by Karen Day
As Mr. Volkov, a big, hulking man with a thick accent told me we could work in the girls’ bedroom at the back of the apartment, I stole a glance at his daughter. Two red circles burned into Marta’s cheeks, her eyes glued to the floor in front of me. I felt her embarrassment and immediately liked her.
“Please make sure you tell them that I’m not an elementary school teacher,” I’d told Mr. Donahue when he called to ask if I’d help. Marta was falling behind, struggling with reading and writing, and her parents—newly arrived from Russia—couldn’t afford tutors. I didn’t want to do this. What did I know about teaching fourth graders? But when Mr. Donahue, who lived on the sixth floor of the building, said that he’d pay me, the situation was that desperate, I agreed to give it a try—but only on the condition that I do it for free.
I followed Marta to her bedroom and closed the door behind us. I could still hear voices from the TV and smell whatever was cooking on the stove (cabbage?) but at least it was private. The room was sparsely furnished and everything, from the skimpy pillows to the pockmarked bureau, felt second or thirdhand. Marta sat on the bed, her pudgy legs dangling over the edge and her head hung. Her little sister grinned at me as she bounced around the room and showed me her new Barbie, her latest drawing, and her Blowpop lollipop that she’d won at the second-grade spelling bee that day.
I put my backpack on the floor and sat in a folding chair near Marta. I was sweaty and still bothered by my conversation with Lucy. But I had to get through the next hour. As I watched the two girls, so different in looks as well as personality, I instantly saw the dynamic between them.
“So, Anna, that’s your name, right?” I asked the grinning sister. She nodded and giggled. “You want to go out to the other room so Marta and I can work?”
“No.” She shrugged. “Mamma and Poppa say I get to be here.”
Great. I glanced at Marta, who still wouldn’t look at me. “So, Marta, did you bring home work we can look at?”
She shrugged. Anna giggled and I shot her a look that she completely ignored.
“Did you bring home any books?”
She shook her head.
“How about any assignments?”
She shook her head again.
I sighed and looked around. I had to take a different approach. “So, do all those people out there live here, too?”
“No!” Anna giggled.
“Really? I thought they did. I thought maybe they all slept in the living room, you know, stacked on top of each other like Pringles potato chips.”
Anna burst out laughing. Marta smiled, although cautious, and looked up at me. She had a mouthful of white teeth and a nice smile. I grinned back at her.
I glanced at a plastic pink backpack, covered in pictures of Dalmatians, on the linoleum in the corner. “How come you guys don’t have a dog?”
“We want one!” Marta said, her voice quick. “But our parents won’t let us.”
“We’re not responsible enough!” Anna cried.
I shook my head. “Keep working on it. I had a dog. She was the best friend I ever had. I used to dress her up in doll clothes and pretend we were in the circus.”
Now both girls laughed. It didn’t matter that I was lying—my mother was afraid of dogs and would never allow one—because I was on my way. When I pulled out a book I’d found on the T last week, The BFG, by Roald Dahl, they settled into the bed and stared at me as if I’d just promised them a dog if only they’d listen.
Later, after I finished a few chapters and Marta was able to answer the questions I asked, I realized that she was smart. Next time, I said to her, I’d read more and then maybe we’d work on her homework together. She nodded. By the time I walked into the dark living room, the light of the TV providing a path to the door, I felt better than when I’d arrived.
As I walked to the T, I thought about my fourth-grade year. I remembered it well, maybe better than almost any other time, because it was the year my mother was in between. She’d taken a sabbatical from the university and Listen had been written, although not yet published, and she was more relaxed, more calm and pleasant to be around, than at any other time I could remember. The four of us ate dinner every night in the dining room. We watched TV and read by the fire. And that spring, my mother and I began walking all over town every night after dinner and sometimes stopping for ice cream on our way home.
I liked that year not only because the craziness with Listen had yet to begin. It was also a magical time, as I saw with Marta, when you’re not yet jaded or worried about boys or friends or whether you’re a good person or not. You just are. You got excited by a dog or a lollipop. You could lose yourself in a novel.
Maybe I shouldn’t be tutoring adults but teaching children.
But I cringed, thinking how my mother might respond. And what would I say to Ben (oh, God, we hadn’t talked at all about the marriage thing he brought up the other night)? Maybe I’d just blurt it out. Guess what? I’d decided to change careers.
Yet again.
CHAPTER 18
“You should’ve asked Lee to come up, too,” my dad said.
It was a month later and we were sitting in the kitchen of the Vineyard cottage, the warm air blowing through the screens. I had come out two days earlier, ahead of Ben, and now I was cradling a mug of coffee and watching my dad heap strawberry jam on a thick slice of bread cut from the loaf I’d made the day before. The newspapers were spread before us. I glanced at a paperback, The Portable Milton, which propped open the window, and then at my mother, dressed in a casual black dress that I’d never seen before, who was working at the picnic table on the patio. Later today their friends, the Donahues, were coming for a barbecue.
I tried to straighten the book—the weight of the window was collapsing the spine—and then wiped my dusty fingers on my napkin. My parents referred to this place as a house, but it was nothing more than a summer cottage; no insulation, a leaky roof, wood floors that squeaked when you walked on them, and a kitchen, with the tin sink and dishes and plates stacked on open wood shelves, that resembled the camp I attended as a kid. For years Logan had been urging our parents to remodel, that Vineyard real estate would hold its value, but so far they’d done nothing.
“Don’t you think, Clare, that it would’ve been nice for her to come up?”
“She’s pretty busy,” I said.
He smiled. “Ah, ABC is working her hard.”
I nodded and looked out the window again. Truth was, I didn’t know what Lee was doing today. I hadn’t spoken to her since returning from Chicago four weeks earlier. I glanced at the clock above the stove. Ben should be calling soon from the dock. He promised to be on the eight o’clock ferry.
“I still feel awful that she had to witness Logan’s meltdown in Chicago,” he said. “He was mortified the next day.”
My dad continued lathering his bread. This was the fifth or sixth time he’d told me how mortified Logan was. I’d yet to talk to my brother. I was in no hurry to call him and he, obviously, was in no hurry to call me, either.
“Did he at least apologize?” I asked.
“Well, of course!” he said. “These things happen from time to time.”
He set his knife on the table and wiped his fingers on his napkin. It occurred to me, as I watched him, that I’d never heard him criticize Logan. I didn’t remember his ever criticizing me, either. His style of parenting was to let us go through our lives with a little encouragement and a total lack of condemnation. And did my mother have a parenting style? I glanced out the window again. Tap, tap, tap, slam!
“She’s a good girl, that Lee.” He lifted the bread to his mouth.
The first few weeks after I returned, I startled when the phone rang and held my breath when going through the mail. But she hadn’t called or written. Sometimes I composed letters to her in my head while on the T but once home I never followed through. It was confusing, all the emotions I felt.
“Delicious,” he said, chewing. “You’
ve become quite a good cook, my dear.”
“Thank you.” I’d tried over the last couple of weeks to make scones but so far they were as dry as Donna’s. But my breads were improving and I was a good cookie maker, too. “I’m thinking about selling my cookies at the coffeehouse.”
“The sugar cookies?” he asked. I nodded. I didn’t talk much about the coffeehouse. Usually when he asked about work, he was referring to my graduate studies. He screwed up his forehead and tilted his head. “But don’t you have to have some kind of permit to sell food products for profit?”
“How would I do that?”
“Might be more bother than it’s worth.” He put his bread down and placed both hands on the table. “So, I want to tell you, I read that letter you gave me.”
I’d been fiddling with the Milton book in the window again but with this, I pulled my hands across the table and into my lap. I’d given Lucy’s letter to my dad last week, the first I’d seen him or my mother since Chicago. “And?”
“They’re claims anyone could make,” he said. “The world is full of people who are envious or sick or unhappy. Remember the woman who accosted your mother in the grocery store and wanted her to write a book about her father?”
“Sure, I do. So, you don’t think it’s true?” I asked. When he shook his head I nodded toward the window. “What did she think about it?”
“Not much. She read the letter and put it aside.”
“Without saying anything?”
“What was there to say? The woman accused your mother of stealing her story. But she had no proof. And frankly, all the things she cited were things anyone could claim. I think she’s a troubled woman.”
“Did she remember having her as a student?” I asked.
“We didn’t talk about that.” He shrugged. I frowned and shook my head. “What’s wrong, Clare? Do you think there’s some truth to all this?”
I glanced at the clock. Why hadn’t Ben called? I turned back to him. “I don’t know. The woman just seemed like she might be telling the truth.”
Your mother was so warm and nice. I’d met a few of my mother’s students over the years at book signings and several times on the street while we were walking, and they’d all acted fairly stunned and mute in her presence. But Lucy, at least in the beginning, had thought of her differently. What had she seen in my mother that others hadn’t? What had she seen that I’d missed?
I glanced out the window at my mother, chewing on the stem of her glasses as she stared at her typewriter. “I know she calls herself a New Critic. But don’t you think it’s a little odd that she never talks about where Listen came from?”
He chuckled. “I heard her say once that only readers cared about where a story came from. Writers cared about understanding how a novel is put together.”
“What do you remember about where it came from?” I asked.
With the side of his hand, he began scooting breadcrumbs into a pile next to his newspaper. But he wasn’t very thorough and left small trails all over the table. “I remember her talking about an idea of a man coming home from war altered from all he’d seen and done. I know she tried a couple versions from his point of view. I don’t remember how she settled on Phoebe’s voice. But once she did, the writing seemed to fly out of her.”
Had she stolen Lucy’s story? It would explain why her novel sounded so different from her academic writing and why she was reluctant to speak of it. And yet I still had a hard time believing my mother would do this. She was so capable in this part of her life. Why steal?
“You should ask her about it,” he said.
When the phone rang, I jumped up and hurried to answer it. The moment I heard Ben’s voice I knew he wasn’t coming.
“I’m at the office again,” he said. “I was here until midnight last night. I can’t swing it. I’m sorry. I gotta be here all day today.”
“But you’ve been working every day for the last three weeks,” I said.
“I know, but this is unusual. They’re counting on me. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got to put all my research into a document by the end of today.”
I imagined poor, innocent children dying as they went down poisonous slides and Wellesley couples keeling over after barbecuing on their contaminated decks. Yes, it was important work. But still.
I glanced at my dad, who was cutting another piece of bread. “All right. I’ll see you later tonight.” I put the phone back in the cradle and sat at the table.
My dad looked at me over the top of his glasses, his knife poised above the strawberry jam. “You and I are surrounded by workaholics. Your brother, your mother, Ben.” He smiled and smeared his bread with jam.
Last week when I gave him Lucy’s letter, I’d told them about Ben’s job offer. I didn’t tell them about our marriage conversation. It was too soon and besides, Ben and I hadn’t talked about it since that night. Truth was, we’d barely seen each other. I glanced at my mother, whose hands flew over the typewriter keys. My dad had done most everything when I was growing up—cooked, cleaned, paid the bills, took me to the park, put Band-Aids on scraped knees.
“Don’t you wish that you could do what you want to do?” I asked.
He put his knife on the table. “What I want to do?”
“Yeah, I mean when you were a kid you took care of everything and now you’re still taking care of everything.” I wasn’t sure where I was going with this.
“What I did as a kid has nothing to do with what I’m doing now.” He slapped the table with his palm. “Listen, I have an idea. You should stay and have dinner with us tonight. We’d love to have you. Take the ferry back tomorrow.”
“Well—”
“You could help me cook. The Donahues would love to see you.” He chuckled. “Walt said to me the other day, ‘Sure would be nice to see Clare.’ He reminded me of the dinner parties we had when you’d toddle in, pull up two stools, one for Ellie and one for you, and listen and ask questions. So precocious! Everyone loved you.”
I smiled, remembering the giant stuffed elephant that my mother’s cousin Oliver had given me when I was young. For several years Ellie, who was nearly as big as I was, went everywhere with me. On planes. To the beach. Even to the grocery store. People chuckled when they saw us coming but I didn’t care. No, I didn’t care at all until I read about Ellie in Listen. Couldn’t my mother have given Phoebe something else, a giant bunny? A kangaroo. A shark?
I glanced out the window. Phoebe looked like me and I looked like Phoebe.
“Some children, once they have adults’ attention, get silly,” he said. “Or try to perform or impress. But you never boasted about anything. You were genuinely curious about others. And confident! You were wise beyond your years, Clare.”
But that was then and now I didn’t feel so wise. I didn’t feel curious, confident, or precocious, either. You fucking figure it out.
I stood, walked to the counter and poured more coffee. If we had a different relationship, I’d tell him about how much I loved the coffeehouse and reading to Marta on Tuesdays and how much I hated tutoring. I’d tell him about missing Ben and the fight with Lee and what had happened in Florida. But that would require me to be honest and emotional (vulnerable, as Lee had said) and tell him things he didn’t want to hear. Besides, there was value in perpetuating this myth of confidence and precociousness. Because at least this way I was good at something.
The whistle on the teakettle pierced the air and my dad walked over and lifted it off the stove. He poured boiling water into a mug waiting on the counter. Then he dunked a tea bag, cut another piece of bread and slipped it into the toaster. I thought about how I’d begun making lunches for Ben to take to work. I’d learned this from my dad. I felt, suddenly, tender toward him. He was starting to gray along his temples and his strong arms were dotted with small brown aging spots. We’d spent so much time together over the years, and yet we knew little about how the other truly felt. Why wasn’t he furious with Logan? Did he ever f
eel oppressed by my mother? Why didn’t we talk about these things?
“This D. H. Lawrence class is killing me,” I said.
He laughed. “Don’t tell your mother. She loves Lawrence.”
“What about you, do you love Lawrence?” I asked.
“Sure!”
I wanted something from him, an acknowledgment or confession or maybe just a nod, a wink, collusion over something meaningful. “Ben’s so passionate about his job. He told me that he loves the law because it’s so exact. I think he also loves always trying to be right.”
“It’s good to be passionate about what you do,” he said. We were standing so close that my shoulder was touching the middle part of his upper arm. He raised his brows and glanced at me. “Passion is what keeps your mother going.”
Yes, passion and love of words made my mother write every day. Although when I remembered how I’d found her on the living room couch last month, despondent over Janice’s letter, I wondered if it was worth it.
“Do you feel passionate about anything?” I wanted him to say no, not everyone feels so much. People like us are worker bees, the soldiers who support those who burn up the world with their ambitions, desires, and appetites.
He put the tea, toast, and a miniature container of milk on a tray. “Sure I do. I feel passionate about my family and work. I wake up every day thinking about how best to market your mother’s books. Passion keeps us alive. Now, do you want to take this out to her?”
I sighed, took the tray, opened the screen door with my hip, and walked onto the porch. The brisk air was warm and fragrant, the tops of my dad’s tomato plants next to the shed swaying, the leaves on the birch trees clustered in the lawn fluttering. My mother nodded as I set the tray on the picnic table. It was a good writing day. I could tell.