Ordinary Beauty (14 page)

“Of course. I understand.” He gives my shoulder a brief squeeze and turns to leave. “I’ll be here for a while longer, so if you want me, the nurses know how to reach me.” He nods, his blue eyes soft with sympathy, and disappears out the door.

I take a tissue from the box on the table tray. Blot my face and blow my nose. Sit in the quiet and stare at the shrunken ruin of my mother. Part of me—the part that still shouts
She doesn’t get to be forgiven just because she’s dying!
—wants up and out of here because staying is surrendering, giving her all the comfort and tenderness she never gave me, and that side of me balks hard at letting her have it.

The warring sides twist me up. What am I doing here? What’s wrong with me? What if she dies and never gives me anything at all, not a look or a smile or a word or ANYTHING?

No. There has to be something.

There has to be.

That hand, tucked under her chin, so cozy.

Does that mean she’s at peace?

I’m not.

Not at all.

I want to know what she’s thinking, want to know what’s going through her mind right now because she feels so far away. I want to know if she’s remembering her life, if that’s what Red meant when he said the dying turn inside themselves, and have no need for the outer world anymore. That annoys me briefly, because
I’m
in the outer world. I want to know if she’s searching her soul and making peace, or if her life is flashing and tumbling before her in a kaleidoscope of brilliant, broken fragments with no order and no end. Is there panic, knowing tomorrow’s slipping through her grasp, is the spark struggling to stay burning, or is she simply done, tired and ready to go?

If I lean closer and talk to her, will she hear me?

WHEN MY MOTHER AND I WALKED
to the mission the next morning for breakfast, there was a big pile of flowers and teddy bears and candles placed near the front door, but it wasn’t until we got closer that I could see the familiar, smiling face staring out of the framed picture at the heart of the tribute.

“That’s Miss Mo,” I exclaimed, stopping in front of it and staring up at my mother. For a moment my brain refused to process what this meant, and translated the little Madonna statues and sympathy balloons into birthday tributes. “We didn’t bring her a present!”

My mother looked at me funny, pulled the door open, and said, “Come on, let’s go see what’s up.”

I followed her, not really getting what she meant—or maybe I did, but just couldn’t bear to acknowledge it—although once inside with the people talking, crying, and praying all around us, everything became clear.

Miss Mo had been murdered last night in her carport.

Stabbed by Mareene’s ex-boyfriend.

Mareene had found her.

The cops had arrested Harlow Maltese, who was splattered with Miss Mo’s blood and still had the knife on him.

Mareene was a basket case, and her father was flying in from Georgia to stay with her.

The wake would be in two days, the funeral service out of Holy Mercy Baptist Church, and the burial at Holy Mercy cemetery.

Somehow my bewildered brain let me hear it and make sense of it all, but not feel it. Miss Mo was dead, but that fact hung somewhere out ahead of me like a distant, neon sign and it stayed that way until the other volunteer ladies went back behind the counter to begin serving breakfast. We all got in line, but when I got to Miss Mo’s spot it was empty and the pan that she always gave me scrambled eggs from was empty and her fun, red-striped apron hung limp on the hook and all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry anymore so I got out of line, and dizzy, with knees like water, walked out the door to the tribute and sat down on the sidewalk in front of her picture, just sat and stared into her wonderful eyes until my mother finally came out and found me.

“Did you eat?” she said.

“No,” I said, pushing myself up off the ground and dusting my hands on my jeans. “We have to go to the wake.”

And she must have seen something in my face because she didn’t argue, only said, “It starts Wednesday afternoon,” and walked quietly beside me all the way back to the motor court.

We went down to the Methodist church on Tuesday because they’d had a clothing drive for the needy and my mother found me a pair of navy blue pants and a plain white top with crocheted lace around the edge of the sleeves, and a black pin-striped pants suit and a cream-colored V-neck blouse for herself. She found black high heels, too, and I got a pair of decent running shoes. The church ladies suggested I pick out a few more things and so I did, because school would be starting soon and I didn’t have much.

My mother was quiet all day Wednesday, not mad quiet but almost like thoughtful quiet. When she put on her suit, she stood looking at herself in the mirror for a long time, first, I think, like studying how different she looked and second, gazing straight into her own eyes, like she was trying to figure herself out.

“So this is what I would have looked like if I’d gone to law school like I was supposed to,” she said finally, straightening the front of the jacket. “Pretty bizarre, huh?”

I didn’t know what to say because she didn’t look bizarre, she looked a little like Katie Bingo’s mother who always smiled and kissed her good-bye when she dropped her off at school in the morning before she went to work, who drove a shiny red car and gave Katie lunch money and took her to Disney over the Christmas holiday. If my mother’s side tooth wasn’t missing and her hair was swingy and shiny and she had rings and earrings and more makeup than just that rose-colored lipstick, then she would look just as good, if not better, than Mrs. Bingo.

“That bad?” my mother cracked, looking at me in the mirror.

“No, not at all,” I said, coming to stand beside her. “You look nice, Mom.”

She gazed back at me. “So do you, kiddo.” And just as my shy smile began to bloom, she cocked her head and added, “God, you know, you really do look like your father. Well, from what I remember, I mean, which isn’t much, but you don’t look
anything
like me, so . . .” She shrugged and busied herself buttoning and unbuttoning the jacket, seeing which way she liked it, while I stood there stricken, staring at myself in the mirror. “He was tall and had big, dark puppy dog eyes with all those long black lashes, just like you do.” Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Funny, the stuff that comes back to haunt you, right?”

I bit my bottom lip, then with a burst of courage blurted out, “Was Bellavia his last name, too?”

In an instant her smile died and a flash of something—embarrassment?—crossed her face, then dissolved into anger. “Goddamn-it, Sayre, why do you do that? Can’t you just take what you get and be satisfied? Do you always have to have more? Just . . . stop, all right? Don’t ask me any more stupid questions.” She stalked across the room and grabbed her purse. “Now let’s go before I change my mind.”

And so we walked to the funeral home in the center of town, with me always just a few steps behind and struggling to keep up, and it was mobbed. Crowds of people were standing outside smoking and looking tragic, parting for the new arrivals and then closing ranks again. The carpet in the foyer was plush and the walls were dark, gleaming wood. We got in line behind a sad-looking guy with saggy pants who I recognized from the mission, and little by little we inched forward into the room where the wake actually was. There were folding chairs set up in rows and every seat was taken. It was hot and the air was heavy with perfume and BO.

“What, did she know everyone in town?” my mother muttered, pushing her damp hair back off her forehead. “This place is packed.” Her mouth twisted again in that weird, wry smile. “Well, you won’t have to worry about standing room only at my wake. You and Candy will be about it, and Candy’s so pissed off that I won’t go out partying with her that she probably won’t show up, either, just to spite me.”

“I didn’t know you still talked to Candy.” I stood on tiptoe and tried to see the front of the room where Miss Mo was supposed to be, but it was impossible.

My mother gave me a defensive look. “Well, what am I supposed to do, block her calls? She’s my best friend. Just because we’re not hanging out doesn’t mean I can’t talk to her, you know. God, what’re you, my parole officer?”

“Okay, okay,” I said because she wasn’t whispering anymore and I could feel my cheeks getting hot. “Look, there’s one of the ladies from the church.”

It took us a full twenty-five minutes to get to the front and when we did, I wished we hadn’t. Mareene couldn’t stop crying, sobbing and hugging me when she saw me, radiating pain from every pore and drenching me with her tears, telling me how her mother had loved me, and how empty the house was when I left, and on and on.

My mother, already tired of waiting, poked my arm and gestured to herself, made a cigarette motion and pointed out the door. She passed Miss Mo’s casket without pause, and disappeared into the crowd.

“Come on, honey, I’ll go up with you,” Mareene said, sliding a trembling arm around my shoulders. “I know she would’ve wanted to see you again.”

And so we walked up to the edge of the casket and it was so hot and there were white lilies everywhere. My head was spinning and my heart was aching, and I looked at this lifeless Miss Mo dressed in her light pink church suit with her silky hair all neat and curled wrong, and too much face makeup and no smile, not even a little one, and that big, vibrant bouquet of rainbow zinnias that I knew were from the garden, and Mareene was standing beside me saying,
Doesn’t she look good? I had to put the flowers over her hands, though, because of all the cut wounds on them,
and then her crying, crying, crying until an older man who must have been her father came and led her away. Someone put a hand on my shoulder and said quietly,
Hey, Sayre
and I looked up into Beale’s dear, solemn face, and that’s when I cracked.

He gave me a tissue and waited while I clasped my hands tight in front of me and whispered,
Dear God, please love this lady. She’s very kind and generous and she loves you more than anyone but Mareene, so if she can’t be here with us then I hope she’s in heaven with you. Amen,
and then he ushered me through the crowd to the back of the room.

“Is Aunt Loretta here?” I asked, craning my neck to scan the ever-increasing crowd.

“No, she wanted to come, but she’s down with the flu,” he said. “She’s going to try to make it to the funeral, though. Losing Mo just broke her heart.” He shook his head. “You’re not here by yourself?”

“No, my mom came—ow!” I said, yelping as someone stepped hard on my foot.

“Come on,” Beale said, and taking my hand, led me out of the wake into the foyer. “Where’s your mom?”

“Outside smoking,” I said.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, edging us past a gaggle of church ladies squeezing in the door, down the steps and over toward the lawn.

“No, this way,” I said, leading him over to my mom, who was standing alone under a maple tree. The brilliant rays of sunset cast a golden sheen over everything and I saw my mother, wearing her pin-striped suit and high heels, glance up at us, her face glowing in the light, and go still, her eyes widening slightly but not fixed on me. When I turned to see what she was staring at, I realized it was Beale, and he was staring right back at her with the same kind of dazed and shimmering look.

I never saw the arc of lightning pass between them, but I felt the air shiver when Beale cleared his throat, introduced himself, and shook her hand. My mother felt it, too, I’m sure, because her eyes turned to great soft, black pools and her cheeks went pink and she was smiling, closemouthed to hide her missing tooth. Beale was smiling, too, only his was wide and beaming and I stood there between them as this whole immense thing was happening, unbelieving yet at the same time lit with dawning hope, hardly daring to breathe lest I interrupt and ruin everything because they were talking and laughing quietly, shifting back and forth on the grass in a weird kind of dance that brought them closer with every step.

Somehow, Beale ended up taking us out to the Applebee’s on the highway for supper and while I sat there eating fish and chips and watching them, scarcely believing the miracle that was unfolding right in front of me, my mother and Beale talked and laughed and she didn’t yell or swear and he didn’t drink. Her face was shining and pretty, and Beale never took his eyes off her.

It wasn’t until the waitress came and joked about how I’d eaten every last thing on my plate that Beale started and kind of woke up, looked at me with real distress, and said, “Sayre, I’m sorry. I can’t believe I haven’t even asked you how you’ve been,” and then he brought me right into the conversation and ended up telling my mother about my little Stormy kitten and how Aunt Loretta had grown so fond of me and what a help I was and on, and on.

“So
you’re
the one who taught her how to spit watermelon pits,” my mother teased, and to my amazement, Beale actually blushed and ducked his head, which made my mother and I laugh and then it hit me, the lilting music of our mingled happiness, and I almost cried because it was such a good sound.

That night, the night of Miss Mo’s wake, was the beginning of something I’d never even dared to dream of, and I always knew that it was Miss Mo who’d caused it, watching out for me from heaven, smiling her wonderful, soft smile and saying
You keep your heart open to miracles, Sayre, because I’m sending you one right now.

THE MIRACLE OF MY MOTHER AND
Beale didn’t end like I was afraid it would, but only intensified as the days passed. We became an astonishing threesome and I got to see my mother straight, not high, in love and warily happy, hanging back sometimes, awkward and shy, as if she couldn’t believe it, either, and was just waiting for the ax to fall.

But not Beale.

He came to us every day as strong and bright and reliable as the sun, making us smile, taking us out to eat, to the park, back to his house on Sunrise Road where Aunt Loretta embraced my mother like she wasn’t a recovering addict scared to death at all the good things suddenly coming her way, but like she was the woman who was making her son sing all the time now, and that was good enough for her.

“And you,” she said, laughing and hugging me, “are my beautiful bonus prize! Oh, Sayre, it’s so good to see you again. Come on, would you like to go see Stormy?”

It made me breathless, made my heart actually hurt sometimes at how happy I was just sitting at the kitchen table or helping Aunt Loretta cook, and listening to my mother and Beale sitting out on the front porch talking.

I learned that even though Beale had gone over and cleaned out the carport after Miss Mo’s death, hosing it down so that every last drop of her blood was gone, Mareene still couldn’t bear to live in her house anymore, and so she’d put it up for sale and gone back to Georgia with her father. I wandered over there alone one afternoon while it stood empty, a little scared, a lot sad, but once I got to the carport I felt the hair on my arms rise. It was quiet but it was an eerie quiet, an unnatural one, like residual violence still hung heavy in the air, and it made my skin crawl, so I didn’t go any closer, only ran around to the garden, picked zinnias, and then took them back and threw them hard into the carport as some kind of antidote or exorcism, I guess.

It didn’t feel like enough so I said a speedy Lord’s Prayer and then followed the edge of the field back to Beale’s, pausing every few feet and grabbing bunches of Queen Anne’s lace because they felt clean and pure and safe. Their tough, wiry stems fought me but I fought back, pinching them off with my fingernails because they felt like hope, and I wanted my hands full of it.

I gave them to my mother, shocking her speechless, and I think Aunt Loretta was the only one who realized she didn’t know what to do with them or what to say to me, so she offered to put them in water. My mother seemed relieved to surrender them.

I didn’t mind. I would have endured almost anything to keep us here, and happy.

And then my mother finally started her job at the factory and I started school. We only saw Beale at night and on the weekends, when he would take us out to the farm on Friday and bring us back Sunday night. He called the motor court a roach motel and hated that we lived there, said he’d never seen a place this bad in his life, but my mother told him it was all we could afford right now and no matter how much he grumbled, there was no changing it.

It was kind of thrilling, watching him cast dark looks at all the guys hanging out in the parking lot, leaning against their pickups or sitting on the curb drinking beer. He was my mother’s boyfriend, he knew about her past addiction and how she was trying so hard to keep clean, and it worried him that this was the environment we called home.

It made me feel proud to have him care about us like that.

Like we were worth protecting.

I dug in and started bringing home A+ papers from school. Last fall, when we’d been staying at the Fees, my grades had been terrible, but this year I not only had food and a bed and a mother who, while she wasn’t fawning all over me, at least wasn’t telling me to get the fuck out of her way as she staggered over to smoke some meth.

It made a difference.

Beale helped me with my homework, too, and I studied hard because I wanted to make him proud. And I suppose I wanted to show my mother what I could do, thinking maybe if she didn’t like what I looked like then maybe she’d be happy with my brains, but mostly I loved the way the slow, delighted smile would break out over Beale’s face when he saw the big red A+ at the top of the page, and the way he would give me that brief, strong, one-armed hug and say, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Miss Sayre Bellavia: You’re a keeper.”

My mother wasn’t quite as impressed, and the first fight I ever heard them have was over one of the papers I did for English. The teacher had written
Wonderful! Vivid scenes, excellent language skills! You’re a natural-born writer!
Beale made a big fuss over it, and my mother, tired from working and having her period, watching from the little counter in our room where she was making coffee for the two of them, snapped, “Jesus, Beale, will you give it a rest already? It’s only a school paper. It’s not like she found a cure for cancer or anything. God.”

My laughter died, and Beale, who had just gotten me in a congratulatory headlock and was giving me a gentle noogie stopped cold, and released me. “Oh, come on now, Dianne. You can’t stand there and tell me you’re not a proud mama while our girl here gets genius grades.”

“Stop telling her stuff like that,” my mother said, scowling and dumping milk in the Styrofoam coffee cups. “You keep filling her mind with big ideas and all you’re doing is creating false hope. This is Sullivan, Beale. Dug County. Last time I looked there weren’t any Einsteins hanging around down at the Colonial Pub.”

Beale stared at her for a long moment, which made her scowl even harder and busy herself sugaring the coffees. “Sayre, would you mind stepping outside for a couple of minutes? Your mom and I have something we need to discuss.”

“Okay,” I whispered because his face was strange, it gave nothing away, and he must have heard the tremor in my voice because he gave me a reassuring smile and it was enough to steady my knees and get me out the door.

Happily, although the curtains were drawn the window was cracked open, and so I loitered close enough to hear what they were saying.

“Why do you do that to her, Di?” Beale said. “She was happy and proud and she should have been. She’s doing really well now, and I hope she keeps it up. Grades like that will get her scholarships someday and maybe even into a decent college.”

“Not if she gets pregnant in sophomore year and fucks up her life,” my mother said.

It was silent a moment.

“Why would you even want to say that?”

“Because guess what, it happens. I was supposed to go to law school and be some big important attorney rolling in dough, you know, but I had
her
instead and if
I
had to give up everything to do it, why should she be any different? I don’t get why you think she should have more. More than what? More than me? Why can’t she just take what she gets? I had to.”

“But she’s not you, Di,” Beale said carefully. “She’s a completely different person and she gets to build her own future. You don’t want her to go through what you went through. Christ, even the little bit you told me about the drinking alone . . . nobody wants their kid to live a life like that. I mean she’s only what, ten years old? Think about what she’s already been exposed to.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” my mother said defensively. “And she was a kid, she didn’t know what was going on.”

Beale remained silent.

“Well, she didn’t,” my mother said, angry again. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It was her
childhood,
Di, and somehow she managed to survive it without being all messed up. You’ve got one smart, strong kid there and it’s like you don’t even get how lucky you are,” Beale said. “She could be really screwed up, out drinking or getting high or messing with boys, but she’s not. She’s got a good head on her shoulders and that’s worth something. I mean, I know you had a hard time, but so has she, and as a mom, you have to want more for her than this kind of life.”

“So you’re saying this life is good enough for me but not for her?”

“No, I’m saying she’s a smart kid—”

“Oh, wait, I thought she was a genius,” my mother said in a mocking voice.

“Stop, Dianne. You know what I mean,” he said quietly. “She works hard, trying to please you. Why don’t you ever congratulate her or hug her or something? You see the way she looks at you: She’s like a pup chained up just out of reach, hungry for affection and—”

“Excuse me, but I don’t remember asking you how to raise my daughter,” my mother said in an icy tone.

I bit my lip, anxious, scared, and almost wishing I’d never even gotten the stupid A+.

“Look,” he said finally and his voice was farther away now, so he must have gotten up and gone over to her. “I don’t want to fight and I’m not trying to tell you how to raise Sayre. I’m just saying there’s no harm in praising her when she earns it.”

“Fine, whatever,” my mother said after a moment. “Do what you want. Tell her she’s a goddamn fucking princess and the whole world is her oyster for all I care. Fill her full of bullshit fairy tales that’ll never come true. I won’t stop you.”

“Good, because I think she
should
have high hopes and expectations, and not just settle in life. There’s been too much of that already.” His voice was strange, like he wanted to say more but was holding back. “So . . . are we okay again?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” my mother said, and it sounded like she was sulking.

“Oh yes you do,” Beale said and then his voice dropped to a murmur. After a while I heard my mother laugh softly and then there was silence again, but this time it was a good silence, so I sat on the curb while the kids played, the ladies gossiped, and the men drank and talked trash in the parking lot, and stared up at the sky thinking about all the nice things Beale had said about me and being glad that I had a good head on my shoulders. I sat there thinking and thinking until my mother called me back in, which was only about ten minutes later but still long enough for me to find the North Star and make a fervent, heartfelt wish.

I wished Beale was my father.