“And all the hot dogs I can eat?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll help, too, Grannie,” Lexi said. “As long as I don’t have to touch a worm.”
In a conspiratorial stage whisper, Frannie said, “That’s why we need your dad.”
Dan tossed the red cloth toward a toolbox. “I heard that.”
The three of them grinned at each other like baboons while Carrie listened in amazement. She had tried for years to get Dan involved in church activities. Then Mother waltzes in, talks about boys and fishing, and he gives in without so much as an argument.
Patroskys’ farm was little more than a horse corral, a pond and a stand of woods, but it was the perfect place for a bunch of rowdy town kids to learn about outdoor recreation in a positive environment. Mother flitted up and down the pond edge, her bawdy laugh echoing over the water in conjunction with the squeals and chatter of thirty or more kids.
Carrie wasn’t sure how she’d gotten roped into the outing, considering the resentment she felt toward most of the adult attendees. But she’d been so intrigued at Dan’s enthusiastic involvement she hadn’t wanted to be left out.
“Come on, Mom.” Lexi gestured from her spot next to Dan along the grassy bank. “I saved a lawn chair for you.”
“Did you use bug spray?” Wielding a can of Off! Carrie moved from the shady cookout area toward the pond.
“Yes, Mom.”
“Spray these other kids, Carrie,” her mother called.
Most of the town kids wore shorts and flip-flops, a poor choice for horseback riding and traipsing through knee-high pastures. She doubted if any of them had used sunscreen or Off! before boarding the church van.
“Line up, kids, if you want bug spray.” Children of all sizes and shapes came running as if she were handing out free Nintendo games, arms out to their sides, while she fanned the insecticide around their bodies. Carrie turned her head away from the strong odor. “Any bug brave enough to come through this stuff deserves the free meal.”
When the last child was sprayed, Carrie stood alone, can in hand, wondering what to do now. She wasn’t much for fishing, though she supposed her knowledge was more than most of these kids. And she certainly didn’t want to sit in the circle of lawn chairs around the campfire with the other adults from the church, making small talk. She had nothing to say to those people anymore. It was hard to be chatty with resentment churning inside her.
At a loss, she finally journeyed down the embankment toward Dan to help with the fishing. A gaggle of children surrounded her husband, touching him, talking to him, soaking up every word he said. From his expression, Dan loved every moment of it. He was born to be a daddy, a truth never clearer than today.
Beside her, a little girl with honey-blond hair and smooth, tanned skin reeled in an empty line.
“Your worm is gone, Bailey.” Carrie pointed to the empty hook.
“Can you put a new one on for me?”
Carrie cringed and looked toward Dan, who was too busy to notice. “Uh, sure.”
Bracing herself, she dug in the dirt-filled container for a wiggly night crawler and threaded it onto the hook.
“Stinks, don’t it?” Bailey asked, watching every move of Carrie’s now-filthy fingers.
“Sure does. But the fish love them. Have you caught one yet?”
“No. But I asked Jesus to let me get one. He knew all about fishing. Rev. Ellis said He was a fisher of men. But I think he was joking. Men don’t live in ponds and eat worms.”
While Carrie absorbed that bit of adorable wisdom, a shout went up. “I got one. I got one.”
Dan dropped a plastic sack of bobbers and raced toward the young fisherman, a solemn-eyed boy with mocha skin and curly hair. “Pull him in, son. Nice and easy. That’s it. You got him. Here he comes.”
The boy reeled desperately, his wide, dark eyes flashing from the bent line to Dan’s face and back again. He pushed the reel toward Dan. “You do it. I can’t.”
Dan remained beside the boy but refused to take the reel. “Yes, you can. You’ve almost got him. Don’t give up. This one’s yours, buddy.”
As if he’d needed that bit of encouragement, the youngster set his feet in the soft, moist earth and reeled harder. By now, half a dozen other children had come running, offering words of advice and yells of excitement.
Dan leaned forward, ready to grab the line the moment the fish broke above the water. “Here he comes. He’s a good one.”
As the bass surfaced, the noise around the pond increased. The fisherman sent up a shout of jubilee. “I got him. I got him. He’s huge.”
The now-banked fish flopped and twisted, scales glistening in the evening sun. Dan clapped the boy on the back. “I knew you could do it.”
The boy looked up at him and finally let his smile come. It spread over his face, into his dark eyes and finally out to his body. A gurgle of laughter, pure and delightful, erupted.
Carrie smiled and headed that direction as Dan showed all the gathered kids the proper way to remove the hook.
“Anyone have a camera before we release Shamu back into the wild?” Dan asked, urging the grinning boy to hold the bass aloft for all to admire.
“I’m coming.” Digital camera glinting silver in the sun, Frannie untangled herself from a circle of kids playing blindman’s bluff and trotted over.
Once the photo was taken, Dan and the boy squatted side by side to release the fish back into the water. Carrie watched them, a hitch beneath her ribs, as the boy looked up at Dan with an expression of hero worship. Such a simple thing to help a boy catch a fish and yet both males glowed with pleasure.
By the end of the evening, when the sun began to fade and the children loaded the church bus to return home, Carrie sat in a lawn chair with Dan at her side, tired but feeling positive. Her mother had been as exuberant as ever, without a hint of the dementia, and Dan had had a wonderful time.
“You were great with those kids, Dan,” she murmured, rolling her head to look at his profile. “B.J. stuck to you like a wood tick.”
He returned her gaze. “He doesn’t have a dad in his life.”
She knew. “Sad.”
“Not a bad kid.”
“Yet.”
“Yeah. I was thinking maybe I’d spend some time with him. Teach him some boy things. Him and a couple of the others were asking if they could come over to the house sometime.”
“And you said yes.”
“You don’t mind, do you?”
Ten-year-old boys running through her house and flowers. As if she didn’t have enough problems dealing with Mother.
But hadn’t she wished for more children in the house? Hadn’t she prayed for God to send Dan a little boy?
Thinking that God had a warped sense of timing, she only said, “No, I don’t mind.”
In the days following the cookout, Dan and B.J. struck up a friendship that had the fatherless street kid hanging out at the Martin house more than at home. Both males seemed to thrive on the relationship, and any annoyance Carrie felt at having dirt tracked on her clean tile was offset by watching a somber boy begin to blossom.
Most times, Carrie managed not to think about her mother’s illness too much, though she couldn’t get past her annoyance at people. First the church had betrayed Mother and now Ken, for she was certain he had. The old coot. After years of squiring Mother around, he’d disappeared like the hot dogs at the cookout.
Frannie, in her inimitable style, went right on as if nothing had happened. She laughed, she clogged, she played her guitar and watched the skydiving. The day after the cookout, she and Alice had signed up for a karate class.
She was forgetting more. Carrie could see it so clearly now, though the occasional episodes of confusion were the worst. Even Alice mentioned them. So, if Mother forgot to pay her electric bill on time or put the iron in the refrigerator, Carrie simply paid the bill or moved the iron without comment.
But thinking about Mother’s decline d
rove her to despair.
On a quiet Wednesday when the wind was hot and unwelcome and everyone prayed for a rain that didn’t come, Carrie bought a basket of rich-scented peaches from a farmer in the parking lot of Ace Hardware.
Today was Mother’s Red Hat Society meeting. Carrie didn’t worry about her when she was with the girls, all of whom knew her diagnosis.
Once she’d reached the house and put away the groceries, she dug out the ice-cream maker. Homemade peach ice cream, Dan’s favorite, would hit the spot on this hot, dry day. Maybe she’d marinate some pork chops and grill some corn on the cob, as well. She’d throw on extra in case B.J. and his buddies showed up.
As she organized the ingredients and chopped peaches, she hummed a happy tune and now and then snitched a bite of the juicy fruit. Life seemed better today, as if she had faced a trial and adjusted.
When the phone rang, she wiped her hands on a dish towel and reached for the receiver. “Hello.”
“Carrie?”
She didn’t recognize the voice. “Yes?”
“This is Claudia Davis.” The woman who lived across the street from Mother.
“Oh, hi, Claudia. How are you?” Cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear, she reached for another peach.
“Honey, do you know where your mother is?”
Something in Claudia’s voice sounded odd. Carrie placed the peach on the counter.
“At the Red Hat Society.” She glanced at the clock on the microwave. “Or she may be home by now. Why?”
“Carrie, I hate to tell you this, but Frannie’s house is on fire.”
Chapter Eight
Sirens pierced the hot, breezy afternoon like screams. Carrie’s legs shook as she parked her car a block from Mother’s and took off in a dead run toward the flashing, whirling emergency lights. Her purse flapped against her side. Why she’d stopped to get her purse was a mystery she had no time to solve.
Both sides of the quiet two-lane street were packed with cars and emergency vehicles. Uniformed emergency workers swarmed the neighborhood like ants at a picnic.
A wall of yellow-coated firefighters rimmed the perimeter of Mother’s house spilling out into the street to a long, red ladder truck. One firefighter stood atop the truck working gauges while others pulled a huge beige hose toward the flaming structure.
With a sick jolt, Carrie realized they were too late to save Mother’s little frame house. Their focus was on keeping the fire contained and protecting the surrounding structures.
“Oh no, not this, too.”
Stricken, she slowed her pace, searching through the clusters of neighbors and nosy disaster chasers for a short, squat woman in a big red hat.
“Has anyone seen Frannie Adler?” she called toward one of the groups. They parted like the Red Sea, staring at her with interest and curiosity. Some of the people she knew. Others were strangers. Nosy strangers who’d come to watch her mother’s house burn in both sympathy for the victim and gratitude that the disaster hadn’t happened to them.
In a small town like Riverbend, people took their excitement where they could, and a house fire was big news.
“Carrie, honey.” Mother’s next-door neighbor, Sara Cummings, rushed forward and hugged her. The gray-haired woman had been Carrie’s high school math teacher. “I don’t think your mother was home.”
Heart thudding painfully against her ribs, Carrie nodded, trying to calm the panic and distress flooding through her veins like the water from those fire hoses. “She was supposed to be at the Red Hat Society.”
“Thank the good Lord.”
“But I can’t find her. I thought she’d be home by now.” The wind blew her hair into a swirling mess. A strand slapped across her mouth. She reached up and pulled it away, knowing that her hair, like the fire, was out of control in this kind of wind. Mother’s house hadn’t stood a chance.
“I was just about to start supper.” Sara gazed at the soaring flames as she spoke. “I went out in the garden to cut a mess of okra. Bob isn’t supposed to eat fried foods, but he loves okra.” She smiled softly. “You know how it is. First thing I noticed when I opened the back door was the smoke. Whew, it burned my eyes something fierce. Right then, I knew a fire was awful close.”
“Were you the one who called the fire department?”
“Yes, but I guess someone else already had because dispatch said they were on the way.” She turned toward her one-story brick. A hummingbird feeder strung from the porch rafters swung in the stiff breeze. “Bob’s gathering up our important papers in case the fire gets to us.”
“Oh, I hope not, Sara. Is it safe for him to be in there?”
“A fireman went over with him. Told him to make it fast.”
Carrie had to agree. “Thank you for calling 9-1-1. You’ve been a good neighbor to Mother.”
Sara patted her arm. “Frannie is a good neighbor to all of us.”
“I have to find her. She’s going to be devastated.”
“Who wouldn’t be? Let me know if I can do anything. Tell Frannie I said that.”
With barely a nod, Carrie rushed off to speak to a firefighter wearing a red captain’s helmet. Before she could reach him, a car horn blared long and loud. Carrie whirled toward the familiar sound, heart leaping into her throat. The street was cordoned off, but half a block away The Tanker slammed to a halt next to a birdbath on Jack Rodell’s front lawn, and Mother leaped out.
The surge of relief at seeing her mother alive and well was an adrenaline high like no other. Hurdling a hodgepodge of unfamiliar-looking equipment, Carrie dipped and darted between parked cars and around emergency vehicles in an effort to touch Frannie, to assure herself that Frannie was truly safe.
“Mother!” she cried, running full steam ahead.
They met in the middle of Oak Street in the narrow space between an SUV and an empty police car. Trembling like a leaf, Mother fell against Carrie. Throughout her life, Carrie had been held in Frannie’s arms many times as Mother soothed and prayed away her daughter’s hurts. Today, the roles were reversed, as Carrie feared they would be in the months and years to come. With the stench of smoke in her nostrils and the heat of summer like a weight, she gathered her mother close and held tight.
Mother’s face was stark white behind bright red lipstick and aviator sunglasses. Her breath came in short pants. “What happened? My house. My house.”
“It’s gone.” The cruel words scraped across her tongue.
Frannie slowly peeled off the sunglasses and stared in wide-eyed horror at the scene playing out in her front yard. “Everything? All of it?”
Carrie nodded, sick at her stomach to be the conveyor of such news.
As Frannie gazed toward the only home she’d ever owned, her face drooped like melted candle wax.
“Did they save anything? Anything at all?” Her mother’s voice contained such pain, Carrie could only shake her head and fight back tears. The fire was one more in a long list of last straws. How much more could Mother take before she broke completely?
With the strength that had carried her through a lifetime of ups and downs, Frannie squared her shoulders and hitched her Hawaiian print tote bag. “I need to see for myself.”
Heavy smoke and bits of ash floated on the wind. Ashes of Mother’s life. The gray ghost of a refrigerator poked up through the piles of glowing, charred, unrecognizable objects. One final, tenacious wall crumbled beneath the force of a fire hose.
As they drew as close as firefighters would allow, neighbors formed a semicircle around them. Some just stood there at a loss for words. Others offered murmurs of sympathy, while others speculated on the cause of the fire.
“Old house like that is a tinderbox.”
Carrie gave the hook-nosed speaker a hard glare. He dropped his gaze and hushed. Silly old thing. Didn’t he have any common sense?
Mother, usually a wealth of conversation, stood in dejected silence, her hat knocked askew, one snazzy red shoe missing.
It oc
curred to Carrie then that the only clothes Mother owned were on her back. They’d have to find that shoe.
“A crying shame, Frannie.” Sara Cummings had walked over to pat Frannie’s back.
Frannie, her stricken gaze on the destroyed home, suddenly clutched Carrie’s arm in a death grip. Her hands were hot and clammy. “Tux. Where’s Tux?”
Oh God, please. Not the cat, too. Hasn’t Mother suffered enough?
“I don’t know, Mother. Maybe he got out. You know how skittish cats are.” To the neighbors, she said, “Has anyone seen a black-and-white cat with a sparkly red collar?”
“And a jingle bell. He has a jingle bell,” Frannie said desperately. “He’s fond of birds.”
A chorus of heads waggled a negative reply, faces full of sympathy.
“Never know, Mrs. Adler, he might show up after things die down. Cats don’t like noise and commotion.”
Frannie nodded without enthusiasm. She had faced an Alzheimer’s diagnosis with humor, buried a husband with strength and resilience but today she looked defeated.
“What I am going to do, Carrie?” she muttered. “What in the world will I do?”
Most of Mother’s memories, both tangible and emotional, had been inside that house. Now there was nothing solid left to hold her back from the empty chasm of Alzheimer’s disease. No reminders, no photos, not even her beloved cat.
A tight fist of grief knotted in the center of her chest, Carrie said the only thing she could.
“You’ll come home with me.”
“This is only temporary, Carrie Ann, until I get back on my feet.”
The declaration was more in character than anything Frannie had said or done all evening, though the air of defeat hanging on her was as heavy as the scent of smoke. The latter filled Carrie’s house, overpowering the soft fragrance of vanilla potpourri.
“Fine, Mother. We’ll start looking around for a new place as soon as you’re ready.” No need to say the obvious. With Alzheimer’s closing in like a hungry wolf, her days of living independently had been numbered anyway. She was here, and here she would stay. “For now, this is your space. Do anything you want to with it.”
Mothers and Daughters: An Anthology Page 16