That was it. Hardly worth the half hour it took for Mom to get my stage makeup on.
I thought of the Hueberts with their eight children and servants as I pulled my car into the driveway next to that old mansion, its purple paint peeling away from the wooden siding. I parked in front of the sloping porch and looked up at the arched doorway.
It was going to take an awful lot of work to get that place in shape for people to want to come visit.
“Good luck,” I said.
“Aren’t you coming in?” Mindy asked.
“Nope. I’m going to wait out here.”
“Oh.” Mindy released her seat belt and half turned toward me. “I thought you were just going to come in and check it out.”
“Mins . . .”
“It won’t take long, I promise.” Her shoulders tensed almost up to her ears and she clenched her jaw.
“Listen, I need a real job,” I said. “I want to have some money saved up before I leave for college.”
“This is a real job.”
“You know what I mean.”
She shifted in her seat, pushing the passenger side door open and getting out. Before she closed it, she bent at the waist and looked in at me.
“Please, Sonny,” she said. “Just come in with me. If you hate it, we can leave.”
Over the years my sister had perfected the most pathetic puppy-dog-eyed look when she wanted something. I knew I should avert my gaze as soon as she lifted her brows and lowered the corners of her mouth. But I didn’t. I met her dark eyes and knew I was a goner.
It was totally bogus for her to play me like that, and she knew it.
“Fine. You win.” I pushed open my door. “But if I get any Bat Motel vibes from the place, I’m out.”
“I think you mean Bates Motel.”
“Whatever.”
Taking the steps up the front porch, Mindy gave me a half smile. “Thanks.”
She hesitated and breathed in deeply before knocking on the door.
“Come in,” Mrs. Olds called from inside.
Mindy pushed open the door, and I wrinkled my nose at the dusty, musty air. The floorboards in the foyer creaked when we stepped inside. Nobody had lived there for a long time, and I doubted that anyone had swept the place for years. Huge cardboard boxes were stacked up against all the walls.
“It stinks in here,” I whispered, wondering what kind of beast—raccoon, maybe—had made it his home for any number of decades.
Mindy didn’t act like she’d heard me. Instead she pulled a slip of paper from her purse.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“My resume,” she answered.
“Geek.”
“Girls, hello. Hello,” Mrs. Olds said, coming our way with arms spread. “I’m glad you made it.”
She reached for Mindy first, pulling her in for a hug before moving on to me. It wasn’t a creepy hug like I thought it would be. It was actually kind of nice. Her arms were strong for as little as she was, and she smelled like brown sugar and cinnamon.
“Let’s take a tour of the place, huh?” she said once she let go of me. “Then we’ll have a cookie and talk about details.”
“Cookies?” I said, perking up like I was a six-year-old.
I would have been embarrassed if anybody other than Mindy was there.
“I made them this morning,” Mrs. Olds said. “My mother’s recipe. But for now, let’s look around.”
We followed her from room to room, boxes and tarp-covered furniture crowding each and every one. Using her gnarly index finger, she pointed at the walls, telling us what she imagined ending up there. Each room would have a theme from the various artifacts that people around Bear Run had donated.
I had to admit that it seemed like it was going to be pretty cool.
We ended up in the kitchen, the one completely spic-and-span room in the mansion. Mrs. Olds had us sit at the drop-leaf table while she got a jug of milk from the refrigerator.
“Help yourselves, girls,” she said. “I made plenty.”
They were, without question, the best cookies I’d ever had. Like, ever. They were even better than Grammy’s. Not like I would ever have said that out loud though. Grammy was one to hold grudges.
“Now, did you know that I taught your father when he was in kindergarten?” she asked, pouring three glasses of whole milk. “Your uncle too.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mindy said.
“Well, it was a hundred years ago.” Mrs. Olds carried all three glasses to the table without spilling a drop. “I was heartbroken over Dale’s death. He was such a kind boy.”
“We never met him.” I shrugged my shoulders.
“I suppose not.” She took a seat. “It is a pity.”
“Yeah.”
I never knew what to say when somebody mentioned Uncle Dale. They’d want to offer condolences or tell me that he was a hero. I thought they wanted to see me tear up about him. But he died three years before I was born. If anything, it made me sad to think about him because of Dad. I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be if Mindy died.
It would be the worst.
I grabbed another cookie, breaking it in half before taking a bite.
“Well, I suppose we should talk about the job,” Mrs. Olds said before taking a drink of milk. “I’d need you here at eight o’clock sharp, Monday through Friday. You’d work until noon.”
I let a mouthful of cookie melt on my tongue, thinking that everything about this job sounded good. That was the trick, wasn’t it? She’d lure us in with cookies so we couldn’t refuse the job!
Well, it was working.
“The wage is $5.50 an hour,” she went on.
I nearly spit out the sip of milk I’d just taken.
$5.50 an hour? I quick did the math. That was $2.15 over the minimum wage. There was no way I would make that much working at Dairy Queen or some store in the mall.
“What do you think?” From the old lady’s grin, I could tell she enjoyed shocking us. “Shall we have another cookie to celebrate your new employment?”
When we finally said our goodbyes, Mrs. Olds told us to extend her apologies to Mom for ruining our suppers. Then she reminded us to wear clothes we didn’t mind getting dirty in.
“This is going to be grimy work, my girls,” she said. “But it will be worth it in the end.”
She stood on the sloping porch and waved at us as we drove away.
CHAPTER
Sixteen
Bruce, 2013
The view outside my parents’ apartment is of a marshy area. Tall grasses and cattails edge the wetland, and lily pads float on the surface of the water. A pair of wood ducks have claimed the spot as their own. As I stand looking out the window, I see a perfect place for a nest box.
It wouldn’t do to put it in now. The ducks need to migrate soon. But they’ll be back come spring, and I do believe they’ll make good use of that box I plan to make for them.
Early summer we might just see the mama swimming with her chicks.
Man, it’s something when those little critters jump out of the box, their still-flightless wings held out at their sides. Then with a plop they land in the water, swimming by instinct to keep up with their mother.
It’s been a tough month for my folks. Mom’s getting better, despite her grumbling and groaning through every physical therapy session. She’s not well enough, however, to go back to taking care of the big house she’s kept since I was a boy.
Somehow we’ve managed to whittle down their stuff from sixty-seven years of marriage to what we could fit in the one-bedroom apartment in this retirement home. The rest we’ve either split up among the family, sold, or put in storage.
Dana told me that Mom pitched a fit when she told her. I don’t doubt it for a second.
That woman has been in charge of nearly everything she’s touched for most of her life. All of a sudden she doesn’t get to decide what she eats or when she does therapy or even where she’s going to live
.
Letting go of that kind of control must be hard for her.
Behind me Mom’s talking at Linda about my brother Dale, and I wish I would have taken Dad up on his offer to join him for his first woodworking class.
Some days I’m all right to talk about Dale, and I’m able to laugh at some goofball thing he did when we were kids.
Today’s not one of those days.
My brother’s been dead for nearly fifty years and still, every once in a while, I get twin stabs of guilt and grief when I think about him.
But Mom feels like talking about him today, so I indulge her even if it is hard on me.
Linda, bless her, has heard all this from Mom at least half a dozen times over the years. But sweet soul that she is, she’s sitting there, listening to it all over again as if it was the first time.
Most people who know my mom now think of her as being a hard-nosed, stiff-upper-lipped, difficult-to-love woman. From what I remember of her from my childhood, though, she wasn’t this way. She didn’t let us kids get away with much, but she was kind. There was a softness to her. Back then she laughed more than she yelled and smiled more than she scowled.
She didn’t understand me, not even then. I guess I’ve always been more like my dad. We’d argue, but there was a spark in her eye when we did.
When Dale died it took a toll on all of us. We all had to carry on in our own ways.
For a couple years after, my mother kept his room just as he’d left it. She even went so far as to rumple the bedclothes to look like he’d just been sitting on top of them, and she set his shoes by the door in a less-than-perfect line.
His careless housekeeping had always irked her, but when he was gone, it was one of the things she could hold on to of him.
Right around the time Sonny was born, Mom cleaned out the room.
I never found out what she did with all his things. They were just gone, and nobody had the nerve to ask her about it.
“I need to get another cup of coffee,” Mom says after a lull in conversation.
“I can get you some,” I say, turning from the window.
“I’ve got a new jar of Nescafé up there.” She points at the cupboard over the sink in her small galley kitchen. “Make yourself a cup too if you want.”
Instant coffee. I try not to pull a grimace.
“No thanks,” I say, getting a mug out for her.
“I was proud of my son when he enlisted,” Mom goes on, glancing at Linda as if she expects her to pull out a sign and stage a war protest right there in the living room. Once a hippie, always a hippie in my mother’s book, I suppose.
“Dale was always a patriotic boy,” she says. “He knew they’d send him to . . .”
She stops and looks from Linda, not speaking the word Vietnam, as if it is a swear she doesn’t want to get caught saying.
I draw water from the sink into the cup before popping it into the microwave and tapping a couple buttons to get it started.
“Vietnam?” Linda offers.
Even from across the room I can see that Mom’s closed her eyes.
“I was more proud of him than I’d ever been of anybody else in my life,” she says. “But I was scared every day for him.”
“I bet you were.” Linda rests her elbow on the arm of the loveseat. “Did you watch the news coverage of the war while he was gone?”
Mom nods.
What she doesn’t say is that Dad refused to watch it. That he’d find some task to do that would take him out of the house. Mowing or weeding in the warm months turned to raking in fall and shoveling in winter.
And she doesn’t tell Linda how, when I was home from school, I would pontificate about the injustices of the war after each report of how many GIs had lost their lives in the war that day.
Poor Dana tried to keep the peace between us, but it hardly ever worked.
The microwave dings and I measure the instant coffee into the hot water, hoping I put in the right amount. If not, Mom will send me back to fix it.
“Thank you,” she says when I hand her the cup.
“Babe, you want a cup?” I ask. “It’s decaf.”
“No,” Linda says, widening her eyes to let me know she thinks I’m nuts for asking. “Thanks.”
I wink to tell her I’m teasing her.
Mom takes a sip. “That’s good, Bruce.”
I sit beside Linda on the loveseat. A group of people make noise in the hallway outside the apartment, but Mom doesn’t seem to notice. Either because she’s growing accustomed to it or because her hearing has dulled that much.
Just another thing to ask her doctor about.
“Didn’t Mindy want to come see us today?” she asks after a few minutes of looking out the window.
“She’s at work,” Linda says. “Remember, she’s at the newspaper now.”
“Ah.”
Dad shuffles in, a fresh bandage on his pointer finger. He smirks when he notices me looking at it, proud of his battle wound.
“Don’t tell your mother,” he whispers.
“Wouldn’t dare,” I whisper back.
“Well, since you’re both here,” Linda says, nodding and taking my hand, “Bruce and I have something we need to tell you.”
“Everything okay?” Dad asks, a shadow of worry darkening his eyes.
“Oh yes,” Linda says. “In fact, everything seems to be really good. It’s about Mindy. She’s started to look for . . .”
“A new husband?” Dad says. “Hope he’s better than that good for nothing—”
“Hush, Ivan,” Mom interrupts him. “What’s she looking for?”
“Bruce, maybe you better,” Linda says.
“Mindy’s looking to reunite with some of her family in Vietnam,” I say as simply as I can, but it still sounds complicated to my ears.
There are a lot of layers of complicated to all this.
“Why?” Mom’s eyebrows tense.
I should have anticipated that question, should have planned an easy, one-sentence answer. It might not have mattered anyway. My mother had the interrogation skills of a hardened FBI agent. Even at sixtysomething years old, I still got intimidated when she got started on a line of questioning.
“What does it matter why?” Dad asks. “It’s none of our business.”
“Well, I think it is.” She widens her eyes at him. “She’s our granddaughter.”
“Yup. She is. And so we’ll be happy for her and support her.”
“Linda, how do you feel about this?” Mom asks.
“I think it’s good,” Linda answers.
“I knew this would happen.” Mom points at an afghan in a basket beside her chair. “Linda, would you get that for me? I’m suddenly chilly.”
Linda does as she’s asked, even tucking the blanket around Mom’s legs.
“There you go,” she says. “Now, what did you mean that you knew this would happen?”
“That the girl would never be happy here. I knew she wouldn’t like being away from her own people.”
“Now, Hildie,” Dad says. “We’re her own people.”
“You know what I mean.” She smooths the afghan and picks a few lint balls from the top of it. “It’s why I didn’t come see her at first. I didn’t want to get attached just so she could leave us in the end.”
Back on the loveseat beside me Linda droops just slightly. Like a little bit of air let out of a balloon.
“That’s not why, Mom,” I say.
“It most certainly is.”
“No.” I swallow hard. “It’s not.”
My folks raised me to believe that children ought to honor and respect their parents. I still hold to that belief. Always will. Even with all her faults, my mother deserves a measure of esteem.
I want to honor her.
But, doggone it, sometimes the most honoring thing is to hold our elders to account when they’re wrong minded and hurtful.
It makes my stomach clench and the bile try to creep up my throat. But I
shake my head and honor her with the truth.
“Mom, you didn’t come see Mindy when she first came because she was Vietnamese,” I say. “You were ready to disown me and Linda over it.”
“Well . . .” she starts.
“Now, I don’t have a grudge over it,” I go on. “Because I love you and I’ve forgiven you. But I’ll be darned if I let you gloss over how you acted back then.”
“You always chose them over your brother,” Mom says. “Always.”
“Who?” Linda asks.
“Those Vietnamese,” she answers. “Your brother went off to war and what do you do? You protest against him and for them. When he died, where were you? Off gallivanting across the country with your greasy hair and peace signs.”
“I’m sorry about all that,” I say. “I still wish I would have done things differently. But I will never regret bringing Mindy into this family. Never.”
“Well,” Mom says, but so quietly I hardly hear her. Her face is turned away from me, but I can see that her lips are quivering.
“She’s not going to leave us,” Linda says. “Hilda, did you hear me?”
My mother nods but doesn’t turn her head toward us.
“Good,” Linda goes on. “She needs us all to support her right now. It’s a really scary thing she’s trying to do.”
“Don’t know what I can do to help,” Dad says. “But whatever it is, you can count on me.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I say.
We don’t stay much longer. The mood’s gone quite icy and I fear we’ve already overstayed our welcome. When we announce that we’re heading out Mom doesn’t budge, not even when I kiss her goodbye.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
Linda, 1975
When I was pregnant with Sonny we had the better part of a year to get ready for her arrival. Dana threw a baby shower for me in the church basement, and the ladies of the congregation brought all sorts of green and yellow baby things for us.
Bruce put together the crib and I washed the bedding and we two dreamed about the little one that was coming, speculating over whether it would be a boy or a girl.
We took all the time in the world getting our little nest ready, and it was so much fun.
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