Take Me Back

by Sally Mandel

  “What do you think, Ma?” Stella asked. “Isn’t it about time for a little colored water?”

  Lily glanced at her watch. Actually, it was William’s watch with the gold band. Lily had worn it every day since his death, a habit that Stella found touching.

  “Without a doubt,” Lily said. “I’ll just go up and settle in.”

  “Let me know if you need anything,” Stella said.

  “What was that, dear?” Lily asked from the second stair. “You need to speak up.”

  “Holler, I said, if you need anything.” If her mother was getting deaf, this was the first time Stella had been made aware of it. She watched her mother climb the stairs, deliberately and with a firm grip on the banister. She’s going to leave me, Stella thought to herself.

  It was a cool May evening, but the cushions on the porch swing out back were still warm with sunshine. Stella brought out their drinks and some Goldfish on a tray. Lily drank bourbon, one part bourbon to ten parts water, from a bottle that had been in the liquor closet since 1979. When Stella sat down, Lily snuggled right up next to her. Lily had never been much of a hugger, as she put it. But lately, after a lifetime of arm’s length affection, Lily had finally relaxed into the comfort of physical contact with her daughter.

  Stella held the crackers out. “I want you to eat every last one of these, Ma. I can feel your bones through your sweater.”

  “I’m a shrinker, that’s all,” Lily said. She selected a single Goldfish that sat in her palm for several moments, stranded, as if on a riverbank. “That’s what happens when a person gets older. Remember your Aunt Maude? Now there was a sweller. She was so enormous that they had to put her in a special box and haul her to the cemetery in a pickup truck.”

  Stella laughed and felt herself begin to unwind. There had been a garden swing back at the old house in Indian Wells. Stella had been such a hyperactive child, one leg always pumping, fingers tapping nonstop. She was often aggravated, often with her mother in particular. When she sat in the swing, though, she was able to calm herself. It was one of the first things she and Simon had installed at the Hudson house.

  Stella inhaled the scent of new growth in the garden and closed her eyes. She was so enjoying the proximity of her mother. It seemed inconceivable that there could ever have been tension between them.

  “Now, tell me everything,” Lily said.

  “Haven’t heard a peep,” Stella answered. Any conversation between them always began with Amy and her doings. “Have you?”

  “I had a postcard with Grand Central Station on it. It reminded me of when I first took her there, you remember? She looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Big church.’” They sipped their drinks, savoring the memory. “I wish she would find a nice man,” Lily said, “but I probably sound like a broken record.”

  “Yeah, well, nice men aren’t exactly falling from trees,” Stella remarked.

  Lily peered at her. “Hm …” she said. Stella had forbidden Lily to harass her about her social life, but there was an epic novel within that one drawn-out syllable.

  Stella took a generous sip of wine. “I remember when you taught me how to make hollyhock dolls,” she said.

  “Yes, and then you taught Amy.”

  They sat for a moment, watching a pair of rabbits nibble at the new shoots in the very back of the garden. The shadows were lengthening across the lawn. Stella often looked back on her childhood years as being fraught with turmoil. It was pleasant to remember the happy times sitting in the yard with her mother, playing with the flowers. She reached for Lily’s hand.

  “Why was I always blowing up at you when I was a kid, Ma?” Stella asked. “I can’t recall a single reason for it, just that I was always mad.”

  Lily smiled. “The same reason Amy was mad at you, I expect. I was your mother.”

  Stella thought about that for a moment. “I couldn’t even say ‘good morning’ to Amy without her cringing,” she said. “In fact, she’s still a pretty accomplished eye roller.”

  Stella set another Goldfish onto Lily’s palm. “What about your mother?” Stella had never met her. She had died of malaria before Stella was born.

  “I took a train ride with her one time in Egypt,” Lily said. “I must have been about twelve. She fell asleep next to me and pretty soon her head fell back against the seat. I’ll never forget—her mouth gaped open like a horrid big fish and she began to snore. It was so mortifying. If I could only have moved to another car, or another country. Or just died.”

  Stella laughed, but then there was that chilling sensation like a cold finger drawn up her spine. Stella’s grandmother on that train had, in all likelihood, been younger than she, Stella, was this very moment. Now she was dead, and that girl Lily, herself, was an old woman. Seventy-seven was old, no getting around it, and there would come a time, sooner rather than later … Stella felt her eyes begin to mist. When had her mother developed that tremor in her hands?

  They sat sipping their drinks for a while, swimming amongst the flotsam and jetsam of other decades. Then Stella shook herself free of the past. Lily had finally consumed the Goldfish, she noticed. “Okay, Ma,” she said. “Let’s go pump some vittles into you.”

  They sat at the table indulging in their favorite comfort foods—Lily with macaroni and cheese, Stella with nachos. The conversation now revolved around movies. When Stella was in grade school, Lily would keep her home whenever something exceptional happened to be playing in the movie theater, Lily’s definition of exceptional being anything that had a gangster in it. If organized crime wasn’t available, cowboys would do nicely. High Noon was so gripping that they sat and watched it twice. Then Lily would give Stella a note for her teacher the next day, “Stella was indisposed,” it would say. It wasn’t a lie, Lily had explained. Stella was indisposed to go to school, that was all.

  “I think The Big Sleep’s on tonight,” Stella said, reluctantly scooping up the last tortilla chip.

  “You know, dear,” Lily said, “I’m afraid I’m just an old poop. Much as I would adore watching the bewitching Mr. Clift, I believe I’ll just head on up to bed.”

  It was around midnight when Lily came downstairs, one of Amy’s old winter coats tossed over her nightgown for warmth. Stella had fallen asleep by the television.

  “Wake up, Stella,” Lily said, standing over her.

  Stella shifted a little, blinked and looked at Lily as if she’d just stepped out of a dream. Her mother was holding a manila envelope, which she shook in front of Stella’s face. “I’ll make you some coffee if you like, but you’re going to wake up.”

  Stella squinted at the envelope. “What’ve you got there, Ma?” she asked, sitting up with a yawn.

  “Something I found in the wastebasket by your desk.”

  “What on earth were you doing, poking through my stuff?” Stella was waking up now, and fast. “Give it here.”

  Lily held it away. “You didn’t open it,” she said. “Why?”

  “Maybe because it’s from Simon and I don’t need any more grief.”

  “All right, I can see that. But don’t you think it’s telling that it’s been sitting in that waste basket for over two weeks?” Lily asked. “What’s the message there?”

  “Probably that I’m a lousy housekeeper.”

  “You have to read this,” Lily said.

  “No, I don’t,” Stella said. “And you neither.”

  “I already have,” Lily said.

  “You read my mail?” Stella asked, incredulous. She stood up now and grabbed the envelope from her mother. It had been slit open.

  “While I’m awaiting arrest,” Lily said, “you’re going to sit down with those pages.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Don’t be a coward, Stella. It’s unlike you.”

  Stella stared back at Lily, seized by a mixture of rage and disbelief that left her uncharacteristically tongue-tied.

  Lily took a breath and spoke
quietly. “You’re my brave girl, Stella. You’ve faced rampaging elephants. You can certainly read a letter from your ex-husband.”

  “Yeah, well, Mother, elephants don’t have the clout to break my heart into smithereens,” Stella said.

  “I’ve always been so proud of you,” Lily said. “Don’t let me down now.”

  “Proud of me?” Stella retorted. “You know, it might have been nice if you’d told me that, just once.” She got off the couch and began to pace back and forth in front of the empty fireplace.

  “You’re right,” Lily said. “I should have and I’m sorry. I suppose I was terrified by your job, by the danger. Maybe because I had lost one child, I was overly frightened that I would lose you. The last thing I would have wanted was to say anything that would encourage you.”

  Stella stared at Lily in disbelief. Revelations were pouring from her mother’s mouth faster than she could possibly take them in. She raised her hands. “All right, all right,” she said. “Let’s just calm down, okay? The issue here is the envelope. It’s my property, and you had no right to open it, much less read the contents.”

  “Oh, Stella …” Lily said, shaking her head. In the old days, she would have been afraid that Stella would be about to have an episode, but Lily had moved past that. Simon had taught her how. And the fact that Stella was now holding the envelope defiantly to her chest Lily took to be a good sign. “I’m cold and I’m tired,” she said, “so I’m going up to bed. Just read it, Stella. Read the damn thing.”

  She turned and walked out of the room. Stella heard her slow tread on the stairs.

  Stella sat there for some time with the pages in her lap. After a while, she got up to make a fire and pour herself a glass of wine. She sipped at it thoughtfully while the logs flared up, then settled into a crackling blaze.

  Finally, she picked up the first page and glanced at it sideways as she might have done while watching a scary movie.

  “For my darling Stella,” the letter began.

  Damn him, Stella thought, vowing to read no further. But just at that moment, a cinder exploded with a loud pop. Surely that was a sign that she ought to at least try.

  It was a list, she saw, with sentences in capital letters. Simon had always loved lists. With Stella often traveling and Amy in school, he was in charge of running the household. Stella had loved the reminders he left on the refrigerator door, many of them executed in rhyme schemes: If you’re looking for ways to improve your demeanor/ Please pick up your skirt from our friendly dry cleaner. The receipt would be attached. Or, for Amy: Before you go out, could you please wash the dishes/ And after, remember to feed both the fishes.

  “I am hoping that you can bring yourself to read this,” Simon had written at the top of this new list so many years later. “But no response is required or expected. xxS.”

  “HEREWITH AN INCOMPLETE LISTING OF THE REASONS THAT I LOVE STELLA MEREDITH ADAMS VANDERWALL AND ALWAYS WILL:

  “BECAUSE OF YOUR DEDICATION TO YOUR WORK, E.G., THE TRUCK.”

  Stella regarded her Peace Corps years the way other people did their college experience. Listening to her friends talk about the anti-Vietnam War protests as if they had been some kind of national fraternity party, she was silence. It was just that her coming-of-age had been so fundamentally different, her plunge into the reality of African poverty a world away from the beer blasts and all-night cram sessions, the protests and the sit-ins.

  Her village in the Ivory Coast boasted a single vehicle, a beat-up yellow ’64 Citroen 2CV Fourgo, affectionately known as “Le Coeur,” for “Coeur de Lion.” A “gift” to the village from the secretaire général of the district, whose wife had managed to strip all the gears except reverse, it now sat in the center of town for months on end, and was used mainly as a playground for the children. Stella had been coached in minimal auto repair skills, but nothing she administered could persuade Le Coeur to move in a forward direction. One day, Moussa, the Gaullist who lived next door in a bamboo frame mud-covered house like Stella’s, cut his leg with a machete. He bled without ceasing and Stella realized she had to get him to the nearest village with a doctor. But how? she wondered as she stared helplessly at the truck. While others might well succumb to kicking the tires in frustration, Stella characteristically chose to encourage rather than criticize.

  “Come on, now, Braveheart, you can do this,” Stella urged the vehicle, loading Moussa into the truck. “You can do this.” She backed onto the “main road,” a single rutted lane. The rearview mirror had been snapped off long ago, so she was forced to open her door and lean out to see where she was going, the kicked-up dust clinging to the sweat dripping from her face. That backwards nine-mile trip saved Moussa from bleeding to death. Not that Stella spent any time congratulating herself for it. The next day, she found a mechanic who, in exchange for her high school ring, managed to retrieve a single, temperamental forward gear for Le Coeur.

  The experience was the first of so many that propelled Stella into a life of service, though she might not have thought of it that way, let alone talked about it. She was shy about expressing her feelings regarding her job, imagining that they might sound hollow or pompous to anyone else. With Simon, though, she shared them: that she was one of the privileged people who get to see firsthand a positive impact on some other human being; that it horrified her to think she had come so close to foregoing the Peace Corps for business school instead; that her work enriched her, fed her, buoyed her. Simon understood it all, never once chastising her for taking off for some tangled jungle even as the dishwasher was flooding the kitchen or the dog needed surgery.

  “BECAUSE I CAME HOME FROM WORK ONE SUMMER DAY AND FOUND YOU SPRAWLED FACEDOWN ON THE FRONT LAWN.”

  Stella had been inhaling the earth. Sometimes the scent was simply too intoxicating to ignore. Stella felt a smile prickling at the corners of her mouth and caught herself. It was the wine, that’s all. She would not do him the favor of reacting. She would skim through as if prancing delicately across the surface of a treacherous spider web.

  “BECAUSE YOU LOVE OUR DAUGHTER EXTRAVAGANTLY.”

  “WHEN AMY HAD JUST GOTTEN HER DRIVER’S PERMIT SHE RAN OVER A BIRD. I CAME HOME TO FIND YOU BOTH ON AMY’S BED. SHE WAS SITTING AT THE EDGE AND YOU WERE BEHIND HER WITH YOUR LEGS AND ARMS WRAPPED AROUND HER, ROCKING HER AS SHE WEPT. I’LL NEVER FORGET THE LOOK ON YOUR FACE AS YOU HELD HER.”

  Stella had forgotten the incident about the starling, how Amy had fretted that it was merely half dead, lying there suffering, awaiting another crushing blow from an oncoming vehicle. Stella had phoned the local wildlife center, eliciting a promise that someone would go out to the site and dispatch the animal.

  What Stella was inclined to remember were the times she had let Amy down. There weren’t many, but still. Exhausted already, Stella sighed and picked up the pages again.

  “BECAUSE OF YOUR 2:00 A.M. WEATHER REPORTS.”

  Stella had always been a sleepwalker, even as a child when she would let herself out of the house in the summertime and wander around the yard barefoot amid a cloud of fireflies. But a few months after Stella and Simon had moved in together, he told her over breakfast that she had awakened him in the night.

  “Quick!” she had called. “Come and see! It’s snowing!” At first, he had thought groggily that there must be a storm outside, but then he realized that Stella was not at the window but was in fact standing with her back to him, staring into the closet.

  “Oh, it’s so pretty,” she went on. “I love it when it drifts.”

  He had taken her gently by the shoulders and ushered her back into bed. She had stared up at him with brilliant vacant eyes. “Go to sleep, Stella,” he had said. “It’s time for sleep.”

  Six months later, she woke him again. She stood beside the bed in her raincoat holding an umbrella. “It’s time to go,” she had told him. “Here,” she said, handing him the umbrella. “It’s pouring.”

  Simo
n spoke quietly so as not to startle her awake. “All right, Stella,” he said, taking the umbrella. “Let’s get you in out of the rain.”

  “Is it time to go home?” she asked.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” Simon said, and put her back to bed.

  The nocturnal weather reports came in cycles, often showing up a week or so after a trip when Stella’s attempts to adjust to American time were not facilitated by the malaria vaccine that was still messing with her dreams. Ever since the divorce, Stella sometimes found a random sweater beside her bed in the morning, or a stray pair of shoes, and gathered that she must have been on an adventure during the night.

  Stella set the pages beside her on the couch and stood up. She had been sitting with one leg bent under her and it had fallen asleep. She picked up her wine glass and paced back and forth to get her circulation moving again. If only the numbness in her leg would travel up to her brain, which was functioning all too keenly.

  “BECAUSE OF THE WAY YOU LOOK AFTER WE MAKE LOVE—LIKE YOU’RE NOT QUITE SURE WHERE YOU ARE, ALL DAZED AND LIMP AND BEAUTIFUL.”

  Stella realized now that she would not stop reading until she’d finished every page. Were she was told that the world was about to end, she would keep on reading. Especially then.

  “BECAUSE OF THE ONLY TIME I EVER SAW YOU BLUSH.”

  Uncertain at first what he could be referring to, Stella thought for a moment. The realization struck, and she blushed all over again. She and Simon had been shopping for a cocktail party they were hosting to benefit the PTA. They had both been busy, Simon bringing to fruition the sale of a large estate in the next township and Stella typing up the notes from her last trip. They dashed out to the store with two hours to prepare, planning the menu on the way: cheese and crackers, hummus, nothing fancy.