Concrete Angel (5 page)

“Evelyn, say the word,” Grandfather would say, already edging toward the backdoor, rattling the change in his pocket as if she might demand a quarter for candy. “You too, Christine. Tell me what you need. Learn any verses today?”

Mother seldom took him up on such offers, even after the divorce when money was tighter, knowing the kind of cash she had in mind wouldn’t come from his oft-mended pockets. I knew there was some bad blood between them, but nobody had filled me in on what it was.

On the trolley to their house, Mother would pull a worn copy of the New Testament out of her pocket and encourage me to learn a few lines. “Recite this one,” she’d say. “For God so loved the world…”

And I’d repeat those lines or some other ones.

“Good,” she’d say, sticking it back in her pocket. “No harm in softening him up a bit. He’ll give you a quarter at least and look more favorably on me.”

Gazing favorably on his daughter seemed pretty remote from what I saw.

“Where’d you get the Bible?”

She shrugged. “He gave me one every birthday. I raised an uneven leg on my vanity table with a stack of them back in high school.” I started to say something when she interrupted, saying, “He never came in my room, you know. If he wanted me, he’d call from the hallway. Probably afraid he would spot something sordid. Dried blood on the mattress pad or something like that.”

Sordid? I’d have to look up the word. But my grandfather was soured on small talk by the time I came along. We didn’t get many words out of him beyond greeting and departing clichés. (“You look so pretty in your dress; still not over your cold, huh; watch out for the traffic crossing Route 211, Evelyn.”)

When my grandmother and he were alone, he usually could be found in his garage woodshop. At some point, they’d divided the house. Grandmother Hobart ruled from the kitchen and living room; he, the garage. Neither of them found this partitioned occupation strange; perhaps it was generational. He was dead before my ninth birthday.

“The love of my life,” my grandmother wept. She continued to weep for weeks, though I’d never once seen them touch or exchange more than the most prosaic words.

Visits to our house from my grandparents were rarer still, considering their proximity. They always chose a time when Daddy was at work, perhaps fearing recriminations on Mother’s upbringing or the introduction of embarrassing information on current misdeeds. They entered our living room in Shelterville with trepidation on their faces. It was hard not to see it.

“My, this is a lovely house,” my grandmother would say. “Mrs. Murphy’s a wonder. Still cleaning for you? Cooking too?”

“See how I don’t get an ounce of praise from her,” Mother’d say after they left. “It’s Mrs. Murphy, she credits. What about the décor? All my doing.”

Both my grandparents probably wondered which items, displayed tastefully, were legitimately purchased and which ones had been brought home through other means. Could they get into trouble, years later, for harboring a criminal, for raising such a daughter? Had it been their duty to report her to the authorities decades ago? To do something about Eve, or Evelyn to them, before it got out of hand.

Even the items purchased legitimately were worrisome to people who lived so frugally. Shouldn’t their daughter be tithing or helping missionaries in Africa like they did? Shouldn’t we be saving for my college costs or their own old age? Shouldn’t Mother put something away in case Daddy got disgusted enough to leave her? What was our bank account like with so many expensive items filling our shelves? Later I wondered why Mother had left such items on display—knowing how they’d react. But house-pride trumped any good sense. And she probably thought she
was
being prudent given the number of things she’d stashed away.

Yes, there were many things to examine in my mother’s house, and occasionally my grandparents recognized one.

“Isn’t that the cut-glass bowl your Aunt Lillian kept on her buffet?” Grandmother asked one day, her hand going at once to her mouth as if covering an imminent scream. I could tell right away she’d said it without thinking and already regretted her words—especially given the presence of my grandfather. She had a higher level of tolerance for my mother’s ways than he did.

All eight eyes shot to the item in question. Grandfather began to shake his head in despair. “I tell you, Dell…”

Mother ‘s eyes darted around, searching for inspiration. “It’s slightly different from hers, Mother.” I could see her brain clicking from across the room, the swift invention of a cover story. “When I spotted the bowl in an antiques’ store in New Hope, I had to have it—remembering hers so fondly.” Her eyes flashed back and forth between her parents. “Dear Aunt Lillian. What good taste she has. She’s famous for it. Right, Mother?”

My mother was gaining confidence as her story took shape. I could see a fulsome reminiscence on the horizon. I nodded, trying to provide any support I could.

My grandmother, eyes darting fearfully from her husband, to her daughter, to the bowl in question, voiced her agreement.

“Lillian did the altar at church on Sundays. People remarked on it all the time. Lovely taste—in flowers especially.”

My grandfather sighed, pulling out a handkerchief to pat his damp forehead. A low hum began. It was unclear which grandparent used this device as a balm until my grandfather died and with him the hum.

Mother, ignoring the hum, grew more convincing as she began to believe her own lie. “I paid the moon for it too. Probably too much but…” Her voice was strong now and she looked them straight in the eye. “Had to have it once I saw the likeness—almost a tribute to her.”

She proceeded to spin the story of her purchase of the cut-glass bowl into something as fragile as the bowl itself, embellishing it with stories of trips to get its worth assessed, the insurance paid bi-monthly, a mention of registered mail orders to Dublin for special cleaning fluid.

I was on pins and needles—waiting to see what came next and wondering when she’d stolen it. We rarely visited Aunt Lillian so it might’ve been hidden away for years, perhaps for as much as a decade—long before I was born probably. Why did she decide to display it now? Had she forgotten where it came from or did she like to torment her parents with stories like this one? Did she relish displaying her abilities as both a thief and a liar? Although a regular circulation of Mother’s booty took place in our house, she had a pretty good memory about which items were taboo. Was there a part of her wanting to be caught, confronted, and shamed?

As the details about the purchase of the bowl mounted, I was faint with anxiety. Certainly she’d go too far and they’d know the truth. They’d feel obliged to bundle the bowl under their arm and take it to Hackensack, New Jersey where Aunt Lillian lived, admitting to the elderly woman, in some stage of dementia now, that her great-niece was a thief.

What I didn’t understand for a long time was my grandparents didn’t want to know the truth. They were neck-deep in Mother’s lies, and there was no way out. Not for any of us. They’d coddled her instead of taking action. They’d turned their heads.

“Would anyone like some peanuts?” I said.

The bowl for the peanuts was thankfully a tin with a picture of the planter’s nut on it. No one would wonder about its provenance. No one acknowledged me or the bowl of nuts, and I sat back down.

Grandfather shook his head and stood, bringing an end to this particular string of lies. But perhaps their daughter, Eve, hadn’t stolen it. They wanted to believe her, just as they always had. Over the years, many of Eve’s “things” had come into their house with stories much like this one. Elaborate, risky stories, which were never repeated. No one trusted that Mother would fully remember her “origin” stories.

T
here’d always been a lot of stuff. The Hobarts encouraged it unwittingly by dragging Eve along to church rummage sales where she was given a quarter to spend, and by overlooking the items that regularly turned up in her closet or on her shelves. Items they must have known were not lawfully purchased.

Occasionally wealthier relatives, like Aunt Lillian in Hackensack, would send along trinkets and clothes they were done with. Forgotten Christmas decorations left on the sidewalk for the garbage men found their way home with her. When other kids brought home sick puppies or birds, Eve brought the crepe paper from a May pole or the tinsel from a tree. Hoarding was her real passion, although no one had named it as a disorder yet. She was perfectly willing to acquire things legitimately when the means presented themselves. It didn’t always work out though, so she improvised.

Her parents’ basement overflowed with such souvenirs in
my
childhood, possessions she’d outgrown but couldn’t discard. All of her purchases, gifts, and stolen goods, squirreled away in carefully labeled boxes in cubby holes and cedar closets, were flashy: jewelry, baubles, knick-knacks. Pennies, but only the shiniest ones. She was not indiscriminant.

“I like pretty things. Don’t you think this bracelet is pretty?” she’d ask, showing me a gold circle formed from twined asps.

The gold paint might be chipped and one of the jeweled eyes of the snake long gone, but Mother still loved it, loved the hundreds of similar items stashed there—even after she had possessions at home worth ten or a hundred times the amount of these keepsakes. Years after she became known for her impeccable taste, there was this hidden side.

“If only we had more room at home,” she’d sigh, “I’d bundle this up and ship it over. Though it’s kinda nice to discover them waiting here for me like buried treasure.” She waved a creamy white porcelain swan in my face. “Have you ever seen anything so sweet?”

Our house was filled with newer, more acceptable, bounty, and Daddy put his foot down about incorporating these reminders of her youth.

“It’s all trash, Eve, accept it. Adults outgrow a love for dime-store jewelry and carnival prizes.” When she didn’t accede, he added, “Do you want me to bring my trophies and sports’ gear in here too? Should I have saved my baseball cards, my Batman comics?”

I could see Mother didn’t equate Daddy’s memorabilia with hers, but she let it go. The Hobart basement would do as storage space for now.

Eventually she rented a storage unit in the northeastern section of Philly to handle the overflow. Ultimately she leased units in various parts of the city. She lost track of a few over the years, holding a key quizzically in her hand from time to time.

“Remember what this one opens, Christine? Was it the unit in Germantown? Conshohocken? The tag’s disappeared.” She smiled. “Probably means it’s an older unit. Maybe Flourtown? Oh, I haven’t been over to see some of my junk in ages. Let’s plan a visit.”

“You need to make a filing system for me, Christine. What a help it’d be.”

She often called her booty junk, making its theft or dubious acquisition less criminal perhaps. The joke was that none of it, not the trashiest possession, was junk to her. For me, her fortitude, skill, and wherewithal gave something like a cheap glass snowball some worth. Her delight was contagious. To Mother, each item was beautiful on its own terms, and she needed all of it. Wanted more of it, in fact.

Our visits to my grandparents’ row house in Philly were always more about visiting her treasures than seeing her parents. They were the sentry guards to the palace, dealt with in a few minutes. We’d sit in my grandparents’ slightly musty basement, unwrapping and examining some new box she’d found in a corner—or behind the furnace or under the steps.

Mother didn’t offer any of her treasures to me, not the most insignificant ones, the things destroyed by time, the objects damaged by damp or rust or infestations.

“You look better in silver than gold,” she’d say quickly if she saw me eyeing an item. “You prefer a more austere room. Right? None of this silly clutter for you. You’re too sensible for my junk. You’re more like your father.”

Anything to excuse her hand’s iron grip on the candlestick, the copper kettle, or the tiara.

“Or maybe I’m more like Grandmother.”

She’d eye me suspiciously when I said such things, wondering if I was completely reliable.

But I didn’t mind her selfishness. There was no way I could give Mother’s treasures the requisite love. My eyes couldn’t find the beauty in a necklace missing half its jewels. But I understood Mother’s love for these trinkets. I knew to honor it, let it be.

Mother’s predilections were nothing new and to understand them, to understand her, it was necessary to start at the beginning.