Her Daughter's Dream (5 page)

“Trip . . .”

“You can’t just leave them on their own to fend for themselves.”

“I can work night shifts. I’d be home by seven in the morning. They wouldn’t even know I was gone.”

“Remember what happened the last time you took on too much work and didn’t get enough rest.”

“Yes, Trip.” Mommy’s voice sharpened. “We still have the hospital bill. It reminds me—
every single month
.”

They lowered their voices, and Carolyn fell asleep again. They argued every night about the same thing until Daddy gave in.

* * *

1955

Mom’s hours changed to “swing shift,” and a key was placed under the flowerpot by the front door. “Be sure to put the key back after you unlock the door. Otherwise, it won’t be there tomorrow and you’ll have to sit outside until Daddy gets home from work. Charlie, if you go anywhere, you be sure to leave a note as to where you’re going. Be home by five at the latest. Carolyn, you stay in the house. Play with your doll or read books, but don’t go wandering off.”

Dad bought a television set. Mom complained about the money. Dad said everyone else in the neighborhood had a television; why shouldn’t they?

Carolyn turned it on every day when she came home from school. She felt better hearing voices in the house. She didn’t feel as lonely.

“I think it’s time you quit working, Hildie. Carolyn needs you.”

“She’s doing better.”

“Better how? Watching TV? Never getting to play outside the house except on weekends? A little girl shouldn’t be alone so much. Things could happen.”

What things? Carolyn was afraid to ask.

“School lets out in two weeks, Hildemara. What’re you going to do then? leave the kids alone
all
day
every
day?”

“I put in for night shift.”

“And you think that’s going to solve our problems?”

“I don’t know, Trip. What will?”

He muttered something and Mom got mad. “I’m trying to help you, and you can’t even say a civil word to me! What happened to the man I fell in love with, the one who wanted us to be a
team
and build something
together
? What happened to
him
?”

“The war happened!” Daddy didn’t sound mad this time. He said more, but Carolyn couldn’t hear. “I’ve been thinking there might be another way to work this out.”

“What way?”

“Take them down to Murietta. . . .”

Carolyn sighed. She fell asleep in her own bed for the first time in months.

5

The day after school let out, Dad put two suitcases in the trunk of the car and drove Carolyn and Charlie down to Oma’s farm outside Murietta. Mom cried the night before they left.

Oma had a casserole waiting on the stove and Daddy’s favorite angel food cake on a big blue and white willow dish in the middle of the cottage kitchen table. After lunch, Oma told Carolyn and Charlie to play outside while she and Daddy talked. On the way out the door, Carolyn heard Oma say, “They can stay all summer if they want, but I have another proposition to make.”

Dad looked less sad when he said he had to leave late in the afternoon. Stooping, he hugged and kissed them both and said things would be better soon. Carolyn couldn’t think of anything better than staying with her grandmother.

* * *

For the next three weeks, Carolyn and Charlie took turns feeding the chickens and rabbits. Neither Charlie nor Carolyn wanted to weed the garden, but Oma said they needed to learn how to “pay for their keep.” The quicker they got chores done, the quicker they’d be free to do whatever they wanted. Charlie always found fun things to do. They climbed the chinaberry tree and pelted one another with “bombs.” They dug for treasure in the garbage pit, made friends with the feral cats living in the barn. They weren’t quick enough to catch the mice in the hay, but Charlie managed to capture horned toads, which he kept in a box until Oma found them and made him turn them loose. When it got too hot outside, Carolyn sat in the cottage with Oma, watching
Truth or Consequences
,
You Bet Your Life
with Groucho Marx, or
Queen for a Day
.

Mom and Dad came for a Saturday visit. They looked relaxed and happy. Charlie showed Dad the tree house. He asked Daddy if they could build one just like it in the walnut tree back home. Oma gave Carolyn carrots and told her to go feed the rabbits. Carolyn loved the warm, fuzzy white animals and dawdled while Mom and Oma sat in the shade of the bay tree. Both rocked in the aluminum chairs. Oma got up after a while and put her hand on Mom’s shoulder and went inside the cottage. Mom put her head back and stayed outside. She didn’t look happy.

Carolyn went into the small washhouse, where she could hear Oma and Mommy talking.

“Charlie looks so brown, Mama.”

“He’s outside as soon as the sun comes up.”

“Carolyn is happier than I’ve seen her in months.”

“There are lots of things for her to do here.”

“Chores, you mean.”

“Chores aren’t meant to be punishment, Hildemara. They’re meant to teach responsibility. Chores make you part of the family enterprise.”

Oma and Daddy talked over supper.

“How long do you think it’d take, Trip?”

“Not long if I hired help.”

“Could you manage it by the end of summer?”

“No, but no later than Thanksgiving, I think.”

When Dad said they had to leave after supper, Charlie asked if he could go home with them. He missed his friends. Dad ruffled his hair. “Not yet, buddy.” Charlie missed Mom and Dad more than Carolyn did.

Oma never left them alone. She didn’t allow Charlie to “mope around.” She took them to the library and checked out adventure stories and picture books. She put out a puzzle of Switzerland and told them stories about her faraway friends Rosie and Solange. When they finished that puzzle, she bought another of an English countryside and told them stories of Daisy Stockhard and fancy afternoon tea parties and daily outings to the royal Kew Gardens. When Carolyn asked if they could have tea parties, too, Oma said of course they could, and they would have one every afternoon if she liked.

Sometimes Oma drove them all the way to Lake Yosemite, where she taught them how to swim. By the middle of summer, Charlie could swim all the way out to the raft, but Carolyn never ventured far from shore. Oma sat under an umbrella and read one of the big books she checked out of the library. On the way home, Oma took them to Wheeler’s Truck Stop to have dinner. She told them Mom worked there as a girl and earned tips for being a good waitress to the truckers who carried produce up and down Central Valley Highway 99.

“Your mom is a good, hard worker. You should be very proud of her.”

Carolyn could see Oma was.

* * *

At the end of the summer, Oma drove Carolyn and Charlie home. Something new had been added to the property. A slab of concrete had been poured and walls and roof framed. “I wonder if it’s another shed.”

Oma laughed. “I hope not!” She parked between the house and the new structure being built.

Neither parent had come home from work yet. Oma took the key from under the flowerpot and unlocked the front door. She pushed it open, but didn’t go inside. “You two go unpack. I’m going to take a look at the new project.”

Carolyn hurriedly put her playclothes in drawers and her toothpaste, toothbrush, and comb back in the bathroom and raced out to join Oma. Her grandmother stood in the middle of the concrete foundation, between the open two-by-four framed walls. Carolyn came through the open space that would be the front door. Oma pointed. “There’s going to be a picture window there and a fireplace over here. Over here is the kitchen with two windows, one looking toward your place and one up the hill.” She took Carolyn by the hand. “Accordion doors will cover the washer and dryer, and back here is the bedroom with a nice bathroom, tub, and shower.” She smiled as she looked around. “Your daddy does good work.”

“Who’s going to live here?”

Oma smiled broadly. “Well, who do you think?” She hugged Carolyn against her.

Carolyn felt a surge of relief. “It’s like your cottage!”

“Like it, but better. Solid foundation, for one thing. We didn’t have the money for one when my cottage was put up. And it’s a hundred square feet bigger. There’ll be a modern built-in stove and refrigerator in the kitchen, room for a table and three chairs.”

A police squad car pulled into the driveway. Charlie came running out of the house and threw himself at Daddy when he got out of the car. Daddy laughed and hugged him, holding him tight and rubbing his knuckles against his hair. “It’s about time you came home!” He strode toward the framed cottage. He bent to give Carolyn a quick hug and kiss and then straightened, facing Oma. “So? What do you think?”

“It won’t be ready by Thanksgiving.” She smiled. “But it takes time to do things right.” She looked around again. “And it looks very right to me.”

Oma went home to Murietta after breakfast the next morning. She wanted to be home for church the next day. Carolyn climbed an old plum tree near the new cottage. Her folks came out and walked around inside the open structure.

“It won’t be like the last time, Hildie. She won’t be living under our roof. She’ll have her own place.”

“I’m just a little uneasy, that’s all.”

“Uneasy about what?” Daddy sounded annoyed. “I thought everything was settled.”

“It is. It’s just that Carolyn loves her so much.”

“Oh.” Daddy stepped closer and put his arms on Mommy’s shoulders. “You’ll always be her mother, Hildie. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “If I were a better mother, I’d worry more about her being alone so much than where I’m going to fit in with all the changes we’re making. I just want to know there’ll be room for me in her life.”

“Make room.”

“It might already be too late.”

* * *

1956

Carolyn stopped dreaming about Dock when Oma moved into the cottage. No more going into an empty house. She flew off the school bus and raced Charlie up the driveway to Oma’s cottage. Her brother always won. Charlie dumped his books by the door, gobbled his cookies, gulped his milk, and rode off on his bike with his redheaded buddy, Mitch Hastings. Carolyn stayed to enjoy “afternoon tea” with Oma. She sipped cream-laced tea and ate triangle-cut egg sandwiches while Oma asked about school. After tea, they went outside together and worked in the garden, weeding the flowers in front and thinning the seedlings in the vegetable garden in back.

When Mom came home, Oma stood on the front steps and called out to her. “Why don’t you come over for tea, Hildemara? Rest awhile.”

And Mom called back. “Can’t today, Mama. I have to get out of this uniform, shower, and change. I’d better get supper started. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow then. Save some time.”

Tomorrow never came, and after a few weeks, Oma stopped asking. She would send Carolyn home when Mom drove in. “Better go do your homework,
Liebling
. And don’t forget to help your mother.”

But whenever Carolyn offered to help in the kitchen, Mommy would say, “I don’t need you, Carolyn. Go and play. Enjoy the sunshine while you can.”

After a lonely half hour on the swing, Carolyn went back to Oma’s cottage and stayed there until Daddy and Charlie came home.

Oma came over. Carolyn came into the house a minute later and heard her and Mommy arguing. “Why do you chase her outside all the time?”

“I’m not chasing her out.”

“What would you call it?”

“I spent most of my childhood inside a house, doing chores. I never had the chance to go out and do whatever I wanted. When she comes to the cottage, you could tell her to play instead of keeping her there.”

“I send her home to spend time with her mother, and you just send her right back outside again. . . .”

Carolyn ducked out the door again and ran out to her swing. She saw Oma walking back to the cottage. She looked so sad. Carolyn stayed on the swing until Daddy came home and said she should go in the house and help her mother.

* * *

Mom took extra shifts at the VA hospital so they could buy more lumber and supplies for building. Daddy finally finished the master bedroom and added a step-down utility porch off the back of the house, with hookups for a washing machine and dryer. He bought Mom a mangle for Christmas so she could iron the tablecloths, sheets, and pillowcases like his mother had. She also ironed Daddy’s shirts, slacks, and boxer shorts and her nurse’s uniforms. The only clothes she didn’t iron were the brown polyester pants and flower-print blouses she wore after work every day.

As soon as Daddy finished the utility porch, he started work on a larger addition at the front of the house.

Oma came over to take a look around. Daddy proudly laid out the living room plans: fourteen by twenty feet, twelve-foot wood-beamed ceiling, skylights, stone fireplace, wall-to-wall carpeting, and picture windows looking out on the orchard in front. He showed her the plans he had drawn. “We’ll put in a pool with a patio all around and terrace that back hill, plant a garden, have a waterfall over there in the corner.”

Oma looked as though she had swallowed something that didn’t taste good. “Your own private paradise.”

“Something like that.”

“Well, it’s better than building a bomb shelter like most of the people in the neighborhood.”

“Actually, I was thinking about renting a backhoe to dig one in the hill. . . .”

The next time Oma invited Mommy over for afternoon tea, she wouldn’t take “Sorry, maybe another time” for an answer.

“I can’t stay long. I have to start dinner soon.”

“Things won’t fall apart if it’s not on the table at six on the dot, Hildemara.” Oma sounded irritated. She poured tea in a pretty pink rose china cup and offered cream and sugar.

Mommy looked at the platter of spicy chicken sandwiches and egg salad sandwiches with dill and the apple streusel cake. “What is all this? I didn’t forget my birthday, did I?”

“I wanted to treat my daughter to an English afternoon tea, the kind I used to prepare for Lady Daisy in London.”

Mommy gave her an odd smile. “It’s lovely. Thank you.”

Oma took one seat, Carolyn the other. “If you’d like, we can do this every afternoon when you get home from work. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, the three of us sipping tea and taking time to sit and talk awhile?”

“I can’t stay more than half an hour.”

“If you had a Dutch oven, you could start dinner in the morning before you left for work.” Oma sipped her tea. “You’d have an hour to relax when you got home. All you’d have to do is steam some vegetables and set the table. Carolyn could help.”

“You always made a four-course dinner, Mama, and dessert, even after you’d worked all day in town. And you walked there and back.”

“Until I drove.” Oma chuckled as she lifted her teacup. “Papa didn’t think much of that idea at first, did he?”

Mom smiled. “We all thought you’d kill yourself in that Model T. You drove like a maniac.”

“Probably still do. I felt free. And no one was going to take that away from me.” She cut slices of apple streusel and gave Mom a sly smile. “You know, there’s no sin in taking advantage of the conveniences available: a car to drive to work, a washer and dryer in the house, an old-fashioned Dutch oven. It buys you time for other things.”

“There’s always too much to do, Mama. I wish there were more hours in a day.”

“And if there were, what would you and Trip do with them?”

Mommy gave a bleak laugh. “Finish building the house.”

Carolyn finished a last bite of streusel. Oma cleared away her teacup and saucer and plate. “Why don’t you play outside for a while, Carolyn?”

She didn’t want to go outside. She wanted to stay inside and listen. “Can I finish the puzzle?”

“I finished it this morning. There’s a new one on the coffee table. You can bring it out here and start sorting the pieces, if you like.”

Carolyn ran to get the box, dumped the pieces on the table, and began turning them over, sorting colors and searching for edge pieces and corners the way Oma had showed her. Oma and Mommy kept talking.

“You and Trip and the kids ought to take a family vacation.”