“Kimberly is my granddaughter,” Claire said, “and that doll is for her.”
“Then why is it in the closet?” Chloe asked.
“Because Kimberly and her brothers are with their daddy, and he lives far away, so I haven’t been able to give it to her yet.” Claire turned back to stacking the dishes. “Hopefully I’ll see them one day soon, and then I’ll give her the doll.”
Hopefully, she’d said. There had to be some other way, Charlie decided, some way that didn’t dash her last bit of hope.
~ ~ ~
In April when buds began to appear on bare branches and crocuses sprouted along the walkway, Charlie announced he’d planned a business trip and would be gone for a few days. Such trips were not at all unusual, so Claire packed his bag, tucked in a package of freshly-baked cookies, and waved a cheerful goodbye.
When the plane landed in Minneapolis, Charlie rented a car and asked for a map of the area. Once in the car, he unfolded the map and traced his fingers along a series of highways until he located Plymouth. The town was northwest of Minneapolis, almost an hour drive. He slid the car into gear and began the journey.
As he pressed his foot down on the gas pedal Charlie tried to imagine what he would say once he stood face to face with Jeffrey. First off, he’d push himself through the doorway the moment it was open; then Jeffrey would have to listen. Although in his heart Charlie knew he’d done no wrong, he’d apologize as if he had. “I’m sorry,” he planned to say, “sorry for any harm I’ve caused you and your family.” He’d explain that Claire felt the same way, and then he’d offer financial help so Jeffrey could get back on his feet.
Charlie knew he had to make it perfectly clear that he was here to give, not take. He would ask for nothing, no favors, no concessions. He wouldn’t even mention the possibility of moving back to New Jersey until they’d established a reasonably friendly dialogue.
But what if Jeffrey refused to listen? The possibility ripped through Charlie’s thoughts, and his fingers tightened their grip on the steering wheel. There could be no “what if” he decided; he had to make Jeffrey listen. If he was thrown out of the house today, he’d come back tomorrow, and he’d keep coming back until he said what he’d come to say. Sooner or later Jeffrey had to realize that pulling the family back together was good for everyone, himself included.
Eventually Charlie left the highway and threaded his way through the streets of Plymouth until he came to Breezeway Gardens, a winding maze of single-family houses that looked much the same, except each house was painted a different color. 12571 Easy Way was the address he was looking for. After several wrong turns he found Easy Way; then he spotted the house. It was fourth from the corner, dark gray with burgundy trim.
He drove by once, then circled the block and passed by again. He had hoped to see some toys in the yard or a minivan in the driveway, but he found nothing. He circled the block again. This time he noticed that the blinds were closed, probably because Jeffrey was still hiding from his creditors. Charlie parked the car two doors down, walked back to the house, and rang the doorbell.
No one answered, but Charlie expected as much. Jeffrey seldom opened the door when he figured it might be trouble. Charlie continued to ring the bell for nearly fifteen minutes; then he began knocking with a heavy-fisted hand. After a good bit of that he took to calling out Jeffrey’s name and pleading for him to open the door.
“I’m not leaving here until I speak with you!” Charlie said loudly over and over.
Around five o’clock a car pulled into the next driveway. A woman emerged with two small children and a bag of groceries. Charlie called out, “Excuse me” and asked if he was at the right house for the Thomas family.
“It’s the right house,” she answered, “but they moved last week.”
“Jeffrey Thomas? He’s got three—no, make that four kids?”
“Unh-huh,” she nodded, shuffling the bag of groceries from one hip to the other. “His boy, David, went to school with my Chad.”
“Oh.” Charlie’s shoulders slumped. “Got any idea where they went?”
“Afraid not. David’s not in Chad’s class anymore, so I’m assuming it’s somewhere outside of this school district.”
“Do you know of anybody else I might ask? Did they have friends in the neighborhood?”
“Friends?” she replied, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t think they had any.”
“Oh. Didn’t socialize much?”
“Not at all. Probably because of the wife; she was always screaming about something. Even with the windows closed you could hear her. Most people in this neighborhood have kids and don’t get involved in situations such as that.”
Hearing his grandchildren belonged to a family of outcasts made Charlie’s heart heavy. He wanted to say it wasn’t always like that. When Liz was alive they were a family filled with love, a family people wanted as friends. Charlie could have said so much, but he didn’t. What good would it do?
“Thanks anyway,” he said, then walked away.
Charlie knocked on several doors asking the same question, but the answer was always the same—the noisy family in the gray house had moved, but no one knew where they had gone. One man claimed he didn’t realize they’d moved.
“But,” he said, “I have enjoyed the peace and quiet of the past week.”
~ ~ ~
After he left Breezeway Gardens, Charlie went to Max and Martha’s Waterfront Café. No, they said, Jeffrey wasn’t there and he wasn’t expected to come back. He had collected his pay and quit two weeks ago. One of the waiters seemed to think he might be moving to Wisconsin, but he wasn’t sure.
“Thanks anyway,” Charlie replied; then he paid for his dinner and left.
It was almost ten o’clock when he checked in at the airport motel. He felt defeated and wished he’d surprised Jeffrey with his visit instead of calling first. Now he knew his options had run out. The next morning he boarded a plane back to New Jersey.
Later that evening, after the dinner dishes had been cleared away and after he’d planned what to say, Charlie joined Claire on the sofa. He sat down and moved close enough to drape his arm across her shoulder so that it hampered her movements as she crocheted a sweater for Christian.
“Charlie,” she said, laughing, “you can see I’m—”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Sensing the weight of the words he spoke, Claire set the sweater aside and turned to him. “Is it about the children?”
He gave an almost imperceptible nod, but Claire got her real answer from the sorrow in his eyes, in the lines etched across his forehead.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, a tear already glistening in the corner of his right eye. “I tried, I swear to God I tried.”
Claire listened as he told about Frank Walsh’s report, about his telephone call to Jeffrey, and finally about his trip to Minnesota.
“I was prepared to go along with whatever Jeffrey wanted,” he said in a trembling voice, “but they were gone when I got there.”
Her heartbeat quickened into furious movements that thundered against her chest like the wings of a trapped bird. “But surely you can find them again. You found them once—”
“I’d hire an army of investigators if I thought that was the answer, but it’s not. Even if we find them, Jeffrey is not going to allow us into his life. He’s not going to let us see the children. He’s made that perfectly clear.”
“But how can he do such a thing?” Claire moaned. “They’re our grandchildren. They’re all we have left of Elizabeth.”
“They’re not all we have,” Charlie replied solemnly. “We have our memories.”
“Memories.” Her tone held a mocking bitterness. “Can you take a memory to the park? Can you watch it laugh? Or play? Can a memory call you grandma and tell you it loves you?” A torrent of sorrowful sobs drowned her words, and she hid her face in her hands.
“We’re not going to give up.” Charlie eased Claire�
��s hands from her face and pulled her into a protective embrace. “We’ll just wait a while, give Jeffrey some time to cool down, lose some of the anger he’s got, then perhaps—”
“If we wait Jeffrey will disappear completely, and we’ll never find them.”
“No,” Charlie said softly. “I’ll have Frank Walsh keep tabs on him. I promise you, we’ll know every time Jeffrey makes a move. He won’t realize it, but we’ll always know where Liz’s children are. Maybe in time we’ll see them again.”
After that they said little, but for a long time they remained on the sofa, their bodies fitted together like the two halves of a broken urn. The clock struck twelve when they rose to go to bed.
The next morning Charlie noticed that a lopsided ball of yarn had replaced the sweater Claire had worked on for Christian.
“Please, Lord,” Charlie prayed. “Don’t let her give up hope.”
Over Time
As days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years Claire continued teaching the Sunday school class. She also continued as Chloe’s “temporary” babysitter. Halfway through the second year, Chloe was joined by Jack, a toddler whose mother had been incarcerated for stealing. Jack’s father came to Claire pleading for help.
“I’ve got to work,” he said with desperation, “and I’ve got no one to care for Jack.”
“I suppose I could do it,” she answered. “On a temporary basis.”
Jack stayed for five years, and Chloe continued to spend her afternoons at the McDermott house long after she’d outgrown the need for a babysitter. But they were not the only ones. After Jack came a frail little girl afflicted with severe asthma, then an autistic boy prone to fits of screaming, and twins who clung to each other as a drowning man clings to a scrap of wood. Eventually Claire lost count of the number who came her way, but she never lost sight of their needs.
Many of the sad, broken children carried the burden of life on their tiny shoulders. Every one of them needed love. And thus it happened that Claire became a replacement for other people—a missing mother, a dead father, a sick grandma. The children who came into her life became whole and then moved on, leaving her to wait for the next knock on the door, the next child who would stand there wearing a mask of fear and sorrow.
Claire turned no child away. When the winter wind blew and ice crusted the trees, she made certain they all had warm coats and shoes. In the blistering heat of summer, she loaded them into the car and drove to the beach. She baked cookies, helped with homework, taught right from wrong, and gave them love.
She envisioned each child as a counterpart to one of her own grandchildren. Every little girl reminded her of fair-haired Kimberly, even those with dark skin or curls the color of a flame. She saw David in the eyes of boys who wore a pretense of toughness to cover their tender hearts. When their frustrations erupted in tantrums that sent toys flying across the room, she stepped aside and waited until it was time to hold them in her arms. She knew the least about Christian. Christian was always blurry, the child too difficult to recreate. He was Tommy locked inside his autism, he was Brigitte who seldom spoke, he was all those with hurts too deep to be repaired.
With each new child who came into her life Claire wondered about her grandchildren, and she’d pray that someone would take care of them. After a while she prayerfully struck a bargain with the Lord. She promised to care for and love all of His substitute children, if He in turn would send someone to do the same for Elizabeth’s children.
~ ~ ~
After Adam moved up to the second-grade Sunday school class, Claire sadly figured he was gone from her life. But every Mother’s Day he came back with a paper card he’d lettered himself, and every Christmas he came with a clumsily-wrapped present. At first it was a toy or candy bar but as he grew older it became a handkerchief, a book, or, in one instance, dime-store pearls.
One by one the children grew up and moved on, but Claire stayed. Year after year she taught children on Sunday mornings. Even after a decade had gone by, Claire insisted that she was merely a temporary replacement for the teacher.
“I never know when my grandchildren might need me,” she’d say.
~ ~ ~
Charlie remained true to his promise, and for a good number of years Claire knew the whereabouts of her grandchildren even though Jeffrey had forbidden any contact. At Christmastime and on their birthdays Claire sent each of the children a card with a small amount of money folded inside, but all of the cards returned unopened with “Return to Sender” written across the face of the envelope with the harsh black strokes of a heavy hand. Jeffrey never sent an explanation or word of acknowledgement, and Claire knew her precious grandchildren had never received the cards.
Still she never gave up hope, and year after year when the unopened envelopes returned she tucked them into one of three cartons marked, “David,” “Kimberly,” and “Christian.” The cartons contained a number of things: small toys she’d bought for them that first year, photographs of their mother, mementos Elizabeth wanted them to have. Alongside Kimberly’s carton was the yellow-haired Cabbage Patch doll. Even after Claire knew they’d grown too old for such toys, she could not bring herself to give the things away. Emptying the cartons would mean she’d never again see her grandchildren.
Charlie kept Frank Walsh on retainer and received a report whenever a change occurred in Jeffrey’s life. When a brown envelope from Parsippany Investigative Services arrived Charlie would close his office door and read through every word, sorrowfully shaking his head as he learned the details of yet another fiasco. It disturbed Charlie that this man, the man he’d once considered a son, should lead such a hapless life. Knowing the downward spiral of Jeffrey’s circumstances weighed heavily upon his heart and Charlie believed it would trouble Claire all the more, so he filtered the reports when he relayed their contents to her.
Jeffrey married Kelsey Grigsby shortly after they moved to Wisconsin but Charlie told Claire nothing, nor did he mention it eight months later when they got divorced and the judge ordered Jeffrey to pay a sizeable alimony. After Jeffrey moved, Charlie simply told Claire that the kids were well and living in Brownsville, Texas, which he suggested was a rather pleasant town.
For the first three years it seemed Jeffrey moved every few months. He’d rent a house, accumulate a bunch of bills, and then run off without paying them. With his bouncing from state to state, it became increasingly difficult for Frank Walsh to find Jeffrey before he moved.
Within ten years, Jeffrey Caruthers, Jeffrey Thomas or, in two instances, Thomas Jeffrey had lived in at least six different states and married four different women. Each of those marriages had ended in divorce. The second wife rendered him deaf in his right ear when she hit him with a cast iron frying pan, and the last wife took his wages to collect her alimony.
Jeffrey’s career, such as it was, fared no better. From waiter he became a bartender and then a short-order cook frying up greasy hamburgers. After he got fired from those jobs he began working the late shift in a twenty-four-hour gas station. When he was caught sleeping, that job went the way of the others. Eventually he became the custodian in an exercise gym and stuck with that for a while.
On three different occasions Charlie tried to offer assistance. The first time Jeffrey said, “Drop dead!” The second time he said he’d get a restraining order if Charlie didn’t stop bothering him, and the third time he slammed the receiver down without a word.
When Charlie learned that Jeffrey had lost his job at the gymnasium, he sent a check with a note saying that Jeffrey need not respond. The check was returned to the bank with the envelope unopened and a scrawl of painfully familiar words: Return to sender.
In 1998 Frank Walsh retired from the investigation business. “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing,” he told Charlie and offered the name of another investigator. By that time Charlie realized the futility of tracking a man who wanted nothing to do with them, so he declined and said nothing to Claire of
Frank Walsh’s retirement. He wanted to spare her the tears and sleepless nights she suffered at any mention of their grandchildren.
Eventually Claire stopped asking if there was any news, but Charlie knew she never stopped hoping.
In June of 2001, on a warm summer night when fragrant breezes drifted through the window and curtains fluttered softly, Charlie kissed Claire goodnight then rolled over on his side and closed his eyes forever.
They’d been married for forty-six years and they’d loved each other even longer. Together they’d endured so many hardships, but always Charlie had been beside her. He had held her in his arms and eased the pain. Now he too was gone. Claire cried aloud to the Lord asking how He could leave her alone in this world, but His silence deafened her.
On the day of Charlie’s funeral Claire went to the church expecting to sit alone in the pew reserved for family, but instead of one pew the family area had been expanded to seven rows.
All the temporary children she’d cared for and loved filled the pews. Chloe with her husband and two babies. Adam, with his new wife on one side and his silver-haired dad on the other. Little thumb-sucking Brigitte who’d grown up and become a model. Jack, now an engineer. Frankie, Henry, Melanie. Row after row, the children she’d babysat and those who’d passed through her Sunday school class. Some now parents themselves, others who’d gone off to college and returned, some still in their teens, but all part of one family. Her family.
“Thank you, Lord Jesus,” she whispered.
Claire McDermott
A fair bit of time has gone by since the day I lost Charlie, and I’ve become accustomed to spending my days alone. As the weeks and months turned into years, I came to understand that alone doesn’t mean lonely. Only a person who’s never known love can be truly lonely. I’m not. I’ve had more love than any one woman is entitled to. All those children I thought were just passing through have taken up residence in my heart. I can close my eyes and picture their faces, which is enough to make me feel warm all over.
Cracks in the Sidewalk Page 29