Monday I Love You (5 page)

All these things happened before we moved out of our house on Lily Pond Lane. I loved that house, loved our backyard with its clothesline, the moth-eaten bag full of clothespins hanging from it. Loved watching my overalls and panties with ruffled behinds blowing in the wind. We never had a clothes dryer. My mother loved the smell of sun in the clothes, she said. Once, a neighbor helping her fold the clean clothes sniffed at them and said, “What is that wonderful smell? What did you put in your rinse water?” And my mother smiled pityingly and said, “Fresh air and sun.” That's the stuff TV commercials are made of.

We had no dishwasher either, except for my father. When I got older, I helped wash and dry, but he was forever putting dishes back into the water, dishes I'd washed that emerged from the suds with bits and pieces of eaten food still on them. My father went into a rage when he discovered the cupboard bare of clean dishes. My mother never washed a dish if she could help it.

“It's a waste of time,” she said gaily. “They'll only get dirty again.”

When my father lost his job at the hardware store, we moved out of that house. I was very sad and went around touching every bush, every twig, the clothesline and even our mailbox, which hung crooked and was painted the same pale blue as the house. It had a big 9 on it, but the number of the house was actually nineteen. When the 1 had blown off during a windstorm, we'd never thought to put it back.

The neighbors across the street, the ones with the big black Lab, hung out the flag the day we moved. I didn't know what it meant. I thought maybe it was a national holiday, like the Fourth of July or Memorial Day. But when I asked the girl who lived there, who loved her dog and dressed him in her old baby clothes and stuffed him into an ancient pram and even put mosquito netting over him as she trundled him up and down the driveway, why their flag was hanging out, she said snippily, “Because you're moving.”

Our next house was an apartment. It was painted a horrid color, a mixture of gray and brown, both inside and out. Our landlord lived above us and was always snooping around, asking if there was anything he could do. My mother said, “Well, yes, Mr. Barry, if you'd fix the latch on the kitchen door, I'd appreciate it,” and we never saw him up close again. Except for his footsteps climbing the outside stairs to where he lived, he might as well have died.

And if my father was late with the rent, as he often was, Mr. Barry stationed himself on the far side of the street and stayed there until my father finally sent me out with the cash in an old envelope with the stamp torn off. My father collected stamps in those days. We always paid our rent in cash.

I never liked a house as much as that Lily Pond Lane one though. I loved that house. No place we've lived since has meant so much to me. Maybe because that was the happiest time of my life. Either the house made me happy or I made the house happy. One or the other. Maybe a little of both. It was one of those perfect times that doesn't have or need an explanation. It just
was
, and I remember it with love and joy, and probably always will.

8

Some people eat supper in front of the TV. Other people, I've heard, actually talk to each other during the meal. In our house, my mother switches the radio on just as we sit down to eat. Those droning voices get on my nerves, but it's her house.

“When you have your own house, Grace,” she says when I complain, “you can do what you like. But until then …” She smiles, twirling the dial.

So we listened as we ate our continental supper: fettucine Alfredo out of a box, green beans amandine out of the freezer.

“I always say what would we do without these frozen people.” My mother never took her eyes off me as she crunched down on an amandine and winced, reminded of her recent root canal. “Would you believe, Grace, in the olden days, there was no such thing as frozen food. Can you believe it?”

I could and did, wondering about the Eskimos. My mother chewed every mouthful twenty times, as she'd heard this cut down on caloric intake and kept you thin. I couldn't help noticing that the constant movement of her jaws made her nose move too. She watched me, I watched her nose.

“You all right?” she asked for the fourth time.

I nodded.

“Sure? Maybe a laxative?”

She was always flushing me out.

“Why are your eyes so bloodshot, Grace?” A sudden, terrible idea occurred to her. I could see it travel across her face and hit her brain.

“You're not
on
anything, are you?” In her agitation, she put down her fork. “Coke? Heroin? Crack?” She knew all the words.

“Yeah, Ma,” I said wearily, not having the strength to laugh, “I'm on 'em all.”

“You can tell me, Grace. You can tell your mother. It's only a mother's duty to help her child.” She leaned toward me, forehead creased with worry lines. “You can always confide in your mother, Grace. What's wrong? Something's wrong. I can always tell.”

Why is it, I wondered, that people who can't handle their own problems, much less other people's, always want to know what's wrong?

“Nothing new,” I told her. “All the same old stuff.”

“You should get out more,” she said brightly. “Go meet new people, make new friends. That way you'd be happier. You have to make an effort, Grace.”

Suddenly the announcer's voice cut in. There'd been a shooting and robbery at the Amoco station out on the highway, he told us, breathless with excitement. I figured that local announcers didn't get too many chances at dishing out exciting stuff like this.

“Listen,” my mother commanded, head tilted toward the radio as if that way she'd hear better. As if I wasn't listening. She loved stuff like shootings and robberies. I guess it was the only drama in her life.

The gas-station attendant was even at this very moment on his way to the hospital in the county ambulance, the announcer said, which had answered the call for help in a record time of three minutes and eight seconds.

“Well, I never.” My mother's eyes darted around the room, checking for possible danger spots. She got up and pulled the curtains closer together. As if
he
was out there, thinking of breaking and entering our little home.

“We will keep you informed of any new developments,” the announcer told us. “Stay tuned.”

“I bet,” I said.

When I finally escaped, I locked myself in my room and sat on my bed, looking down at myself. I threw out my chest suddenly, as far as it would go. Then I marched over to the mirror and began to strip. I stripped all the way down to my bras, which were still there, guarding the fortress, holding it in. I'd got the crazy idea that if I slept in my bras, I'd wake up and my breasts would be normal size. I needed to see myself as Ashley and the others had seen me. I wanted to know how bad it was.

Worse than I'd thought. I was a terrible, awesome sight. Even seen through slitted eyes, I knew I was ludicrous. Laughable. Once, when I was a lot younger, B.C. (Before Chest, as I thought of it), I went with my mother to a store where she tried on clothes in a communal dressing room. I remember laughing behind my hand at a woman with humongous breasts. No doubt she'd been aware of me and my amusement. More than once, I'd asked silently for the woman's forgiveness. Forgive me. I didn't know.

What on earth made me think wearing two bras might make me look smaller? All it did was push my flesh around, shoving me up and out. Bulges I'd never had before now bulged significantly. Bulges that, when pushed down, sprang up of their own accord.

A deep red wave of shame crept over me from waist to forehead. Above the billowing flesh my head looked small, inadequate, my face confused and pinched, as if I'd just been told I had a brain tumor. Or as if I'd been caught in a giant machine and pressed. My head looked flat on top. I was a mess.

This, then, was the sight that had greeted Ashley's probing hands and eyes. I threw myself down on the bed, pillow over my face to muffle my cries. She must've heard me anyway.

“Grace! Grace!” My mother's voice came through the keyhole. “Let me in.” If I hadn't been so beside myself I might've put my mouth up against the keyhole and shouted, “Let me alone!” so loud it would injure her eardrum and make her stop. My mother was a keyhole person, always watching, calling through it. Just because I had my own room didn't mean I had privacy.

“I'm thinking,” I called to her, making my voice sound normal. “I have this big essay I have to write, and it requires a lot of thinking.”

“Oh,” I heard her say.

I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my chest. Maybe I was having a heart attack. Maybe I was dying. I'd heard of people my age dying. A boy over in Clarksville died after being tackled in a football game. Doctors said he'd had a heart condition that no one knew about until they did an autopsy. Maybe I had a heart condition and was going to die at any moment. They'd lay me out and kids from school would come to the funeral, kids who despised me for the way I looked; kids like Ashley would come and cry loudly so they'd get noticed, then they'd embrace each other, hang on each other outside the church so people would look at them and say, “How sad. They loved Grace so.”

I waited for another pain to strike. I waited quite a long time. Nothing happened. Finally I sat up and drew my knees up to my chest. I have fat knees, too. Like old ladies you see on buses with their fat knees spread apart to give balance and support. It's awful, having fat knees.

I considered eliminating Ashley. Wiping her off the face of the earth. Would it make me feel better? Recently I'd read about an ancient method of torture. It involved putting a person inside a bag of snakes and tying the bag so neither the person or the snakes could escape. I thought about that.

“Grace.” The voice was at the keyhole again. I remained silent. Maybe she'd think I was asleep or so deep in thought I couldn't hear.

“Grace, it's the telephone.”

I jumped to my feet, fat knees or no.

It was probably Estelle. Estelle was the only one who called me. “Is it Estelle?” I asked.

“No.” My mother's voice sounded breathless. Excited.

“Well, who then?”

“It's a boy.”

“A boy? Is that what you said, a boy?”

“Yes. A boy.” I heard her uneven breathing.

Goose bumps marched up and down me, across, all over.

“What does he want?” I whispered through the keyhole.

“I didn't ask him. He said he wants to speak to Grace.”

I put on my red-and-black plaid bathrobe and unlocked the door. My mother clasped her hands and watched me go, wordless, probably saying her prayers. Please, God, make it lovely. For Grace's sake, make it lovely. For mine.

“Hello,” I said boldly into the telephone.

“Is this Grace Schmitt?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this is Charlie.”

The only Charlie was Charlie Oates, who was big and blond and sexy. A hunk.

“Charlie.” My voice caught in my throat, choking off further words. Charlie Oates.

“Yes, Charlie. I was wondering if …” The voice came to a halt.

I almost hung up. I wanted to. I was almost sure it was somebody fooling around. I thought I heard noises in the background.

But I hung on, hoping against hope.

“I was wondering if you'd …” Again the voice stopped. “If you'd go to the dance with me Friday.”

I swallowed and closed my eyes. Spots danced in my eyeballs. I blinked my eyes open. My mother hugged the wall, pale. Listening. Saying prayers. Please, God, please. Be nice. That's what she prayed.

“Dance?” I said, and my mother's face was consumed by joy.

“Yeah. There's this dance in the gym Friday. After the game.”

“Friday. Tomorrow?”

“Yeah, that's right. Tomorrow.”

I swallowed again and said, “All right.”

“Wear your black …” Charlie said, and it was like canned laughter on TV. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, they laughed. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

I slammed down the receiver. Too late I slammed it down. My mother huddled in the corner, clutching her unanswered prayers in her tightly clenched fists.

“It was a joke,” I said in a loud, ragged voice. “It was all a big joke. I don't know why you're surprised. I certainly wasn't. The minute you said it was a boy, I knew it was a joke.”

My mother and I stared at each other. She put her fist to her mouth. I smiled.

“I knew it all along,” I told her. “He said he was Charlie Oates. He said he wanted me to go to the dance with him Friday in the gym after the game. It was like one of those teenage romances. Unreal. I hate those teenage romances. They make me sick. I have to go now. I have to think some more.”

My mother put out her hand. I avoided looking at it. I studied a spot over her head.

“I have work to do,” I said. Then I went into my room and locked my door. Somehow I didn't think she'd be at the keyhole again tonight.

I'd barely settled down when the telephone rang again. I could hear it through the thin walls. No, I thought despairingly. They wouldn't. Not twice in one night.

I heard my mother come tapping, like a wicked witch, or a ghost, seeking retribution. In a voice as penetrating as a stiletto, she said, “It's Ms. Govoni, Grace. She wants to speak to you.”

“Tell her I'm dead!” I shouted. “Tell her I'm having a nervous breakdown. Tell her anything!”

“She says she wants to ask a favor of you.”

If it really was Govoni, I thought, I owe her one. She'd been kind to me. I got up, unlocked my door and padded heavily past my mother.

“Hello,” I said, my neck muscles so tight I could hardly turn my head. If it was another hoax, I planned to tear the telephone out by its roots and hurl it through the window where, by enormous good luck and more enormous coincidence, Ashley would happen to be walking by, and the telephone would nail her, causing permanent brain damage.