The Art of Mending (13 page)

But I wondered if it wasn’t something else. Maybe it was the tender irony of the way that we, blind ourselves, offer our arm to others, hoping to ease the crossing. Maybe it was the odd surges of love one can feel for an absolute stranger. Or maybe it was the way we give so little when it’s in us always to give so much more. Thomas Merton wrote about feeling a sudden awareness of a profound connection to others, understanding that “they were mine and I theirs.” I always loved reading things like that, things that pointed to our oneness and, by extension, our responsibility to others. It’s the execution of anything specific that’s the problem. It’s kneeling down to meet the eyes of someone slouched on a sidewalk that you’d so much rather walk past. It’s bothering to listen with an open heart to someone who smells bad. It’s hard.

The three of us kids are in a bathtub piled high with soapsuds. In the background Steve and I are grinning happily. I have made a lavish upsweep, using the thick lather of White Rain shampoo. Steve has made devil horns. My knees are up against my chest, my arms spread out wide—I remember I was being Dinah Shore, singing “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” Steve has his hands behind his head, “wewaxing.” In the foreground sits Caroline, solemn-faced, wide-eyed, dry-headed. Her eyes are raised as though in silent appeal to the person above her. She wants to be lifted up. She does not want to be there.

19

IN THE MORNING, I MADE A POT OF COFFEE. I’D HAVE A
cup, and then do some handwork on the quilt I’d brought along, the one for the woman I met with just before I left. It was
for
a dog, as it turned out. That would eliminate any sew-ons, which the dog could eat. Instead, everything would be incorporated into the design of the quilt. I’d suggested some appliquéing, which would lessen the cost, but the woman thought appliqué was tacky.

I’m always amazed at how much people spend on their animals. I’ve never understood that kind of love, though I don’t denigrate it. Maggie has a mutt that looks like a poodle in the front and an extraterrestrial in the back, and she worships him. Every Friday night he gets an Italian beef sandwich from Johnny B’s.

When the coffee was ready, I went to the refrigerator for milk. I didn’t see any—where did Aunt Fran put it? I saw a carton of cottage cheese, a package of English muffins that, though unopened, had passed its expiration date. Some Tupperware dishes holding leftovers. And that was it. I looked in the freezer, thinking she might have absentmindedly put it there. Nope.

I searched the cupboards for fake creamer, found none. It might be Dunkin’ Donuts time. But first I’d call Aunt Fran.

When she answered the phone, I said, “Hey, you! Where’s the milk?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s me, Laura. I thought you brought us some milk. I don’t see any.”

“Well, yes, that’s . . . listen, honey, is Caroline there with you?”

“No. I’m going to see her for lunch today. Why?”

“I wonder if I could ask you to come here first.”

“Sure. Is something wrong?”

“Well, I just want to . . . I think there’s something you should see.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

I dressed and got in the car, headed for the drive-through window of Dunkin’ Donuts. If I didn’t go in, I wouldn’t be tempted to get a doughnut. When I spoke my order into the silver box, I requested a large regular coffee, skim milk, light, no sugar. “Anything else?” a voice asked, and I paused, then said, “A bowtie?”

On the way to Aunt Fran’s, I passed a sign for a backyard play posted to a telephone pole. Aunt Fran once had a role in one of our backyard plays (to which Steve sold tickets, ten cents for a show and a paper cup of Kool-Aid), and she played a wicked witch so convincingly that one of the little kids in the audience went home crying and the mother called my mother to complain. I tried to remember the last time I stayed over at Aunt Fran’s. I believe it was a summer night when I was fourteen. She helped my cousins and me write letters to stars that night. Gregory Peck was her choice, Paul McCartney was mine. Everyone I knew loved either Paul or John, except for Caroline, who preferred Ringo.

When I knocked at the door, it took a long time for Aunt Fran to answer, but then there she was, in her bathrobe. “I was just getting out of my gardening clothes,” she said. “I’ll be with you in a minute. Go in the kitchen, there’s a big plate of chocolate chip cookies.”

“Did you bake this morning?” I asked.

“No,” she called, from her bedroom. “Brunderman’s Bakery.”

“I’m disappointed,” I said.

“Eat one,” she answered. “You won’t be disappointed anymore.”

Since I had already ruined my “diet,” I ate two. Then, as I was pouring myself another glass of milk, Aunt Fran came into the room, carrying something under her arm. A small photo album, it looked like.

“
Here’s
the milk,” I said, holding up the carton and smiling at her.

“Sit down, Laura.”

“Okay.” I put the milk back in the refrigerator and sat down at her little kitchen table. There was a pitcher of flowers in the center, a beautiful arrangement from her garden: hydrangeas, lilies, small roses, all in shades of pink, a little baby’s breath here and there, not the nearly yellow, defeated kind sold in grocery stores but bright little white blossoms, full as miniature petticoats.

She sat opposite me and put the photo album between us. “I didn’t go over to bring you food the other day. I went over to get this out of the house. Your mother asked me to.”

I recalled the brief bit of conversation I heard between the two of them. No wonder my mother hadn’t wanted me listening in; she must have been talking to Aunt Fran about Caroline making trouble again. And she must have wanted her sister to remove anything that could get Caroline going.

“What is it?” I reached for the album, but Aunt Fran pulled it closer to herself.

“Your mother does not want you to know about this. But I’ve decided you should. I hope it’s the right thing to do. She just never wanted you to know.”

“About what?”

She opened the album to the first page, to a photo of a newborn in a crib. “Is that me?” I asked.

“It’s your sister.”

“Caroline.”

“No. It’s your sister who died. Her name was Claire.”

I looked up quickly at Aunt Fran and then back at the baby. She was remarkably thin.

“She died when she was only nine weeks old.”

“From what?”

“A heart defect. She never had a chance, really. It just about killed your mother.”

I looked at the photo again. The baby was so young, it was hard to see much in her face. And her eyes were closed, her fist close to her face. I turned the page: more photos, the old-fashioned kind with jagged edges. There were only about twelve in all, some with my mother or father, one with another baby. “That’s me, right?” I said, pointing to a picture with an older baby, staring in a direction opposite my sister.

“Yes, that’s you. I wonder—I’ve always wondered, really—do you have any memory of that child?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“You weren’t even two when she died.”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“Well, I wouldn’t expect you to. And that’s certainly the way your mother wanted it.”

“Why?”

“The only way she could get past it, finally, was to deny it. But then when Caroline was born—too soon, really; it was much too soon for your mother to have another baby—she . . . well, it made all the sorrow come back. She saw Caroline healthy, and it reminded her of Claire, dead. And I think it affected the way she treated Caroline.”

I nodded my head slowly, though I didn’t really buy this explanation. It seemed to me that if you lost a baby you’d be overjoyed to have another one.

“At first it was just that she was afraid to get close, thinking it could happen again. Or maybe it was postpartum depression, which everybody talks about now. We didn’t know about it then. But Laura, despite the way things were between them, you must know she does love Caroline.”

“Pretty long time for a postpartum depression to last, Aunt Fran. And pretty selective behavior on my mother’s part.” I stared into the open face of a lily, all its parts exposed. Then I said, “Do you know that Caroline was in the hospital when she was a kid? She was there because—”

“I know,” Aunt Fran said. “Your father and I both knew, though your father thought he was the only one. It was a terrible thing. But at least Caroline got some help. Things got better after that.”

“But . . . what about my
mother
? What about help for
her
?”

“Things were very different then. People relied more on their own resources. I think your mother felt that if Caroline got help, she would be helped too.”

“That makes no sense at all.”

“It was a long time ago.” Aunt Fran turned the photo album toward herself to look at the pictures. “She was a beautiful baby. And smile? That baby smiled from the day she was born. I swear, she was the happiest little thing you ever saw. And then came Caroline, such a sad little girl. Always so sad. I think your mother saw that sadness and it bothered her, that the one who lived would be so—”

“But Aunt Fran, my God! Caroline had reason to be sad!”

“Oh, I know. I know. But I often wonder which came first. Who caused what in whom. She closed the photo album. “Anyway. May I ask you to keep this a secret?”

“I . . . don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”

“Well, Laura, I showed you this so that when Caroline complains about her life, you know part of the reason that your mother had difficulty with her. And the other part, I must tell you, was Caroline herself. She was a difficult child. Surely you remember that! She remains difficult today; that woman cannot settle down inside herself. I love her, truly, but she is a tortured soul. It is not easy to be around her—not then, not now. You’ve had good luck with your children, Laura. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about what it would be like to have a child like Caroline.

“I really don’t think your telling others about Claire will help anything. It might make things worse. Your mother made mistakes, but she tried her best to take care of all of you. That’s all a parent can do.”

I stood. “I’ve got to go.”

She took hold of my arm. “I will ask you again to keep this a secret, Laura. It was your mother’s wish that you kids never know. Not only so that she could try to forget about it, but so that you children wouldn’t have to know about such a sad event. She wanted to protect you; she still tries to protect you. Don’t remind her of things she tried so hard to forget and then, on top of that, tell her that her sister betrayed her—not when her husband has just died. Please, Laura.”

“I won’t say anything right now. That’s all I can promise.”

What I meant was, I wouldn’t say anything to Caroline. But I was going back to my mother’s house, and I was going to make a few calls. One to Pete for consolation; one to Maggie for advice. And then I would call Caroline, to tell her I was on the way to see her for lunch.

I drove home mindlessly, mechanically. The only thing I seemed to take in was a cemetery, which I noticed as I sat at a stoplight. Was Claire there? I wondered. I looked at one of the markers: a stone angel, bent at one knee, head hanging low, hands clasped over her heart, weeping tears of stone.

20

NATURALLY, I GOT ADVICE FROM PETE AND CONSOLATION
from Maggie. Pete thought I shouldn’t say anything to Caroline; she was in such a fragile state that hearing what I’d learned might harm her further.

“But it might help her too,” I said.

Pete said, “Well, it’s hard to know how she would interpret it. So why take the risk?” I supposed he was right. I’d often been surprised by Caroline’s reactions to things. And this was a delicate time.

Maggie told me she felt bad for me, handling all this alone. Which I realized I was, at least at this point. I told her to tell me something funny, to give me a yang for the yin. She said, “Hmm. Something funny. How about an Amazing Fact instead?”

“Fine.”

“I used to be able to bounce a quarter off my stomach. Now I can hide an all-terrain vehicle in there.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t find that amazing. I find that funny. Also convenient. Next time we get tired on one of our walks, we’ll just pull out your Hummer.”

“Next time we take a walk, we’ll be too old to walk.”

“No, we really are going to start walking regularly.”

“I know we are, sweetheart.”

“As soon as I get back. I mean it.”

“Hey. I’m lacing up my sneakers.”

A FEW MILES FROM CAROLINE’S,
I turned off the radio and listened to the sound of the rain that had begun. I turned on the windshield wipers and remembered, suddenly, a cabdriver I once had on a rainy night when I was visiting New York City. His wipers weren’t working very well, the traffic was heavy, and he was in a terrible mood. I wanted to put a daisy down his rifle barrel, so I said, “Pretty bad traffic on Friday nights, huh?” “
Every
night!” he said, speaking from between clenched teeth. I looked across the backseat of the cab, as though seeking some sort of rolled-eye affirmation from an invisible ally. Then, in the warmest voice I could muster, I said “I guess it can be pretty hard to live here.” We were at a stoplight, and I thought he might turn around and crack a smile. But he did not turn around. Rather, he began pounding his steering wheel. One fist, pounding steadily but slowly, terrible little intervals of silence in between.
Bam!
.
.
.
Bam!
.
.
.
Bam!
I got out then, said this was close enough, thank you very much, and gave the guy a really good tip, though he did not deserve one at all. I walked away thinking, What happened to this man? Why is he not like the cabbie I had earlier, who had a picture of his daughter on his dashboard, who pointed out tourist attractions in his thickly accented English, who sang a little song to himself as we waited for the light to change, who waved at and then laughed with another cabbie who pulled up beside him? Surely the angry man did not emerge from the womb shaking his fist. Who did this to him?

Pretty obvious memory to have pop into my head, as I drew closer to the house where my sister lived. Though of course what she pounded was not the steering wheel but herself.

CAROLINE WAS SITTING AT HER DRAFTING BOARD,
looking at blueprints for an addition she was doing to someone’s house. I looked at the finely drawn lines on the big white pages and said, “Funny how we both ended up doing kind of the same thing.”

“What do you mean?” Caroline erased something, penciled in a correction.

“I mean, you know . . . making things out of raw materials. I use cloth, you use wood.”

She looked up. “You know what I think? I think it’s very different. I think I focus on seeing the actual substructure. You take things as they are and chop them up to re-create a new whole. And then you say, ‘See?
That’s
what it is!’ ”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I want to know the truth of what’s beneath. You want to transform things into something comfortable and beautiful, but not what they
are.
” She stared at me, a little smile on her face. And then her smile faded and she said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not. It’s just . . . I’m in such a bad mood. I’m sorry.”

“Maybe it’s good for you to be in a bad mood.”

She moved from her desk to sprawl out in a chair. “I’m so sick of this. I am. I am so sick of myself. You know what happened this morning? I toasted half a bagel. So far so good, huh?”

I smiled.

“And then I wanted to have it on a beautiful dish, I just wanted to have something beautiful to eat on because I’m trying to do what my therapist says and
nurture and reward myself.
So I have these cute little saucers I bought in an antiques store, cherries all over them, and I took one down from the cupboard, and here comes the big finger from the sky, pointing at me.
Put that back! That’s a saucer! You can’t eat a bagel on a saucer!
She looked up at me, sighed. “All the time, this voice:
Wrong. Stupid. That is not for you. It is for everyone else, not you.
And Laura, I want you to know, I really want you to be clear about this: It’s not how I want to be. I look up at the night sky and see the same beauty you do. I mean . . . torch singers, little red potatoes, the sight of a kid running down the street with her tongue sticking out of her mouth . . . I
get
that.

“I want you to know that whenever I go to a museum, everything in my head gets pushed away. It doesn’t matter what I look at : ancient pottery bowls, period rooms, sculptures—doesn’t matter. The whole time I’m there, everything pecking away at my soul bows to greater considerations. I stand in front of a little French oil of a woman at a food market and all you can see is one slice of her cheek and her coat and hat and her shoes, and everything about her comes to me: where she lives, her little overheated apartment, the half circle of camembert wrapped in butcher paper in her refrigerator, the split in the lining of her shoe, the water level when she takes a bath, the little pink roses on her teacup, how she’ll buy the lemons and the peaches—I see it all! I feel like I’m lost in the Wheel, only a part of some larger whole, and I can
breathe.
It’s such a relief. But then I have to come out. I have to come back.

“What’s wrong with me is what always intrudes. It overlies everything, that shadow. It’s what never, ever, ever goes away.
No! You can’t do that, you can’t do that, shame on you, shame!
And I have had enough. I have had enough! I am going to give it a real try here, I am by God going to try everything I can, and I am . . . I am
.
.
.
No fear,
okay?” She pounded the arm of her chair at this last. Then she stopped, deeply embarrassed. “Jesus. Oscar clip. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said, moving over to her, touching her am. “I’m glad you told me that. It makes me . . . well, it makes me know you.” I looked at my watch. “Let’s go out to lunch, want to? My treat. You can eat anything you want from anywhere you want it. I need to tell you something from Steve. And then I need you to tell me how I can help.”
And then I want to go home.

“I
WAS
,
SICK,” CAROLINE SAID.
“And Steve’s right. When I was lying on the cot in the nurse’s office, I heard her kind of yelling at Mom.
Didn’t you notice she had a fever, Mrs. Meyer?
I remember wanting to come home because I felt so bad and yet dreading it because I knew I’d be in trouble again.”

I played with the few strands of pasta left on my plate. In it, I suddenly saw a kind of filigree design that was actually very beautiful. I started to say, “I’m listening to you, Caroline. But I just saw something here that I want to get down.” I could feel heat rising at the back of my neck at the thought, at how close I came to pulling out my sketch pad, knowing that she would have said, in one way or another, “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Instead I said, “I . . . it must have been so hard for you.” I cleared my throat. D+, I gave myself for that attempt at an empathic response. Beneath the table, my free hand curled into a fist.

Caroline smiled sympathetically. She could see I was ready to jump out of my skin. “Look. I know you’ve been trying very hard to . . . in the midst of . . .” She put her hand over mine. It was such an awkward gesture; I could feel the clamminess. Were we friends, were we real sisters, I could comment on this, say something funny, and it would be fine. As it was, I ignored what surely both of us were aware of, making the moment even more awkward than it already was. “I’m trying to say thank you. It means so much that you listened to me. And that you said you believe me.” She took her hand away, put it in her lap. “So.”

I moved closer to her. “So. What now? Do you still feel like you need to talk to Mom?”

“I know it’s not the right time, with Dad . . .”

“Probably not.”

“And I’ve got lots of work to do in the meantime, God knows.”

“I guess we all do.”

“Thank you for coming back here, Laura. You can . . . why don’t you go back home? I know it’s hard for you to be away. But could I call you sometime?”

That she needed to ask. “Any time,” I said, and a small black part of my heart singsonged,
You don’t mean it.
“Any time,” I said again, overcoming it.

I DECIDED TO PAY THE EXTRA COST
and fly home that evening. Before I left for the airport, I called Aunt Fran. “I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I would really like permission from you to tell Caroline and Steve what you told me.”

“Oh, Laura.”

“I think it might help. I think it might help everyone.”

“She trusted me to never let you kids know.”

“But look at what’s happening. Caroline is having a lot of trouble right now, dealing with the way she grew up. I mean, she had a mother who attacked her with a knife, and she—”

“What?”

“Well, Aunt Fran . . . you know that. You said you knew. You said you knew! Mom attacked—or very nearly attacked—Caroline with a knife! That’s why Caroline was hospitalized.”

“Oh, honey. Oh my goodness. That’s not true. It was the other way around! She came after your mother!”

“That’s what my mother told you?”

“It was the other way
aroun
d
! Oh my goodness. Caroline said your mother attacked
he
r
? No, sweetheart, I swear to you, it was the other way around! Ask—oh, I was going to say ask your father. But he knew. It was Caroline who tried to attack your mother!”

There sat the spider, beautiful in her web, drops of dew shining like diamonds all around her. I spoke very carefully. “Aunt Fran. Do you honestly believe that?” I picked up a pencil from the kitchen table, balanced it along the knuckles of one hand while I waited for her answer.
Come on, Aunt Fran, you were my favorite. You in a yellow sundress, holding two of your own kids, one under each arm, laughing.

“Well, of course I do! It’s the truth!”

I let the pencil fall; it rolled under the table. I would not bother to retrieve it. My mother had Aunt Fran, just like she had my dad. There was no more to say. I held on to the phone and stared out the window at the sunset. Beautiful pinks. Dusty rose. Mauve. Wonderful next to sage green.

“Laura?”

“I have to go.” I hung up the phone, locked my mother’s house, and headed to the car to go to the airport. Enough. I turned on the radio, turned it up loud. Then louder still.