Protecting Marie (2 page)

“
You
are the masterpiece.
You
are the perfect one.”

“Right,” Fanny had said sarcastically, jumping up to plant a kiss on her mother's cheek.

Catching glimpses of herself in the bathroom mirror as she watched her mother confirmed it all over again. Fanny looked a lot like her father. She often wondered why she had to resemble her father so strongly. Why not her mother? Fanny's features
were
her father's. They looked fine on him—a sixty-year-
old man. They didn't on her—a twelve-year-old girl. Funny how a long nose with a bump, deep-set eyes, and a thickly furrowed brow can take on dramatically different qualities depending on whose face they happen to be part of.

Many of Fanny's parents' friends thought she was attractive. “You have a lovely Grecian profile,” they'd comment. “Your eyes are so expressive, dear,” they'd say. “You look pretty tonight, Fanny,” they'd add. But all their flattery seemed false to Fanny. What did they know anyway? Many of her parents' friends were over fifty.

At school, Fanny felt extremely average. She did not belong to the popular clique. No one asked her for beauty tips in the lavatory. No boy had ever called her on the phone. And no one ever commented on her appearance, except for Bruce Rankin, who once said that Fanny Swann had a nose that could cut cheese.

Average. If you said it long enough, it sounded as bad as it felt. Average, average,
average.

The one time Fanny mentioned her concern about her “averageness” to her father, he bristled.

“You are
not
average,” Henry Swann stated, turning red. “It's your young, garbled vision clouding things. Hopefully, you'll outgrow it—your garbled vision. Then you'll see how beautiful you really are.”

Her mother was more sympathetic, but just as blind.

Who's the one with garbled vision? Fanny often asked herself.

While Ellen had tucked in a few uncooperative strands of hair, Fanny had slipped in front of her and faced the mirror square-on. She straightened her outfit. She was wearing black tights, a black turtleneck, black Converse All-Star high-tops, and an old, brown, stretched-out, V-neck sweater of her father's, onto which she had randomly sewn dozens of buttons. The buttons were various sizes, shapes, and colors. I look like a clown, she thought. My mother is a goddess.

“Done!” Ellen had said, startling Fanny. She whirled about beneath the cool bathroom light like a dancer in a jewelry box.

Now they stood in the dining room, under the chandelier. Bright yellow balloons and green crepe-paper streamers hung down, moving slightly above their heads.

Ellen grabbed Fanny's hands and squeezed them tightly. Then she laced their fingers together. “I don't know when he'll be back. He didn't say. When he called, he just told me he wasn't coming to the party.”

Fanny waited for her mother to say more. Things Fanny wanted to hear. Things like, “But I'm sure he'll be home soon,” or “Surprise! It's just a joke—he's hiding in the front hall closet,” or even something as simple and meaningless as “Don't worry.”

But she didn't. She swung her arms out, making a circle with Fanny. The balloons bobbled in the small wind, and Fanny could hear the tight rubbery sound they made. And she realized that if the evening had turned out
the way it had been planned, she would be hearing the laughter and talking and singing of guests celebrating her father's sixtieth birthday. By now, the room would be littered with crumpled paper napkins. Champagne glasses would be clinking. Half-eaten cocktail sandwiches and pieces of birthday cake would be sitting side by side on the huge pine table that had been pushed against the wall. Her father's colleagues and family friends would be scattered about in knots throughout the house. Instead, the house was empty, except for Fanny and Ellen holding on to each other, forming a ring in the dark.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Fanny asked, already playing out options in her mind: wait by the phone, call the police, hop in the car and start looking.

Ellen sighed and looked upward as if the ceiling held an answer. “I have this uncontrollable urge to do something that would annoy the hell out of him,” she told Fanny. She puckered her lips and twisted her mouth into a funny shape. “I know,” she said, “let's go to
Burger King. I'm hungry, and I couldn't bear to eat those sandwiches or that cake.”

“
Burger King?
Dressed like
that
?”

“I know, I know,” Ellen said, her eyebrows raised. “It's the last place on earth I'd normally want to eat. And I wouldn't dream of going in this. But this is not a normal night. And just think how aggravated your father would be if he knew.” Ellen squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, and Fanny wondered if she were holding back tears.

“I'll turn on the answering machine,” Fanny said. “And I'll leave a note on the table.”

As she ran down the hallway to meet her mother at the front door, Fanny felt a burning in her stomach. She covered it up with her thick coat. She wound her scarf around and around her neck and pulled on her knitted wool cap and mittens.

Ellen jingled the car keys in one hand and smoothed her coat with the other. “Let's go,” she said. “Let's just see what happens.”

It was a dense, moist December evening. The sky was purplish gray, and light. Fanny knew it would snow. She could almost hear it.

Fanny's ears were so sensitive that she had to have a fan running beside her bed every night, making white noise. If she didn't, she couldn't fall asleep. She'd hear the wooden floors creak, the refrigerator humming downstairs, the glass shrink and expand in the window frames. She could even hear the snow fall on the roof.

That night, there were many sounds. Small frozen puddles cracked under their feet, branches from the maple tree in the front yard scraped against the house, a dog howled in the distance, muffled voices traveled up chimneys with smoke. Fanny wondered if her mother heard any of it.

But once Fanny was buckled in Ellen's car, she became extremely focused; she didn't even notice the rattling of the engine or the gentle hissing of the heater. She was anticipating what her mother might say. And she was wondering if she would tell her mother what
had happened that morning.

Neither spoke. Fanny listened so closely to her mother's breathing that she began breathing in the same rhythm. It was her mother's deep yoga breathing. In—fill your lungs completely. Hold it. Exhale entirely. Push out every drop of air with your belly button. She knew her mother was trying to relax.

The Burger King was about a mile and a half from their house, and by the time they pulled into a parking space enormous flakes of snow were already twirling down.

Ellen rushed ahead to get inside where it was warm.

Fanny dawdled, watching snow land on her mittens and melt. “There's something I should tell you,” she said softly. There, Fanny thought, I did it. She felt better having said even that much. But she also felt relieved that her mother was already opening the restaurant door and hadn't responded. Fanny ran to catch up. The entranceway floor was slippery, and Fanny slid into a man who was coming toward her on his way out. She grabbed for her
mother's coat and held on to it as they walked to the counter.

Fanny wasn't very hungry, so she only ordered french fries and hot chocolate. Ellen ordered a Whopper, onion rings, and coffee.

Without hesitating, Ellen chose a booth near the side door. “I feel greasy already,” she said. She took off her coat and plopped it down beside her. “And I feel perfectly out of place,” she added, lightly running her hand over her hair.

Fanny pulled off her scarf, cap, and mittens. She decided to keep her coat on. It was saffron yellow with a large tawny stain across the back and a fake leopard-skin collar. Fanny had bought the coat at an antique store near school with her own money. Eight dollars. Her father hated it; she loved it. She was glad that the stain hadn't come out when Ellen had had it dry-cleaned. The stain looked like the head of a dog with pointy ears and its tongue hanging out. Fanny gathered the collar tighter around her neck. She breathed in its smell, and the fur tickled her nose.

“Well?” Ellen said.

Fanny dipped each end of a french fry into the pool of ketchup she'd made on a napkin. She bit off the ends, then dipped them into the ketchup again. After repeating the process several times, she was left pinching the tiniest piece between her fingers. She popped it into her mouth.

“What's the something?” Ellen asked.

“What?”

“You said, ‘There's something I should tell you.' What's the something?” Steam rose from Ellen's coffee. She leaned over the cup and blew to cool it off. She blew and sipped, blew and sipped, while she waited patiently for Fanny to reply.

“I didn't think you heard me,” Fanny said into her fur collar.

“What is it, sweetie?”

Fanny began stacking her mother's onion rings on a corner of the plastic serving tray. The tower rose—five, six, seven. And then it tilted. And then it toppled.

“You have to tell me, you know,” Ellen
said, nudging an onion ring.

A single tear squiggled down Fanny's hot cheek. “This morning,” she said, “I ran up to Dad to give him a big birthday hug . . . and I was trying to be funny, I guess, or something stupid like that, and I said, ‘Happy Birthday, Gramps.' I called him
Gramps
, Mom. And he hates me. And I know that's why he didn't come home for his party. . . .” Tears streamed into Fanny's hands. Her cheeks glistened. “I know that's why he left. Everything's my fault.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Ellen said. “
That's
why you were worrying?”

Fanny nodded and licked a tear.

“Come here,” Ellen said, motioning with both hands. “Nothing's your fault. It's not like that at all. You could have called him Rip Van Winkle and it wouldn't have mattered.”

There was a sudden burst of laughter from a nearby table. It made Fanny feel all the more regretful. She slid out of her side of the booth and joined her mother, scooching against her like she did when she was a baby.

“I know your father's having a hard time turning sixty. Forty wasn't tons of fun for me last year.” Ellen dried Fanny's eyes with a napkin and draped her arm around Fanny's shoulders.

“But you seemed okay. You didn't do anything weird. Except eat half your cake. And devour cookies for two days straight.” A small chuckle got tangled with a sob and Fanny coughed, as if something were lodged in her throat.

“Listen,” Ellen said, “your father's worried about a lot right now. Retirement, having enough artwork for the show in New York, his health. The whole idea of growing old is scary. And a big birthday is so symbolic.”

“What do you mean, his health?”

“I just mean he can't run or play racquetball every day like he used to. His knees bother him. His shoulder bothers him. When he
is
painting, his eyes grow tired and his hand goes numb. I think he's just concerned about . . . oh, I don't know, the future.” Ellen glanced at her watch and twisted the band;
then she looked straight at Fanny. “He just couldn't face having the party. And it's got nothing to do with you. Say it. Say, ‘It's got nothing to do with me.'”

“Mother.”

“Say it. It's . . . got . . . nothing . . .” Ellen prompted.

“It's got nothing to do with me,” Fanny said weakly. A tightness squeezed her belly. “But is he okay? And where is he?”

“I think he'll be fine. It wouldn't surprise me if he went to the cabin.” The bun of Ellen's Whopper looked as if a mouse had nibbled its way around the edges. All of a sudden she took a big bite. After swallowing hard, she said, “This tastes awful. Maybe I'm coming down with a cold—it feels like my mouth is crammed with flannel.”

They ate silently for a while, pressed together at the far end of the booth. And then they both played with their food. Ellen kept thumping what was left of her Whopper with her pinkie, and Fanny was forming people out of the french fries and onion rings. The onion
rings were perfect heads and the fries were arms and legs. She used ketchup to make them anatomically correct.

“You're sad
and
mad, aren't you?” Fanny asked, squirting ketchup all over an onion ring/french fry man that was running away from two onion ring/french fry women. Her eyes drifted up to meet her mother's.

Ellen nodded. “I'm kind of mad that I had to call everyone at the last minute and tell them that your father had the flu. But mostly I'm just sad that he's upset.” Her voice grew quiet. “I know your father's difficult at times. But I know he loves you. Sometimes people have problems of their own that don't have anything to do with anyone else.”

Fanny bit her bottom lip until it hurt. “Can we go home?” she asked.

“We'd better. Before they kick us out for being overdressed and for making such a mess.”

“Maybe there's a message on the machine.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe he's home.”

When Ellen didn't reply, Fanny felt the sadness and anger all snarled up inside her more intensely than ever. Sad and mad, sad and mad, sad and mad, she said in her head like a chant as she cleaned off the table and dumped their garbage into a bin stamped
THANK YOU.

The windows in the houses they passed on their way home were amber-colored and bright. Some of the houses were decorated on the outside with hundreds of small white lights strewn across shrubs and circling porch railings like stars. One had blinking lights framing the door like a chorus line of fireflies. With the snow falling, the street looked as perfect as the toy village beneath the Christmas tree at Fanny's house. When they drove by a house that was dark and seemingly empty, Fanny shivered. She hoped that when they pulled up in front of her own house it would be ablaze with lights, and that her father would be waiting—happy, talkative, and hungry for birthday cake.