by Lisa Wingate
“Oh, you’re home!” Smoothing her apron as if I were the guest of honor, Mom took my box of school materials and ushered me in the door. I waited for her to ask about the dress, whereby I would have to admit that I’d failed to fully accomplish my mission for the day.
“Special occasion?” I asked.
“Oh, no.” Mom’s voice jingled like birdsong. “I just wanted us all to have a nice, quiet dinner tonight. There’s been so much stress lately… .” The sentence trailed off into a bright smile, and she stood motionless, waiting for my reaction.
Making one more sweep of Mom’s hopeful face, the table, and my father’s bewildered expression as his gaze darted back and forth between us, I had a dawning understanding. This was Mom’s attempt at repairing the rift we’d opened this morning.
I instantly felt guilty. “Sorry I’m late,” I said, and instead of adding the usual admonishments about how there was no need for her and Dad to wait dinner for me every night, I added, “This looks beautiful. Thanks, Mom. What a treat after sitting in traffic.”
Her lips lifted into a warm smile. “Oh, pfff.” She waved a dismissive hand. “It’s nothing. Just a little pasta.”
Dad, who had probably been watching her fuss over the meal all evening, gave her a double take.
Catching his gaze, I winked and he shrugged, as in, There is no figuring this woman out. I’ve tried for years, and she still confuses me.
“I have the perfect finishing touch for that table.” Tossing my coat onto the hook, I ducked back into the garage for my purse, briefcase, and Mim’s roses. “Just right for wine and pasta,” I pronounced, handing Mom the impromptu gift. “These are for you. A peace offering. I’m sorry about this morning.”
Mom’s eyes teared up as she took the three roses. “Oh, my. Oh, goodness, I just don’t … You shouldn’t have done … Where did … Well, they’re absolutely beautiful. Thank you. I can’t remember the last time someone brought me flowers.” She glanced pointedly at Dad, who’d just picked a crouton out of the salad. He blanched, swallowing the lump guiltily, and gave me the thumbs up as Mom went to the cabinet for a vase.
Suddenly, all was right with the world. We sat down to eat, passing around the pasta and making polite chitchat about the on-again-off-again winter weather, and the food. Mom seemed determined to keep mealtime light and happy, avoiding all the taboo subjects, but eventually Dad commented on how perfect the roses were, and that led to a discussion of where I’d gotten them, the cleaner, and the wedding dress.
“I’ll pick up the estimate tomorrow,” I said vaguely. “She thinks she can come up with the antique lace and seed pearls she’ll need. They do a lot of restorations. People send them dresses from everywhere.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Pushing the pasta bowl my way, Mom gave my plate a concerned frown. “Have some more, sweetheart. You must be famished.”
“Not really. I had a big lunch.” I took a conciliatory second helping, which I would mostly stir around on my plate.
“Oh?” Raised brows indicated the need for more details on the day’s intake.
“Yes. I’m tutoring a student during noon hour. We shared her sack lunch.”
Lowered brow, look of mild panic. “That couldn’t have been much.”
Shift to defensive posture. “Oh, no, it was plenty. Her mother packs double so that she can have a snack after school.”
“You ate a child’s after-school snack for lunch?”
The conversation slid downward from there, proof that the food police were on active duty, even tonight. Finally, Dad hopped up from the table and offered to do the dishes. I didn’t argue with him, because I couldn’t stand to look at food anymore. My stomach was a tight knot around the pasta, and acid gurgled in my throat. What I really wanted to do was run to the bathroom and be done with it. I couldn’t, of course. Mom listened carefully for bathroom sounds and toilet flushes after each meal.
Getting up from the table, I scraped my plate and put it in the dishwasher. “Where’s Joujou?” It was unusual to be by the trash can without Joujou hanging around waiting for scraps.
“Oh, I put her outside.” Mom glanced casually toward the sliding glass door, where Joujou was huddled in her playhouse, looking wistfully toward us. “I didn’t want her bothering us at supper. She can come in now.” Walking to the door, she called Joujou in, picking her up and cuddling her, commenting on how chilled her fur was.
I realized again how important the dinner had been to my mother. She’d left Joujou at the mercy of the elements, ostracized to the doggy penthouse so that we could have quiet time as a family without anyone begging for handouts or licking our toes.
Joujou’s feelings were hurt. Snorting unhappily, she nestled her head under Mom’s chin, and Mom cooed to her like a baby, promising her Italian sausage.
“The dinner was great, Mom, thanks,” I said, and started helping Dad with the dishes.
He shooed me away, glancing toward my box of grant-writing materials. “Go on; I’ll handle this. Looks like you’ve got work to do.”
“Grant application for a new performing arts center,” I said. “It’s amazing how much detail they want in these things—everything from blueprints to median income levels of students’ families.”
“Sounds challenging,” Dad replied blandly, more focused on finding the right Tupperware container than on the conversation.
“A little, but I’ll get it together eventually.” Picking up the box, I turned to leave. “Thanks for doing the dishes, Dad.”
“Sure, honey.”
Before he could empty the pasta pan, Mom took away his Tupperware bowl and replaced it with a smaller one. “Use this. It’s the right size,” she said, then started digging through the drawer for the lid. “I can’t imagine what’s happened to the top. I usually …”
Lifting her hands from the drawer, Dad closed it. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll find something. Why don’t you go put your feet up?” he suggested, and she laid her head wearily on his shoulder.
I tiptoed from the room, realizing again how much stress they were under. As hard as my illness was for me, it was harder for them. They had no control over it. Now, there was also Bett’s situation, and the fact that our family was changing, whether we were ready for it or not.
Upstairs, I put on sweats, spread the papers on the bed, and worked on the grant application for a couple of hours, until my eyes kept falling shut. Finally, I unearthed Dell’s spiral notebook papers tucked in my briefcase with my DayMinder.
Stuffing the grant materials back into the box, I lay back against the pillows and began to read.
I saw Mama in a dream. I was singing at the church in Hindsville. Colored light flowed through the windows, and the room was full of faces. Mama came in and stood in the back, and even with so many people there, I could see her. Her hair was long and shiny golden brown like fall grass, just a little darker than Angelo’s baby hair. She was wearing an old denim jacket, and her eyes were that color, too. Like little pieces of faded blue jeans, soft and sad and clear, like something I could curl up inside.
I’m not sure if her eyes were really that color, but that’s how I remember her. She’s gone misty in my mind like an old picture, and I paint in the detail when I need to. It’s probably better that way. Maybe one day I won’t be able to paint her at all. I wonder if she never says anything in my dreams because I’ve forgotten her voice.
When I see her in the church dream, she’s trying to speak, but no sound comes across the room. I move closer, but there are so many people and they want to keep me from Mama. I wonder what she would tell me, if she could. I wonder if, before she died, she was sorry about Angelo and me. Did she think of us, or did she just fall away with her mind foggy and blank? Nobody ever told me. Granny just came one day after school and said my mama was dead. “That’s that,” she said, like when they gave Angelo away. I wasn’t to talk about it anymore.
“It’s OK,” I told her. Mama was gone from my heart by then, so I
didn’t cry about it. It only hurt because it seemed like she should be there, and she wasn’t. Grandma Rose says we cause most of our own misery by thinking in should-be’s. There’s no use in should-be’s, she says. We have to find happiness in what is.
I know she’s right. There’s no sense going on about how things might be different. But then I wonder who I am, where I came from, and why I’m here. Brother Baker says that God is my father, but God didn’t make me out of thin air. He knit me together, but what did he use for string?
I think sometimes about the man with the long dark hair and the cowboy hat. I wonder if he was my father. Sometimes when he came to drop Mama off, he would stand at the gate and look at me like he was thinking. When I had the flu, he took me to the doctor because Granny was sick and Mama was too messed up to do it.
The nurse at Dr. Schmidt’s office said I might of died, with a temperature like that. He told her it went up all of a sudden, but that wasn’t true. The sofa had been swimming under me for days and I saw things in the room that weren’t there. Sometimes it felt like I was floating on air.
He filled my prescription at the pharmacy, then handed me a box of ice-cream bars and a little pink stuffed horse. My body melted the ice cream on the way home, but he didn’t get mad. He carried me into the house and put what was left of the ice cream in the freezer. For a while, he came around to make sure I got my medicine and got better.
He might of been my father. He never said, and that was probably best. He was as messed up as Mama. He brought the stuff that got her messed up. She’d ask him for it every time he came.
“You got some stuff?” she’d say before she let him in the gate.
“Sure, baby.” Then he’d snake his arm around her neck and kiss her like he was going to choke her to death. When he did that, it felt like he was pulling her away from me.
The last time I saw her, he was loading her things in his truck to move to some apartment in Kansas City. He let her overdose there, and I never saw her again.
Why would I want someone like that for a father? If I came from him and Mama, then how could there be anything good in me? How could James and Karen, and Grandma Rose, and Kate and Ben love me? How could anyone love me?
Unless they don’t know who I really am.
Setting the paper on the nightstand, I slipped beneath the comforter, turned off the light, and closed my eyes. I lay thinking of Dell’s life, of her need to know who she was and where she came from. I understood the desire for answers and the fear of them. Respect for my dad wasn’t the only reason I’d never asked why my mom was an unwed mother when my parents met. The truth was that I was afraid of the answer, afraid it might change who I was. Redefine me in some way I couldn’t predict.
It was easier not to ask.
Yet those unsaid things were a haunting presence that pervaded my life, a shadow so dark that when I drifted into it, no light followed me. Filmy and thick like tar, it held me in place. Each time I broke free, pieces clung to my feet as I walked away, so that there was always a trail into the past.
If Dell’s questions were never answered, if she carried them hidden for as many years as I had, would she eventually find herself where I was now? Twenty-seven years old, lost, having starved herself almost to death because she was afraid she wasn’t worthy of real love?
The possibilities swam through my thoughts as I drifted into sleep. I hoped my dreams would take me to the river, where I would dance, but instead, I found myself on Division Street, where the taco stands were lined with cars—dark ones with tinted windows, their drivers shrouded in mystery. At the cleaner’s, the parking lot was filled with white dresses on faceless mannequins, their wedding veils floating softly on the breeze. Among the maze of bridal finery, Jumpkids dancers followed Mrs. Mindia in a swaying line, like village children enraptured by the pied piper. As they passed, Mim gave them roses and Granmae dropped tiny angels on their shoulders. The air was filled with miniature celestial beings, their light so bright it pushed back the shadow of Division Street… .
I awoke to the feel of something warm and wet bathing my eyelashes, my cheeks, my forehead. It tickled the inside of my nose, and I jerked off the pillow, sneezing.
I smelled liver and onions.
“Joujou!” I croaked, shuddering. Eskimo-kissed by a dog. Yuck. Glancing at the clock, I realized I didn’t have to be up for another hour yet. The house was still quiet. Mom and Dad weren’t even out of bed.
Bounding onto the pillow, Joujou wagged her tail and yipped.
“Go wake up Mom,” I urged, and she growled playfully.
From somewhere down the hall, Mom’s sleepy voice called, “Jooooujoooou?” and then a little more cheerfully, “Joujou? Sweetiepoo?”
Joujou cocked an ear toward the endearment, but remained on my pillow, wagging her tail expectantly.
“She’s in here,” I called down the hall. “I think she needs to go out. I’ll take her.”
“Ohhh-kaaay,” Mom’s drowsy reply drifted back.
Scooping up Joujou, I headed downstairs, put her out on the patio, and proceeded to search for the old waffle iron. For a change, I could be the one to start breakfast.
While Joujou raced around and around in her doggie dream house, I created waffles, which no one in our house had done in years. By the time Mom came down, I’d stacked several on the breakfast table and consumed two myself—dry, no butter, no syrup. Much less fattening that way.
Mom eyed me skeptically when I told her I’d already eaten and I’d better be heading upstairs to get ready for school, since I had to go by the cleaner’s this morning. “Are you sure you’ve had enough to eat?” she questioned.
“Yes, I did.” No matter what, I was not going to get in a tiff with her this morning. My days of adding stress to Mom’s life were over. Period. “One thing about cooking waffles—you get plenty of time to nibble.”
“Well, there’s—” She was about to point out that there was plenty left, but Dad came into the kitchen and gave her a stern head shake.
“Go ahead, sugar,” he said benevolently. “We don’t want to make you late.”
As I left the room, I could hear them arguing. About me, and about food. Again.
When I came back downstairs, I rushed past the kitchen on purpose.
“Thank you for cooking breakfast, sweetheart,” Mom called after me.
“You’re welcome.” I was putting my things in the car when I remembered that I needed a double sack lunch for today’s tutoring session with Dell.
Mom glanced up as I hurried back in the door. “I need a sack lunch,” I explained. “With tutoring, I don’t get any time to go the cafeteria.”
Popping out of her chair, Mom went to the pantry. “That cafeteria food isn’t good for you anyway.” She started pulling things from the shelves, while I took out the jelly, thinking I’d make sandwiches.
Mom had much grander ideas. “I have some canned chicken salad and cracker kits, some Vienna sausages, Cup-a-Soups, chips, SpaghettiOs… .”
“A couple of peanut-butter-and jelly sandwiches ought to do it.” Why in the world did Mom have SpaghettiOs in the pantry? Sometimes, I wondered if she had ever truly faced the fact that there were no longer kids in the house.
“Oh, let me.” Snatching the bread from the bread box, Mom inched Dad’s newspaper out of the way and set slices on the breakfast table. “I have some deli turkey right there in the meat drawer. Can you pull it out? It’s just wonderful. Honey smoked, from the natural-foods market. No phosphates. I think it tastes better.”
Taking a two sodas and a couple of pudding cups from the fridge, I stood back and let Mom create sandwiches that were fully loaded works of art. As she bagged them up, she glanced at me, smiling. “I haven’t made a school lunch in years. This is just like the old days.”
I didn’t point out that in the old days, Grandma Rice made my school lunches and saw me off in the mornings. Instead, I kissed Mom on the cheek, grabbed the lunch sack, and headed off to
school feeling good. On the way, I called Bett to tell her about Mim’s roses and discuss the issue of wedding flowers. Bett was afraid that if we used a florist all the way across town, Mom would have a nervous breakdown. When I thought about it, I had to agree. In the cold light of reality the idea seemed slightly insane.
Still, I felt a twinge of guilt. Judging from Mim’s faded clothes and old tennis shoes, she could use the money. It probably wasn’t easy selling flowers in that neighborhood. Maybe I’d ask her about making some bouquets for the rehearsal night. That way, the bouquets weren’t very good, or Mim failed to come through, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. “Her roses really are amazingly beautiful, but you’re right: It’s probably too risky to have her do the wedding flowers. What if I ask her about some practice bouquets? I know normally on rehearsal night, people use bouquets of ribbons from the bridal shower, but since we don’t have time for a shower, real flowers at the rehearsal might be a nice touch. Just something simple. What do you think?”
“That sounds good,” Bett agreed, then her call waiting beeped, and we said good-bye as I pulled into the parking lot of the cleaner’s.
When I went inside, Mim wasn’t there, so I left a note for her with Granmae, inquiring about the cost of some small bouquets and perhaps a table arrangement or two for the rehearsal dinner. When Granmae handed me the estimate for the dress restoration, I wished I had looked at that first. Dad was going to have a coronary. Maybe I would make Granmae’s flowers my special treat for Bett, and pay for them myself.
Granmae tapped the bill with her fingertip. “Now, I done told ya it would be high. But our work is guaranteed, one hundred percent. That dress’ll leave here lookin’ like it just come off the runway, and I’ll even put an angel on the shoulder of it for free.”
I smiled at that idea. “All right then.” I hoped Dad didn’t flip when he saw the cost. “And you’re sure you can have it done in time?”
Granmae eyed me with the shrewd look of an experienced business-woman. “Yes, sugar pie. It’ll be ready.” Leaning across the counter, her heavy bosom resting on the wood, she picked a scrap of lint off the shoulder of my pantsuit, and winked at me. “You got one too many on there today. Sometimes, they like to congregate, but then they ain’t focused on their job.”