The Art of Mending

by Elizabeth Berg

  So it was that when Maggie and I walked in, Frank, seated at the bar, called out, “Hey, Laura! How was the fair?”

  “Oh, it was great.” I looked over at Maggie, and without saying anything she agreed with me. Now was not the time.

  “Bar or restaurant?” Frank asked. Then, reaching into the menu bin, “Late lunch, early dinner, or just drinks?”

  “Loaded nachos and margaritas in the restaurant?” I said.

  “You got it.” Frank threw the menus back in the bin and led us to the back area that served as the restaurant. It was five-thirty, and we were the only ones in the place. “Sit anywhere you want,” Frank told us, “and I’ll put the order in for you.”

  I sat at a corner table and folded my hands tightly together on the white tablecloth. “So.”

  “Did you bring Kleenex?” Maggie asked.

  “For what?”

  She reached in her purse, took out a pack of tissues. “Here.”

  “I’m not going to cry.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not!”

  She put the Kleenex back in her purse. Then she leaned forward, smiled a small smile. “It was awfully sudden, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Stroke. He was in the hospital for a little stroke. And then he had a big one.”

  A young waitress appeared, using both hands to balance the tray holding our drinks. “Here we go!” she said, her loud cheerfulness an attempt to compensate for her insecurity. As far as I was concerned, her tip had just gone up threefold. She very carefully set our drinks before us, the pink tip of her tongue peeking out of the corner of her mouth. “And!” She looked brightly at us. “Anything else?”

  “We ordered nachos,” Maggie said. “Loaded.”

  “Uh-huh, Frank told me. But . . . anything else?”

  “We’re fine for now,” I said. “We’ll let you know if we need anything more.”

  “Okay. Oh! My name’s Paula? And I’ll be your server?”

  “Okay, Paula.”

  I needed to make a suggestion for Frank’s COMMENTS box. Hey, Frank. Please be the only restaurant left that does not encourage your waitstaff to form intimate relationships with the customer.

  “So he died instantly, huh?” Maggie said. “I guess that’s good. That’s how my dad died too—a stroke. Only he didn’t die right away, he was in a coma for a couple of days. It gave me some time to say some things. Sort of. I mean, I sat by his bed and said some things. And then—well, this is sort of embarrassing to admit—I was trying to be all New Age, and I said, ‘It’s okay, Daddy. You can go. Just go toward the light.’ And my mom leaped out of her chair and rushed over and said, ‘Oh, no, Tom, don’t go! Don’t leave me!’ And she grabbed hold of him and started sobbing, and I stood there feeling just terrible.”

  I held up my glass, clinked it with Maggie’s in an ironic toast, and had a long sip. “So what did you tell him?”

  “My dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked away, watching Frank put a couple of tables together so he could seat a large group of people who had just come in. “I told him—oh, you know—thank you for helping me sell Girl Scout cookies door to door, for trying to teach me to catch a football, for telling me I was the prettiest girl in the yearbook when we both knew I wasn’t. And I told him I loved him, you know, that I’d always . . . that he’d always be—” Our eyes filled with tears, and she dug in her purse to get us each a tissue. “Nothing covers it. No matter what you say. So don’t feel bad that you didn’t get a chance.”

  “But I do feel bad. I really do.” I wiped at my eyes again.

  “This will take some time, sweetheart. There’s always going to be an ache. Our dads are—”

  “I know.” I started crying harder, making noise now, and looked at Maggie, panicked.

  “You want me to quick change the subject?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. Okay.” She stood up, turned her back to me, and said over her shoulder, “Does my ass look like two watermelons in these pants?”

  I blew my nose. “Yes.”

  “No, no, don’t hold back, just tell me the truth.”

  She sat down, laughing, and we accepted the nachos our new friend Paula had brought over. I ate one, two, and then looked around the room, trying to steady myself. “Before my dad died, my sister Caroline told me some things about my mother.”

  “Okay, but first: Does my ass look like two watermelons?”

  “No. . . . Hams, maybe.”

  “Oh, I see. Thanks a lot. I feel much better now. So. What things?”

  I took another drink and began.

  MUCH LATER, MAGGIE AND I were sitting in the bleachers of the high school football stadium, where we’d come to talk after Goldie’s closed. The stars were so clear; constellations stood out as plainly as star maps. I squinted at my watch. “Whoa, it’s two-thirty!”

  “Will Pete worry?”

  “No. He’ll go to bed. How about Doug?”

  “He’ll worry a little, but that’s all right.”

  I stood, a bit unsteady. I didn’t know how much I’d drunk, but it was much more than usual. “We should go.”

  She took hold of my hand, pulled me down. “In a minute. I want to tell you something first.”

  “What?”

  “Just this story, about . . . well, I used to stay with an aunt and uncle every summer. My family would go to visit them because they lived on a lake—in fact, the whole extended family would come up and find cottages and use their house as headquarters. But I stayed in the house. They had a daughter my age, and I slept on a cot in her room. I loved that family, especially my Uncle Harold. He was handsome, and funny, and so kind. But one summer when I was nine, he spanked me—grabbed me by the arm and swatted me maybe five, six times. He did it in front of other people, I remember; that was one of the worst things, it was so embarrassing. We were in the hallway, but there were a bunch of relatives in the living room who could see us. The front door was open; it was a beautiful day. I remember a breeze that smelled like water, I remember the cotton ball they had bobby-pinned on the screen to keep the flies away, I remember the red shorts I was wearing with this striped shirt with spaghetti straps that tied over my shoulders and the straps hurt that day because I was sunburned. I remember all that. But I don’t know why he spanked me, I cannot for the life of me remember why. It was just that one time, but it devastated me. I never wanted to stay with them again. I felt afraid of him; I just saw him as a completely different person.”

  “Meaning what? That Caroline suffered one little thing and blew it all out of proportion?”

  “Well . . . is it possible? Does it make sense to you that that might have happened? Perhaps . . . a few times?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “I mean, I never changed my mind about that uncle. Even now when I see him I feel a little afraid. And he’s just this little stooped-over gray-haired guy. Last year, at a family picnic, I was sitting by him and I all of a sudden said, ‘Do you remember the time you spanked me?’ And he said, ‘No. When did I do that?’ And I knew he really didn’t remember, and there was no point in bringing it up. I don’t know why I did bring it up.”

  “You probably wanted him to apologize.”

  “I don’t think it was that, really. I think I wanted to stop being afraid of him. You know?”

  “Oh, Maggie. What should I do? If I let my mother come and stay with me, I betray Caroline. If I tell Mom not to, I betray her at a time when she’s really hurting.”

  “Tell her to come,” Maggie said. “Let her be with your family. Then you go and see Caroline. Let her finish.”

  I sighed deeply.

  “Just an idea.”

  “It’s a good idea. I could get together with Caroline and Steve—he’s still in town, visiting some of his old high school friends. Maybe if she can just finish saying all she wanted to say, if we can both say we support her.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Would Steve come?”
>
  “Yeah, I think he would. For a few hours or so, anyway. He would if I asked him. I could tell him he needs to come and help Caroline and me do things in the house. Then we could kind of ease into it. I think it’s important that Caroline talk to him too.”

  “I’ll cover for you with the kids. Tell them to come over if they need anything. I can work from home better than I can work in the office, anyway. I only go to the office for the doughnuts.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Oh, Maggie. Thank you. What would I do without you?”

  “Let’s go home,” Maggie said. “You’re getting a little sentimental here.”

  We walked across the field with our arms linked. The only sound was our footsteps, walking over grass grown stiff and strawlike in the absence of rain. I watched the fireflies, their little lights appearing, disappearing, appearing, disappearing.

  WHEN I SLID INTO BED BESIDE PETE, I had not exfoliated or washed or toned my face. I had not flossed or brushed my teeth or shoved the proxi-brush between them, or rubber-tipped my gums or scraped my tongue. I had not put on my five-billion-dollar-an-ounce moisturizer that undoubtedly did nothing that Vaseline couldn’t. I had not delicately pulled up the flab on my neck and then looked at myself from various angles, sadly considering plastic surgery. I had not taken my gingko biloba in an effort to help my failing memory. A friend of mine recently said about gingko biloba, “I think whatever-that-stuff-is-called works great. I just keep forgetting to take it.” Another friend told me about a time she’d answered her cell phone and told her girlfriend, who was the caller, that she was in the parking lot of her doctor’s office, getting ready to go in for an appointment, but she was early; she had some time to talk. They chatted for a while and then the woman happened to look down into her purse at the empty carrier for her cell phone. She told her friend, “Dammit, I lost my cell phone.” Wait. It gets worse. The friend says, “Well, let’s retrace your steps.”

  So I had not done any of my usual nightly routine and it felt wonderful. I wondered why I cluttered my life so much. I felt so free: I had bothered only to remove my sandals and my pants and to lie down on what was approximately my side of the bed—which felt suddenly like a boat on an angry sea. I put one foot on the floor, and things stopped moving.

  “What time is it?” Pete asked.

  I looked at the bedside clock and then spoke with great precision—as well as good cheer, I thought; I sounded really very cheerful. “One after three!”

  Pete raised himself up on one elbow and looked over at me. “Oh, boy, you’re in great shape. Maggie drove, right?”

  “Yesh.” The roof of my mouth was numb. I touched my lips experimentally. Some feeling there. The face of my dentist, Dr. Paine (I know; he knows; we all know) appeared in my head, his green goggles and paper mask, his curly black hair. Numb yet, Laura? No. Not yet.

  “Did Maggie drink as much as—”

  “No! Jesus—oops! Sorry.”

  He turned on his bedside lamp.

  I shaded my eyes, squinted at him. “What. Are you mad?”

  “No. I think you deserved a night out.” He turned out the light again.

  “Pete?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me a memory.”

  “I’m tired, Laura. Come on.”

  “I need to, though. I mean, I need you to.” I turned to face him, felt dizzy, and turned back. “I’ll tell you one.”

  Nothing. But he hadn’t gone back to sleep; I could tell from his breathing.

  “Once I got sent to the principal’s office for making fun of the math teacher’s chin. Which was this huge double chin, like a purse. Mrs. Menafee. Your turn.”

  Pete groaned. “I don’t have one, Laura.”

  “Yes, you do. Tell me. We’ve never missed a night, Pete.”

  He turned on the light again. “Are you all right?”

  I shaded my eyes with the pillow. “Yesh.”

  He gently pulled the pillow away from me. He was wide awake now. “Did you tell Maggie? About Caroline?”

  “Uh-huh. We talked about it for a long time. A loooooong time.”

  “What did she say?”

  I took back the pillow, covered my eyes again. “Turn off the light, okay?”

  I heard the click of the switch, and then Pete said, again, “What did she say?”

  Suddenly, my spirits fell and I was exhausted. I plumped the pillow, arranged it carefully under my head. “She has an idea. I want to talk to you about it. But tomorrow. Tell me a memory and let’s go to sleep. A short memory. Not sad.”

  He lay flat, thought for a moment, and then said, “Okay. Once, I ran away. And the only thing in my suitcase was salami sandwiches.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  I giggled. “Come on.”

  “I’m serious. I thought I’d figure out the rest later. I was walking to the bus station when Subby found me.”

  “What did he do?”

  “We went to a park and ate some sandwiches and then he took me home.”

  “What did Rosa do?”

  “Smacked me on the back of the head and then hugged me and then made me something to eat.”

  I thought of Rosa in her apron, weak in the knees with relief, hitting the head of the son she was so happy to see. I wondered how often it was transmogrified love that made for the worst lashings-out. Something needled at me, making me wake up a little more. “How were the kids tonight?”

  “I hardly saw Hannah. She came back with some clothes. And some hair . . . semen.”

  “What?”

  “Well, that’s what it looks like. You know, gel, whatever. Hair goop.”

  “Hmm. She’s getting more and more interested in the way she looks. What style clothes did she get?”

  “I don’t know—she’ll show you tomorrow. Anthony and I went and got steaks at McMannus’s.”

  “How was he?”

  “Anthony? Fine. Why?”

  “Was he mad at me?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He thinks my mother should come and stay here.”

  Silence.

  “Pete?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You do too?”

  “Go to sleep, Laura. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Okay, but my today thing? Maggie wants another baby.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “She isn’t going to, she just wants one.”

  “Oh. Well, me too. That’s my today thing. Okay? Good night.”

  “You want another baby?” I saw myself in a rocking chair, looking down at my new baby. With my old neck. “You want a baby?”

  “Sure. But not really.”

  I lay still for a while, then said, “I’m so glad to be home.”

  Nothing.

  “Pete?”

  A deep snore. I closed my eyes and hoped I could sleep late.

  IT WAS NOT TO BE. At a little before five, I heard Hannah in the bathroom, moaning. I got out of bed and found her sitting doubled over on the edge of the tub. I knelt down beside her. “Hannah? What’s wrong?”

  She pushed her hair out of her eyes, looked up at me, and her expression instantly changed. “What happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You look . . . look how you look!”

  I went to the mirror, turned quickly away. Then I knelt beside Hannah again. “I’m just . . . I didn’t wash my face last night.”

  She stared at me, considering. Then she said, “I have cramps so bad. Why do we have to get cramps on top of having to have stupid periods?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to practice for childbirth.”

  “And that hurts way more than this!”

  “You forget all about it, though,” I said, perpetuating the lie in the time-honored tradition. I went over to the medicine chest and opened it, surveyed the contents.

  “I just did.”

&n
bsp; “What?”

  “I just took something.”

  “What did you take?”

  “Advil.”

  “Okay. So, go on back to bed. I’ll get the heating pad for you. I’ll lie down with you.”

  She headed out of the bathroom, saying over her shoulder, “Mom? No offense, but could you, like, brush your teeth?”

  I brushed my teeth, washed my face, took a couple of Advil myself, and then went to the linen closet for the heating pad. This is a sign, I was thinking. I can’t go anywhere. My kids need me. This is a clear message: You’re needed here more than there.

  I plugged in the heating pad, gave it to Hannah, and lay down beside her. “Poor baby.”

  “What?” Her voice was muffled, miserable—her head was buried under her pillow.

  “I said, ‘Poor baby.’ Ish a drag, huh?”

  She lifted her pillow, looked over at me. “Are you drunk?”

  I said nothing.

  “Mom! Are you drunk?”

  “Oh, not so much.”

  “I can’t believe you’re drunk! Gross!”

  I sobered up to the best of my ability, concentrated mightily on my articulation. “I had too much to drink. That is true. But I am here to offer you comfort nonetheless. I know how much it can hurt when you get bad cramps.”