by Sarah Willis
“Hello, Larissa,” my mother says, bending over even farther. My hand reaches out, in case she falls over.
Larissa looks down at her feet.
“Would you two like to come in?”
“No, Mother,” I say. “We drove all the way here to stand outside on the driveway.”
She laughs. It’s just the kind of joke she loves.
As we walk in, my father comes into the kitchen. “Well, look who’s here,” he says. “Hello, Alice.” He looks down at Larissa. “And who is this little girl?”
My father has gotten so thin that his cheekbones poke out from under his skin. His ears are large and his earlobes get droopier every time I see him. He has a Band-Aid on his chin.
“This is Larissa, Dad. I’m going to take care of her for a little while. Where are the boys?”
“They’ve gone down to the drugstore. Seems we don’t have the right kind of pop. We do have Pepsi, though, if you’re thirsty. The boys should be back soon with the better stuff, according to them. Pepsi’s just fine with me. Are you thirsty, Larissa? Would you like some pop? Can I get you some?”
Larissa looks at me.
“Would you like some pop?” I ask.
She shrugs.
“Okay, Dad. One for both of us. Thanks.”
The next fifteen minutes is spent getting the tour of the house from my mother. It’s a very slow tour. I play my part and help narrate. “My mother sewed all the curtains, and she slipcovered the couch and those chairs.” She still sews, even with the arthritis. The toaster has a handmade cozy with bread appliques. The teapot has a tea cozy with teacup appliques. There are pillows of every shape and size on the couches, chairs, and window seats, and in the corner of every room. There are no plants in the house; there is no room for them. You have to move pillows just to sit on the couch. I get a pillow every year for Christmas. I inherited Vince’s pillows when he died.
Upstairs, my mother shows Larissa the bathroom. The bathroom gets softer each year, as if it’s growing orange fur. This year my mother found shaggy orange material that matches the shaggy orange rug and toilet seat cover. She made a cover for the Kleenex box, a cover for the waste can, and a curtain for outside the shower. Larissa looks around in wonder, and I smile at her, rolling my eyes. My mother has already moved on to my room.
“This is the cot we set up for you, Larissa. I hope it’ll be comfortable enough.” It has three pink pillows, and a pink-and-white quilt that was mine when I was little.
We go back out to the car and get our things, my mother following, my father insisting he carry our bags, the both of them leading us back up the stairs to my old bedroom as if I might have forgotten the way. I tell them I need a moment alone with Larissa.
“Certainly, certainly,” they say. My mother shoots me a questioning look over her shoulder as she leaves the room.
“Okay, Larissa,” I say, moving pillows so I can sit on my bed. “I want to explain something to you before we go back out.”
Larissa stands, looking at me, thumb in her mouth. I don’t expect to see that thumb again while we’re here, except at meals. But her eyes seem alert and curious, the dull gaze of yesterday gone. There is a pink color to her cheeks, a healthy glow, not the blotchy look of rubbed-in tears. She stands there patiently waiting for whatever I might tell her, becoming used to being told all sorts of strange things. When very young, I used to pretend that I was Alice in Wonderland. My father had bought that book for me on the day I was born. My mother would read it adding warnings as if they were written into the text. “And so you should never wander far from home,” she’d say. “Or speak to strangers.” But Larissa, she must really feel like Alice in Wonderland, and I imagine now it’s not fun at all. To be lost in someone else’s world, wanting only to go home.
She’s so little, I think. So brave. And it occurs to me right now that this brave, good kid is how she came to me, not someone I have created with my magic finger-spelling, my Cheshire cat. She was a brave little girl, a tough little girl, and polite except when driven to anger and frustration. She’s a six-year-old girl who was left for too long by a mother who raised her to be a cool little kid. I look at Larissa and think about Michelle, how she’s a child too, who will someday be older, maybe wiser. Then I see Larissa again, the baby fat still in her face, her thumb in her mouth, her small hands, and I can’t imagine her growing up, getting taller, her face thinning, dating boys, becoming a woman. My bedroom makes me think all this. What must it be like for my mother, my coming home to sleep in my own room at almost fifty years old? Knowing, too, that her son will never come home again? I am sure, as I watch Larissa watching me, that I will never forget exactly how she looks right now. She will always be standing here, in my bedroom, a few feet away.
I shake off my thoughts and tell her what I need to. “My nephews, who are staying here this weekend, who I told you about, Bruce and Dylan? They’re my brother’s sons. My brother Vince and I were twins. He died six months ago. I just want you to know that. Their mom won’t be here with them. They flew in from Arizona by themselves, where she lives. They were living with my brother when he died, and now they’re living with their mother. They haven’t been here since their dad died. This place has memories for them, of their dad, coming here with him. It has memories for me, too. This was my bedroom, and the bedroom next door was Vince’s. My dad and mother are still very sad about Vince dying.” I don’t say getting killed. “Everyone wants to be happy, and they’ll act happy most the time, but if they’re quiet, or looking sad, I want you to know why. I just wanted you to know how people here are feeling. Not that we won’t have a good time.” I stop. Saying all this makes me wonder why we even came.
“Okay?”
She nods seriously. I so like that serious nod.
“Okay. You ready to go out there? Have ourselves some fun?”
She shrugs. I take it for a yes.
As we walk downstairs, I hear voices at the back door, the sound of bags being put on the counter, my father saying that Aunt Alice is here with the little girl. Larissa stops walking. “It’s okay,” I say, and take her hand, easing her down the steps. We walk into the kitchen together. The boys turn and look at us.
“Bruce! Dylan!” I let go of Larissa’s hand and hug them both. They’re taller, I can feel that in my arms. They hug me back like they mean it, and it takes me a minute to let go of each of them, a minute to blink back tears. They both look so much like Vince; scraggly and thin, high cheekbones, green eyes.
Vince’s kids are gorgeous, but goofy looking. “Hey, what did you do to your hair?” I ask with a laugh. The hair on the top of their heads is combed up, meeting in the center like a miniature Mohawk. Then I notice Bruce’s ear. “Oh, my God, you got your ear pierced!”
Bruce grins sheepishly. Both of them are always more quiet at my parents’ house than they ever were at mine.
“This is Larissa,” I say. She’s standing behind me and I step back so they can see her. Bruce and Dylan say hello. Larissa stares at them.
“Are you getting your ear pierced, too?” I ask Dylan.
“Not till I’m fourteen,” he says.
“Oh well,” my dad says. “Too bad about that.”
“Larissa, you have your ears pierced,” my mother says. “Didn’t that hurt?”
Larissa slowly shakes her head no.
“No tattoos you’re hiding?” I ask Bruce.
He smiles, showing a flash of white crooked teeth. “Not yet.”
“Thank goodness for small miracles,” my mother says.
“You gonna drink that pop you bought or let it sit on the counter all day?” my father asks, rubbing his hand across the top of Bruce’s head. The hair bends over, then stands right back up.
“You want some Coke, too, Larissa?” my father says, not lowering his voice to talk to her as my mother does.
She shakes her head up and down quickly as if he might change his mind, and hands me her empty pop can.
“Okey d
okey,” he says. When the hell did he start saying okey dokey?
Once everyone has a Coke in their hands, my father clears his throat. Now, that throat clearing, that I remember. “The boys and I are making a doghouse in the basement. They got a dog back home named Bruiser. You want to come down and help us out, Larissa? We have a whole lot of work left to do.”
Everyone looks at her. She shrugs. This shrug means she’s afraid to do this, but afraid to say no. I’m getting good at reading her shrugs.
“I’ll come down, too,” I say, as if she has agreed.
“I think I’ll stay up here and make some egg salad,” my mother says.
“I’ll be back up to help in a bit,” I offer, tilting my head toward Larissa, meaning, when I can. My mother doesn’t need my help, but I’m expected to offer.
My mother smiles tightly. “Thank you.” I ignore whatever’s bothering her and take Larissa’s hand, walk her down the basement stairs.
Chapter Eighteen
The basement is the exact opposite of the rest of the house. There are no pillows, and although I do remember my mother sewing some sort of quilted cover for my father’s table saw, I see no sign of it now. The basement is all tools—True Hardware did not get its hands on all of the merchandise from my father’s hardware store. Larissa’s eyes dart everywhere. l don’t know much about her life, but I figure it’s not filled with furry orange bathrooms and a basement that has the feel of a torture chamber for wood. This is the culture of my life.
There is no doghouse, and I look at my father.
“It’s in bits and pieces,” my father says, as if reading my mind. “We’ve cut the walls and floor and roof. Now we’re going to mark the holes for the screws, drill the holes, then take all the parts outside, put her together, then take her apart. I don’t see any way we can fly a doghouse back to Arizona, so what we’re going to do is make sure the boys know how to put it together, then ship the pieces, and the screws, and a few tools they’ll need. I think I have enough to spare,” he says with a wink. “Ever use a drill, Larissa?” He reaches over to the workbench and picks up a pencil and a right angle.
I’m not sure I’m supposed to let a six-year-old foster child play with power tools. “Ahh, Dad, I don’t know about that—”
“If she don’t want to, I will,” Bruce offers.
My father turns to Bruce and silently looks at him, then looks at me. “It will be perfectly safe, Alice. I know what I’m doing.”
Does he? I look for a tremor in his hands, but he seems fine.
“We need to do some measuring first. Bruce, get that floor board we cut and bring it here. Dylan, you get the piece marked left wall. We’re going to hold them together and mark where to drill the holes. Larissa, can you come here and hold this pencil for me? Then I’ll show you right where to make a mark.”
She looks at me.
“We could really use your help,” my dad says.
“Why don’t you help, Larissa?” I say. I move us a few steps closer to my dad.
“Can we put this rabbit fellow someplace safe?” he says, looking at Larissa’s stuffed bunny clamped firmly under her arm. “We don’t want him to get hurt while we work. He can see us fine from here.” He nods to a shelf nearby.
I hold my breath. Larissa looks at me, at the boys, back at my dad.
“Do you want to put him over there yourself?” my dad says.
She nods, and goes over to the shelf. Carefully and with obvious doubt, she sits Lucy down, balancing the rabbit against a paint can and adjusting the long legs to hang over the edge of the shelf. Lucy is so loose and floppy, she sags like a deflating balloon, but she stays there.
“Okay,” my dad says. “I’ll show you just what to do.” I see myself in him, the way he just accepts what he wants to believe, the way he goes forward with only the slightest bit of encouragement.
He hands her the pencil. It has a sharp point. He hands it to her point down, but I still shudder.
It takes quite a while to get the boards lined up. My father makes numerous measurements before he finally says, “Right here, honey. Make a little X. That’s good. That’s perfect. Thank you.” He looks up at me and smiles. See, he says with his smile. “Okay, Dylan, now hold that wall steady.” He makes a few more measurements, and Larissa makes a few more marks. “We’ll drill the holes when we’ve marked the whole thing. Dylan, put this wall back and get the back wall, please.” As they mark the second piece of plywood, Larissa looks over at Lucy every few seconds, but each time my father tells her that she did a good job, the corners of her lips turn up, along with the corners of her eyes.
My father is meticulous and exact, and they’re going so slowly I can tell it will take forever before they use the drill. Maybe not until after dinner.
“I’m going to go help Mother make that egg salad,” I say. “Is that okay, Larissa? I’ll be back down soon.”
My father keeps measuring as if this question is no big deal, but Bruce and Dylan stop what they’re doing and look at Larissa. They somehow understand what a big step this will be. I love them even more.
Larissa holds perfectly still for a moment, then shrugs. Not a real firm okay, but an okay all the same.
“I’ll be right upstairs in the kitchen.”
“All righty, put an X right here, Larissa,” my father says, and I go upstairs, my left hand spelling careful.
My mother sits in the living room, reading a catalog. The egg salad is in the refrigerator, tightly covered with plastic wrap.
“Thought I’d rest for a moment, while everyone was occupied,” she says. “Everything okay down there?”
“Shouldn’t it be?” I ask, wondering if there’s something I missed.
She meets my eyes. “Yes, it should be just fine, Alice.” She emphasizes my name, making me feel like a little child. A mother’s trick. I won’t do that to Larissa.
I sit across from her in a chair covered with a summer blue slipcover that matches the slipcover for the couch. She’ll switch to her fall-colored slipcovers after Labor Day, like a woman putting away her white shoes.
“So, do you want to tell me about Larissa now?” she says.
“Okay. Yeah. I do.”
She puts the catalog down on the table. “So tell me.”
I tell her about getting the first phone call from Larissa. Before I can get much further, she interrupts me. “You didn’t go there in the middle of the night, did you?”
“Yeah, I did. But listen first.”
She shakes her head and huffs. By the time I get to describing the walk up to Larissa’s apartment, her jaw is set. As I tell her about looking around the apartment for the phone, she has picked up the catalog and rolled it tightly in her hands. She smacks it on her knee.
“God in Heaven, Alice,” she says. “You could have been killed!”
“By a six-year-old?”
“You know exactly what I mean. You should never have gone to that girl’s apartment.”
“You know what? I know that. But look, nothing bad happened to me. I can’t be afraid all the time. You know, I’m scared of heights, too. Because of you.”
She sits up straight, holding the curled catalog in one hand, looking as stunned as I feel for saying that to her. “Excuse me?”
Tears come to my eyes. “I’m sorry. Look. I just want to tell you my story without you condemning me. Or Larissa. Can’t I just tell it? I did something brave, Mother. I guess that’s what I was hoping you’d see. Be proud of me.”
Her chest heaves with each breath. She just stares at me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t know what I’m sorry for, it’s just an automatic response.
“I can’t take any more pain, Alice,” she says. “I just want you to be more careful. And I’m not condemning that little girl. I don’t know why you say that.”
“Because you’re assuming that because she’s black and was abandoned, that she lived in some awful place full of drug dealers with guns who might have killed me
in the middle of the night.”
She looks away from me. “I never said that. I’m not prejudiced.”
“I thought not. Can I just tell it, now? Will you listen?”
“Yes, I’ll listen. I won’t say a word, if that’s what you want.”
The last time I saw my mother this mad was at the trial for the man who’d hit Vince. And I knew she was just as mad at Vince for jaywalking.
Yeah, well, look what happens when you’re too careful. The woman lives in a house with padding. And you’re fuckin’ worried about a little girl holding a pencil.
I roll my eyes, angry at Vince’s quips, and angry at myself. I had thought Larissa’s apartment building would be some awful place. I love my mother, but I want to blame her for who I am.
I pick up a pillow to keep my hand from swearing, and bunch it in my lap.
“I don’t want you not to say anything, Mother,” I tell her. “But listen. It turns out well. She’s a beautiful little girl. She’s very sweet.”
“Go on,” she says with an indifferent shrug. “Tell it.”
So I do. My mother never really unlocks her jaw. I tell her about looking in the medicine cabinet, the scene going down the stairs. But I don’t tell her Michelle Benton showed up on my doorstep. My mother would never sleep again.
“So she’s living with you for a few months, and then her mother will get her back?” my mother says, very matter-of-factly.
I close my eyes and answer her. “If she follows her case plan.”
“And do you think she will?”
I open my eyes and look directly at her. “I don’t know, Mother.”
“Then what? If she doesn’t?”
“I’d like to adopt her.” I know I say it like a threat, and I’m ashamed.
My mother sighs through her nose and closes her eyes. With the both of us closing and opening our eyes, it’s like we’re talking in Morse code.
“Why are you mad at me?” I ask, leaning forward. “Why be mad at me?”