Ordinary Beauty (19 page)

When Beale finished playing I went down the steps and sat next to him. “Guess what? I just felt the baby kicking.”

He smiled down at me and said, “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, then tugged his head down and whispered in his ear, “Beale, do you think the baby will like me?”

He leaned back, gazing at me with a strange expression, and said in a gruff voice, “This baby is going to love you, Sayre.”

“Good,” I whispered, ducking my head with happiness.

And then Aunt Loretta brought out lemon sherbet and called me the birthday girl, and with all of the contentment in the world running warm and sweet throughout me, I had no idea this bliss would not last and that eleven would turn out to be the darkest, most agonizing year of my life.

I WHISPER THESE MEMORIES TO MY
mother, pressing my lips close to her ear and hoping she can hear me, hoping what’s left of her mind can grab one of them and hold on to it. I want her to remember, I need her to know how I felt, how I
still
feel, and I’m not holding anything back because honest is the only way it will come out. She couldn’t stop me now if she rolled right over and opened her eyes, looked straight at me, and said, “Jesus Christ, will you shut the fuck up already, Sayre? You see I’m trying to sleep, here.”

And who knows, maybe that’s
exactly
why I’m doing it. Maybe my way of making peace is to disturb hers. Maybe she shouldn’t be allowed to just drift away from me so calm and tranquil, leaving me with a legacy of unacknowledged chaos, pain, and disregard. Maybe I
want
to break her heart, to make her feel what I feel, to realize exactly what she threw away and exactly how she got here. Maybe I’m pushing her on purpose, charting a path so big and obvious that she
has
to remember, has to see the wreckage, has to open her eyes and tell me to stop. . . .

Because she’s going, and this time she won’t be back.

This truth leaves me weak, hollow, and so I rest my head on the pillow, close my burning eyes and keep talking, although my words are slow and stumbling now. Exhaustion is winning, and the closer I get to remembering Ellie the heavier my words become, the more grief spreads its thick, gray cloak over me, draining my body and pulling me down like gravity into yesterday. . . .

MY MOTHER WORKED UP UNTIL THE
third week of June, then reluctantly took a leave of absence and came back to the farm to finish the baby’s room and be surprised that Sunday with a baby shower in the local grange hall.

Aunt Loretta and I had gone over Saturday and decorated it with a wishing well and blue, pink, green, and yellow streamers because my mother and Beale had decided not to find out if the baby was a girl or a boy. We got a beautiful white sheet cake from the bakery with pink and blue rosettes all over it and hired the church ladies to do the catering, since it would have been impossible for Aunt Loretta to do it at home with my mother underfoot.

The only worrisome thing, for me, was the guest list.

For the past three weeks, every time Jillian’s mother saw me, she had hinted for an invitation. Horrified, I’d never mentioned it to Aunt Loretta, hoping Mrs. Jergenmeier would just get the hint, but no such luck. She actually called one night to ask about it—thank God my mother was in the bathtub at the time—and I answered the phone. When she asked to talk to Beale I held the phone out to him, bugging my eyes and vehemently shaking my head while whispering, “It’s Mrs. Jergenmeier and she wants to know if she can come to Mom’s shower.” I finished my show of opposition by mouthing
No, no, no
and making violent slashing motions across my throat just in case he still didn’t get it.

“She
what
? Oh, for . . .” Beale said, scowling and taking the phone. “Hello?”

I couldn’t hear the whole conversation, only Beale’s side, and although my mother never found out about Mrs. Jergenmeier’s call, she would have been proud of Beale’s no-nonsense response: “I’m fine. Now, what’s this about?” Silence. “No, Karrie. Sorry.” Silence. Snort. “I think ‘friend of the family’ is a pretty big exaggeration.” Silence. “Well, you didn’t have to get the baby anything but thank you. Dianne and I appreciate it.” Silence. “Send it to school with your daughter before Friday and Sayre will bring it home with her.” He caught my alarmed gaze and made a “wait” motion with his hand. “No. No. Look, I’m in the middle of something, so . . . Sure. Thanks again. ’Bye.” He hung up, and looked at me, boggled. “What the hell was that?”

“A really close call,” I muttered, as upstairs the bathroom door squeaked open and I heard my mother’s footsteps trudge down the hall to the bedroom. “I can’t bring that present here, Beale. Mom will have a fit!”

“Yeah, I know, but what was I going to say? We don’t want your stinkin’ present? You can’t say that.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Maybe we could just change the card to something like ‘Jillian and Family’? That would be better than anything Karrie’s going to write.”

Yes, it would, but that still wasn’t good enough. “You know, if the card fell off before the shower, then the present would be anonymous,” I said casually, with a very innocent shrug. “Stuff like that happens all the time, right?”

Beale stared at me for a few seconds, then grinned. “Well, Miss Sayre Bellavia, now why didn’t I think of that?”

Unfortunately, the Jergenmeier dilemma wasn’t my only worry.

While my mother and Candy hadn’t hung out together since they’d completed rehab, mostly because my mother had gone on and built herself a brand-new sober life, and Candy hadn’t, they still talked on the phone every once in a while, and so occasionally her name would pop up. Aunt Loretta and Beale had heard of the Fees, of course—who hadn’t?—but since the Galens inhabited such a completely different world they’d never actually met Candy, had only heard a few of the laughing, carefully edited stories my mother told over the dinner table. I’d never said much to Beale about the old days, my mother’s addictions, how we’d lost Grandma Lucy’s house, or the way we used to live. I never said much about Candy, either, because if I did, I’d have to tell him how scummy she was, and from there it was only a short hop to confessing that we’d been scummy, too, and I couldn’t bear to do that. I never wanted to see that realization dim the light in his eyes.

So, since Candy was my mother’s best and only friend, and without knowing how awful she was, Aunt Loretta had gone ahead and invited her to the shower.

My lone shred of hope was that Candy never RSVP’d, and so every day, right up to the shower, I sent out a fervent wish that she’d never gotten the invite and didn’t even know the shower was happening, or that she had lost the invitation, or was in jail, or if all else failed, she would get really stoned that morning and forget all about it.

The funny part was that Mrs. Jergenmeier turned out to be the forgetful one, as I waited till Friday and Jillian never brought that baby present from her mother to school. I never asked about it, either, and Jillian, who had always passed on news the second she got it, never said a word.

Personally, I think Mrs. Jergenmeier lied about that present just to get invited.

When the big day finally dawned, Aunt Loretta and I got all dressed up, and on the way out we told my mother we were going to a church event because we knew she wouldn’t ask any questions. Aunt Loretta had curled her hair and put on lipstick, her pearl earrings, peach-colored slacks, and a peach-and-white flowered blouse. I wore my new blue skirt and a really cool blue-and-white fleur-de-lis print tank top that Aunt Loretta had given me for my birthday.

I was beside myself with excitement when I walked into that grange hall and set my gifts up on the front table. I had gone to the mall and blown my entire allowance on a stuffed-animal cat that looked like Stormy, a cuddly blanket with lambs on it, and best of all, I’d had a little white baby T-shirt made that said
SAYRE’S MY BIG SISTER
on the front.

My mother was so shocked when Beale brought her into the hall and we all called,
Surprise!
that she had to be led to the decorated chair up at the front of the room. She was big now, ripe, Beale called it, and pretty. Her face had lost all its hollows and her skin had cleared up and glowed a healthy tan. She felt ugly a lot, though; I knew that because I’d heard Beale comforting her at night, but that was private and I didn’t share it with anyone.

And just when everything seemed perfect, Candy came in, already half drunk and
I
was the one shocked speechless because I had forgotten that dull, haggard, alcoholic look, the thick skin and puffy, bloated face, the slurred words and stupid, slack smile. I had forgotten—maybe on purpose—that my mother used to look like this, too, and was really glad when Aunt Loretta bustled over and found her a seat at a table full of Beale’s out-of-town cousins.

She stood back up though, waving at my mother, and although my mother waved back I think she was kind of embarrassed because Candy kept calling, “Open mine, open mine!” when we started on the presents.

The baby got a lot of nice things: diapers, blankets, a rocking chair, a baby swing, toys, onesies and booties, and one of those snuggly baby carrier slings that my mother could strap on and wear the baby in the front of her so they could be together all day.

“Well, we know who this is from,” my mother said when she held up the T-shirt I’d had made, and I got all embarrassed when everybody laughed and clapped, and Aunt Loretta hugged me.

“Open mine, Di,” Candy called again, and so my mother opened the first one, which was an infant set in a blotchy green-and-brown camouflage print, with a hat and bib and blanket and romper, and the sight of it made Aunt Loretta mutter something under her breath. My mother opened the second smaller package, which was another bib that said
MY MOMMY’S TATTOOS ARE BETTER THAN YOUR MOMMY’S
and when she held it up, smiling and shaking her head, Candy called out, “Remember that night, Di? Man, we were really fucked up. I—”

“Let’s take a break, everyone, and have some punch!” Aunt Loretta called, clapping her hands, and like magic, the women rose and chattered and bustled about.

My mother went over to Candy, who hugged her and started blubbering and saying she missed her and loved her and wanted to know why they never hung out anymore, and she was loud and sloppy and everyone was pretending not to listen but they really were. My mother kept trying to calm Candy down and looking more and more desperate, until finally she snapped and dragged her outside, and in a voice I hadn’t heard since we’d moved to the farm, said, “Jesus Christ, Candy, what the hell are you doing? This is a baby shower! You don’t need to come here all fucked up, and if you can’t keep it together, I hate to say it because you’re my oldest friend, but you’re gonna have to leave. I’m not kidding. Do you hear me?”

Candy gazed at her a moment, eyes bloodshot and sagging like an old hound dog, and then sniffled, lifted her chin, and said, “Fuck you. I don’t even know who you are anymore, but if the real, fun Dianne ever comes back,
she
can give me a call. You I don’t give one shit about.”

And then she turned and walked with the exaggerated dignity of the drunk back to her car, got in, and drove away.

My mother stood there a moment in the sunshine, shoulders slumped and staring after her, then drew a deep breath, smoothed her hair, and turned back to the grange hall. Spotting me by the door, she said, “Why did you even invite her?” and swept past me before I could say that I hadn’t, Aunt Loretta had because my mother had told her that Candy had gone through rehab, too, but not that she’d relapsed.

The rest of the shower went fine, and later, when we were home and done with putting away all the new baby stuff, I lingered in the baby’s room, sitting in the new rocker that had been a gift from Aunt Loretta, sniffing the scent of the powder and baby lotion all lined up and ready to go, staring up at the puppy and kitten mobile hanging over the crib, and making a solemn vow to never let Candy anywhere near this baby.

Ten days later and four days earlier than expected, one clear, sparkling, early July morning while I was out floating down the river on an all-day tubing trip with Jillian and her family, my mother went into labor and by the time we finally landed on shore at dusk and I got all the voice-mail messages, my baby sister, Ellie Joy Galen, had been born.

SOMETHING HAPPENED TO MY MOTHER AFTER
Ellie was born.

While Aunt Loretta and Beale were over the moon and I was absolutely enchanted with this little pink, fist-waving, soft and silky new baby sister, and spent hours sitting with her, talking, playing with her fingers and toes, and calling
Ellie, Ellie
in a gentle singsong that she soon came to recognize, my mother was . . . removed. She was quiet and touchy and didn’t sleep much, didn’t want to eat or fuss over the baby, and got irritable when people gave her funny looks about that. She fed Ellie and changed her but she didn’t cuddle or talk to her, and actually seemed relieved when me or Beale or Aunt Loretta held out our arms for our baby girl.

And she started talking about going back to work.

“But this is only the second week and you have another six weeks off,” Beale said, cutting up his lasagna. “I say take them and enjoy. Stop worrying about the money and relax with the baby for a while. You’ve earned it.”

“Your poor body needs time to heal,” Aunt Loretta added, handing Beale the grated Parmesan.

“I know,” my mother said dully, toying with her salad. “I’m just getting a little stir-crazy, I guess. I mean I was pregnant for nine months and I ate right and did everything I was supposed to do and now I . . . I don’t know, I just feel like doing something for me. Alone.” She dropped her fork and pushed away from the table. “I don’t feel good. I think I’m going to go lie down.”

Beale looked at his mother. “What was that all about?”

“It’s a big change for her,” Aunt Loretta said, leaning back in her chair and pressing her fingertips to her temple. “Darn this headache. Sayre, will you get me an aspirin, please?” She smiled her thanks as I handed her the bottle, swallowed two with a sip of iced tea, and returned to the subject of my mother. “Think about all she’s been through, Beale. You two didn’t have that much time together before she got pregnant and it sounds like she’s feeling overwhelmed and needs a little time to herself to go out and have some fun, and feel young and pretty again. Trust me,” she said, giving him a look over her glasses, “it’s hard to feel attractive when you haven’t slept in a week and there’s spit up all over your shirt.”

I didn’t say anything at all, just watched them and wondered if anyone else had seen the flat unhappiness in my mother’s eyes, or if I’d just imagined it.

We all sat out on the porch later that night, my mother and Beale on the steps while he idly strummed his guitar and she fidgeted, Aunt Loretta on the swing, and me in the wicker rocker, holding Ellie. She was asleep, her little pink cheeks glowing like the moon, and every couple of minutes I would kiss her forehead or her nose or one of her little fists. I couldn’t help it. She was the most beautiful, unspoiled thing I’d ever seen, and my heart grew so big it actually hurt my ribs every time I looked at her.

“I have a sister and she’s you,” I whispered into her ear. “And you have a sister, and she’s me, Ellie, Ellie.”

“So, Di, I was thinking that if you wanted to take a ride into town and go shopping, or go to lunch or something, I’m sure my mom and Sayre could babysit Ellie for the day,” Beale said casually, leaning back against the porch post and stretching out his legs. “How’s that sound?”

“I don’t know,” she said listlessly, shifting on the wooden step. “I still have all this baby weight, so there’s no point in buying clothes, and if I go to lunch I’m just going to gain even more weight and then I’ll never fit into anything, so.”

“Hey, c’mon,” Beale said, setting down his guitar, sliding over, and putting his arm around her. “What’s the matter, hon?”

My mother shrugged and lowered her head, staring down at the ground.

“Di,” he said, pulling her closer to lean against him. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Don’t worry, okay? We’ve got a good life ahead of us. We’ve got a great family and we’re all healthy and I’m saving for your ring—no, I haven’t forgotten—and as soon as that’s on your finger we can start planning our wedding.” He waited and when she didn’t respond, said, “Did I tell you I’ve got a couple of new restaurants in Scranton interested in letting us supply them with all of their raspberries, and maybe peaches, too? If that works out we can triple our canes next year. And there’s a livestock auction coming up in September, and I’ve been thinking about going because . . .” He noticed her disinterest, stopped, and cleared his throat. “The point is that this place is making money, and okay, it’s not a huge amount, but we’re doing fine.” He stroked her hair. “And look at that sky. Have you ever seen so many stars?”

“No,” she said without raising her head.

“Oh, c’mon, you didn’t even look,” he chided with a smile.

And something about that made her lift her head and say coldly, “Do you really think I haven’t sat out here and looked at the stars before? Jesus Christ, all we ever
do
is sit outside in our little nightly committee meeting and watch the bats fly around and the deer wander by and look at those goddamn stars like they’re some kind of friggin’ miracles when they’re not, Beale, they’re just big balls of gas.”

“Shh,” I said as Ellie stirred in my arms. “Mom, you’re gonna wake up the baby.”

“Oh, excuse me,” she snapped. “You’re right, of course, because you’re our local genius and you know everything now, don’t you?”

“Hey,” Beale said, dropping his arm from around my mother and leaning away to look into her face. “What’s gotten into you tonight?”

“Tonight?” my mother said wildly. “You think it’s just tonight?”

And that’s when Aunt Loretta rose from the swing and, opening the screen door, motioned me and Ellie in behind her to give them some privacy.

It didn’t matter, though, because except for the jangling chorus of peeper frogs, the creeks flowing, and the wind in the trees, the country is very quiet at night, and voices easily carried.

Not that my mother was trying to keep her voice down.

“I mean, are we always going to live like this?” she asked.

“Like what?” he said, sounding bewildered.

“Oh my God, like
this
! Like work and kids and TV and food and maybe having sex once a week if we’re lucky and just sitting out here every fucking night watching the seasons go by and doing the exact same things the exact same way over and over and
over
again.”

“Take the baby upstairs,” Aunt Loretta said in a low voice and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

Holding Ellie close, I turned and padded up to her bedroom. She was still asleep, but I sat down in the rocker anyway, rocking and soothing her, patting her little arm and whispering, “Don’t worry, baby. I’m here and everything’s going to be fine.”

“Well, what do you
want
to do, Dianne?” Beale said, sounding both frustrated and a little angry. “God, you just had a baby, I thought you’d be happy having time off—”

“Why, to sit here and look at the stars?” my mother cried. “Or no, wait, maybe I should be in there pumping this stupid milk out of me like a goddamn cow or running up and down those rotten cellar steps to wash load after load of baby clothes, or do dishes or cut the grass or any one of a thousand other chores that are killing me just thinking about them. Do you know that? I think about doing the same thing day after day for the rest of my life and I just want to . . . I don’t know. Scream. Run.”

Ellie sighed in her sleep.

I kissed her forehead.

“I don’t know what to say,” Beale said finally, in a weary voice. “I love you, Dianne, and you’re not going to like it when I say this, but I love our life. I love the farm, the way it’s always changing and growing, and the peace and knowing that when I walk in that door after work Sayre’s going to be there with Ellie and my mother, and you’re gonna come down those stairs with that smile . . . It’s ordinary stuff, but it makes me really happy. It’s all I ever wanted.”

Crickets chirped and the breeze rippled through the little lamb-print curtains.

“I know,” my mother said and she sounded exhausted. “I’m sorry, I am. I’m just so tired and . . . I think I’ve got a bad case of the baby blues or something. I don’t know. I do love you and I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I just . . . never expected it to be like this. So constant and overwhelming.”

“You know, you’re going back to the doctor’s for a checkup soon. Why don’t you tell her how you’re feeling?” Beale said quietly. “I mean, if it’s the baby blues, maybe you two can talk about it or she can give you something for it.”

I stopped rocking.

“Yeah,” my mother said after a moment, sounding a little more upbeat. “That’s a good idea. I really want to feel good again and enjoy Ellie and sitting here with you—”

“Looking at the stars?” Beale said dryly.

“Just being with you,” my mother said.

They didn’t speak again and I gazed down at Ellie, so tiny and vulnerable sleeping in my arms, so pure and perfect, with no hurts or disappointments or betrayals yet, and I thought about my mother being sad and restless and maybe it was normal but it set off distant warning bells inside me.

It made me want to take my sister and run.

I couldn’t do that, though, so instead, for the rest of the summer me and Ellie became almost inseparable. My mother had gone to the doctor and gotten a prescription for her postpartum depression, so Ellie was being bottle-fed now instead of breast-fed, which freed up my mother and gave me even more time with my sister.

She was a happy girl, with big hazel doe eyes and a little rosebud mouth, a drooler and a laugher, an arm waver and a screecher, just for the fun of it. She would chatter like a little monkey whenever she saw me, kick her legs and flap her arms and pitch a fit of baby temper when I tickled her nose with my hair or tried to change her diaper.

I was bad at diapers, the dead belly button thing was nasty, and the sour spit up grossed me out, but Aunt Loretta was good at that stuff, swift, gentle, and efficient, and so she had plenty of Ellie time, too. So did Beale, who loved laying on the blanket on the floor with her after work as she pushed herself up on her wobbly arms and burbled and spit and cooed, and then fell asleep on his chest.

Somehow our whole family began to revolve around my sister, like she was the sun that lit up our planets. Even my mother, her mood better on antidepressants and smiling occasionally, had taken to wearing Ellie around the front of her in the baby sling while she went grocery shopping or folded laundry or strolled around the yard.

Once I even caught her dancing out at the edge of the field under the willow tree with Ellie in her arms, moving to music only she could hear, smiling and kissing my sister’s cheeks, telling her she was beautiful and adorable and that Mommy loved her.

Can a person feel two violent emotions at the same time? Can a person ache with love and seethe with jealousy, be both happy and miserable with longing, because that’s how I felt standing there watching them.

That’s exactly how I felt.

My mother wasn’t like that all the time, though. Sometimes she was snappy, irritable, and lonely, I think, because the farm and the mountain could be a lonely place. She wasn’t back to work yet and had taken to leaving the baby home in the afternoons and heading down into town to visit a woman she’d met in Lamaze class, a transferee to Dug County whose husband was in management at the factory and who lived in a big new house and had money and jewelry and went to the spa and had parties all the time and had been to Greece, and Italy, and Paris twice.

When my mother told us these stories, the envy in her voice was right out there, undisguised, and she would gaze at us with a mixture of accusation and dislike, as if we were the reason she had never been to Paris.

She never came home from those visits happy, only more and more dissatisfied. She started mocking her amethyst ring, calling it “quaint,” and would stare at herself in the mirror like she was trying to drill holes into her own soul.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go down there anymore,” I offered, hanging around in the bedroom doorway and watching her actively despise her hair.

“Oh really? Then tell me, where am I supposed to go to get out of here, Sayre? Come on, you’re so full of answers these days. Tell me. I don’t
have
a lot of friends. I have one. Her. What am I supposed to do?” she said, glaring at me in the mirror.

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging and running an idle finger up and down the wooden door trim. “But friends aren’t supposed to make you feel bad about yourself, Mom. They’re supposed to make you feel
good.
”

She held my gaze for a long moment, and something in her face changed.

“You know, you’re right,” she said, walking across the room and perching on the edge of the bed, near the night table. She picked up the phone, and without looking at me, said, “Close the door on your way out.”