Concrete Angel

by Patricia Abbott

  “Sounds great,” my grandmother said, fanning her face. “Wish I’d been there. I could’ve stood up for you at least. At the ceremony, I mean.”

  Ignoring her sarcasm, Mother continued, “Turned out we didn’t have the proper licenses to get married in Florida. We didn’t understand the legalities—the fact we needed a specific state license. We were back here before we knew what hit us.”

  “And there’s been no time to rectify this state in the last year, Evelyn. You’ve been so occupied with household chores, and Mickey with his fish, you couldn’t find the time? You’re truly a fool if you believe it was accidental. That he didn’t know exactly what he was doing. I don’t think you were together long enough to qualify as a common-law wife. You’ve been had. ”

  “He meant to marry me. I’m sure of it.”

  Mother sounded quite credible, and I believed her. Believed she thought they’d get married at some point. I’m sure her perfect behavior over the last year was partly to seal the deal. Her interest in my being the ideal daughter was meant to help lure him in. He’d be unlikely to marry her if she brought a troublesome daughter into the mix. We were being tested, undergoing a probationary period. And we’d failed. Hurray!

  “So this is why you got pregnant? Thinking he’d marry you if you had a kid? Do you understand he’s Catholic? The church still sees him as married to—what was her name? Ravine?”

  “Racine.” Mother shook her head. “No, no, the pregnancy just happened. I knew he wouldn’t go for an abortion. Catholic, you know. It’d be a real mess. Is a real mess,” she amended. “There was no good way out of it. I turned it over in my head a million times.”

  “Oh, I know about those Catholics.” Grandmother shook her head. “Not that I’d condone an abortion either, of course. Poor little Russell. Can you imagine not having him with us? Poor little tyke.”

  My mind went back to the night Mother’d tried to abort him with herbal preparations, and how I aided and abetted her.

  “My church is against murder,” Grandmother continued. “Have you seen the field of crosses? Brings cars to a halt on Old York Road.”

  “Your church is against everything, Mother, and look, call the baby Ryan from now on, please. If Mickey’s out of the picture, I’m not going to be stuck with a name like Russell for the rest of his life.” She paused for a minute. “You know from the moment Mickey chose his name I knew he was leaving. I never heard him say a single good word about his old man. And then to insist we name our little Ryan after him?”

  Unbelievably, Mother already had her figure back and was wearing tight black pants. Her boobs were big now too; she was already hot stuff again and would probably have a new man in days if the Mickey thing had truly ended. She might outdo Racine in that department as long as she breastfed. Actually, she rarely breastfed; she mostly pumped milk into bottles and handed them to me. It worked out well for all three of us.

  “Is there anything that doesn’t ‘just happen’ to you, Eve? Do you ever have a conscious plan for your life? Goals you set. Do you ever think to pray on it?”

  “Goals? Well, now you sound like one of my shrinks.”

  Grandmother walked over to the baby and shook her head. “There’s three of you now. You’ll have to get a job this time. Hank’s child support money won’t keep you all. And I’ve done my time and then some.”

  Mother was too defeated to respond. It was true, I thought. She didn’t have a plan. Or a goal beyond getting her hands on more junk. She equated success with the number of storage unit keys on her ring.

  I looked around the room we’d just cleaned. The broken glass from the fish tanks had been swept away, but a pale salmon-colored fish of some sort was stuck to the top of the table, moving, in what was probably its death throes, in a puddle of sorts. I picked him up by his tail, depositing him in the trashcan. I wasn’t heartless, but nothing remained available for a fish requiring salt water and extravagant care. The saltwater from its former tank had flowed out the door or down the drain. We’d be gone soon ourselves. The only question was where.

  Perfect behavior from Mother and me probably wouldn’t have made a difference. Had I contributed to the demise of the union of Mickey and my mother? I’d yet to give up on the notion all bad things emanated from me, but there were plenty of candidates should I look.

  My grandmother had told Mother, with vehemence, we’d have to make it on our own this time. She’d said it several times, in fact, and was unlikely to change her mind and yank her ironing board out of the spare bedroom again. There were three of us now too. Ryan could only sleep in a bassinet for so long.

  If Grandmother’s house was no longer an alternative, she’d still probably agree to help care for Ryan should my mother land a job. What kind of job could Mother get? She was getting too old for some of the ones in her past. Spritzing perfume? Did women in their forties still get hired to spritz? And she certainly was not going to be invited to stand behind the counter at the stationery store in Hatboro. Was there anything else she could do? Legal things, I mean.

  The carpet beneath my feet was sodden with water, and I wondered if the floor would give way. Ten large fish tanks in a twelve-by-eighteen foot room—all deep-sixed by my mother—made for quite a tidal wave. The amount of water still in the room was a serious issue. Armed with mops, we attempted to push it out the door and onto the lawn but much of it lay trapped in the carpet fiber, puddling on furniture, cascading down the basement steps until Mother slammed the door.

  Mother’s romance novels floated by until the weight of the water finally sunk them. Her collection of Cosmo magazines had turned the water blue and red. Pieces of seaweed from the tanks embroidered most of the furniture and thousands of colored pebbles clustered in spots where the soaked rug had created boulders and dams. The smell of fish food, fish waste, and wet sand hung in the air. I wore knee-boots, but water still sloshed inside them and there was nasty stuff between my toes. Luckily, Ryan’s crib, one floor up, had saved him from all of this. He slept on, oblivious to the family he’d been born into. He’d find out soon enough.

  “I’d cry if I wasn’t so damned tired,” Mother said, standing, hands on hips, on a carpet soggy enough to suggest the room was undersea. Although she’d wrought the scene we looked on, she seemed as surprised as me.

  “I think we have enough water,” I told her.

  We exchanged a tired smile. There was no point in berating her for her performance now. The anger had built over a period of days, finally erupting a few hours earlier. I felt like destroying one or two of Mickey’s things myself and wondered if he’d removed his clothing from the wooden valet upstairs. Had he gathered his precious accouterments. Looking around, I pocketed the silver deep sea diver, perched now on the fake Eames chair, desperate for my own revenge. Maybe it could be hocked.

  The kitchen floor, another spectacle, was ankle deep in dirt. Mother had swung at the sill full of African violets once she was done with the fish. Mary Theresa was in there now sweeping the remnants into a dustpan.

  “Maybe my mother can save a few,” she said, a chewed-up pink-striped plant in her hand. Water and dirt had mingled, making mud everywhere. I’d called my step-sister, not knowing how to deal with the plants or if any could be saved. She was one of the few people I could call on for help. Why did we have such a paucity of friends? When I had the time to think about it the answer was clear—we were a freak show and witnesses were unwise.

  The only thing I knew about the plants was that Mary Theresa and her mother put a high premium on them, had a house full of them, implying some sort of expertise.

  “My mother didn’t deserve this—this wanton destruction of her gifts. She had nothing to do with the trouble between Eve and Mickey.” Mary Theresa nodded toward the plants. “She was trying to make your house a home.” Looking mournfully at the African violet in her hand, she said, “Poor innocent things.”

  I thought she was talking about us for a moment and started to nod. But it was the
plants she cooed to. She swept around the room with despair, stooping to fetch an intact root ball.

  “I thought about bringing my mother with me today, but seeing this, I’m glad I didn’t. She’d have been heartbroken. I’d no idea it was this bad.” Mary Theresa flung out a desperate arm. “You know, you could’ve invited her over for coffee and dessert before this happened. She’d have enjoyed seeing her plants in Daddy’s new house.” I rolled my eyes, but Mary Theresa was going too strong to catch it. “She’d nothing against Eve, you know. She was happy Daddy found someone to take care of him.”

  I found this information surprising and, although I didn’t say anything, I thought it strange the death of dozens of fish held no trauma for my stepsister, but those African violets brought her to tears. It was Mother’s trip with Mick to Florida that spawned his interest in fish. Maybe she saw the fish the same way she saw Russell/Ryan. Maybe both were too much a part of Mickey’s new life—a life only including her peripherally.

  Having only seen Racine once and from afar, I wished we’d invited her over too. I never did get a good idea of why Mickey’d left her, didn’t discover what sexual problem she might’ve suffered.

  “I imagine they’re shell-shocked,” I said, looking at the plants she’d recovered. “I’ve heard plants can sense things.”

  “Mother swears to it.” The white blouse of her uniform was streaked brown. I didn’t have the heart to tell her, but she probably knew. “She can feel vibrations in a plant’s roots when she takes a cutting.”

  Did I sound this obsequious when I spoke about my mother? Of course, I tried not to mention her outside the family. Who’d believe it beyond the few who already knew?

  “Look, why don’t you go on home, Mary Theresa. We can take care of the rest of it. Those plants probably need to be replanted quickly.”

  All of her grousing and fretting was getting on my nerves. Normally a competent girl, she was undone by the actions of her stepmother, a situation I was not unaccustomed to. But still, suck it up, I wanted to say. Who asked you to take the fall for murder? How have you suffered? You don’t know what a life not lived is like. Or did she?

  She’d nearly fainted when she first walked through the door, probably thinking some sort of rogue storm had hit us.

  “Did Daddy do this?” she asked after a minute.

  I shook my head, wondering momentarily if he’d done something similar in the past. But it was probably natural to assume actions like this were the work of a man. Mother could surprise anyone.

  “Eve?” she asked unbelievingly.

  I nodded. Her mouth formed the word, “why” but no sound came out. I couldn’t have told her the exact precipitating event anyway. It was mostly over by the time I’d arrived. Mickey was gone, and my mother was sitting on the steps, exhausted. “I think I’m having chest pains.”

  “It’s no wonder.”

  “Could you give me a hand,” she said, nodding toward a mop. We worked silently and with little effect until I called Mary Theresa in for the second shift.

  My earlier attempt to lure Grandmother over hadn’t worked. “Don’t you think I’m a little old for all the bending and lifting?” she asked when I described the battle scene. “Maybe Hank will help out again.” She snickered unbecomingly.

  Looking grimmer, Mary Theresa said now, “I guess this is the end of us being sisters.” She searched for her jacket. “Hey, Christine, I always meant to tell you to call me Terry,” she said, finding her coat under a layer of newspapers and shaking it out. “Everyone but Daddy does. I never got around to telling you.”

  Terry. Suddenly I remembered her lifting the hair of her neck back in the hospital. Maybe Terry, away from her father, was a different creature.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “We weren’t really, were we? Sisters, I mean.”

  And I felt some miasma of regret. We’d never once gone anywhere together, not even to buy an ice cream cone or to shop at the mall. I wondered why. We might’ve worked together to make this family work. But then she summed it up—perhaps having the necessary distance to recognize it.

  “It’s hard to have friends—with the way it is. The way they are.”

  I nodded. So Racine was like Eve in some ways. “My parents—they can suck the life out of me,” she said, sounding bitter. With Mickey gone, she could let her hair down—or in her case, put it up.

  I wished it wasn’t too late to ask “Terry” if she could tell me how the women were alike. Had she confessed to some terrible crime to save Racine years ago too? Had she hurried home from school each day to see what trouble her mother had gotten herself into? I think Racine’s behavior was probably of a more normal ilk. But there was no sense rubbing it in.

  Mary Theresa closed the front door quietly, the plastic bag of damaged plants in her hand. I wondered if she’d always known Eve and Mickey weren’t married or if the information was recent to her too. I’d bet on the former and wished she hadn’t been too polite to tell me. It would’ve saved me a lot of anxiety.

  I never saw Mary Theresa DiSantis again. I always imagined she’d gone into a convent but probably Racine couldn’t have gotten along without her. Certainly I couldn’t get away from Mother by pleading a calling from God.

  Mother, Ryan, and I rented a small apartment near Grandmother’s house on Cooke Street, and Mother took her most humiliating job yet—a chambermaid in a downtown hotel.

  “Eve, you know this is not the right job for you given your predilections,” Daddy told her, shaking his head. “I can’t think of a worse fit, in fact.”

  Unlike Mickey, Daddy took to Ryan immediately, confirming my idea he’d always wanted a son, a future cadet at West Point, a junior partner at the firm.

  Or maybe he did have his own son in his arms that day, although it was hard to believe my parents could put their bickering aside long enough to make another baby. Still Mother’s behavior at the time of her pregnancy had been strange.

  Daddy began to pace, jiggling Ryan as he walked. I wondered if he held me so tenderly. He wasn’t the father my mother described Herbert Hobart as being, but he wasn’t John Walton either. How easy it was to settle in with the The Waltons, the antidote to what I found in my life. Only the grandmother on the show reminded me of mine.

  Grandmother and I had fretted about Mother’s job choice from the moment she came home, paperwork in hand. “Don’t look at me like that,” she told both of us. “Do you want a steady paycheck or not?”

  She’d applied for jobs all over the city. The Philadelphia House, a downtown hotel catering mostly to medium-income tourists rather than flush businessmen, was the only place to respond. I supposed the turnover in hotel maids was significant, large enough for the hotel to take a chance on Mother’s scant job history. It was still a time when a short job history was not unusual for a woman.

  Dad was able to bury most of her peccadilloes, including her stays at mental institutions, her nights in the slammer, her run-ins with the post office and various other officials. He composed a sterling recommendation for her to brandish, especially glowing about her time spent at the stationary store in Hatboro, her business acumen, her creativity. Someone else signed it. He wanted her to find work badly. The fear his child support might now extend to Ryan for the next eighteen years was probably gnawing at him. Eve, at work, might do less harm than Eve, at home. Maybe. This was probably the same thinking that led to the job in the stationary store earlier.

  Now he’d heard what his letter wrought, I expected him to comment on Mother’s ineptitude at housework or the on impropriety of the mother of his child cleaning hotel rooms, but it was another aspect worrying him.

  “You’re not going to be able to resist taking things you see in those rooms, Eve. It’s like an alcoholic working in a bar.” He paced the floor smoothly now, careful not to jolt Ryan awake. “There must be some other line of work that’d suit you better.” He paused, clearly at a loss for what it might be. We all were.

  “I’m waiting f
or your ideas on the subject,” she said, tapping her foot. “Maybe you’d like to send me back to school so I could train for something.”

  I could see she was already imagining her new co-ed wardrobe.

  “She hasn’t taken anything from a store in years,” I said.

  Perhaps her time with Mickey had been a sort of penance period. Mother flashed me a look it was impossible to decipher-part grateful but partly annoyed her child had to stick up for her—maybe annoyed too that I knew as much as I did about her past peccadilloes. I was sitting in judgment somehow. She could never get it into her head that the murder of Jerry Santini and its cover-up laid her open to my probe. She was indebted if only she could see it.

  But instead she was unashamed, contemptuous of Daddy’s remarks.

  “Nobody’s made me a better offer, Hank. And I haven’t taken anything from a store, much less a hotel room, in years. That part of my life is long past. And now, with little Ryan here,” she gestured toward the crib, not noticing Daddy held him, “I’ve an incentive to leave it all behind me. Us,” she corrected herself. She glanced fondly toward the crib again, still not seeing it was empty. “I’m looking forward to supporting my little family.”

  When Mother spoke like that, with an overblown vocabulary and too much virtue in her voice, it made me worry. Did she already have some plan in the works? Had she pocketed an item from the human resources office of the hotel on her way out the door? Whether I liked him or not, Mickey had kept her in check, confining her to the low-stakes return business.

  Daddy shook his head, handing me my brother. “I don’t believe you can do it. I’d like to think so, but I don’t.” He paced the floor. “It’s some sort of sickness you have. I used to think it was about the thrill involved in taking stuff, but now I’m not so sure. I read an article somewhere about people who hoard. Maybe you’ve got such a disorder: hoarding. Still have the storage unit? Or is it more than one unit by now?” He fired this question at my grandmother who’d been silent. “Is your basement still a flea market, Adele?”