The Art of Mending

by Elizabeth Berg

  “Nothing,” I’d said. “Choose your own snacks from now on. Get salmonella.” But the very next time he said something about wanting a snack—in the same situation, actually; we were in the family room watching a movie—I said, “There’s licorice in the cupboard.” And then I’d stared intently at the screen so he couldn’t say, See?

  But this was a different situation. “Hannah,” I said. “I’m not trying to control anything. You just need a little help packing, that’s all.”

  Hannah readjusted her headband, then patted the top of her head. She spent hours grooming now; in the kids’ bathroom were at least seven products for her hair alone. “I’m done,” she said, pushing back from the table. “I’m going to call Gracie, and then you can help me, ’cause I’m too lame to pack by myself.” She flounced out of the kitchen, a defiant gesture that merely served to entertain the rest of us.

  “Why don’t you help me, Mom?” Anthony said. “In fact, you can pack everything for me.”

  “You can do it yourself.”

  “No fair,” he said, grinning. He tipped his chair back on two legs. “Hey, Dad. I saw this car for sale? Two blocks over?”

  “No.”

  “Just to work on. It’s only fifty bucks! We could keep it—”

  “No,” Pete said. And then, though I knew it would only make matters worse, I said, “Anthony.”

  “What?”

  “Chair.”

  He sat forward, righting the chair, muttered, “Jesus.”

  “What was that?” Pete asked.

  “I said Jeez. Okay, Mr. Cleaver?”

  “I heard what you said.”

  Anthony looked at me, shook his head. Neither of us was sympathetic to Pete’s inability to tolerate any word that is or approximates a “swear,” as Hannah called it. But I usually let it go—I did, after all, have my own proclivities toward extreme old-fashionedness.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “What.”

  “Would you buy me a concert ticket for the fair?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Would you buy me two?”

  “Who’s the other one for?”

  “I don’t know. I might get lucky.”

  Pete started clearing the table. “Yeah, I’ll buy you two concert tickets.”

  “All right!” Anthony stood, stretched. “I’m going to pack now. Then I think I’ll stay up all night so I don’t have to get up early.” He pulled my apron string as he walked past, then told me, as he always did, “Hey, Mom. Your apron’s untied.”

  I started rinsing the dishes while Pete finished clearing. “So today,” he said, “this old lady comes into the store and asks me where I keep the pliers. I tell her, and she goes back there for a really long time. Then she comes past the checkout counter with a pair of pliers sticking out of her purse. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘You going to pay for those?’ And you know what she says? She says, ‘Well, I wasn’t planning on it.’ ”

  I looked at him, laughed.

  “I swear!”

  “So who was it?”

  He shrugged. “Beats me. Jeannie said she thought it might be Theresa Haggerty’s mom, who’s visiting her from Florida. I guess she’s not quite all there.”

  “I guess not. So, did she pay?”

  “Yeah, she paid. And then she tried to give me a tip.”

  I shook my head, smiling, and rinsed the last of the silverware, loaded the dishwasher, and set it to start a few hours later.

  “So what happened to you today?” Pete asked, sitting down again at the kitchen table.

  I sat opposite him. “Let’s see. I got a call from a woman who wants a quilt made for each of her seven grandchildren. And I saw three ducklings cross the street by Save Mart. All the traffic just stopped, waiting for them to cross, and them taking their sweet, waddly time. I love it when that happens—kind of puts things in perspective.”

  Pete smiled. “Yeah, it does.”

  “And here’s a memory for you,” I said, “Once, at the fair, I went into the tunnel of love by myself. I was Hannah’s age. Ahead of me was this couple, kissing away. And I just couldn’t stand it, I wanted so much to have a boyfriend. I took my gum out my mouth and threw it at them. I wanted it to get in the girl’s hair.”

  “Nice.”

  “I know.”

  “So what did she do?”

  “I missed. It landed on the back of the guy’s neck. He got really mad. He turned around with this killer look, and I yelled, ‘I didn’t do that! I don’t know where it came from; I just saw it fly past. I didn’t do it!’ I’m sure he knew I was lying, but he went back to his girlfriend.”

  “You want me to take you in the tunnel of love this year?”

  “Yes. And on the Ferris wheel. And to the pig barn. And to see the butterheads. And to the cheese curd stand, and for roasted corn and caramel apples. And pie. And Swedish coffee. And to see the tractors and the home improvement stuff. And I’ll go to the technology building with you if you’ll come to creative arts with me. I want to see the dog shows. And the horse shows—I don’t want to miss the Lipizzaners again.”

  “Go help Hannah pack,” Pete said. “I’m exhausted already.”

  JUST BEFORE I FELL ASLEEP, the phone rang. Pete answered, then said, “Oh, hi, Caroline; here’s Laura,” and handed the receiver to me. He’s never been one to chat on what he calls a modest instrument of torture, but you would think he might have learned to be a bit less abrupt. My sister was used to it by now, of course, but I was always having to explain to new friends that my husband was really a very nice guy, he just had no telephone etiquette.

  “Were you sleeping?” Caroline asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “You weren’t . . .”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Listen, I’m sorry to call this late, but I wanted to catch you before you got to Mom and Dad’s. I’ve been . . . there’s something I have to do.”

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  “Well, I want to have us kids get together, just by ourselves—you, me, and Steve. A restaurant, maybe; we could go out for dinner or something.”

  “Why?” To plan Mom and Dad’s anniversary? I wondered. It would be fifty-five years this September: admirable, but not something you usually make a big deal out of.

  “I want to talk about some things.”

  “What things?” I began to get alarmed. “Is it something about your health?” Pete turned on the bedside lamp, mouthed What’s up? I lifted my shoulders: I don’t know.

  “No, it’s . . . I’ve just been thinking a lot, lately, about the way we were brought up, and I—well, there are some things I want to ask you and Steve, with no one else around. This will be a good time to do it. Bill’s not coming this year; he’s going to finish putting in our new bathroom. And Tessa won’t be there either; Steve said she’s got to be in Atlanta. Pete won’t mind if the three of us take off for a couple of hours, will he?”

  I didn’t know whether to be worried or annoyed. “But . . . Caroline, just tell me, what do you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t want to get into it now. But I’d really like to have us all get together. Would you just help me arrange it?”

  “Well, yeah. We’ll pick a day when we’re there and just do it. It’s not that hard.”

  “I’d hoped we could pick a day now. And then maybe you could call Steve and let him know. It’ll be harder for him to say no if you and I have already agreed to it. Would you please do that?”

  “Fine. How about the second night we’re there? The first night we’ll have to hang around. But the next night we’ll go out somewhere. How about Snuffy’s; you want to go to Snuffy’s?”

  “Anywhere. Thank you, Laura. So you’ll call Steve tonight?”

  “It’s better with Steve if you don’t plan ahead. I’ll just tell him. He’ll come.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I leaned over Pete to hang up the phone and lay down again. “Caroline wants to talk to me and S
teve alone. I don’t know what about.”

  “Is she upset about something?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say upset, exactly, but she sounds kind of . . . intense.”

  “Well. What else is new?”

  “This felt different. She says she wants to talk about some things that happened when we were growing up. I hope she doesn’t mention the time I told her about Jesus on the cross. I hope she forgot about that.”

  “Why, what did you say?”

  “Oh, just . . . you know, I told her the story of the crucifixion. And made her cry.”

  Pete turned out the bedside light, settled down under the sheets, yawned. “That’s not so bad.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Religious education wasn’t the goal. Making her cry was. Not that it was hard. Caroline was always oversensitive. She cried if you looked at her wrong. Literally.” I moved closer to Pete, closed my eyes.

  “I’m waiting,” he said.

  “Why do you have to be such a good listener?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Well, I overdramatized a bit, okay? I talked about how it hurts when you stick a pin in your hand. And then I said, ‘And just imagine. They put NAILS in. They pounded NAILS in.’ Stuff like that.”

  “You said that? That is pretty bad.”

  “Yeah, I know. But you did some terrible things to your brother and sisters.”

  “I can assure you I stayed out of the God area.”

  “Yeah, but when Stella was only four, you told her you turned into a werewolf at night.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She told me. And she also told me that you lined shoes up along the top of your door and then yelled for Danny to come quick, and when he pushed the door open all the shoes fell on him. And gave him a black eye.”

  Silence.

  “You robbed Tina’s piggy bank twice.”

  “All right. Good night.”

  “Oh. Oh! And you—”

  He leaned over, kissed me. “Good night. We have an early morning.” He turned on his side, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. It’s amazing. Head on pillow, and he’s out.

  I lay awake, wondering what was up with Caroline. I thought of the drive ahead of us, how the kids would ignore each other for the most part but how there would also be a few fights to contend with. It was only a five-hour drive, though, and then we’d be there. The garden would be perfectly tended, the bird feeders would all be full. There would probably be sheets and upside-down shirts and pants on the clothesline; my mother was a big believer in line drying. One summer I’d tried it myself, but the romance had drowned in the inconvenience.

  The food would not be memorable, of course, but the setting would be nice. We’d eat out on the back porch on a green painted table with an embroidered tablecloth, nice old flowered china, a huge vase of flowers, and the cut-glass salt-and-pepper shakers that had belonged to my grandparents—whenever I saw them, I remembered those shakers being on their Formica kitchen table. I remembered, too, my grandfather using his tongue to pop his lower dentures out of his mouth, then gulping them back in, one of the many things he did to thrill us grandchildren. For a long time, I hadn’t known they were dentures, and I’d thought my grandfather was an extremely talented man. I had spent long periods of time lying on my bed trying to loosen my own bottom teeth so I too could perform this interesting feat. My mother had come into my room one day with a laundry basket and had seen me yanking away at my back molars. “What are you doing?” she’d asked. And when I’d told her I was trying to do Grandpa’s trick, she’d laughed and told me his teeth were false.

  “But where are his real teeth?” I’d asked.

  “Gone.”

  “But gone where?”

  “I don’t know,” she’d said. “Just gone.”

  “But—”

  “Laura.” She’d touched my shoulder. “Don’t ask so many questions. You always ask so many questions. Don’t do that. Just . . . accept things.” She’d moved to my dresser to put away neatly folded stacks of underpants, talking with her back to me. “Don’t ask questions and don’t look back. Believe me, you’ll be much more content.”

  I’d grown silent, trying to figure out what that meant. Then I’d gone back to thoughts of my grandfather’s teeth.

  It was strange how my memory was changing. More and more, someone would refer to something that had happened fairly recently, and I would have forgotten all about it. I misplaced my glasses, the cinnamon, the name of an actor I’d always known. An abiding comfort was that it was happening to Pete too. “Guess who was in the store today?” he’d say. And then he’d get this panicked look on his face. “It was . . . oh, you know. You know who I mean.” We would stand in the kitchen, blankly staring at each other. “Oh, man,” he’d say. “Hold on a minute.” He’d concentrate for a while, eyebrows knit together, arms crossed, one foot tapping the floor, and then he’d throw his hands up in the air and give up. Hours later, he’d remember. Or not.

  Other things, especially from times long ago, I remembered clearly. I recall, for example, every detail about a time I lay on my belly next to the stream that used to be half a block away from our house. It was a hot morning in July; I had just turned ten, and I’d wanted to go somewhere to be alone and consider my oldness—two digits! I remember the algae swaying seductively in the greenish water, the quick thrill of a school of minnows swimming past, the grit of dirt against the exposed strip of skin at the top of my yellow pedal pushers. I remember the onion-scented smell of the long grass there, and the way it imprinted a pattern of itself against your skin after you lay in it.

  That same summer I buried Necco wafers in the dirt and then dug them up again and ate them, to show I was not afraid of germs. The sun had been setting gloriously when I popped the candy into my mouth; I remember the sky looked as though it were on fire. There’d been a ring of admiring neighborhood kids around me, including a six-year-old girl picking her nose rapturously with one hand and holding a Tiny Tears doll wrapped in a pink-checked blanket with the other. I wanted very much to hold that doll, but for obvious reasons I feared touching it. A twelve-year-old boy, the senior member of the impromptu gathering, had tossed a baseball from hand to hand, weighing insult versus compliment, I knew. In the end, he’d split the difference and had said, “Huh!” before he walked away.

  And this memory has persisted too: my mother holding a laundry basket against her hip that day she came into my room, telling me what she believed was necessary for living a happy life.

  It is my grandfather, sitting in a nubby green oversized armchair in his living room. The flash of the camera is captured in his eyeglasses. He is wearing his gray cardigan sweater, a plaid shirt, and some loose-fitting pants. On one side of his lap, I sit holding a lollipop and leaning back against him, smiling. On the other side is Caroline. Though my grandfather has his arms securely around both of us, she is trying to pull his arm closer still. Her fingers appear to be digging into him. She looks tense and unhappy, trying so desperately to delay his letting go that she hastens it. I remember the exact moment after that photo was taken: a sudden gust of wind lifting maroon draperies printed with exotic lime-green fronds; the smell of frying chicken in the air; my grandfather standing up to go into the kitchen “to help Grandma make the gravy”; and me pinching Caroline because I knew it was she who made him leave. I cautioned her not to tell or I would pinch her again, harder.

  4

  MY FATHER HAD SENT US AN ARTICLE FROM THE PIONEER Press about some things that would be at the fair this year, and Anthony was slumped in the backseat of the car, reading aloud from it. We’d been driving for three hours, and an edgy monotony had set in.

  “There’ll be two hundred and fourteen port-a-johns,” Anthony read. “And they’ll use twenty-two thousand rolls of toilet paper.”

  “Gross,” Hannah mumbled.

  “What’s gross about toilet paper?” Anthony asked. “What would be gross is if there weren’t any.”
>
  “Eeeeuuuuwwww!” She returned to her paperback, a story of three teenage girls who explore the Arctic by themselves.

  “They’ll have elk ragout,” he said. “And walleye on a stick.”

  “That walleye’s actually very good,” Pete said. “I’ve had that. I might get it again.”

  “Listen to this breakfast,” Anthony said. “Smoked pork chop, scrambled eggs, fried dumplings, and a kolach. I’m getting that.”

  “I’m eating only fried food,” Hannah said.

  “Well, you’re in luck. Listen to this: They have fried ravioli, French fries, cheese curds, onion blossoms, and fried dough. And look at this: deep-fried pickles! Hot damn!”

  I saw the color rise in Pete’s face at Anthony’s mild epithet, and he started to turn around but opted instead for paying attention to the road. But his eyes sought out Anthony’s in the rearview mirror.

  “Sorry,” Anthony said quietly.

  “You know, Anthony, you just don’t seem to get some things,” Pete said.

  “I said, Sorry!”

  “He’s smiling,” Hannah said. “He’s not sorry.”

  “Hannah!” I said, at the same time that Pete said, “I can see him, Hannah.”

  It was thickly quiet for a moment, and then Pete said, “I guess if you can’t remember to respect my rules, I can’t remember to give you money for concert tickets.”

  “Dad, I’m sorry, okay? It just slipped out. It’s not—I don’t know why you get so bent out of shape about this! It’s just an expression everybody uses. I don’t get it, why you’re always so—” He stopped, exasperated. Stared out the window. “It’s weird,” he said, under his breath.

  Pete put the blinker on and moved to the right lane to pull off into a rest stop.

  “Uh-oh,” Hannah said. “You’re gonna get it.”

  “Pete,” I said, “don’t be so—”

  But he stopped the car, cut the engine, stared at me in a direct bid for support, and turned around to look at his children. “There are certain things in your life that will become very important to you,” he said. “You might not be able to explain to anyone else why they’re important. But you will expect the people who love you, the people who are your family, to respect those things. If any of you need to swear, do it somewhere else. It bothers me.”