Look at You Now (2 page)

I felt her look over at me. If things were normal, I might have rolled my eyes and said something sassy or funny, but I stayed quiet. My mom was doing the tapping thing on the steering wheel, which I'd seen her do before. Methodically tapping each finger a few times on the wheel, waiting a moment, and tapping the next. What was she doing? Singing in her head? Counting something? Saying the rosary? Our family was Catholic, and Dorothy loved, loved, loved to pray. She told us every day that we should pray as often as possible. I remember praying like crazy in third grade when I was waiting for her to pick me up after CCD class. Dorothy called it catechism class, its purpose was to
further my religious teachings
. I called it Sunday school on Wednesdays, and I really didn't like having to go. Every Wednesday when I was eight years old, I had to go after school to Saint Mary's Church for CCD and get ready for my first Holy Communion.

On one of those Wednesdays my mom was late picking me up—really late. She'd been late before—in fact, she was always
late—but that day I had a feeling she might actually truly forget me. The other kids were long gone and as I waited, I began to worry about how long it would take my family to notice I was not there. Would it take a few meals, a few days, maybe even weeks? There were a lot of people in our house, maybe no one would notice one kid missing. . . . I decided, while thinking on it, to roll my white kneesocks all the way up as far as they would go, and then all the way back down to my ankles.
Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up down
, until one of my socks lost its tightness and dropped on its own to my ankle. I had half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some raisins in my lunch box. I didn't know if the priests would mind if I lived on their steps, but maybe they wouldn't; they were very generous people. I noticed a bunch of trees in the parking lot across the street and decided it would help me not to panic if I counted something. I counted all of the trees.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, eighteen trees exactly
, not counting the ones on the sidewalk. I decided to click open and click closed my yellow Tweety Bird lunch box fifty times.
Click open, click closed, click open, click closed, click open, click closed, click open, click closed
. The sun was getting lower by the second. I looked over at some kids crossing the street and noticed their Catholic school uniforms. Although we were Catholic, we didn't go to the Catholic schools because my dad would not allow it. He was not a Catholic, he was nothing—that's what he said. I felt lucky that I could wear whatever I wanted to school every morning. I had on my favorite blue-and-white seersucker skirt and my white turtleneck with the duck on the neck. It was getting cold and I wished I'd brought my yellow sweater, but at least I had long sleeves. I looked all the way up at the church steeple bells and then heard the rectory door at the side of the steps creak open. I turned to see Father Joseph making his way toward me. My mom, and her parents before her, had known him a long
time. Dorothy had lived in this area her whole life, and it felt like she'd known everyone a long time. He smiled, and I smiled back. Finally, a person, even if it was a priest.

“Hello, Lizzie Pryor.”

“Hi, Father.”

“This is a surprise.”

“Yes. . . . My mom is late.”

“The other children have long gone. Are you sure she's coming?”

“I think so, I mean, I hope so.” I studied his long black robe as he sat down on the step next to me. It was like a dress.

“Do you like thumb wars, Liz?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you want to play?”

I stuck my thumb out and beat him six times in a row. He looked carefully at his watch after the thumb wars and said, “Do you think we might give your mom a call?”

“446-7737, that's our number. Yes, thank you, Father. I think that's a great idea. It will be busy, it's always busy, but we'll just have to try again and again till they answer, okay?”

Just as we were about to go inside and call, I saw my mom's car pull up. I was crazy with relief. I frantically gathered my things and almost bonked the priest on his head with my book bag.

“Sorry, Father, but you see? There she is, you see her? That's our car, see it? Do you see it? She's here. Thank you for keeping me company. I'm going to be all right, Father, and have dinner with my family and live at my house, isn't that great?” I flew down the steps and into the backseat of my mother's messy car. Father Joseph made his way to the car window equally quickly.

“You're really late, Dorothy.”

Her Katharine Hepburn voice surfaced. “I am well aware of how late I am, thank you, Father.”

“I see. Well, I do have the authority to caution you: This should not happen again.”

She looked right at him. “I am doing the best I can, Father. I have six other children at home and my husband is traveling for work.”

“God has millions of children, Dorothy. Your best was not good enough today. I'll pray for you. And you, Lizzie, come find me if she happens to be late again, okay?”

“Okay, I will, Father. Practice at thumb wars so you can beat me.” He waved as my mother pulled off. I decided I would pray for my mother too, to not be late so much.

• • • •

Hours later, the day was ending, we were still driving, and there was nothing to see but darkness. My mom was messing with the wipers, trying to get the snow off the windshield. There were piles of papers, school flyers, books of stamps, and lipsticks strewn across her dashboard. It was a wonder she could see out the windshield at all. She never did fit the image people had of a woman with seven kids. She didn't own an apron and never baked a pie or cookies in her life. She wasn't a line-the-lunches-up kind of lady; she was more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants, hope-like-hell-she-makes-it lady.

A lot of our life was left to chance, and by what seemed so often a miracle, things ended up working out most of the time. It might have been her unwavering belief in positive thinking. My mom was a fanatic about finding the good in people and in life, and she was a believer in hope. Whatever the situation, she could find the pinhole of greatness. It was a gift. She pounded phrases like
see the glass half full, smile and the world smiles with you, turn the other cheek, rise above it, expand your horizons, reach for the moon
into our young minds until she was
sure
we would look and find the good first.

I suddenly thought about all the things in life my mom had so seamlessly taught me by simply being who she was. Her faith in life was lodged inside me in a way I could never really explain.

What I imagine Dorothy was placed on the planet to do was to love people. Strange as that may sound, she was a master. Being loved by our mother was one of the most important things that would happen to any of us. No matter the other ways she fell short, she effectively taught seven people the single greatest thing life has to offer: She taught us how to love and how to be loved.

• • • •

I hadn't seen a thing, not even a billboard, for miles. We were in the middle of nowhere. Then finally a lone building appeared ahead. As we drew closer I could see it was a small hospital. There was a big square cement building behind it on a little hill. I saw a faded green wooden sign out in front of the cement building that read, Gwendolyn House. The sign had a large crucifix on it, with a dented Jesus lying sad and suffering. We pulled into a spot in a small parking lot outside of the cement building. My mom dropped her head onto her hands, which were still holding the steering wheel. I felt my guilt all the way through to my bones. I was the reason for all of this. It was on me. I wondered in that moment if it was true that God only gives you what you can handle. I'd heard that saying a thousand times. When I was really little, I remember hoping that God knew I couldn't handle losing the tetherball tournament, and that I couldn't handle not getting a guitar. I hoped God wasn't taking a break that day in the car. I hoped like hell he was watching and would make sure I could handle what was happening.

Dorothy finally lifted her head off the steering wheel and faced me. “Lizzie, I need you to pay very close attention to what I am about to say. It is extremely important, do you understand me?”

“Okay, Mom.”

“We're here, and there are a few things you need to know.” She shuffled around in the seat as she spoke. “We've decided we are not going to tell your brothers and sisters, nor your grandparents, a single word about this. Neither your friends nor anyone you know can
ever
know you were here. They will all be told you are sick and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.”

What? This was the first I'd heard of this.

“I'm sick? What am I sick with, Mom?”

“I don't know yet.”

“What's the Mayo Clinic?” She looked almost annoyed.

“It's a medical diagnoooosticcccc clinic in Minnesota, one of the best in the country.”

I looked at the dark vastness outside the car. I was trapped. Trapped in that car, in my body, in my life—and about to be trapped in a cement building in the middle of nowhere, Indiana.

Dorothy continued, “They will take care of you here and that's what you need.” She began to sound like the incoherent mumble of Charlie Brown's parents. “I'll try to visit, but I have to take care of your sisters,
wa wa wa waaa
.”

I wanted to ask her if it would be better if I
were
sick, maybe even dying, if that would be easier, but I didn't because somehow, in that very moment, my mom looked different to me. For the first time in my life I saw her as a person. I remember once seeing my third-grade teacher out at a restaurant and thinking, What the heck is Mrs. Beckwar doing
eating
? Teachers don't go to restaurants. And moms aren't people, they're moms. But that moment in the car, Dorothy was just a person, racked with worry, defeated and overwhelmed. It scared me.
I
was the cause of this. I'd shamed my parents to the point of having to lie to my brothers and sisters, and to all their friends. And on top of that, they were asking me to lie to everyone who meant anything to me, for the rest of my life. I wasn't taught to lie. I guess someone forgot to tell me that lying was
indeed
acceptable, if life got bad enough, and if your kid was truly terrible. I looked at Dorothy—the devout practicing Catholic, the firm believer in “all things will work out”—and I was suddenly terrified. I didn't see hope or faith or any good in this; all I saw was despair. Watching terror besiege the person who had continually given me strength throughout my life was like someone reaching over and pulling out my own power cord.

“Mom, I'm sorry, more sorry than I've ever been in my life.” I could barely get the words past the rising mountain in the back of
my throat. “I know how disappointing I am. I even know that you may never be able to love me the same.”

She stared straight ahead and said, “Love doesn't work that way, Liz. I'll love you as I've always loved you forever. Mark my words, that will never change.”

My entire body began to tremble. “Mom, I really don't want to go in there.”

“I know you don't, but it's what we have to do.” My chest felt as though it was going to come up through my throat. “I don't know what else to do. There weren't a lot of options. If you're here I can at least drive up to visit you.”

We both sat quietly, both terrified, in different ways. She sat up straight, as though she were gathering her own courage, and turned off the car.

“We have to go in. Get yourself together.” It was still snowing. I got my bag and my guitar out of the trunk and followed the click, click, click of Dorothy's heeled boots across the icy path toward the entrance. The building was set back on a small hill, surrounded by a lot of land and what looked like an endless amount of trees. It was mostly concrete, and I couldn't see any windows. There were very few lights on, so I couldn't see very well. The first thing I noticed as we made our way to the entrance was a small sign to the right of a big door that read Locked Facility. My mother pushed the red button marked Entry and a loud buzz sounded. We walked into a small hall lit by fluorescent lights above. We went through another door and into a stark entranceway. The floor was tiled and the walls painted brown. A large black woman with unfriendly eyes was sitting at a desk behind a wiry chain link–looking fence barrier, almost as if she were in a cage. I peered through the fence into the small room where she sat. I saw a little TV and some file cabinets. The woman ignored us. My mother leaned toward the desk and said in her slightly hushed Katharine Hepburn voice, “Pardon me, we are here to see Ms. Graham.”

I whispered, “Why does it say Locked Facility, Mom?”

There was a ball of terror churning inside me. Before she could answer, another woman approached, a petite white woman wearing a gray wool suit, with short black hair and wire-rimmed glasses resting on her head. She looked to be in her forties, around my mom's age. She said hello and led us into her office. There was a framed plaque that read,

The woman took off her coat, folded it just so, and sat down on the wooden desk chair. She looked at me and said, “I am Ms. Graham, welcome to the Gwendolyn House.” She said it without a lot of welcome. She looked down at the papers in front of her as she continued. “I am the resident social worker and will be here for Liz in any way she might need me. Beginning with the mandated weekly sessions she will attend here in my office . . . Tuesdays are her day, one o'clock, and she may never miss.” She wasn't a warm person, but she wasn't mean either, she was just kind of cold and sterile. My tears were falling out of my eyes like rain off a roof, but there was no sound.