Keepsake

by Kristina Riggle

  She was picking out colleges and was attracted to DePaul University in Chicago. She had an adorable crush on President Kennedy.

  One entry described another fight with her father: a character in her diary so far removed from the Grandpa Van Linden we knew I could scarcely imagine they were the same person. He accused her of a sassy mouth again when she made a comment sympathetic to civil rights protesters and threatened her with having to stay home from college, where she might be subject to “dangerous and radical influences.” As the fight escalated, he threatened to make her stay home from the prom, too, saying perhaps her “morality was becoming dangerously loose” based on her refusal to respect the commandment to honor her father.

  Despite her earlier ambivalence about the prom, teenage Frannie, my mother, in her all her glorious teen stubbornness, was all the more determined to go.

  The next page’s entry was brief. Just three small words, centered halfway down the page, in scrawled blue ballpoint pen.

  Lord help me.

  Chapter 41

  I walked the bike up the steep hill, my legs trembling with exertion, a trickle of sweat down my back and between my breasts.

  It seemed exposed here, too new and raw. The sun was far too bright. I dropped the bike in the grass just off the path. In the distance a mower roared, but it was far from me at the moment.

  I sat down on grass warmed by the sun and stroked the smooth granite with my fingertips.

  FRANCES EVELYN GRANGER

  BELOVED MOTHER, DAUGHTER, AND SISTER

  1944–1996

  Mary and I had argued about the inclusion of “wife.” She’d wanted to say “wife,” and I balked. Mom was no longer anyone’s wife and I couldn’t engrave a lie into permanence. We would feel the lie every time we visited, I told her. In the end, we left it up to Dad, who of course voted for accuracy and truth though I could tell it pained him. At the time I thought, Good, I hope it hurts. It should hurt to break your vows and leave your wife.

  But then, more pain is the last thing any of us needed.

  “Mom,” I said. I could find no more words. I trusted instead she could feel me. My frustration, pain, confusion.

  I would jump in front of a moving train for my sons. Throw myself in front of a mugger’s gun. Leap into a rushing river.

  Yet when challenged to throw away old things for their sake, I failed.

  They should have known better, though. My dad especially, with his broken nose, should have realized you can’t just reach into a hoarder’s belongings and start ripping items away.

  They cared so much about cleaning that damn room, but no one stopped to take care of me.

  I put my face in my hands and cried through my fingers as I remembered the times I was cared for. Mom giving me ginger ale when I was sick and letting me watch cartoons all day. Bringing me a Ken doll to go with my Barbie, just to cheer me up.

  Dad picking me up and brushing gravel off my scraped knee after a bike spill.

  Ron holding my hand while crying huge, fat gobs of tears as I pushed out Jack. Tears such that I’d never seen, before or since. Even that time he crushed this thumb with a hammer.

  “Why doesn’t anyone care anymore?” I asked, of Mom, of God, of the air. “Why am I even here?”

  If I’d stayed at home and taken care of her, maybe I could have saved her, cured her, saved myself, ultimately. Or died in the fire with her. But at least she wouldn’t have been alone. I wouldn’t be alone now.

  I tried to imagine—as I had many times in the past standing here at her grave—my mother cradling my baby-never-born, the two of them keeping each other company in heaven. This never brought me the peace I hoped.

  I curled up on my side, toying with a blade of grass, letting my eyes go unfocused past rows and rows of granite stones marking the end of everything.

  Mary came around to my field of vision and sat down cross-legged in front of me, where I was still curled up on my side. I had a flash-memory of playing duck-duck-goose with her at some birthday party or something.

  From my sideways view, all I could see was her old dirty jeans and running shoes.

  “Whose bike is that?” she asked.

  “I’ll turn it into the police and say I found it.”

  “I’d better handle that. Someone may have seen you take it.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Everyone’s worried about you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The lawn mower had stopped, I noticed now. Birds tweeting, distant traffic.

  “You should sit up, Trish.”

  “No.”

  “Looks like there’s a funeral coming soon.”

  At this I rose to my elbow and followed Mary’s stare. There was indeed a canopy over a grave several yards away. That meant soon a procession of cars with little orange flags would be pulling in. I dragged myself up to sitting. It would seem rather odd and disrespectful to look like I was taking a nap.

  “I’m not going to apologize for getting mad,” I said. “You lied.”

  “I know I did. I’m not going to apologize for that, either.”

  “It was wrong.”

  “I had to do it.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  She imitated her eight-year-old self and stuck out her tongue, prying a chuckle out of me.

  “Stop being funny. I’m having a nervous breakdown and I’m not supposed to laugh.”

  “Oh, it’s not in the handbook?”

  “Ask Dr. Seth, secret shrink. He would know.”

  “That’s not why you’re really mad anyway. I know it’s not.”

  “It sure as hell didn’t help.”

  I picked at more blades of grass. It was so green already, so lush. How was that possible? Just a week ago everything was brown and mud.

  “Dad still doesn’t get it,” I said. “Why doesn’t he?”

  Mary shrugged. “I’d better text the boys that you’re OK.”

  “Go ahead, I guess.”

  Her thumbs working the phone, she asked, “You are OK, right?”

  “No.”

  She slid the phone shut, looked at me again, inspecting. “You weren’t hit by a bus or anything.”

  “I forgot, you’ve gone all literal on me. Yes, I’m physically intact. Well, my feet hurt from pedaling in socks.”

  “Now what?” Mary said, sighing.

  “You know? You haven’t even looked at Mom’s grave.”

  She flinched, but still didn’t look.

  I asked, “Have you ever visited?”

  She shook her head.

  Of course not. After all, she abandoned her in life, too. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “How often do you visit?” she asked, looking past me.

  I shrugged. “Once a month to once a week, depending on weather, how I’m feeling.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Help what?”

  “Anything.”

  She didn’t seem to be challenging me. She was simply asking. Mary was one of those people who could often say, with complete honesty, “I was just asking,” because she actually did not have an agenda. She wasn’t usually conniving enough. Until she dragged Seth out here pretending he was just any old friend. It’s always the quiet ones.

  “I don’t know. I just know that I need to.”

  “And I don’t. Need to, that is. I don’t know why. I know it seems awful to you. But that’s the truth of it.” Mary finally risked a sidelong glance at the gravestone, then pointed at it. “She’s not here. Not to me.”

  Mary then placed Mother’s diary on the grass between us. She placed it there with both hands, as gently as if putting down a newborn baby.

  “I’m sorry that I read it without you,” Mary said. “I read some because I didn’t know what else to do; didn’t
know if you were even coming back.”

  “And?”

  “There’s an entry,” Mary said, tapping the cover. “There’s a long entry, and the one just prior was only three words long. It said, ‘Lord help me.’ I didn’t want to read more without you.”

  I reached for the diary and saw a flash of my teenage mother—looking something like me—scrawling page after page with tears plopping onto the paper. I riffled through our family history for a disaster that would have occurred in 1961, realizing quickly I knew of no such tragedy. Maybe no one else did either.

  I started to pick it up and stopped, seized by a thought: “Wait, how did you know I was here? And are the boys going to come charging in here now?”

  Mary shook her head. “I only texted you were fine and we’d be home soon, not where we were. I thought you’d need some time.” She glanced away, at the canopy for the distant grave. “As for me, I just guessed. Even Clueless Mary has a hunch sometimes.”

  “Maybe Mother nudged you.”

  Mary grimaced. “Don’t start that talk. It weirds me out.”

  I started to open the diary, and Mary interrupted. “We’re going to read it now? Here?”

  I looked at Mother’s grave and nodded. “Yes. Yes, we should.”

  After a moment—maybe she considered arguing—Mary scooted around next to me, and we began to read silently.

  July 14, 1961

  I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  I’m a tramp and I’m an idiot, with loose morals just as Father said.

  That stupid, cursed prom. Wally was a very good dancer, as it turned out. He had nice breath. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and looked nearly dashing, except for this unfortunate cowlick. He fumbled the corsage as he pinned it to my dress, and in his crooked smile and his adorable fumbling I finally felt that rush of feeling the girls have been talking about. Giggly and giddy, like when you’re on the swings as a kid and you reach the very top and are suspended for half a heartbeat before you swoop back down.

  I felt it again when his arms were around me at the dance, for “It’s Now or Never,” which I will never be able to listen to again now.

  Is that why I did it? That feeling?

  The trouble started after we all got bored at the dance, and Larry said he knew a spot on the beach that was secluded, where we could park our cars and have a bonfire and no one would bother us. And then Rich said he’d gotten some wine and brandy from his older brother. Even with the fire it was cold out on the beach and Wally put his coat around my shoulders, which was very sweet. I had a paper cup and they all kept refilling it.

  Somewhere in me there was this little voice, sounding like my sister, Margaret, actually, that scolded me. You shouldn’t be doing this. That it was a bad idea to be on this secluded beach with this boy I didn’t know very well, while drinking, too. And I knew my father would be so angry if he knew I was behaving this way. But then Wally put his arm around me and I laughed with all this warmth in my chest from the drink and I had my first of several disastrous and wicked thoughts: I don’t care what Father thinks. To hell with him anyway.

  People started pairing off. I didn’t even notice until later we’d been left entirely alone, everyone else in their own little pockets of sand dune, or up at the cars. I looked up at the stars and they were so stunning and clear, and also spinning in this way that was sickening and delirious and wonderful.

  He leaned in and kissed me, hard.

  Here is where I should have pushed back. I should have pushed him back and told him to take me home, like Betsy did and everyone made fun of her the next day, but Betsy isn’t in trouble, is she?

  I didn’t do that, though. I kissed him back. I kissed him hard, and I leaned against him and pressed my bosom into him and when he nudged me back on the sand—or did I lean back myself? I really can’t remember, but it hardly matters now—I let myself go.

  Then he was on top of me. It felt thrilling, and electric, and dizzy. I felt like the sand dune was whirring us off into space. By the time I realized he’d unclipped my stockings, he was kissing me so hard right then I could barely breathe. Then my panties were down around my knees, and suddenly he rolled back away and everything was wet and sore.

  He said the weirdest thing. He said, “I didn’t mean to come inside, you’re just so gorgeous.” And I thought, come inside where? I really thought that. And then I got scared and turned to one side and threw up.

  I kept telling myself for weeks that we hadn’t done it. These were the weeks I didn’t write, I couldn’t bear to admit even to myself in these pages what might be true. I wasn’t even naked, and didn’t you have to be naked to do it? That’s how stupid I used to be.

  Now I know you don’t have to be naked. Because my period is gone and my breasts are sore and I’m tired and sick all the time and my skirts aren’t fitting. I have to admit I’m a tramp with loose morals just like Daddy said.

  The worst part is that he won’t admit it. I got Wally to walk me home one day after school and I told him, and he got this look on his face, this look like I was garbage, and he said not to blame him because he didn’t do it. I started to cry on the street and insisted that yes, he did so, and he knew it, and he said, “All I ever did was kiss you. It must have been someone else” and he called me a whore. He’s scared too, and he’s lying, only I can’t lie my way out of my trouble like he can.

  As soon as everyone finds out, he’ll probably tell them the same story too, and I won’t have any way to contradict him.

  I don’t know what to do. I have to tell my parents and I don’t know how. I’ve ruined myself, I’ve ruined our family. I don’t deserve to live, I really don’t, but the only reason I haven’t tried to kill myself is because I’m afraid to and also because it’s not the baby’s fault.

  I’ll pray. That’s the only think I can think of to do.

  August 1, 1961

  My father was, as I predicted, livid. He was in a rage, screaming at me for being so careless and sinful and that he hadn’t raised a whore. The same word that Wally used. I wanted to say that all the other girls had gone off with boys that night, too; they were just lucky enough not to get in trouble. That I didn’t know it could happen so quickly, with my clothes still on. That no one told me anything about it, actually, except not to do it.

  But I knew there was no point. My mother was kind to me, but only after Father left the house to go drive around the neighborhood. She fed me saltines and ginger ale and had me lie down with a cool cloth on my forehead because she could see I was trembling. My sister wouldn’t even look at me, but that was no surprise.

  I told Mother I wished I could undo it, and she told me there’s a way I can make it all better. I was so relieved to hear her say that I didn’t even think to ask what it was before I said yes, please, anything. She told me about these homes for girls who get in trouble, where you go off and stay there and have the baby, and they find a barren couple who wants a child desperately and then you let it be adopted. Then you come home and pick up your life where you left off, and the barren couple gets to experience the joy of parenthood they so desperately want. She said then I could start a family the right way, on my own time, later. She said it’s a good Christian place, where kind people know how to help girls in trouble.

  I told her I didn’t want to be away, and she said it was only for a little while and that they’d visit. I told her I’d think about it, and then she put her hand on my arm and said, “Sweetheart, there’s nothing to think about. It’s what we’re going to have to do.”

  And so I have no choice. I flip between grateful and terrified. Grateful that there’s a way to go back in time, in a way, and that a nice married couple will get to be happy because of my mistake. But I’m terrified to be away from home, alone when I have this baby, and . . . I know this is a wicked, selfish thought, but this is my baby, and what if I wanted to keep it? I always enjoy
ed the little ones at the migrant camp. Couldn’t I take good care of my own baby? Like Inez with her baby sister?

  But I have to stop thinking like that. Because if I do, I will make myself crazy. It’s not up to me anymore, and I don’t deserve a choice because of the ruin I’ve brought on myself. I know I didn’t mean to do it, but I was the one who got drunk and lay down in the sand with him.

  Frances

  August 13, 1961

  I’m undeniably showing now. I’m not allowed to leave the house unless I duck down in the backseat until we’re out of the neighborhood. That’s humiliating, so I don’t leave. It’s easier. It seems like the town is buying the “sick” story my parents have been telling, or at least pretending to, which is sort of a relief because I was afraid Wally would run around calling me a whore. Maybe this way I’ll have a life to go back to.

  Though I can’t imagine what that life will look like now. Even if—when, I guess—I give up this baby, I’m not going to college. The home costs money, and my father says he’s spending my college money on that, and whatever else is left is going into Margaret’s education. Margaret doesn’t give a damn about school; she just wants a husband. But Father thinks she’ll get a better one at a better school, so off she goes. And what can I say? I did this to myself.

  I can save up my own money, though. After all this is over I’ll move out, get a job waiting tables or something, and start saving. I can go to nursing school myself and show Father, and Mother, and Margaret that I don’t need them anymore. And then I’ll date, but I’ll never drink again, and never let one near me until I get married. Maybe I’ll move far, far away after all this. I’ll go to California, or New York. Somewhere no one ever knew that I was “sick.”

  I’m so bored. I wish I had more books. I’ve got nothing to do here but get bigger and think. I help with light chores like folding laundry, but otherwise I stay in my room watching the light rotate along the walls with the sun until I want to start ripping down the wallpaper.

  October 22, 1961

  A long gap in writing here. But I’ve got nothing of interest to report, and after I write, I get so morose and sad because I’m thinking about my situation. We leave for the home soon and I’m so scared and lonely. I’m bringing some yarn to knit some sweaters. I’m also going to knit a baby hat. I would like the baby to have something from me.