The Lost Mother

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Oh, Margaret.” Irene kept patting her hand. She shook her head, with a look of astonishment as if she’d had no idea Margaret could feel such things.

  “Will you come back home with us? Please? Please, Mommy?”

  Thomas nervously pushed his checker back and forth between two squares. So there it was. Right out there.

  “I can’t,” she quietly answered.

  “Why not? You don’t even have a job. You just live here, that’s all. We could go home and you could just live there. With us.”

  “I couldn’t. No. I … I couldn’t.”

  When they went to bed the rain was falling steadily, the close pattering on the roof a comfort, like rain on the tent when their father had been near. They were sound asleep. The ringing came from far, far away. Each stirred, then fell back to sleep. The wind was howling now. As the night had grown colder the rain had turned to wet, heavy flakes. Thomas’s eyes opened with the banging. Outside, someone called loudly. He jumped up and started down the stairs. He pressed against the icy wall. His mother opened the front door.

  Mr. Dexter sounded drunk. His voice was loud and slurred. His key had fallen in the snow. He had been at the club. But the roads were terrible. Glare ice. He couldn’t drive any farther, so lucky girl, here he was. All hers, for the rest of the night. At bedtime his mother always left the door at the bottom of the steps open to let heat up. Thomas could hear every word. His mother tried to whisper, but Mr. Dexter demanded that she speak up; he couldn’t hear a damn thing she was saying.

  “But what about your wife? She’ll be worried.”

  “No, she won’t. She’ll be glad!”

  “But what will you tell her?”

  “I’ll tell her what I always tell her, and that’s whatever the hell I wanna tell her.”

  Thomas crept down three more steps. The street lamp shone through the window. Mr. Dexter’s coat and hat had been thrown over one of the small pink chairs. He had pulled off his tie and was unbuttoning his shirt. Thomas was surprised to see such a small, stoop-shouldered man. He had oiled black hair, a thin mustache, and he was the same height as Irene.

  “Louie.” Irene’s arms were folded over her nightgown. “You have to go. What if your wife …”

  “Oh! Oh!” He advanced on her, laughing. “I see. You’re not happy to see me.”

  “No. I’m happy to see you. I’m just … I’m surprised, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t expect me, so maybe you’ve got another visitor. Who is it?” He threw open her bedroom door. “Who’s in there? What son of a bitch has crawled into my—”

  She watched from the doorway as he ripped the blankets from her bed. “Louie! Stop it! See! Of course there’s no one here.” She picked up his tie from the floor and carried it into him with his hat and coat. “You shouldn’t be here like this.”

  “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here!” he growled. “Maybe you’re the one who should leave!”

  “All I meant was … well, you’re in a terrible state.”

  “A terrible state!” he bellowed. There was the sound of a slap. And then the bedroom door was quickly closed.

  Thomas ran to the bottom of the stairs. It was a minute before he realized that it wasn’t his mother crying, but Mr. Dexter. Between high, gasping sobs he begged Irene to forgive him. It would never happen again. Ever. He promised. Of course she forgave him, she assured him.

  “I just wanted to be with you, to stay,” he wept. “That’s all I wanted.”

  “Yes, I know. And now you are. Oh, my dear, sweet Louie, now you are.”

  It seemed only moments before his heedless, fleshy snore exploded in the room. Thomas tiptoed back up to bed. “It was Mr. Dexter,” he whispered, though Margaret lay so still with her back to him he thought she was asleep.

  “I know,” she whispered and curled tighter on the edge of the bed.

  The next day they played outside. Mr. Dexter had left at dawn. The deep ruts of his spinning tires ran along the fence. Margaret and Thomas rolled snow until they had the base of their snowman. Margaret wore her mother’s cloth gloves, but Thomas’s hands were purple with cold. He kept stopping to blow them warm.

  “Hey!” It was the tall, skinny girl. She wore a purple coat that hung over her shoes. With every step she had to lift the hem. She asked what they were doing.

  “What’s it look like we’re doing?” Thomas said, shoulders hunched and shivering, fists deep in his pockets. Now, Margaret was rolling the chest.

  “I’m just trying to make friends, that’s all,” the girl said with narrowing eyes.

  “We’re making a snowman.” Margaret turned and smiled. “But there’s not too much snow.”

  “Want me to help?”

  “Sure!” Margaret said, drowning out her brother’s no.

  The girl helped Margaret roll the snow until it was big enough to set on the base. Her name was Clementine, she said as she and Margaret packed snow into all the crevices. Her hands were also bare. She had two older brothers and two younger brothers. Her father’s hand had practically been cut off at work last year, so now he stayed home. Her mother worked. Six days a week. She cleaned a big house over in Dearborn. Mr. Pratt sold cars, Fords. The Pratt family was so rich they’d wear something one time and then throw it out just because they were sick of it. Like this coat she had on, it used to be Connie Pratt’s, she said proudly, then scowled at the lack of response. Didn’t they know who Connie Pratt was?

  No, Margaret said. They didn’t know anyone. They weren’t from around here. They were from Vermont, she added. Clementine asked if they were going to live here now or if they were—

  “Visiting,” Thomas interrupted.

  “But we’re gonna stay,” Margaret said in a forceful tone. “We’re gonna live here.” She would not look at her brother.

  “So that lady, she’s your mother?” Clementine’s eyes were wide.

  Margaret nodded.

  “So where’s your father?” Clementine asked.

  “He’s not here,” Thomas said with a searing look meant to silence his sister.

  “Did he die?” Clementine asked.

  “No!” Margaret turned to Thomas, troubled now, as if it might be true and no one had told her.

  “You’re awful nosy, what do you care?” he snapped at the girl. He began to pack more snow around the base. Black smoke poured out from the distant factory stacks. The sooty haze hung over the rooftops.

  “I was just asking, that’s all.” Now, Clementine pounded snow on the opposite side.

  “Well, I didn’t ask about your father, how his hand got cut, did I?” he said.

  “Go ahead, ask me, I don’t care.”

  “None of my business,” he grunted, working on her side now.

  Margaret’s face was drawn with worry. Something far worse than jail had happened to her father and no one wanted to tell her—it would explain everything.

  “It got caught in a big machine. Most of it got cut off, so the doctor had to finish it the rest of the way. He almost died,” Clementine said. For a moment the only sound was the thump, thump, thump of their hands against the dense snow. “Mr. Dexter’s really rich. That mill.” She pointed toward the biggest chimney. It towered over all the others. “That’s the Dexter Mill. They have three houses. They even have horses. Somewhere, I don’t know where, but they have five kids—just like us,” she added with pride of the connection. “Mrs. Dexter’s sick though. My mother said rich ladies shouldn’t have too many kids, they’re just not strong enough.”

  Margaret headed toward the door. She said she was going to go in now, she was cold. Saying he was cold too, Thomas started to follow.

  “What about the head?” Clementine asked.

  “You can do it,” he called from the open door.

  Clementine hiked up her coat and hurried after him. “I’m cold too, can I come in?”

  “No.” He shut the door.

  Word spread quickly. The children were conscious of bei
ng watched. The women moved from window to window, alert for signs of trouble, eager for it—a woman like that. They looked away when Irene passed them on the street. Clementine had become the object of much attention. Vying for secrets only she possessed, the older children courted her, their mothers’ jaws agape with the fanciful reports: her husband was such a cruel man that the pretty lady in the gatekeeper’s cottage had run away and then sent for her children later. Terrified of their father the poor little things were grateful for Mr. Dexter’s protection. They said he was the kindest man in the whole world. The Kressey Court mothers rolled their eyes. They knew all about that kind of kindness.

  Again, the doorbell was ringing. Clementine’s ravenous eye scoped against the glass sidelight. Irene was hanging clothes on the little line behind the cottage. Still no letter had come from Lena. Every day Irene waited for the mail delivery before she did anything. Today when none came she hurried outside to get the clothes on the line before it snowed. The doorbell rang again.

  “You’re not supposed to play with her,” Thomas warned. Margaret headed for the door anyway. They were tired of being cooped up inside. Mostly though, each was tired of being constantly with the other. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

  “I just want to see!” She struggled to get free.

  “No!” He pushed her against the loveseat, so hard it moved a little.

  “You hurt me!” She seized the checkerboard and threw it, checkers flying as the corner struck his collarbone. The quick, sharp blow was nothing; it was her weakness, her need to be with people and please them, the constant betrayal that so enraged him now, especially with the perfidious Clementine so near a threat. He picked up the board and threw it hard. Hard as he could. Damn her for ducking, he thought as it crashed into the globed parlor lamp.

  “You broke it!” Margaret cried as the painted splinters landed at her feet.

  Clementine was gone, either as bearer of this fresh report or simply in frustration. The back door opened and closed.

  “What have you done?” Irene gasped. “What in God’s name have you done?” Sobbing, she dropped to her knees and made a pile of the lavender shards as if they were sacred relics. “Don’t you understand? This isn’t my lamp. It’s not mine. This isn’t my house. Nothing here is mine. Nothing! Do you understand? Do you?” she demanded from her knees, her eyes sharp with tears. Distorted by panic her face was no longer pretty, but long and somehow foolish-looking. Pity stirred in Thomas, uneasily, shamefully. What about them? They were hers, but saying it would only heighten her desperation.

  The next morning Irene went off with two letters to mail. She returned quickly, happier than she’d been in days. That afternoon Mr. Dexter’s long visit cheered her even more. He wasn’t at all upset about the lamp, she reported later. In fact, another would be arriving soon from Hetter’s Furniture Store. Of course, she had taken the blame, she said, as if they should be grateful for her sacrifice for weren’t they all in this together, the three of them, children, existing on the man’s whim. She had told Mr. Dexter she had knocked it over when she’d been cleaning. As before, they stayed upstairs, so still, so quietly on the thin mattress that every sound in the little cottage came to them. Now neither questioned the rhythmic ruckus, the weepy little cries, then at last his profoundly grateful moan. Margaret held to her side of the bed, rigid and, Thomas knew, breathless. Soon, the cigar was lit and sourness seeped into Thomas’s throat. They were as much intruders here as at old Bibeau’s. More so here, perhaps. At least there Gladys had wanted them to stay.

  A week had passed without a visit from Mr. Dexter. Margaret asked if he wasn’t going to come anymore. Oh no, Irene said, he was just away. Traveling. But his trip would be over soon. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, she called in to them. “Cinnamon sugar,” she announced, as she came from the kitchen, stirring the amber granules in a crystal bowl. Late afternoon tea and toast were what people did now, she was telling them. In the past they had not been allowed anything before dinner.

  “Fancy people?” Margaret asked in a shiver of delight as Irene sprinkled the toast.

  “Very fancy people!” Irene placed the toast in front of her. Margaret giggled and took a bite, craving the hesitant glow of her mother’s attention far more than the sweet toast. Thomas ate his and said little. Even this teatime was a wan and hollow exercise. Margaret would do anything to make her mother love them while his mother’s happiness had little at all to do with them.

  “Use your napkin, Tom. You’re making grease marks on the chair,” Irene said.

  “It’s such a pretty chair. Is that Mr. Dexter’s too?” Margaret asked and he scowled at her.

  “Oh yes. He had it all fixed up like this.”

  They watched her smile, her grateful gaze around the room.

  “Is Mr. Dexter nice?” Margaret asked a little sadly.

  “Oh, very nice. He’s very kind.” She made a sweeping motion with her hand. “Well, as you can see. He’s very thoughtful. When I first came here I didn’t know anyone. Other than that awful Mr. Hemmings. And then when the job turned out to be so horrible, it was Mr. Dexter who told me not to worry. That I could stay here.” She smiled a little. “I thought that was so kind of him.”

  “Why didn’t you come home?” Thomas blurted.

  Her eyes lifted warily. “I couldn’t.” That said, neither spoke. His anger built, boiling inside.

  “Does Daddy know Mr. Dexter?” Margaret asked, and Thomas stared, incredulous.

  “No. No, he doesn’t.” She reached down and plucked something from the carpet. A bit of toast crust. She pressed it onto the rim of her dish. “They haven’t met.”

  The gate clanged outside and the mailbox lid squealed open then closed. Irene rose quickly. Every day the mailman had passed the cottage by.

  “Aunt Lena’s not going to take us, you know. She’s drunk all the time,” he said before she could get to the door.

  “Thomas! That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Irene said.

  “Well it’s true. She hides the bottles in the hamper. And Uncle Max doesn’t want us there either.”

  The minute she opened her mouth he regretted having launched this attack. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said, opening the door, “but something has to be done.” She hurried outside.

  “Stop it! You’re going to make her mad!” Margaret hissed.

  Irene sat at the table with the sheet of paper shaking in her grasp. The square, almost reproachful script on the envelope was Gladys’s, but the letter it held had been written by their father—34 Common Street was crossed out. Kressey Court had been penciled on the bottom of the envelope. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath that seemed to hold her. They watched her. In the afternoon sun the cut-glass lines of the decanter reflected on the opposite wall, glinting like fine rainbows.

  “Is Daddy coming?” Margaret finally asked.

  There was a weight of stillness in the room, and once again Margaret tried to plow through it. “He could live here. With us. There’s slaughtering jobs. There must be. Right, Thomas? We saw some farms, remember? On the way here. We did.”

  Irene rose stiffly and went into her bedroom. They picked up the letter and read it.

  Their father was still in jail. Uncle Max had gone there demanding that Henry do something. Why had his and Irene’s children become their problem? Margaret and Thomas were no one’s problems, Henry wrote that he had told Max. They were their parents’ responsibility. He could not make restitution to Farley for the damaged barn door or the “stolen” saw and tire, so he had no choice but serve out the six weeks left of his sentence.

  I know how hard it must be to work and take care of them both, but it will have to be that way for a while longer. I wish there was something I could do, but I can’t. Even Gladys is trying to help, but she doesn’t have enough money to lend me yet. They can both take pretty good care of each other. Tell them I said to help with the chores and they will. As soon as I can I will come and get them.

/>   Your husband,

  T. Henry Talcott

  P.S. Or you can bring them back here if that’s what you want to do. Irene—I hope that you are all right and doing fine. I mean that. I really do.

  13

  Even Thomas thought they should be going to school now that they were here for good. He didn’t want to end up like Billy Pfeiffer, who’d been absent so long one winter he never came back. Billy Pfeiffer did all right, skinning raccoons and selling the pelts, but he couldn’t read or write so everyone said he was plain stupid, like every other Pfeiffer.

  Margaret had walked down the hill with Clementine one day to see her school, the Burleigh. The next day Margaret took Thomas. He didn’t like the look of it at all. Brick with granite over the tall windows and wide oak doors, it was the biggest school he’d ever seen. That’s probably where they’d go, she said on their way back. Clementine’s teacher had a mustache. Believe it or not, but her name was Miss Beardsley. When she thought no one was looking she clipped her chin whiskers with tiny little scissors—Clementine had seen her. Miss Beardsley would probably be his teacher too, because he and Clementine were in the same grade. Sixth.

  “She’s fourteen!” He stopped in his tracks.

  “I know,” Margaret said, admitting Clementine’s oddness with a shrug. But Clementine was her friend and as she had at first with Jesse-boy she could not just overlook strangeness, but had to champion it when no one else would. Margaret was fast becoming the most sought after playmate on Kressey Court. To her credit, she insisted Clementine be included. The annoying Clementine may have been the neighborhood’s first access to the mysterious goings-on inside the little cottage, but now they had Margaret herself. The little girls loved her, but no more than their mothers, who also took pleasure in her pretty face and held up her sweet manner as an example for their own children. Margaret Talcott always said thank you. She left her wet shoes on their doormats and fussed over their babies. A lovely little girl. Not at all unfriendly like the brother and mother. But why wasn’t such a smart child in school? Both children for that matter. Might it have something to do with Mr. Dexter? He still came by his few afternoons a week in his elegant topcoat and his gleaming green car. They watched eagerly through their window curtains. Imagine, with children in the house. What did he care with all his money about anything or anyone. But their own mother—no wonder she hurried down the street looking straight ahead in her smart new hat and fur collared coat, while her children wore the same clothes day in and day out. Couldn’t she at least patch the boy’s worn trouser knees or mend the little girl’s torn sleeve?