Dear Bill, Remember Me?

by Norma Fox Mazer

  It was freezing every day in February. We had an ice storm. There was slick polished ice everywhere, on the streets and sidewalks, a layer of ice like frosting on every car, and all the trees and telephone wires sagged under ice. Sometimes I thought the freezing air from outside was slipping into our house through invisible cracks, punctures, holes and leaks; the furnace worked and worked, but there was always a cold draft leaking in somewhere.

  One night when I got home from school, the kitchen was dark. Nothing had been touched since breakfast. Dirty dishes in the sink, cocoa smeared on the stove, bread crumbs on the counter, a fork on the floor. “Mom?” I called, but I knew she wasn’t home. The house felt different without her.

  “Not home,” James said, popping in from the living room. He had his thumb jammed in his mouth like it was a magic lollipop.

  “Take the thumb out.” I ran hot water in the sink and poured in liquid detergent. Pink bubbles floated into the air.

  “Do you know how many more days to my birthday?” James said.

  “Of course I do.”

  “How many?”

  “Enough.” I left the dishes soaking and opened the refrigerator. My mother had left hamburger patties on a plate covered with Saran Wrap.

  “What are you getting me for a present? I bet you’re not getting me anything.”

  “When did I ever forget your birthday?”

  “Uh—uh—last year when I was younger.”

  “Dumbo. I got you your magic blackboard last year.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Oh, yeah, yourself.”

  “Making supper now?” He pulled up his shirt and rubbed his belly. “I’m starved!”

  “Take the milk and ketchup out of the refrig.” I stuck the patties under the broiler.

  “Mom working overtime again?” I asked Dad when he came out of the bathroom. He was freshly shaved and showered. He likes to do that every day after work. He had on clean pants and a fresh shirt.

  “I suppose,” he said. He plucked at his lower lip, and smiled a little. Even his smile upset me. It flickered on and off on his face like a light bulb that’s almost going out. I wanted to shout like my mother did, Don’t do that!

  “Mama works overtime every day,” James said.

  “Not yesterday!” I said sharply. “She was home yesterday. Remember?”

  “No,” James said.

  “Yes, you do! Don’t you remember, for supper we had—we had—” Suddenly, I couldn’t remember. I wasn’t sure if Mom had been home or not. Maybe James was right. There was a lump in my stomach, I didn’t feel hungry, but I took the hamburgers off the broiler and put them on the table. I was sick of hamburgers, and for no reason at all I thought I might cry.

  After supper I cleared the table and started on the dishes, doing the ones from breakfast, too. I worked slowly, listening for my mother’s car in the driveway, hoping she would come in. I knew just how she’d sound and look when she rushed in, her cheeks bright from the cold, her dark hair messy, clapping her hands together, calling out to each one of us. “Bick,” she’d call, “how are you? How was work? James, what happened in school today?” Then she’d come into the kitchen, she’d pull a dish towel around her waist and shove me away from the sink, saying, “Oh, you did plenty tonight, honey. More than enough. God, what would I do without you? Those two men in there—helpless!” We’d both laugh, then she’d tell me again to go and relax, do something else. But I’d stay and work with her, I’d tell her about school, maybe I’d mention Colin sitting next to me in assembly, I’d tell her about the A I’d received on a math paper. “No kidding!” she’d say. “Marylee, you are going to do fine things in the world!”

  All the time I was washing the dishes, I kept making up the things my mother and I would say to each other. I dried the dishes and put them away in the cupboard and wiped up the counters, then swept the floor, and she still wasn’t home.

  Later, very late, I heard my mother coming up the steps and going into her bedroom. I fell asleep then and had a dream about my mother chasing away a pack of dogs. I woke up, remembering something real from a long time ago. I’d been seven or eight, coming home from school, and suddenly a gang of older boys surrounded me, penned me in. I couldn’t get away. One of the boys stroked my head. The others laughed. I was terrified. They were saying things.

  All at once, my mother was there. She pushed the boys aside. “Shame on you!”

  She was half the size of those boys. Any one of them could have knocked her down easily. But when she yelled at them they ran away.

  Remembering all that, for some reason I started crying and pulled the pillow over my face, so no one would hear me.

  In the morning my eyes felt tired and sandy. My mother was sleeping late, she didn’t have to be at work till ten o’clock. I helped James with his breakfast, boiling an egg for him. My father drank coffee standing up by the cupboard. It was snowing outside again, a thin gray snowfall, and even before I went out, I felt chilled and sad.

  At lunchtime in school, Colin and I ate sitting under the first-floor stairwell. I had a tuna fish sandwich. I gave Colin half. Usually I looked forward to lunch, but that day my stomach felt full in a sickish way. “I wonder if I’m getting the flu.”

  “You got a temperature?” Colin said. “Stick out your tongue.” Sometimes when we were fooling around and got silly, we pretended to play doctor the way kids do when they’re about nine years old.

  “No, it’s my stomach. It feels queer, kind of like jelly. You know, quivery?”

  “Give me the science homework,” Colin said. “I didn’t get a chance to do it.”

  I took another bite of tuna sandwich. It tasted awful, like something swept off the floor.

  “Hey, you all right?” Colin gave me a friendly jab in the ribs and reached past me to pick up my notebook. “In here?” I nodded slowly, fighting that quivering sickness. Colin found my paper and scribbled the answers into his own notebook. “Okay, thanks,” he said, snapping my notebook shut.

  “I’ll do the same for you someday, Marylee.”

  I smiled dutifully. I liked Colin a whole lot when we were walking home from school, talking, or when we went to the movies, and I liked some of the things that happened when we were kissing, but … but …

  “Want to do something after school?”

  “I have to deliver my Scottys,” I said.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, don’t.” I looked down at my wristwatch, and again I felt that sickish, quivering, jelly-like sensation low behind my ribs. I didn’t want Colin with me tonight. I put the watch to my ear. Ticktickticktick … TICKTICKTICKTICK … I felt as if my heart were racing to keep up with the watch.

  Later that evening, after I did my Scotty route, instead of going straight home, I walked down North Street, past the cemetery, toward the shopping center. Maybe I’d find something to buy for James’s birthday. Where North intersected Seneca Boulevard, there were dozens of stores. I looked into the lit windows, checking out the toys, a huge panda bear, a miniature chess set, an airplane construction kit. I couldn’t settle on anything. I didn’t feel sorted out, calm, as I usually did after doing my route. I paused in front of Cubby’s Ice Creameria, a funny place that served weird varieties of ice cream and where the owner, Cubby, kept a changing assortment of driftwood in the window. He’d tie bits of colored ribbon to the driftwood, set tiny plastic cowboys astride them, and scatter miniature sheep or dwarfish little toy frogs in niches. It was always fun looking in Cubby’s window. I glanced up into the almost empty store and saw my mother.

  My mother? I was so surprised. I squinted, pressing my face against the window. Yes, it was her sitting on one of the white plastic stools, half turned away from the counter. She wore her blue coat trimmed with fur at the collar and cuffs.

  “Hey, Mom,” I called, raising my hand to tap on the plate-glass window. Then I stopped. She wasn’t alone. A man was with her. A stranger, someone I’d never seen before. He h
ad a thick mustache and looked bulky in a light-colored overcoat. They were turned toward each other, my mother sitting up very straight, her head rising from her fur collar like a dark lovely flower.

  The man’s fur hat lay between them on the white counter. Their hands were touching. My mother threw back her head and laughed. I knew exactly how that laugh sounded. The man smiled, picked up his fur hat and put it on my mother’s head, tipping it down over her eye. She leaned toward him and they kissed.

  All those nights when she came home late. All those quarrels with my father. All those lies.

  “Dear, do you know what time it is?” A woman, red-nosed from the cold, spoke to me. Speechless, I gaped at her, then ran down the street. The freezing air cut like little knives into my sinuses. I put my bare hands to my forehead. Where were my mittens? Not in my pockets. Gone. Lost? Stolen?

  At home my father was waiting for supper. He smiled so normally. “You’re a little late, Marylee. I get worried about you.”

  “I was looking for a present for James. His birthday—” I opened the refrigerator and at once felt dizzy, nauseous. “I can’t make supper. I’m sick.”

  “Sick? What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know, my stomach. Maybe the flu—”

  “You really feel sick? Why don’t you lie down. James and I will have my scrambled eggs special.” He sounded disappointed. He didn’t like to cook.

  “I’m sorry.” I went upstairs to my room. I lay down, then got up. I sat on the edge of the bed. Just sat there. I kept seeing my mother and that man in Cubby’s together. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. Was that possible? I wanted to ask somebody, was it possible to make up something so that you were positive you really saw it, and yet you didn’t? Sometimes dreams were that real.

  The room grew dark. I didn’t move. Patterns of light from outside moved over the walls. Downstairs, the front door slammed. I heard my mother coming in, speaking to my father. Water ran in the pipes. The television was on. Then James came upstairs, singing to himself. “Twenty-one bottles of beer …” Where’d he learn that? Probably on the school bus. He went into the bathroom, started running water into the tub. “Nineteen bottles of beer on the wall …”

  My mother knocked on the door. “Marylee? You sleeping, hon?”

  “No.”

  “Can I come in? Your dad says you don’t feel well.” She opened the door and turned on the light. The sudden brightness made me wince. She bent over me, touched my cheeks. “Why were you sitting in the dark? Marylee, what’s the matter?” She sat down next to me. She was wearing silver hoop earrings, thin silver chains looped around her neck. She put her arm around me and tried to slide me next to her, tried to pull my head down against her, but I wouldn’t let her. “Hey, Marylee—what is it?”

  I wanted to say I saw you, but I couldn’t get out one word. I was such a coward. I turned my head away. I felt horrible, as if I were burning up.

  “Are you getting a virus? You better hop into bed.” She put her cool fingers on my forehead. “I’ll bring you some fruit juice and aspirin.”

  “No. I don’t need anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “Want me to fix your covers?”

  “No.”

  She went to the door, looked at me for a moment. “Sure you’re all right?”

  I nodded and she left. I rolled over and closed my eyes. I fell asleep almost instantly and slept heavily, no dreams, and woke up in the morning to the buzz of my alarm clock.

  I went downstairs and drank a glass of orange juice. James was sitting at the table, eating cornflakes from the box and reading a comic book. I heard my parents walking around in their bedroom. I didn’t want to see either of them.

  I left the house and was at school before anybody else. The janitor had just unlocked the front door. I hung around in the halls till my homeroom teacher opened up our classroom. “’Morning, Marylee,” Mr. Hammar said, “you’re here nice and early.”

  I opened my notebook and stared at a blank page. I looked down at my watch—the watch my mother had given me. I pulled it off—I couldn’t bear to wear it now. Before I went to my first class I dropped it into my locker. The day passed queerly. Long stretches of time, minutes, even hours, disappeared, and I only knew they’d gone because the bell was ringing, or people were shifting to watch slides, or I found myself walking slowly to another class. At the end of the day I was the last one left in homeroom. I didn’t want to go home. Mr. Hammar was ready to lock up. “Marylee, first one in and last one out,” he said.

  I gathered up my books and walked through the dim, quiet halls toward my locker. As I rounded the corner and approached the long flat line of metal lockers I saw a girl in a brown car coat trying first one locker, then another, lifting the handles and letting them fall. The last locker was mine. She opened it, stooped down, and picked up something. Then she saw me. She had my wristwatch in her hand. She was stealing my wristwatch. With a feeling of disbelief I saw her shove the watch into her pocket and walk away.

  She was stealing from me. Stealing my watch, and I was letting it happen. She glanced back, saw me still standing there and gave me a sort of half-salute with her head. Well, she seemed to be saying, what are you going to do about it?

  A sly, superior smile flitted across her face as if she recognized me, knew that stealing from me was okay. Knew that I’d never say anything. I was the sort of person anyone could steal from. Her smile said it all—anyone could take anything from me, and I wouldn’t say a word.

  “Wait,” I said. I swallowed. My throat was so dry. It was the first word I’d said in hours. “Wait!” I dropped my books with a thud. As if that were a signal, the girl in the brown coat started running. And I ran after her.

  “Wait!” I screamed in a terrible explosion of pain and fury. “Do you hear me? This can’t go on.”

  She was gone, though. I ran all the way down the stairs, but she was nowhere in sight. She’d run away, been scared off by me. On the landing I found my wrist-watch. She must have panicked, and thrown it away. I was so surprised. It was crazy, but I felt absolutely elated. I’d done it. I’d opened my mouth, filled my lungs with air, and yelled as loud as I could. And stopped her from stealing my watch. Me, the coward.

  I got my books and started home. It was still snowing, gray, clouded, damp. I walked fast. I was thinking about my mother, my father, James, me. Our family. It wasn’t going to be the same again. No use pretending. Some things changed whether you wanted them to or not. I couldn’t make my mother stop seeing that man. Couldn’t make her start loving my father again. Couldn’t control her life. But my own life was something else. I stopped, packed snow into a ball, and threw it at a big red STOP sign on the corner. My aim was perfect. The snow splattered right on the T.

  Mimi the Fish

  (From Mimi Holtzer’s diary: March 8, Who are you, Mimi, what are you, why are you here, what does it mean to be alive? Can fish tell other fish apart? Do parents always know their children? Do children always know their parents?)

  Mimi, phosphorescent, swam up through a murky sea. “Interesting! I’m a fish,” she said. Her little light shone bravely. She swam with wings, pushing toward the surface. Light broke through the water in long rectangles. “Here I come,” Mimi called. “I’m coming, you know!” Then she found it hard to breathe and woke, gulping for air. The quilt was over her head in bunches and folds. She punched her way free.

  “A party, indeed,” she muttered, remembering at once her mother saying the night before, “Mimi, honeypie, you never have your friends over here, only that gawky Susan, why don’t you have a party for all the boys and girls you know?”

  “What all boys and girls?” Mimi had said.

  “Why, Susan, of course, and—oh, Ruth Ann Levinson? Her mother is a customer. And boys, too, there must be a boy you like?” Mimi’s mother waited, but Mimi said nothing. Only she and Susan knew how Mimi felt about Robert Rovere. Had her mother mentioned hi
s name, Mimi would have managed an astonished lift of her eyebrows, a blank smile. Robert Rovere? Rō-ber Rō-vere? Who he?

  “I was crazy about boys at your age, and they were crazy about me, too.” Her mother touched the little yellow bow (to match her yellow sweater) perched in her nest of curled black hair. “I always used to have parties on Friday nights for all my friends, and after they left my mother and I would clean up together and talk everything over.” Mimi’s mother had smiled hopefully. “You could invite whomever you want. Daddy and I would stay in our room, quiet as mice. You can buy Cokes and chips, invite as many as you want. The more the merrier! You know your friends better than I do.”

  So she did. One good friend. Susan Gaspay. Mimi was no social butterfly, no life of the party, no with-it girl with a big gang of friends.

  Besides, what kind of party could they have in the space behind the butcher shop that served as living room, dining room, and kitchen for Mimi’s family? There was barely space enough for the four of them, although the room was large. But within its four walls, painted the same glaring, varnished-looking yellowish brown as the other rooms, were crowded two refrigerators, stove, sink, kitchen table, chairs, TV with a sagging green plush chair in front of it, a couch where newspapers, scarves, socks, and lunchbags accumulated, a glassed-in cabinet for dishes and silver, a sewing machine, and a washer and dryer.

  “No party,” she told her mother. “No.”

  In her room now, in the narrow windowless darkness, the radiator hissed. Was it morning? Or was it still night? Yawning, Mimi groped for the little white plastic clock on the floor. As she found it, the alarm went off in her hand.