by Sonja Yoerg
Her aunt put her fingers to her lips. “Her wantingness. Well, maybe.”
“What is it?”
“It’s when you want something you can’t have. Or shouldn’t have.”
Her father threw up his hands. “For the love of God!”
A thousand questions zinged through Carole’s mind, but before she could settle on the right one, her aunt spoke again. “That’s enough for now. These are the cards we’ve been dealt, and there’s a baby that needs us.”
There was nothing Carole could do except nod.
Her mother had told her a while ago that Aunt Bettina had wanted children, but they’d never appeared. Now it seemed like she’d forgotten she ever wanted any. She wasn’t mean to Carole or the baby, but she didn’t dote on them, either. The nurse tended to the baby. When Carole was not in school, she rocked and sang to her fussy sister, modeling herself after the nurse, and was occasionally rewarded with a toothless smile.
Carole’s longing for her mother seemed larger than she was, an illness she felt everywhere inside her, and it played with her mind. She’d believed she spotted her mother walking down the sidewalk, or across a field near the school, and a fresh sadness filled her when she realized she was mistaken. She’d had her mother every day of her life, had relied without knowing it on the unspoken and unquestionable bond between them, and now she was gone.
Carole poured her longing into her sister as if it were milk. It was the only thing to do. Carole saw her father at her aunt’s house, mostly, because being at their house without her mother was strange; sadness hung in the rooms like a mist. Carole loved her father, but he had edges now, and moods. The first few times she saw him, he asked her to come home to stay. She had refused—she wouldn’t leave the baby—and that left a giant gap between them. Carole felt torn in two, wanting to be with her father and make him happy like she’d always been able to do, and wanting to keep her promise to her mother to be a good big sister. She couldn’t do both, and the baby was little and needed her, so Carole stayed at Aunt Bettina’s, wishing her mother would come home, wishing her father would start loving the baby, and knowing deep in her heart things would never be the same again. At night, she sometimes dreamt of being with her parents at the beach house, with the baby, too. She awoke, tasted salt on her lips, and felt more alone than ever when she discovered it was only tears.
Two weeks after her mother had been taken to Underhill, her father came to Aunt Bettina and Uncle Tyler’s for dinner. While they ate, the adults talked about boring things, mostly a man named Hitler. The maid brought dessert, then cleared the dishes, and her aunt and uncle left to have coffee in the sitting room. Her father stayed where he was like he was frozen.
Carole crossed her arms and pulled at the skin on her elbows, pinching and twisting it until it hurt. One elbow was scabbed from doing this before. She picked at the scab until she felt blood ooze. That gave her the nerve to ask the question she’d been holding on to.
“Papa?”
He folded his napkin, as if he hadn’t heard.
“Papa?”
He looked at her, surprised to see her there. “Yes. What is it?”
“Why don’t you like the baby?”
He blinked hard. The granddaughter clock in the corner ticked and ticked. Her father’s eyes glassed over and tears slid down his cheeks.
“Papa?” Carole had never seen him cry.
He stared at the table and shook his head over and over.
Carole didn’t ask again, but she thought it over long and hard. The best she could figure was that her father, and her aunts, blamed the baby for making her mother tired and sick and full of wantingness. It seemed wrong to blame a baby, but Carole knew it was impossible to change adults’ minds. The baby would have to do without her father, just as she was doing without her mother. Both Carole and her sister would have to do without their parents, who were tangled up in a terrible web made of invisible silk.
Carole did her very best. She told her sister again and again how much their mother loved her. Saying it reminded her that her mother loved her, too. But with each day that passed, it felt more like a reminder and less like a fact.
• • •
One afternoon in May, a month after Carole’s mother had gone, Rosemarie Bouchard, Carole’s grandmother, appeared at Aunt Bettina’s house. School had let out for the summer, and Carole was settling the baby into the pram in a patch of sun near the front porch. The baby was crying as usual, but Carole was used to it and hummed over the top of the noise as if crying were another kind of singing.
Grandma Rosemarie swung open the low iron gate at the end of the walk and came up to them. Her dress, once red but now a dusky pink, was tied at the waist with a man’s leather belt. She carried a large quilted satchel and her graying hair was gathered in a long, loose braid. The braid, and of course Grandma’s face, too, brought to mind her mother so vividly that Carole had to blink away the rush of tears. The last time she’d seen her grandmother was in the winter when she’d come asking after Carole’s mother. So much had happened since then.
“Hi, Grandma.”
“Hello, my dear girl.” She gave Carole a hug, then held her by the shoulders. “You’re skinny as a switch.” Her eyes were somewhere between gray and green, like her mother’s, but didn’t hold the same light. “I hope your aunt won’t mind I stopped by.”
“She won’t.” As soon as she said it, she realized it might not be true. She wasn’t exactly sure how her aunt felt about her mother’s family, but if she had to guess, Aunt Bettina didn’t approve of them any more than the rest of her father’s family did. She was just more careful about what she said. Uncertain what to say, Carole bent over the pram and fussed with the baby.
Grandma said, “I’ll only stay a moment.” She came beside Carole and peered into the pram. She reached in and laid her hand on the baby’s chest, exactly as Carole had done the first time she’d seen her. “Doing battle with the world already, are you, wee one?” The baby stopped crying, opened her eyes wide, then set off howling again. Grandma’s mouth was a thin line.
“Mama’s at Underhill,” Carole said before she knew she would.
“I know. I’m sorry for you.” She placed her palm on Carole’s cheek.
An ache filled Carole’s chest. “Have you seen her?”
“We tried. Went to see her doctor in town, but he said he couldn’t tell us anything.”
“Why not?”
“Rules, he said.”
“But I want to go to see her. Can you take me?”
She frowned. “Tried that, too. Your uncle David borrowed a car and we drove all the way out there. ‘No unapproved visitors,’ they told us.”
“How long will she be there? No one will tell me.”
Grandma shook her head slowly. “I haven’t any idea.” She touched Carole’s cheek again. “I’d best be going.” She leaned over the pram and kissed the baby’s forehead.
Carole had so many more questions—about her mother, about her father, about Underhill—but her grandmother didn’t seem to have any answers.
Grandma Rosemarie said, “Your father’s family will take care of you. I know they will. But if you need us, you know where we are.”
Carole pictured the shabby houseboat, the narrow berths, the rats scurrying along the docks, but she didn’t want to be impolite. “Thank you, Grandma.”
Her grandmother started to leave, then paused and pointed at the pram. “You ought to give her a name.”
“Me?”
“Who else, my dear?”
Carole watched Grandma Rosemarie amble down the sidewalk, round the corner and disappear onto Orchard Terrace. A wide swath of longing for her mother opened inside her, a longing so familiar and yet powerful enough to make her unsteady on her feet. The baby wailed—Carole had ignored her too long.
She picked her up,
dabbed her face with a corner of the blanket and held her to her shoulder. Her sister’s wriggling warmth calmed her. “What should we call you, then? Nothing too plain. You’re too precious to be a plain Jane.”
• • •
Four years later, when Carole was fourteen, her father announced he was joining the navy. She knew he’d registered for the draft two years before—all the men had—but she never imagined he would actually go to war.
She and her father were walking home from a Fourth of July celebration at Aunt Regina’s house. It was a small, quiet party, because of the war. Aunt Bettina had left early to put Janine to bed. The air was moist and still as they ducked under the leaf-heavy branches along the street.
Carole’s step slowed. “Do you have to go, Papa?”
“Yes. It’s my patriotic duty.”
Carole reached for her elbows, running her fingers along the raised scars. She pinched each spot hard, digging into the soft, fresh skin around the scars, then let her arms fall to her sides. The sweet release from the pain flowed into her belly.
No one as old as her father had to fight in the war, not unless being a soldier was their job. She knew that from school and from conversations behind closed doors. She’d overheard Aunt Bettina pleading with her father to reconsider, reminding him of “his responsibilities.”
He’d laughed bitterly. “I might as well go where I can do some good.”
He was leaving in a matter of days, and she wanted him to change his mind or at least to say he was coming back, to promise. But she wasn’t a silly girl. She understood you didn’t leave for war and make promises, not ones you intended to keep. She wanted him to say it anyway, to try to make up in some way for leaving her and her sister.
The day her father left for basic training, her aunt called her from her room to say good-bye. Carole hesitated on the stair landing.
He stood at the door holding his hat, a brown leather bag at his side. His expression was stony, and she saw behind it that he wasn’t leaving because he needed to go, but because he couldn’t stay.
She ran down the stairs and into his embrace, as she had done countless times in her childhood.
“Be good, my darling Carole.”
She watched him go without a word.
• • •
Less than a year after Carole’s father was sent to fight the Japanese, Aunt Bettina and Uncle Tyler decided to move to Buffalo to bring his metal engineering business closer to the manufacturing centers. Carole and her sister had no choice but to live with Aunt Regina, a situation that pleased no one. The woman would hardly look at five-year-old Janine, and repeatedly threatened to throw her out on the streets or into the harbor. The girl’s willfulness did nothing to help. Regina’s husband, Harold, a taciturn property broker, never countermanded his wife, especially where children were concerned, as she had raised four fine boys without his interference.
After the girls moved in, Carole got up the nerve to confront her aunt about her attitude toward Janine.
“Why are you so harsh with her?”
Her aunt’s eyebrows shot up. “Why am I so harsh? A better question is why we consented to take her in at all. And if you wish to stay here, you’d better not bring it up again!”
With no levers at her disposal, Carole protected her sister’s feelings as best she could.
• • •
The week before Christmas, Carole lied about visiting a friend and hired a driver to take her to Underhill. The absence of both her father and Aunt Bettina had ignited Carole’s desire to reconnect with her mother, whom she hadn’t seen in five years, but whom she still hoped would recover and be restored to her. Aunt Regina refused to take her to the hospital, so she decided to act on her own.
The snow-covered grounds and brick buildings were imposing and much larger than she’d expected. As she entered the main building, her excitement and anxiety turned to shock. In her imagination, Underhill was a restful haven, filled with soft furnishings, colorful paintings and vases of fresh flowers, more of a hotel than this harsh, gray prison. Carole’s mouth felt lined with tissue as she approached the main desk. A matronly nurse in a white uniform greeted her.
“I’d like to see Solange Gifford, please? I’m Carole. Gifford.”
“One moment.”
The nurse consulted a piece of paper attached to the desk, operated the switchboard and spoke briefly. A few minutes later, a slight man in a short white coat came through a side door.
“I’m Dr. Bishop.” He shook her hand and ushered her into a small consulting room.
Carole took a chair and introduced herself. “I’m here to see my mother.”
“I’m afraid Mrs. Gifford cannot see anyone at this time. She is asleep.”
Asleep. It sounded hopeful, and normal. “I can wait.”
He smiled. “We are in the midst of administering a deep-sleep treatment in combination with twice weekly electroconvulsive shock therapy. She will be asleep—that is, under deep sedation—for a month, possibly longer.”
The blood rushed from Carole’s head and she gripped the arms of the chair. “For a month?”
“Or longer.”
“That can’t possibly be good for her. It’s not normal.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows, indignant. “I assure you the treatment is perfectly safe. All the best hospitals are using it.” He leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head. “I recently took over for Dr. Schulkyl, her former physician. He’d given your mother day-long colonics for quite some time. That was his pet treatment. A bit—how shall I say?—European for my tastes.”
“Colonics? To treat what?”
“Dr. Schulkyl prescribed it for most illnesses. Your mother’s current diagnosis is depression.”
“What was it before?”
He shrugged. “She hasn’t been in my care long. Hysteria, most likely.”
Hysteria. It brought to mind her father saying her mother had been out of control. Carole pressed on. “And you can treat depression with sleep? And shock?”
“I wouldn’t prescribe it otherwise.”
“Of course. I only meant—” The doctor peered at her with interest, and Carole shifted in her chair. The room was close and too warm. She thought of her mother here, in this bleak place, and guilt overwhelmed her. She should have come a long time ago. She should have tried harder. Her chest tightened. Tears welled and she hid her face.
Dr. Bishop said, “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “It’s only that I haven’t seen her for so long.”
“I understand. It’s a very difficult situation.”
Carole searched through her jumbled thoughts. “How long will it take, the cure?”
“‘Cure’ is a hopeful word, Miss Gifford. Your mother has been ill for five years. It’s wise to be realistic.”
Carole had never been a dreamer, but realistic is exactly what she became, not only about her mother’s prognosis, but generally. She accepted that her sister would always be headstrong and self-centered. She was realistic about her father as well, admitting to herself that his decision to go to war at age thirty-nine had less to do with patriotism than it did with despair, and that she would probably never understand the cause of it. Carole was also realistic about hope, which she could hold in abundance and yet never have enough.
But realism, as helpful as it was, was insufficient. Like ration cards, realism never went far enough. In the places where her logical mind, stretched to breaking, failed to reach, Carole was exposed and utterly abandoned. At times she could not stop herself from fixating on the monstrous unfairness of it, and the exposed places went from raw to red-hot. Rage flamed inside her.
23
Carole
Carole arranged the spaghetti straps across her collarbones and pivoted to view the back of the dress in the mirror. Tangerine
lace over peach taffeta wasn’t her first choice, but Aunt Regina was in charge—as usual. The color was cheery for November, though, and the enormous bow at the back made her smile.
Her aunt had proposed the party a month ago. “We didn’t celebrate your sixteenth properly because of the war”—stressing the word to reinforce her disapproval of the personal inconvenience it had caused—“but now that it’s over, your eighteenth can make up for it, within the bounds of decorum.” Carole understood her aunt’s elliptical reference. The war wasn’t quite over for them because her father had been missing in action since February. She hadn’t realized how much his sporadic letters had meant until they stopped arriving. There was very little news of him in those pages, but his questions and speculations about life at home helped maintain the rickety idea that she had a father who cared about her.
Carole was wondering which of her shoes would suit the dress when Janine burst into the room. “Wow. You look like an exploded orange.” She began to giggle.
Carole smiled at her. “I’ll have you know exploded fruit is all the rage this season.”
Janine stood with her feet apart, arms akimbo. “Where’s my dress?”
“I have it right here.” Carole dipped into the closet and retrieved the dress she’d pieced together from others she’d outgrown. It was white taffeta with a pink lace overlay, similar in style to her birthday dress. She displayed it for Janine.
Her sister’s mouth dropped open. She didn’t like being caught off guard and quickly pursed her lips. “I guess it’ll have to do.”
Carole wasn’t fooled. Janine loved it. “Want to try it on?”
She helped her into the dress and spun her to face the mirror. “Look how beautiful you are!”
Janine raised her arms in a ballerina pose and tiptoed in a circle.
Aunt Regina strode into the room without knocking. “Carole, we’ll be late for the hairdressers—” She stopped short and raised her eyebrows at Janine. “Where did that dress come from?”