Dreamsleeves

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

  Nana looks worried, scared even, her fingers fidgeting around her teacup. I know she’s afraid of flying. She’s never been on a plane before.

  Nana rode a huge ocean liner across the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland all by herself when she was just sixteen, but ever since then her favorite vehicle is the city bus. Nana doesn’t even like riding in my dad’s car. She’s always telling him to “slow down, Roe!”

  And he does. My father listens when Nana talks. It’s almost like he’s still a boy, not wanting to make his mommy mad. He loves her so much.

  “Don’t worry, Nana,” I say. “I read once that people are safer riding a jet plane than they are riding in a car in their own neighborhood.”

  “Oh, no,” Nana says, shaking her head vehemently, her lips pursed, like this is an absurd thing for me to say. “I’m not worried at all, dear.” She refills my cup and then hers.

  I know she’s faking. That’s the way Nana deals with things that trouble her. She makes believe they don’t exist, or she says novenas.

  Novenas are these really long prayers Catholics say. Nana’s got a novena for everything — somebody’s sick, somebody’s dying, somebody lost their keys, somebody needs a wish granted.

  I wonder what Nana wishes for? She never, ever says. We don’t have those kinds of conversations. We talk about whether the tea is steeped enough, or does the soup needs salt, or if we think it will rain.

  “When are you coming back?” I ask.

  “Bitsy wants me to stay until Labor Day, but I told her I need to be home by the third week in August.” Nana sets her cup down and winks at me.

  Nana loves winking. She winks more than Santa Claus.

  “We have a date, don’t we?” Nana says, walking to the wall calendar and flipping up the pages. “August twenty-first — Aislinn. Got it circled right here.”

  “Yes!” I say, smiling, relieved that she didn’t forget. Nana and I have an annual date — the third Saturday of August. It’s a tradition.

  Ever since I started kindergarten, Nana and I take the bus uptown and we go to Cooper’s Shoe Store and Nana buys me whichever pair I choose — no matter the cost — and that’s very generous of her because I know she isn’t rich. Nana says shoes are a person’s most important apparel purchase. “You can sew a patch on a pocket or let the hem out on a skirt, but a girl should start a new school year in shoes she’s proud of.”

  After we get the shoes (we never buy anything besides the shoes) we go to a restaurant for lunch — Fatone’s or Manory’s or the Puritan — and we get a booth and take our time looking over the menu and placing our orders (we’re never in a rush; it’s such a good feeling), and we generally order tuna fish sandwiches with potato chips and extra pickles and we always, always order pie for dessert, with tea, of course.

  Sometimes when we’re having our annual back-to-school lunch, my new shoes in a box on the seat beside me, and lots of times when I’m sitting here across the table from Nana, here in her kitchen, sometimes I think, Go ahead, A, do it…. Ask Nana for help. Tell Nana how bad it’s getting. How scared you are.

  But then I don’t. Because I know that Nana already knows how bad it is.

  Often, when we’re sitting here having tea, we can hear the little ones’ feet pounding, running back and forth upstairs, Dad yelling, sometimes the sharp yelp and crying after someone’s been spanked, Dad shouting at Mom, doors slamming.

  Nana hears Dad ridiculing my mom about her cooking or her weight in front of everyone at Sunday dinner. She’s seen him hit us, watched him stumble up the stairs after a night out at a bar; she’s listened to me complain about him not letting me go anywhere, locked up like a prisoner, always having to babysit, not being able to join my friends for movies or the seventh-grade end-of-year dance last week. (“It’s not a date, Dad, it’s just a dance!”) I didn’t even know then that Mike Mancinello might like me; I just wanted to have fun with my class, just like everybody else.

  Nana’s watched me sit here crying, tears dripping down on this table, heart broken over and over again, and yet she never says a bad word about him. It’s like there are red lights swirling and alarms blaring and megaphones booming “evacuate! evacuate!” on the floor right above her in this house that she owns with this family she loves so much and she can smell the smoke, but she pours another cup of tea, says another novena, and refuses to shout “fire!”

  Suddenly I am very scared about Nana leaving for the whole summer. I will be the only one home during the day with all of the little ones. And even though Nana never yells at my father, I know that if something really, really bad happened upstairs I could run right down here and get her….

  Maybe now… I try to meet her eyes…. Maybe now since she’s leaving for the whole summer, maybe she would say something to him before she goes. My heart beats faster. Do it, A, now.

  “Nana?” I say.

  “Yes, darling?”

  Beep, beep, beep. The loud honking of a car horn shatters the quiet and makes both of us jump in our seats. My father’s home, impatiently honking in the driveway; he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Beep, beep, beep. I stand, my heart pounding. Any time he comes home, my heart pounds. One has to be on guard.

  “Oh, dear,” Nana says, looking at the clock.

  I shout for B, C, and D to hurry down from the swings, and I rush up the steps. “Time to go to the airport!” I wake up Eddie, quickly change his diaper, grab the sack I packed earlier with snacks and toys for the road, and lead them all down to the car.

  Nana squeezes in the backseat with us, her knuckles snow-white, clutching her purse in her lap. I can feel her fear.

  Callie sits on Beck’s lap. Dooley climbs on Nana’s. I’ve got baby E.

  Dooley offers Nana an animal cracker from his box. “It’s a lion, Nana,” he says.

  “Oh, no, dear, thank you,” she says.

  D’s hand plunges in the box and out again. “Here, Nana. How ’bout a camel?”

  Nana is lost in thought. I smile at Dooley. “I’ll take it, D. I love camels.”

  At the airport, we say good-bye on the sidewalk. Nana slips me a taped-up note. “Open it later,” she whispers with a wink. I stick it in my pocket.

  “And please remember to water and weed my flowers.”

  “Okay, Nana. Don’t worry. Good luck! Tell Aunt Bitsy we said hi. Send me a picture of the baby and San Francisco, too!”

  We hug quickly; Nana’s not big on hugging. I start to cry. It’s the first time Nana’s ever gone away from us. The first time someone in my family has taken off on an airplane. The first time I’ve ever been to an airport. Where are all these people going?

  Dad drives us to a parking area and turns off the ignition. We watch a few planes take off. Maybe one of them is Nana’s. Be strong, Nana. You’ll be fine. “I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again.” That Peter, Paul and Mary song I like flits through my mind. Oh, how I’d love to leave on a jet plane, fly off to California. To anywhere. With Maizey, of course, or maybe Mike Man …

  My father turns around and looks at me.

  It’s as if he heard my mind talking.

  “Ready, Freddies?” he says, meaning ready to go home.

  B, C, and D giggle. They all know Dad’s talking about Freddy Freihofer, that guy on TV who draws pictures for kids and then gives them Freihofer’s chocolate chip cookies.

  Driving home, Dad screeches on the brakes, flips on the blinking lights, and swerves our red convertible off to the side of the road so fast E nearly topples off my lap.

  This can only mean one thing.

  Such sights as youthful poets dream on summer eves …

  — MILTON

  Sit tight, I’ll be right back,” Dad tells us, all squeezed like sausage links in a frying pan in this hot, cramped backseat. It would be cooler if the top was down, but Mom made Dad promise he wouldn’t do that with all of us in the backseat. He drives so fast she’s afraid somebody will fall out.

  Beck and Calli
e giggle-tease each other and play the itsy-bitsy spider finger rhyme I taught them. Dooley eats a monkey cracker, then races his favorite red Matchbox car, vroom, vroom, vroom, up and down Eddie’s leg. Eddie giggles and tries to swipe the car.

  Me? I follow my father like a hawk. What does he see in those hubcaps?

  Sticking my head out the window, I watch him pick up the silver circle, look in it as if it’s a mirror, his face aglow like a kid on his birthday. He turns it around in his hands, studying it. My dad knows every make and model of every car there is.

  Our car was probably real sharp when he first got it, and Dad takes good care polishing it every Saturday for what seems like hours, but no amount of wax can polish away the rust.

  Dad wants to buy a new car; that’s his really big dream. I hear Mom and Dad arguing about it. Dad wants a Cadillac, the most expensive car of all, but Mom says we need a station wagon and besides, we need to save every penny for our house.

  I open the note from Nana. There are two quarters taped on the paper. “For a treat,” she wrote. Nana’s always giving me two quarters taped up tight like it’s gold.

  When we get home, Dad heads straight to the shed to hang up his new hubcap. He’s got a whole hubcap gallery, carefully arranged and polished and hung in neat rows. He’s prouder of those hubcaps than of me, I think.

  Mom is home from work, in the kitchen frying hamburgers for dinner. Her face is puffy and there are circles under her eyes. Dooley runs to clutch her legs.

  “You look exhausted, Mom,” I say.

  “I’m fine, honey.” She smiles at me. “Nana get off okay?”

  “Yep.” I race to call Maizey before Dad comes down from the shed. He doesn’t like us talking on the phone. “A customer might be trying to call me,” he says.

  Mrs. Hogan answers. “Oh, sorry, A, Maizey’s still at the pool with Sue-Ellen.”

  Sue-Ellen? My enemy? That snotty, awful girl who made fun of me in front of the whole class in fourth grade? What is Maizey doing with her?

  After dinner, Dad gargles with Listerine, slaps on some Old Spice Cologne, and puts on a new shirt and tie and his blue suit jacket. Then he takes one of the HELLO MY NAME IS labels from his desk and writes ROE.

  “I’ve got a meeting,” Dad says and leaves.

  It’s probably a sales meeting or that Toastmasters club he belongs to where people learn how to talk confidently in public and win prizes for giving speeches. I just hope he comes right home after instead of going to a bar.

  Mom washes the dishes and I dry, then I sweep the kitchen floor. Mom gives E his bath. Maizey still hasn’t called. I try her number again. This time Mr. Hogan answers. “No, dear,” he says, “she’s having dinner at some girl’s house.”

  Oh, no. That’s it. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this. When did Maizey start being so friendly with Sue-Ellen? And why didn’t Maizey call me? Is she mad at me? Did I do something wrong?

  Halfheartedly, I play Barrel of Monkeys with B and C until Mom comes to take them for their baths. I read Dooley his favorite book, about a steam shovel, twice, then I tuck him in and kiss his cheek, smiling at the red Matchbox car clutched in his little fist.

  Later I find Mom asleep at the kitchen table, her head resting on her arms folded atop her typewriter. Every night Mom tries to write another page of her book. My mom was going to go to college and be a famous writer but she got married instead. All day long she works in a “typing pool” — not a swimming pool, no, that would be fun — this is a bunch of ladies sitting in rows wearing headphones listening to words that lawyers have taped — and she types out nice, clean, perfectly spelled sentences.

  Mom has to type exactly what she hears, no trying to make things sound better. She is “paid to type, not to write.” Mom said her boss made that very clear. That’s too bad, really, a crying shame, because my mother is the most spectacular writer ever. Her poems are like paintings and she writes the most beautiful messages on my birthday cards and holiday cards that make me feel so good.

  My mother’s dream is to write a “great book.” I tell her I think it will be the Greatest American Novel Ever, the GANE, I call it. She laughs and shakes her head.

  Too bad I missed seeing my mother writing tonight. Sometimes when I hear those little typewriter keys clickety-clacking I’ll go to the kitchen for some water just so I can see the look on her face. That’s when my mom seems youngest, prettiest, happiest of all — when she’s writing — peaceful like the faces of the saint statues up at church.

  My mother is snoring. I tap her arm gently.

  “Oh, A, honey, thanks,” she says, yawning. “I’ve got to go to bed. You, too.”

  She puts her typewriter in its case and stuffs her stack of papers in the box, then puts them both back in the pantry above the canned goods shelf.

  My father still isn’t home. I try Maizey’s number again.

  “Oh, hi, A,” she says. Her voice sounds strange.

  “Where were you all day?” I say.

  “Doing stuff with Sue-Ellen.”

  “But …” I stop, waiting for her to say she’s sorry.

  “Listen, A, don’t be mad,” Maizey says. “You’re still my best friend, it’s just … I don’t want to spend my whole summer doing nothing again.”

  Nothing?

  When my head hits the pillow, I lay awake listening for my father. Finally, I hear the tires crunching on the gravel driveway down below, his footsteps across the back porch, the kitchen door unlocking, keys jangling down on the table, the cupboard opening, bottle clanking on the counter, the refrigerator opening, ice tinkling in a glass, liquor being poured. The sounds are like music, a tune I know by heart.

  I sit up in bed to listen better. I have become quite excellent at listening. My ears are like battleship receptors set to detect the slightest enemy sound.

  Mom comes out to the kitchen and they’re talking. “Good night, then,” she says. I hear the television turning on, Dad laughing about something. He goes to the kitchen for another drink. And then it’s just the TV for a long time. Soon he’ll fall asleep on the couch. “Good night, Flop,” I whisper to my stuffed rabbit with the missing ear.

  Some hours later, my bedroom door swings open with a bang against the wall. There is no lock on my and Callie’s door. We have to stuff a sock between the door and frame and pull the knob shut to keep it closed. I sit up startled, heart booming.

  My dad’s in the doorway, yelling at me. His HELLO MY NAME IS ROE sticker has slipped off onto his sleeve and is curling around the edges.

  “Get out of that bed. Get out in that kitchen and sweep that floor right now. It’s filthy. There’s crumbs all over.” He’s wobbling back and forth.

  “Sure, Dad, okay,” I say softly so as not to wake up Callie. She gets so scared when he acts like this. I move past my father, smelling his Old Spice Cologne and booze and I walk to the kitchen for the broom.

  There are no crumbs. I do not argue. I can handle this, easy as pie. All I need to do is sweep the floor, sweep the floor, simple as Cinderella.

  He’s drunk and mad and I won’t make him madder, simple as Cinderella.

  Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it:

  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

  — JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

  In the morning I wake up to the sound of my father throwing up in the bathroom, the room right next to mine and Callie’s.

  Good, serves you right for drinking so much, waking me up to sweep imaginary crumbs off the floor. Otherwise our house is quiet.

  It’s not “our house,” of course, it’s Nana’s — white with green trim, two floors and a basement, steep stairs down to the city sidewalk and four lanes of traffic, two zipping toward and two zipping off the bridge, which runs over the Hudson River.

  Our very short street begins at the bridge and ends on the corner where we live. There are four houses, but there might as well be none, since we never see our neighbors. The couple next door are always wo
rking, and they don’t have children; then there’s the family with the cluttered yard full of toys and appliances; then the house where I once played the Game of Life with a teenage granddaughter who was visiting from Ohio. Beyond that is a stone fence, about as tall as Beck, with a narrow opening I know I could squeeze through if I got the chance, leading down a grassy bank to the oil tankers and the railroad tracks that run beneath the bridge, alongside the river.

  I’m not allowed near the river. Nana says “hoboes and tramps” live there. I think she’s exaggerating.

  We’re crowded up here on the top floor of Nana’s house, but it’s the White House compared to the basement where Mom and Dad and I started out. At least now we have windows, eight of them. In the winter, when the leaves have fallen, from the window in the small yellow bedroom that Callie and I share, if I stand on my tippy-toes and crank my neck just so, I can see a sliver of the river.

  It looks so pretty, that river — so free and flowing — like I could sail away or skip away or skate away on it somewhere happily ever after.

  I would love to stick my fingers in that river, look in to see if there are fish, scoop some water up in my hand, just to see what it feels like.

  My alarm clock says seven A.M. The toilet flushes. The water runs. There’s the tap, tap, tap of his razor against the porcelain sink. My pet turtle, Frisky, is standing up in his pool house trying to peek over the side.

  My father is an auto-parts salesman, a really good one. He’s always getting trophies. He and Mom even won a trip to the Bahamas once. Dad likes to make sales calls when his customers are just opening their gas stations and repair shops for the day. He brings them donuts or warm Danish pastries from Nelligan’s bakery. I used to go with him sometimes, not anymore though.

  Hopefully Dad will make good commissions this month, enough to finally put the down payment on our house. He keeps telling Mom “we’re close, we’re close,” and she keeps saying “please, Roe, soon; somebody else is going to make an offer.”