The Lost Mother

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “And Thomas, you can stay too if you’d like. That way Margaret’ll have a familiar face here when she wakes up,” Mrs. Farley offered.

  He didn’t want to. He wanted to be with his father, who just stood there like a drained and broken man, grease-streaked arms hanging at his sides. But he also didn’t want to have to explain how it had all come to be this way because of him. “Okay,” he said with a quick step into the room.

  “No! He comes with me. She can sleep here. Until I come back. In the morning at eight.”

  It was a long, silent ride back. Thomas was relieved. His father had had enough bad things happen for one day. He didn’t need to hear how his son had been picked up as a common thief and been hauled into jail by the sheriff, though he’d know soon enough. News traveled fast, especially bad news.

  “Listen to me now,” his father said, pulling up to the tent. He turned off the lights, but not the engine. “Fred Farley might have my house and land, but he’s not taking my kids.”

  “No, I know!”

  “Well it didn’t sound like it back there. Seemed to me you were ready to move right in.”

  “No, I wasn’t! I swear!”

  His father was silent a moment. “I’m doing my best, Tom, but I don’t know, maybe that’s not good enough. Maybe one of these days I’ll just run down dead like the truck today.”

  “No! You won’t! It’s just bad times. Like you said.”

  “Some people’s bad times just seem to get worse and worser, no matter what. And that’s what we gotta be ready, prepared for.”

  “For what?”

  “For what to do. If that comes.” Here came a longer silence, strained with the rasp of his hard breathing. “What to do with you and Margaret.”

  “We’re doing fine. Just fine, Daddy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah! I never had so much fun as this. This summer, living in the tent, going fishing every day, just going in the woods all the time. Margaret and me, we’re probably the luckiest kids in the whole world!”

  His father patted his knee. “You’re a good boy, Tom. A real good son.”

  Thomas’s eyes burned with tears. He wasn’t a good boy, good son, good brother, good anything. If he had been his mother never would have left.

  2

  School would start soon. Thomas wasn’t sure when exactly, but he could feel it coming. The dry stubble of old Bibeau’s hayfields puffed up yellow dust underfoot. In the briefer sunlight the cidery rot of fallen apples drew crows from miles around. Some sugar maples were already tarnished with red. Old Bibeau predicted a hard, early winter; he knew by the squirrels’ frenzied nut gathering, and the deer edging nearer the tree line, and by Donald’s limp. The ancient setter’s arthritis was worse than ever. This morning when Thomas and Margaret came to pick up berrying pails, Donald limped off the porch with a pitiful yelp, dragging his hind legs toward them.

  “He’s been missing you.” Hands on her hips, Gladys scowled down from the front steps. “You haven’t come by all week. I made your favorite meat pies. Extra even for your dad, but then you didn’t come.”

  Thomas apologized and left it at that. She knew well as he did why they hadn’t been back. Their last supper here old Bibeau had said something bad about their mother. Thomas didn’t know exactly what though, because he’d been on the porch having one of Gladys’s homemade root beers and playing with Donald. While Margaret helped Gladys wash the dishes, the old man and Henry had a drink at the kitchen table. Usually Henry preferred not to drink in front of his children, but Thomas could always tell when he had by the fullness that warmed his father’s voice, not to mention how much more he seemed to talk.

  Anyway, the next thing Thomas knew his father stormed onto the porch with Margaret demanding he get into the truck; they were leaving. Gladys ran out with her faded blue apron front stained wet, trying to explain that her father hadn’t meant what he’d said about Irene. It was just his way; he was so old-fashioned, especially when it came to women. “Henry! Please don’t leave,” she called, hurrying alongside the truck. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Henry muttered, though Thomas doubted she could have heard over the truck’s noise.

  “Don’t forget about the meat pies,” she hollered as they turned onto the road.

  So, this was their first time back. Asking how their father was, Gladys gave them the big galvanized buckets she’d offered for blackberrying. Good, Thomas answered. What she really wanted to know was if he was still mad.

  “You got any more meat pies?” Margaret asked from her squat next to Donald, whose wagging tail whisked up a cloud of dust. She had left her kitten back at the tent in an overturned peach basket that Thomas had weighted down with rocks.

  “No, but I got egg salad and two big fat drumsticks from last night if you want.”

  “Margaret!” Thomas warned as she ran onto the porch.

  She looked back. “Come on, Tom. Please! You want to as much as me, you know you do.”

  He had to admit he’d envisioned just this scenario on their way here. But now at the moment of testing, he couldn’t. “We can’t,” he said simply. Weakly.

  Pressing her face to the screen, Margaret peered inside, looking for the old man. “He’s not even in there,” she hissed back.

  Thomas wouldn’t go in, so she had no choice but thump her bitter way down the steps to wait with him, muttering all the while what a stupid brother he was, how he didn’t know anything and she didn’t see why she had to go without. All he was doing was taking it out on her because of what the sheriff had told their father about him trying to steal that knife. His father had just found out the day before yesterday, when he ran into the sheriff at the barbershop. By the time he got home, he was so enraged he demanded Thomas’s rusted two-blade Palomino, then threw it hard as he could into the pond. His father yanked off his belt and stood there whipping his own palm to welts while he told him how not having money wasn’t any kind of license to steal. Every time Thomas tried to say he hadn’t stolen the jackknife his father got madder and yelled at him to shut up! A liar and a thief didn’t deserve to speak, much less make excuses. The warning belt whistled through the air while his father grew madder and madder. If Thomas had stayed home that day like he was supposed to, his sister never would have gotten stung. And he wouldn’t be feeling so beholden to Mrs. Farley, who had paid the doctor bill, but Henry Talcott wasn’t about to owe the Farleys for anything. Nossir!

  His father pointed to the tree stump, and Thomas leaned over.

  “That’s what you get for stealing!” His father whacked Thomas’s bottom ten times with his hand, hard. “Next time you get the strap,” he wheezed as he hurried away, slipping the unused belt through his pant loops.

  When his father was safely inside the tent, Thomas shouted as loud as he could, “There won’t be no next time, because there wasn’t a last time. I paid a dime for that jackknife and it was rusted …” He teetered at the edge of the woods bellowing out the story, every bit of the injustice, fully expecting his father to come charging out from the tent, but he didn’t. Outrage spent, Thomas ran crying into the woods, where he stayed until Margaret finally came looking for him.

  His father lay on his cot with his arms over his face, pretending to be asleep. Thomas knew he wasn’t, knew he didn’t know what else to do.

  Besides, Margaret was reminding him now, it was their father who had sworn never to step foot inside the old man’s house again. He hadn’t said they couldn’t. Thomas told Margaret to shut up and she told him to, back.

  “You can come eat if you want.” Gladys offered the plate through the doorway.

  “We better stay out here,” Thomas said, so she set the plate and forks on the oilcloth-covered plant table.

  “He’s afraid of getting in more trouble,” Margaret said, shrugging when he glared at her. Three big bites of the drumstick and she still wasn’t chewing.

  “Well, that’s what happens when men drink,”
Gladys said. “Things get said that shouldn’t.”

  Thomas busied himself with the egg salad. Because Gladys had known his father for so long, she figured she could say whatever she wanted. She’d better not be criticizing him now, he thought, or else he’d have to grab his sister and take off. Without finishing this delicious food.

  “And they snore a lot too,” Margaret said, cheeks bulging with chicken.

  “Swallow!” he said, but she took another bite to spite him.

  Gladys seemed amused. “I hope you don’t ever drink, Thomas.” She poured him a glass of milk.

  “Well, not until I grow up.”

  “No, not even then you shouldn’t.”

  He didn’t say anything. To agree would seem a betrayal of his father, and right then Gladys was too adamant to contradict. As usual, Margaret couldn’t stand the silence. Suddenly she was asking Gladys what old Bibeau had meant by saying her mother was a tramp. Her mother wasn’t a hobo. She didn’t ride boxcars or beg for food or work.

  Gladys’s high-boned face reddened. “Of course she doesn’t. Your mother’s got herself a good job down in Massachusetts.”

  As with much of childhood’s enlightenment, right then and there Thomas realized he knew things he did not yet understand. And what did Margaret know? Was this the first time she had innocently repeated something overheard? Or had she already asked her father this very question and been scolded for it? Funny she hadn’t said anything to him, he thought. Margaret was not a secret keeper.

  Later that day, as they trudged back to the tent, arms and legs crosshatched with scratches from thorns, their purple-stained hands cramped from carrying pails filled with fat, warm blackberries, Margaret asked the same question he’d been pondering a lot lately. “How come Mommy never writes us a letter?”

  “She did. Daddy read it to us.”

  “Just parts though. Why can’t we read it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That time I asked he got mad. He got so mad he swore. Remember?” She sounded as hurt as she’d been then. She wasn’t used to his father’s anger the way he was.

  “All he said was ‘damn.’ That’s not so bad, Margaret. There’s a lot worse words he could’ve said.”

  “Why? I didn’t do anything.”

  “I know. But he feels bad. And he doesn’t want you to feel bad.”

  “Well I do.” She burst into tears. “I don’t know why she had to leave like that.”

  “She’ll be back, you know she will. As soon as she gets enough money saved. It’s like Daddy said, she’s doing it for us.”

  “Well, I don’t care about money. I hate money. And when I have little kids, I’ll never leave them alone. And if I go away even for one day I’ll write them letters and I’ll tell them how much I love them and the exact minute I’m coming back!”

  He would always remember his sister’s words, both for their pain and the simple eloquence of their truth. And as well for the promised woman his sister was already determined to be.

  The next day he and Margaret were walking to town. They hadn’t gone a half mile before she complained how heavy her pail was. The thin metal handle cut into her hand so he ended up carrying both pails. Door to door they went, street after street, peddling their berries. After an hour and no sales Margaret begged to quit. Instead, he dropped the price to two cents a bowl. At the very next house a lady in pin curls wanted to buy some. She came back out with a big mixing bowl, which she filled.

  “That’s not fair,” Thomas finally said, having mustered his courage.

  “You said a bowl.”

  “But I meant a small one.”

  “Then you should’ve said.” She had him there. And most of the berries too.

  “All right, then give us more money!” Margaret demanded. “You took a whole pail!”

  “Don’t be so fresh, you little brat!” The woman slammed the door.

  Margaret reached into the pail for a handful of the plump berries and flung it at the house. A plop of fleshy seeds and purplish juice ran down the white clapboards.

  “You shouldn’t’ve done that!”

  “She asked for it,” Margaret cried, darting past him.

  They skipped the rest of the houses on that street. Even at a penny a bowl now, sales were few. With rounded hands Thomas demonstrated the size bowl he meant. An old woman invited them in for lemonade. Her house reeked of cat pee and camphor, but Thomas was too thirsty to mind. Margaret kept sniffing. He was sure she’d say something. The old woman said she’d love to buy some berries, but the seeds caught in her teeth and were a devil to get out. She suggested they try at the Metropole, the big hotel downtown. Go around back, she advised. To the red door. The cook was always looking for fresh berries. She said, tell him his Aunt Shirl said they were fresh-picked.

  Margaret chattered the whole way, which was mostly downhill. The closer they got to Main Street the more excited she grew. She loved seeing the cars whiz by, all the colorful signs, the store mannequins in pretty dresses and fancy hats. His mother used to act just like this when they came into town: bright-eyed, smiling, chattering in the same breathless voice. The Metropole cook bought all the blackberries. Fifty cents. He said he’d buy more if they brought them to him. It was the most money Thomas had ever earned. He let Margaret buy three cents’ worth of rock candy, then bristled when she wouldn’t give him any. She asked why he hadn’t bought himself any. He was saving for new school pants, he said, but the truth was he wanted to buy a bus ticket. The idea had just come to him when they walked by the depot. Maybe their mother couldn’t get a day off from her job to come visit them, but they could take the bus down to see her. If he could earn enough money. He knew better than say anything to his sister.

  The next day he made Margaret go blackberrying first thing in the morning. She was tired from the previous two days and reluctant to leave her kitten penned under the peach basket again. When he said they might earn enough to buy her new shoes, she finally gave in. Again, they filled two buckets. This time they went directly to the hotel, where the cook gave them seventy-five cents. Thomas was disappointed. He’d been sure they’d get a dollar, but still, he now had one dollar and twenty-two cents toward a ticket. He told Margaret to wait out here on the bench while he went inside the depot. Only if he’d tell her why, she said. He said he had to use the bathroom. She did too. They only had a men’s room, he said.

  The stooped-over clerk said a round-trip ticket to Collerton, Massachusetts, cost two dollars and fifty cents. Thomas was crestfallen. How much for one-way then? A dollar thirty. Eight more cents and he’d have enough for himself anyway. Maybe his mother could give him the rest to get home. Or maybe she’d just tell him to stay. After all, he wouldn’t be half the worry a little girl would be, his mother would say, so it would probably be best if he went alone. He turned from the counter right into Margaret’s squinty stare. She knelt on the bench, watching through the lettered plate glass. He hurried into the men’s room. What were you asking that man? she asked when he came outside. Where the bathroom was, he answered without a twinge of guilt. The thought of that bus ride into his mother’s arms made him happier than he’d been in a long time.

  Lately, everything his sister did annoyed him. He didn’t know it was privacy he wanted, only that he was in great need of something and Margaret had become his obstacle.

  “What’re you looking for?” her muffled voice asked again from her cot. She was sprawled facedown while the kitten sat purring on her back. A moment ago she had been helpless with laughter as it walked the length of her.

  Silently, he continued his hurried search. It was three in the afternoon. His father wasn’t expected back until suppertime, but he’d come home early yesterday when his truck broke down. A flat. Half the blackberrying money had gone toward patching the tire. Last week the fan belt had broken and he had to hitch a ride into town to buy a new one. Things weren’t going well. Summer would be ending soon, with winter howling close behind. Thomas couldn’
t imagine living here then. All it took now was a cold, rainy, windy night to make the mildewy tent so miserable by morning that Margaret wouldn’t budge from under her covers.

  “Tell me!” She sat up with the kitten clawed to the back of her frayed sweater.

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re looking for Mommy’s letter.”

  “No, I’m not! I’m looking for my school card.”

  “Why?”

  There it was. At the very bottom of the hinged wooden box he had dragged out from under his father’s cot. His mother’s feathery handwriting on the envelope. “I forget what grades I got.” Damn. It was empty. His father probably kept the letter safe in his wallet. Or maybe he’d thrown it out in anger. Lately any mention of his wife turned his moods even blacker. Thomas had asked to read it when his father picked it up at the post office. His father hadn’t answered. So Margaret asked if he’d read it to them then. “Leaving out the love parts, please,” she’d giggled. His father hunched over the steering wheel and didn’t speak the rest of the way home.

  Thomas was piling his father’s important papers the way they’d been over the envelope when he realized the value of his find. Not a letter to read, but her address on the envelope flap, her exact location, 34 Common Street, Collerton, Massachusetts, the place where he would find her. If he had to. If he wanted to. He sat on his cot and wrote as fast as he could because the words were pouring out of him.

  Dear Mommy,

  I miss you very much. And Margaret does too. She cries a lot. Her new cat is gray and white. It is a baby kitten. I told her you don’t like cats. Margaret says you do. She says I’m being mean, but I remember that. How you said you never wanted a pet because they always die. If that is right will you please tell Margaret. She is getting very naughty and I don’t like it. She is fresh as paint is what Gladys says to Daddy.