by Nicole Seitz
“Harlan?” we heard Mama say. “Fritz?”
“Hey, Priscilla. You were right. He sure is a hard man to find.”
“Daddy?” I looked over at Grandma Mona. We were all huddled at the top of the steps. I started to dart down to the door.
“Janie!” Grandma Mona said in a hush. “Not now. Come back up here.”
I stopped but didn’t turn around. My eyes were glued to that front door. I couldn’t see my daddy, but I knew he was just on the other side, and the thought of it made me faint, like I might roll right down the stairs and bump into Mama’s feet. I turned and looked at Grandma Mona, and she reached for my hand. Numbly, I gave it to her and she walked Rainey and me up the stairs and into Mama’s room. She quietly shut the door and stood in front of it.
“Daddy’s here, Daddy’s here!” I whispered to Rainey, jumping around like I might wet my pants.
“That’s enough,” said Grandma Mona.
“She said ‘Harlan.’ That’s Daddy’s name!”
“I know it, child, I know.”
“But she’s been looking for him . . . all over everywhere. And she loves him. And now he’s back. We’re gonna be a family again. With the house and the daddy and everything! Just like the real gingerbread house.”
“Gingerbread,” said Rainey, trying to smile, but scared at the same time.
Rainey looked at me, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing. We ran to the window with the big tree behind it and opened it up. We stuck our heads out and breathed the cool breeze and tried desperately to see what was going on, but we couldn’t see for the porch being there. I loved that porch, but at that moment, I would’ve given anything if we just didn’t have one.
“Girls, that’s your mother’s private affair down there. It’s not good to listen in like this.”
But there was no stopping us. In fact, I could tell Grandma Mona was getting closer to that window, too, eavesdropping like we were.
“. . . you shouldn’t be here . . .”
“. . . shouldn’t have ran off like that . . .”
“. . . can’t come in the house, she might see you . . .”
“Priscilla, isn’t there something you wanted to say to Harlan?” I heard Uncle Fritz’s voice cut clear through like a bell.
“No. Wait.” It was my daddy’s voice now, low and firm. Hearing it made my body fill up with warm goodness, like blood pumping for the very first time. It spread all over in my cheeks, my arms, my feet. Then it chilled when I heard him say, “There’s something I’ve got to say to you, Priscilla. Something I should have said a long time ago.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
RIGHT UNDER THEIR NOSES
{Mona}
It was 1980. We’d just moved to Yuma, Arizona. Grayson was excited about being out in the desert with a whole new ecosystem to learn and fuss over. Me? I missed the trees from back home. I missed the oaks and pines and birds and bugs and everything there was to surround you with greenness and home. I even missed the humidity of South Carolina. But Grayson was happy, and that’s what I wanted.
Priscilla was now the prettiest girl in Yuma. She had been the prettiest in Forest Pines, but she’d left all of her friends back there, every single one. They said they’d call and write, and there had been a letter or two, but the letters had already stopped. Priscilla was fifteen years old, in a new place where people didn’t know her. It must have been a confusing time for a young girl, but I thought kids were resilient.
Then to top it all off, Fritz, the long-lost brother she never knew about, came and found me. I can only imagine what that must have done to her. I know how it affected me and, temporarily, my marriage to Grayson.
Now, it’s not like Priscilla turned bad or was getting into drugs or anything like that. Not like she came home with tattoos or ears pierced, even. But when Priscilla came home with all that long beautiful blonde hair chopped off, I sucked in my breath and feared the worst. She had changed before my very eyes. She was a different child all of a sudden. She began hanging out with this Johnson boy and his friends. I forbade her from leaving the house at times, but she’d sneak off. It seemed the more I told her she couldn’t do something, the more she’d try to do the opposite.
Turned out it wasn’t the Johnson boy I should have been worried about at all. It was the strange young man who lived across the street from us. He was right under our noses the whole time, and his name was Harlan Bradfield.
Chapter Thirty-nine
THE BIG QUESTION
{Janie}
Rainey and I were leaning so far out that bedroom window, Grandma Mona had to reel us back in lest we fall. The sky was dark and cloudless above, full of stars. For once in my life, I was glad it was dark because it made it easier to sharpen my senses and listen in on what my daddy was saying on the porch. It’s not like it came in all loud and clear because his voice dropped down an octave, and I could only catch a word here or there.
“. . . back in Yuma . . . loved you the first time . . . shouldn’t have taken me so . . . don’t need an answer now . . . marry me?”
A hush lay over the whole town in the instant my father asked my mother to marry him. Rainey and I looked at each other. We stopped breathing just to hear what her answer would be. In those moments of waiting, I was filled with pure hope, hope for a better life, hope for a whole family, hope for the love my mama and Rainey and I so deserved.
And then, without any screaming or crying or calling out, “Yes, Harlan, yes!” I heard the door shut quietly below us. I watched the backs of Uncle Fritz and my daddy as they emerged from the porch, went down the walkway, and got back in Fritz’s car to leave.
Every child wants to see her parents together, and I was no different. I lay in bed for three nights, praying Mama would say yes. But she didn’t let on what she was thinking. Instead she stared out the windows or lay on the couch holding her belly. She hardly touched her supper at all. She picked weeds here and there in the garden. Grandma Mona’d told us not to ask Mama about Daddy coming over because we weren’t supposed to be eavesdropping. She said sometimes grown-ups keep important things to themselves. I said, smart-like, “How come children are the last ones to know anything?” She didn’t answer me back.
Daddy never came around at all. Seems like if you’d just asked somebody to marry you, you’d want to spend every second together, or so it seemed to me. I’d wait and watch, listening for Daddy’s motorcycle, but never heard a thing. Rainey and I were inseparable those next few days. Her foot was all healed and her arm didn’t hurt quite so much anymore, so she could bounce again. We had chalk and played hopscotch out in front of the house for hours at a time, talking about what it would be like to be a family again. Talking about memories we had of Daddy being home. How Mama used to try to look nice all the time. How she’d stay up with him for a while when he came home from the mechanic shop. How she’d kiss him even though he smelled like oil.
“That’s true love,” I said, “when you can kiss somebody when they smell that way.” I threw down my rock and hop-hop-hopped. “Remember how sometimes he’d bring us flowers—daisies and daffodils?”
“Uh-huh,” said Rainey. She picked up the rock and threw it. It landed on the number 3. “And the cowbell?”
I told her, how could I forget the cowbell? I hadn’t heard it in years, but you never forget a sound like that. It was something Daddy had found in a field, and he kept it in his sock drawer. It would lie quiet most of the time, when Daddy was normal-acting. Other times, he was so sad he’d stay in bed for days on end. Mama’d make excuses to his boss when he couldn’t go to work. He would cry sometimes. He would yell some others. Rainey and I would worry. But then, sometimes he would get so happy he’d be nearly bouncing off the walls. His voice would be loud and there’d be no escaping his enthusiasm. He’d shower sometimes two, three times a day. He’d ride that motorcycle fast as he could. He’d love on Mama and make her giggle. He’d eat second helpings at dinnertime. And every morning when he was extra happy lik
e that he’d ring that silly cowbell and wake the whole house. Life was never boring when Daddy was around, only unpredictable.
The more I started thinking about all the faces of Daddy, the more my stomach started jumbling up in a knot. Then it would smooth away with a fresh wash of optimism. My Mama might finally be getting married, I thought. To my very own father. What could be better than that?
I started wondering about miracles. Coming to the house on Vinca Lane had been a miracle—it was so much nicer than the one in Cypresswood. I pondered how I came out of the tree when Rainey fell and I was just fine. I still didn’t have an answer for it. For all I knew, it could have been a miracle. In fact, I started adding up all the things that were good about our new lives . . . finding Uncle Fritz, the new baby coming. Not counting Poppy’s dying, there seemed to be an abundance of miracles in our family. Yes. I believed. Mama was going to say yes.
The way I learned the news was like this. One day, and I’m not sure which day of the week it was, being summertime, Mrs. Arielle came over to the house. She was dressed in a pink linen suit and she smelled real nice. Mama was expecting her so she’d been working on the house all morning long. She’d gone from no makeup and hair tied back behind her head, to spic-and-span floors along with a painted face and conditioned hair. Mrs. Arielle was pretty. More than her looks I think it was her confidence. She just seemed sure in her shoes. Mama’s skin and hair and eyes were even prettier than Mrs. Arielle’s, but the fact she seemed so unsure made her shine not quite so bright.
“You know I don’t get over this way that often, but this neighborhood is just as nice as it always was. I remember coming over here when we were girls, Priscilla. You still have that swing in the back?” “No,” said Mama. “The branch broke off. Isn’t that a shame? Here. Let me show you around. Or would you like something to drink? Iced tea?”
Mama was real good at playing hostess, and I was proud of her. Grandma Mona was rocking out on the back porch and Rainey and I sat in the sewing room, quiet, still, waiting, listening, staying out of Mama’s way. After a while, when we heard Mama pulling out a tin of cookies, Rainey said, “Come on.” And I followed her.
We strolled into the kitchen and grinned, being real, real good. We wanted to show Mrs. Arielle we weren’t always thieves.
“Well hello again,” she said, beaming. “I’m so glad you were able to come to my little party.”
“Oh no, Kelsey.”
“No, I mean it. Y’all were the life of it all. And you know, I brought something for you.” Mrs. Arielle stood up and walked into the living room. She fiddled with her purse and then reentered with her hands behind her back. She raised her eyebrows and brought out that teddy bear Rainey had tried to steal.
Rainey grabbed it and rubbed it on her face.
“I thought you might like to have this for your new little brother or sister.”
Rainey looked at Mama to see if it was okay, and Mama nodded, a distracted look on her face. “Thank you,” said Rainey. She held it out to me and I petted its soft little brown head. Then we turned and ran giggling out back to the garden to show Grandma Mona. While Grandma Mona was admiring that teddy bear and Rainey was chattering about how much she loved it and how the baby was going to love it too, I was standing close to the door, trying to listen some more to Mama’s conversation. I couldn’t hear much except all of a sudden Mrs. Arielle clapped her hands together and said, “Married? That’s wonderful! I’m so happy—”
“Shh . . .” Mama said. “. . . doesn’t know anything yet.”
I turned to Grandma Mona and Rainey, who was rocking in the chair next to her, cradling that bear. “She’s getting married! Mama’s getting married!” I whispered. I thought I might burst.
“That’ll be the day,” said Grandma Mona, and I remember how angry I was at her for spoiling our fun. Here it was the happiest thing to have happened in a long time, if not ever, and this was the way she celebrated? I knew she was mourning over having lost Poppy, but grieving or not, I rekindled my dislike of Grandma Mona right then. Nobody messed with my Mama’s being happy.
Chapter Forty
THE VOW MAKER
{Mona}
It’s not as if I was being a spoilsport just to be a spoilsport. Sadly, I was considering history and what I knew to be true.
What I knew to be true is that the Bradfield boy would never get married. He didn’t have it in him. He was a coward, if you ask me. I could remember watching him play by himself, walking his dog, shooting marbles, always by himself in his driveway across the street from us in Yuma. For a teenaged boy to spend so much time alone, I felt sorry for him. I befriended him. I’d say hello after Priscilla had already left to go somewhere with her friends. I would talk to this boy as if I might be able to help him in some way. You see, Harlan never had a father that I knew of, and his mother suffered a debilitating disorder. Back in the early eighties they weren’t talking much yet about bipolar, but that young boy told me all about it. Told me when his mama was having a good spell. Told me just as honest when she was having one of her bad.
I remember one afternoon I had invited Harlan to the front porch and we were sitting on the steps. He was distraught his mother was in bed and having a bad go of it, and he said, “I’ll never be like that.” “
’Course you won’t,” I said.
“And I’ll never have children. Never.”
“Oh now, don’t say that, Harlan. Sure you will. You’ll meet a nice girl, you’ll settle down—”
“No, I won’t, because Mama says if I ever do, I’ll be a terrible father. And to add to it, I’ll pass along the crazy gene. There’s enough crazy in the world, she says.”
Can you imagine that? He said it with such conviction. It pretty much summed up Harlan’s life sentence. A life of fear and instability. A lifetime of thinking he had nothing to offer a woman or, heaven forbid, a child. No, Harlan always kept the ones who loved him at arm’s length. Whether he actually developed a true touch of the disorder I couldn’t tell you for sure. All I know is his mother assured him he was a carrier, and that changed his outlook on himself and the whole wide world. And it would affect the Macy family for generations to come.
Chapter Forty-one
LOVE NEVER DIES
{Janie}
Rainey and I heard Mama’s footsteps before her knock. We were lying in our beds, talking about everything and nothing, singing silly songs. It was almost like the night before Christmas. We were just as excited.
“Can I come in?” Mama said. She pushed the door open and Rainey and I grinned up at her. I tried not to show that I knew her secret, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. “Listen, there’s something I wanted to talk about.” Mama stepped up on my mattress to go sit next to Rainey and almost pinched my arm.
“Watch out. You hurt Janie,” said Rainey.
“Oh goodness, I’m sorry, Janie. Let me move over here.” She stepped over me carefully and sat down. “Now listen up, girls, I’ve got some big news to tell you.”
“Mama get married!” said Rainey.
“Wh-what? How did you—”
“We saw Daddy and everything.”
“Oh my goodness. You little stinkbug. I cannot believe . . . well, yes. I know it’s been a long time . . . a real long time, but your father came and we talked. He’s asked me to marry him, but I told him I’d have to check with you first. He wants us to be a family again. I don’t know. I think I’d like that too, but what do you think?”
“Okay, Mama,” said Rainey.
“Yes. Tell him yes!” I said.
At this point Mama’s face lit up, and she pulled her left hand in front of us and showed off a ring. It was gold with a single diamond on it, not as big as Mrs. Arielle’s but a real ring, nonetheless. Mama’d never worn a ring. It made her look like a princess.
We touched that ring and looked up at Mama in awe. She was happy, truly. She was like Cinderella who had found her prince. Out of all my moments of true happiness, that one w
as the best one yet.
After so many years gone by, it’s a strange thing to see your father. It’s like this love you felt but set aside comes rushing back along with a whole other feeling—trepidation, shyness, knowing him but not knowing him. Standing there in the living room, looking at my daddy with his brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, clean jeans on, and Uncle Fritz by his side, I forgot all about the questions I’d wanted to ask him over the years like, where did you go, how could you leave us? Things like that. Instead, as soon as he smiled and put out his arms, I could see in his eyes he was sorry for being gone so long, and Rainey and I ran to him. We hugged him as hard as we could. Daddy sat down on the sofa and cried like a little baby. He seemed genuinely shocked we could love him still after all this time. It seemed to me that Rainey and I, mere children, knew something the grown-ups around us didn’t. That love never dies. I felt happy they were learning what we already knew.
But Grandma Mona remained the naysayer and sucked all the fun out of everything.
“Don’t get too hung up on that boy,” she’d tell Mama. “Don’t pin your hopes on him. He hasn’t changed, Priscilla. People don’t change.”
But Mama must have thought they could. Mama had changed herself, after all. She was changing every second these days, humming at times, cleaning, crying at others. Pretty soon she started getting ill. She’d try to eat some dry toast but wound up running to the bathroom instead.
Daddy moved onto the couch in the living room and just let Mama do her thing. He watched in horror when she got sick. He’d try to help around the house. He’d read to us. I don’t know how many times he read Corduroy, and I was tired of the book, but I listened in anyway. It was my daddy’s voice. My father. The newness of everything was like icing on our gingerbread house. Pinpricks up my spine. Cool chills in the warm air. Stomach jitters. Overwhelming happiness.