Dear Bill, Remember Me?

by Norma Fox Mazer

  She scuffs around on the ground, getting a little scared now, but not willing to leave. Maybe Peter will come back. Maybe she will find something of his. Maybe he left her a secret message. Maybe … there’s a crumpled cigarette package under a bush. She snatches it up. Warning. The Surgeon General … Is it Peter’s? Did he smoke? Maybe smoking is against his religion? She thinks of the small gold cross around his neck. She knows that’s a stupid thought. She throws away the cigarette package.

  She thinks she hears something in the bushes. She stiffens, listens. It comes to her then that she’s alone in Walton Park at night, and it could be dangerous.

  She trots back through the park, moving steadily, her breath puffing in her ears. As she passes between the stone gates and out onto Court Place, a car passes, a head turns to stare. Zoe continues trotting, and is soon home.

  The house is blazing with lights. Lights in every window. The car is gone from the driveway. Mama is out looking for her, and Weezy and her grandmother are waiting.

  “She’s here, she’s back, Zoe is back,” Weezy cries, as if Marcia can’t see her. “Zoey’s here! My God, where were you? Where did you go? Your mother is out driving around this city, crying her eyes out, looking for you. My God.”

  Marcia, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip, takes Zoe by the shoulders, brushes her hair, pinches her face between her hands, blows smoke into Zoe’s face. “Are you crazy?” Marcia says. “Running out in the middle of the night like that?”

  Zoe is terribly tired. She seems to see Weezy and Marcia as if through the wrong end of a telescope, from a great distance. Even their voices seem to come to her from a distance. And when Mama enters the house a moment later, she, too, is very far away.

  Mama says nothing but hugs Zoe and then looks into her face. She wants Zoe to tell, to explain. They are all looking at her, waiting for her to speak. She has caused them hours of terror. She had made them all suffer needlessly.

  She thinks of saying, Peter is gone. But then they will cry, Peter? Who is Peter? Their voices will rise in alarm, they will surround her with questions, and love, and worry. So she says nothing.

  She thinks, One day I walked into Walton Park and I met Peter, who was sitting on the back of his green station wagon. “Now then—!” Marcia begins again. If anyone can, she will get the long and the short of this extraordinary episode out of Zoe. He was my friend. We talked. We laughed about things. “You explain yourself!” Marcia demands. One night I went back into Walton Park, and Peter was gone.

  “Sweetie, please,” Mama says.

  Peter, I went back to see you. I was late, but I went to see you, Peter. Come back, Peter. You will come back.

  “Zoe darling,” Weezy implores.

  Zoe rubs her arms. “You’re chilled,” Marcia says, aggravated. “Running around in bare feet. I don’t understand you. You’re going to catch cold. You know how susceptible you are!”

  “You’ll have to have hot tea and aspirin,” Weezy says.

  They crowd around her, touch her. “Zoe, darling!” they murmur, and wait for her to speak, explain, reassure, to become once again their good Zoe whom, all her life, they have protected, adored, and known like the pages of a much-read and well-loved book.

  But Zoe says nothing. There’s nothing for her to say. What she’s done, she’s done, and what she’ll do in the future only she knows. She shakes out her hair. She loves them all dearly, but she can’t remain their little Zoe forever. Don’t they know that? She kisses Mama, she hugs Weezy, rubs her cheeks against Marcia’s.

  “Good night,” she says. “Good night.” She is fourteen, she did what she meant to do, and to tell the truth, she feels, quite simply, splendid.

  Something Expensive

  About a month before I took the Scotty route, my mother gave me a watch. That was in October, the same month Colin and I decided to go together. The watch had a small white face with blue numbers, and a blue wristband. I knew it was expensive, I’d seen it in the window of Wilson’s Jewelers for close to sixty dollars. I wore it all the time. I took it off only at night, and during the day I’d put it to my ear five, or six, or maybe ten times just to hear it ticking. TICKTICKTICKtickticktickticktick … like a heartbeat. I don’t know why I loved the watch’s heartbeat so much, but listening to it gave me the same sort of rushing, happy feeling I got when my mother came into the house evenings after work, putting down packages, hugging James, talking to me, giving everyone orders.

  Well, yes, I felt happy about the watch, but it also upset me a little. Because it was so unusual for Mom to give me anything. She hardly ever gave me or James presents, not even on our birthdays. Some people think that’s awful, but I never minded. My mother is like a gift herself. You only have to be around her for a little while to see what I mean.

  In its own way, taking the Scotty route was another funny thing. I didn’t understand myself exactly. As my father pointed out, in summer and in fall when it would have been nice and pleasant weather for a newspaper route, I never gave it a thought. Then, in November, with dark coming earlier, there I was delivering Scottys. The Scotty comes out once a week. It’s a little half-size pulp newspaper with no news, only ads for garage sales, furniture, cars, baby-sitting, and also public announcements. PANCAKE BREAKFAST TO RAISE MONEY FOR HOLY CROSS BASKETBALL TEAM, ALL YOU CAN EAT FOR $2. BRING THE WHOLE FAMILY. Or, JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER WILL HOLD YOGA CLASSES FOR TIRED BUSINESSMEN AT 5:30, INSTRUCTOR BABE SWERDLOW, LEARN TO RELAX THROUGH PROPER BREATHING AND ANCIENT EXERCISES.

  Once, before I worked for them, my mother put an ad in the Scotty. I called it into the Scotty office for her. “For sale, mouton coat size 7, good condition, reasonable, call 446-2247 after 6.”

  Dad didn’t want her to sell the mouton. “It’s warmer than a regular wool coat,” he said, pushing his fingers through the stiff fur. “And up here with these winters, you need a warm coat. You know how cold you get, your feet and all.”

  “I don’t wear the coat on my feet,” Mom said.

  We all laughed. I know it’s not the funniest remark in the world, but there’s something about Mom, the way she says things, that makes you laugh. Anyway, she said Dad was actually right about the coat being warm. And it was waterproof, too. “But I can’t stand it,” she said. “Listen, my sister Grace had it when she went to nursing school back in the fifties. And even then, even when it was new, every time it rained, it smelled like wet cat.”

  “Wet cat! Oooh, barf!” James said, doubling over with his hands clutching his stomach. James is very dramatic. He’s more like Mom. I’m more like Dad. We’re both tall and blond, sort of slow, and neat, and not too fast to get angry.

  “Besides,” Mom said, “I am not a fur-coat type. Right, Marylee?” she said, to me. “Admit it, I look ridiculous in a fur coat. Fur-coat types are long, and Jean, and sweep into rooms.”

  Mom is anything but long and lean, and the way she rushes into rooms, with a dozen things to tell you, she certainly doesn’t make regal entrances. So many times I’ve seen Dad smiling and shaking his head at Mom, as if he just couldn’t believe her.

  Anyway, the Scotty ad for the mouton coat cost one dollar, and about a dozen people called on it. I took most of the calls and had fun telling everyone what a good coat it was. Mom sold it for twenty dollars and bought us all ice skates with the money. I was eleven then, and James was three. (James got those double runners with little red laces.) Mom wanted to buy Dad a pair of ice skates, too, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “I’d fall flat on my ass,” he said.

  “Would you?” Mom said. “How do you know?”

  “I’m too old to start ice skating again. I gave it up, or rather it gave me up about a dozen years ago, and that’s it.”

  “Oh! Old-Bick-in-the-Mud,” Mom said. That was one of her pet names for Dad then. He is Bickford Daniels, Jr. (He wanted to name James, Bickford Daniels III, but Mom said, “I’d rather name my baby, Baby Boy XYZ than stick him with Bick-ford Dan-e-els the Third. The poor kid, imagine dragg
ing a load like that around for the rest of his life.”)

  For a long time I haven’t heard my mother tease my father about his name, or call him Old-Bick-in-the-Mud. And I haven’t seen my father giving my mother that puzzled, pleased smile and headshake like, Wow, where did I get such a tiny, lively wife! In fact, ever since that day last fall when Mom climbed up into the maple tree and sat there for a couple hours, saying she had to think about things, Dad hadn’t smiled at all. When Mom did come down out of the tree, he refused to talk to her. He wouldn’t come to supper, either, just plunked himself down in a corner of the living room with his racing-car magazines. He has a huge collection of racing-car magazines, most of them stacked up in the cellar. He saves every issue, and he’s been getting them for, oh, I don’t know, maybe fifteen years? Maybe more. Probably more, now that I think of it, because he’s been crazy about racing cars since he was a boy. I guess he really wanted to be a racing-car driver, but he isn’t. He drives a panel truck for Rastoni’s, delivering grocery orders. Before he worked for Rastoni’s, he drove a truck for City Dry Cleaners over on East Avenue. Then, a do-it-yourself cleaning place moved in right next to City Dry Cleaners and they went out of business. Anyway, Rastoni’s is a better job because people tip him, and he can pick up food bargains. We’re not poor, but we don’t have a huge amount of money, either. My mother is a telephone company supervisor, a good job; she makes about the same money as my father. I get an allowance and do some baby-sitting. And now I also make three dollars a week on the Scotty route.

  My father was opposed to my taking the route. “A girl shouldn’t be out on the streets alone when it’s dark,” he said.

  “Ridiculous,” my mother said. “She’s always out on the streets alone, anytime she goes to visit a friend—”

  “She doesn’t have to work,” my father said. “I’ll raise her allowance.”

  “No,” my mother said. “Money doesn’t solve everything! She wants to do this, let her. People have to do things. You can’t chain people down, Bick, you can’t turn off people’s desires.”

  I tried to put in that it wasn’t the money, but they weren’t listening. They were quarreling again. Sometimes, I tried to figure when the fighting had started, but I never could decide. They’d always had little squabbles—doesn’t everybody?—but these were different, real fights. All through the fall they were fighting two or three times a week. James took up sucking his thumb again, Mom started working lots of overtime, and I decided to do the Scotty.

  I was surprised to find out how much I liked doing the route. I liked the way the sack of folded, rubber-banded papers grew lighter with each delivery. I liked tucking each paper carefully into a protected spot on the porch or behind the storm door.

  It was peaceful cutting across the white lawns, looking into lighted windows, seeing people inside for just a moment, then passing on. Once, I saw a man staring out the window. He was standing by a huge, leafy green plant (I couldn’t tell if it was real or artificial), and although he was inside he was wearing a hat. Another time, I saw a family sitting around a table, eating. A chandelier spilled a dome of pale buttery light down on them. And then, once, I saw three kids through a window, dancing with their arms up in the air. The room was blue from the TV. It was like a snapshot, or maybe a moment in a play. Somehow perfect, everything exactly as it should be. As I hurried past the window (I never wanted to linger, I only wanted to see that frozen instant), I could feel my heart beating like my watch—tickticktickticktick—and it was so odd, I felt so happy because I’d seen those three kids dancing.

  Walking in the cold and the dark, listening to the crackle of slush or frozen snow beneath my boots, was a good time to think about things, about school and friends, and Colin Lambert.

  I’d known Colin forever, but we’d only started going together after Franny Klake’s Halloween party.

  I wasn’t even planning to go to Franny’s party. They were always the same, all the girls came, but never enough boys. But then I was glad I did go, because Colin was there, and for some reason it was different this time. We started talking and we stayed together for the whole party. Colin’s about my size, sort of wiry, with glasses and nice brown eyes.

  After that we began eating lunch together every day in school, and on weekends we went to the movies, or fooled around at the shopping center with some of the other kids. All of those kids were going together, and Colin and I fit right in.

  I liked Colin a lot, I really did, and you like to be positive with the people you like, so the few things I didn’t care for about him I kept quiet about. Such as copying. After we started going together, Colin was always copying my homework, and a few times he even copied answers to science tests. Well, the truth is, I hate people to copy homework and test papers. I work pretty hard to get decent marks in school, it doesn’t come all that easily, and then—well, you know, to have someone just take so casually what I’ve worked for, it hurts. But the fact of the matter is, I have never stopped anyone from copying my homework and my test papers.

  This was one of the things I thought about on the route—this, and my parents’ quarrels.

  They were quarreling again the night I had to write a composition for my English teacher. “Describe the members of your family and how they interact,” Mrs. Shore had said earlier in the day when she gave the assignment. She wore big purple-tinted glasses and had long streaky blond hair. “Try to give the feeling of your family, the ambience, the vibrations,” she told us.

  The vibrations were bad that night. One of our neighbors had borrowed my father’s Phillips screwdriver and never returned it. Then Dad needed the Phillips for a job around the house, but instead of asking Mr. Ferrari, he’d gone out and bought a new one. I knew why he did it. The same reason I never said anything when Colin copied my work.

  But it made my mother mad. “For God’s sake, Bick, that man has had the Phillips for six months. Why didn’t you just ask him for it?”

  “Well, if he was ready to return it, he would have returned it,” my father said.

  “You let people take advantage of you.”

  “It wasn’t that much money.” Dad is big and fair, and when he quarrels with Mom, he flushes like he’s embarrassed, or shy, or something.

  “It’s not the money, it’s the idea,” Mom said. “The principle. It’s your screwdriver, not his. Why should he have it? Why didn’t you assert yourself!”

  “Oh, well now … well, now,” Dad said, and he pulled down his lower lip, something he always does when he has nothing else to say, when no matter how my mother argues, yells, or pleads, he won’t say another word. He just retreats, goes silent, picks up his racing-car magazine, and starts reading. But first he pulls down his lower lip, pulls it like a piece of stretched-out rubber.

  “Stop that,” my mother said, her face getting dark. “Stop that! Stop doing that! You do that just to infuriate me.” And she picked up the little green velvet throw pillows from the couch and flung them both at Dad.

  About an hour later, it was quiet again. My mother had gone out, my father was reading, and James was in bed, so I sat down to write my composition. All lies, I knew it was all lies, but what could I do?

  I began like this. “It’s evening, the TV is on. My father is sitting on the couch with my little brother, James, next to him. My mother is knitting a sweater for me—she says she’ll knit one for Dad next—and I’m sitting at the dining-room table with my schoolbooks open. This is the way my family spends a typical evening at home.”

  Maybe I’d seen a family like this through one of the lighted windows on my route. A perfect moment in a perfect family. The trouble was, I couldn’t get past that one picture. I managed to write a few more sentences, but then I had to end it. I wasn’t too surprised when Mrs. Shore gave me B over C. B for penmanship, spelling, grammar, etc., and C for content.

  In January, my mother started working even more hours at the phone company, coming home late several nights a week. Dad, James, and I would eat
supper together, and it was always awful without her. I didn’t even feel hungry. Sometimes she came home only in time to do the dishes with me. For years, she and I have done the dishes together at night. She washes and I dry, and she talks to me about when she was a girl, and her work, and what I should do in the future. She always tells me to go to college, to become a teacher, or a scientist, or even a lawyer.

  “I only went to college for one year, then I got married, but you’ll be educated, Marylee, and that counts for a whole lot. It counts! Doesn’t it, Bick?” she called to my father one night.

  “What?” He was reading his magazine.

  “I want Marylee to be educated. I want her to take her life in her own hands!”

  “Don’t give her so many ideas, leave her alone,” he said.

  “You want her to be a slug!” my mother called.

  “Don’t talk stupid. Just leave people alone.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” She went to the kitchen door, dripping soapsuds on the floor. “Do you hear yourself saying that? I think that’s very good advice! Yes, leave people alone!”

  I dried dishes furiously, in my mind taking first his side, then hers, then his again. I knew I preferred my mother, and this made me feel ashamed, disloyal to Dad. I wanted to be impartial, to love him as much as her. But the truth was, I didn’t. I loved him very much, yes! but not the way I loved her. The way I loved her was just—like a hopeless passion. Sometimes I thought, Who would I be, what would I be, without her? Not just that she had given birth to me. More than that. I wanted to be like her. Of course, I never could in looks. I was tall and fair like my father, not small and dark like her, but in other ways, I could try to be like her. Whenever I was around her, I laughed more easily, felt myself expanding, opening, I moved more quickly the way she did, and I remembered to walk with my arms swinging and my head up.

  The quarrels continued through January and February. My father didn’t say anything about her working more hours. Instead he’d pick at her for forgetting to buy tissues, or not bagging the garbage properly, or because he didn’t have a pair of clean socks. “This is stupid, stupid,” she would yell. My father never yelled. He would talk for a long time, telling her all the things she did wrong around the house. His face would flush and pale, flush and pale. Then, when she got mad enough to yell, he would pull at his lower lip and walk away from her and not talk anymore.