Portion of the Sea

by Christine Lemmon

  “Rosie, is that you? Where are you?”

  “Jail. I need your help.”

  “Jail? What on earth for?”

  “I’ve been arrested. Me and five hundred and eighty-five other antiwar protestors.”

  “My God! That’s the story I was working on today. Where’s Jack?”

  “He’s fine. He’s here. They’ve got him and want to talk with you.”

  “You took a child to an anti-war rally? My child? My Jack? I didn’t even know you were opposed to the war.”

  “I am. Can you please get me out of here?”

  It was late at night by the time I held Jack in my arms. I took him straight to the hotel room where I wrapped him in a blanket and held him securely as I did when he was first born. At first, he was delighted to play the role of mommy’s baby again, and he did a good job, his fingertips softly reaching up for my lips and nose and his own lips smiling with delight over all of mommy’s gooey words of affection. But then, he returned to being a big boy in search of independence, and he fought his way free from the blanket.

  “I want more candy canes,” he said, glancing over at Rosie. “How many did you have today, Jack?” I asked.

  “One, two, three, four, five, six …”

  I glared over at Rosie, not looking happy as his counting continued.

  “You need something healthy in your tummy now, Jack,” I said after he counted to twelve. “I’ll order you a grilled cheese sandwich and soup. We’ll eat right here in the room.”

  “I rode in police car today,” he said. “I went to jail with monsters and bad guys.”

  Ever since I picked them up at the jail, I had been giving Rosie the silent treatment, not because I didn’t have a million things to yell and scream at her, but because I was worried about Jack and I wanted to make him my number-one concern. I hardly looked at Rosie as I listened to Jack’s long, detailed account of going to jail.

  At three and a half, he was already taking interest in the newspaper. He liked pointing to a story, any story, and then he would ask me to read it to him. Of course I didn’t read it, but rather, made up something wonderful. I subjectively skewed the objective truth, so he would think the world he lived in was a good place to be. I didn’t want him knowing about jail and rapes and political scandals and robberies and car thefts and all the darker sides to living in this world. I especially didn’t want him knowing about war. There were nearly half a million U.S. troops involved in the war now and a little boy didn’t need to know that grownups are unable to resolve things peacefully and diplomatically, and that they engage in war and people get killed. Jack knew about monsters. They were scary enough.

  “Rosie,” I said once I turned on cartoons. “He must have been terrified in all those crowds today.”

  “At least those crowds were antiwar. Until the end, they were peaceful and pleasant, or I wouldn’t have taken him. Can you imagine Jack going off to war one day?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Maybe it is. Things that happen in the world today are going to affect the world Jack lives in tomorrow. You realize our children do inherit the world the way we left it, don’t you? I know you’re a journalist and you’re supposed to play objective, but do you agree with the war in Vietnam, Lydia? Do you? Because there’s a danger in shutting off your opinions for the sake of doing your job.”

  I wanted to grab hold of her and wring her neck. “Look,” I said. “The issue right now isn’t whether I agree with the war or those anti-war protestors. The only perspective I’m claiming at this moment is that of a mother. Jack doesn’t need to worry about how bad the world is. He’s too young. You shouldn’t have taken him there. End of story, Rosie.”

  “But …” she dared to continue.

  “Rosie, pack your bags. You’re going home. And you better start looking for a new job. I can no longer trust you with my son.”

  I didn’t like firing her so abruptly, but as a mother, my son was more important. And I didn’t want to leave him another day with her, not after this. Suddenly, I didn’t want to leave him with anyone. But I had to. When we returned to Chicago, I called around and relied here and there on anyone who was available out of desperation. I had done my best to provide for Jack and for me, and I was tired. I was tired of doing it on my own and of being unbreakably strong and tough and not needing the help of anyone, especially any man. And now that all the good men were off to war, I suddenly appreciated them and feared for them, and prayed for the men, the grown-up little boys, as I had never done before.

  And in the weeks following, I continued relying on interim nannies, working my way up to the next level at work and was covering the horrific facts concerning the war, something that in the past would have only been assigned to male journalists, but now it was I who got to write about the gory details. I was working ten- to fourteen-hour days, coming home drained, trying to be a mommy to Jack and doing the best I could to gather enough energy, so he wouldn’t think his mommy was a zombie. And then I’d collapse into bed and begin it all again just a few hours later.

  I had no energy left at night to do anything but fall fast asleep, and even then I’d wake a couple hours later with scary headlines running through my mind.

  CASUALTY STATISTICS ON THE RISE

  MORE ANTIWAR PROTESTORS FILL THE STREETS

  My mind went from one headline to the next, and every so often it stopped long enough to think about my life and how hectic it had become. In the mornings, when I touched my feet to the floor, I was becoming aware that I had no time to listen to the birds outside my window. And, yes, there are birds and things that are beautiful-sounding even in a city. The sounds of beauty are everywhere, not just on some island. The problem is that I was too busy and stressed to ever listen for them. I was even getting too busy to listen fully to my own son’s voice.

  One particular morning, after only getting a couple of hours of sleep due to worrying about deadlines and appointments and nannies getting sick, I sat up in bed when the alarm went off and asked, “Is this it, Lord? Is this rat race all there is to my life?” I then heard my son turning on the television all by himself in the other room. “Please help me. I need help, Lord. I’m desperate.”

  I poured Jack his cereal, showered, dressed and rushed to work.

  Later that week I received a letter in the mail from Marlena. She was back on Sanibel in between films and wanted to let me know that she saw Josh at the store. It was major news, and she did a superb job reporting it to me.

  JOSH IS BACK FROM THE WAR WITH A CAST ON HIS LEG

  That night, after Jack was asleep, I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to read. Along with the letter, Marlena had sent me another of Ava’s journal entries. I was stunned to discover that many more years had passed since the last entry. It was odd, as if my best friend was aging ahead of me.

  XLIII

  1928

  Ava

  China breaks. A wedding dress dulls. Money gets spent. But the prayers a woman utters in her lifetime flutter back and forth throughout the generations like eternal butterflies landing ever-so-lightly on the shoulder of a daughter, granddaughter, great granddaughter, or any old girl, often without her ever knowing.

  IT WAS A COLD New York morning, and I knew the coldness had something it wanted to say to me. I could tell by the way it howled outside my window and then knocked on my bones. At first I tried not to pay it any attention, but then, when my knees started creaking, I knew the cold was following me and that it wasn’t going to give up.

  “I don’t have time for you,” I said rubbing the goose bumps on my arms.

  “Why don’t you come back in a couple of weeks?”

  I put my robe on and walked over to the table in my room, the one near the window in the spring, and the one where I drank my tea under the rays of morning light. This time of year the table is dark and I place a blanket over my legs when I sit there.

  The cold doesn’t bother my daughter as it does me, so I try not
to complain of it, and we go on drinking our tea in the cups I inherited from my mama. They were part of the set that I was given after her death, and they reminded me of our moments long ago when she, Grandmalia, and I would drink the comfort tea together. But it wasn’t the tea or the china or even the brandy that meant anything. It was the ritual and those have a way of continuing throughout generations if someone takes on the sacred responsibility of declaring them rituals in the first place.

  I glanced at the clock behind me. It was seven-thirty in the morning. Where was she? My daughter usually came wandering into my room by now to lazily plant a good-morning kiss on my cheek before sliding down into the chair across from me. I loved having tea with her each morning before she left for school and, occasionally, if the boys weren’t in a hurry for work, they would wander in, preferring coffee to tea and only having time for a quick sip, if that. I call them boys, but that’s because I’m their mother. Ask any woman, and she’d say they’re men! Their days of living here with me at the estate were numbered, but I wasn’t counting. They could stay as long as they wanted, but my oldest son would soon be engaged, and my middle son was thinking of buying his own place—twice as big as this—and my youngest was making plans to move downtown.

  The boys grew up too fast, which is why I’m grateful God blessed me with a daughter. I still had her home with me for many years yet, and I was glad. I wasn’t at all ready for a childless house and life.

  I enjoyed having tea in the morning with my children. But once they all left and the house was mine, I switched to coffee so I could write. I drank three cups spread throughout the day. The room was cold, so I stood up and paced back and forth a few times, leaning my hands over the tray with the hot tea and rubbing my fingers over the rising steam as one does over a campfire. I thought about which story I might tell my daughter today. She enjoys hearing one story before school, but a short one, and she prefers nonfiction to fiction and her favorite genre, simply put, is true stories having to do with me—her mother—at around her age. But now that I’ve entered my fifties, I forget things that happened when I was fourteen or fifteen, so I have to think awhile before coming up with a good story to tell her. I tell her whatever I remember. Or what I want to remember. Or what I want to relive. Or what might reunite me with the girl I once was. According to recent statistics, the average life expectancy for a man or woman is under fifty-five years old. I refused to become a statistic. My stories and my daughter would keep me young and full of life, I decided.

  I looked at the clock once more, then picked up the tray with the tea and slowly started walking down the long hallway toward Marlena’s room. The cold always kept me in bed a couple of minutes later than usual and maybe it was starting to do the same to her. I understood.

  “Wake up, coconut. Time for tea with your mama,” I said as I tapped the door of her bedroom open with my foot and walked in carrying the tray. “Did I ever tell you about the time my crab crossed the line before some boy’s crab?”

  “Yes, Mama, and it was the first time his crab ever lost to any other crab,” said her lazy voice from beneath a lump of blankets. Her eyes peered out from a hole as she watched me turn for her desk. “Look out for my …”

  Her warning came too late. I tripped over the radio that she kept on her floor so she could listen in bed at night and my feet came out from under me, sending the tray with my mother’s china flying through the air. When it crashed down onto the hardwood floor, it looked like hundreds of shattered seashell pieces, not a single one big or whole enough to keep.

  As I lay in the puddles of hot water, with sharp fragments of china cutting into my knees, I fought back tears, for more than china was lost—moments upon moments with Mama and Grandmalia and their fingers holding this very china and their lips sipping from it, then telling me a story or a tidbit or a grumble. It didn’t matter what. We always sat around talking about interesting stuff as we drank tea together. Nothing could replace the broken china.

  “How many times have I told you, Marlena,” I scolded, “not to leave that radio in the middle of the floor. Were you up all night listening to it again?”

  “No,” she said jumping up from the bed and taking hold of my arm. “I was listening to dramas and commercials for a little while and you know how hard it is to hear from the speakers. I had to move it closer to my bed.” She pulled me up to my knees. “Are you cut?” she asked. “I think you are, right there, on your knee just a little.”

  “I’m fine,” I insisted. “But no more radio at night, you hear?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry,” she said, helping me stand up. “Would you like me to gather up and save the broken china pieces? We can make it all into a beautiful mirror.”

  “I like that idea,” I said and felt a smile set across my face. “Will you do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  I was devastated over the broken china, but I had to be careful not to blame or make Marlena feel at fault. I didn’t want her feeling responsible for my unhappiness. That wasn’t her problem. It was mine. I’ll never forget my feelings of failure when my reading and stories no longer kept my own mother happy.

  “Mother,” Marlena said to me as I sat on her bed and held a cloth to my knee. “Are you sad because the china belonged to your mama?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And to her mama, your great grandmother Dahlia. And I planned on giving it to you.”

  “I wouldn’t want it,” she said sharply. “I would never want to drink tea from it without you.”

  She got me to thinking. After I died, my spirit wouldn’t be floating in a cup of tea. So maybe the tea set wasn’t the one special item that I wanted to pass on to my daughter after all. Of course there was the money. She and her brothers would get plenty of that. The boys were already making their own money, but they were going to get mine as well because I had a lot to give.

  My writing had carried us through and brought in more money than I ever imagined it could. Thanks to my articles and later my columns being published in major magazines here and in Paris, Italy, and England, I made more steady and consistent money throughout the years than Leo ever lost in gambling. My children had everything they ever asked for. I sent them all to the best schools and paid for tutors to teach them whatever it was they weren’t learning at those schools. They played piano and golf and tennis and attended every suitable social event.

  None of it had been easy. After letting all our staff but Nora go, I worked my tail off writing by day and tending to a family and household chores by night. It was then that I missed my mother the most and the days when we did the household chores side-by-side. I realize she worked hard back then not because she didn’t believe in having fun. She worked that hard because she had to. A mother does much that goes unnoticed until she is gone, and then the cobwebs form and the dirt piles up and the house falls down. It did that when she was in her saddened mode, and it did it again when I’d get into mine, but then I’d snap out of it and clean things up. There were times when money was so scarce I could hardly afford eggs, so one by one I sold the garments Leo had bought me. I was savvy in doing so, for just as with real estate, a woman needs to know when to sell. I sold in time, just before the fashions changed.

  Those were the years when my children were young and I had no time to primp or powder my nose or care the least bit what I looked like, the times when there wasn’t enough sunlight in the day to get done all that I had to do, the days when I’d walk into the kitchen and forget why I had gone there in the first place, and the days when each of my four children had on average six requests per hour, so I ran around in circles like a turkey with its head cut off responding to and handling twenty-four requests per hour, making it an awfully long day, to the point of begging and pleading with the sun to go down soon, just so the kids would go to bed and all would be quiet and I could hear my own thoughts. Those were the sleep-deprived days that put a few wrinkles around my eyes and the days that brought me as much joy as one gets from spending a playf
ul afternoon at the beach and swimming and leaping over waves and floating waist-high in that portion of the sea that is crowded with people and activity and lovely noise. If anyone asked, I’d have to say those were the days—my favorite portion of the sea!

  “So, Mother,” Marlena said, putting her arm around me. “Did you win anything when your crab crossed the line first? Did you place a bet?”

  I laughed. “Of course not,” I said, “Placing bets of any kind is wrong. Don’t you ever think about placing any bets with anyone, you hear?”

  I tried in my mind remembering why I kissed Jaden that night when it was my crab that crossed the line first, or at least I think it was. Regardless of whose crab won or lost that night, I fell in love with him the moment I saw him helping that wounded pelican. And by the end of that night at the shack, I could hardly keep myself from kissing him, so when his crab lost, which I think it may have, I gave him a kiss anyway.

  “What happened next? What happened after your crab won?”

  “Nothing. End of story,” I said with a smile and stood up. “Now get ready for school. We’ll have tea together when you get home. I still have a couple of cups left.”

  When the kids were gone and the house belonged to me, I sipped my coffee in the office that once belonged to Leo but over the years became mine. My nationally syndicated column that dealt with whatever it was women were talking about over tea or coffee was due by the end of the day, but I wasn’t flustered. I knew exactly what I wanted to write about.

  Today it would be about mothers passing things on to their daughters. Recipes, rituals, lullabies, stories, a crooked nose, voluptuous hips or no hips, ladylike manners or no manners, a dainty way of walking or a sporty way of walking, a disgust or a respect for men, a critical way of viewing others and the world or a loving way, a china set that breaks—But what can they pass down that might truly say who they were or where they had been or how they had felt or what all they loved or experienced during their escapade called life?