by Lynne Hugo
Later, when one of her arms had gone to sleep, Christine called for Cora to help her. “Take Lexie for me,” she said, “my arm’s gone dead.” From that time on, Alexis was Lexie, and even Marvin only had to be corrected once, privately, by Cora. Everyone took to it with unnamed relief.
Although it was never actually discussed and decided, Christine stayed on at her parents’ house. Cora or Marvin made regular trips to the apartment to pick up needed clothing or baby supplies until it became apparent that more had been moved to their house than remained in the apartment, and Marvin talked to the lawyer downstairs about breaking the lease without penalty, given the circumstances. Christine moved in a daze, and although Cora wanted to talk with her about Alex—about getting a divorce, really—Christine seemed incapable of any decision, even whether to start Lexie on strained peas or carrots first, so Cora didn’t broach the subject.
In July, when Lexie was five months and had her second tooth, a belly laugh, and it was evident her eyes were going to stay quite blue, Christine answered the phone one afternoon while Cora was in the basement folding laundry.
“Chris? It’s me…I’m…so sorry.”
“You know there’s a warrant out on you?”
“The baby?” Alex’s voice was a hoarse choke.
“The draft.”
“Oh. I knew that.” There was a long pause. “I didn’t mean to…” he began, but Christine cut him off. She looked out the kitchen window.
“I know you didn’t. Anyway, they think I was with her. Are you…in…”
“Toronto.” The phone crackled as if to confirm the distance.
“I figured.”
“Do you wanna come?”
Christine hesitated. The phone cord was taut as she pulled on it with her free hand. “You have no idea,” she hissed. “How can you ask me that? There’s a baby here, remember? There were two of them. How do you think I’m surviving? How did you know where to call me? It’s not like you even tried. Did you even know Tina was gone?” She was surprised to hear the sudden rage her answer was rooted in, exposed tentacles wrapped around her soul.
“I knew,” he said. “I called Jake.”
“For money, I guess.”
“To find out.”
Christine thought she could imagine him—in dirty blue jeans and T-shirt, a couple of days unshaven, skinny, longhaired and broke. “So why now? Are you thinking I’ll send you money or what?”
“No,” he said. “I just…look, I just wanted to say how sorry…God, Chris, I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this.”
“Well, it did, didn’t it?” She wanted him to feel bad. No, she wanted him to suffer, and knew, even as she was wanting it, that she’d gone so far alone he might never join her. “Never mind. Just…don’t call me again. For all I know the phone is tapped.”
Christine swung around abruptly, her hair a swirling brown trail following her head, and hung up the phone. She walked over to the back door and looked out of the screen. A light-gray dove, no mate in sight, waddled on the grass pecking here and there, and Christine whispered to it, “Tina, Tina, my sweet Tina.” The dove’s wings ruffled out then, and it disappeared in the elm tree, blending like an oversized leaf.
Christine thought she heard Lexie, a small sound in the house, and turned to go check. Cora was standing on the top basement step, the door ajar. Christine had no idea how long she’d been there, what she might have heard. In a rush of words then, Christine said, “I’ve been thinking, I’d like to put a bird feeder outside. Do you think Dad would care?”
Cora looked at her hard. “I think that’d be fine,” she said. “I don’t see why not.”
DAYS BUMPED UNEVENLY as rocks for the first long year, then pebbles for months more before beginning to sift more evenly, like dust, into a routine that was familiar if not happy. Cora kept Lexie while Christine bagged groceries, took classes at the Richmont branch of Indiana University. Marvin paid the bills while Christine banked her checks, whatever she didn’t spend on diapers and books, for the day when she and Lexie could be in their own place. She decided to become an X-ray technician because she could do it in two more years if she could carry four classes each term, and it seemed like she’d be able to get a job almost anytime, anywhere. Sometimes she thought Lexie might be confused about who was her mother, and Christine—though at first she’d given over the job with relief—realized she had to give Lexie a clear answer about that. “I’m her mother,” she said one evening to Cora when Cora told her that it was past when Lexie should have been in bed. “I need time with her. She can sleep when I’m not here.”
Cora noted the resolution in Christine’s voice.
fifteen
IT WAS LEXIE, REALLY, who started Christine back into keeping a journal. Lexie, with her delicious fat little legs seeming to lengthen daily while her hair grew into skimpy dark ponytails that thickened and sprouted bows, and her mouthful of even square teeth, shaping around words, then sentences, then paragraphs. Sometimes Christine wrote about Tina, the unsettling sense she had occasionally that Lexie was looking for her, too, in the same ache of regret and memory. Lexie grew and spilled things and crayoned on walls while Tina remained a six-week-old fragility. It became hard for Christine to imagine them as twins, Lexie was so different now from the only way her sister had shape in their mother’s mind.
She’d begun by recording the facts: “twenty-three pounds, four teeth, scrunching herself up onto her knees,” first copying the notes Cora had taken for her at each doctor’s appointment into the notebook she’d started after the girls were born, though those days had been so frantic that what she’d scribbled was hardly intelligible. Then she had to include the little stories of how and where she’d taken her first steps, spoken her first words, parroted the alphabet at eighteen months. She needed to describe how Lexie’s eyebrows had seemed to just appear overnight in neat arches as dark as her hair, and how her eyes were the startling light blue of the sky at nine in the morning.
When she was having one of her bad days, she wrote about it. She didn’t want to talk to Cora about Alex or Tina. Alex was a sore spot with everyone, though in different ways, and Christine still worried that her mother might have notions if she’d overheard Christine’s end of the conversation the one time Alex had called. Maybe Christine had forgiven Alex—some days she thought she had, or could—but there was no question that her parents never would. She hoped all they thought was that he’d run to Canada because of the draft, which was the community’s common (and correct) deduction. Whenever Christine watched the war news on television, she thought of Alex. She couldn’t see him in Vietnam any better than he’d seen himself, though her father insisted that it would have made a man out of a scared boy, that’s what war does, and Christine wrote it again in her journal on days she hated Alex with a fierceness that spread like liquid into every cranny of her mind. Alexander the Goddamn Great, she called him, including Marvin’s expletive. For the most part, though, life went on without explicit reference to the world beyond Early Sun and the university branch at Richmont, with forays into Darrville for groceries and hardware, and without reference to those outside the circle of family.
Of course Christine thought about Alex. Day in and day out she took care of his remaining daughter, and whether she wanted to or not, saw small mirrors of Alex all the time. Memory and conjecture, fact and fantasy went into her notebooks. She wrote poems for Lexie, too, recopying them in ink scrupulously centered on their own pages. Some she showed to Cora, who said they were wonderful, and asked how she’d been able to rhyme so perfectly, and not just simple words.
When peace came—at least on paper—to Southeast Asia, Christine thought Alex might come back. Lexie was still in diapers, and Christine actually wrote “Maybe it isn’t too late.” Then, of course, she realized the peace made no difference at all; Alex would be arrested and tried and sent to jail if he did come back. Marvin even checked it out, to reassure himself that Alexander the Goddamn Great would still
have to pay his dues.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cora said. “The dues he owes would take a hundred men working the rest of their lives to pay off.”
“I’ll be satisfied to see the son-of-a-bitch rot in jail,” Marvin answered, his coffee cup clattering in its saucer. It was Christine’s late night at school, Rebecca was at a soccer game, and they were finishing supper as best they could with Lexie flinging squashed peas at them from her high chair. “And pay a major hunk of child support. How long do they have to be separated for her to get a divorce on grounds of desertion?”
“She’s already past that. It was a year,” Cora reminded him.
“So has she done anything?” Marvin always consulted Cora to find out what was going on, even though usually someone had already told him. Having Cora just saved him having to remember anything. He raised his chin to look at her through his glasses, which had slid down his nose again.
Cora sighed deeply and put some little pieces of chicken, most of which would land on the kitchen floor, onto Lexie’s tray. “Nothing that I know of.”
“Did you change your hair?” Marvin noticed it was longer, or something.
“I parted it on the side to cover the gray on top.”
“Now who’s being ridiculous? You’re not gray.”
“Says the bald man,” Cora laughed. “Forty-nine. Did you ever think you’d be feeding a baby at forty-nine?”
“I’m not,” Marvin pointed out in his factual way. “And I’m not bald, either,” he said, running his hand over the thin mix of brown and gray retreating from his forehead.
“You’re right about not feeding her, anyway. I’d think you’d be ashamed.”
“The person who should be ashamed is…”
“Leave it alone, will you? Christine isn’t after revenge.”
“Well, a little revenge would be good for my soul, I believe.”
“Your soul’s not the point here. And it wouldn’t, anyway.”
“You be the Christian charity lady if you want. I’m not that good.” The words were all Marvin, but Cora heard beyond them to the respect he was giving her in his way.
She smiled, her eyes leaving her granddaughter only long enough to lock onto his and say, “You’re a good man. A good man,” she repeated softly to Lexie when she turned back to her with a spoonful of applesauce, which Lexie promptly blew into a waterfall ending in a pool of giggles when Cora jumped back.
WHEN LEXIE WAS JUST over three, Christine graduated from her program in medical technology. It took her an extra summer and semester because of her job at Thriftway, and because the rubber band attaching her to Lexie would stretch only so far and long, then Christine simply had to spend extra time with her. It bothered Cora to see Christine’s life so closed that she never went out, only worked, went to school and hurried home to Lexie.
Chris got a job as an X-ray technician in an orthopedic surgeon’s office in Richmont; she’d done well in her clinical placement, the X-rays she took almost never needed to be repeated, and she had a kind touch with the patients. To Cora, her daughter looked the same as always: when she was home, her long hair down and without any makeup, she could have passed for sixteen. When she began working, though, her hair up in a French twist, lipstick filling in her thin mouth, and her dark brows balanced by enough eye makeup to bring out the blue of her eyes: well, she was a lovely woman, and Cora couldn’t imagine that no one asked her out. She surmised Christine was turning down invitations. “You know I don’t mind if you go out at night, don’t you, dear? You could even put Lexie to bed yourself and then go out. You must have some friends you’d like to spend some time with.” Cora said it more than once.
“I’m just fine, Mom,” she’d get as an answer, which told her nothing at all.
Although it had been implicitly presumed Christine would move out on her own when she could afford to, no one mentioned it when she got her job. Although the daily commute to Richmont took up way too much time, there was a certain security, maybe for all of them, that came with being together. Rebecca had graduated and gone to Bloomington to the University where she lived in a dormitory, and perhaps Cora clung to Christine and Lexie more than she would have were Rebecca still there. Besides, inertia is a powerful force; they had a life, such as it was, a life. And when Marvin had his first heart attack, a mild one that put them all on notice, Cora felt much more secure with Christine there, even though she immediately signed up for a CPR class herself, afraid Marvin’s heart would go haywire again when Chris was at work. Marvin was walking outside for ten minutes at a time within two weeks, back to work within two months, though the doctor wouldn’t sign for him to return to full duty, which included climbing utility poles. “You’re fifty-two years old, the doctor said to him. “Pushing fifty-three. Lighten up. Let the young ones do it.”
“Got a family to support?” Marvin asked, buttoning his flannel shirt back up.
“Sure.”
“So do I,” Marvin said, as if his point were made, proven and underlined.
That evening, when Lexie climbed into Marvin’s lap in the battered wingback chair in the living room where he read the evening paper, Christine told her to stop squirming on Grandpa. Marvin hugged the little girl and said, “Let her be. I’m fine, and I don’t want anyone fussing over me.” His face still lacked color, and his hair seemed translucent to Christine, his body almost ephemeral after the weight he’d lost.
“I’m glad you’re home, Grandpa. I missed you,” Lexie said into his neck. He tickled her and she squealed and wiggled more loudly than she would have if her mother hadn’t just told her not to and been overridden by her grandfather. “Look, I made this heart for you, ’cause yours got hurt.” She bounced onto the floor and ran to the coffee table. Her dark pigtails had yellow bows on them and they swung back and forth. A small, deft hand snatched up a colored cutout heart and ran it back to Marvin. “A new one. Don’t mess it up, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll keep it safe. I love you, baby,” he said, and it actually scared Chris to hear him say it.
WHEN PRESIDENT CARTER signed the Amnesty Proclamation the next year, it occurred to Christine that Alex might come back to Indiana. The square, tawny-green fields of soy, corn and wheat, the enormous stands of trees here and there, the narrow back roads around Early Sun and Darrville were, after all, his home. He was a stranger to her now, though; she’d been granted a divorce on grounds of desertion and although the circle of her life was small, it was closed and complete. She was getting by and Lexie was thriving.
Lexie began kindergarten. Cora went to Jolene’s for coffee and company.
“Still nothing,” Cora said, sitting at Jolene’s kitchen table while Jolene took a sheet of scones out of the oven. Jolene’s kitchen had been redone in avocado green that year, even the stove and refrigerator, and Cora never could decide if she liked it or not. “I guess it’s going to be all right after all. She doesn’t mention him, so maybe she’s not even thinking about it.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that one,” Jolene said, putting a green place mat and one of her old blue plates in front of Cora. “My dishes don’t match anything anymore. I’m watching for a sale at Sears.”
“I shouldn’t eat this, you know. I’m trying to avoid the blimp look for the upcoming social season.” As she spoke, Cora smiled broadly and bit off a piece of scone. Her glasses slid down as she tried to see over them to look at her friend. “Umm, raisins. Can I take one of these to Christine? She loves them. Did I tell you she gave Marvin another bird feeder for his birthday? Actually, this one’s some platform type. I think the birds might put her in mind of the baby, you know, not that she talks about it. But she started with the bird thing after Tina. Anyway, she had him put it next to the lilac bush.”
“Good thing Marvin tolerates birds.”
“Of course, I’d like her to stay right where she is,” Cora said out of the blue, as if Jolene had asked if Christine was ever going to move out, which she hadn’t. “What would
she do with Lexie afternoons, anyway? I worry about her, you know? It just seems like she’s too old for her years. Everything revolves around Lexie. Don’t you think she should have some kind of a social life?”
Jolene shrugged. “I’ve been thinking the same thing about you, actually. Lexie’s still at an age where most mothers would make their life around her. It’s you doin’ it that worries me. Besides, it takes something out of you forever to lose a child, I can tell you that much.”
When she and Marvin were in bed that night, Cora whispered, “Maybe you and I should go away for a weekend sometime…get away by ourselves.”
“Hmm.” Cora couldn’t tell whether it was a question or an agreement. A moment later Marvin’s breathing had downshifted into the faint snore that meant sleep had overtaken him. She lay on her back thinking about what Jolene had said, about what it might be she’d like to do if her time were her own. Nothing came to her. The sheets she’d dried on the clothesline outside were crisp and smelled of early-autumn sun and air and she tried to remember what it was she’d loved as a young woman.
Two bedrooms away, Christine’s light still threw an amber circle around her bedside table and one side of the book she was writing in. “Of course it’s too late,” she wrote. “It’s probably been too late since the day he left. Get on with it, Christine.”
SHE DIDN’T TELL HER parents she was looking for a place of her own until she’d found it and signed the lease. A clean, two-bedroom apartment on the first floor of the new three-story apartment complex, it was in Darrville—which meant she still had a half-hour drive to and from work, but lived close enough to her parents for Cora to take care of Lexie after school. When she told Cora, she put it as a fait accompli so her mother couldn’t talk her out of it.