Love Me Tender (5 page)

Chapter 8

WE MADE Kerrie comfortable in the backseat. She fell asleep right away. But after half an hour on the road, I climbed into the backseat with her.

Mel said, “What are you doing?”

“Checking Kerrie.”

“She's fine.”

I climbed into the front seat. “I just felt like checking.”

“It wasn't your fault,” Mel said.

“I don't know what would be worse, Kerrie going blind or everybody blaming me forever. Daddy told me to keep things together.”

“Listen to me, there was something wrong with that toy.”

“Okay.” That's what I said, but it wasn't really okay. I knew it, and probably Mel knew it.

“Kerrie's fine,” Mel said. “I'm going to pull over at the next exit. You drive for a while. It will give you something different to worry about.”

We switched seats every hour on the hour. Mel made me nap for twenty minutes at a time, and when I drove, she did the same. We agreed we woke up feeling like we'd been hit with a mallet, but neither of us felt sleepy when we were driving.

Sometimes we were practically the only car on the road, and other times we were surrounded by trucks. We drank coffees, but it was hard to know if they helped all that much. Mel lifted the music ban in the interest of keeping us alert.

The novelty of being on the road again had worn off, but we just kept on going. I imagined this was what Mel was like for a while before we settled down in New Hope. When all the excitement of following Daddy from town to town had worn off. Pretty much living from one parking space to another.

I didn't remember much about those years, really, just the parts that mattered to me. Getting big enough to climb on the stools in diners all by myself. Crying because the car seat was too hot. Dropping my shoes out of the car window while we were driving on the highway.

Then Mel got pregnant with Kerrie and Daddy married her. At the time, I thought the big party was for me, be-cause I was starting kindergarten. Daddy sang, of course. “Love Me Tender,” that's what he sang. The other four Elvises sang other songs. There were plenty to choose from. Songs, I mean.

When I took over the driving at three o'clock, I said, “Mel, why did you want to go with Daddy this week if you got tired of being on the road?”

“I didn't want to go all that much,” she said. “I know that must sound crazy.”

“You just didn't want Daddy to go, is that it?”

“No, I—” Mel sat up straighter in the seat. “I don't want him to be sorry he missed a chance.”

“That isn't what you said to him.”

“I know,” she said. “I just didn't want him to
want
to go.”

I felt the same way, really.

I blamed the customers when Daddy first told us he was going. I could see they made him feel bad when they hired the lawn service. But when he started to want to go away, I felt like it was us he wanted to get away from. We hadn't changed, Daddy had, so then I blamed him.

Mel said, “I want him to win that contest. That's the crazy part, I guess.”

“But what happens if he wins? More people ask him to sing at parties, okay, but maybe he'll have to travel more. Like we did before.”

“We'll just figure it out as we go along, okay?” Mel said. “Don't worry about it right now.”

“I don't know that I want him to win,” I said.

“Sure you do. Not just because you love him, but be-cause he loves you even more.”

“What a parenty thing to say,” I said. “Kids love their parents just as much.”

“That's music to my ears, Elvira. But, just so you know, parents always love their kids more.”

I got a little pain in my heart, wanting something, it felt like. But I threw her a skeptical look. “Does the Belly count?”

“Definitely,” Mel said. “Practically an insurance policy. But your daddy wouldn't leave you either.”

“So I'm an insurance policy too,” I said. Wishing hard for it to be true. I remembered again how Daddy didn't wave good-bye, didn't look back from the end of the driveway.

But now I realized it didn't mean he was going away mad. “I think he felt bad about leaving.”

Mel sat forward a little in her seat, and although I could see her only by the light on the dashboard, really, I knew the exact hopeful expression she wore on her face. She said, “Do you?”

And then, “Well, I know he did. I just forgot, I guess.”

“It's like that summer when Kerrie was little and you sent me to day camp. When I came home in the afternoon, I'd be so mad that she got into my stuff, and in the morning you'd be so busy with her, changing her, warming her bottle, telling me not to add too much sugar to my cereal. I wanted to get away from you both and go see my friends.”

“Elvira.”

“Right up until you walked me to the bus stop,” I said. “While you took me to the corner, I started to miss you so much, I wanted to stay home. I even missed Kerrie and she was right there, sucking on her pacifier while she planned how to ruin my life that day. But I missed her anyway.”

“Why didn't you say?”

“I thought it was like going to the dentist, I had to. And when I got on the bus, I could've cried. Except I would've been embarrassed to be one of the crybabies, so I just sat on the side where I couldn't see you.”

Mel leaned back with a sigh. “You know, that's exactly how I felt whenever we left you with a babysitter,” she said. “First I thought I was desperate to get an evening out, but right before we left, I started wishing we had time for one more bedtime story, and always, for just a minute when I got in the car, I cried. Your daddy thought I was nuts.”

A comfortable silence grew up between us. “Do you think everybody is as neurotic as we are?” she asked me.

I thought of things Debs's mother talked about. “Pretty much.”

“There were a lot of crybabies?”

“Lots.”

The funny thing, though, after I said all this to make Mel feel better, I didn't feel better. Before those customers gave Daddy a hard time, I would've said he was happy. I would've said things usually went his way. Now I wondered if he just
looked
happy.

Mel had looked happy till just lately.

When I looked over, she had fallen asleep.

Just after Daddy's momma died and we were all missing her, I started wishing for a big happy family. With Mama Rosa gone, I pictured this grandma, Mel's mother, as a sweet old lady. The kind I'd see on really old TV shows now and again.

When Mel woke up a while later, I said, “I always wondered about this grandmother.”

“Your daddy and I hardly talk about her, Elvira,” Mel said, sounding cranky. “I'm amazed the whole thing didn't just go over your head.”

“Other kids visit their grandparents, they get birthday presents from them. If we didn't do Santa Claus, do you think I wouldn't notice that either?”

“Good point.”

“I wondered if she was the kind of grandmother who baked pies and stuff.”

Mel laughed a little. “That's not the test of the perfect grandmother.”

“No, but it's a good start.” I didn't say it, but I used to bury my face in my pillow at night and wish for that grand-mother. Speeding down the highway, I made a little wish that my wish was about to come true.

It was four in the morning the last time I gave the wheel up to Mel. After that, I fell into a deep black sleep. When Mel woke me, I followed her out of the car without a question. I thought I was dreaming. Halfway across the yard, I realized we'd arrived.

Chapter 9

THERE WERE two floors and a big porch that wrapped around, making a curved corner. A small round upstairs room was topped off with a roof like a pointy cap. The house was cute. Pretty, even, with periwinkle blue shutters and those fish-scale shingles around the roofline. Daddy would have admired the flower beds.

We shivered as we climbed the steps. It was summer, but we hadn't had any sleep to speak of, and it was early and damp. We were cold. After the third time Mel rang the doorbell, we tried peering in the windows, but the blinds were pulled tight.

She looked at me and said, “Maybe there's nobody here. Maybe they've taken her off to the hospital.” Another shiver made her teeth chatter.

“Wouldn't your sister have told you that?”

“I don't know,” Mel said. She rang the bell again.

I tried out the porch swing. This was, after all, my grandmother's house. “Shh,” Mel said when the chains creaked. I got right up again, but certain things still interested me. I'd never thought of Mel's mother as someone with a porch swing.

I said, “Maybe you should call Clare.”

“
Aunt
Clare.”

“
Aunt
Clare, then,” I said. “It's cold out here.”

Mel said, “I'd just drive on over to the hospital, but it's been so many years, I have no idea where to go.”

I looked at my watch. “It's only ten minutes to six. Maybe she doesn't get up at the crack of dawn.”

Mel rang the doorbell, rang it like the bell between classes. No one could be sleeping through that. As if to prove my point, the upstairs lights went on in a house down the street.

Kerrie's head appeared in the backseat window of our car. We had about sixty seconds before she started yammering about a restroom. She'd slept through our last two stops.

There was a sound from inside the house, a kind of thump. I gave Mel a triumphant look, but Mel said, “Maybe she's in there and needs help.” She rang the bell again.

“If she can't open the door, ringing that bell won't help.”

“You're right. You stay here and I'll go around and look in the kitchen window.”

“No, let me,” I said. The Belly had grown huge in only the three days since Daddy left; it was like some horrible science fiction movie come true. “You might slip on the wet grass.”

Right then, the front door opened. Mel and I both jumped a little. There hadn't been any footsteps. No old-lady voice calling,
Whoooo is it?

“Momma,” Mel said, like she was the one woken up.

The grandmother was tall, like Mel and me, dressed in a short-sleeved cotton bathrobe. Her silver hair had been wrapped in toilet tissue that had loosened in her sleep and now hung in loops around her head. The woman looked like she had never opened the door on such an unwelcome sight as Mel and me.

I reminded myself this was just Mel's mother and she didn't look like a morning person. Mel isn't a morning per-son either. We'd driven through the night, was all.

In a flat, tired voice, the grandmother said, “He's left you.”

Mel put her hands protectively over the Belly. She said, “As a matter of fact, Momma, the girls and I came to see how you are.”

The car door slammed shut and the grandmother glanced past us. “I'd ask you to park that behind the bushes,” she said, like the car was part of a scary movie she was watching, “but I don't have enough bushes in one spot to hide it.”

Mel said, “Then it's in as good a place as any.”

The grandmother was pretty rude, even for six in the morning. We weren't looking our best, I knew that, but then neither was she.

Kerrie came up on the porch, carrying her sack of toys like she had every confidence we were staying. One look at the grandmother's face and she slipped her hand into mine. I shook Kerrie off, but not in a mean way. I wanted us to look strong, to be strong. I hoped she got that.

Each year, the grandmother gifted Kerrie and me with a Life Savers Christmas box of different-flavored rolls of candy. By mail. Only the return address showed where it came from. Daddy would always say to Mel, “We can just drive over there,” like she lived only a few blocks away.

Mel always said, “Over my dead body.”

I knew the history on this, but Mel and Daddy were married now. How long could Mel's mother stay mad that they didn't get married sooner? And how long could Mel stay mad that her mother got mad?

Daddy would try again. “One sight of the girls would soften her right up.”

“Don't bet on it.” Then Mel would send this woman a Christmas card, tucking my picture and Kerrie's into it. It was not something I ever brought up, but if someone had shoved a microphone in my face and said, “Who do you think is to blame?” I'd have guessed it was Mel who was still mad and cheating Kerrie and me out of a quality grandmother experience.

Until now.

Kerrie piped up then in her little voice meant to remind people she's a child. Because Kerrie is, unlike Mel and myself, petite, people put up with it. “Could I use your bathroom? I really need to tinkle.”

Because she's cute, some people even encourage it.

“Do you mean you need to pee?” the grandmother asked.

Well, hoo-ray.

Kerrie nodded meekly.

The grandmother stepped back and motioned with one hand. “Go all the way down the hall and through the kitchen. There you will find the johnny house.”

Kerrie looked her in the eye and said, “Does that mean it's outside?”

The grandmother lowered her voice an octave to say, “Definitely not.”

Kerrie walked right inside, like one of those kamikaze pilots she watched on the History Channel. She didn't cower in the least.

The grandmother waited until Kerrie had disappeared from sight before asking, “Is there something wrong with that child?”

Mel said, “Why do you ask?”

“She's short.”

Mel said, “She's a child.”

“She knows it only too well.”

“Just be nice to her,” Mel said. “She'll quit it a whole lot sooner.”

The grandmother's eyes grew round. “Be nice to her?”

A point for Mel, who added, “You're a little daunting at six in the morning, Momma.”

“That's the nicest thing you've said to me in years.” Witty, the grandmother.

Most kids wouldn't want this woman for a grand-mother. I wasn't sure I wanted her. But something about her struck me as, well, interesting.

“It's what kids do when there's another baby on the way, that's all,” Mel said. “She's pretty sure babies must be irresistible.”

“Not to me,” the grandmother said.

“Probably she'll figure that out. Are you going to let us stand here and catch our death, or do we all have to tell you we want to tinkle?”

She gave Mel one more look I couldn't read and said, “You might as well come in. I was just going to have break-fast. In an hour or so.”

“We can go away and come back later,” I said, not step-ping forward. I admit it, I wanted to wring an actual welcome out of her.

“I'm not sure my heart could take it,” she said, holding the door open wider.

There was something in her eyes when she looked at me. Curiosity. Something. She looked away before I could quite know what it was.

Mel stepped around me. “We should have called first,” she said, which was only the simple truth. The woman would've had a chance to get that mess off her head.