by Lynne Hugo
“All right, all right,” she says out loud to the emptiness. She picks up the phone. “Can you page Wayne Merrill?” she says after it’s been answered on the other end. Then the wildness gets loose again. “Yes, goddammit, this is an emergency.”
Ellie and Claire both startle when a knock sounds. Presley begins his frenzied barking, charging the door and then throwing himself at it. Ellie freezes, whispering, “Presley! Presley!” ineffectively, but Claire glances at her watch, shrugs and gets up.
“It’s got to be Dad,” she says. “It’s past four.”
Wayne, in his work coveralls, is standing several feet back, as if he’d knocked and then retreated. Presley sniffs him and retreats in disappointment.
“Come on in,” Claire says. She gestures behind her at the small living room furnished in neutral, nondescript furniture. The only personal touches are Claire’s schoolbooks splayed on the Formica coffee table and Presley’s water and food dishes on the kitchenette floor. “See? We’ve even unpacked. Did you see it when you rented it, or just Ellie?”
Wayne doesn’t glance around nor come in. “Your mother knows you’re with Ellie. Maddie called me at the plant and said she knows and that she’s flippin’ out. You better call her.”
Claire starts to shake her head no, and opens her mouth to say something, but Ellie appears beside her. “What did Lydia say?”
“Maddie just said she was wrecked. I dunno anything else.”
“Well, how’d she find out?”
“I dunno. Maddie didn’t say.”
“Can you call her? Lydie, I mean?” Ellie asks Wayne.
“No, Claire ought to call her.”
Claire takes a step forward and inserts herself. “And I’m not calling her, either.”
Wayne shrugs. “I won’t say nothing, but if she comes and asks me flat out, I’ll tell her. Just so you know.” He pauses a moment, then looks in Claire’s direction. “You okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine. Thanks.”
“Okay, then, I’ll be going,” Wayne says, shifting his weight.
“Don’t you want to come in awhile?
“Naw, that’s okay. I’ll see you.”
Disappointment washes across Claire’s face. “Okay, bye,” she says. “Thanks for getting this place.”
“Yeah,” Wayne calls, his back already turned, but his voice isn’t cold.
When Claire shuts the door after watching Wayne walk away, Ellie starts up.
“Claire, I think you should phone your mother. She’s just going to get more and more upset.”
It’s not like Claire to be defiant, but she looks Ellie square in the eye and says, “No.” Claire heads for the larger bedroom she shares with nearly a month’s supply of dialysis solution, povidone iodine caps and bag sets now, and shuts that door behind her. Ellie picks Presley up and sinks onto the couch. When the dog squirms and jumps back to the floor, Ellie buries her face in her hands. She stays that way for a few minutes, then leans back and stares into space for another fifteen. Presley jumps back onto the couch and curls up beside her, where she strokes his head again and again.
Claire couldn’t have canned soup because it has too much potassium and sodium in it, so Ellie fixed scrambled eggs because Claire says they have protein, and toast (dry, because Ellie had forgotten to get margarine) for supper. They ate watching Jeopardy! on the television, Ellie astounded at how many of the answers Claire knows.
“I don’t mind cooking,” Claire says as she carries both their plastic plates to the sink. “How about I give you a list of some basic stuff to get. I’ll figure out some meals we can have.”
Ellie starts to protest, then stops. “Okay. Good. You make the list and I’ll run to the store.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean this minute,” Claire laughs. She scrapes a runny clot of egg into a paper bag-lined garbage pail under the sink. “We’ll need some plastic garbage bags,” she adds.
“I’d just as soon go now,” Ellie says. “I could do with some fresh air, especially now that it’s cooler.”
“Oh, Ellie, you already went once today. It can wait…or maybe you’re feeling a little cooped up with me? I’m sorry, you’re so nice to do this.”
The plastic glasses are battered, the color leached out of them. Claire puts them in the sink as Ellie hands them to her. “It’s not that,” Ellie says hurriedly, afraid she’s given the wrong impression. “Really, I just need a little exercise. I like to get out in the evening when it stays light. Will you be okay alone for a little while?” Already she is heading across matted, fatigue-colored carpeting to her purse.
“Sure. But don’t you need a list?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Please, do make one. I’m not a good shopper. I always get sort of confused about what I should buy, if I need it or not.”
“A list helps,” Claire says without a trace of sarcasm.
“I’ll try it.”
Ellie watches Hard Copy while Claire sits at the table and works on two pieces of notebook paper. Within fifteen minutes, she gets up and hands Ellie one of them.
“I’ve done up meal plans to take us through the rest of the week, so the weird things on the list are an ingredient for one thing or another. Is that okay?”
Ellie reads the shopping list. “Sure it’s okay. I may be a while. I don’t know where to find a lot of this stuff.” She is in awe that Claire knows how to make different dishes, and from memory knows what goes in them. “What’s the barley for?”
“Mainly for a change from rice, since I can’t have potatoes. You can cook it in broth and it takes on a nice flavor. I’ll use the broth from the chicken—see, the chicken will be stewed the day before for chicken salad. That’s what I need the celery for. I’m supposed to have red meat, too, so I put down two small steaks, if that’s okay.”
“Oh.”
“Unless you don’t like those things. Here, read the meal plans….” Claire crosses to the table to get the other sheet.
“No, no, I like them fine. I’ve just never…I mean, that will be fine.” She stands, picks up her purse and bends to pat Presley. The basset raises his chin so she scratches beneath it. “Presley, you take care of Claire. Mommy will be back soon. Be good.”
Claire, sweet Claire, doesn’t even laugh when Ellie says this, the way everyone else in the family does. She just says, “Don’t worry. We’ll be just fine.” And Ellie believes her.
At Thriftway, Ellie goes up and down every aisle and goes to the deli three or four times to ask the worker behind the high glass display case where something is. It takes her a long time to get everything, partially because she passes some items three or four times and has to backtrack when she comes to it on the list. There’s more to it, though. She’s distracted by what made her in such a hurry to get out to do the shopping tonight to begin with. Her initial impulse, which had blazed like a comet, has passed beyond discernment and now she’s less sure. She’s chewed her bottom lip all the while she’s shopped, anxious from the stress of looking for things on the maze of shelves and trying to search the sky of her own mind for a sign.
Once she’s paid and the bagged groceries are in the cart, she has to decide once and for all. She fishes a quarter out of her purse and pushes the cart to the pay phone mounted on the wall of Thriftway’s entrance.
“Lydie?” she says when the phone is answered at the other end of the line. “It’s me.”
CHAPTER 30
Graduation. To think that I spent so much time alternately swelling up and deflating myself like a tree frog, so proud of Claire and so worried about how I’d manage when she left for college, when what I should have been worrying about was something that would have been unendurable to imagine. But I never did imagine it.
I never thought I’d go into the auditorium alone on the night of June sixth. It never occurred to me that the dusk would be scented by a lovely flowering tree planted to the left of the school entrance in memory of some poor, lost student. What that girl’s mother must have been throu
gh, must go through every day, I think. Really, I’m lucky. Mine is still alive. A small, bronze plaque propped at its base has white, fallen petals around it like so many snowflakes, that cold comfort.
I expected to cry when Claire received her diploma, but I never thought I would cry in a stall in the girls’ room before the time came to find a seat. I didn’t think I’d sit alone, surrounded by strangers, in the back section where they stick “other guests,” as opposed to immediate families. From my seat I try to see over heads and through bright movement and waving programs to where Wayne must be, but I can’t. Is Ellie there with him, in my place?
When Ellie called from the grocery store, I was equally inclined to melt into a puddle of gratitude and take off after her with a crowbar. I think she told me the truth, at least mostly, but she resisted certain questions like a birch that gives in the wind but doesn’t snap. “El,” I said desperately, “you can’t do this to me. This is my daughter, she needs me, I need her, we have to work this out. I know she’s angry at me, I know. But you’ve got to let me see her. You don’t know the first thing about this, and it’s my job, not yours.”
She’d been a little apologetic until then, and I thought she understood. I thought she was on my side. I never thought I’d be pleading with and threatening either of my sisters, let alone both, for my child.
“Well, Claire seems to think I’m doing the job just fine,” she said. “I shouldn’t have called you. I didn’t want you to be all scared and hurt. I can’t believe you’re yelling at me.” There was a scratchiness in her voice that sounded as if the words were pebbles rolling over the flint of her tongue. A fire was about to be started.
“God, Ellie. I’m not scared and hurt, I’m terrified and crushed. Can’t you—” I broke off, afraid that she might hang up on me. I tried what used to work all the time, lowering my voice but trying not to wheedle. “Don’t you think Elvis would insist on seeing Lisa Marie? Wouldn’t he do whatever he had to—to be by his daughter’s side? I’m sure they had tough times when he and Priscilla split up, and maybe Lisa Marie was really mad at him, but I think he still got to see her.” The strange thing was I really felt it. I think I know what everyone who has ever been separated from his child, her child, feels. Don’t let this happen, I want to pray for us all.
“Are you and Wayne splitting up?” Her voice came pitched over the wire, a high line drive, the kind that breaks the pitcher’s nose.
I lost it then, which made her neat sidestep work. “How the hell should I know?” I was nearly shouting. “He’s not said a word to me since he walked out. I just discovered that Maddie—my sister—has been hiding him and that you, my other sister, has been helping her. I should ask you—are Wayne and I splitting up?”
She completely ignored that. I wondered if the phone line had snapped, stretched too taut between us.
“Ellie? Are you still there?”
“I’ve got to get going. I don’t want to leave Claire alone too long,” she finally said. She’d switched to fencing. Parry and thrust. She must have known how that long blade would hit home.
“Wait. Wait. What about her graduation? Can she go? Has she seen Dr. Douglas? I guess the dialysis is going all right, she’d not be with you if it weren’t, she’d be in the hospital, but…do you know all the signs of peritonitis? Is she taking her Norvasc—that’s the one for blood pressure, and how about the Epogen shots? She can’t forget those—” I was babbling. Ellie cut me off.
“She doesn’t want you.”
“At her graduation? Claire wouldn’t do that to me. I can’t believe it, Ellie, she knows how much I love her. She couldn’t do that….”
“Look, I’ll send you the guest ticket you sent me. Try not to let her see you. I’ve really got to go.”
I stood there listening to the unwavering dial tone for a couple of minutes, the flatline sound from the machine hooked up to my heart.
The boys are in black robes and mortarboards, the girls in white ones, and they progress slowly, in boy-girl twosomes down two aisles simultaneously. “Pomp and Circumstance” is being played, beautifully, with dignity, by a trumpet soloist accompanied by the band director on a small organ. The students are moving in a slow, practiced cadence, the music swaying through their bodies. Just above the necklines of the boys’ robes, white shirts and ties emerge; their black dress shoes are freshly shined. The girls are in white two-inch heels, and no one’s dress hangs below the robe. They are transformed into shiny new adults, at least for these few hours, ready to march on into fresh futures. Maysfield High School does only a few things with magnificence and perfection, but the graduation ceremony is one of them, and I cannot find my daughter.
I look at the students in one aisle, then swivel my head to the other side, knowing I’m missing a glimpse of at least two faces on either side at any time. Finally the class all stand in place in front of their seats. Their backs are to the audience, and it is too late.
The band, minus its graduating seniors, plays the national anthem and the alma mater. Then on stage, flanked by flags, speakers begin to step to the podium. Nine or ten awards are announced. “For Excellence in French Five, the Mark Mortine Award goes to Anna Claire Merrill,” the principal says over the loudspeaker. “This award carries a five-hundred-dollar scholarship for further study of the language,” the principal intones, and I am taken completely off guard. I had no idea this was coming. But then maybe Claire didn’t either. Then I see her. She stands from the very front row and climbs the six steps up to the stage. Claire has worn her dark hair loose—and it cascades just onto the shoulders of her robe, a striking image against the rich, deep red stage curtain. She’s had it cut a couple of inches since I’ve seen her, which makes it more curly than wavy. She wears a gold medal around her neck: the honor accorded to the top five percent of each graduating class. She made it. My baby made it.
Ms. Seeley, tall, dark-haired and dimpled, doesn’t fit a single stereotype of a principal. Instead of shaking Claire’s hand, she steps from behind the podium and gives Claire a hug. Then she leans back to the microphone and says, “How’s this young woman for a profile in courage? Your school and, I know, your family, are so proud of you, Claire. It is a privilege to present this award. I only wish the school had one for bravery and determination.” Then she begins to applaud and the audience takes it up, and every senior stands up for Claire. They stand and applaud her all the way off the stage and back to her seat.
Two more awards are given out and then the roll call begins for each senior to cross the stage and accept a diploma. The top honor graduates are first, then the rest of the class, in alphabetical order, carefully seated to insure a slow, orderly flow of handshakes across the stage. When Kevin’s name is called, his parents mount the steps and take his diploma for him, his mother with tears coursing down her cheeks, his father carrying himself with the bearing of an ex-marine. The senior class all stand and applaud again for a good twenty seconds before taking their seats. These are good young people, I think. They care. Even though I’m locked outside of that circle, for Claire’s sake I’m grateful that it exists. Go ahead, surround her. Love her and encourage her. Please. Keep her safe. I beg with no idea now who I’m addressing—something inside or above that circle of the undamned, someone who can do what I can’t.
The father of one of the senior girls, a minister, gives “A Parting Word,” because they can’t call it a benediction anymore. “Go with God,” he says at the end, hope and admonition at once, and it is over. The class processes out to a trumpet voluntary, and parents crush behind the last of them to find their children and gather them up in great hugs and congratulations.
As I walk up one aisle, I see him standing just inside the door open to the other aisle. John. John came to see his daughter. He either sneaked in—nearly impossible, I’ve heard—or used some lawyer connection to get an “other guest” ticket. I have to cut across several people and find an empty row that I can use to cross the seats. Then, even when I am in t
he right aisle, I have to angle myself sideways and crowd between people. “Excuse me. I’m sorry. Excuse me,” I say over and over, trying to outswim the current.
I approach John. He sticks the handkerchief in his left hand into his pocket. His eyes are red-rimmed, like a rabbit’s. He stands still and I hesitate. But we see the evidence of each other’s tears, and when I take another step, one that brings me close enough, he puts his arms around me. “Beautiful,” he whispers. “She is so beautiful.” I feel his shoulders shake and his weight increases on my shoulder.
“I know,” I whisper back. “It’s okay. I know. I never thought it would be like this, either.”
CHAPTER 31
“I’m going. Period. Full stop. I don’t care what Dr. Douglas says or doesn’t say,” Claire says.
There’s a steely side to her niece that Ellie is just discovering, though it’s not been directed at Ellie. The quality (always popping up like a jack-in-the-box out of Maddie, and Lydie) has seemed as if it represented a whole genetic code unreplicated in Ellie. Of course, she’s never let either of them know there’s an iota of admiration mixed into her jealousy and frustration. With Claire, though, it’s somehow different. Ellie’s been watching her.