Together Alone

by Barbara Delinsky

  Besides, if he hadn’t taken her then, he might have lost his nerve.

  Which was a joke, given what he did for a living. He was known for his calm under fire, but hell, the police academy hadn’t prepared him for fatherhood. As detectives went, he was street-smart and quick, but neither of those things impressed Julia, and as for his shield, she’d as soon bury it in cereal as cower before it.

  Brian knew what it was to see the seedy side of life, then go home, close the door, and shower it away. But there was no showering Julia away. She was his for the forseeable future. Taking her from her grandmother in Chicago was the most daring thing he had done in his life.

  “A burger and fries,” the waitress sang, setting a platter before him. He smiled his thanks, but didn’t move. Julia continued to drink. He knew that she was perfectly capable of sitting up, tipping her head back, and holding the bottle herself, but she seemed content.

  And so, for that brief moment, was he.

  But the moment passed. Julia finished the bottle, sat on the booster seat beside him, and ate pieces of the hamburger he offered, but she was tired. Normally neat, she grew messy and whiney. She rubbed at her eyes with ketchupy hands. She said words that Gayle would have known, but that meant nothing to Brian. He tried to pacify her with more milk, but she wasn’t having any part of it—or with the Coke he had ordered for himself—and when she started crying, “Mommmmy—mommmmy,” he lost his appetite.

  Swinging her into his arms, he paid the bill and started back toward the Jeep, only to set her down again when the squirming resumed.

  It was warm out. The air was still, heavy with the ripe smell of trees and grass and so different from where he had been that he wondered if this was an omen, too. He had never particularly wanted to live in the country, but it seemed the best choice, given the circumstances. He needed a sane place to raise Julia. He needed a peaceful place to heal.

  Julia began to whimper again.

  He swung her up. “What is it, sweetie?”

  “Mom-my.”

  “Mommy isn’t here, but Daddy is. Everything’s going to be just fine. See? Here’s the Jeep, right where we left it.” And intact—which was a city thought if ever there was one—but not so dumb, given that the vehicle held the sum of his most precious earthly possessions. Not to mention paraphernalia for Julia, her favorite crackers and juice, and the stuffed rabbit that she refused to sleep without.

  Brian’s mind lingered on crackers and juice and his own belly, which would undoubtedly speak up several hours hence. Julia’s crackers and juice wouldn’t do the trick. He had tried the night before.

  So he returned to the drugstore and bought a party-size bag of cheddar popcorn, three Heath Bars, and a six-pack of apricot nectar. He was turning to leave, with Julia under one arm and his purchases under the other, when a round of squeals drew his attention to the back of the store.

  A photo booth stood there, its half-curtain drawn, and beneath and behind, more legs than he could sort out and count. He grinned. He remembered that fun.

  The squeals came again, high laughter followed by a flash of light and the frenzied repositioning of legs. The laughter rang out, the legs froze, the light flashed, then it all began again. When it was done, six preteens tumbled from the booth.

  Brian wasn’t sure how they had all fit in, but they seemed happy and healthy, and the activity suddenly struck him as such a throwback to an earlier time, such a refreshing change from a world of video arcades and computer massacres, that he couldn’t resist.

  Tucking the paper sack into the booth, he dug in his pocket for change, and slid in with Julia on his lap. “Grammie will love this,” he told her, and tried to push her curls into some semblance of order. “If we smile for the camera, she’ll see that we’re doing just fine. Isn’t that a great idea, Julia?”

  Julia was looking at the innards of the booth as though it were a house of horrors. Her unearthly eyes were growing wider by the second. Tears pooled on their lower lids.

  “Oh, sweetie, it’s okay,” Brian coaxed. “Nothing will hurt you here. Daddy won’t let it. Look,” he said with pumped-up enthusiasm, “I’ll just feed it some quarters—want to help me—here, hold the quarter—”

  It fell on the floor.

  He bent over to retrieve it, inadvertently squashing Julia, who let out a wail. He hugged her. He kissed her head. “Shhh. Daddy didn’t mean that. Here, let’s try again.” But he pushed the quarters in himself, because retrieving the thing in such cramped quarters hadn’t been easy on him either, and because he figured he had Julia quieted, but not for long. “There. Now we look here,” he pointed at the big black circle just as the first flash went off.

  Startled, Julia began to scream and didn’t stop this time, despite Brian’s efforts to console her, cooing his sympathy, holding her cheek to his, begging her to smile. Moments later, standing outside the booth waiting for the strip of pictures to emerge, he figured that, if nothing else, he had that first shot before she had lost it completely. Guardedness was better than terror, he supposed.

  As it happened, he didn’t even get guardedness. He got three shots of Julia crying her heart out while he held her cheek to his. For that first shot, she had been down on his lap. All that showed of her was a mess of curls on the top of her head.

  Wondering if this, too, was an omen, he folded the strip of photos in half and stuffed it in his pocket. Then he set Julia on his hip, snatched up the paper sack, and strode from the store.

  Myra Balch sat at the upstairs window of her small frame house, watching the world go by. It wasn’t a large one, as worlds went. She lived at the end of a dead end street lined with small frame houses not unlike hers, but from her end, the only house she could see was the Arkins’.

  That didn’t mean she didn’t know what was happening on the rest of the street. She most certainly did. She knew when the Wilsons’ weekly oranges came from their daughter in Florida, because the UPS truck turned around in Myra’s driveway. She knew when Abel Hinkley got a raise, because the furniture delivery truck did the same. And that funny little truck painted like a rat. The exterminator. At the LeJeunes’. Again.

  Of course, there were things her driveway couldn’t tell her. That was why she went walking up and down the street every morning at eleven. She wanted the news. And the exercise, of course, she wanted that, too. Frank was a big one for keeping in shape. If she ever got fat, he’d leave her, no questions asked.

  The sheers moved, just a flicker. She wished for more, wished for a breeze to cool the house. Frank kept promising her a fan, but he never seemed to get around to buying it, so the air remained still and warm.

  She leaned forward. The photographer who had taken pictures of the Arkins was leaving. He was the same one who had taken pictures for Ginny Haist’s sixty-fifth birthday, and the pictures were grand. Myra hoped he had done as well for the Arkins.

  She had crocheted Jill an afghan for school and planned to give it to her on the night before she left. She knew Emily would be touched.

  The photographer backed out of the driveway and drove off, leaving Emily’s old wagon looking bare and forlorn. It had seen better days, poor thing.

  Doug’s car was another matter. It was little more than a gleam of black and chrome in the shelter of the garage. She wondered if it would stay there when they rented out the rooms above. She wondered if the renter would be expected to park on the street. She wondered whose idea it was to rent in the first place.

  Probably Doug’s. He would want the money. It wouldn’t bother him if there were strangers around. He wasn’t the one who would see them coming and going. He wasn’t the one whose privacy would be disturbed.

  Emily deserved more. Myra did what she could to help—and her lace cookies were the best in town—but lace cookies could only do so much.

  Flowers helped. Myra always had one bloom or another to give Emily. And, of course, there were things like knitted mittens or an afghan, guaranteed to bring a smile.

&nb
sp; Myra gasped. There they were, Emily, Jill, and Doug, climbing into that rusty wagon, off to the Whittakers’ cook-out. Tomorrow night there was a party at the Davieses’, and the next night one at the Eatery, where Jill and her friends had all waitressed.

  One party after another. Myra didn’t know what it was about people that made them want to make fools of themselves in public. Emily understood that. She wasn’t throwing a party for Jill. She didn’t see the girl’s leaving home as cause for celebration. Their parting would be a private affair, surely a sad one.

  “But I don’t talk,” Myra vowed as she rose from her chair, “never have, never will. I bake my cookies and knit my sweaters, and keep still. So what do they do? They plan a party for me.” She started down the stairs. “I don’t want a party. They’re the ones who want it. They left here the very first chance they could, and they never came back for long, and they feel guilty about that. So now they’ve brought food for a party, and they’ve taken over my house.”

  To her right, at the bottom of the stairs, the dining room table was covered with her mother’s embroidered linen and the first of the food her daughters-in-law had brought. To her left, the living room was filled with sons and grandkids, all glued to a baseball game on television.

  Turning toward the back of the house, she slipped through the kitchen, let herself out the door, and went down the steps and across the lawn without being noticed. She paused to admire the whole of the huge, pale green weeping willow that stood on the bank of the pond, before settling onto the scrolled wrought-iron bench that sat beneath the veil of its arms.

  She plucked bits of fallen leaves—willow lint, she called it affectionately—from the bench, then leaned over and plucked bits from the ground. She worked her way down the bench, grooming the grass beneath the willow until it was neatened to her satisfaction. Then she sat back and admired the pachysandra she had planted and pruned over the years, and beyond that, the impatiens, and beyond that, the lilies. Looking out over the water, she sighed.

  Such a beautiful spot. And so well tended. She had done her best. She would continue to, until the day she died.

  That thought made her restless, impatient, and frightened at the same time. She carried a dreadful burden. When she thought of death, the burden shifted and threatened to spill. She gathered her strength, steadied it, and vowed that she wouldn’t die yet.

  But it was coming. She knew it, more and more so, with each birthday that passed. Time was running out.

  “Myra?” It was her daughter-in-law Linda, the career woman who believed that all women were sisters, regardless of age, and that “mother” was too formal a name for her mother-in-law. “Why are you sitting out here alone?”

  “I’m not alone,” Myra said kindly. She liked Linda, actually. Quirks and all, Linda was more tolerant than the others. The others would have argued with her even now, but Linda merely smiled.

  “We want pictures. Will you come inside?”

  “But pictures should be taken out here. This is the most beautiful spot around.”

  Linda swatted away a mosquito. “It’s very buggy.”

  “Not for me. I use the right perfume. It’s in the bathroom off the kitchen, if you’d like to try some. Not that the boys will like it, but a few bites won’t hurt them any. Yes,” the idea was growing on her, “if we’re taking pictures, I’d like them taken here. But you’ll have to call Frank. We can’t take pictures without him.”

  Linda smiled. “I’ll go get the others.”

  Myra returned the smile, and it lingered. A picture-taking session beneath the willow was perfect. So there was something to be said for daughters-in-law, after all. Certainly for grandchildren. Even for sons who felt guilt after years of neglect. Far be it from her to tell them that by the time they had left home, she had been ready for them to go, tired of the fights with each other and with Frank, tired of the cooking and the cleaning. She had been more than ready for a rest.

  Not that she would tell Frank that. Lord no. He would be furious. He hadn’t liked the boys leaving, hadn’t liked it at all.

  “Come on inside, Mom,” called her oldest, Carl. “We’ll take pictures in the living room.”

  “Out here!” she called back.

  “The light is dimming out there.”

  Indeed it was. Dusk was imminent. But she wasn’t as dumb as they thought. “It’s still brighter here than it is inside.”

  “We can use a flash in here.”

  “You can use a flash out here, too.” She grinned. “It’s here or not at all, Carl. It’s my birthday.” The grin thinned. “You’ll have to tell your father we’re out here. Where is he? I thought he was puttering around the woodshed, but I don’t see him there. Find him for me, Carl?”

  Carl retreated into the house, but only for a minute. When he returned, he wasn’t alone. The other sons were with him, and the daughters-in-law, and, trailing dutifully, the grandchildren. Before Myra could do more than pat her hair and check to make sure that her collar lay flat, she was surrounded by family, kneeling in front, sitting beside, standing behind.

  In the crush came the thought that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, that the grass under the willow would be hurt, but it seemed too late to say that, and then there was the matter of Frank.

  “Where’s your father, Carl?” she asked, looking around. She didn’t see Frank anywhere. “I want him sitting on this bench.” She tried to oust the grandchildren to her left, but they were packed in too tight.

  Carl put the camera to his eye. “Look here, everyone.”

  “Where’s Frank? We can’t take a picture without him.”

  There was murmuring behind Myra and a snicker or two in front. She ignored them, sitting straighter, putting on the kind of starched face that Carl wouldn’t care to photograph.

  “I want Frank here,” she insisted. “It’s only right. He’s part of this family.”

  “Take the picture, Carl.”

  “It’s getting darker.”

  “Mommy, I’m bit!”

  “On the count of three,” Carl said from behind the camera.

  Myra sat forward, looking to see if Frank was off to the side, wading in the pond. He did that sometimes, when the air was warm.

  “One…two…look here, Mom.”

  “But your father—”

  From behind her came a gentle, “Myra,” and Linda’s hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. He’ll be along. What if you smile, and then we can surprise Frank with the picture?”

  Unsure, Myra looked back at her. “Should we?”

  “Definitely.”

  “But he may be angry that we didn’t wait.”

  “He won’t be angry. He’ll be pleased.”

  Myra wanted that more than anything in the world. Pleasing Frank was crucial. It was the key to her survival. It was what made her steady that heavy load she carried, what made her turn away from death, even those times when she was so tired of fighting that she wanted only to close her eyes and succumb.

  She lived on for Frank.

  “Look at Carl,” Linda urged, and Myra was unsettled enough to do it.

  “That’s it,” came the camera’s voice, sounding enough like Frank’s to put Myra momentarily at ease. “On the count of three, everyone say ‘cheese.’ One, two, three—”

  There was a collective, “Cheeeeeese,” and a flash of light.

  Myra neither smiled nor spoke. It wasn’t Frank behind the camera, after all, but Carl, and she wasn’t sure Frank would like being left out. If he was angry, he could argue with Carl.

  But it didn’t work that way. She was the one who lived with him. She was the one who suffered.

  The count came again, the collective, “Cheeeeeese,” and the flash, and then the crowd that had swarmed down on her so suddenly, as suddenly dispersed. The back door slapped again and again, until at last it was still and all was quiet.

  Myra closed her eyes. She let the warm night breeze cleanse the space around her. Then,
silent as always, she slipped to her knees and began fluffing the grass, combing it with her fingers, caressing the soil beneath. This was the most beautiful spot around. It was right to take a family picture here. This was a place for reunions.

  two

  PART OF THE BEAUTY OF HAVING A CHILD, EMILY decided, was the reflection it brought to one’s own life. Through Jill, she remembered things that would have otherwise been lost—overnights with giggling friends, the fear of being left chairless when the music stopped, the warm, wet flush of a first kiss. As Jill experienced things, Emily relived them.

  So, now, she relived leaving home. She relived the frantic shopping and packing, the last teary gatherings with friends, the fear of a faceless roommate, the terror of academic failure. She also relived the excitement, because, in hindsight, going to college had been the single most pivotal point in her life. She had met Doug the first week. They had been married within the year.

  It had worked for her. But for Jill, she wanted more. She wanted four years of study and fun, a degree, traveling with friends, sharing an apartment, getting a job, building a name—then coming back to live nearby.

  Thinking of Jill’s eventual return was one way to fight the sadness of her going away. Another was to keep busy, which Emily did readily in her capacity as laundress, social secretary, and cooker of favorite meals. Still there were times, as Jill whirled through her final preparations, when Emily stood watching her, wondering where the years had gone, wishing them back. There had been a solace in knowing how Jill spent her time and with whom. There had been a luxury in determining it.