by Sandi Ward
I still hate it. All music sounds horrible to me.
After sitting Finn up on his bottom and leaning him on pillows so that he is facing her, Mary crosses her legs and sits up straight. She makes her hand into a fist, holds it near her mouth, and starts singing into her hand.
It’s a love song, I believe, judging by the faces Mary makes as she sings. I think she looks quite lovely, and I can feel the longing and heartache she is trying to communicate, even though I can’t stand the music. Finn watches her, enraptured. Mary uses her hands to illustrate some of the words, and the sadness on her face almost brings tears to my eyes, even though I realize she is acting.
A moving shadow catches my eye, and from where I sit under the crib I see Jimmy and Father standing in the doorway. Mary’s back is to them, and she is unaware they have snuck up behind her. Father folds his arms, leaning against the door frame, and he looks amused. Jimmy grins.
Mary is surprised when she turns and sees them, and she hides her face in her hands. “Were you listening?” She laughs, hard. “I’m so embarrassed.” She turns back to the big black box. “Oh. This next song is beautiful too. Do you guys know this song? It’s on the radio all the time.”
Jimmy says something about never listening to crappy pop songs. Father just shrugs. He doesn’t seem to know the song either. He’s been preoccupied lately, and probably isn’t aware of all of the songs that important people like Mary know.
Mary picks Finn up off the floor and holds him in her arms as she sings to him. It is a nice song, I think, not too loud. Earnest and serious and slow, Mary sings the love song right to Finn, rocking him back and forth. Finn is getting very big in her arms, and he smiles at her. Jimmy wanders away, patting his dad on the back, but Father stays and listens, tipping his head.
Mary sings a verse or two, until she turns her head to look at her father and sees the expression on his face. Her voice fades out. And then she stops.
“Oh.” She looks embarrassed all over again. Mary glances down at her feet. “It’s okay, Dad. I didn’t mean to—”
He reassures her that he’s fine.
“Sorry. You just looked so . . .”
Father tells her that he’s fine again, and turns away. He walks down the hall and goes into his own bedroom. The door clicks shut behind him.
“Don’t quit your day job, Mare!” Jimmy yells from somewhere down the hall.
Mary stands there. She walks over and clicks off the box.
“No worries, baby,” she says to Finn. “Just a momentary blip in the program. A bump in the road.” She kisses his fat cheek. “Just a little hiccup. We don’t need that music anyway, do we?”
Finn seems to agree as he pulls a clump of Mary’s hair into his mouth with a big smile. I blink my eyes at him.
When Mary lies down on the rug next to Finn, I approach and snuggle right next to the baby, so he is sandwiched between the two of us. It reminds me of how I used to lie between Mother and Father, and it was the best feeling in the world. It makes me happy knowing I can give this feeling to someone else, and it makes me doubly satisfied to know I can comfort the baby. He will never hear me meow. But when his little hand clumsily touches my fur, I hope he knows that I am on his side.
A tall, dark shadow appears at the doorway. It is Jimmy again, coming back to his room, and he finds all of us lying on his rug. Without a word, he lies down at our feet and stretches out.
The four of us make a good team.
I wonder again if Mother will return and want some of us to go home with her.
What if she does?
And if she does, who will go? One of us may have to go.
I wonder if it will be me.
17
Space and Energy
One night, Father stays up far too late. Just as he is about to get up off the living room couch to go to bed, he notices something that interests him on the TV. It seems to be some kind of emotional story. When he starts the show he is sitting up, and by the end of it he is exhausted and lying on the couch. Although he holds the controller for the TV in his hand, I see he is unable to turn it off until the very end.
There is no reason for him to hurry to bed. Without Mother here, he loses track of time in the evenings.
I sit in the hallway, waiting for him. It is a bitter cold night, and I can feel a draft of wintery air forcing itself under the front door. It is a shock to my whiskers.
When the show is over, I follow Father upstairs.
As he stands in front of his closet, sleepy, I settle down on the bed. He peels off his shirt and throws it in the hamper. Then he unbuckles his belt and hangs it on a hook in the closet. Father runs a hand over his chest for a moment, lost in his thoughts. He unbuttons his jeans, pulls them off, and hangs them up. Finally, he peels off his boxer shorts and socks and adds them to the hamper. Father is much more neat and organized than his children.
Father puts on a shirt and new underwear to sleep in, then lies down on the bed. Father pulls the sheet up over him first, and then grabs the blanket and Mother’s comforter, smoothing them out on top.
At first, he lies still, and I know he is asleep by the even rhythm of his breathing. I listen to the clock chiming downstairs. But after a while, Father begins to toss. He moans in his sleep, and I wonder if it is a dream or a nightmare.
I hope it is a lovely dream.
I try to think good thoughts, about one of my favorite times with Mother.
I try to really remember every moment, every word, to figure out if there was anything I misunderstood. I desperately want to know if there was a clue that Mother was planning to leave us, something I might have missed.
I remember one night, perhaps a year before Finn was born, when Mother was telling Father one of her more exciting stories and Father let me sit on the bed with him. She acted the whole story out, pacing at the foot of the bed. I believe she was playing all of the parts, reliving something that had happened to her that day. Father had his pillow behind him and his hands behind his head, and he was very happy to listen. A few times, he laughed at her story. I sat and watched the two of them.
It was entertaining. Mother was so, so full of energy—almost bursting with it—and waving her hands wildly. She was in constant motion. And when Mother jumped on the bed, Father had his arms open, ready to catch her. She was soon on top of him and kissing him. If there’s one thing you can say about Mother, it is that in those moments when she loved Father, she truly, passionately loved him and there was no doubt in it, not a shred of hesitation, not a moment of care for anything in the world but Tommy Tommy Tommy.
She leaned back to take a breath, gently running her knuckles over the scruff on his face. “Honey.”
He moved a curl of her dark hair out of her face. “Baby,” he said back to her. He was always hungry for more of her, when she was happy.
In those days, I was either jealous or bored when it wasn’t my turn to get Mother’s attention. I waited it out.
I longed for Mother to see me and give me the same loving embrace.
Looking back on it, of course Father didn’t notice me very much in those days. He didn’t need me. He had room for no one but her. She took up so much space and energy. I understand it better now.
I remember also what happened later that night, when Father had exhausted himself and passed out cold. Mother cuddled me awhile, but she never actually slept.
Instead, she snuck out of bed. I waited while she pushed her feet, one at a time, into her fuzzy slippers. Father never stirred. I followed her downstairs.
She went into the kitchen, flipped on the light switch, and peered into the trash bin. It was full of garbage. She carefully and quietly tipped the bin over and shook it, spreading the garbage out over the entire tile floor.
I know this game! I remember thinking.
She and I sifted through all sorts of interesting things: sticky Popsicle wrappers, coffee grounds, chicken bones, a stale roll, dirty napkins, a dead fly, an old sponge, two apple cores and apple seeds
, torn envelopes, cold spaghetti with tomato sauce splattered everywhere, a newspaper circular, crumpled homework, a leaky pen, a banana peel, a few moldy grapes, the wrapper from a loaf of bread and the matching twist tie, and an empty cracker box.
So interesting! Full of great smells. I batted a dry piece of cereal, watching it skid across the floor.
Mother was hoping to find cans, accidentally placed there by one of her family members. But everyone was good about putting used cans into the blue bin out back. So, no luck.
She cleaned the whole thing up, using her bare hands to scoop the trash back into the bin. Mother used paper towels to pick up more of it, the smaller scraps. Then she wiped the floor with a wet sponge. Next, she sprayed the floor with a brisk cleaner and wiped it with a paper towel. Finally, she sprayed a foul-smelling liquid on the floor. After running the water until it got so hot that steam misted from the faucet, she ran the hot sponge over the floor one more time.
What a funny game. Mother was so much fun in the middle of the night! I was always happy to have a companion to prowl around with during my hours of nighttime adventure.
Having had no luck with the trash, Mother had to make do with what was available in the recycling bin. Opening the back door that led from the kitchen, she reached outside for the tall container as the cold buffeted her body, and she pulled the bin inside. It was disappointing to her, whatever she saw inside. I could tell by the look on her face as she glanced down.
“Oh well, Boo,” she said to me. “Only a few cans tonight.” Now that we had the cans, she smiled and relaxed a little. “Should we get to work?” Mother had a gleam in her eye, and she whispered sweetly to me. “You’re my best friend, Boo. Want to help me? You’re the only one who helps me.”
Of course! I always wanted to help. Mother loved and appreciated me. Now that I had her undivided attention, all felt right in my world.
First, we had to wash the cans. I jumped up on a kitchen chair to watch. I knew the drill. Very hot, steamy water, and lots and lots of liquid soap on the scrubby brush. More spray, and a final rinse in the hot water. Then she dried the cans with a towel, shaking them repeatedly to get the water out of the nooks and crannies.
Next, the cans had to be reshaped. There were two soda cans that someone, probably Jimmy, had crushed with their hands. Mother tried to manipulate the cans back into a normal shape. Sometimes it could be done, sometimes not. She stuck a finger right into the can to try to push it back out to a circular form. Sometimes she cut herself and there was blood, so she needed a Band-Aid. But not tonight. The cans weren’t perfect, but they were okay. Close enough.
Mother padded upstairs very quietly, the bin full of clean cans in her arms. I followed.
She did not turn on the hall light. We snuck into the guest bedroom. Only after Mother had closed the door, making sure my tail was safely inside, did she turn on the lamp in the room.
It was going to be a castle of cans. Cans already lined three of the four walls, several rows deep and as high as her knees. She added the new cans on top, one by one. It was a slow task, because one wrong move could potentially send several cans toppling over. I knew that Mother wanted this to be a surprise for Jimmy and Mary. She told me so.
“What do you think, Boo? Is this enough? It’s not enough, is it? We need more cans.”
Mother looked over her creation and decided something was wrong. She began taking it apart, can by can. I got a little concerned as I realized she was going to dismantle the entire thing.
But it’s so nice, I wanted to say to her. Just leave it. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
But clearly, it wasn’t perfect. There’s a lot Mother knows that I don’t, so I trusted her judgment. I watched as she took all of the cans down from their neat rows and put them behind her. I came to see that she wanted to group them by color: red, black, green, or silver. There wasn’t enough room to lay them all out, because of the bed. As her movements became more frantic, I grew concerned. She was worried about her castle, and I felt terrible that I had no way to help her. But I stuck with her. That was the most I could do, stay with her and comfort her by just letting her know I was there.
Her eyes looked more and more tired as the minutes ticked by. She was beginning to squint at each can, as if the designs on the can were blurring before her eyes. I yawned. We were up such a long time. I wished Mother would go back to bed.
And then, I heard it: the heavy fall of feet on the floor. Father was up.
I heard him walking around, the weight of his footsteps on the floorboards, but Mother continued to work with her cans as if she had not heard and did not know that Father was coming. She must have known, but she was so very involved with organizing those cans that she could not stop. These cans were important, and her mind seemed to be consumed with it. They had to be just right. It was as if her whole life depended on it.
Let’s go, I begged her in my mind. I suddenly knew that Father would be angry about this, all of this. We have to go back to bed. You have to say you were just getting a drink of water. Or that we were checking on the children.
I was filled with dread. I realized for the first time, now that I really thought about Father walking into the room, that he would not like this one bit. He never liked when Mother was consumed with projects that took all night, like the time she painted a rainbow of stripes that covered every wall in the basement, or the time she took all of the clothes and shoes out of her closet and arranged them by color all around the living room. Mother loved colors and had a very artistic eye. She also sometimes scrubbed the kitchen floor until the tiles were scratched and rough. She loved cleaning and putting things in order.
At the time, I just thought Father was selfish and controlling. That he wanted her to stay in bed because as her mate he thought it was his right to tell her what to do.
It didn’t occur to me, the way it does now, that maybe something was wrong. And that, just perhaps, Mother wasn’t building a castle.
“Carrie?” I heard him ask quietly in the hallway. And then I heard a slight rattle as his hand landed on the doorknob. The doorknob turned, and he slowly pushed open the door. Blinking in the bright light, he took a step into the room. He looked down at Mother, where she sat on the floor.
“No, no, no, no,” she said, waving her hand at Father to drive him back. “Not now. I’m working.”
“Working? On what?” Father looked around the room, turning back and forth, in complete confusion. At first, he seemed merely curious. And then darkness came over his face.
“What are you doing?” he asked, and I heard it; I heard how his tone completely changed. His voice dropped and became more menacing, as if he were now speaking to a naughty child rather than his wife.
“I’m working,” she spat back at him. “Get out. Out. OUT.” She barely looked at him, turning back to her cans. She put red cans to the left, black cans in the middle, silver cans to her right. There was so much work to be done, and she couldn’t waste a minute talking to him.
There was another shadow in the hallway, and then Jimmy stepped into the room.
Father spun around and grabbed Jimmy by the shoulder. Father demanded to know if Jimmy had known that Mother had been in the guest room, obviously for days now, piling up the cans.
Jimmy wrenched himself out of Father’s grasp. “Don’t you think I would’ve been the first to tell you if I knew?” Jimmy seemed bewildered, at both Mother’s work and Father’s attitude. “I’m the one who tells you everything.”
A can hit Jimmy, and he looked up, startled. Mother had thrown a can at him. “Get out. Both of you. I have work to do. You have to go. Now.”
“C’mon, Ma,” Jimmy said. “What the heck are you doing? Why are you throwing a—”
“GO BACK TO BED,” Father raged, wheeling around to face Jimmy. “DON’T MAKE HER TELL YOU AGAIN.”
Jimmy slunk back, back into the darkness of the hallway. Father shut the door once Jimmy had gone. He turned and stared at Mother. The an
ger drained from his face until he looked tired and sad, his head tipped to one side.
Father bent down next to Mother, and she grabbed the sleeve of his T-shirt. She thanked him for getting rid of Jimmy, who was bothering her.
Father knelt on the floor. He explained that this was all trash, and it had to be thrown away.
But she just answered him with a long explanation of how she had carefully cleaned every can. Every can was like new.
What she was saying was true. I saw it. I watched her do all this. She worked so hard, my mother. She worked so hard to make nice things for this family.
Father explained it again. “We have to get rid of this,” he said quietly to her. Mother wasn’t listening. She turned away from him and started stacking up the cans.
“Go ahead, talk. I’m listening. I’ll listen while I work.”
“No,” he said tenderly. “No, baby, no.” He put his arms around her from behind and took a can out of her hand. For a moment, seeing her frown and wince, I thought she was going to elbow him in the stomach. But Mother surprised me and just went limp and leaned back into him. He told her again that this was crazy and they could not keep these cans up here, that the trash was not really clean and it wasn’t good to have these things upstairs where the children slept.
Mother listened, but her eyes were glassy. She rubbed one hand with the other hand. I could tell she was itching to get back to work. “Why don’t you help me?” she finally tried. “You can help me stack the cans. As long as they’re straight. The rows have to be straight.” She explained to him several times how to line them up.
Father took her hand in his and kissed it. Sometimes he fought with her, but other times he knew when to quit fighting. To just give up and start fresh tomorrow. Sometimes he would find a way to get her out to the doctor, and maybe she’d come back with pills of a different color, or maybe she wouldn’t come back at all for a day or two. Sometimes he’d just give up and let her be. There were so many important things she needed to get done.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Can’t you leave me alone? Can’t I be allowed to work in peace?”