He revealed the wrist corsage he had been holding behind his back. I had never worn one, although my mother let me try on one my father had bought her before they went to a charity ball a little more than a year ago. It looked like a replica of that corsage.
I stepped off the stairway, my eyes fixed on the flower as I approached him.
“Hold out your arm,” he said. He fastened the corsage to my wrist. His ruby-blue eyes dazzled with excitement when I held it up and looked at it as if it really was a diamond bracelet. Jewelry was always more important than flowers for my mother. “Flowers die; a diamond is forever,” she had said, and then laughed and added, “Buy me a bouquet of them, Raymond, dear.”
“Thank you, Daddy. It’s beautiful,” I said now.
“It is on you,” he replied.
I couldn’t recall putting that much delight into his face, even when I did things he thought were wonderful and beyond my age for a child.
He stared at me a moment, and then suddenly, he took my hands into his and, holding my arms apart, stepped back to look me over.
“You did your makeup just the way she would, too,” he said.
I had done some eye shadow and chosen one of her lipsticks because the color worked well for both of us. We had similar complexions.
“Is it all right?”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re beautiful. You need just one other thing to complete this picture. After I shower, shave, and change, I’ll bring it down with me. I can’t believe how perfectly you did your hair.”
“I watched Mother do it many times.”
“Yes, I bet she made sure of that,” he said, the bitterness seeping into his voice. But his smile instantly returned. “This is so good for us, Scarletta. When two people have been so deeply wounded in their hearts, they need to steal a few moments of pure joy from whatever they’ve been promised and whatever is waiting for them in this world, even if it’s short-lived. It will help us find the strength to go on.”
He released my hands, kissed me on the cheek, and then hurried to the stairway. I looked from the corsage to him charging up the stairs like a teenager. He had left the house looking twenty years older, and now he looked twenty years younger. After my tense day at school, I couldn’t deny or in any way refuse to accept the moments of happiness we were stealing. If my mother had hoped we’d be in mourning tonight, she’d be terribly disappointed.
My glee is a good thing, I thought. Isn’t it? Apparently, she could casually drop me out of her life as easily as she could discard a gum wrapper. Where was our intimate mother-daughter relationship in all this? Although she was disdainful of the way other women her age related to their daughters, trying to be as young, she never heard my friends describe how they got along with their mothers. I envied them for having best friends in their mothers, too.
My mother had never confided in me about her new love. There was never even a hint. Was she afraid I’d run to my father with her secret, betray her instantly? All right, maybe that was it, but why couldn’t she have at least said a proper good-bye, held me, and promised someday soon to see me? What more could I have done to show my love for her than obey her every command? Was there another daughter who was as obedient, who even took her mother’s side in just about any disagreement she might have with her father, whether she believed she was right or not? Even if I felt sorry for him, I tried to hide it from her.
So here I was, the day after she had come out of her room, suitcase in hand filled with whatever of her things she had wanted to take. She had walked right by my room, maybe without a glance into it, down those steps, and out our front door, closing it behind her probably with little or no hesitation.
Here I was left with no other explanation than what my father had read to me from a printed-out note. Why couldn’t I drop her with the same indifference? At least for right now, it was okay for me to be more angry than sad. As time passed and she was still gone, I’d be both, for sure, and surely sadder eventually, but at this moment, anger kept me from crying. I welcomed it.
I couldn’t imagine forgiving her should she call me to explain. What would I say? It’s all right for you to care only about yourself, Mother? Go enjoy your new life with your new lover? See the world and pretend you don’t have a daughter?
A mother’s love for her child should be stronger than her love for a man, even her husband. I remembered her telling my father that once. Was she just talking, mouthing words she wasn’t going to follow? I swore to myself back then that what she had claimed was how it would be for me when I got married and had children. I would never do what she had now done to her family. It was rare for me to think something this terrible about her. However she had displeased me or Daddy in the past, she always seemed to have good reasons, even if they were reasons I wished didn’t exist. No matter what she did or said, although I didn’t have the power to do it, I excused her. I forced myself to see everything the way she did. I was so proud of her and admired her so.
Actually, nothing was different about that now. Despite the pain I saw in Daddy’s face and the pain I had in my own heart, my hating her for what she had done was like trying to put on shoes the wrong size. I could be angry at her, but I couldn’t despise her, not like Daddy did. Was she confident of that? Did she believe I’d welcome her back no matter how long she had been away and how coldly she had left me?
I went into the living room to wait for Daddy and think more about it all. What we were living right now wasn’t exactly a nightmare. Nightmares came and went. They might be remembered for a little while, but I couldn’t recall all the nightmares I had as a child, and besides, time made them less threatening, even silly. How could time change this? Would I forget my mother a year from now or two years from now? Could I ever forget her? Was her love for this other man really so strong that she would forget me? What would she do on my birthday? Would she be on some island somewhere or in some other country, as Daddy believed, and deliberately do something to keep herself from thinking about it?
This wasn’t the first time I wondered about such emotionally challenging family tragedies, but it was always something involving someone else. Now one was touching me, too. I had classmates whose parents had divorced, some with fathers who had moved far away. I listened to them talk about receiving gifts or phone calls, but as well as they were hiding the pain, I could still see it swimming in their eyes, floating under their words, and hiding behind their smiles, smiles that would freeze on their faces when their friends mentioned something their own fathers had said or done recently. Those who lost theirs were surely remembering something similar before their world was shattered. Was it painful for them to think of their fathers now? Did their hearts ache every single day? Would mine fold into itself like a poked caterpillar every time I thought of my mother?
Now I, too, would be wearing the same dumb smile the children of divorced parents wore when children from happy families talked about something their families had done together. I would surely resemble someone who had been struck in the head, someone who was thinking the same dark thoughts about her own life and people she loved. As a child, whom did you believe in more than your parents? After they broke their promises and vows to each other, what could you believe about the vows and promises they made to you?
How would it all show in my face? Would my eyes grow darker, my smile become as thin as cellophane? Would the corners of my mouth weaken and settle into an obvious habitual smirk? Would the color in my cheeks fade so that I resembled a flower pressed in a book of memories, the color diminished and the aroma gone? My “frame” would splinter, and the eyes of others, boys especially, would pass over me as if I wasn’t there. Most of the time, I wouldn’t feel like I was there, either.
People died for you in different ways, especially a parent lost in a divorce. Distance killed them a little. Time smothered their faces. Their voices thinned out over the telephone. Their images faded or blinked off on computer screens after Skyping or FaceTime. “Good-by
es” cut deeper and deeper, until one day, you realized your father or your mother had become almost a total stranger. You could even imagine having to be reintroduced decades later. “You remember your mother, I think, don’t you?” “Oh, yes. How have you been?”
After all, the parents who left you lived completely different lives with different experiences and memories gathering during the time they were gone. The shared DNA wasn’t enough. There were fewer and fewer “remember whens.” Pages of albums would be blank. Occasions were missed, moments lost. Part of your life was evaporating.
But wouldn’t there be that moment, that terrible, heart-wrenching moment, when your father or your mother looked at you and thought about all that he or she had missed when you were growing up, memories lost forever to them, too? Wouldn’t they feel regretful and realize how selfish they’d been? Wouldn’t they look for you to forgive them? How would you forgive them if time lost could never be regained? You wouldn’t forgive; you’d forget or, really, just force it all out of your mind, like squeezing a balloon full of water until it was only wrinkles.
Do birds ever see their babies fly by and remember who they are? It doesn’t look like it. Are we really like them, flying by each other with indifference?
These thoughts rushed over and through me. I had done most of my homework before I had come downstairs. It had helped me to avoid thinking, but I couldn’t do that now. Silence drew the painful thoughts from the deepest, darkest places of my mind. Daddy’s excitement was barely a Band-Aid.
When I had first gotten off the bus and started for home today, I wasn’t really looking forward to us going to this restaurant. I even played with the idea of suggesting we go somewhere else, but now, when I looked at my corsage, I thought it might just be perfect, if not for me, then for Daddy. He needed me to help keep him from suffering, and when he didn’t suffer, I suffered less. I leaned back, confident we were doing the right thing. Staying home and staring at my mother’s empty dining-room chair would have made it all more painful than it was.
I suddenly realized I had chosen to sit in the corner of the Chesterfield sofa where my mother was always sitting comfortably. Did I do that deliberately so that I wouldn’t look at the empty seat? It was funny how certain places in our home, maybe everyone’s home, got identified with one person or another. The heavy matching Churchill chair across from me was Daddy’s. Neither Mother nor I ever sat in it. The seat of it looked worn to his size. I could easily imagine the chair squirming and moaning if someone else sat on it. On the dark cherrywood table beside it was Daddy’s pile of business magazines. Seeing it now brought back memories.
“You don’t relax by reading what returns you to work,” my mother once told him when he had begun reading one. In the early evening, she often would sit with her legs crossed, sipping an after-dinner drink, and gaze at him judgmentally with her eyelids narrowed.
“You are what you do,” Daddy said, smiling.
She laughed, but not because she thought he was funny. It was an “aha” laugh. To me, even at my age, sitting and doing my math workbook assignment that day, it seemed Daddy had fallen into her trap.
“Exactly, Raymond,” she said. “You often look like a stick of furniture.”
“Ha-ha,” Daddy said. But I saw something beneath his smile. There was a layer of anger he kept so well hidden that my mother either didn’t see it or didn’t care. It frightened me even though it was only a flash.
“I want to change this rug,” she said. “It’s not wearing as well as I thought it would. There’s always a reason something’s a bargain.”
She looked at me.
“Remember that, Scarletta,” she said. She threw her wisdom out like someone throwing peanuts to pigeons. “You get what you pay for in this world.”
“This wasn’t meant to be a bargain, Doreen,” Daddy said. “I squeezed the Fullers to get that price. They wanted to be part of a bigger deal that I was doing.”
“Whatever,” she said. She’d wave off any disagreement with a backhand slap of an invisible, annoying fly. “I still want to replace it.”
“Sure,” Daddy said. He returned to his magazine, holding it in front of his face more like a shield than anything.
That was about the time I began to wonder whether we fit the definition of a happy family, one of those families I especially saw on television commercials around Christmas. It looked like smiles floated through those homes like bubbles. And there was always so much laughter. How often did we laugh? How often did I see bubbling smiles? Mother was always too busy teaching me things to make small talk or joke. I imagined a blackboard on wheels rolling behind me through every room.
“Do it this way” and “Say it this way” were like chants echoing everywhere, even outside. I heard them when I played in the backyard or when I rode my bike. They followed me to school. “Don’t hike your skirt up so high.” “Don’t sit with your legs apart like that.” “You bring your cup to your mouth, not your mouth to your cup.” “Elbows,” she would sing at dinner, and I would take them off so fast that someone sitting there would think the table was on fire.
I could hear all of it now as I sat quietly waiting for Daddy to come down. It occurred to me that my mother never could completely leave this house, even if she had run off with someone else. The walls had absorbed all her lessons, warnings, and threats. Every once in a while, one spilled out at my feet, and I could hear her saying it.
What a strange feeling it was to sense my mother still here, but I was far from used to the idea of her being away. Maybe I never would be. Right now, I half expected to see her come in or hurry around a corner the way she often did. I would look up. She would surely appear surprised and a little angry. “What’s this about my running off with a lover?”
Was that the sound of her stiletto shoes on the floor above me? My mother’s presence was always so strong that I could sense her even if she was in another room. Her image preceded her. It was as if her silhouette could take off on its own and she would have to follow it instead of vice versa.
The ringing of the phone seemed to climb up my spine to my ears. I jumped and waited to see if Daddy would pick up. He didn’t. I imagined he was still in the shower, so I lifted the receiver on the fourth ring. My mother’s instructions for answering the phone accompanied the smooth, calm way I brought the receiver to my ear. After all, this might very well be her, calling to say she was on her way back. I wouldn’t want her to begin by chastising me for not following her instructions.
“Barnaby residence,” I said. “Scarletta Barnaby. With whom would you wish to speak?”
“Jesus,” Jackie Hansford said. “Is this the White House or something?”
“Something,” I said dryly.
“I just say hello when I answer the phone.”
“How can I help you, Jackie?” I asked. My patience, like an old spiderweb, was quickly drying and coming apart. Of course, I thought her call might be about homework. I wasn’t usually her first call for anything anymore. What else could it be?
“Help me? I think it’s more me helping you. I’m having a TGIF party this weekend, and Chet Palmer says he won’t come if you’re not invited. If he doesn’t come, Sean Connor won’t come. They’re like attached at the waist, and I have this thing for Sean. I told you, remember?”
I didn’t. So much of her conversation and the conversation of girls like her in my class went by me like road signs when we were traveling fast on a major highway. All of it a blur, one merging into another.
“What’s TGIF?”
“Are you kidding? Thank God It’s Friday. What world are you in? It’s an excuse for a party, Scarletta. My parents are leaving for the night, a sort of second honeymoon thing, and I’m left watching my brother Stuart. We’ll drug him about seven,” she said. I wasn’t sure she was kidding.
“What’s this about Chet?”
“Apparently, Miss Oblivious, he’s got this serious crush on you. You don’t have to dress formally for my par
ty,” she quickly added before I could respond. “Wear jeans and a blouse and sneakers. None of those expensive fancy shoes. No one’s going to wear a dress. Come over about six, and we’ll plot how to separate the two joined at the hip. You’ll take my room, and I’ll take my parents’ when we do, okay?”
What was she suggesting? Good-bye to virginity? Some of them acted like it was a cannonball chained to their ankles. You’d think they breathed through a vagina.
“I don’t know if I can attend.”
“Attend? Well, now. Look, if you’re worried about it, I’m not inviting you because we all feel sorry for you because of what your mother has done. It’s a party, not a pity. We’re going to have fun, and someone very good-looking is interested in you. This isn’t brain surgery. Don’t call Jared or Phoebe for advice. Okay?”
“I’ll ask my father,” I said.
“How is he doing?”
I knew she was asking more for her parents than herself. She hardly had spoken to him the two times she was here, and where else would she have seen him or had a chance to get to know him?
“We’re fine. We’re going out to dinner,” I said.
“Sounds like you’re celebrating. Whatever,” she said. “Let me know as soon as you can. I’m depending on you. And you should be very excited. Just about every girl I know would like Chet to be after her booty.”
I heard my father start down the stairs.
“Got to go,” I said. “I’ll call you later or let you know tomorrow.”
“Call me later!” she practically screamed. “I have to make plans. Don’t ruin it for me!”
I hung up the phone and sat back. Chet Palmer? Why hadn’t I noticed he was interested in me? Was I really Miss Oblivious? Nevertheless, the invitation really seemed odd. Didn’t Jackie think I might not be in the mood for a party since my mother had left us? Were parents breaking up and families splintering as important as a yawn to her and some of my other classmates?
The Silhouette Girl Page 11
