June now runs what amounts to a small factory, which produces her own designs. She specializes in comfortable clothing for working women in the 12 to 16 size. Katie wonders if women ever mind that June is herself a tidy size 10. She also produces a line of accessories, scarves and satin rosettes, ribboned clips. On Christmas Eve while Katie was there she had a benefit for one of the hospitals. Although she didn’t put strings on her gift (she had been doing this for four or five years), she was pleased when told that her funds had helped in the new preemie ward. June the baby-helper, Katie thought. She wondered what had happened to the passionate doctor-lover of so long ago. June didn’t go out while Katie was there. Katie couldn’t bring herself to ask Christine about her mother’s personal life, largely because she knew she was being stingy with the details about her own. She noticed books by C. S. Lewis and Thomas Merton lying around. Though she had never read either writer herself, you could not exist in the environs of a “hip” community without hearing of both. There was even a C. S. Lewis study group. She had seen the notice on bulletin boards, along with study groups for feminist mythology, dreamwork, and A Course in Miracles.
“Have you thought of going to school?” June asked one evening, a few days before Katie was returning to Oregon. June was knitting an elegant sweater of mohair and silk. Rhea had fallen asleep watching television, Christine was in bed. Katie was pretending to read The Ladies Home Journal.
“I haven’t,” Katie said simply.
“There are so many career opportunities these days,” her mother said. “In business, health—”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re a bright young woman, to spend your life serving food.”
“I haven’t the money or disposition for school, Mother.”
“I wish I had spoken sooner. You might have stayed here and gone to Tech while Fisher was—away.”
“Too late,” Katie said, appalled at the thought.
June put her knitting down and looked directly at her daughter. “I’m not interfering if I say I want the best for you. I still want you to have a good life.”
“Still? After I don’t deserve it?”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant, you’re forty years old, and I might not concern myself with your welfare. But you still seem rootless and unfocused, Katie, you still seem unsettled.”
“I’ve lived in Oregon nearly twenty years. We have a house.”
“You’re not going to let me talk about this, are you?”
“Mother, lots of people get by. Most people, maybe. Everybody doesn’t have a career. What did you do for years and years?”
“It was different when I was young. If you were lucky enough not to be a poor woman, you thought it was your job to take care of the house and the family. Now, I must say, that seems a luxury fewer and fewer women have.”
My, Katie thought. Mother the Feminist.
“But you could still choose something. You could still make your life mean something—”
“I marched for hunger last year.” Actually, she had walked on the sidewalk alongside the group as they set out from the plaza toward the next town, carrying placards. It had been a beautiful spring Saturday, and she had gone for something to do, and because Fish had mocked the effort, and her interest in it. She had spent days thinking about hungry people, in this country, maybe even her town, and God knows, in Africa and Asia. It had soothed her, to think about emaciated women with their drooping, flaccid breasts flapping over the cheeks of their starving babies. She had thought: So many people are desperate. So many people die young. She felt lucky, being who she was. She gave forty dollars to the hunger walk.
“Good,” her mother said, and picked up her knitting again.
Katie hated her, as she always did, not for interfering, but for being right. Katie’s life was mostly very boring, especially with Fish gone “away.” She got by on the vicarious experiences of Ursula, mostly, hearing about children abandoned in junkyards, or found wandering naked in a house full of far-gone users, and about Ursula’s children, whose lives were good and sometimes funny, especially Carter’s.
“There is something I want you to know,” her mother said in a moment. “If something should happen to me before Rhea is grown—” She paused, to let that sink in, Katie supposed. In truth, Katie had not considered the possibility of her mother’s death. June was in better shape than Katie. “If that happens, you should know that there would be plenty of money for Rhea. Christine would have the house until she died, but there’s money and the business. But there would be strings.”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“You didn’t want me to look forward to a free ride!” Katie exploded. “It never crossed my mind! I’ve always assumed you are IMMORTAL!” She threw the magazine from her lap across the room, nowhere in particular. “Why don’t you fucking BILL me for my visit here?” Rhea, asleep on the floor, moaned.
“Katie, Katie,” her mother said. “You know I’d pay your way if you wanted. I’m glad you came, for your sake as well as Rhea’s. For all of us.”
“Why? So that on some quiet evening you can slip in the knife? Usually it’s my nutritional standards.”
Christine appeared in the doorway. “Don’t, June,” she said quietly. At least she knew not to admonish Katie!
“It’s all right, Aunt Christine,” Katie said. “I was just about to tell my mother that I have a new job, as soon as I get back. I’m going to work for the theatre festival. I’m going to have a GOOD JOB.”
She stormed out of the room and left the two women to commiserate about Katie’s bad manners and temper. Goddamn her, Katie thought. There’d be strings. Big surprise.
Of course she had done a small mean thing, bringing up the theatre job just then, and not telling her mother what the job was. She might have said anytime, Mother, you’ll never guess, aren’t you glad you taught me to sew, did you know I learned so well? I’m going to be a stitcher in a costume shop. I’m going to like working for once.
She knew she had withheld the information because it would have pleased her mother.
She went to bed. In a little while Christine helped Rhea to bed. The child didn’t seem to have waked. Christine sat on the edge of Katie’s bed and stroked her arm. “Your mother never seems to find the right way to say things, Katie, but she means well. She loves you. She’s a good person, good to Rhea, and to me, and if she knew how, she’d be good to you, too.” Katie turned over sullenly, like a bad child. Rhea was the good one. Oh, wasn’t she a sad case? Katie thought of herself, wallowing in self-pity and jealousy. Oh to be a child again! Of different parents, in a different life!
To be Rhea, even.
In the morning, Rhea’s sweetness and enthusiasm assuaged Katie’s bad feelings, and June acted as if nothing had happened. Whatever June’s efforts to make Katie feel guilty (and Katie would have had a hard time remembering them, but one was surely last night!), Rhea’s disposition and health relieved Katie of the burden. She only felt sorry that Fish had missed out completely. A sweet daughter might have been good for him. But that had not been the child’s function. Katie had not used her.
Of that much she was glad.
40
The week goes by, and Fish does not return Katie’s car. In the middle of the week Katie calls Ursula to ask what is going on over there, and Ursula acts thick-headed and makes her ask about Fish specifically. Ursula says he is pushing hard to start a new job, a big one. He is working until dark every night. “Oh, it’s the car,” she says. “He didn’t call you?”
“To say what?”
“He didn’t call to say it would take longer?”
“Nope.”
“It’s still sitting in front of the garage. Are you okay without it?”
“Yes,” Katie says. And it is true, she is. She walks to work. She has spent the week sewing velcro in vests and jackets, so that the actors in heavy Shakespearean costumes can change in a hurry.
“I guess. No, no, don’t. He said Monday. I won’t give up until next week. It has a Monday in it, too.” She laughs and hangs up. She tells herself it is a good sign. Fish isn’t acting out of character. If he were prompt, it would bother her. Getting her car fixed right away now seems a cool, dispassionate act she is glad he has avoided.
On Saturday she goes with Maureen to the park in the early afternoon, before Maureen goes to work. On the way, they walk a block in silence and then she tells Maureen that she is feeling shaky about the divorce. Maureen says maybe Katie is going too far too soon. Maybe she is using the divorce, instead of walking away from it. Before, Fish messed up her head, and now the divorce is doing the same thing. “Don’t kid yourself,” Maureen tells her. “The divorce won’t solve your problems, because Fish isn’t the problem. The problem is inside you.”
“Great. Thanks a lot.”
“You need to go to group. You need to listen to what other people have learned. Learn to work the program.”
“It sounds like a sprinkler system.”
Maureen is unruffled. She takes Katie’s hand as they walk. “Have you read the steps?”
“I heard them read the other night.”
“The first step—you have to start there. Maybe you are avoiding it. The first step is surrender, kiddo.”
“Surrender what?”
“The idea you can control it all. Fish, your pain, your life.”
“If I stop believing that, I might as well give up.”
“Oh no, Katie, You’ve got yourself blown out of proportion. Lots of people have a time when they make a turn, or don’t. Before that they’re shit. Like me. I was a drunk, I fell in love with drunks. I got drunk with my own mother and sister and sent them off in a car that way. See, you don’t have so far to go. You’re functional.”
“As long as somebody tells me what to do.” She thinks of her mother, and of Jeff. Maybe Maureen now. “Not that I follow advice all that well.” Maybe she just wants sympathy. But from whom?
“Nobody can tell you what to do. You have to find out.”
“You talk in circles.”
“Look inside yourself. Talk about what you find. Pretty soon you’ll hear what you’re saying.”
“Sure. Who wants to hear it? Who would care?”
“Me, for starters. Or take a name in group and call someone. When you’re ready to start, I promise you, you can get the help. You have to take the first step.”
As they come to the park, Maureen explains that she is meeting her nephew Ricky and his foster parent. The foster mother has things to do in town, and Maureen can spend an hour with the child. It is the first Katie has heard about Ricky. It is a relief to have the subject changed.
“They live way out in the country, there’s no way for me to get there, but once in a while the foster mother calls and I go over on the bus to the mall and meet them. It’s been nearly two months since I saw him. He doesn’t seem to care, one way or the other, he’s only seven, I guess he takes it as it comes.”
“Am I not supposed to ask about his parents?”
“You don’t think I’m going to hold secrets, do you? You don’t think I’m going to repress?” Maureen laughs at herself. “Besides, I told you I’d tell you about my sisters. One at a time. This one is Rochelle, she’s two years younger than me.” She looks at her watch. “We’re a little early, you want to go in the shops?”
“No, I want to hear this.”
They sit on a low stone wall in the shade.
Maureen speaks softly, staring at the grass. “Your sister-in-law would know Rochelle. Everybody in that work in the valley does. She was a big case last year. She had Ricky, and a toddler, Summer. And she had this boyfriend who was talking about moving in with her. She was very crazy about this guy. The kids’ father had been gone since she was pregnant with Summer. She was living on welfare, drinking some, she was depressed, and then this guy came along and cheered her up.
“Last spring, this is a year ago, there was a really sunny day, and they took a ride out to the lake. Rochelle had packed sandwiches. I guess they had a little picnic, with a blanket spread out on the grass above the lake. Sometime in the afternoon Rochelle went behind some bushes to pee—” Maureen’s voice breaks. She looks at Katie. “Nobody believes that. I don’t, but I told her I did. She’s my sister.”
“What happened?” Katie has an idea she knows. She has the faintest memory of something Ursula told her.
Maureen takes a deep noisy breath. “They say she went back behind the bushes with the boyfriend. Rochelle said they’d been dozing on the blanket, she went back to pee, the boyfriend was asleep, the baby was asleep, Ricky was playing with some toy trucks—”
“Oh shit, Maureen, I do know about this.”
Maureen goes on anyway, doggedly. “The baby woke up and went down into the lake, quick as anything. When Rochelle came back to the blanket, the baby was gone. Ricky was down by the water’s edge. Summer had gone into the water and drowned.” She grips Katie’s hand. “Is it really worse if they were both in the bushes? Is it worse if the guy was back there instead of on the blanket? Does it change how drowned Summer was?”
Katie remembers Ursula raving about the case. They didn’t do anything to the man. He wasn’t the parent, he wasn’t responsible. Rochelle they took to court for neglect, she got a county jail term.
“So Ricky is in foster care until she’s—on her feet again?”
“Oh, she’s on her feet. She’s out and gone. She said they’d take Ricky away, what was the use of fighting it?”
“I remember Ursula saying they probably wouldn’t be able to keep Ricky from his mother. The state wants kids with their parents. She yells about it all the time.”
“I couldn’t take him, you can see that, can’t you?” Maureen says. She speaks so softly it is hard to hear her. “All my energy goes into staying afloat. I’m still putting one foot in front of the other.” She gets up and rubs the wrinkles in her pants, smooths her hair. “Do you still want to go? I thought I’d get him a corn dog or something and take him to the swings.”
“Sure, I’ll go,” Katie says. They walk to the stretch of parked cars. Maureen spots the boy and his foster mother by the bridge. She waves, and the woman waves back. The boy watches Maureen and Katie approach, his face placid and inexpressive. His foster mother kisses him goodbye and says she will be back in an hour. He doesn’t say anything. He watches her until she drives away.
Katie thinks of Rochelle behind the bushes. At least I’m better than that! she thinks. It is hardly comforting.
She sticks her hand out for the child to take. He walks between her and Maureen. He raises his arm limply and allows her to grasp his fingers. He doesn’t look at her.
Suddenly ashamed, she squeezes his hand lightly. They cross over the bridge, and catch sight of the pond. A duck is crossing the stone walk. Ricky breaks away from the women and runs to the duck. Maureen, coming up behind, says, “Don’t scare it, Ricky.” The duck waddles up the grassy slope and back onto the walk. There is another pond farther up the park, away from the congestion. Ricky stays right behind the duck, pacing his steps to the duck’s stops and starts. Maureen and Katie follow.
Maureen says, “He was standing by the water, watching where his sister had gone. I asked his foster mother if they were getting him any counseling. She said he was too young, he’d forget about it. She’s a nice lady, but—too young? What must he remember? He never mentions his mother. I used to, but what could I say?”
Katie says, “I’ll go get something to feed the ducks and meet you at the upper pond. We’ll have a good time.” Feeding the ducks will be something to do. Maureen nods gratefully and moves closer to the child. Katie watches them take a few steps, and then turns and flees.
Katie finds Maureen at home another evening. Maureen is unraveling a failed knitting project, winding a ball in her lap. She says hello without smiling.
&
nbsp; “Are you not feeling okay?” Katie asks.
“It’s a mood. I guess it’s from seeing Ricky. Thinking about my family, my life.”
Katie doesn’t want to know any more. She feels cheated. Maureen has been giving her advice for months. Now, when Katie feels impaled on her own indecision, when she desperately wants to do what Maureen says to do—hear herself think aloud—Maureen is full of her own trouble. One thing for sure, Katie wouldn’t know how to console Maureen.
The only person she comes close to understanding is Fish. That means only that she knows better than to predict what he will do; his unpredictability has become familiar over the years. It is she who has broken the pattern, done something to shake his teeth. He is driven by an energy unique to him. He cannot be bullied, and does not negotiate, unless he has already decided to yield.
The only real question now is how long it will take him to come around. She thinks she knows what she will do. It isn’t even a decision anymore; it’s fate.
41
Katie comes home and finds her car in the lot. The keys are on the floor. She runs inside to call Fish, but only Carter is at home. “Tell Fish thanks,” she says, a little out of breath, but she doesn’t think she can count on Carter to deliver a message, so she calls back later. This time Michael answers. He says, “Carter said you called,” and she feels stupid, like a pining girlfriend.
Beyond Deserving Page 23