I grabbed the compliment like a gold miner. (“Pure selfishness,” Polly said. “A nice job and money and a boyfriend and she gets her hair done by Mr. Michael every week. My most selfish friend.”) Look how Flo did on her own! I could grow up and not have children except for a girl like me to grace the weekend.
“Stop wiggling your feet, Mols,” Ted said. I had my feet tucked in the small of his back as we watched The Ed Sullivan Show with Gail and Polly in our new house. We’d hightailed to Tonawanda after Gram and Grandpa retired to their new apartment. “Mols, ya gotta stop moving your feet back there!” I wiggled from happiness at the thought of Monday—no gym! The brand new school in the brand new development didn’t have its gymnasium finished, so I fled to art class in the cafeteria. Ted removed my stockinged feet and examined them during the commercial. “I like them socks, kneesocks,” he said.
“You do-oo?” I was so shocked I said do in two syllables.
“They look nice on girls.”
“On me?” I said me-ee.
“Yeah. Now stop wigglin’ ’em.”
Polly passed Ted the potato chips. They had their house, white with pink trim, and a naked three-foot maple tree (a “starter” Polly called it) in front. Gailie and I each had a room, and fifth grade stretched out like a cat before me purring, “art, not gym…art, not gym.”
“Yes, this is where you eat lunch,” Miss Cramer said, “but when you have art here, it’s not a cafeteria. It’s a sanctuary.”
Twice weekly I entered the sanctuary and drew the still life in chalk, a green wine bottle and a garnet jug. Next to the jug was a white bowl with a blue Star of David in it—Miss Cramer’s religion. “This is the sanctuary. Art is holy,” she pronounced. It had certainly saved me from gym. Polly didn’t believe in holy (“They trucked me to church three times a week! Wednesday choir and twice on Sunday!”), but I went to mass with Flo and watched her cross herself and genuflect. I wore a hanky hair-pinned above my ponytail for a hat, and so did Flo. Were we holy? While she floated up to communion, I stayed in the pew.
“We’re getting fat,” Ted said to Polly when the June Taylor Dancers came on, “fat and forty!”
“Not me!” Gail chimed. She was a leggy thing who sprang into cartwheels during the number. “I’ll never be fat!” Gail got better grades in our new school.
Polly passed Ted the fudge.
Much earlier that day Gail and I had eaten some of that fudge for breakfast while they slept in. Our kitchen, on Sunday morning with just my sister and me and Mitzi our dog, felt holy. For half an hour, it was a sanctuary. I drew on a piece of oaktag. The art class had to make the school calendar and my month was March. Miss Cramer had put the squares for the days in the bottom half and I filled the top with three green earlobes that were supposed to be a shamrock. Disgusted, I slapped the oaktag down on the other side and the stupid thing vanished. Then I had to sketch clusters of shamrocks around the margins to hide the butter stains from the fudge. A big blank space squatted in the middle. I had to fill it with something.
A poem could go there like in the Golden Treasury of poems at La Grange where each verse was framed in green ivy. Miss Cramer had said “Still life is poetry.” I lettered lightly, erasably, MARCH IS SUCH A PRETTY MONTH then used the edge of the Courier Express Sunday Magazine to guide the next line, FILLED WITH LOTS AND LOTS OF SNOW. Didn’t sound right. I stared so hard at the oaktag, my eyes had to wander. Through the window was next door: the Marshes. Just one letter away from the month of my poem.
Ruffled curtains, butter-yellow, framed their window like a sleeping cap. The gray formica table formed a horizon below the sill. You could lay a drawing pad on that table without fear of fudge crumbs. Mrs. Marsh brooked no crumbs. I found that out when I came to collect for the United Way and she was sponging off the table. Mr. Marsh smiled at her and at me, then absentmindedly put his arm around her. He was like a priest and she was like the nun, except they were married, as I thought priests and nuns should be. Amidst Revere Ware with copper bottoms and a clock that ticked majestically was the peace of the world that passeth understanding. Mr. Marsh got out his wallet and gave me a dollar for the United Way. Most people gave me a quarter.
(“Hefty contribution,” Polly said. “Well, they can afford it. It’s just the two of them—no kids.”)
It dawned on me to make the snow line last, then rhyme something else with it earlier. I lettered, FILLED WITH LOTS AND LOTS OF SNOW lower down, then erased it above and wrote instead: HAS THIRTY-ONE DAYS, YOU KNOW. All I had to do was think of the third line. It had to rhyme with “month.”
“Vonth,” Gail said.
“Come on! It has to be a real word.”
“Squonth,” she said.
“Stop it.”
“Dunth. Punth. Sumpth. Womth!”
Warmth.
WE WAIT FOR WARMTH, I wrote. Too short. I added IN MARCH. Then it didn’t rhyme at all.
“Shit.”
“Don’t swear, Molly.” Gail imitated Gram’s snooty voice. “It doesn’t become you!”
“It’s the shamrocks that matter anyway,” I said stoutly. But I knew I’d gone “the extra mile” Miss Cramer talked about. Even if mine wasn’t too hot, nobody else would have a poem.
Sunday night with Ed Sullivan, contemplating my calendar page, Ted in a good mood, and all of us watching, nearly approached being a sanctuary—except you couldn’t draw a still life of it like you could in art class. There was nothing to make a still life of. Unlike other people’s houses, we had no milk glass vases or little china Bo Peeps. Our surfaces, except for the potato chips in a metal bowl, were bare. Ted broke anything you put out for decoration. Not at first, but eventually he’d get mad and throw the porcelain frog, and then it would be gone.
After Ed Sullivan it was a drama with a miserly old grandfather.
“Heh!” Ted laughed. “Heh!”
“What’s so funny, Dad?”
“That guy’s like my grandfather.”
“You mean Grandpa?”
“Jesus Christ, Molly, Papa’s your grandfather and my father. You got no common sense.”
“Oh.”
Ted laughed again when the mean grandfather wouldn’t give money for the crippled boy.
“Why is that funny?” I asked again.
“Because he’s like old Granpop Peacock! The old geezer would heat pennies on the stove when I was a little boy, see?”
“On a burner? Heat pennies?” I was incredulous.
“Not on a goddamned burner! It wasn’t an electric stove, it was a wood stove, for Chrissake!”
My mother interrupted. “Ted, for crying out loud, why would she know about wood stoves?”
“Yeah! Why would I?” I said defiantly behind the shield of my ally.
“Hey, Daddy,” Gail said, “look at my socks!” She’d gone and put on kneesocks during the station identification. We all watched the miser and the crippled boy again.
“Heh!”
“So what about the pennies, Dad?”
“What pennies?”
“The ones on the wood stove!” I wiggled my feet in exasperation.
“It’s nine-thirty. You guys have to be in bed!”
“But the program’s only half over!” Gail whined.
“That don’t matter,” Ted said.
“Get your jammies on,” my mother said.
“I won’t.” I shoved my feet directly into his sacrum. “Not till you say about the pennies!”
“Molly, that hurt! Don’t be rough!”
“The pennies!”
We’d lost track of the program, but Ted watched the screen as he spoke. “Well, he heated them up on top of the wood stove till they were really hot, see? Red hot. And then he said I could have them if I could grab them. And it was the Depression, Mols, and a penny bought the world. I was putting rubber bands around my shoes to keep the soles on, so I really wanted those pennies.”
“Where was Gram?” I asked.
“She was afrai
d of him,” Ted wheezed. Polly got up and turned off the TV to force us into action. My father still watched the empty screen.
“Wait, Ma! What about Papa, Daddy, didn’t he get you the pennies?”
“No sir! Papa’s a coward.”
I curled my feet under me and sat with the knowledge that they wouldn’t help him. Gail was sloshing around the bathroom sink and Polly was getting the wash ready for Monday morning.
“Did you get any pennies, Dad?” I asked quietly.
“Heh. He stopped me from poking some off the stove with a stick,” Ted said stonily.
“So, did you pick some up?”
“Hell no, Molly, they were hot! I woulda burnt my hands to a crisp.”
If I were my dad I’d have gotten those pennies, somehow.
“So I won’t be here when you get home from school, girls,” Polly explained at the kitchen table.
“Mitzi!” Gail shouted, and I swooped the dog’s rear end onto the paper. Mitzi’s habit was to get her two front legs on the newsprint while the pooping part hung off.
“Listen to me, girls, here are your keys.”
“Our keys?” Gail and I said simultaneously.
“Because I won’t be here when you get home from school,” she repeated.
Gail was nine and I was twelve. It was the beginning of seventh grade. “Can’t somebody be here, like Gram?” I pushed the keys back toward my mother.
“This is the new routine,” she said firmly, pushing one key back toward me and handing the other to my sister. “Now, Gail, you’ll get back first, around three-thirty, and Molly comes in around four. Your father will get here around four-thirty. He’s working eight to four now. So you’ll just have that hour alone before your dad comes home.”
Daddy was going to take care of us? Cook dinner and everything? “But when do you get home, Mom?” I asked plaintively.
“Later, lots later, stupid,” Gail said.
“So Daddy’s going to cook dinner?”
My sister howled with laughter.
“Don’t be such a hyena, poophead,” I said. At the word poophead the parakeet squawked. Her name was Poopsie, after her first act, shitting on my father’s brushcut. Poopsie and our lizard were going to be our only pets. Mitzi couldn’t seem to be trained to poop outside, and when she went inside, she couldn’t seem to get it right. Mitzi squirmed in Gail’s lap.
“When’s she going to the pound?” Gail asked numbly.
“Friday,” Polly said.
“But when do you get home tomorrow?”
“After your father comes to relieve me at the store.” Poopsie flew to my finger. We were friends, even though she was Gail’s bird. And Mitzi was Gail’s. She got them on her two last birthdays. Poopsie flew on top of Mitzi’s head and the dog sat quietly, as if an angel had perched on her eyebrows.
“You mean Daddy’s gonna leave us home?”
“Just for a few minutes. Till he comes to the store and I drive home.”
Polly had bought a little grocery store. It was supposed to be just like La Grange, only it wasn’t wood. It was cement blocks and the other half was a liquor store owned by other people. “They make lots of money in that liquor store!” Polly said. Now she was going to be just like her father. Only Polly and Ted had to borrow from the credit union to get started. We didn’t have any money. “If you weren’t such a boozehound,” Polly said. Ted was going to be good. He was going to come home from eight hours of work at the electric company and he was going to take care of us and he was going to work at the store, so Polly could come home.
“But Daddy can’t cook!” I said in exasperation.
“He’s not going to cook, poopface,” Gail said, “Mommy told me.”
“You be quiet, Gailie,” Polly said. “Now, Mols, you’re getting all grown up, and you can take on some grown-up responsibilities.”
Gail threw Mitzi to the floor and screamed, “You’re cooking, Molly! It’s you! You have to feed us!”
I looked at my mother in disbelief.
“I’ll have everything all set up for you, Mols,” Polly said seriously. She’d had her hair done at Mr. Michael. She looked at us so directly that each of her eyes was like a tower beam.
“Do I have to?” I said.
“Yes, you do.”
“I don’t know what to do!”
“I’ll tell you.”
“Do I have to every day?”
“Every day after school,” she said solemnly. Poopsie flew on top of her perfect hair. She lifted her off and flung out her hand and the bird flew back to its cage.
“You mean you’re never coming home after school? We come home alone every day? Forever?” My legs twisted around the chair legs like ivy suckers.
“We’re changing the routine, girls.”
“ ‘We’re changing the routine, girls.’ ” Gail repeated in repeat talk.
“Now stop that repeating everything I say,” Polly said.
“ ‘Now stop that repeating everything I say,’ ” Gail said.
“I mean it,” Polly said.
“ ‘I mean it,’ ” Gail and I both said.
“Oh, you girls!” Polly said, putting on a blue smock that said “Peacock’s Superette” in red script on the front.
“ ‘Oh, you girls!’ ” we said.
“Girls! Girls!” Poopsie said.
“Starting tomorrow, so take your keys.” We began to fight over our key chains. Mine was green and Gail’s was pink. “I want the green one,” she whined.
“Take it,” I said suddenly. After all, I was grown up now.
There was more to it than cooking dinner. There was ironing a shirt for Ted to wear to the store. There was Saturday housework, vacuuming up the bird feathers and feeding the pet chameleon I’d won at the Erie County Fair. Polly’d let me take it home, and now it lived on the living room curtains. I had to get out a piece of paper and put a mealy worm on it. Then I’d cover my face while the chameleon chased it. Through my fingers I’d watch the lizard break the back of the mealy bug and eat it. There was also getting Gail to do her homework. And doing mine. Now I had a job (seventh grade) and a family.
“Sit down and do it, Gail.” I pinned her to her desk chair. “Sit down and do it for”—I looked at my watch. I wore a watch now—“for twenty minutes. Then dinner’ll be ready.”
“But what if Daddy doesn’t come home in twenty minutes?”
“We’ll eat by ourselves.”
“Hey, cool!”
She was nine years old. How did she learn to say Hey, cool?
“Come on, get started so I can go out and make the salad dressing.” I’d already chopped up the iceberg lettuce. The hamburgers with onions were sizzling in the iron pan. Potatoes bubbled in the aluminum pot. All I had to do was smush some ketchup and relish in the mayonnaise.
Gail’s homework was to glue color-coded bird stickers onto black-and-white outlines of bird shapes from blue jays to wrens. “Do you know how to do it?”
“Of course I know!” she said, grabbing the stickers. “Here!” She slapped the baby chickadee on the big fat father robin.
“Wrong!” I snapped, but she looked so downhearted that I took it back. “It’s hard,” I lied, “isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, soft as a bird.
The burgers burned in the pan and the potato water boiled out, but the rich smell of overcooking hadn’t got to Gail’s bedroom yet, so I had time to stare dumbfounded at what she couldn’t do in fourth grade. I could’ve done that in second grade! Was she stupid? She was so smart at figuring out Polly and Ted. She knew Polly was going to make me be her mother before I did. She knew all about which teachers were single and married and she got all her friends into a baton-twirling group and I never could have done that. She couldn’t be stupid. Maybe she was average.
“Well,” I said, equally softly, “look at the size more than the color first. Don’t pay any attention to the color.” The color coding was a decoy in the instructions. �
��Match the big ones with the big ones, then the mediums and the smalls.” I smelled the potatoes burning. “Bring it all out to the kitchen!” I screamed, and ran to hack the burgers from the pan and gouge the potatoes out for mashing. I threw the pans into the sink and turned to Gail. “Great!” I shouted. (She’d put the cardinal on the cardinal.) My father burst in, asking, “What’s for dinner?” and handing me his lunchpail. I put it on the counter to wash later and started the salad dressing. Out the window was the Marshes’ sanctuary kitchen. Here we had homework, lunchpails, and hamburgers the size of fifty-cent pieces.
“Jesus, what’s that smell!” Ted declared. “You’re not gettin’ good grades as a housewife, Molsie. Them hamburgs look like dried shit!” He sat down. “Well, I’ll eat ’em. But Christ Almighty you gotta watch that friggin’ frying pan, Mols. You gotta grow up!”
“Sorry, Dad,” I said, and meant it. Maybe Gail should always do her homework in the kitchen so I could teach her and cook, too. And then after I gave them supper, I’d iron Ted’s shirt. Oh no, he’d need it right away. I should’ve ironed it just after school, but I forgot.
“Oh, Dad, I forgot your shirt! I’ll do it right after supper!”
“Jesus Christ Almighty, Molly, you’re makin’ me late for the store!”
The phone rang. It was my math partner from school. I hadn’t looked at the math. “Call you later,” I mumbled, bolted my hamburger, and ran down to the cellar to iron. The shirt was a mass of wrinkles. I’d forgotten to remove it from the dryer.
“Hey, Mollleee!” Gail yelled from the top of the stairs. “Can you check my birds?”
—
Every day we came home after school to the smell of linoleum, the empty kitchen of the empty house that waited to be brought to life. It is mothers who bring houses to life, and ours was gone, though she’d left the table wiped and the counters clean. She’d left Pepsi and potato chips, chopped meat, stewed tomatoes, and lettuce. But it was all refrigerated, and none of it retained its smell in the cold. The house itself was cold of Polly’s scent. She had left too many hours before. And I did not smell like a mother.
Paradise, Piece by Piece Page 3