“But if ever I was to admit that my magic has left me,” the seamstress continued, trailing off into a mumble.
Mellie frowned. “I still say she looks good,” she said. Beside her, Tracy gave an exasperated sigh. The little girl picked up Veronica’s pocket book, and began to rifle through it.
“What are you looking for, Trace?” Veronica asked.
“Nothing,” said Tracy, continuing to dig. “Didn’t you bring the Game Boy?”
“Auntie Ashley’s old thing?”
“Yeah,” said Tracy. “I was gonna play Tetris.”
“We’re almost done,” said Jenna, smiling a weak smile at Tracy. “I promise.”
Tracy pulled an envelope from the pocket book. “What’s this?” she said.
“Put that back, please,” said Veronica.
Tracy squinted, examining the return address. “This is from daddy’s lawyer, isn’t it?”
Veronica stepped down from the pedestal, and snatched the envelope away from her daughter.
“So,” said Tracy, her face clenched into a frown. “That’s it then.”
“We’ve talked to you about this,” said Veronica.
“You ruin everything,” said Tracy, as she ran for the door, as she stormed out into the tempest.
* * *
Hail fell from the sky, each stone ripping into the gooseflesh of Veronica’s arms like a spitball sent from the mouth of Heaven. She stomped through the muck on the side of the road, calling out her daughter’s name, imagining the worst. Cars blazed by, hydroplaning here and there, kicking up a spray of cold, dirty water as they passed. Veronica stumbled in their wake, caught herself, and then continued on. Tracy would not have been so lucky. She was too small, too frail. In her mind’s eye, Veronica saw a tiny body flying up over the hood of an SUV.
“Tracy!” cried Veronica, picking up the pace. “TRAY-CEEEEEE!!!”
She shook her head to try and get the image out, tried to imagine Jenna and Tracy sitting at the snack bar of the Roller Kingdom again, the two of them splitting a plate of fries. It was an image that Mellie had painted for her while they worked to free Veronica from the shackles of her gown. And it was an image that made sense, she had to admit. It was right down the road, and Tracy did love it there, and, you know, why wasn’t it possible that Jenna had found her before tragedy struck? Jenna had begun her pursuit before Veronica could even ask her for the favor. They were safe. That’s all there was to it. And yet, Veronica couldn’t help but sigh as she raced down the hill and toward the roller rink. She couldn’t help but pause a moment before she opened up the door. Even if Tracy was alive, damage had still been done. The rift between them seemed more like a chasm now than ever before: deep, jagged, unbridgeable. Like the gash her brother had torn in the fabric of their family all those years ago, Veronica’s attempt to be true had brought about a great schism of its own.
She opened the door and stepped backwards in time, back into the place that she herself had fled to so often, so long ago. The hall was dark and cavernous, the rink itself a halo of neon light at the center of the windowless purgatory. There were a dozen patrons, or thereabouts, and most of them were crowded around the outdated arcade games, the dusty old snack bar. Just like old times, there were only a handful of people on skates, and two of them, it turned out, were the two that Veronica was looking for. She leaned against the side of an out-of-order Pac-Man machine and watched them from the shadows.
Tracy whipped around the track as if trying to outrun the truth, or, as if, like Superman flying round and round the planet, she might be able to turn back time if she skated fast enough, hard enough. Veronica watched her daughter, and saw herself. In Tracy’s eyes, there was such determination, such stubbornness, and such frustration. Tracy knew that this wasn’t going to do any good, but she was going to do it anyway.
Jenna rolled off of the rink, and into the shadows. She came to a stop and bent over, hands on her knees, panting.
Veronica sighed. “She hasn’t stopped since she got the skates on, huh?”
Jenna shook her head.
Veronica took a look at the skates. “We’re the same size, right?”
Jenna nodded, rolling toward the nearest bench.
“She’ll get over it,” said Jenna, as she handed over the skates. “I know I did.”
“How old were you?”
“Five, when my dad left. It was sad, but once I realized that there wasn’t going to be any more yelling…” Jenna trailed off, managed a weak grin.
Veronica smiled, lacing the skates onto her own feet.
Jenna laughed. “Of course, with my mom’s lousy taste in men, I’ve been through it three times now. So maybe I’m not the best person to ask.”
Veronica stood, arms held wide at her sides, trying to keep herself upright. Tracy whipped by, a scowl on her face.
“Did you hate your mom?” asked Veronica.
Jenna sat silent for a second, and then she sighed heavy and hard. “I hated myself,” she said.
That was worse, Veronica decided, so much worse. As she made her way out onto the rink, she couldn’t shake Jenna’s words from her mind. What if she, Veronica, had already done that kind of damage to Tracy? That would be unforgivable for certain, and maybe even unfixable to boot, and she didn’t think she could live with herself if it were true.
Her little firecracker whipped up next to her, fuse burnt down almost to nothing. There was a little explosion in Tracy’s high voice as she said, “How come you can’t skate? Didn’t you, like, live here when you were a kid?”
“I came on metal night,” said Veronica. “Nobody ever skated. We sat in the booths, argued about the black album, head-banged to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.”
“Who’s we?” asked Tracy. “You and daddy?”
“This was before I met him.”
Tracy huffed and skated away. Veronica lowered her arms and stumbled forward. Before I met him—those were the magic words, and Veronica couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to utter them. “Tracy!” she shouted, pushing forward hard, tripping, falling onto her face. It took her breath away, the impact of her body hitting the floor, the sight of her daughter continuing on as if nothing had happened.
They were in the backseat of Jenna’s beat-up Chevette before Tracy uttered another sound, and, once again, it was nothing more than an exasperated sigh. Up front, Jenna and Mellie stayed quiet. And though she knew that now was neither the time nor the place, she couldn’t help herself.
“What do you want me to say?” she said.
“I want you to explain something to me,” said Tracy.
Veronica glanced over at her daughter, surprised at how much venom an eight-year-old could muster, wondering if she herself had ever sounded so mean when she was so young.
Tracy frowned, gulped something down, and then spoke. “If you and daddy were a mistake, then what does that make me?”
Veronica reached for Tracy’s hand, but the little girl pulled it away.
“That’s what I thought,” said Tracy, turning away.
Veronica felt her eyelids grow heavy and hot. How could she make her see? How could she get her to understand?
* * *
When they got home, the Runt wasn’t the only thing that was missing. Their apartment was empty, barren. All that was left was Tracy’s bed, a single down comforter, and three boxes labeled ‘Veronica’s shit.’ Tracy didn’t say a word. She didn’t throw Veronica so much as one nasty look. The little girl simply went to her room, sat on her bare mattress, and stared at the place on her wall where a poster of Sarah McLachlan had once hung.
Veronica read the note he’d left on the refrigerator without really reading it. She picked up her cell phone, ordered Chinese, and went back to her daughter’s room to see how the kid was doing.
Tracy had opened one of the boxes. A photo album lay open on her lap.
“He brought most of your stuff to his new place.”
Tracy nodded, flipped another page.<
br />
“He says the landlord expects us out by the end of the week.”
Tracy looked up, her eyes a little swollen, a little red. “Where are we going to go?”
Veronica sat on the floor, leaned back against the wall. “Down the Cape, I think. The family’s old summer house. Your grandfather will say no, but I think my Uncle Albert will overrule him.”
Tracy gave her a little smile, then cast her gaze downward, her hand running over a crinkly page of the old photo album, smoothing it out.
“I’m sorry,” said Veronica.
Tracy shrugged. “Whatever.”
The doorbell rang and Veronica leapt up to answer it. By the time she returned with the enormous brown paper bag, Tracy had set the photo album aside and was examining a single snapshot. Veronica set their food down and sat down next to Tracy on the bed. She looked at the photo, a photo of Veronica and Desiree in their high school graduation gowns. Vern and Des were all smiles in the photo, the only evidence of their turmoil the glistening diamond on Veronica’s ring-finger and the pregnant belly beginning to make itself known.
“Is it true that you’re in love with someone else?” asked Tracy.
“What?” said Veronica.
“Daddy says that the reason you two don’t get along is because you’re in love with someone else. Is that true?”
Veronica bit down on her lower lip. She sat still and silent for a moment, but then, finally, she nodded her head.
“For how long?” asked Tracy.
“A long time,” said Veronica.
Tracy ran a thumb over the photograph, left it hanging above Desiree’s face. “Why didn’t you marry that person then, instead of Daddy?”
“Because I’m a coward,” said Veronica. And for a second, she thought of taking it back, she thought of revising her answer. But instead, because she knew it was true, and because she felt a weight lifting from her shoulders just by being honest, she said it again. “Because I’m a coward.”
Tracy tossed the picture back into the open box, then slid to the floor. “Let’s eat,” she said. “Before it gets cold.”
10
You’ll Not Be Buried in My Tomb
Veronica crouched at the foot of the Christmas tree, reaching under its lowest branches for the red metal stand that held the dying fir upright. Pine needles hailed down on her bare arm as she fumbled around for the first screw, her hand scraping against the trunk and slipping into the stand’s soupy reservoir before she finally found it. She turned her face away from the shaking tree, squeezing her eyelids closed and biting softly on her extended tongue, and then, finally, she began to turn the screw.
Her father’s heavy boots clunked along the living room floor. She felt the tree steady when the clunking came to a halt just to her left. And then, she heard his voice admonishing her. “You can’t do that alone,” he said. “The tree’s going to fall on top of you. You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I was just getting it started.”
“And besides,” he said. “You’re a guest here now. It’s not your responsibility to clean up after your old man anymore.”
Veronica sighed. She moved to the next screw.
“How is Tim?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Robert grunted. “You can’t even speak to the father of your child?” His voice trailed off. Then he grunted again. “What about when you drop Tracy off with him on the weekends? Like yesterday. Did you talk when you dropped her off then?”
Veronica shuffled herself around to the other side of the tree to work on the final screw.
“You don’t even talk then?”
“We talk,” she said. “But it’s not exactly what you’d call a conversation.”
Robert sighed. “Where did I go wrong in raising my kids? I mean, the two of you, you just… you seem determined to fuck up every good thing that’s thrown at you.”
“Done,” said Veronica, ignoring him. “You can pull it out now.”
“Oh,” he said. “Okay. You just hold the stand then.”
Robert groaned as he hoisted the tree out of the stand, and Veronica could hear him panting as he leaned it up against the wall.
“You want help carrying it out?” she asked him.
He looked up at her, then back down at the floor, and then he nodded.
They set the tree down on the curb, in front of his three overflowing garbage barrels, and beside the heap of flattened boxes they’d stuffed into his blue recycling bin. Robert put his arm around her, the first time he’d done that in years. And Veronica didn’t like it. His glove, sticky with pine sap, clung to the shoulder of her pea coat. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “I do wish you’d brought Tim, but—”
Veronica groaned. “I’m divorcing him, Dad. Please just get over it.”
Her father wrenched his arm away from her and tended to a barrel in danger of tipping. “I like Tim,” he said. “He makes an honest living. And he dotes on Tracy like any good father should.”
“He’s not her father,” she said. “Michael is closer to a father than the Runt has ever—”
Robert stalked back toward the house. “I hate it when you call him that,” he said. “He is your husband and the father of your—”
“He’s neither!” she said, trudging after him through the snow. “Not anymore.”
“And Michael? He’s your cousin, not your… not a… and…” Robert trailed off, stopped to center himself, then found his heading again. “Michael is too young to be a father figure. And, besides, he’s getting married, starting a family of his own with…” He trailed off again, his brow furrowing as he searched for her name. “That girl from Maine,” he said.
“Jenna.”
“Jenna,” said Robert. “Sure. So, you can’t count on Michael. And Veronica, you don’t need to,” he said, taking hold of her shoulders.
“Let go,” she told him, trying to shrug him off.
“You’ve got Tim,” he said as he let go of her, catching her drift a little later than she’d have liked. “You tell me: what’s wrong with Tim.”
“I’m not in love with him, Dad.”
He stomped off again, reached down into the high snowbank as he passed it, balled up a clump of the stuff, and hurled it at the garage.
Veronica rolled her eyes and hurried after him.
The roar of the vacuum cleaner greeted her as she came in from the cold. Her mother was in her purple bathrobe, maneuvering the old Dirt Devil around the fireplace, getting it into every corner and crevice. The bathrobe was a plush, furry thing that hadn’t fit her in five years. Lydia’s body, which had never been what one would call trim or fit, at least not in Veronica’s lifetime, had not withered, as Robert’s had, as much as it had expanded. Like the overfull bag of the vacuum cleaner that she handled so deftly, it truly seemed as if she were about to burst.
From the kitchen came Robert’s voice. “Coffee?” he shouted.
“You should buy her a new bathrobe,” Veronica told her father. She took a steaming mug from him. “I mean, if you guys are going to pretend to play house again, why not go the whole nine?”
“You know, when I was running around the damned mall doing the Christmas shopping, I couldn’t think of a damned thing. Not a damned thing.” He sipped from his own mug and peered around the corner. “How could I have forgotten that she needed a new bathrobe?”
Veronica sipped at her coffee, but pushed it away almost as soon as it had touched her lips. One tiny slurp had been enough to scald the tip of her tongue, and it was bitter besides. “Dad,” she asked, setting it down, “could I get some cream and sugar?”
“Did I forget?” he asked, picking up her mug for examination. “Christ, I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay.”
He set down her mug on the countertop and opened the refrigerator. “Lot on my mind, I guess. You know how that goes, right?”
“I sure do,” she said. “That said, I’m wondering if you’ve been to the doctor late
ly.”
He scoffed. “I’m not losing my marbles, Veronica.” He pinched open the top of the carton of cream and began to pour. “Tell me when,” he said.
She held up her hand when he’d poured enough. In the living room, the vacuum stopped.
“Vern?” Lydia called. “Robert?”
“In the kitchen, Mum,” Veronica shouted.
Lydia waddled in, smile on her face. She was much bigger since she’d quit the cigarettes, and Veronica saw that her father found it an effort not to frown. Closing the door on one bad habit, Robert had confided in Veronica, had just opened the doors to others. Lydia bought a donut with her morning coffee now, and at dinnertime she always made room for dessert. The holidays had been one night after another of pie and cookies and giggled “just one more”s. But what her father saw as folly, Veronica saw as good fortune. She remembered all too well the emphysemic hacking and wheezing of her grandfather near the end, and Veronica would much rather he had made the same trade her mother just had. After all, it was hard to hug a tombstone.
“Coffee?” Robert asked, holding up the pot.
Lydia waved a hand at him. “No, no, no. It’s my New Year’s resolution to start losing some of this weight,” she said, rubbing at her belly. “I’ve put my mind to it.”
She reached into the cavernous refrigerator and produced a gallon jug of spring water. Then she took her coffee mug—World’s Best Grandma—down from the rack that hung above the stove, and she filled it to the brim.
Lydia came to the table, and sat beside her ex-husband, an exiled queen taking the throne beside her once and, perhaps, future king. And together, the two of them looked at their daughter, the princess who refused to play out the fairy tale ending they’d written for her, and they began to speak in unison, like some kind of Greek chorus trying to narrate for her how it was going to be. But before they could get a word out, Veronica backed away, dropping her mug into the sink, looking for an exit.
“I’m not going to listen to it,” she said. “I should have known,” she said. “I should have fucking known.”
Missing Mr. Wingfield Page 7