by Sarah Willis
I open a present from Santa. Cotton turtlenecks, in dark green and blue. “I needed these! How did Santa know?”
“Didn’t he get you anything fun?” Larissa asks.
You, I think.
Larissa loves the pink mittens I got her. They’re made out of a fuzzy material with kitten faces on the backs. She puts them on and rubs her cheeks. “Oh, they’re so soft!” She likes the Groovy Girls and the clothes to dress them in, and the art kit, and the plastic food for her kitchen set, but she loves those mittens and puts them back on when she’s done opening all the other presents.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute! Stay there!” Larissa shouts and hops up. She runs upstairs then comes back down, holding two packages. “You have two more presents!”
Handing them to me, she sits back down next to me on the floor, her knee almost touching mine. She won’t wear slippers and her bare feet stick out from under her flannel nightgown. I reach over and touch her foot, give it a little squeeze.
“That one first,” Larissa says. “I made it.”
The package she points to is small and crumpled-looking, with a piece of red yarn tied around it. The other present is wrapped carefully, the edges neat, the tape in precise measures, and I know Michelle wrapped that one—the same way my mother wraps presents. This thought distracts me for a second.
“Open it!” Larissa says.
It’s a pot holder made out of loops of cloth. “I made it in school,” Larissa says. “You didn’t know I did that, did you?” I didn’t. The pot holder is made with a multitude of colors, all woven together randomly without regard to pattern. It’s beautiful. It reminds me, in reverse, of my cup of white beads. I lean over and give her a hug. I can count the times I’ve hugged her on one hand. This time she doesn’t tighten up at all.
“Next one!” she says. “Next one. It’s from a store!” She’s so delighted about this that she can’t hold still, bobbing up and down on her knees.
I look again at the neatly wrapped present. It reminds me of all those boxes in Michelle’s apartment, neatly taped and labeled. She was so careful wrapping this present, packing those boxes. Why hadn’t she been more careful with her child?
It’s something I’ve wondered about for months, and am finally beginning to understand; she lost control for one terrible moment that lasted nineteen hours. I never lose control. I was the one who arranged Vince’s funeral, wrote the eulogy, stood up in front of people and said what I had to say without breaking down. I cried only when alone so as not to upset my parents or anyone else. I took off three days of work, then went back, did my job. Although I had lost part of myself in Vince’s death, I never lost control, like Michelle did. And here Michelle has lost her husband, her daughter, her life as she knew it, and wrapped me a present. I pick it up and hold it in my hands. I am afraid to open it.
It’s the same pink bottle of perfume we picked out for Michelle. “I told her what to get!” Larissa says. “I remembered where we went and told her where to go! Isn’t it pretty? I think it’s so pretty! Open it up. Try it!” It’s sealed in plastic. We hadn’t been able to test it for her mother, but Larissa was sure something so pretty had to be wonderful.
I open it up and dab it behind my ear. It smells of roses. I put some behind Larissa’s ear, too.
“Do you like it?” she asks. “Do you think my mommy will like hers? Doesn’t it smell pretty?”
“It smells lovely. I love it. Thank you.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Larissa says. “I told her where to go, and she found it!”
Her mother is her too. We are both her sometimes. It is nothing to take offense at. Larissa likes me. Sometimes we giggle together. Sometimes we hug. I take her to school every morning, and I feed her, and drive her to the donut shop.
And I love her.
Chapter Twenty-five
By the end of January, I find Michelle a job at a small independent pharmacy in my neighborhood. The pharmacist is a woman I know who has a deaf brother, and she’s very active in the Deaf community. Michelle works the register and puts merchandise on the shelves. Although the pay isn’t great, it’s full-time with benefits. She has to take two buses to get to work, but she’s hardly ever late. She’s rescheduled her parenting classes, anger management classes, and substance abuse classes for evenings and weekends, but getting to them is almost impossible. Sometimes Shaun drives her. She’s learning sign language and she and Shaun date, although they don’t have sex very often because Michelle sleeps on the couch at Teya’s, and Shaun lives with two guys. He teases her that Ed and Joey won’t hear them, and they make love a few times in his bed, but she still feels uncomfortable. They’ve decided not to be exclusive, and Shaun is seeing other girls. Michelle tells me all this about her and Shaun, asking me what I think, as if I am someone to her now. Even though I’m uncomfortable with all this, I ask her if she’s using birth control. “Condoms and foam,” she says. I’ve never known anyone who used foam.
Sometimes I pick Michelle up after work and bring her to my house to watch Larissa while I go to a late job, such as teacher conferences or a study group for Ed or Shaun. The only problem is that when she babysits, there’s no one to stay with the sleeping Larissa while I drive Michelle home. The first time Michelle watched Larissa, we didn’t think far enough ahead. She had to sleep on the couch and go to work from my house the next morning. The next time, she packed a few clothes.
February fourteenth is the first anniversary of Vince’s death. The word anniversary reminds me of the sections in card stores that I avoid. And there aren’t cards for this, I’m sure.
It’s Valentine’s Day, to boot. At least he got killed on a holiday that meant nothing to me. If it weren’t for Larissa, I think I might not survive today. I don’t want to wake up, I don’t want to get out of bed. But Larissa has to go to school. She has twenty-two Valentine cards to hand out. She wrote her name on the back of every card, then wrote the name of each student on the front of each envelope. This took hours. She is so excited.
Happy Valentine’s Day, I think to Vince, lying in my bed, my eyes still closed.
Same to you, he says.
Miss you, I say.
He’s silent. He’s dead.
I take Larissa to school, then head down to Akron and the marsh. The temperature is in the fifties and last week’s snow is slush, the sky gray and heavy above me. Just fine with me. I don’t want anything to be pretty today.
Leaning on the wooden railing, I look out across the marsh at the bare trees.
Hey, Vince, where are you? I want to believe in heaven, that I’ll see him again. I wish I could.
“I’m sorry,” I say, out loud, and take a breath. “Really sorry.”
I haven’t heard his voice in my head as much recently. I can go through a whole day without thinking about him, just as I would have when he was alive.
I try to put together a picture in my head about everything that’s gone on, trying to send him my life in a thought, send it out to the marsh where I pretend Vince now lives, the King of Frogs or the biggest baddest carp in the whole pond. It’s a jumble in my head. I have a life now, Vince, I think. It’s a little crazy at times. It’s a fucking mess, really. You happy now?
Where’s the fucking part? he says back. You’re not dead yet.
I grin. He’s still here, part and parcel of me, like an invisible arm or a leg, keeping me off balance just a bit, or, maybe more balanced.
Thanks, Vince, I think. It’s time to go home. You may like this place, but my feet are getting cold. Come on. Let’s go.
That night I call my parents. My mother starts crying as soon as she hears my voice, and keeps crying until my father takes the phone from her. “It’s a sad, sad day,” he says, the slur of his words obvious. “We miss him so much. Your mother’s having a pretty bad time tonight, honey. It’s sweet of you to call. We’re so thankful you’re our little girl. We’re so glad we have you. You just take good care of yourself and Larissa, you do th
at for us, won’t you?”
“Sure, Dad,” I say.
“Why don’t you call back tomorrow, when your mother can talk?”
“I will,” I say. “Love you both.”
“Love you too, honey.” Then he hangs up.
I never tell Larissa about today being the anniversary of Vince dying. She has twenty-two Valentine cards from schoolmates, one from me, and one from Michelle that came in the mail. Michelle also sent two boxes of small pastel candy hearts. One for me, maybe? Larissa and I spend the evening trying to decipher the words on those little candy hearts.
On the twentieth of February, Michelle moves into my attic. It’s filled with old junk I really don’t need, like pictures in broken frames, a chair I always meant to fix but really isn’t worth the effort, wallpaper reams that were here when I moved in. Michelle and I carry it all out to the front lawn, where she stacks these broken, useless things in a neat tidy pile as if it’s a puzzle that will all fit into one perfectly square section of my tree lawn. Ed and Shaun carry up the bed in the basement that Larissa slept in before she got her own bed, and Michelle arranges things so the room seems cozy and inviting. Although it’s a small space Michelle occupies up in my attic, I can feel the weight of her above me at night, not as an ominous presence, but as a curiosity, as if her own possibilities are mine. I charge her fifty dollars a month for rent.
Larissa is so happy she skips and twirls around the house for days. Her teacher calls just to tell me what a joy Larissa is in class these days. Polly thinks I’m crazy, and tells me in no uncertain terms, closing her eyes as she lectures me. When I tell Yolanda at lunch that week, she says, “Ah, did you tell Larissa’s social worker yet?”
“Not yet. Why?”
“Because you can’t do this,” she says. “You’re not supposed to have Mom stay at your house with the child.”
“Why not?”
“Rules.”
“Well, that’s stupid. Larissa’s doing great in school now. She’s happy. Michelle helps me. What could be wrong with that?”
Yolanda looks at me with a steady gaze. I like the way she thinks before she speaks. It’s like me, organizing a translation of an English sentence into ASL to make sure I have the essence right. I should do the same with everything I say. But I did think it over before I asked Michelle to move in. It just makes sense.
“Okay, listen,” she says. “We’re at lunch. I’m off the clock. We’re two people just talking. My advice, as a friend, is don’t tell her social worker right away, unless she asks somehow. See how it goes. Maybe it won’t work, and she’ll move out. Maybe it’ll work, then you have some justification to continue. Now, we’re going to change the subject. Seen any good movies?”
I smile. “Movies? How about videos? Shrek is great. Did you see that yet?”
“Girl, I loved that movie. Did you see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone?”
“Three times in three days.”
We talk children’s movies for the rest of the meal.
Michelle makes it possible for me to take evening jobs again, and she does most of the cleaning and laundry. She scrubs woodwork hidden by furniture and washes the walls. The inside of the fridge shines.
There is a contentment I didn’t expect, having another woman around. One day I pick out a bracelet that I haven’t worn for years because I can’t clasp it myself. “Can you hook this for me?” I ask Michelle.
“That’s a nice bracelet,” she says. “And those earrings are so cool.” I feel chipper all day; someone so young thinks I’m wearing “cool” earrings.
Still, Michelle is gone a lot. She leaves at eight-thirty for work and doesn’t come home until five-thirty. She has all those classes, and her dates with Shaun. Sometimes I am exhausted with her constant motion. Sometimes I turn to say something to her, and she’s not there.
Michelle never answers the phone, and she never asks if Shaun can sleep over. I don’t tell my parents that she has moved in.
Larissa still talks to me about school as we drive home. She asks me if we can make cookies. She’ll ask me to read her a book, fix her hair. If Michelle is around, she’ll ask her.
On a Saturday in early March the snow falls fat and lovely. Michelle volunteers to shovel the driveway.
“There’s a boy down the street I can call,” I say.
“Oh, I want to. It reminds me of when I was a kid. I always had to shovel. My dad said it was my job since I was like eight.” She licks her chapped lips. Her skin is constantly red and dry. She doesn’t use my lotion, and she doesn’t buy her own.
“Didn’t he shovel the drive?” I’m sitting on my bed. Michelle has come into my room after taking a shower. She has a towel wrapped around her head, and another one wrapped around her skinny body. One towel is hers, one mine. Larissa’s downstairs watching cartoons.
“Not since I was eight. Fuck, I did everything. I cooked and cleaned. We moved like ten times and I was always the one packed and unpacked the boxes. He taught me to drive when I was fourteen, and he’d give me the car to go to the grocery even though I didn’t have no licence yet. Not that we had much money for food. I can make you soup from any bone you give me. Hey, you want me to cook some? I can cook. I just don’t know if I make things the way you want them.”
“Thanks. Sure. You can cook anytime. What did he do?” I ask.
Michelle rubs the towel over her head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if you did everything?”
“Oh, he worked. All the time. Like ten hours a day. The rest, he drank. He got pissy but he passed out quick. He slept in the chair more than his own Goddamn bed!”
I take a breath as if I’m going to say something, but then nothing comes out; I worry that my father has a few too many beers at night.
Michelle looks down at the floor. “Oh, I’m dripping. Sorry.” She reaches down and runs a hand upward on her leg.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “So he didn’t like your husband?”
“No. He wouldn’t even come to the wedding. We had the wedding at my best friend’s house ’cause she had a big backyard and her parents weren’t prejudiced and they liked Charlie. He was a football player at my school. He played quarterback. Half the school was black and we got along, mostly. I mean, there were fights, sometimes. Most people liked Charlie ’cause he was such a good quarterback. He was the first black guy I ever kissed. The only one, really. I couldn’t believe I liked him as much as I did. He was the second guy I ever slept with. He could kiss me and make me wet in a second.” Michelle’s face reddens, even more than it had from the shower and the winter. She rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
I smile. “So he was a good kisser and a good quarterback. What did he do, after high school?”
Michelle’s look changes to anger. Did I ask something wrong?
“He went and got fucking killed,” she says, then shakes her head. “No. Sorry. He got a job at Wal-Mart. He was thinking a’ joining the army but I wouldn’t let him. I was scared he’d get killed.” She rubs her bare arms, like she’s cold. “Look, I didn’t mean to get morbid or shit.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “Sounds like you have a good reason.”
“It was a nice wedding. I still have my wedding dress. Janey Potts, my best friend? She made it for me. You want to see it?”
“Sure.”
“She moved to West Virginia, and I haven’t seen her for a year. We talk on the phone sometimes. I should write her a letter. Could I give her your address? I don’t want to call her long distance on your phone.”
“Sure, give her the address,” I say. I stand up, but Michelle doesn’t move. Maybe she didn’t mean she wanted to show me the dress now. I wonder if I’m supposed to give her a hug or something, show some female support. I pick up a receipt off my bureau, fold it in half. “You could call her, if you want. Your friend.”
Michelle is quiet for a moment, as if she’s confused, trying to figure out what I’ve said. “From
here?”
“Yeah. If you want. You know, just don’t make it too long.”
Once again, she thinks first. “Thanks, but I don’t want to owe you nothing like that. But thanks.” She turns and looks out the window. “I saw a shovel in the garage. I can use that, right?”
“You really want to?”
“Yeah, I do. I’m gonna make Larissa shovel the walk. She needs to do more work. You spoil her, you know.”
There’s an awkward silence while we both look away. “Sorry,” she says.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I say. I pause. “You think I spoil her?”
Michelle tugs on an ear. “No, not spoil her, I guess. You’re just really nice, that’s all. Real moms aren’t always nice.”
Now there’s another silence. I tuck the receipt into my pocket.
“I guess I’m putting my foot in my mouth all over the place,” Michelle says. “Sorry. You’re doing good. Better than me.”
“No,” I say. “Not better than you. Differently, maybe. I’m new to this, so I’m extra careful. I make mistakes . . .” I spell help with my hand, then make a fist.
“Not like I did,” she says. She backs toward the door. “You always do that thing with your hand. You sayin’ something behind my back?” She tries to make it sound like a joke, but the accusation hangs there. “I better go shovel the walk.” She leans out the doorway. “Larissa! Get on your snow stuff! We’re going outside to shovel!”
“Don’t go out with wet hair,” I tell Michelle.
“Yes, Mother,” she says. There is, again, silence. “It’s a joke.” Then, “You’d make a good mom.” She says this with more importance than her description of her drinking father, her mother dying. I feel my throat swelling up. I am so uncomfortable standing here with Michelle, and yet I want her to stay, to keep talking with me.