Story Girl (26 page)

My mother looked rather stunned, as did Jenny – but Mary and I had been waiting for this.

“And let me tell you something else, Joanne – I hate painting and building and installing. I’m not good at it – I’ve never been good at it, and I’ll never be good at it. I hate it. And anything that I love – like my cucumbers and tomatoes, you just scoff at.”

Now I could feel her eyes penetrating me as though I were speaking the words and not my father.

“And anytime I wanted to do the things I love – like fishing, you’d make me feel like a bum or a jerk. And I’d have to make up for one lousy trip with a long list of horrible chores.”

“Is this pity party over, or do you have more?” my mother asked.

“See how you belittle me? I tell you the honest truth and you reject me. You’re not interested in how I
feel
. Not now – not ever.”

“Well how about this for honesty, Herb? For years I’ve dealt with ugly specks of paint on the wall, shelves that would collapse at random, crown moldings that were crooked, an entire entertainment unit that sits lopsided, and a basement that now resembles a truck stop. In a one word summary – tacky.”

My father started to stand, but Mary held his forearm.

“If you wanted to marry a goddamed handyman – then why didn’t you? You married me, Joanne – what did you expect? Did you think you’d wake up one morning and I’d morph into Bob Vila?”

“Maybe I was hoping.”

Emotion was cracking her surface like the cold on a windowpane.

“Hoping you’d learn some class – appreciate manners and stuff. Be accepted by such people. People who have real taste – people that are admired in the world. I wanted you to know about wine and opera and travel. But no – you wanted license plates on the walls of our home. You wanted bacon dinners at four in the morning for you and your greasy truck driver friends.”

My father passed her his handkerchief, but she only swiped at it.

“I at least expected you to understand the art of being a man, which normally involves building things and fixing cars. Like the way I’ve been saddled with the art of being a fucking woman.”

“Okay, Joanne,” he whispered.

“All a man has to do to have a child is orgasm. But women need to work miracles from that very second forward. You get release; we get bondage.”

What fiends of the pits had I set free?

“It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, Herb.”

Now she was choking on her sobs, and it was clear that none of this was really even about my father. This was all and only about herself. I watched my mother literally fall across the table, bangles jangling, mascara tears pooling in the creases of her hand-stitched tablecloth.

My cheeks were hot, and I was sure I could feel the hives readying their attack.

“I’m a retired truck driver, Joanne.”

“I know full well what you are,” my mother wailed.

“Do you know what it’s like to close your eyes and see nothing but road in front of you? Sometimes it was just torture. But I’ll tell you what, those endless miles paid for a lot of stuff around here. And that truck paid for this house and raised two healthy daughters.”

“But I mean, is that all you were content to do? Drive a big dirty truck back and forth?”

I had never witnessed such nerve – blaming him for all of her unrealized potential.

“Yes, as a matter of fact. I was very content, Joanne – with my job, with my greasy buddies and bacon dinners, with my wife and children. I’m sorry that I haven’t measured up in your eyes. But maybe you should be asking yourself these same questions – you’ve never even mentioned
opera
before. I thought Tim McGraw was your favorite?”

Super Bingo!

“Who do you think has taken care of you all these years?” she asked.

“We’ve taken care of each other.”

It was such a defining statement that nothing else really needed to be said. So I barely heard him remind us that he’d be at the motel – if we needed him.

His car started up with Tina Turner screeching splendidly about rivers deep and mountains high, and we all listened as he sped off out of audible range.

My mother looked up and around the table with a wet black smudgy face, announcing with finality that my father’s departure was entirely my fault.

Jenny immediately concurred.

“How is it her fault?” Mary asked.

“It just is,” my mother said.

“She’s the one that had to dig all this shit up,” Jenny said. “Instead of just letting people be a little bit unhappy – which is totally normal – she had to blow the whole thing sky high.”

“Why couldn’t you two just let me be?” I asked. “I’m like a wound that wants to heal, but you just keep picking at me.”

“Do you even want us in your life?” Jenny asked.

“All I ever wanted was an example.”

“Of what?” my mother asked.

“People who are comfortable in their own skin.”

“Then maybe you should be that example for us, Tracy. Did you ever think of that? Maybe you should show us how to do a relationship.”

A horrible image of James speaking at a Republican National Convention flashed through my mind. He was standing next to his picture-perfect wife who was proudly beaming by his side.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Why don’t you be the example?”

“Well,” I said, rather flummoxed. “What do you think I’m doing? But you’ve never liked my example – not one bit. I’m trying to feel my way, based on my own stuff – not someone else’s. I just want you to let me find my way without all the pressure. And now I come home to see that what you want for me doesn’t even bring
you
happiness.”

“Try to raise a child and keep it fed and protected and alive and healthy to the very best of your ability – and then all
this
.”

“But all this is
real
.”

I looked at my mother whose watery green eyes were the precursors of my own. Now they appeared to be melting. I’d never really
considered the strength of our resemblance before, although from time to time people remarked that our left profile seemed an identical match.

And I could see exactly what I would look like at her age. It was true; she was my mirror – just as I was hers – perfectly reflecting the future of my features and probably my unhappiness too. But it wouldn’t be the same kind of unhappiness – I’d risk it all to create my very own brand.

As if she had so easily read my mind, she turned to me while speaking to my sister, “Jenny – go and get me the biggest hammer you can find.”

Oh shit. I wondered if she was finally going to bash in my ungrateful brains.

“Why?”

“And call your husband.”

“But – ”

“That shed is coming down.
Now
.”

chapter
38

A
S A DETECTIVE
hunts for clues, I needed to re-visit the underground.

I ran downstairs and looked around at his large and controversial collection of license plates. I’d never really asked him about them, having no idea that they’d meant so much. Some of them were custom, but most were standard issue. Over half were from the mid-west, with a couple of really neat ones from the south. A vertical column of plates started near the ceiling with North Dakota and ended at the carpet with Texas. He had one from every state – except Alaska.

The plates reminded me of my scripts – symbols of a difficult journey. My father and I had traveled far and wide, but somehow I’d ended up lost while he’d arrived at the very place he’d probably started – at ease.

My mother’s hurt had turned back to anger. She was pounding around upstairs like an obstinate queen who’d just discovered a major betrayal within her inner circle. Jenny was echoing her distress – at least my mother hadn’t lost the loyalty of her best princess. It wouldn’t be long before they were trash-talking the gargoyle under the stairs, surely even more Machiavellian than the one who had fled.

A pot smashed against the wall, and I could only hope that Mary wasn’t in any immediate danger. But then intermittent bursts
of a measured voice broke through the wailing and moaning, and I knew that she was trying to talk sense to the temporarily insane.

As a frying pan came crashing down the stairs, I realized I should probably get out of the house. I could almost see the headlines now:
Woman – who tried to write about the awesome magnitude of inner and outer space – perishes in dispute over backyard garden shed
.

But then again, I reminded myself – who’d really care?

I wiggled out a basement window and scurried to the old shed itself – a true monument to the Johnston family power struggle – just a modest rectangular structure of light wood and shingled roof. It was locked, but I knew my father kept a spare key buried in the soil of the bonsai plant that sat on a tiny table beside the door.

Inside was a vision to behold. Everything twinkled in the most meticulous of condition. Boxes were stacked from heavy up to light, and everything had a square label printed in neat block letters. Golf clubs, fishing rods, and skis were placed in their own hollow columns of bamboo. Fishing tackle was organized by color; screws and bolts were organized by size. The lawn mower sat in the corner beside the infamous red toolbox that opens up like a staircase – the one my mother gave him for his fiftieth birthday instead of the horticulture book series he’d requested.

But the most beautiful things in here were my father’s plants – big and small, dark green and lime. There was also a small shelf of books, arranged in alphabetical order, describing plants and seeds. The walls of the shed were covered in special shots of vegetables – the ones I assumed were from his very own garden. The largest picture was a blowup of a superstar tomato – ripe as heaven, as he would say.

A beige curtain covered the back wall, perfectly blending with the interior. His ability to coordinate was not a big surprise, as he had often matched the fabrics for my home economics class. My mother was always delighted with my color choices; nobody ever let on that it wasn’t me who was making them. Left to my own druthers, I would have happily sewn myself a wardrobe of straw colored sacks.

I doubted my mother had ever bothered to explore in here. She might have discovered that while he failed at construction, he could organize his heart out. And I would defy her to find a more passionate green thumb.

Lost in appreciation for my father, I almost forgot what I had come for – but quickly spotted the wheel under the curtain. The Lindsay Wagner Streak was my truest companion between grades four through nine.

Lindsay was the total bomb, and I was quite sure I still had a bionic woman shirt or two in my mother’s old trunk – the kind that was both undershirt and over-shirt combined. Removing the Streak from her secure spot took some time, but I finally pried her free. I was about to maneuver her outside when I heard something stir.

I was being watched. Perhaps my mother was standing outside with a meat tenderizer. I turned my head slowly to the small window that served as the shed’s only natural light source – nothing but my overactive imagination.

But then I saw them: two eyes peeking at me over the rim of a large orange plant pot.

A lizard.

“Are you the keeper of this shed? Master of the cucumber and tomato world?”

He ducked below the rim of the pot and coiled his tail around the stem of a geranium.

“This place stands only to be flattened.”

I stared out the window and saw the new shed strewn about the lawn – boards, ladders, measuring sticks, and bags of nails littered everywhere. Poor Luke – having to spend most of his trip in some silly hardware store.

“So be careful you don’t scuttle over a nail and spike yourself. And take care of my father then, when I’m not here. You alone are the ancient guardian – a throwback to a different time. A prehistoric time – when everyone accepted his or her place without confusion.”

“There was always confusion, Tracy.”

I spun my head from the window to the pot – nothing but a miniature reptile cozied up around a plant. The scaly little thing probably didn’t even have a voice box, although I was most certain I’d seen his green skin turn yellow.

“I’m finally and completely ill. I guess this is what happens to a screenwriter without a screen, a writer who is never right, a woman who…”

I thought of James.

“Never-mind.”

I wheeled my bike outside, locked the lizard in the shed, and put the key back in the bonsai – underneath a small wooden character I’d never noticed before. A very old Japanese sailor was sitting on the bank, fishing. His line was made of dental floss – gently skimming the tiny watery hole my father had so carefully dug in the soil. The little tree cast the sailor’s face in shadow, but I could tell he was otherworldly. Perhaps it was he who had spoken to me about the past. I peered closer at his tiny figurine features – minuscule lines had been carved into the wood of his face.

“Did my father carve you?”

He was lost in bonsai shadow again, forever engaged in his own contemplation.

Perhaps my dad was a secret craftsman after all, but only when he got to create little spectral fantasies of his choosing. I thought about the hordes of my own little toothpick people.