The Resurrection of Tess Blessing

by Lesley Kagen

  “A Coke would be great,” she tells him. “With ice.”

  After Henry takes off, she partakes of the only tranquilizer she can swallow—a soap opera. She asks if General Hospital is all right with me, but I suggest my favorite, Guiding Light, and she politely clicks to Channel 6.

  Neither one of us gets much viewing in before the phone trills an inch from her head. She struggles to prop herself up, lands on her drain, and cries out, “Hell-ow!”

  “Mom?” Haddie asks. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, honey, I’m fine.” Tess gives thanks for once that her perceptive daughter is hundreds of miles away. “I was making the bed and kneeled on…,” she leans down and checks to make sure she didn’t do any damage to the drain, “the…ah…TV controller.” She doesn’t see the point in telling Haddie the shoulder surgery story, and she can count on Henry not to share it with her. He’s probably already forgotten about it by now because where is her Coke?

  “How are you? Did you get your Valentine’s card?” she asks Haddie.

  Tess had searched for just the right ones for her family for the better part of an hour. She had to be especially careful when it came to picking out Birdie’s because cards were such a big, big deal to her. They had to be Hallmark ones because her sister is obsessed with Hallmark. It all goes back to those Hall of Fame specials the company aired when the girls were children. They really got to little desperate-for-love Birdie. The sappy melodramas imprinted themselves on her so deeply that later in life she began to use Hallmark’s words of wisdom for guidance, the way Christians do the Bible, Jews the Torah, and Muslims the Koran. The walls of her Boca Raton apartment are papered with inspiring card innards like, “Today Is a Purrrfect Day!” and “Spread Your Wings!” There are also silver-lining ones: “The Tree of Life Has Many Limbs. If One Should Break…Go Out on Another!” Or “Today Was a Cloudy Day, but Tomorrow the Sun Is Sure to Shine!” and “Be a Ball and Bounce Back!”

  When they were still communicating, Tess sent uplifting cards two to three times a week. Sometimes they worked to raise her sister’s low self-esteem, but sometimes they wouldn’t. It’s not always easy to know how a depressed, anxious, obsessive-compulsive, traumatized, anorexic-bulimic, and occasionally delusional woman will respond on any particular day—especially on one as important as Valentine’s. After much running about from section to section in the store, Tess settled on an innocuous, “Love Makes the World Go ’Round” card for her sister, and a small gift—a porcelain wishing well. Before she sent them off, she sealed the package with a kiss, and hoped that Birdie wouldn’t send it back unopened the way she had all the others.

  The card Tess chose for Henry was a knee-slapper, he wouldn’t tolerate anything tender. She almost selected a hearts and flowers one for Will, but if he was making love to Connie that would be so pathetic, so she went with a sad-eyed basset pup instead that suggested in a cheery script, “Have a doggone nice Valentine’s Day!” Haddie received a poignant one with a beautiful drawing of a mother gazing lovingly at the chubby pink baby in her arms. Tess hoped the subliminal message wasn’t too obvious.

  “I loved the card and thanks for the check,” Haddie gushes. “Does Daddy have anything special planned?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he does. You know how much he likes surprises.” Tess wonders if Connie will be on the receiving end of a box of chocolates in a heart-shaped box instead of her. “And how about you and Drew? Is there romance in the air?”

  “Actually…giggle…giggle…I met another guy. Rock.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t catch that.” Her hearing is fine, she just can’t keep up with her daughter’s motormouth. She thinks that Haddie just told her that she’d met a new fella named Rock. Could that be right? Tess’d noticed that on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line parents often christen their offspring after all sorts of stuff. Like guns. There was a Remington in Haddie’s advanced perspective class and a Colt wandering around campus. Nature names were popular too. Lake, Coon, and Gator came up every so often in their conversations. Since it annoys Haddie to hell and back when her mom asks her to repeat herself, Tess warily asks, “Did you say the name of the boy you met is R-o-c-k?”

  Regretting now that she mentioned the new guy to her mother in the first place, she says exasperated, “Y-e-s.”

  Henry bursts in and sets the Coke down on the bedside table like a busy car hop. “Gotta get back downstairs. Big tourney on Ubet.”

  Tess doesn’t want to interrupt Haddie when she’s finally opening up about her love life, so she mouths, thanks, and throws him a kiss that he pretends to dodge.

  “Rock is an amazing illustrator,” Haddie sighs on the phone. “And he’s thinks I’m sexy.”

  That didn’t upset Tess one whit. It was fine with her if her daughter wanted to hop in bed with Rock. She didn’t get all this nonsense people were spouting lately about waiting until after marriage. Getting along in the sack is vital. To feel your separate parts coming together is not only blissful, it’s crucial, but only if those parts fit right. The way hers and Will’s do.

  Don’t you mean…did? Louise reminds.

  What if Haddie waited until after her wedding and discovered on her honeymoon that the man she committed to until death did her part unveiled a penis that resembled a ballpoint pen? What would she do then?

  Use it to write a suicide note.

  Haddie says, “Well, just wanted to say hi and thank you for the card.” There is no mistaking the excitement in her voice. “Gotta get ready. Rock’s taking me to the sweetheart dance tonight at the boathouse.”

  There’s a pause then, a long one. Tess is just about to say, You still there? when Haddie utters in her sweetest voice, “I love you, Mommy.”

  It was the first time in months that she’d said the words Tess had been longing to hear. Tears flood her eyes, but she sucks them back and replies with a grin that she hopes that far away Haddie can hear, “I’m sorry, honey. Could you please repeat that?”

  Shiver Me Timbers

  February 14 is more than a holiday for Birdie. It’s a holy day.

  Before they’d had their most recent riff, Tessie would’ve received four cards from her sister before the big day. Their postman, Art Holcomb, would always attach a small note of gratitude for the contribution to his pension on the super-sized one that he slipped under the welcome mat.

  My friend, who’d fallen asleep in my arms in the chintz chair in the sunroom after one of her middle-of-the-night wanderings, is woken early the next morning by the AOL man informing her, “You’ve got mail.”

  She’s sore from the surgery, but as she squirms into an upright position, her heart is doing a jig. It could be a response to her many e-mails to Birdie. She might’ve finally gotten through to her. It’s Valentine’s Day, after all!

  Tess slowly eases into her desk chair and clicks on the mail icon. When an offer for carpet cleaning pops up instead of a note from her sister, her disappointed sigh ruffles the papers stacked next to the computer. The letdown is awful, but never fear, she won’t allow it to deter her on her quest to reignite their relationship. She says aloud as she types:

  “Dear Birdie,

  HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!!!

  Did you get your present? Wishing you did;)

  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo”

  Above her head, Henry rolls out of bed and heads to the bathroom to begin his morning prep. A half hour later, Tess can hear his clodhoppers on the staircase. She calls out to him, “Happy V-day, honey. I’m in the sunroom.”

  He saunters in hoodie-free and handsome as all get out in jeans and a crisp white button-down shirt. Fresh out of the shower, he smells like the entire Ralph Lauren body care line. “How’s your shoulder?” he asks.

  That’s a surprise. Tess figured he wouldn’t remember the surgery this morning, and she’s a little disappointed that he did. If she’s going to keep the cancer from him, she’s counting on his obliviousness. “Not too bad,” she tells him. “Should be t
ossing the Frisbee around in no time.”

  Henry returns her smile with one that she thinks might be responsible for global warming, pulls an envelope out from behind his back, and says, “Got you a card.”

  “Really?” He usually doesn’t go in for this sort of thing. She opens the envelope to find it’s the same funny one she’d gotten him. “Thanks, baby,” she says with a laugh. “Yours is on the kitchen table, and there’s something yummy in the bread box.” She’d asked Will to stop at Ye Olde Bakery yesterday and pick up Henry’s favorite streusel coffee cake after he dropped her off at the hospital. “Leave a piece for Daddy, and don’t forget to remind your friends to be here before seven tonight.”

  Considering that this may be her last Valentine’s Day—she may have made it through the surgery, but that was just the opening gambit—she agreed to pull out all the stops and rent a limo for the Sadie Hawkins dance. This year’s theme was PIRATES! Henry and his girlfriend, Kat, and three of their close friends and dates, would be whisked away this evening to partake in music and swashbuckling debauchery in the high-school gym. Knowing that she might be feeling some lingering effects from the anesthesia, Tess arranged for the stretch to pick them up at the Blessings’, which unfortunately means that she’ll be expected to join the other mommies in a picture-taking frenzy before they take off. She can see it all now. In the excitement, her drain pops out from beneath her sweatshirt and someone says, Holy cow. What’s that? If not that scenario, something equally unpredictable and distressing could occur.

  My friend isn’t the only woman in Ruby Falls going through the change of life. Used to be, most of the ladies’ problems were fairly run-of-the-mill. Like finding just the right outfit for the Fourth of July dance at Ruby Falls Country Club, or who would be the next PTA president, but the stakes were raised as their estrogen decreased. Just last week, Tess heard that Becky Winner and Nancy Lindhjem engaged in a hair-pulling scuffle in the high-school traffic circle after Becky accused Nancy of trying to skip ahead in the pick-up line. And at Henry’s basketball games nasty stuff flew out of their menopausal mommy mouths that they’d once kept sealed tighter than their Tupperware.

  After Henry takes off for school, Tess drags herself upstairs to find Will singing Elvis’s, Can’t Help Falling in Love in the shower. If she could rewind time back a few months, before he began withholding all his best parts, or even to before yesterday when part of her breast had been cut off, she would’ve stepped in and joined him in a soapy free-for-all. She misses that good clean fun.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day,” she says with not much enthusiasm.

  Will draws a heart in the steam on the shower door and replies, “Got a special surprise for you! Should be here soon!”

  She says “Oh. Thanks,” in a slightly incredulous way. He’s been so unresponsive that she thought Cupid would fly past their house this year and straight over to Connie’s. Something special? She feels guilty now for not getting him more than the Bassett hound card and a pen-and-pencil set. She should pick him up a sleeve of golf balls, or a furry cover for the Chevy’s rear view mirror when she’s out doing errands, tell him later that she’d forgotten to give it to him this morning. Then again, with the way things had been going lately, the “special surprise” might be a new vacuum cleaner.

  Tess tells him, “I’m gonna wash up in the kids’ bathroom.”

  She’d been instructed to keep her chest bandage dry so a sponge bath is the best she can do. She blots herself off with a blue towel Henry had left on the floor, fastens the drain onto the bottom of a ratty old Ruby Falls High sweatshirt with a safety pin, the way Jerry had shown her in his demonstration, then shimmies up her cotton undies and stretchy-waisted pants.

  She’s halfway down the stairs when the phone rings. She figures it must be one of the detail-oriented mothers reconfirming the drop-off time for tonight’s Sadie Hawkins dance. She snags it with her left hand on her way into the kitchen. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mom!”

  “Thank you, sweetie! You too!” It was one of those great connections. Her daughter sounded like she was in the next room, and if Garbo would quit barking, Tess could hear her even better. She turns toward the mud room to scold her dog, and there…there in the entryway is…“Haddie!?”

  Will hadn’t agreed with her when she insisted that it was important to keep the cancer to themselves, so Tess’s first panicked thought is that he had broken his reluctant promise to do so. Had he called her home to share the burden? She quickly reads Haddie’s face. She looks happy, and doesn’t sound like she’s coming to rescue her dying mother as she runs toward her shouting, “Surprise!”

  Tess hadn’t laid eyes on her gaunt girl for six weeks. Her first impulse is to crush her to her chest, but if she does, she’d surely feel the bulky drain that’s beneath the sweatshirt. So she sets her arms around her daughter, not in the way she normally would—like she was drowning and Haddie was a life jacket—but in the awkward way women do to prevent their breasts from rubbing against another’s.

  “Oh, honey,” Tess says with a manufactured sniffle as she steps back. “I don’t want to get too close. I have a little…cough…cough…virus.”

  Will saves her from further explanation when he comes bounding down the stairs, proud as hell of perpetrating the surprise. “Gotcha!” he says to Tess with one of his trademark winks. “Welcome home, baby!” He gives Haddie a bear hug, then gets to work doing what he does to show how much he loves his girls.

  Mother and daughter get cozy at the kitchen table while Chef Will prepares the house specialty. Haddie had brought home her portfolio and was eager to show what she’d been up to. The Savannah School of Art and Design was doing a wonderful job expanding her vision. Her primary focus had formerly been nature photography, but she’d enrolled in a portraiture class this semester. Tess was moved by what she saw as she leafed through the book, and told her so. “I think you mighta found your true calling.” Haddie had shot a series of pictures of grizzled black men lounging out front of a shabby café smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and playing dominoes on a card table. More than just the decentness in the men’s eyes, she had captured their longing for dreams beyond their reach.

  “Voilà,” Will says as he sets the plates of eggs Benedict down in front of them.

  Tess, who is almost swooning from happiness, sedation hangover, and the grind of appearing normal, is growing more doubtful by the minute about her ability to keep the surgery a secret from Haddie. She’s an artist, observant, so as much as she loves her, she hopes her daughter doesn’t intend to stay long. But surely, Tess thinks as she slips a bite of eggs into her mouth, she’s a good enough performer that she can keep her secret hidden during a short visit.

  “How long are you home for, hon?” she asks Haddie like she wishes it could be forever.”

  With a grin that shows off the dimple that sits high on her right cheek, she says, “I moved some things around! You’ve got me for the whole weekend!”

  The high-school kids show up later that night looking like they’d just arrived from Penzance. The boys are jabbing each other in the ribs, battling with plastic cutlasses, and “Yo, ho, hoing” it up. Timmy Wescoe, who has yet to go through a growth spurt, is wearing tall, black boots with heels. Billy Brown had a stuffed parrot sewn into the shoulder of a red waistcoat that looked homemade. Always hungry, Steve Mertz, is looting a sack of chocolate doubloons that is swinging from Henry’s gray hook. Their wenches, donned in hoop earrings and shoulder-baring peasant blouses with swishy long skirts, are admiring their dates’ swashbuckling moves.

  Tess’s fear of one of the picture-taking moms discovering her condition is neutralized when photographer Haddie tells her to stand back and steps into the fray. She snaps off shots of the motley crew first in the den, and then in the limousine with the Jolly Roger flag affixed to its antenna. Her daughter would also be attending the pirate soiree. Tess waved as the car pulled away and was grateful for the time apart. She was worn to the nub from keeping h
er guard up, and it did her heart good to know that her girl, who had inherited her mother’s love of dance, would be showing the high-school kids how it’s done.

  When Haddie came home a few hours later, she gave Tess a thumbnail description of the evening. “Great decorations. The music was okay, some garage band. The best parts were when one of the chaperones bitch-slapped another, and the walk-the-plank game got even better after Henry spiked the grog.”

  The Blessings are enjoying a celebratory lunch on Saturday afternoon after Henry’s basketball game at the high school. The diner staff fawns over former waitress, Haddie, and congratulates Henry and the Ruby Falls Buccaneers on their win at the buzzer. Filmmaker wanna-be waiter, Cal, pops by for another brief discussion about one of his and her son’s favorite movies, The Silence of the Lambs. Tess is enjoying herself until Connie Lushman lands at their table. She places her hand on Will’s shoulder, whispers something in his ear, and he smiles and excuses himself.

  When Henry challenges Haddie to a game of pinball, Tess takes the opportunity to step into the kitchen to say “Hola,” to Juan and the other señors. They’d be hurt if she didn’t tell them how delicious her burger was. Waiters and waitresses are rushing to and fro delivering and picking up orders, but dishwasher Otto is standing still and straight-backed at the sink wearing full battle gear. The picture of his Russian mail-order bride above the faucet has been defaced. Elena has a mustache covering her worn-away-with-kisses lips, a laddered scar across her right cheek, and devil horns sprouting from her forehead. She’d emptied their savings account on the way to the airport to catch a flight back to Minsk ten days ago. Otto is heartbroken, pissed off, and has been more paranoid than usual. Aluminum foil is bunched around his shower cap and he’s wearing his noise-reducing earphones. He’s also added another something new to his protective ensemble that Tess hasn’t seen before. A kilt? Made out of…what are those things? Roof shingles?