Promises to Keep

by Ann Tatlock

“Who told you that?”

  Silence a moment, then, “I don’t remember.”

  “Shame,” Tillie said. “I thought it something of a mark of distinction. I used to show it off to all the workers in the nursery. It seemed like a sign he was destined for great things.”

  “Well, he did end up the editor of the Mills River Tribune. I guess that’s something.”

  “Yes, I guess so.” Tillie sighed. “But I wonder what he might have achieved had the birthmark not faded.”

  “Well, I – Oh look!” Mrs. Kinshaw said. “There’s the Irelands. Aren’t they adorable? Yoo-hoo, Rod and Marian!”

  I sat up wondering what these adorable people looked like. I pictured leprechauns, the magical wee folk who sprang from Irish folklore. But the family I saw walking along in front of our house was a regular American family, a mother, a father, and a little red-haired girl about Valerie’s age. The father was carrying the child on his shoulders, her little hands clasped firmly in his.

  “Look who’s back,” Mrs. Kinshaw hollered. “Tillie has moved back in. We’re all neighbors again!”

  “Really?” the woman said. “But I thought – ”

  I moaned again, curled up into a ball on the swing, and pulled the blanket back over my head. I put my hands over my ears to block the chatter of voices, the questions, the exclamations, the laughter. I even started humming to myself. I was so tired of hearing Tillie say she’d come back to die in her own home and no one was going to stop her. If I heard her say that one more time, I was certain I’d kill her myself and let her be done with it.

  After a few moments the porch quieted, and I peeked out from beneath the blanket. “Are they gone?” I asked.

  “Lovely family, the Irelands.”

  I sat up and shrugged.

  “That’s exactly how it should be,” Tillie went on.

  “How what should be?”

  “Families. Did you see the way Mr. Ireland loved on that little girl, how proud he was of her?”

  “I was under the blanket, Tillie. I couldn’t see anything.”

  “Yes, and that was really rather rude, Rosalind.”

  “Well, I never said I wanted to come out here. I don’t feel good.”

  “Do you need another gargle?”

  “No. I just need . . .”

  “What, Roz?”

  I thought of the little girl perched high on her father’s shoulders and clenched my teeth. “You know, Tillie, I used to ride on my daddy’s shoulders just like that.”

  “Did you now?”

  “Yes, I did. And we used to go for walks, all up and down the streets of our neighborhood, sometimes all the way around Lake Calhoun and back home again. We’d take a bag of bread and feed the ducks and the fish and the geese.”

  “It sounds very nice.”

  “It was very nice. I don’t care what you think. Daddy was a good man.”

  “I never said he wasn’t.”

  “Yes you did. That’s what you told the mailman.”

  “That’s not what I told the mailman. I told him not to deliver any letters your father might send to your mother.”

  “That’s the same thing.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  I peered out over the lilac bush and toward the street. “Daddy was a hardworking man,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt that.” Tillie shifted her weight in the chair, settling a now slumbering Valerie in a more comfortable position on her lap.

  “He worked construction, you know. He was a foreman. That’s the boss.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Most days when he came home, he’d reach into his shirt pocket and pull out a Sugar Daddy for me, my favorite candy. He’d say, ‘Here, Little Rose.’ That’s what he called me, his Little Rose. He’d say, ‘Here, Little Rose, some sugar from your daddy, who loves you.”

  I pressed my lips together and looked at Tillie through narrowed eyes, daring her to deny my words, daring her to call me a liar. My daddy was every bit as good as Mr. Leprechaun from down the street, and I wouldn’t have Tillie thinking otherwise. I wouldn’t have her pitying me or my family. I watched as Tillie nodded slowly. She was stroking Valerie’s cheek.

  Finally she said, “It sounds like you have some good memories of your father.”

  “I do,” I said. “I have plenty of good memories.”

  “Well then, you be sure to put those memories in a safe place and don’t lose them. The time will come when you’ll be glad you have something left of the man.”

  I didn’t know what she meant and wasn’t sure I wanted to know. All I wanted was to be as safe and as satisfied as the little redheaded girl appeared to be, up there on her daddy’s shoulders.

  “Lay yourself down now and take a nap,” Tillie said quietly, “just like Valerie here. The sun and some sleep will do you a world of good. Uh-huh, nothing like sun and sleep to cure what ails you.”

  I was tired and did what I was told. As I settled my head on the pillow, I thought about Daddy. There were so many memories to pick through. I imagined myself a child gathering wild flowers in a field. The bad ones I plucked like weeds and tossed aside. The good ones I gathered together as though forming a bouquet, a keepsake of fragile images of the happy times with Daddy. I wanted to have at least that much of him. Once my bouquet was complete, I would tuck it away in a safe place, just as Tillie suggested, so that nothing and no one could take it away from me.

  The warm sun was tempered by a soothing breeze, and soon I drifted off. I don’t know how long I slept, and I don’t think I dreamed. After a time I was awakened by Wally shaking my shoulder. “Roz, Tillie says you need to come in now.”

  I drew in a deep breath and stretched. “Your hand stinks,” I said.

  He lifted his fingers to his nose. “I washed,” he said with a shrug. “Hard to get the smell of blood out.”

  “Blood? Yuck. I hate you working for the butcher.”

  “How come?”

  “It’s just . . . creepy.”

  Another shrug. “It’s good practice.”

  “For what?”

  “For ’Nam. For killing the Vietcong.”

  I sat up, shook my head. “I hope you’re kidding, Wally. Or else you’re turning really weird.”

  “You want us to win the war, don’t you?”

  I never even thought about the war. It had nothing at all to do with me, and it wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. “Wally?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think Daddy knows where we are?”

  Wally sniffed in disgust. “Who cares about him?”

  “But, I mean, do you think he can find us?”

  “I don’t know.” Wally sat down on the swing beside me. “Probably. He’s crazy but he’s not stupid. I’m sure he’ll figure out we went to live near Gramps.”

  “But do you think he’d ever come after us? You know, try to get us to go home?”

  “Naw, I really don’t think so. He’s probably already found somebody else he can make miserable.”

  “But . . . what would you do if he did? I mean, what if he came around here and tried to talk Mom into going back to Minnesota?”

  Wally looked out at the street, his head turning left and right like a beacon. And then he said easily, as though he were talking about swatting a fly, “If Alan Anthony ever came snooping around here looking for us, I’d kill him.”

  chapter

  6

  “Wally is something of an angry young man, isn’t he, dear?” Tillie asked.

  Her words reached me from far away, and Mom’s answer too seemed to float through the air a long time before finally coming to light in my mind. “He has good reason to be angry,” Mom replied.

  I’d been vaguely aware of their voices for some time, but I wasn’t sure where they were, and as I struggled to rise up out of the depths of sleep, I wasn’t even sure where I was. I thought at first I was still on the porch with Tillie, but when I opened my eyes I saw I wasn’t on the porch at all but on
the couch in the living room.

  Oh yeah, I thought, now I remember. I had settled down with a book to read, but still listless from the fever of the day before, I drifted off to sleep. Today was Sunday, not Saturday, and Mom was on the porch swing with her mending basket, just beyond the open window. Tillie must have followed her out while I was asleep, and now they were talking about Wally, who wasn’t home. He’d gone over to Grandpa’s to cut the grass, as their gardener was on vacation. Even though Gramps was paying him, I still thought it was good of Wally to go on his day off from his butchering job.

  “Pity,” Tillie was saying. “He’d be such a nice boy if he just got rid of the chip on his shoulder.”

  “I’m not sure I’d call it a chip on his shoulder, Tillie,” Mom said mildly. “He’s been through a lot. It hasn’t been easy for him.”

  “I suppose it has to do with his father. Not that it’s any of my business.”

  Mom didn’t respond for a long moment. I rubbed my eyes. I was fully awake now.

  Finally Mom said, “Wally’s father is dead. He was killed by a sniper in Korea while serving with a MASH unit.”

  “Merciful heavens,” Tillie said quietly. “I’m sorry, Janis. I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t. How could you?”

  “I . . . then . . . I . . .”

  For the first time since she had come to live with us, Tillie was tongue-tied. I lay there enjoying it. I didn’t think she ought to be saying bad things about Wally when he wasn’t around to defend himself.

  Mom, though, jumped to Tillie’s rescue. “I remarried and had Roz and Valerie. Wally still carries his father’s name; he’s still a Sanderson. Alan didn’t adopt him.”

  “Alan. So that’s the man you ran away from.”

  I expected Mom’s response to be angry, but she merely sounded resigned.

  “Yes. That’s why we’re here,” she said. “In your house,” she added with a small laugh. Two weeks with Tillie and that’s how Mom talked to her now, as though the house were still Tillie’s, as though Gramps hadn’t made the down payment fair and square, and as though Mom wasn’t on her feet eight hours a day selling hats and gloves to pay the mortgage. I didn’t know whether Mom was humoring Tillie or whether she decided that ownership was in fact a matter of the sweat, years, and love a person poured into a house. If the latter was true and could hold up in court, this house would be Tillie’s long after she was dead.

  “I’m sure you had good reason to leave,” Tillie said.

  “Our lives depended on it.”

  Another long silence followed Mom’s statement. I lay there thinking about what she’d just said and wondering if it was true. There were days with Daddy when we’d been afraid, but there were other days, good days, when we hadn’t been afraid at all, but happy. Just the previous afternoon I’d begun to collect them, to make a keepsake bouquet of the memories, and hadn’t even finished by the time I fell asleep. How could Mom say we had to leave Daddy because our lives depended on it?

  “You did the right thing, Janis,” Tillie said.

  “Yes.”

  I imagined Mom nodding as her fingers worked the needle and thread.

  “I suppose he drank?” Tillie asked.

  “Oh yes.” Mom sighed. “But it was more than that. It was like he was two people, and one of those people was crazy. One of them was dangerous. At first, it wasn’t that way. The first couple of years were actually rather happy. But later . . .”

  Mom’s words drifted off, as though to leave the unspeakable unspoken.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Tillie said, stitching up the frayed edges of the conversation. “A good woman like you deserves better than that. I know it took courage to leave the way you did. I’m glad you found the courage.”

  The chains holding the swing began to creak. Mom must have started swinging gently, pushing herself with the balls of her feet. “I wish I’d found the courage sooner,” she said, her voice heavy with remorse. “I often ask myself why I stayed so long, for so many years. If I’d left sooner, it would have been far better for the children. Wally especially, I think.”

  “And for you too, no doubt,” Tillie added. “But you know the old saying, it’s never too late to turn around when you’re headed down the wrong path.”

  “Hmm, yes. I suppose you’re right. So I’ve turned around, and we’re making a new life now. Maybe that’s all that matters.”

  “Oh yes, that’s all that matters. And you can stay right here in this house for as long as you like. I promise you’ll be safe here.”

  “Thank you, Tillie.”

  “My pleasure, dear.”

  The porch swing went on creaking. Beyond the porch, from the direction of the blue spruce, came a tangle of birdsong, fitting background accompaniment to Tillie’s promise of security.

  “It is nice,” Mom said, “not to be worried all the time, not to have to wonder who will come home, the good Alan or the bad Alan. No more lying awake nights in fear, no more terrible fights, no more riding in the car and wondering . . .”

  There was a pause, followed by muffled sobs as Mom wept quietly. Then Tillie’s voice drifted through the air in hushed and gentle tones. “Say no more, dear. It’s all behind you now.”

  Just as Tillie instructed, Mom didn’t say anything more, but I remembered. I remembered those times of riding in Daddy’s car, the thought of which still made my mother cry. It had happened fairly often, especially toward the end, this wild game of Daddy’s. His unpredictable desire to play came out of nowhere, and he didn’t even have to be drinking.

  The last time it happened, only a couple of months earlier, we were driving home late at night. We were on the long stretch of two-lane highway between the shores of Lake Minnetonka and our home in Minneapolis. The landscape offered little for miles, other than the dark-shrouded trees on either side of the road and the bright stars overhead. Our headlights cleared a path through the otherwise pitch-darkness of that little-traveled route.

  Daddy was driving, of course, while Mom held Valerie on her lap in the front seat. Wally and I sat behind them on the vinyl bench seat of Dad’s 1963 Chevy Impala. All was quiet save for the whirling of the tires over the asphalt. Exhausted from a long day in the sun, Wally and I laid our heads back against the seat and began to doze.

  That’s when it always started, when we were right there on the edge of sleep. It started with a slight acceleration, almost imperceptible at first, but growing greater until, jerked awake, I saw the trees whiz by at an impossible rate.

  “Alan, please . . .” Mom said as she clutched Valerie tighter. “Please . . .”

  Daddy’s face was lighted up like he had front-row seats at a Minnesota Twins game. “Come on, Janis, it’s fun. This road just begs for a game of chicken. Everybody ready? Anybody screams, I’m heading straight for the next tree.”

  I watched in horror as the needle on the speedometer climbed higher. I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out.

  “This isn’t funny, Alan,” Mom said. “Please don’t do this.”

  Wally sat up straight in the seat, his spine a ramrod, his hands curled into fists. “Stop it, Alan,” he said, his jaw tight, teeth clenched.

  “What’s the matter, Wally? Chicken? Buck-buck, buck-buck!”

  The needle climbed. Daddy laughed. He laughed so hard he cried.

  “Alan.” Mom was trying hard but failing to keep the panic out of her voice. “Alan, you’re going to kill us. Please slow down.”

  “I promise not to run off the road unless somebody screams. Anyone screams, well . . .” He tugged at the wheel enough to send the car swerving onto the shoulder of the road. We bumped over the gravel for a few terrifying moments until Daddy pulled the car back into the lane.

  By now, Valerie was awake and whimpering. Mom held a hand near Valerie’s mouth, ready to stifle her cries. I had a firm two-handed hold on the armrest of the door, bracing myself for impact. Mom was at least secured by a lap belt but, without seat belts
in the back, Wally and I were on our own. I imagined the car careening off the road and rolling over, Wally and I tossed about inside like a couple of rag dolls in a dryer.

  I trembled. The Chevy trembled. I lifted fearful eyes to Wally. The muscles on the side of his face rippled, and his fists were on the back of the driver’s seat, just behind Daddy’s neck. “Slow down or I’ll kill you, Alan,” Wally said. “I swear I will.”

  Daddy laughed. “Yeah? And who’s going to grab the wheel when I’m dead?”

  Mom looked at Daddy, and I could see the tears running down her face. “These are your children, Alan,” she pleaded. “Please don’t hurt them.”

  At long last Daddy decelerated, letting the car slow down to the posted speed. He chuckled, shook his head, called us names I can’t repeat. He took off his fisherman’s hat, used the palm of one hand to wipe his eyes, tossed the hat back on the crown of his head.

  And then he went on driving homeward through another dark Minnesota night.

  And now, because I’d overheard Mom and Tillie’s conversation, I had one more weed to try to uproot as I waded through that field of memories.

  chapter

  7

  Tillie and I were in the kitchen making spaghetti for supper when the doorbell rang and someone hollered through the screen door, “Mother!”

  “That you, Johnny?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Door’s open.”

  Tillie stopped stirring the tomato sauce, wiped her hands on her apron, and smiled at her son as he walked into the kitchen. “Stay for supper, Johnny?”

  John Monroe’s round face was crimson; he was waving a newspaper in the air. “I didn’t come for supper, Mother.”

  He glanced at me and nodded politely as he loosened his tie. The day was warm, and his full-length sleeves were rolled up past his elbows.

  “What’s the matter now, son?” Tillie turned to the sink and started filling a large pot with water.

  “Have you seen today’s paper?”

  “Haven’t had time to read it. What’s Johnson gone and done now?”

  “President Johnson has nothing to do with this, Mother. The question is, what have you gone and done now?”