For some reason, I seem intent on leaving the kitchen spotless before I sit with the others on the patio. I’ll only mess it up again if and when I can interest anyone in dessert. The upside is I can clean it again. I find great satisfaction in that.
My thoughts return to Paula. I’m so grateful for her. I hope she knows that.
Of course she knows that.
She came into my life because of Margaret, another reason to thank God for her. Paula is the granddaughter of Margaret’s sister. We met when Margaret and I visited her sister the summer before Paula and I began the ninth grade. Up to that point, I had not known a happier week.
I had friends in St. Louis, at school anyway. But Mother didn’t encourage friendships. I wouldn’t say she intentionally discouraged friendships—she just didn’t like the idea of people coming over to our place, and she didn’t much want me going anywhere else either. After all, she didn’t know “those people,” and for some reason I accepted this, instead of saying, “Well, how would you, Mother?” Sarcasm wasn’t in me then, nor was pleading, arguing, or even calm reasoning, the one exception being repeated inquiries about my father. The ability to confront when necessary is a quality I have developed as an adult.
Margaret must have noticed that she and Hugh passed for best friends as well as surrogate parents. I’m sure she arranged for me to spend time with Paula. Margaret admitted it pleased her no end to see Paula and I enjoying each other so much the summer we met—laughing together on a porch swing, where we outdid each other with tales of junior-high angst; and rushing from the car when Margaret let us out at the mall to shop and see a movie. Being with Paula became a summer tradition.
When Margaret and I went to visit her sister, Paula would meet us there, and after a few days, I’d pack my things to spend a few days at Paula’s house, playing tennis in the park (a short-lived pursuit) and swimming at the municipal pool, sunning on our beach towels while chatting with Paula’s school friends.
Through the years, the drive to Paula’s reinforced my love for fields ripe with soybeans and corn. When we were seniors in high school and she had her own car, the Happy Honda, I sat in the passenger seat, studying the Indiana countryside, and made an announcement: “When I have a child and if it’s a girl, I’m going to name her Maize.”
“No,” Paula said, “you’re not.”
“Oh, but I am. I love these fields. Love them!”
“Love them all you want, but name your daughter Jill—or Sue.”
“I’ve made up my mind. I actually studied the etymology of the words corn and maize for a paper I wrote last year.”
“You did a paper on maize?”
“And corn—‘often used synonymously.’ I made an A on that paper, if you’d like to know. The word maize has always struck me as quite romantic.”
“Well, Miss Maize better get ready for the jokes,” she said.
“She’ll think it’s worth it.”
When I graduated from high school, I traveled across Illinois and into Indiana to attend Butler University with Paula, and when she was invited to join one sorority and I another, we decided to stay together in the dorms and later in an apartment near campus rather than be separated. We knew the time might come when once again we would have to be long-distance friends, but we were putting it off as long as possible. And then, gift of grace, we both got jobs in the same elementary school, not far from where Paula grew up.
“Hey,” Luke says now.
I look up and see him standing in the open doorway. “Hey, yourself.”
“Are you about done?”
“Just finished,” I say, pulling the trash drawer open and tossing the paper towel into it. The front sack is nearly full, but I resist the impulse to replace it. “I’m on my way out.”
I grab a pitcher of peach tea and ask Luke to get the ice bucket.
“I think the kids are going to swim. Want to join them?” he asks.
“I don’t think so. Your folks are still here, aren’t they?”
“Of course. Dad’s not budging until he’s had the cobbler and ice cream.”
“I thought so.”
We head outside, Luke pulling the door shut behind us.
“Miller,” I say, setting the pitcher on the table, “are you ready for dessert?”
“Soon,” he says, pulling out the chair next to him. “Take a load off, girl.”
I pat my father-in-law’s hand and sit down beside him. “That sounds lovely.”
Maisey
“Come on,” I beg, trying to pull Marcus to his feet.
“Your mom just got out here,” Marcus says. “And what about dessert?” he asks, as though we haven’t been talking about going for a swim for the last thirty minutes.
“It will be much better after a little exercise. Let’s go change. Pleeease.”
“You might as well get going, Marcus,” Grandpa says. “The sooner you swim with our girl, the sooner you can eat some cobbler with us.”
This advice motivates Marcus. He lets me pull him out of his chair, and I wave at the grandparents as we head into the house.
“Two minutes,” he says before we go our separate ways at the top of the stairs.
“I’m not moving that fast. I’ll just meet you downstairs.
I’ll bring towels.”
I shut my door behind me, comfortable in the darkness. Leaving the lights off, I walk across the room to look out the windows unobserved. On the patio below, the four older Laswells sit around the table, talking. Actually, it looks like Grandma is doing the talking, using her hands as expressively as an orchestra conductor. Whatever she’s saying is making them laugh.
The pool is beautiful at night, the water glimmering in the moonlight. I’ve always enjoyed swimming under the stars. Well, not always. I started my solitary night swims the summer I was thirteen—a teenager finally. Oh, how I had dreaded that. I remember telling Mother the Christmas before I started middle school that I didn’t want to become a teenager. Sometimes when I sit near a window watching it snow, I recall her laugh as she assured me we could never not like each other.
I believed her.
A couple years later I could have stayed in the pool twenty- four hours a day and my parents wouldn’t have noticed. They were certainly too preoccupied to notice my slipping into the pool most evenings, with only the moon and stars for company.
Unfortunately, the summer after that, when this practice had become a consoling habit, they had begun to see me again.
The night Mother came out and found me floating face-down in the water, they laid down the no-swimming-alone law. She so overreacted. She dove into the water, flipped me over, cupped her hand under my chin, and swam me to the stairs on the side of the pool. I was too shocked to protest.
“What were you thinking, Maisey?” she said, holding on to the side of the pool, trying to get her breath.
“Mother! What were you thinking? That’s the question!” I grabbed the hand bars and pulled myself up the steps. “Are you practicing to be a lifeguard or what?”
“Stop right there, Maisey,” she said, climbing out of the pool behind me.
I grabbed the towel I’d thrown on the table and wrapped it around myself. Mom stood dripping in the shorts and T-shirt that clung to her body. She walked across the patio, opened the door, and called for Dad to bring her a towel and robe. I wanted nothing more than to go to my room, but I was pretty sure I had better not move.
When she came back to the table where I stood frozen in place, tears were streaming down her face. “I thought you were dead, Maisey! You looked dead, floating in the water like that! I thought you had hit your head or something.”
She covered her face with her hands and shook with sobs. I looked at her in amazement, trying to understand why, since I was perfectly fine, she would be crying hysterically.
Dad came out then, bringing a towel and her terry cloth robe, asking what was going on.
Mother took off her shorts and shirt, just letting t
hem splat on the patio, grabbed the towel from Dad, and rubbed down her arms and legs. When she had dried as much as she had patience for, Dad helped her on with her robe, and she collapsed in a chair.
“I thought she was dead, Luke.”
“I was only seeing how long I could hold my breath,” I said.
“I counted to sixty.”
“She was floating facedown in the water!”
Hysterical—she was hysterical.
“Maize,” Dad said, “go get ready for bed. We’ll talk about this later.”
For the first time in a year, Mom came in with Dad to kiss me good-night. Dad had taken over bedtime duties when she had dropped out of life the summer before. When she finally felt better and wanted to take over again, I begged Dad to continue our new tradition. He seemed to like the idea, and I guess Mother thought he deserved to share this time with me, since she had hoarded it for thirteen years. But according to Dad she agreed “reluctantly.” And she did seem sad, but she had been sad for months. Dad tucked me in efficiently, fifteen minutes max, after we decided I was old enough to read to myself and to say prayers on my own. Mother said the transition had been too abrupt. And most nights she’d peek in and blow a kiss or say, “Sleep tight.” I always said, “Good night,” but the bugs never had anything to say.
“I’m sorry,” Mother said, sitting beside me on my bed the night of the “rescue” and fight. “It was a misunderstanding. But, Maisey, no more swimming alone.”
“Mother!”
Dad, standing beside the bed, laid a finger on my lips, forbidding another word. “It’s not safe, Maize. We should never have allowed it. It’s a rule now. Break it and you’ll be grounded from the pool. We love you too much to risk an accident.”
“Do you guys get to swim alone?”
“We guys are grown, Maize,” he said. “But generally speaking, we won’t be swimming alone either.”
They kissed me then and left the room, but not before looking back as though to make sure I was still there, tucked safely into bed. As soon as they shut the door, I got out of bed and stood at these windows, looking at the pool, wishing they hadn’t messed with something I had grown to love. Gliding alone through the water, pretending I didn’t have a care in the world, didn’t make that last year go away, but for a few brief moments, it had helped.
Why did Mother have to come out there and ruin everything?
Kendy
We’re watching Maisey and Marcus swimming laps. It’s a freestyle race really, and since Maisey is behind with no hope of gaining the lead, she grabs Marcus’s feet and holds him in place. A skirmish ensues, and the race has become a water wrestling match. It’s fun to watch them have fun.
Shortly after the kids jumped into the pool, Miller told us he had asked Clay and Rebecca to stop by to pick up some material and to sign papers for a trip the four of them are taking in September. Clayton Laswell is Luke’s uncle, Miller’s younger brother—seven years younger.
Clay and Rebecca must have heard Maisey and Marcus carrying on in the pool, because they have come around to the back of the house and are joining us on the patio.
“I can’t believe we’re crashing the party,” Rebecca says.
“We won’t be long,” Clay adds.
I’m mortified.
Residue—the word residue comes to mind.
“Well, you need to be long enough to have some cobbler and ice cream with us,” Luke says.
“We’re glad you’re here,” I say, moving to make room for Rebecca between Anne and me before going into the kitchen with Luke to get what we’ll need for the dessert Miller has been waiting for.
The six of us sit amicably around the table, eating and talking, and after some coaxing, Maisey and Marcus get out of the pool, put a towel around their shoulders, and eat their dessert sitting shoulder to shoulder on a nearby lounger.
Marcus has never met Clay and Rebecca, though he’s been here five or six times in the last two years. Miller tells him that Clay retired in June, and Marcus seems to be genuinely impressed that Clay served one school district for forty years, over twenty of them as superintendent of schools. When Marcus asks him the secret to such a long tenure, Clay gives his standard answer: “Good teachers.” Marcus says it must be good administrating too, and after a rather thorough question-and-answer session, Marcus congratulates him on his years of service and his retirement.
I can’t help myself. I lean over and hug Marcus.
“What accounts for your impeccable manners in a day marked by so much crudeness and self-absorption?” I ask, more of a compliment than a question.
“That’s easy,” he says, “a drill sergeant disguised as my mother.”
Maisey, disinterested in the lively conversation Marcus has been having with Clay, has pulled up a chair behind and between Anne and Rebecca. She asks Rebecca about her job. There are always stories, remarkable stories.
Rebecca, the most reserved of the Laswell clan, has been the director of a shelter for battered women for the last nineteen or twenty years. Most people would say Clay is dedicated to his job; those who know Rebecca, however, would say she is fiercely committed. Clay always said it was too bad she was salaried, because she’d be rich if she had been paid by the hour. Rebecca, focused and no-nonsense, would respond that they were already rich by anyone’s standards, whereas the people she worked to help were needy in every way.
“So,” Maisey says, “are you retiring too?”
“As a matter of fact,” she says, “Friday is my last day—as director anyway.”
“I can’t imagine that, Rebecca,” I say.
“I know. It was a hard decision, very hard. But I’ll be assisting the new director part-time next year. And after that I may volunteer some. We’ll see,” she says, patting Maisey’s bare leg.
At one time, until she was in middle school and her friends became preeminent, Maisey had been as much Clay and Rebecca’s girl as she was Miller and Anne’s. Before we put the pool in, Maisey spent most summer days in their pool. Clay had the whole month of July off, and it was he who taught Maisey to swim, turning her into an expert at every stroke except the butterfly, which she hated, as did Clay. She wasn’t in the first grade before she jumped from the diving board and swam into his safe arms. And Rebecca, though often at work when we were there, equipped the pool with any kind of apparatus she thought Maisey would enjoy. For years Maisey was the sole Laswell grandchild, and Clay and Rebecca agreed with Luke: Maize was a-maz-ing.
Jackie doesn’t call her Spoiley Girl for nothing. I doubt anyone on this earth has been loved more than my daughter.
Clay and Rebecca take off soon after the cobbler has been eaten and properly appreciated, and not long after that, Miller and Anne get up, stretch, and say they have to be going too. “We’ve stayed up way past our bedtime and still have a drive ahead of us,” Miller says, glancing at his watch.
Luke and I walk his parents to their car, but as soon as Miller turns on the ignition, Luke heads back to the patio to be with the kids. I stay and wave my in-laws out of the long drive and onto the highway until their car becomes only the two tiny red dots of their taillights. As I turn, intending to join the others on the patio, the wide stairs of the front porch seem to call my name, inviting me to stay awhile.
So I plop here and stare at the lawn stretching luxuriously to the highway lying beyond it in the darkness. I almost always sit out back, but this is nice too. I have chosen steps over the chairs that Luke and I sat in last night, waiting for the kids. A chair would be too intentional, like I needed to be alone, needed to step away from trying, even if for just a moment.
I didn’t dream Miller and Anne would stay until eleven. They probably wouldn’t have if Clay and Rebecca hadn’t stopped by.
Clay.
Well, one thing has not changed: I will never stop being thankful to him for introducing me to his handsome nephew. But I have more than Luke to thank him for. Six or seven months before that introduction, I had welled
up with gratitude when he gave me my first teaching job. I actually sent him a thank-you note, although Paula had said that was over the top. To her thinking, my verbal thank-you had been very nearly effusive.
I couldn’t help it. I’ve always loved this area of Indiana, one county over from where Paula grew up, and I couldn’t believe it when Dr. Clayton Laswell offered me a fourth-grade classroom, the desire of my heart. Nor could I believe he hired Paula as well to teach another fourth-grade class in the same elementary school.
Paula and I were impressed with Clay Laswell from the moment we met him. After our interviews with the building principal and the hiring committee, I waited in his secretary’s office while Paula had her interview. When she came out of Dr. Laswell’s office, she waved a folded sheet of paper in front of her like she needed to cool off and said, “Whoa.” Passing her on the way to his office for my interview, I laughed.
But when I walked in and he stepped around his impressive mahogany desk to shake my hand, I understood what she meant. Clayton Laswell was Robert Redford handsome. Well, that’s what he is now. Then he was Brad Pitt handsome. He was the thirty-eight-year-old brand-new superintendent of schools, offered the position, according to the scuttlebutt, because of his excellent record as assistant superintendent and his ability to work amicably with everyone: teachers, staff, students, and parents.
But what impressed us besides his relative youth and his good looks was his enthusiasm and philosophy of leadership. He believed in giving classroom teachers as much autonomy as possible, but at the same time, he didn’t leave them, especially new teachers, to live “lives of quiet desperation.” His teachers could count on guidance and impressive resources. Listening to him talk that day, I felt like jumping up and waving pompons.
Clay Laswell was also a good listener. He seemed to want to know everything about me as a person, as well as a potential teacher. He thought it was quite interesting that I left St. Louis to come to Indiana to college and that I wanted to stay here and teach, preferring the countryside to the glories of the city. He seemed even more interested in my thoughts on teaching, nodding with approval when I explained, among other things, my desire to provide a “positive zone” in my classroom. Some people would have laughed, calling such a thing the idealism of a teacher who has never taught, but Clay Laswell seemed to believe it was an exciting possibility.
Things Worth Remembering Page 5
