“It looks like Bob is taking a selfie.” I was flummoxed.
It was over in a second. Rowena disappeared around the corner, and Bob walked towards us slowly, her head down. She stumbled up the steps. Ella held out her arms, and Bob got down on her knees and folded herself into her gran’s arms, sobbing softly.
“Bob, why did you run after your mother like that?” I whispered.
Bob looked up into her gran’s soft face, tears sparkling. “Just because she wants me to forget her, I didn’t want her to forget me.” Bob held out her cell. “So I had her take our picture. So she and I could both have it. I told her I couldn’t promise to forget her.”
Ella stroked Bob’s cheek with her gnarled hands, gently wiping the tears away.
“But why do I still want to hate her so much? And love her a little bit, too?”
Ella ran her thumbs under Bob’s eyes. “Because you are human.”
Bob put her head down in Ella’s lap. I left them together, went into the house, sat on the sofa, and shriveled.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
That evening, back at my apartment, I looked over at the Bowers’ house, lights blazing in all of the windows. I needed to do something. I needed to try to fix things for them. I wasn’t exactly sure what I could possibly do. So I called my mother.
“What a heart wrenching story. Honey, I am so proud of you for helping Bob and Rowena.”
I snorted. “Helping? It wasn’t exactly catharsis. Rowena went back to her life of crap, I presume, and Bob is devastated. How did I help?”
Mom sighed. “Well, you were there for both of them. You know, they are each on their own paths. You can’t wave a wand and fix either one of them. But you listened, and you made the meeting easier for both of them. Now you just have to continue being the best friend possible to both of them.”
That didn’t really make me feel much better. It was getting late, but I knew Gail would be up, so I called and started to tell her the whole story. She was kind, but interrupted me in the midst: “Honey, I would really like to hear you out, but Theo is here right now. Can I call you back tomorrow?”
I was thrilled for Gail, if frustrated myself. “Don’t bother, kiddo! Have a lovely evening. Smooches!”
I had no choice. I called my sister.
In between sips of wine, I laid out the entire story. She did not interrupt once, which surprised the hell out of me. And when I finished, as I watched the lights go out in Bob’s bedroom, D gave me her take on things.
“You know what they say in therapy? You have to get things out. Help Bob recognize what’s churning around inside her right now. Love and hate. Anger.”
“I am not a therapist, D.”
She laughed. “Obviously. But you are a writer. Writers get rid of all sorts of angst through prose and poetry. And artists draw. Maybe you can get her to do art therapy or something with you. It can’t hurt. Probably it could help.”
“Diana, you are sort of a genius. This is a great idea. If only I can figure out how to make it work.”
I spent the rest of the night trying to picture myself as an art therapist. No pun intended.
▷◁
I invited Bob over for lunch. I told her I had gone to Costco and discovered that they had raspberry Popsicles. She seemed mildy enthusiastic.
As soon as she arrived, Bob dropped to her knees and called Simpson, who padded in smiling, his fur now gleaming from all of the post-traumatic vitamins and special food we were giving him. He purred, and Bob scooped him into her arms. Thank God he was back. But as Bob stroked Simpy, she stared into space, her face devoid of anything. She was flat.
We had fried bologna sandwiches, which I slathered with mustard. They were incredibly delicious, but Bob just nibbled at hers. Although I waved the blue Popsicles invitingly in front of her, she declined. “My stomach is littler since my mother left,” she explained. “It feels like there are spikes all inside me, poking me from inside. Everything’s all mixed up.”
Here was my opening.
“I have an idea, kiddo. You told me you are all mixed up together in there,” I indicated the area around her head and torso. “The spikes are probably a combination of anger, love, and stuff like confusion, am I right?” I had my fingers crossed. I was hoping that Bob wouldn’t self-destruct right in front of me.
Bob looked startled. She nodded vigorously. “Yeah! My insides are all mushed together with stuff! I can’t concentrate at school, Hallie gets mad because I don’t want to play, and Gran says I need to look for the sunshine in life, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do.” Her fingers raced over the tabletop, her eyes blank. “I feel all empty.”
“I have an idea. It may be stupid, but I thought we could try it. I have a bunch of things mushed up inside me, too. And I thought that one way we might get all that stuff out is to write some little poems. Have you learned about poetry in school at all?”
“A little. We studied it in school last year at Christmas. I know that it doesn’t have to rhyme. And the teacher told us that good poems don’t start with ‘roses are red, violets are blue.’ We wrote Christmas poems. It was fun. Let’s go into the living room.”
I got out the two pads of paper that I purchased that morning at the CVS, along with two newly sharpened pencils. I motioned for Bob to sit beside me on the sofa, and I placed a pad and pencil on the coffee table in front of each of us.
“You’re right. A poem doesn’t have to rhyme, and it can be really short. Poems explain how poets feel inside. I thought that we could each think about what is poking us from inside, and we could write a poem about it. We can share them if you want to, but that isn’t necessary.”
Bob looked dubious, but she picked up her pad and set it on her knee. With the other hand, she took the pencil and rubbed the eraser against her cheek. “We have to take time to think.”
I picked up my pad and pencil. We sat quietly for a while, and then Bob began to write on her pad. It took me a bit longer, but then my poem appeared.
I titled it “Beck’s Poem”
You drove away from us
My whole world went with you
We weren’t good enough
Dad
I stared at it. Some of the spikes did stop poking me from inside. They were still there, just not poking quite so hard. I rubbed my forehead and looked over at Bob, who had finished writing and was staring at her pad intently.
“Do you want to share yours?” I asked.
“Do you think we should?” Bob rubbed her pad with her thumbs, as if to cover up her poem.
“Only if you think it might make you feel better.”
Bob said, “I have another idea. Is your poem sad, or mad?”
“My poem is very sad to me.” There was a catch in my throat for some reason.
Bob looked grim. “Well, my poem is MAD. I don’t want to read it right now. You know what I want to do with it? I want TO STOMP ON IT!”
She ripped off the little sheet, carefully placed it on the floor beside her, and then Bob stood up and smashed it repeatedly, first with one foot, and then the other. She worked up quite a head of steam, leaping up and down at least ten times, grinding the paper into the floor with each stomp. She stopped suddenly, standing on top of the paper, and flashed a beatific smile in my direction.
“Oh, I feel so much better! What do you want to do with yours?”
I looked at her triumphant little face, wreathed in freckles, her deep blue eyes flashing.
I tore my poem off the pad, stood up, kissed it once, and then tore it into tiny shreds, throwing them into the air like confetti.
Bob laughed. “Yours must have been full of love with the sadness. Right?”
I laughed, held out my arms, and Bob jumped into them. We hugged for what seemed like hours. I made a mental note to send my sister some flowers.
Later that night, I found Bob’s poem under my coffee table, gritty from all the stomping.
“Mother”
You don’t smell like flowers
You have dark eyes
Remember me
I am good.
Don’t come back.
▷◁
Bob took to poetry like a duck to water, pardon the passé phraseology. She got into the habit of leaving me a poem in my mailbox on her way to school in the mornings. The first one said
“Another poem to Beck from Bob”
Life is hard, but you are my friend.
I like to sit with you and have a treat.
Please write me a poem,
If you were a color
You would be pink.
So since she requested a poem in return, I took this one over to Ella’s and asked Janey to put it in Bob’s lunch box:
“Bob, Small but Big”
When you are mad, even though you are a kid, you get very big and strong.
Tough.
When you are happy, you make me happy.
When you grow up and get tall, I hope you get a cat
To sleep on your head.
Ella reported that Bob put with that one under her pillow.
A few days later, I found this on the floor in front of my apartment door:
“Beck the Beckest”
Hallie is my best kid friend.
You are my grownup one.
You know my secret.
Love and hate
They can be together.
When I got that one, my breath seemed to leave my lungs temporarily. I had to sit down and try to keep from dissolving into ugly tears. I carefully put it into an envelope and put it into the drawer beside my bed, where I could read it whenever I needed to remember what a blessing I had in my friend Bob.
However, I requested a few happy poems, because I told Bob that I thought we needed some laughs. I asked Janey to put this one in Bob’s lunch:
“Bobbo”
You have so many freckles
Your face looks like it has
Chocolate sprinkles all over it.
Remind me not to lick your cheek!
This is the one I got back:
“Happiness”
Gladness is watching TV and eating Fritos with Janey and Gran.
Fun is riding my scooter really fast. And Hallie
Happiness is having you across the street
And Popsicles
After that one, I told Bob we needed to take a little poetry hiatus, or else my heart might just burst. Bob smiled and said, “That’s okay, because I don’t feel anywhere near so spiky and mushed around inside, do you?”
“Bob, you’re right. I am spikeless.”
▷◁
I showed the poems to D. She read them all, set them in her lap, and gently stroked them. She sat, looking down at them as if they were alive somehow.
“I wrote one about Dad. But I tore that one up.”
Diana didn’t look up. “What did it say, if you will tell?”
I sorted through the images inside my head. There stood our father, so handsome, love for us radiating all around him. But there was something else there, too. His eyes. I remembered his eyes. How whenever he spoke to someone: us, Mom, the neighbors—his eyes were never totally focused on the person standing in front of him. He was always scouting, looking for what was just beyond range.
“I told him I loved him and missed him. Then I kissed him and let him go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Things calmed down for a while. I thanked the universe for that. Bob and Hallie went back to being besties. Ella, although exhausted by recent events, tried manfully to resume her therapy routine. She actually graduated to the point where she could take a few steps without her walker inside the house. Her goal was to be able to get herself into the bathroom to take care of things, and then get herself back out without having to ask Janey for help. So far, she hadn’t succeeded, and Janey reported that she wondered if Ella was “stalling out.”
One afternoon, Janey’s day off with her family, Ella sat in her kitchen, sipping tea and instructing me in the art of spaghetti sauce making, Ohio, non-Italian style. Her mother’s recipe. We were cooking because Ella “just couldn’t face taking another walk.”
“Why am I not using olive oil, again?” I asked her, stirring the onions in the frying pan.
“Oh, honey, olive oil has such a strong flavor!”
Right. Italian. “I see. Is that also why I’m using garlic salt instead of actual garlic?” I looked at the jar of McCormick’s on the counter beside the stove.
“Yes. We want the sauce to be subtle.” Ella clinked her teacup against the saucer.
Subtle sauce. Basically crushed tomatoes, a touch of garlic salt, tomato paste and just a soupçon of onion. Absolutely nobody would get heartburn from this. As I shook just a bit of the garlic salt into the sauce, Ella cleared her throat.
“Rebecca, Bobby isn’t perking up the way she should. I know she loves the poetry, and that is fun for her. And you have been so good to her, trying to cheer her up. But her teacher called me this afternoon and told me that she feels that Bobby is listless. I’m worried about her.”
I turned down the heat on the sauce, poured myself a glass of water, and slid into a chair opposite Ella. “This has been a very tough year for her, hasn’t it?”
Ella’s face, usually pale but with a swath of pink across her cheekbones, looked especially dull, and there wasn’t any sparkle left in her eyes. Defeated. “Rowena. I curse her for coming here. Bobby still has bad dreams.”
“Ella, it takes time. She needs to work through her feelings about her mother. Give her time.”
Ella nodded unconvincingly. “That isn’t all of it. She keeps asking me how much longer before Janey can go home. She nags me that I have to start going upstairs. She seems so focused on having things back the way they were before.”
Ella looked down at her legs. She raised them one at a time, straightening them out from the knee. “I’m doing the exercises as best I can. But Rebecca, I am eighty-four. I may not ever be able to go upstairs again. I’m afraid that Bobby carries around so much on her shoulders, with me and my hip, Rowena, Charles being away—she frets. I think she’s afraid I might fall again, or worse.”
I felt as if I had been struck by lightning. “Oh, no! You are so far from that scenario!”
Ella pulled on her earlobe. I poured her another cup of tea. As she stirred, her face brightened a bit. “Halloween is coming in a few weeks. That is always such fun for the children. Maybe we should make a special night of it for her, with decorations and lots of treats. Like a party right here. It would give Bobby something to look forward to—something new to focus on.”
“This is a fabulous idea! Especially since Bob has mentioned that she doesn’t want to go out trick-or-treating, because Janey would have to go, too. She doesn’t want to leave you alone. Even with me here to keep you company. I will be glad to help with the decorations and things. We can carve pumpkins; I’m very good at that. It will be the Halloween event of the year!”
Ella clinked her cup against the saucer. “I’ll talk to Bob and Janey about this. Oh, Rebecca, what would I do without you?”
We sat, Ella sipping her tea, me staring at my glass of water. Then the strangest thing happened. Ella suddenly sat bolt upright in her chair, grinned mischievously, and winked at me. “Yes! Halloween is just the thing! Now, Rebecca, get going on finishing that sauce and put it in the refrigerator for later. Then you can just go on home.”
Ella handed her cup to me and reached for her walker. Gripping it tightly, she nearly sprang up from the table. “I have to start making a list, and when Janey gets home, we will have to get busy, won’t we? A porch party for Halloween! W
ith all sorts of decorations, and we can do cupcakes. Jack-o’-lanterns! The neighborhood children will all come. Bobby will be happy!” She paused, smacked the handle of her walker, her wedding ring making a loud ding. “And maybe there will be surprises!”
I watched as Ella, now suffused with enthusiasm and determination, clunked her walker on the linoleum and stumped out of the room after it. In the doorway, she paused and twisted back towards me. She chuckled and winked.
▷◁
“Doesn’t he just look beautiful?” Bob stroked Simpson’s fur. It was still growing back, but it gleamed. He purred loudly. “And all the scabs are gone. That hole in his neck is almost all gone, too.”
I looked at the two of them, perched on my sofa, a skinny cat, kneading skinny little scabbed knees. “It was a miracle, wasn’t it?”
Bob put her face against his side, to better hear the purr. “And your sister found him. So you aren’t mad at her anymore?”
“Well, I stopped being mad at her long before that. But I was sure glad that she found this guy.”
“He walks funny, but that’s okay, ’cause he can get around just fine. And we have the collar on him now, for identification. But he won’t get out again, will he?”
“No, he won’t.”
“I told Gran. I told her that Simpson was worse than she was. And he got walking again without physical therapy or anything. I think she listened. She is trying harder, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know how to answer. “Your gran is better. But we are coming to the end of her therapy. Bob, she might not improve much more. But I don’t think, honey, that she will get worse! Don’t you worry about that.”
Bob adjusted Simpson on her lap, so that his legs didn’t dangle over onto the cushions. I lowered myself onto the sofa beside them and continued. “Janey may just have to stay with you indefinitely.”
Bob stroked Simpson, who kneaded her lap gently. “Gran says that I should be very excited about Halloween.”
I watched as Bob rubbed Simpy’s forehead with her index finger. He closed his eyes in rapture. Bob’s forehead creased with worry. “She and Janey are making a big deal out of it. They think it’ll be thrilling for me.” Bob shook her head. “I’m not very thrilled.”
Crossing the Street Page 28