Thank You for All Things (20 page)

She asked me if I remembered the young woman, Sally Rutherford, who lived in the Norton place on Venison Drive the summer when I was about nine years old. The woman who painted the watercolor hanging in her bedroom back home, and did I know which painting she was talking about? I reminded her that she has only one painting hanging in her bedroom.

Even though I’d just told her I knew which painting she meant, she described it. Talking about the woman emerging out of the water, the crown of her head barely breaking the water’s surface. She reminded me of the first time I’d seen it, when I reached out and touched it as though I’d expected the water to wet my finger.

I typed a nonsensical sentence just so I’d look busy, hoping she’d keep her story short. She didn’t. She yammered on and on about Sally’s big, listless eyes. How she was so timid that the sound of her own voice seemed to spook her, but how she
painted bravely, trying imaginative new styles, not afraid of color. Then she told me that she always thinks of Sally’s painting at times like this.

I switched my tone from bitchy to bored as I asked her what she meant by “times like this.”

She blinked at me like the answer was obvious, then she clarified it with, “Times like this, when somebody is too afraid to break the surface and spring out of the sea of whatever is drowning them. It always makes me wonder: What if they dared come up all the way?”

I glanced up and Ma was staring upward, her eyes focused on nothing. Her face had that look again. The look that reminds me, on occasion, that underneath the persona of a wacky New Ager, some sort of wisdom lies there.

Ma scooted her water glass aside, deciding on tea instead, and did I want a cup of chamomile? I shook my head. I kept my head down while she poured water from the Brita into the teakettle. While she set it on the stove and ignited the burner, Ma told me that we both know where things went wrong for me. With her, she said. Then she nodded toward Dad’s room and added, “And with him.”

I pretended not to know what she was talking about, though I don’t know why. My feigned ignorance only served as an invitation for her to explain.

She told me that it doesn’t take an eleven-year-old genius to figure out why I’m afraid to trust my heart, and men in particular. She recaptured the key events of my childhood, then told me that she hopes that while I’m here I’ll open my eyes and take a look at whatever has me gripped at the ankle, not allowing me to rise fully above the waterline.

She was speaking in riddles, but I didn’t bother telling her so.

Ma caught the teakettle before it whistled, then poured us
both a cup of tea, even though I’d just told her I didn’t want any.

As she bobbed a tea bag into her cup and sat down, she talked about how Dad’s getting worse and how Marie thinks she should call a county nurse to come look at him. I couldn’t stand listening to her talk about him, her voice so soft with concern. I partially closed the lid of my laptop and told her how it bugs the shit out of me that she’s here—that any of us are here, but especially her—and that I hoped it didn’t mean that she still loved him.

Ma smiled as she reminded me that there are many kinds of love and that while, yes, once she did love him, desperately even, he destroyed
that
love, and now the only kind of love she feels for him is the kind of love you feel for a sibling. She ended her clarification by saying, “You’d take care of Clay under the same circumstances, wouldn’t you?”

The mention of Clay distracted her—thank God—and she suggested I call and give him an update on Dad, reminding me that he’s two hours behind us so he’d still be up.

“You call him,” I said, my snotty tone intact. Ma reminded me that Clay doesn’t take her calls, and I told her that maybe then
she
needs to come up out of the water and deal with that situation.

I felt guilty the minute I said it and saw her brows wrinkled with remorse. Ma
has
tried with Clay Many times over. So have I, for that matter. But every time I’ve managed to get a hold of him and dared to bring up the topic of Ma, he cuts me off quickly and tells me to give it a rest. I got pissed the last time he said this and asked him point-blank why
he
couldn’t give it a rest. And what exactly did he blame her for, anyway? For being afraid of him? We were all afraid of Dad.

Clay reminded me that we were only kids. Ma wasn’t, and he claimed that she could have walked away like he did.

His remark pissed me off all the more and I went off on him, reminding him that she had two kids to take care of and that she didn’t have a penny to her name. No car. No experience being on her own, since she’d lived with her parents until the day she married Dad. But none of that meant jack shit to Clay. The phone call ended with me telling him to shove his self-righteousness up his ass.

Ever since that conversation, his calls have gone from once a month to three times a year: Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. And he keeps those calls short. Polite. Like you would if you were calling an old aunt out of obligation.

Ma sat down at the table and took another sip of tea. She told me that the time would come for her to talk to Clay, but for now he’s not ready.

I asked her if Sky Walker told her this, and she told me to stop it. That I know her name is Sky Dreamer. She took a deep, soft breath, and her face turned wistful as she informed me that she’s thinking of changing her name.

I hoped to hell she was kidding. She wasn’t. She was perfectly serious as she told me that Lillian is a nice enough name but that it represents the old her. She reminded me that Marie had her name changed for the third time right before we left. I reminded her that Marie’s Indian, for God’s sakes—and she’s not—that it’s part of Marie’s culture. I groaned out loud, then looked back at my computer screen. I could feel her thinking up new names even as we sat there.

“I’m not staying here until he dies, you know,” I said abruptly. “Maybe you love the guy enough to stay and tuck him in for his dirt nap, but I don’t.”

Ma gasped at my comment, then asked when I got so sarcastic and bitter, anyway. What could I say?

She sat quietly for a minute—okay, maybe a fraction of a
minute—then she brought up her promise to Dad again. How it never went away, even after his meanness chipped away at her love until there was nothing left. After all Dad put her through, I said, she should be absolved from that promise.

She blinked at me. “Absolved by whom?” she asked. Again, I had no answer.

Suddenly Ma looked almost small. Almost vulnerable. She shook her head slightly and gave me one of those bittersweet smiles. Then she told me how, from the time she was a girl, she wondered what her purpose in life was. She always knew that it wasn’t something on a large scale—even though she admitted that when she was young, she wanted to do something great. “Youth always dreams of greatness,” she added, reminding me of my own youthful dream of becoming a world-class novelist.

She went on to point out that she has no special talents. How she loves music, but can’t play it. How she gets goose pimples over beautiful artwork but can’t create it. But she’s comfortable with that at her age, she said, because she looks at success a little differently than she used to. Then she started talking about how when she’d finally gotten herself together, she promised the “Creator” that she would keep her word and decided that if she accomplished only keeping her word for the rest of her life, that would be enough.

That’s a noble ambition, and I told her so. But I added that I didn’t see the point in this case. And then she brought up something that pained me. How she’d promised everyone—Marie and me and herself—that she’d stick with her commitment to put an end to the madness going on in this house, but she didn’t do it. Not then, anyway. And that although she tries to live with no shame, no blame, and no guilt, she falters at
times and wonders if things might have turned out differently if she’d stuck to her promise the first time.

I felt my whole insides stiffen when she said this. “It wasn’t your fault!” I protested. “You weren’t the cause of what happened!”

“Wasn’t I?” she said. Ma wasn’t so sure about that, and she wasn’t about to test it out. “And whether you see my aim as worthy for a life’s goal or not isn’t the point. To me, it’s everything.”

I wanted to wrap my arms around her at that moment, but I didn’t. Instead, I asked her if she knew what I was having the most difficulty accomplishing.

She made a smart-ass guess that it was “trying to come up out of the water,” and, I swear, there was a little taunting curl to her lips!

“No!” I snapped, even though I had planned to reveal something akin to that. I told her that it was trying to get my work done when someone was chewing my ear off. I adjusted the screen of my laptop and stared at it fiercely.

Ma rose then, warming her tea with more water from the kettle and leaning her backside against the counter. She made a comment about how fear is a peculiar thing, following that gem up by reminding me of how Clay always accused Dad of being a phony and a coward. She surprised me by agreeing with Clay and talking about how Dad split himself into two halves and sent one half out into the world for others and left one half here at home for us. How in both places there was fear. Dad didn’t go to college—even though he loved learning as much as Milo and Lucy do—because he was afraid he wasn’t smart enough to rise to the top there. How he held on to his money with a gripped fist and would take a swing at her when she dared try to snatch some of it for bread or milk
,
because he was afraid he’d run out. And she brought up how Dad had a string of mistresses and loved at least one of them but couldn’t be with her because he was afraid that if she saw him at his worst, she’d stop loving him. “Everything that man did, he did while standing chin-deep in fear,” Ma said, then she added, “I understand fear, of course. I lived in it too. We all have fears, Tess. But, well, at some point we need to face them.”

When I didn’t respond, Ma said she’d leave me to my work. She set her cup in the sink and kissed me good night, then went to her room.

Ma’s right. I
am
afraid. I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid that if I allow my love for Peter to take me back to him, he’ll change, and he’ll find my underbelly and rip it to shreds in the end.

I’m afraid to really look at Dad, for fear that I’ll see too much of myself in him and that I’ll break through the thin covering of indifference that sits over the hole in my life where a father should have been and fall into a pit of grief when he dies.

I’m afraid to look at Lucy when she asks about her father, for fear that in a weak moment I’ll blurt out the truth.

I’m glad my old files from my time with Howard are gone, along with that old word processor itself, because if I had them, I’m afraid I would read them and go back to that time I never want to relive.

I’m just afraid.

I feel like I just walked into a stranger’s room and saw them naked. I minimize the screen.

Downstairs, the back door shuts, and I hear Mom’s voice. She’s grumbling about something or other. I kick off my
shoes, and in stocking feet—half crouching, half creeping—I rush Mom’s laptop to her room and set it on the nightstand next to her bed. I hurry back into my room, slip my shoes back on, and head downstairs.

“I had Lucy bring it upstairs,” I hear Oma say when I reach the landing of the stairs.

“It’s on your nightstand,” I add, then quickly lean over Oma’s shoulder and ask her how the dinner preparations are coming.

“Fine, honey,” Oma says. “We’re going to eat like kings tonight.”

I pride myself on the acting job I’m doing. Mom had that worried look on her face when I entered the kitchen—the memory of catching me rummaging through her notebooks still fresh in her mind, no doubt—but I played it cool by looking casual, even if I didn’t feel that way inside.

I manage to give Mom a bit of eye contact and keep my voice at its normal pitch when I casually ask what time Mitzy is coming. Mom is buying it, apparently, because her shoulders relax when she says, “Around seven.” Well, as much as her shoulders are capable of relaxing, anyway.

Mom’s face might look exactly the same, yet after reading her private thoughts, I know that there is a lot more underneath that dry skin and emotionally void face than meets the eye. For a long time now I’ve prided myself on my skilled intuition, my ability to read body language and verbal tones, but suddenly I question whether I’m any good at any of it at all, because I always assumed that Mom—with her attachment disorder and abandonment issues and all—didn’t feel very much past her love for Milo and me and Oma. Now I know that she feels everything. Intensely.

I watch Mom as she heads up the stairs, and I think that
maybe I should brush up on my math skills and just become an accountant or something.

A
S THE
day progresses, the aroma of Oma’s cooking swells from the stove to fill the kitchen, and by the time Feynman begins to bark, alerting us that someone is here, the whole house is bathed in smells so enticing that we’re salivating like Pavlov’s dog.

The first thing I think of when I see Marie is Oma’s fertility goddess earrings. Her skin is clay-red, and she’s molded solid like the earth, with heavy breasts and wide hips and thighs. Her face is full, and her salt-and-pepper hair is pulled back and twisted into a fat knot at the base of her neck. She has a wide, square, attractive face, and she’s wearing a long denim skirt and a white roomy blouse. Long earrings made of tiny red and yellow beads wobble and bend against a neck that is filled with rings like a tree trunk. Mom didn’t specify which kind of Indian Marie is, but I see for myself—feather, not dot—and she doesn’t seem old, even though I know she’s around Oma’s age.