Riversong (7 page)

It was then that Linus walked to the pulpit to speak. The crowd was silent. The microphone squeaked as he adjusted it up to his height. He explained that he was in the restaurant business and that he'd thrown their wedding reception. He cleared his throat and wiped the corner of his eye with a lime green handkerchief before continuing. “When I met Dan I remember thinking he was the ultimate golden boy, what with his crown of blond curls, his movie star smile, his pedigree of Stanford and Wharton, his athletic prowess. And yet I was skeptical of this man that wanted to marry my Lee, wondered if he was good enough for her, wanting to be sure this man deserved her. What happened next I will never forget. Dan could not dance. Not a move without stepping all over his partner's toes. Two months before the wedding he asked me if I'd teach him to waltz. He wanted to surprise Lee at their wedding reception.” He made a frame with his hands. “Picture straighter than straight, masculine Dan, and little ol’ me waltzing around his living room.” He choked up, breathing heavily into the microphone. “Dan learned how to dance to please Lee, and as many of you may have observed, he was beautiful that night, dancing with his bride. No matter what, we all have that memory of him and I have to believe he was happy in that moment. I hope that might give us all some peace in the days and months to come.”

Now, sitting in her mother's kitchen, she closed her eyes, recalling the night of their reception. “Dance with me,” he asked. Surprised, she'd looked at Linus and he'd nodded, yes. She put her hand in Dan's and he walked to her the middle of the dance floor. He nodded to the band and they began to play, “waltz.” He guided her in perfect time, his silk tuxedo against her bare arms. Dan looked into her eyes and she whispered tearfully, “Thank you.” And she thought to herself, this is the beginning of my real life, the one I was meant to have. Everything was right.

Now, at her mother's old kitchen table, she wiped her eyes, wondering if anything would ever feel right again.

L
ee slept the rest of that first day and through the night, awakening to birds chirping outside her window. She reached over to Dan's side of the bed with her foot but there was nothing but a cold fold of bed sheet. In that instant between sweet insensible sleep and consciousness, it was as if the previous month hadn't happened. Once fully awake the sick ache roared through her. She got out of bed and looked out the window, still nervous that somehow Von followed her. But there was nothing in the driveway but her minivan. She shivered, yawned, and rubbing her eyes shuffled to the bathroom. She glanced in the mirror and gasped, shocked by the greasy hair and dark circles under her eyes. She tugged at the rusty faucets in the shower until they trickled russet colored water into the yellow stained tub. She sat with her arms around her ankles, head resting on her knees and rocked until the water cleared.

She went to the hall closet for a towel. It smelled of old neglected wood. There were two ratty towels, the material so thin she could see through it, folded in squares on the second shelf that Ellen must have washed and put away for her. Steam drifted into the hallway from the bathroom.

She stood under the warm spray with her eyes closed. Compared to the shower at home, the water was a trickle on the back of her neck. But it was hot and comforting to her skin that felt beat up from the strain of the last weeks. She moved her hand over her stomach, taut and bloated. It was hard to comprehend there was anything inside her except longing and despair instead of a multiplying mass of cells that would turn into a human baby.

She scrubbed her body with soap and as the suds washed her clean she began to sort through and organize her thoughts, as she had with all new ventures, devising a plan that she would execute step by step. She saw it unfold in five phases: fix up the house, sell it, pay DeAngelo, move to a new city and get her career back on track.

She washed her hair, holding her breath because the smell of the shampoo brought nausea in waves, and tried to focus on breaking down the first step of the plan. This morning she would conduct a full assessment of what it would take to get the house ready to sell. If the house foundation and construction were as strong as Ellen White indicated, she might be able to sell it for more than she owed DeAngelo. After the assessment, she would gather any items she could sell to get started on the repairs.

She stared at her image in the mirror on the bureau. Her tender breasts strained against her blouse, enlarged from their usual modest size to the size of large apples, and made her feel like a porn star. She popped a cracker in her mouth, slipped on a long cardigan sweater, and surveyed the master bedroom. There were two bedside tables, the bureau and the bed, all brought with her grandmother from the east when she married in 1943. They might be considered antiques. She swept her hand on the smooth wood of the headboard, calculating its worth. She jotted that amount in a small notebook under the category, “to sell,” “Grandmother's furniture” with a circle bullet, in her precise angular printing.

She wandered down the hallway. The wallpaper, once a light brown with small blue flowers, was now faded to tan. The hallway's hardwood floor showed burns from dropped cigarettes most notably between her mother's bedroom and the bathroom. She wrote in her notebook under “repairs”, the estimated cost for the floor to be refinished and what it would cost to have the wallpaper replaced.

At the end of the hallway, Lee opened the door to her childhood bedroom six or so inches before it pushed against something. She poked her head in the crack and saw piles of newspapers, Ladies Home Journals, Reader's Digests, and romance and mystery paperbacks, stacked on the bed and floor. She felt a tightness in her chest and her right eyelid twitched. She closed the door with a slam. Her mother's bedroom was also stacked with worthless junk. She wrote in her notebook under “to do”, “burn contents of bedrooms”, along with estimated costs for repairs.

She walked to the ground floor, the hardwood stairs creaking with her footsteps and the stair railing swaying in her hand. From the foyer at the bottom of the stairs, Lee moved into the curved archway of the living room, felt for the light switch along the left wall and flipped it but the bulb was burned out. In the dim light she saw stacks and stacks of papers with a path to a stained and sunken couch. She walked through the path to the window and pulled back the worn burgundy velvet draperies. There was a small rickety end table next to the couch, damaged with rings from her mother's drink glasses, a small television on an apple box and piles of magazines, newspapers and paperbacks. In the rare places where the wall showed, paper hung in strips. The smell of cigarette smoke permeated everything. She jotted in her notebook, “burn or dump all contents of living room.”

She trudged up the stairs, sat on the bed and added the estimates for kitchen upgrades and repairs to the list. All together the costs of cleaning and repairs were shy of fifteen thousand dollars. She had five hundred dollars cash in her wallet that Linus insisted she take, several thousand in the bank, no idea how to do any repairs, and no money to pay anyone. The only answer was to find a job in town, scrimp, and use every spare dollar for the restoration.

She heaved herself off the bed to unpack the few belongings she had left. She'd kept the bare essentials, only what would fit in one suitcase. Her intent was to hang her clothes in the closet by type, with color coded hangers she brought from her closet in Seattle. But each item she unpacked evoked thoughts of Dan and her former life. The light blue cashmere sweater Dan chose for her at the Nordstrom sale last autumn, the white cotton panties he called her granny underwear, the cocktail dress she wore to their last business event. She stopped unpacking and stared at the pine floor boards.

Later that morning she sat on the steps off the kitchen. The yard was a grassy area and outside the fence was untouched forest, heavy with Douglas firs, pines, madronas, and low growing ferns. It was chilly and the air smelled of damp earth and the unique freshness of early spring. The crab apple and cherry trees hinted of their summer bounty with white and pink flowers, while the lilac and hydrangea bushes sprouted green buds. Only the daffodils and tulips opened to their full glory. There was the sound of a truck changing gears on the highway and birds chirping. She looked up into the tall trees outside the fence and beyond to the vast blue sky. As a child, in the summer months, the backyard was a place of solace. After her mother slept, she crept out to the yard, lay in the grass and listened to the deep croaks of the bullfrogs with the high-pitched song of the crickets. She would gaze at the stars until the night's vast sky enveloped her and she became a star herself and was at peace in that moment of connection to the largeness of the universe. But today it did not comfort her. Today, it amplified her feelings of isolation from the world, even from herself, as if mocking her with its beauty.

L
ee was thirsty. She rummaged through the cupboards for a glass. They were bare except for a few cracked plates, a cereal bowl, and four faded salad plates, chipped on the edges, and one lone teacup, cracked but still intact. This was all that was left of the original set. Lee had given it to her mother for a Christmas gift when she was young.

This old kitchen was cold and full of memories, she thought.

The year she was seven Lee's mother lost her job at one of the grocery stores in town. Neither of them knew then it would be her last job. Lee shopped for the groceries each Saturday morning at the other store, the one on the other side of town. Eleanor sat in the car; a floating head amidst the smoke from her cigarettes, a hand flicking the ashes out of a small slit in the window. Lee filled their basket with the same items every week: coffee, milk, peanut-butter, cheese, bread and ground meat. She paid with the Food Stamps her mother picked up every Monday afternoon. The autumn Lee was eleven, the store put up a display of dishes you could purchase with Green Stamps. The first time she saw them, Lee stopped to look at the display, wanting more than anything to give them to her mother for Christmas. She touched the light brown ceramic plates and ran her fingers over the white flower pattern etched on the edges. She held one of dainty tea cups and pretended to drink from it, until she heard her mother beep the horn and motion for her to pay for the groceries and come to the car.

The entire dish set, which included four place-settings, cost one-thousand green stamps. Each week the ladies at the check stand gave her fifty stamps, more than she should have earned for the amount of food she bought, not to mention that technically you weren't eligible unless you paid with real money. But, at age eleven, Lee didn't know, and accepted the stamps, bliss in her heart each time. She couldn't help but notice that the checkers glanced out at the smoke filled car with a disapproving look when they put the stamps in her hand.

One week before Christmas she counted out one-thousand stamps to the lady with the blond beehive named Bridget. Bridget called the rest of the ladies over. “Lee's got enough, girls. She's got enough for the whole set.” They all cheered for her and the lady name Sue with the long brown hair and looked like Jacqueline Smith on the show “Charlie's Angels” offered to bring it to her house the next day. “Can you bring it at night,” Lee asked her, glancing at the car. “My mother goes to bed early.” The ladies exchanged looks and Sue, said, “No problem. I get off at 8:00.” That's perfect, Lee thought, because Mom will be asleep on the couch by then.

Her steps were light that day and her tummy did little flops. That night after writing in her worry journal, she imagined sitting on the floor next to an enormous tree, decorated with small ornate glass ornaments and twinkling lights. Under the tree were many presents in store-bought wrapping with giant bows, all for Lee. She and her mother were in new Christmas pajamas and slippers, sipping cocoa. Her mother, eyes twinkling like Pa's from “Little House on the Prairie”, patted her hand. “I wish we had some new cups to drink this cocoa from.” And Lee said, kind of casually so as not to give away the surprise, said, “Maybe you should open my gift now.” Her mother's face lit with excitement as she opened the box and saw the cups. “How were you ever so clever to think of it?” Lee shrugged modestly. Her mother took them out of the box one at a time, examining them in ecstatic excitement. “They're so beautiful. Maybe we should have a dinner party!”

But of course it wasn't that way.

When her mother tore open the newspaper Lee used in place of wrapping paper, she looked at them, a mixture of disdain and displeasure on her face. “What do we need all these for?”

“It's how they come, Mom. They don't come in packages of two.”

She reached further into the box and pulled out a salad plate. “What are we gonna use these for?”

Lee's face turned pink. “They're for salad. Or dessert.”

“May as well just put everything on the same plate. Less to wash.” Her mother picked up the packaging and stuffed it back in the box. “You can put them away later, once you figure out what to do with the perfectly good dishes we already have.” Lee excused herself, ran to the bathroom and sat on the floor crying until she heard her mother call from downstairs that she needed more ice from the freezer in the shed.

After that she didn't allow herself any fantasies that involved her mother.

Now, Lee drank several teacups of water and then washed the cup and put it into the cupboard. She leaned next the sink and looked at the ancient stove and remembered a cold night, two frozen dinners heating in the oven. Her mother leaned on the counter, flicking her cigarette in the glass ashtray and sipping vodka on ice. Lee sat at the table, drawing a picture of an exotic bird from a photo in a magazine. The house seemed cozy, like they were a family from one of Lee's fantasies. She imagined her father would arrive home from work any minute, dressed in a suit and holding a briefcase. He might kiss her on the head, and call her ‘honey’. Her mother lifted her glass in a gesture towards the drawing.
“What is that now, a bird?” “A parrot, mommy, but it's not right because I need color markers to make the feathers.”
Her mother snatched the paper from the table and ripped it in two.
“You think I have money growing from trees to buy you anything you want?”
She slammed her glass on the counter and an ice cube fell on the floor.
“Do you?”
Eleanor poured more vodka in her glass and yanked the hot tin dinner from the oven.
“You want to keep eating?” “Yes, mommy.”
She threw the tin on the table, and drops of Salisbury steak gravy splattered onto Lee's homework folder.
“Then shut up about pens.”