by Sarah Willis
“Alice, this girl . . . she’s lovely and sweet, but she’s scarred, she must be, from all this.” She waves her arm around. She doesn’t mean this house, she means everything outside this house. “And if you adopt her, she’s going to keep growing up. She’s going to be a teenager and . . . a troubled teenager, no matter how good a parent you are. You’re so attached to this little girl already. I worry about you.” She pauses, glances at the picture of Vince on the mantelpiece. “I worry all the time something’s going to happen to you. That’s all. You adopt Larissa, and you’ll see what I mean. You’ll never stop worrying.”
What can I say to that? She’s played the Vince is dead card. In the quiet that follows, I hear the high whine of the drill and realize I’ve been hearing it for a while now. I tense, but don’t run right down to the basement. “What are we having for dinner?” I ask. I’m worried it might be something Larissa won’t like.
“Pizza,” my mother says. “Not even homemade.”
“Thanks. That’s a great idea. All kids like pizza, right?”
“I believe so.” She still isn’t over being mad at me.
“Well, I guess I’ll see how they’re doing down there.”
I walk down the basement stairs slowly, careful not to distract anyone who might be holding a drill. My dad kneels behind Larissa with his arms reaching around her shoulders. She’s wearing plastic goggles that are huge on her small face. My dad holds his hands over Larissa’s hands, and they’re drilling a hole in the wood. The board is clamped vertically to some contraption my father has rigged up. I sit down on the steps and watch. They drill three holes before he stops and looks up at me. Larissa turns her head up, too. Her eyes, even behind the goggles, show delight and pride.
“We’re almost done here,” my dad says. “This girl’s a champ. How many holes did we drill? Sixteen, right?”
Larissa nods.
“Or was it just fifteen?” my dad asks her.
She shakes her head no.
“Sixteen, yes, you’re right. And the boys each did sixteen. Does it look like rain out there, Alice?”
“No, it looks just fine,” I say.
“Okay then. Larissa and I will finish up the last side here, then we have to move all these boards upstairs. See where else we have to drill, Larissa?” My dad tilts his head and looks at her. No two faces were ever more different, I think; her round, brown, young face, her closed and silent mouth; my father’s pale, white, wrinkled skin, his large ears, his bony cheeks, his grandfatherly grin and yellowing teeth. I’ve known one my whole life, and the other a little more than a month. My chest hurts. My mother would know why.
Larissa points to a penciled X.
“Okay, let’s get this turned around then. Bruce, would you remove the clamp, and Dylan, turn the board so we can get those last few holes? You boys won’t mind if Larissa finishes this up, right?”
Bruce and Dylan say, “No problem,” almost in unison, just like Vince and I used to do. My father stays on his knees, directing the boys until they get it just right. “Ready?” he says, and Larissa nods. They drill three more holes.
“Okay, that does it,” my dad says. “Will you unplug that drill there, Dylan?” It takes him a bit of time to straighten back up, waving away Bruce’s offer of help. “Okay, let’s move these boards outside. You going to help us put it together, Larissa?”
She nods. A firm nod.
“Okey dokey,” my father says.
My father, Larissa, Bruce, and Dylan spend the afternoon putting together the doghouse and drinking Cokes. Lucy gets moved to a new place, this time on top of the bird feeder, for the best view of the action. I hardly know what to do with myself. While my mother takes a nap, I do the same, lying down on top of my bed, cradling my head in a cluster of pillows. One of them smells of lilac.
When I awaken, the clock reads four thirty-eight; I’ve slept more than an hour. As I come downstairs, I hear voices out in the backyard. My father’s in the kitchen, drinking a glass of milk. “Five thousand, six thousand, seven thousand!” I hear someone yell.
“What’s going on?” I rub at my face, waking it up.
“They’re playing hide-and-seek,” my father says. “The doghouse is home base. Dylan wants to sleep in it tonight, but I think he’ll chicken out.”
“Hide-and-seek?” I say dumbly. “Larissa’s playing hide-and-seek?”
“Apparently. You used to, too, you know.”
“I know, but . . .” I shrug. I just can’t imagine Larissa playing hide-and-seek. “What are the boundaries?” I ask, trying not to sound worried.
“Just our house and the Fischers’ next door.”
“Okay.” I move over to the back door. Dylan stands with one hand on the doghouse. I can’t find Larissa. “Ready or not, here I come!” Dylan shouts, and runs off.
“Nice doghouse,” I say.
He chuckles. “Grandma’s making a big pillow to go inside. Then Dylan will really want to sleep there. Larissa wants to make one for your cat. Sampson, she said.”
I freeze, one hand on the back door screen. “What?”
“Oh, don’t worry, she asked nicely. Actually she didn’t ask. I suggested it, when I remembered you had a cat. That little girl, she does love that cat.”
I feel dizzy and hot. “What are you talking about? Larissa told you about my cat?”
My father nods slowly. He’s enjoying himself. “Yes, she did.”
“Dad, she doesn’t talk. I mean, she hasn’t been talking hardly at all, for weeks and weeks. She told you about my cat?”
“Well, yes, she doesn’t talk much, that’s true. But when I asked if she had a dog, she shook her head no, and then I asked if she had a cat, she shook her head no again, then shrugged, which I guess meant maybe. ‘Maybe you have a cat?’ I asked, and she nodded. Then I asked if it was your cat, and she nodded again, and then I asked if your cat would like a cat house with a pillow inside. Hah! I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head. I took that moment to ask her what the cat’s name was, and she said ‘Sampson,’ plain as day. I didn’t make a big deal about it, but later I told her we had to ask you if you wanted a cat house, and would she help me do that, and she nodded. I said, ‘What was that cat’s name again?’ because we could carve it over the doorway, and she said ‘Sampson,’ just like she did before. I told her a cat house is a whole lot smaller than a doghouse, and we can probably get it done by Monday, if she could stay that long, and then you two could take it home with you. Were you staying till Monday? Did I make a mistake there?”
“Dad! I don’t believe it! She talked to you!”
“She even said ‘you’re welcome’ right now when I thanked her for helping with the doghouse. I won’t expect a lot more from her. Don’t worry. I won’t push it.”
I hug him. I feel just like a little girl hugging her daddy, even though I’m just as tall as him now. “Thank you. Thank you for being such a good grandpa and father.”
“You’re welcome,” he says. When he steps back from our hug he looks at me, and I know, just from that look, he’s going to say something I might not want to hear. I’ll be so pissed if he tells me I’m going to get hurt. It will ruin this whole visit, them both telling me that.
“You know, she’s quite a beauty,” he says. “I imagine she’s just as pretty as any daughter you might have had. I’m sorry that didn’t work out for you. I hope this does.”
I tilt my chin up, turn my head away, and blink back tears.
“Tag! You’re it, Larissa!” Dylan shouts.
I look out the back door. Larissa is a few feet from the doghouse, Bruce already there, a hand on the roof.
“You have to keep one hand on the doghouse and close your eyes and count to ten,” Dylan explains to Larissa. “And remember, we’ll be only in this yard or that one. Got it?”
Larissa nods and walks over to the doghouse. She puts one hand on it, closes her eyes and starts counting. She counts softly, but I can hear her. “One, two, three .
. .” The boys take off running. I look at my dad, and he smiles at me.
“She’s okay, that little girl,” he says. Once again, I have to look away.
Before dinner, I check my messages. There’s one about an interpreting job, and one from Michelle Benton. She wants to talk to Larissa. I save the message about the job.
That night, we eat pizza around the picnic table in the backyard. Larissa doesn’t join in on the conversation, but when Bruce sticks a piece of pepperoni on the back of Dylan’s head while Dylan is seriously answering some question my mother asked, she starts giggling. When Dylan discovers the pepperoni on his head, he puts it into Bruce’s milk, and she giggles harder. My parents exchange looks—these are not the kind of shenanigans Vince and I would have been able to get away with, but what are they going to say to two boys who have just lost their father, and a silent foster child?
I love the sound of Larissa’s giggle; it comes in short bursts, as if she can’t quite control it, then comes back again unbidden. I want to blow milk out of my straw, stand on my head, anything to get her to giggle again.
Larissa likes pizza as much as she likes pop, and she listens intently as Bruce and Dylan answer my parents’ questions about their school. My father doesn’t ask Larissa anything she can’t answer without a head movement. My mother is almost as silent as Larissa. After dinner, we walk up to my old elementary school at the end of the block, each house we pass a boxed memory. I remember who gave out homemade candy apples at Halloween—the Shepards’ who decorated their lawn for every holiday, the brick house where Henry the deaf boy lived.
The playground is different now. In the center is one of those bright plastic mazes with tubes and slides and rope walks all connected togther. Larissa hands me her bunny, an honor I take seriously, holding Lucy gently in the crook of my arm as I would a baby. All three children run off, even though I would have thought Bruce was too old for a playground. He climbs around with Dylan and Larissa, showing off by hanging upside down anywhere he can. At one point he whispers in Larissa’s ear, and they dash off to stalk Dylan, chasing him into one of the big orange chutes. In seconds, they all pile out at the bottom in a clump of feet and arms and laughter. The sound of children’s laughter, which has always meant to me someone else’s children, is a whole new sound now.
Back at my parents’ house, we watch TV. After watching silent TV with Larissa for days, I now find the laugh track so ridiculous that it makes me laugh out loud. Larissa looks over at me, and I smile at her, pretending she knows why I’m laughing.
By nine, Larissa is half asleep, and I tell her it’s bedtime.
“We’ll start on that cat house in the morning, all right, Larissa?” my father says, giving me a wink for his play on words. I roll my eyes at him. Larissa nods.
“And,” my mother says, “we’ll have to pick out the material for the cat’s pillow. I have a bunch of fabric in the attic. Is it a boy cat or a girl cat?”
Larissa looks at me.
“A boy cat,” I say.
“Well, good night, Larissa,” my mother says.
“Good night, Larissa,” my father says. The boys chip in a good night, too.
“Good night,” Larissa says shyly, and bobs her head.
In my parents’ orange bathroom, I give her a washcloth and tell her to wash up real good, brush her teeth, and get into her pajamas. She climbs into the cot and pulls up the blanket. She fits the cot perfectly, as if it has always been hers.
I read a few poems from a Mother Goose book. I don’t mention her mother’s phone call. We’ve had such a lovely day.
Chapter Nineteen
Sunday morning, my parents go off to church. I stay home with Larissa and Vince’s boys, who have been brought up agnostic. Vince used to say that they were pedestrians, funny in its own way, right up to the moment Vince got hit by a car.
Yeah, ha-ha, he says.
We sit on pillows on the lush carpet and watch cartoons, eating sugary cereal. Larissa’s taken the band out of her hair and it hangs in her face, curling up wherever it damn well pleases. Bruce and Dylan’s hair has remolded itself during the night and now sticks out at errant angles all over the place. My short spiky hair has done the same thing and I haven’t bothered to comb or style it yet. I imagine my parents are more than happy to go off to church by themselves.
“We look pretty goofy,” I say to Larissa, pointing to the boys’ hair. Dylan sticks his tongue out at me. I cross my eyes and make a goofy face at him. Larissa covers her mouth and giggles.
Maybe we will never go back to Cleveland.
Once again, I have nothing much to do all day. My father keeps Larissa busy in the basement except when my mother keeps her busy in the attic, sewing. Outside, Bruce and Dylan take apart the doghouse and put it back together, even though that means they have to take it apart again tomorrow. I tell my mother I’ll go with her to the grocery store to get the stuff for a cookout. When I ask Larissa if she wants me to get plain potato chips or barbecued, she says, “Plain.” When I ask if she likes mustard or ketchup on her hamburgers, she says, “Ketchup.” When I ask her if she will stay with my dad and the boys while I go to the store with my mother, she thinks for a minute, then shrugs. I take her shrug to mean she will stay.
“She’s talking,” I tell my mother in the car. “Just a few words, but I think she’s over the silent thing.”
“She must be very traumatized,” my mother says. “Is her mother white?”
I blink. “Yes. Why?”
“Oh, I just thought so,” she says.
She drives in silence for a while. “Your father’s quite taken with her, you can tell. He was humming last night.” She says this with an air of sadness, as if it’s not necessarily a good thing.
“I’m glad he likes her,” I say. “He seems to be in a pretty good mood. I only saw him with one drink last night.”
She’s driving—insisting on driving just to show me that she still can and I’d better not think otherwise—but now she looks at me a little longer than I think she should while going forty down a two-lane road. I am not to judge my father, her look says. It’s not my place. I point my chin to the road ahead. Look where you’re going, I imply.
“He’ll be let down when you leave,” she says. “I imagine it will be a hard time for him, then.” She’s insinuating that my visit with Larissa will make him drink more. I’m almost fifty years old and only now realize my mother is passive-aggressive.
The yellow jackets come out as we eat dinner. One crawls along the side of my plate, circling my food. My mother absently waves her hand above Dylan’s plate as he eats. “Next year I’m going to build us a tent, one of those netted things, so we can eat in peace,” my father says, and winks at Larissa. My mother and I exchange a look, both wondering what next year will bring. Bruce, Dylan, and Larissa draw faces on their hamburgers with ketchup.
After dinner, while my mother sews something and my father watches CNN, the boys get ready to take apart the doghouse for the last time. “Gonna help?” Dylan asks Larissa, and she nods. As they head out to the backyard, Dylan turns and winks at me. I see Vince in that wink, and my dad. I never wink at people. I didn’t get that gene.
A little while later, as I stand drying a pan in the kitchen, Bruce comes into the house for something to store the screws in. He’s got them loaded into his pockets, and I hold open a plastic bag as he drops them in. “So, are you gonna keep her?” he asks.
I stiffen. It’s the way he says it, as if she’s something I can keep or give back, like an expensive present. “Yeah, I’d like to, Bruce, but she might have to go back to her mom.”
He nods, solemnly, as if he understands. And then I realize he does. He had to go back to his mom. Had to. That’s got to be a hard word to put together with the idea of being with your mom. At least Michelle wants her daughter.
“Well, I like her,” Bruce says. “Dad would have liked her, right?”
“Yeah, he would have.” We stand there silentl
y for a minute. I’ve still got the bag of screws open. I close it up. “You doing okay, Bruce?” I ask. “Everything okay with you and your mom?”
“Yeah, she’s okay,” he says. I think he might say more, but he doesn’t. I hand him the bag of screws. He runs back outside.
That night, I sit on the floor next to the cot and read Larissa more Mother Goose poems. Before I turn off the light, I ask her if she’s comfortable in the cot. She nods. “Did he make it?” she asks.
I smile, knowing who she means. “No, but he could have.”
“He’s nice,” she says. I can’t answer her. I’m stunned, and feeling too much for words. I nod and make the sign for yes, my hand accomplishing what my mouth can’t. I swallow, shake it off. “He is,” I say. “Now time for bed. Good night. Sleep tight.”
She makes the sign for yes, then puts her thumb in her mouth. The well worn-out Lucy is tucked under the covers. Good night, Lucy, I say in sign. Larissa smiles at me, then looks down at Lucy and gives her bunny a kiss.
I close the door halfway. I have to stand there for a while before I can move again. The world feels too full of something, and it scares me.
Downstairs, my parents and the boys are still watching TV. I go into the kitchen and get my phone from my purse so I don’t put charges on my parents’ phone. I call home for messages. There are seven. The first is a phone solicitor. Then a message from Beth in my book group, inviting me, last minute, to a Labor Day picnic. She does this, now and then—remembers I am without “male companionship,” and invites me, last minute, to holiday get-togethers. Someone has canceled on her. Next there’s a message from Michelle. “Please, could Larissa call me? I just want to say hi. Thank you.” Then another phone solicitor. Then Larissa’s mom again. “Hi, this is Michelle Benton, and it’s eight-thirty, so I figure you’re home ’cause I know you want to put Larissa to bed on time and all that, so could she call me now, before she goes to bed? It’d be nice to talk to my daughter for a little.” She leaves her number this time, as if I don’t know it. The next message, at eight-forty, is her again. “Why you avoiding me?” she says. “She’s my daughter, you know. I want to talk to her.” She hangs up. I only have a second to worry what she might do—like go to my empty house and break windows—before I hear the last message. It’s from Polly.