dorms and all the fun they’re having. Robin is at State, Sandy is at NYU. They immediately join the conversation.
“God! Never thought I’d know a rap star from way back when,” Marissa says.
“I did,” Robin says. “All she ever did was practice her piano and write to Aaron. She was dedicated.” She eats some Brie and says, “I want to be a teacher. I think I do. But,” she shrugs, “I don’t have any passion for it. It just seems like a good idea.”
Pretty soon they’re talking with Brooke and Sky about dating. I hear Sky say, “I’m so not ready for that yet. I’ve never dated!” with the wide-eyed surprise of just realizing it. “I’m going to need lessons.”
“I’ll give you lessons. Hell. I’ve gotten to be an expert,” Brooke says, and laughs that husky laughter of hers that is so much like a man’s.
Molly is busy being everyone’s mom, helping the younger children eat, selling the hummus and veggies that she and Brooke brought. “It’s good for you, too,” she insists. I hear Brooke in her inflection.
Rachel gets up from Paul’s lap and points out the baked Brie and pecans to Levy, who looks at it with a frown. “What part do you eat?” he asks.
“It’s yummy,” Rachel says, and holds some in her fingers and pushes it in his mouth. “Flavorite,” she says as she watches him eat and swallow. He takes another bite, and goes back to carrots.
The adults share funny stories about Internet dating. Jennifer enumerates the lies people have told—one posted a picture that was ten years old, another said he was single. Andy tells similar stories about women with deceiving photos and lying about their children.
I try to learn how men think and listen hard to Andy, but it doesn’t seem, at least from what he’s saying now, much different from how women think. Maybe it’s a war, a game where each plays by similar rules but the goals are different. Maybe not. Seems like we all want love, great sex, and freedom all at once. It’s where freedom and self-determination hit at each other that love and closeness erode.
At one point, it’s Sky and Rachel, Brooke and Molly, Jennifer and Karen and me. Marissa and Andy are in the living room with Levy and Paul.
I look around and think, we’re all fatherless daughters. My heart goes out to Rachel when Sky picks her up, folds her arms a
round Rachel’s little body, and she wraps her legs around Sky’s waist. I perceive the love. I can even experience it as though I am both Sky and Rachel simultaneously—but realize the journey they have. Maybe Sky will find a man who can father Rachel; maybe Aaron can help out. Or Paul.
But I know the wound of fatherless daughters, whether by desertion or death. Not trusting men makes it harder to maintain a family through hard times. You’re always ready to quit, tell yourself you don’t care, or run. I have to hold on to my courage.
Right now Levy and I are lucky. We have Aaron. Right now. We need to scoop this up as long as we keep working, and I hope that will be as long as we both live. I don’t know what I’d do without him and I don’t know how that happened. But I’ll do almost anything for us to stay together. When we pledge that next month at our wedding, I’ll mean it with my entire being. He’s as important to me, almost, as I am to me, as Levy is to me, the line separating those measurements infinitesimal. I guess that’s what commitment feels like.
That’s part of being the hero of my own life. Being my own hero requires courage. And courage following my own meaning in life. And my meaning lies in family and music.
Like Sky, it’s up to me.
Sky moves her guests into the living room for cookie distribution at the perfect time. We’ve all eaten. We’ve enjoyed a glass of wine, the kids are settling down. “Hey, where are the charity ones going?” I ask.
“Hospice,” Sky says.
Cookies start making the rounds. Marissa made apricot twists and placed them in an oven mitt. Andy passes out almond and chocolate biscotti standing upright in a canning jar. Paul’s are three different flavored truffles: coconut, almond, and milk chocolate. He’s put them in a collection of antique tin tea containers. Molly and Tyler and Brooke made double chocolate chips and positioned them in canisters decorated with horse-pulled sleighs. Molly insists all of us taste one. With a serious expression, she hands one to Levy waiting for him to squeal, “It’s my flavorite!” which he does, and then she grins. Ah, success!