Labor Day

by Joyce Maynard

  The morning after we brought Frank home from Pricemart—the Friday before the start of Labor Day weekend—I woke up forgetting he was there. I just knew something was different at our house.

  The tip-off came when I smelled coffee. This was not how my mother did it. She was never out of bed this early. There was music coming from the radio. Classical.

  Something was baking. Biscuits, it turned out.

  It only took a few seconds before I got it. Unlike other times I’d woken up and then remembered some piece of news, there was no bad feeling to this one. I remembered the silk scarves now, the woman on TV saying the word murderer. Still, the feeling I had, when I thought of Frank, contained no fear. More like anticipation and excitement. It was as if I’d been in the middle of a book that I had to put down when I got too tired to keep reading, or a video put on pause. I wanted to pick back up with the story and find out what happened to the characters, except that the characters were us.

  Coming down the stairs, I considered the possibility that my mother would be where she’d been when I left her the night before, tied in the chair, with her own silk scarves. But the chair was empty. The person at the stove was Frank. He had evidently made some kind of splint for his ankle, and he was still limping, but he was getting around.

  I would have gone out and got us eggs, he said, but it might not be a great idea stepping into the 7-Eleven at this moment. He nodded in the direction of the newspaper, which he must have picked up from the curb where it had been tossed sometime before the sun came up. Above the fold, next to a headline about the heat wave they were predicting for the holiday weekend, a photograph of a face both familiar and unrecognizable—his. Only the man in the photograph had a hard, mean look and a series of numbers plastered across his chest, where the one in our kitchen had tucked a dishrag into his waistband and wore a potholder.

  Eggs would really hit the spot with these biscuits, he said.

  We don’t go in much around here for perishable groceries, I told him. Our diet mostly featured canned goods and frozen foods.

  You’ve got enough room in back for chickens, he said. Three or four nice little Rhode Island Reds, you could fry yourself up a plate of eggs every morning. A fresh-laid egg is a whole other thing from what you get in those cardboard boxes from the store. Golden yolks. Stand right up off the plate like a pair of tits on a Las Vegas showgirl. Companionable little buggers too, chickens.

  He grew up on a farm, he said. He could set us up. Show me the ropes. I shot a look at the newspaper while he was talking, but I thought if I looked too interested in the story of Frank’s escape and the search now on to find him, it might hurt his feelings.

  Where’s my mom? I asked him. For just a second there, it occurred to me to be worried. Frank hadn’t seemed like the type to do anything bad to us, but now a picture flashed through my brain of her in the basement, chained to the oil burner, maybe, with a silk scarf over her mouth instead of wrapped softly around her wrists. In the trunk of our car. In the river.

  She needed her sleep, he said. We stayed up real late, talking. But it might be nice if you took her this. Does she like coffee in bed?

  How would I know? The question had never come up.

  Or maybe we’ll just let her catch a few extra winks, he said.

  He was taking the biscuits out of the oven now, laying them on a plate, with a cloth napkin on top to keep them warm. Here’s a tip for you, Henry, he said. Never slice a biscuit with a knife. You want to pull them apart, so you get all the textures. What you’re aiming for is peaks and valleys. Picture a freshly rototilled garden, where the soil is a little uneven. More places for the butter to soak in.

  We don’t usually keep butter around, I said. We use margarine.

  Now that’s what I call a crime, Frank said.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee. The newspaper was sitting right there, but neither of us reached for it.

  I don’t blame you for wondering, he told me. Any sensible person would. All I want to tell you is, there’s more to this story than you’ll see in that paper there.

  I had no answer to that one, so I poured myself a glass of orange juice.

  You got any plans for the big weekend? he asked. Cookouts, ball games, and whatnot? Looks like it’s going to be a scorcher. Good time to head to the beach.

  Nothing special, I said. My dad takes me out for dinner Saturdays, that’s about it.

  What’s his story anyway? Frank asked. How does a fellow let a woman like your mother get away?

  He got together with his secretary, I said. Even at thirteen, I was aware of the sound of the words as I spoke them, the awful ordinariness of them. It was like admitting you wet your pants, or shoplifted. Not even an interesting story. Just a pathetic one.

  No offense intended here, son. But if that’s the case, good riddance. A person like that doesn’t deserve a woman like her.

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME since I’d seen my mother looking the way she did when she came into the room that morning. Her hair, that she usually pulled back in a rubber band, was hanging down on her shoulders, and it seemed fluffier than normal, as if she’d slept on a cloud. She had on a blouse I didn’t think she’d ever worn before—white, with little flowers all over it, the top button left open. Not so much revealed that she looked cheap—I was still thinking about that line he’d uttered, about the Las Vegas showgirl—but friendly, inviting. She had put on earrings, and lipstick, and when she got closer I could tell she was wearing perfume. Just the faintest whiff of something lemony.

  He asked her how she’d slept. Like a baby, she said, then laughed.

  I don’t know why they say that, actually, she said. Considering how often babies get up in the night.

  She asked if he had any children.

  One, he said. He’d be nineteen now if he was living. Francis Junior.

  Some people, like my stepmother, Marjorie, would have made some kind of sympathetic remark here, about how sorry they were. They would have asked what happened, or if they were religious, said something about how Frank’s son was no doubt in a better place now anyway. Or told about someone they knew who had lost a kid. I had been noticing lately, how often people did that: take whatever anybody else mentioned in the way of a problem, and turn it around to them, and their own sorry situation.

  My mother, hearing about Frank’s son who died, said nothing, but the look on her face changed in such a way that no more was needed for the moment. It was a moment like the one the night before, when he was feeding her the chili, and holding the wineglass up for her to sip from, and I got the feeling they had gotten past normal words and moved on to a whole other language. He knew she felt bad for him. She knew he understood this. Same as when she sat down in the chair at the place he’d set for her—her same chair from the night before—she held her wrists out for him to put the scarves back on. They had an understanding now, the two of them. What I did mostly was watch.

  I don’t think we’ll be needing these, Adele, he said, folding the scarves carefully and setting them on top of a stack of canned tuna. Like how the pope might handle some kind of special garment popes wear, when he puts them away.

  I don’t plan on using these again, Frank said. But if the day ever comes when you have to say I tied you up, you’ll pass the lie detector.

  I wanted to ask When was that day? Who would be giving her that test? Where would he be, when she took it? What would they ask me?

  My mother nodded. Who taught you to make biscuits like this? she said.

  My grandma, he said. After my parents died, she was the one that raised me.

  There’d been a car wreck, he told us. It happened when he was seven. Late at night, driving back from a visit with the relatives in Pennsylvania, they hit a patch of ice. The Chevy slammed into a tree. His mother and his father in the front seat dead—though his mother had lived long enough that he could remember the sound of her, groaning, while the men worked to get her out, the body of his father, dead across the
front seat of the car, his head in her lap. Frank, in the back—his only injury a broken wrist—had seen it all. There had been a baby sister too. In those days, people just held their babies on their laps when they rode in cars. She was dead also.

  We sat there for a minute, saying nothing. Maybe my mother was just reaching for her napkin, but her hand grazed Frank’s and lingered there a second.

  These are the best biscuits I ever had, my mother told him. Maybe you’ll tell me the secret.

  I’d probably tell you everything, Adele, he said. If I get to stick around long enough.

  HE ASKED IF I PLAYED BASEBALL. What he asked, actually, was which position I favored. The idea of none, unfathomable.

  I played one season of Little League but I was terrible, I said. I didn’t catch one ball the whole time I played left field. They were all glad when I quit.

  I bet your problem was not having someone to coach you right, he said. Your mother looks to be a woman of many talents, but I’m guessing baseball may not be one of them.

  My dad’s big on sports, I said. He plays on a softball team.

  Precisely, Frank said. Softball. What do you expect?

  His new wife’s kid is a pitcher, I told him. My dad works with him all the time. He used to take me out on the field with them to practice with a bucket of balls, but I was hopeless.

  I think we should throw a ball around a little today, if you can fit that in your schedule, Henry, he said. You’ve got a glove?

  Frank didn’t have one for himself, but that wasn’t a problem. He’d noticed there was an open area, out behind where our property ended, where a person could work on his fielding.

  I thought you just had your appendix out, I said. I thought you were holding us prisoners. What happens if one of us runs away when you aren’t looking?

  Then you get your real punishment, Frank said. You have to go rejoin society.

  What we did then: he scoped out our yard, to figure out where the chicken coop could go. Cold weather was coming, but with enough straw, chickens wintered over just fine. All they needed was a warm body to huddle up to in the night, same as the rest of us.

  Frank checked out our woodpile, and when he heard the cord had just been delivered, he told my mother the guy who sold it had been shorting her.

  I’d split this wood for you, but I might bust my stitches trying, he said. I bet it gets cozy here in wintertime, when the snow piles up, and you get a fire going in the woodstove.

  He cleaned the filters on our furnace and changed the oil in the car. He replaced a fuse for the blinkers.

  How long since the last time you rotated your tires, Adele? he asked.

  She just looked at him.

  While we’re at it, he said, I’m betting nobody ever showed you how to fix a flat, am I right about that, Henry? One thing I’ll tell you now, you don’t want to wait till it happens, to learn. Particularly not if you’ve got some young lady in the seat beside you that you’re wanting to impress. You’ll be driving before you know it. That, and other things.

  He did laundry. He ironed. When he washed a floor, he also waxed it. He looked through our pantry, in search of something he could make us for lunch. Soup. He’d start out with Campbell’s but augment. Too bad we didn’t have a patch of fresh basil growing. Next year maybe. Meanwhile, there was always dried oregano.

  Then he took me out in the yard, with the new baseball he’d picked up the day before over at Pricemart.

  For starters, he said, I’m just going to take a look at how you place your fingers on the stitching.

  He bent over me, his long fingers over mine. This is your first problem, he said. Your grip.

  We won’t actually throw today, he said, after he’d shown me the good way, his way. His scar was still a little tender for that, he said. But anyway, it was a good idea for me to just get used to this feeling first. Finger the ball. Toss it lightly in the air when I walked around.

  Come nighttime, he said, I’d like you to put your glove under your pillow. Breathe in the smell of the leather. Keeps you in the zone.

  We were back in the kitchen now. Like some kind of pioneer woman, or a wife from an old western movie, my mother was mending Frank’s pants where they’d ripped. She wanted to wash them too but then he’d have nothing to wear. He sat wrapped in a towel while she sewed, dabbing off the worst of the blood with a wet rag first.

  You bite your lip when you sew, he said. Anyone ever tell you that?

  Not that, or so much else he noticed about her that day. Her neck, the knuckles on her hands—no jewelry, he observed, which was a pity, she had such pretty hands. There was a scar on her knee that I’d never noticed.

  How’d you get this, honey? he asked her, like it was no big deal calling her that, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  A “Stars and Stripes Forever” routine at my dancing school recital, she told him. I tapped myself right off the stage.

  He kissed it.

  SOMETIME IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, after his pants were mended, after the soup, and the card game, and the trick he taught me—making a toothpick come out your nose—there was a knock on the door. Frank had been around long enough now, almost a day, to know this was unusual. I saw the vein in his neck flicker. My mother’s eyes moved to the window: no sign of a car. Whoever it was came on foot.

  You go, Henry, she said. Just let them know I’m occupied.

  It was Mr. Jervis from down the street, with a bucket of late-season peaches. We’ve got so many of these, we don’t know what to do with them all, he said. I thought your mother might find a use for them.

  I took the bucket. He remained on the stoop, as if there was more to say.

  Big weekend coming, he said. They say it’ll get up to ninety-five by tomorrow.

  Yup, I said. I saw that in the paper.

  We’ve got the grandkids coming over Sunday. You’re welcome to come by, jump in the pool, if you’re around. Cool off.

  They had an aboveground pool in their backyard, which sat empty most of the summer, except when the Jervises’ son’s family came to visit from Connecticut. A girl about my age who used an inhaler and liked to pretend she was an android, and a boy around three years old, who probably peed in the pool. I wasn’t tempted.

  I told him thanks.

  Your mother home? he asked. It was a needless question, not only because our car was out front. Everyone on our street had to know my mother hardly ever went anywhere.

  She’s occupied.

  You might want to let her know, in case she hasn’t heard. There’s some guy on the loose from Stinchfield, the state pen. They’re saying on the radio he was last spotted out at the shopping plaza, coming into town. No reports of any hitchhikers or stolen cars, which means he could still be in the area. Wife’s got her panties in a twist, convinced he’s headed straight for our house.

  My mother’s sewing, I said.

  I just thought I’d let your mother know. Her being on her own. You have any problems, give a jingle.

  CHAPTER 7

  AFTER MR. JERVIS LEFT, I went back to the kitchen. I had only been gone from the room four minutes, maybe, but even though it was my house, where I’d lived four years almost, and we’d just met Frank yesterday, I had the feeling, coming back in the room, that I was breaking something up. Like a time I walked in my father’s bedroom over at our old house, and Marjorie was sitting on the bed with the baby, and her shirt was open and one of her breasts was showing, and another time when they let school out early because someone did an experiment wrong and the building filled up with sulfur smell, and there was a record playing so loud my mother didn’t hear the door open and slam behind me, and from the kitchen, where I came in, I could see her in the living room, dancing. Not a regular dance with steps, or the kind she was always trying to teach me. That day she was twirling around the room like she was one of those dervishes I saw once on a National Geographic special. That’s how the two of them looked, when I came back in with the peaches. Li
ke they were the only two people in the world.

  They had more than they could use, I said. The Jervises.

  The other part, what Mr. Jervis said about the prison escape, I didn’t mention.

  I set the fruit on the table. Frank was down on his knees on the kitchen floor, fixing a pipe under the sink. My mother sat next to him, holding a wrench. They were looking at each other.

  I picked a peach out of the bucket and washed it. My mother didn’t believe in germs but I did. Germs are something they made up to distract people from what they should really be worried about, she said. Germs are natural. It’s the things people do you have to worry about.

  Good peach, I said.

  Frank and my mother were still sitting there, holding the tools, not moving. Too bad they’re all so ripe, she said. We’ll never get through them all.

  Here’s what’s going to happen, said Frank. His voice, which was always low and deep, suddenly seemed to drop another half octave now, so it was like Johnny Cash was in our kitchen.

  We have a serious issue on our hands, he said.

  I was still thinking about what Mr. Jervis said. People out looking for the escaped prisoner. From the newspaper, I knew they’d got roadblocks on the highway. Helicopters over by the dam, where someone thought they spotted a man matching the description, only now they were saying he had a scar over one eye and possibly a tattoo on his neck of a knife or a Harley, something along those lines. Now was the moment Frank was going to take out a gun, or a knife maybe, and wrap his lean, muscled arm around my mother’s neck, that he’d just finished admiring, and press the knife against her skin, and guide us out to the car.