A Face in Every Window (11 page)

"I just love to grow seeds, now," he'd say, holding up his pots. "Look what I got, everybody, and we can eat these in our food when they're all grown up."

Mam gave Pap a patch of lawn to turn into a garden, but since it was autumn, and then winter, all he could do was rake leaves and scoop out the snow so he could talk to the
frozen grass, promising it that he and Bobbi would someday turn it into a beautiful wildflower garden.

This was our new life. Everyone wandered off during the day to school, to jobs, but in the early evenings we'd gather again, five, seven, nine of us (not including Bobbi's critters), and the noise—piano music, readings, arguments, cooking—the chaos would begin.

I never knew what to expect. I never knew who I'd find in my bathroom when I came home in the afternoon, or who I'd find napping on my bed. I didn't know which of Larry's friends would help him with dinner, creating even more bizarre concoctions than before, or how many there'd be squeezed in at the table. I didn't know what kind of animal would sit on my feet while I ate or escape at night and crush my chest while I slept. If I wanted Mam, I never knew where I'd find her—listening to poetry, working out in the yard at midnight, on a date with Dr. Mike, asleep in a bathroom or on the living room floor or, sometimes, in her own bed with Pap.

While everyone around me seemed to have found themselves, I grew more and more lost. While everyone else could hear their own voice in the midst of the cacophony, I grew more and more silent. I spent my evenings up in my room, eating and studying with the radio on so I wouldn't hear the others below and have to think about how I didn't, couldn't, fit in. I wanted to tell Mam. I wanted her to know how I felt about our new life, and I wanted her to care. I wanted to say to her, "Okay, Mam, either I go or they do, you choose," but I was afraid she wouldn't choose me, and I had nowhere else to go.

O
NE SATURDAY MORNING
after the first snowfall of the year, I found Mam outside sweeping snow off the porch, and I asked her if she would go for a walk with me in the woods. We had lived in the house three months and yet we had never taken the time to explore the land beyond our front door. At our old house, when Grandma Mary was alive, we lived outdoors; we explored the creek and its wildlife on a daily basis, and I realized, looking back on those days, that there was a certain sanity in our lives there. Paying attention to the minute details of the life at the creek, the changing seasons, kept us sane, focused, centered even. Now we were all crazy, wild, out of control. We had no Grandma Mary, no creek, to keep us grounded. That was what I wanted to discuss with Mam.

Mam loaded up a pack with binoculars, camera, pita sandwiches, herb tea in a Thermos, cups, and a notebook for drawing. I carried it on my back, pleased to think that we'd
be gone a long time. I needed that time to figure out how I would say what I wanted to say.

We found a path in the woods marked with deer prints in the snow. We followed them beneath a steeple of trees that Mrs. Levi had claimed were planted back in the days of William Penn. Most were tall, slender trees that bent easily with the wind, and the few birds left to sing in them sounded so far away in those high, high branches that only their echoes reached us.

Mam stopped and closed her eyes to listen to a cardinal. She had her hands stuffed in the pockets of a coat I'd never seen before. She held her face up to the sky, her back slightly arched, her eyes closed.

"Listen," she said, smiling to herself.

I didn't listen. I watched her instead. I wondered if by staring at her long enough I could figure her out, because I had a feeling words wouldn't work. She had on jeans and Larry's boots, which were at least three sizes too big for her. She wore her hair knotted up in some kind of mess held together with a plastic grabby thing that looked like a butterfly. I had seen the same hair holder in Melanie's hair the night before. She had on Bobbi's long Egyptian-style earrings, which were too large for her narrow face and looked out of place dangling next to all her freckles. They were meant for Bobbi, not her. I looked at Mam and thought that she had become, like the clothes she wore, a hodgepodge of different people. I missed the old Mam, the Mam who wore her own jeans and plaid shirts and her own boots and who spent hours exploring the creek with me. I missed being with her alone. I missed talking to her about nothing. We used to have
so much time to talk that it never mattered that it was about nothing, because that nothing was everything. Now I had to think about what to say, plan it, make every word count, because I didn't know when I'd get another chance.

I tried to ease into the conversation by just getting her to talk.

"I'm glad you like living here, Mam," I said, looking up at the treetops so far away.

Mam opened her eyes and smiled at me. "I do," she said. "I love it. And I love the house and everyone in it." Mam ran her hand down the trunk of a tree and leaned forward to smell it "Mmm, you can smell the sap already. Come on, smell."

I leaned forward. I couldn't smell anything.

"You know, I'm really good with people," Mam said, starting to walk again, leading me along the deer path. "I never knew that about myself, how good I am with people—outside my teaching, I mean—how much I love it." She turned back and grabbed my hand and pulled me forward.

"This trail's kind of narrow," I said, hanging back, not wanting to talk face-to-face or even side by side.

Mam pulled me along, talking all the while. "I thought I was an introvert," she said. "Imagine going all your life thinking of yourself as a loner, an introvert, telling yourself you don't need people and then discovering—well, life! I think I've been dead all these years. I've been hiding out in the woods, in the creek, in Grandma Mary's house. It never occurred to me to go out and get my own life. What a scary thought. That's what I used to think. I was so afraid of people."

"Some people, though, are natural introverts," I said, pulling my hand from her grasp. "Some people don't like
crowds and groups all the time. Some people like it quiet, less chaotic."

Mam stopped walking and turned around. She blinked at me, her eyes a deep dark blue in the filtered light of the woods. "Might you be talking about yourself, JP?"

I leaned against a pine tree and kicked my heel into the snow. "I hate chaos," I said.

Mam nodded. "You like stasis."

I stopped kicking and looked at her, startled that she knew about chaos and stasis. I started walking and Mam walked beside me.

"What's wrong with stasis?" I asked, watching my feet make tracks in the snow.

"JP, you know better than I do that it's impossible. You read the book. It can't last, it can't be maintained. Things do change."

"That's not true," I said. "Not with everything. Not with water kept below thirty degrees, not with—"

Mam threw her arms up. "JP, we're not ice! Stasis is stagnation, and stagnation is death."

"So is chaos. Chaos is just as impossible, totally unpredictable. I never know if I'm going to be able to sit down at dinner and have my own space to myself or be sharing it with Jerusha, the she-man."

Mam laughed. "I think she likes you." She started walking again, and I followed.

"I hate the way she takes food off my plate. She just takes it! I hate them crowding in on our dinner. And I hate finding that Harold guy using my bathroom. He has to climb two flights to use it Why can't he go downstairs?"

"Maybe he wants privacy. Maybe he's like you and needs to get away every now and then."

Mam waited for me to catch up, then she linked her arm in mine and said, "I spent so much of my life alone, JP. I was surrounded by my family and yet, except for your uncle John, no one paid any attention to me. Of course, I never made the effort to get to know anyone. I was shy and awkward. Like you, I spent so much of my life and my schooling in my bedroom. It was easier just to keep my head buried in my books. It's easier, JP, but not better. I agree chaos is no better than stasis, but there's got to be a middle ground, doesn't there?"

"Yeah," I said. "My book calls it complexity."

"Complexity." Mam nodded and considered the idea awhile, slowing her walk and staring at her feet.

"Complexity. That's perfect, isn't it? That's such a rich-sounding word. That's exactly what we are, isn't it? Complex." She squeezed my arm and shook it. "Tell me about it, scientifically, I mean."

This felt good, Mam asking me something, wanting me to teach her. "Well, to put it simply, complexity is that place where things aren't predictable but they aren't out of control, either."

"Exactly!" Mam said. "I like it, go on."

"Take for instance water. If you freeze it you've got stasis, if you boil it you've got chaos, but there's that point just before boiling where the molecules could go either way and—"

"That's perfect!" Mam interrupted. "That's what we'll work toward. How about it? Complexity." Mam nodded to herself as if she'd solved it all. As if just by saying this she could pull us back from the chaos.

"Mam, you didn't let me finish. You know where complexity exists?"

Mam nodded. "In just about everything, I'd guess. All of life is complex."

"No, Mam, I mean mathematically, scientifically."

"Tell me. Where does complexity exist?"

"At the edge. At the edge of chaos. That's what they call it, and the edge is too close to chaos for me."

"Well then, JP, you're stuck," Mam said, and then realizing the truth of her statement shook her head and added, "and you're lonely, and I can't seem to do anything about it, can I?"

I shrugged and pulled my arm away from her and walked a little faster. She kept up.

"What about Timmy? Why hasn't he come by for a visit? Why don't you go see him?"

"He's so different now," I said "I talk to him on the phone and we've got nothing to say. I'm talking about the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinear equations, and he's talking about football and Laura Pentero and some party he went to. I don't know. He's gone wild"

Mam nodded. "He's changed, too. That's all it is, JP. Life just changes and you can either move along with it or stand there, but either way it's going to keep on moving."

I stopped. "It's the way it's changed. Look at you, Mam. Why do you have on Larry's boots?"

Mam looked down at the boots and laughed. "Is that what's bothering you?"

"And you have on Bobbi's earrings, and Bobbi keeps taking my Einstein shirt and most of Pap's shirts, and Larry wore and ripped my jeans."

Mam leaned back on her heels and clicked the toes of her boots together. "I've got on Larry's boots because they were right there by the back door and my boots are somewhere in Bobbi's room, two flights up."

"I could have gotten your boots for you. You just had to ask."

"These will do," Mam said, still staring at them.

"Why can't everybody just keep to their own stuff? I can't find anything anymore. It's a mess. I don't like it."

"You want us to leave your things alone?"

"Yes! I want everyone to leave my stuff alone. If they want something, they can ask first. Nobody asks, they just take. I hate it."

Mam started walking again, her hands in the pockets of her jacket. I followed her, keeping a couple of steps behind.

"Okay, JP. Tonight at dinner I'll tell everyone that your room is off-limits. Will that help?"

"Yes."

"Anything else?"

"Yes."

Mam turned around and waited for me to catch up to her. I didn't want to. I preferred talking to her back.

"What is it, then?" Mam looked wary, as if she knew what I was going to say.

"It's Dr. Mike."

Mam nodded and turned and started walking again. She didn't want to face me, either. I talked to her back.

"You said he'd stop coming around when we moved. Remember? You said it would all be over, but you still see him. Mam, you're going out on dates with him and you're married. What would Grandma Mary say?"

"I refuse to make predictions about what someone who died might have said. She's gone and I'm here, and I've got to live my life."

Mam sounded angry, but I wasn't sure if she was angry at me or Grandma Mary—maybe us both.

Mam ducked under some low-hanging branches and I followed her, holding my hand in front of my face in case she let a branch go too soon. She was moving fast, breathing hard, not looking to see how far behind her I was walking.

"I told you," she said, "I'm not going to be like Grandma Mary. I'm not even going to try." She stopped a second and thumped her chest with her fist. "This, JP, who you see now, this is me. This is who I am. I like people. I want to be around people. I don't want to hide away anymore. I want a family and good friends, and one of those good friends happens to be a man." She turned back around and continued along the trail. "I can talk about things with Mike I can't talk about with Pap or you or Larry or Bobbi. I can bring out this other side of me. I'm not all one thing. I don't love just one thing, or one person."

I stopped walking and pounded my fist against a tree. "So now you love him? First you say you're friends and now you love him?" I didn't know what to do. I wanted to run away. I wanted to stay and yell at her, demand that she stop dating Dr. Mike and kick everyone out of the house who wasn't family—real family. Instead I paced. I kept my head down,
watching my feet, tramping down my old tracks again and again.

"JP, of course I love him, the way I love Larry or Bobbi or any of the others who come to our house, the way I try to love everybody. I'm not
in
love. I don't love him the way I love you or the way I love Pap. You two are special."

"You could have fooled me." I stopped pacing and looked at Mam in her big old coat and huge dangling earrings. "I never see you anymore." I pointed at her. "I never see
you!
Even when I do see you, it's not you. You're part Bobbi or Larry or Jerusha. Look, even your freckles have faded. You're someone else. You're not my mother. You're nobody's mother. You're acting like a teenager. It's embarrassing. Yeah, that's it You embarrass me. I hate who you are! I hate this life!"