The Lost Mother

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Mrs. Farley—”

  “But what about Thomas?” Margaret interrupted, still holding the shoes. “Doesn’t he get any presents?”

  “Yes, of course! Look what I brought you, Thomas.” She offered what appeared in the shadows to be a brown stick. “A flute! Just like Jesse-boy’s. Now you two can play together.”

  But he didn’t know how to play the flute, he told her. Well then, Jesse-boy would teach him, she said, the two red dots glowing on her cheeks. Why didn’t they go there right now? Jesse-boy was hoping they’d come back with her. He hadn’t seen them in so long. In fact the flute had been his idea. Thomas said they couldn’t; his father wanted them to stay in the tent. Oh, he won’t mind a bit, Mrs. Farley said; and it’ll just be a quick visit. Jesse-boy was waiting.

  Suddenly they were in her car and on their way. She told them how Jesse-boy wanted to hear all about their summer in the tent. He thought it was the most magical life anyone could have. Her chatter swamped Thomas’s weak protestations. Margaret was so excited sitting up front that she was no help at all. Mrs. Farley urged her to put on the new shoes so Jesse-boy could see them.

  As they were led into Jesse-boy’s bedroom, Margaret wilted into her brother’s side and squeezed his hand. The room smelled of talcum power and stale urine. Pictures of cowboys and Indians hung on the red striped walls. Jesse-boy’s face had a gray wet sheen against the propped pillows. His childishness was belied by the wispy fuzz on his upper lip. His frail body seemed even thinner under the bedsheets, his soft voice weaker. He asked Margaret why she wasn’t wearing her new dress. When she didn’t answer right away he looked in exasperation to his mother. Mrs. Farley drew Margaret closer and told her to show Jesse-boy her new shoes. Margaret lifted one foot. Jesse-boy strained to see, but couldn’t.

  “Up you go!” Mrs. Farley swung her onto the bed. “See, Jesse-boy!” She lifted Margaret’s foot and her son smiled happily.

  Margaret sat stiffly beside him. He asked Thomas if he liked his present. Thomas nodded.

  “Let’s play together then,” Jesse-boy said, slipping an identical flute out from under the sheet. Thomas said he didn’t know how, but that didn’t bother Jesse-boy. He played two or three weak notes, paused for breath, gasped three more notes, paused wheezing, played again. This went on for what seemed to Thomas (and surely for Margaret, frozen at his side) the longest time. Finally, he did not set down the flute so much as let it drift lightly, wearily from his wet, tremulous grin.

  “Oh! Oh!” Mrs. Farley cried, clapping, then covered her mouth against her tearful joy. “Oh, Jesse-boy, that was so beautiful.” She threw her arms around Margaret. “He’s never been able to play that all the way through before!”

  Margaret stared out at her brother over Mrs. Farley’s embrace.

  Standing against the wall, Thomas felt as if he were being pressed back by a great force that would consume his sister just as it had his mother.

  “Mummy! I need to!” Jesse-boy said, pressing his hand over his crotch.

  “Yes, yes!” Suddenly Mrs. Farley was snatching Margaret from the bed and opening the door.

  Just then, there began a great commotion downstairs. Banging, thudding, then raised voices. Men, shouting.

  “Henry, you wait outside! Don’t you go up there now or I’ll—”

  “You’ve got my children. I don’t care what the hell you do, I’m getting them!”

  “Daddy!” Margaret cried, running down the stairs, the strangeness of it all erupting with the sight of their father, who scurried them outside.

  Mrs. Farley ran out to the truck and tried to pass the new flute up to Thomas. His father grabbed it and threw it onto the ground. She had no right to come and take children out of their home. No! Mr. Farley thundered back—off of his property, that’s what it was. She was sorry; she was so sorry, Mrs. Farley kept saying and Thomas wasn’t sure who she was sorry to because both men seemed mad at her. All she wanted was for Jesse-boy to have company; he’d been so lonely lately. Well, that’s not how you do it, her husband shouted. If only the children could live here a while. Even just during the week, poor things, she tried telling Henry as the truck inched ahead. She held on to his window well, pleading as she skittered alongside. They’d have so many advantages, a fine home, a good education—

  “Look, Phyllis,” Henry Talcott said, stopping the truck dead. “Just because your kid’s not right doesn’t give you any claim on my two.”

  Her head drew back as if slapped. Her eyes seemed to lock on Thomas’s. He felt both shame and pity for her. His father didn’t have to say it like that, as if Jesse-boy were some freak. After all, she’d only been trying to give them what they didn’t have, which was more than most people did.

  “You get the hell off my property, Talcott, tonight! You hear what I’m saying?” Mr. Farley shouted and threw a rock against the roof, running after the truck in such a rage Thomas was sure he’d chase it all the way back.

  When they got to the tent, Henry Talcott balled up the new shoes and the doll in the dress, tying the bow strings and sleeves into a tight bundle while Margaret wept. They were never again to take handouts from anyone, did they understand? Because there was always a price. Always. But Daddy how could she go to school? Margaret bawled. She didn’t have any shoes at all now. Her old ones were in Mrs. Farley’s car. Then she’d wear Thomas’s to school and he’d have to wear his father’s dress shoes. But they’ll be too big and flop, they protested.

  “Then they’ll flop!” Henry Talcott roared into the night so angrily they huddled on their cots. “They’ll goddamn flop! And you’ll just keep on walking! And if they fall off your goddamn feet you’ll put them back on, you hear me? You hear what I’m saying? Do you? Do you?” he raged through the darkness.

  His father’s despair was terrifying. His father was the strongest man he knew. If he couldn’t cope with the forces against them, then who could? What would become of them? Thomas lay very still, arms over his head. No wonder his mother had left. He would too if he could. If he had someplace to go. And if Margaret would come with him.

  All that was left when they got home from school were their clothes in a heap. The tent and everything in it had been torn down and hauled away. It had been a raw, gray day, damp under the threat of low dark clouds, snow probably if it got any colder. Thomas’s breath spouted to vapor in the air as he told Margaret to shut up and stop crying. At least he had his jackknife.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” she screamed, tearing through the pile as if her father might be at the bottom.

  Thomas assured her their father must have taken it all down to move them into the new house early.

  “No, he didn’t! He left! He’s gone too!” she wailed, then ran back the way they’d just come through the woods.

  “Margaret!” he grabbed her arm, but she punched his chest, pushing him away. He lunged and this time caught her wrist. Writhing, she shrieked to be let go, but now he clenched both wrists. Her face twisted into pure hatred and she kicked his shin bone. His painful bewilderment, that she would hurt him when he was only trying to help and comfort her, soured to outrage and he slapped her. Right across the face. Hard, hard as he could because she deserved it. Because, somehow, this was all her fault. For being too pretty and weak and always wanting more than they had. Because he was as helpless as she was. And now her tears streamed into the blood pouring from her nose. She let herself be led back. He grabbed a ragged shirt from the pile and pressed it to her nose. It was all right, he kept telling her. Everything was going to be all right. They’d just wait here and she’d see, pretty soon Daddy would be back to take them to the new house. But he doesn’t have enough money for the rent, she cried. Yes, he does, he said. But the windows are all still broken. No, he probably fixed them, but didn’t say anything to surprise us. But what about the hornets? She blew her nose and the bleeding started all over again. Press harder, he told her. Daddy must have killed most of them. They would finish off the rest, the ones he couldn’t. Are
you sure? she asked with a last deep shudder that finally seemed to calm her, though her thin shoulders continued to tremble. Yes, and they’d probably be finding dead ones all winter long, he said.

  “I know! Let’s keep them in a jar. See how many we end up with. Thousands probably,” she sniffed.

  Probably. Past her, he watched the sky deepening into cold, dull lead.

  It was almost dark when the children arrived at Gladys’s. That goddamn Farley, she swore when Thomas told her what had happened. Hearing this, Margaret burst into tears and could not be consoled. Gladys picked her up in her long, strong arms and sat with her, in the warm kitchen, assuring her as Thomas had earlier that everything would be all right; she’d feel better as soon as her daddy got here.

  “I want my mommy,” Margaret cried, sobbing again. Thomas was getting annoyed with his sister’s breakdowns. But he was afraid to say anything for fear she would tell that he’d hit her. “I want my mommy!” she gasped again.

  “Yes, I know you do.” Gladys clasped Margaret’s wet face against her own coarse cheek. “How could she have done this. Such a terrible wrong to you poor children. Such a terrible wrong!”

  Thomas glared up at her. He was angry that she had said the very thing he’d been thinking. But who was she to criticize his mother, his beautiful mother? He remembered a conversation on their way home from T. C. Whitby’s Christmas party in town. Gladys had been at the party and his mother teased his father how Gladys’s lazy eye turned straight in, she got so excited whenever she saw him.

  “That’s not nice, especially in front of the children,” his father had scolded in a low voice.

  “No, but it’s true. Gladys Bibeau thinks she’s just biding her time!” she had giggled, flushed with punch and the attention she always got at parties. “I’ll bet she goes to sleep every night dreaming of you, Henry.”

  “One more word like that and I’m stopping the truck!” he had growled.

  “And then what? What’re you going to do, make me get out and walk like last time?”

  “I didn’t make you. You said to.”

  “Well, that’s what you meant by stopping.”

  “I just do what I’m told, that’s all.”

  “You do? Is that what you think? Then how come I’ve only got two—”

  “Irene. Don’t. Please, don’t.”

  Thomas had fallen asleep then. Sometimes he thought grown-ups argued just to hurt the other person, not because what they said was true or even mattered to them. At least that’s the way it always seemed with his mother. In some ways she could act as much like a little girl as Margaret. Sometimes even Margaret had more sense about people’s feelings than her own mother did.

  That argument was as much a mystery to the boy now as then. He couldn’t ask and all he knew was that it had to do with his father’s temper and Hemmings, the tipsy cloth salesman from Massachusetts, who had been teasing his mother at the party. The same man in the pin-striped suit had been at their house months earlier when their father wasn’t there. They had come home from school to find him sitting at the kitchen table, his tie loose and collar unbuttoned. T. C. Whitby had given him her address and he had just dropped in on her. His mother wanted him to leave. He ignored her and began telling the children about the stack of picture cards on the table. He mounted one in the stereoscope for Margaret to see. Thomas hadn’t liked him at all. His mother was nervous and the man was too pushy.

  After a while though Thomas had forgotten about it until one day when they were driving home from supper at Aunt Lena’s. Out of the blue Margaret asked what happened to that man in the kitchen who had shown her the pretty bird pictures. Thomas tried to hear, but couldn’t make out the words up front. Then the truck stopped and his mother got out and started walking. She got home a while after they did.

  Gladys set Margaret down and moved around the kitchen taking pots and pans from the wide metal shelf over the stove and covered dishes from the icebox. “Ham steak and home fries,” she said, slicing a baked potato lengthwise, then into cubes. She chopped a red pepper and then an onion. The knife’s racket on the metal drain board drew them closer to watch.

  “See what you did!” Gladys laughed, wiping her sniffly nose on the back of her wrist. “You made me cry, Margaret Talcott!”

  “No, I didn’t. It’s the onion!” Margaret squealed and all three of them jumped, startled by the cowbell clanging from the parlor.

  “Shut up!” old Bibeau yelled. “Shut the hell up in there.”

  5

  The next day Thomas rode alongside his father to Farley’s. He could tell his father expected trouble, was working up to it, nodding grimly, lips moving in silent fury, readying himself for the fight to come. Thomas was more excited than scared. He knew his father’s reputation as someone not to mess with, though he’d never seen him actually hit a person. Once in his younger days, three men had been waiting for him by the side of the road. The one who said he had a gun demanded the money Henry had just been paid after a long day’s butchering and dressing hogs. The other two had clubs. They ordered Henry down from the truck, but he said they’d have to come get it if they wanted his money. When it was over one man sobbed like a baby with a broken arm dangling at his side while the others ran away.

  Old Bibeau loved to tell that story, gumming his tobacco and grinning. Sometimes there were only two men, often as not, five or six. Thomas had asked once if it was true. His father laughed and said it didn’t matter now that people thought it was true. Even T. C. Whitby had alluded to it the last time he’d been with his mother when she picked up the store’s books to work on. He said he’d warned Hemmings that Henry Talcott was one man not to get mad. Oh, Mr. Whitby, what’re you talking about? Clyde just wants to be everyone’s friend, you know that. Friends like him you don’t need, Whitby had snapped and, as always, his mother, his out-of-the-house, in-town mother, only laughed.

  And then what? How much time had lapsed between the man with the bird picture on the stereoscope, sitting at the kitchen table and his mother’s leaving, to now? He couldn’t be sure. Time had never been of much consequence. One day he was rowing through summer heat and here he was now bouncing along through snow flurries on his way to a showdown.

  The truck rumbled off the road onto the long gravel driveway in to Farley’s Dairy Farm. As they drove past the house Thomas wondered what Jesse-boy would do if there was a fight. Probably cry and wet his pants. His father parked in front of the first red barn. Of the three it was the smallest. Dairy Office, said the sign over the dented metal door.

  “Wait!” Thomas yelled as his father jumped down.

  “You wait!” His father slammed the truck door.

  Fred Farley stepped out from the office followed by a scowling man in knee-high barn boots. His father towered over Mr. Farley. Thomas rolled down the window, but it was hard to hear with the wind blowing. His father did most of the talking at first, with Fred Farley’s high, nasal twang cutting in to say he was sorry. But Henry’d been given fair and legal warning. Of course he was sorry the children had to find such a scene, but hadn’t Henry put his own children in that desperate situation by not providing them with a proper home. This angered his father more. He said something, pointed at Mr. Farley. The worker stepped forward and Mr. Farley spoke up loudly. He said Henry’s belongings were right out back in the shed behind the barn. This man, Arnold, would help Henry load them onto the truck.

  “No need,” Henry Talcott said on his way back to the truck. “I brought my boy.” He drove behind the barn. Farley made a great show of trying different keys before finally unlocking the padlocked door. The heavy smell of cow dung rolled out from the shed. Thomas followed his father inside. Surprisingly, everything was carefully stacked. Even the kerosene lanterns had been wrapped in newspaper before being put into the fruit crate. The tent was neatly folded. Thomas and his father moved quickly between shed and truck. His father ignored the men watching him and his son hustle their sad belongings like migrant work
ers. Farley’d gotten him good, Thomas thought. Was that what was happening? Was this the way life would be, lower even than the Pfeiffers, hauling their fire-blackened pots and pans from site to site, the boy wondered, head down like his father.

  “One of the poles cracked some,” Arnold, the worker, said on the last trip in.

  This, Henry ignored. He looked around. Just one more cot and another chair. “Something’s missing,” he told Farley.

  “It’s all here. Nothing’s missing,” Farley said.

  “My spare tire and my boning saw.”

  “I don’t remember seeing any spare tire or boning saw. Do you?” Farley asked Arnold.

  “No!” Smirking, Arnold drew in his double chin.

  “Well, they were there. And now they’re gone,” his father said.

  “You accusing me of stealing them, Henry?” Farley looked amused. “An old tire and a saw?”

  “Somebody did.”

  “Well it sure as hell wasn’t me and you know that. You’re just looking for trouble now, aren’t you? Or maybe you’re trying to make a little money off me now, is that it?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s trying to do,” Arnold said with that insulting grin. “There weren’t no tire or saw or I’da seen ’em.”