Toby Lived Here

by Hilma Wolitzer

  In one song, Susan wrote:

  You must know I can’t keep lovin’

  Anyone who won’t quit shovin’.

  Now she sang:

  I don’t mean to be contrary,

  Raising cattle on the prairie,

  I will always love you, Mary...

  and then she stopped, trying to come up with a last line. She shut her eyes and scratched her head. “Dairy fairy hairy,” she said.

  Toby suggested:

  But I’ll always love you, Mary,

  Even if you are so hairy.

  They both laughed, but then Susan said, “Keep trying, Tobe. Maybe it will really come to you.”

  They sat there in silence until Toby said, “How about, It’s just that love seems kind of scary?”

  Susan thought about it. “Hey, that’s not bad, not bad at all. In fact, it’s pretty good. ‘It’s just that love seems kind of scare-y,’ she sang. “We could be a songwriting team, maybe. Like Simon and Garfunkel. Or Loggins and Messina. How does it sound? Goodwin and Schwamm. Schwamm and Goodwin.”

  Toby felt very pleased and she worked up the courage to say, “But that line about the prairie...”

  “It stinks, right?” Susan said.

  “Well, I wouldn’t...it sort of...yeah, it stinks.”

  They laughed again and, when they tried to sing, found they couldn’t stop laughing. They began throwing pillows at each other and fell backward on the beds, still shrieking with laughter.

  Toby felt wonderful. She hadn’t laughed like this for what seemed like a long time, hadn’t felt safe or comfortable or free enough to let loose. Susan was so much fun to be with. She was daring and outspoken, and had such a good sense of humor. Toby realized she liked her even more than her old friends in Brooklyn. And then she remembered why she was here in the first place and grew sober again, and sad.

  “What’s the matter?” Susan asked. “Do you miss your mother?” And when Toby could only nod, dumbly, Susan squeezed her hand. There were so many lies between them, though. One seemed to lead easily to another. Now Toby would have to be careful not to be caught out. She didn’t want Susan to ever be at the Selwyns’ when Miss Vernon came to check up on them. And Anne was bound to say something that would give everything away. If you told her it was a secret, that only made it worse. Then she couldn’t wait to tell. Maybe it was just a bad habit she’d outgrow, like the thumb sucking.

  And Toby was a little ashamed of the Selwyns, falsely represented as “friends of the family.” Susan’s family was so cultured; they were always having discussions about art and music and literature. Toby never asked Susan to come home with her after school.

  Instead, they went directly to Susan’s, where Mrs. Schwamm was usually at work in her study. They could hear the clicking of her electric typewriter through the door.

  Now they went downstairs and found her making notes for an article on a yellow scratch pad. A Mozart flute concerto was playing on the stereo. The music made Toby feel lonely for her own mother and yet it was consoling at the same time. On the way back to the Selwyns’ for supper, she found herself humming. But it wasn’t the Mozart melody; it was the tune Susan had written, to which Toby had added words. She walked quickly, her spirits lifted, thinking, Maybe today there’ll be a letter.

  6

  June 18, 1977

  Dearest Mother,

  Today the mailman asked me if I’m expecting a love letter from my sweetheart. I guess that’s because he always sees me hanging around the mailbox when he gets here. Every day I think there will be a letter from you.

  Mrs. S. has promised to call Miss Vernon to find out how you are doing and when we can come and see you. I can’t wait!

  Pretty soon Constance will be coming for lunch. She’s the girl I told you about who used to have my room. It turns out that she is twenty years old! And she is getting married!

  So far I have one good friend. Her name is Susan Schwamm and she has beautiful wavy red hair which she hates. You would love her dog. He’s so sweet. Susan says he used to be able to do wonderful tricks, but now he’s too old and sick and he sleeps most of the time. Lately he’s been wetting the floor the way he did when he was a puppy. Susan tries to clean it up before anyone sees it.

  Mr. Selwyn said he will take us bowling next Friday after school. He goes to work after supper and is home in the daytime. He works for the Daily News, in the place where they print the papers. He gets a free copy every day. Anne is all excited about going bowling, but I don’t care. He said I could bring Susan if I want to.

  Guess what? I am learning to play the guitar. Only easy stuff so far, and my fingers are killing me. But Susan says they will get calluses and then feel better. I can play Michael Row the Boat Ashore and Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me. That should come in handy in the summer, ha ha! Susan and I are writing a song together.

  Well, there is nothing more to say except that I miss you very, very, very, very much. Did you ever get the Mother’s Day card I sent? I hope you liked it. Mrs. S. got a load of them from all the kids who used to stay here, and she has them tacked up on the kitchen wall. Anne is making you a card. She is coloring in the whole thing with colored pencils, and it will probably take her a few years. (Only kidding.)

  I hope we’ll be back together for my birthday. Two whole months and six days which is a long time to feel better in, right? I guess I’ll end this letter now. If you get a chance, will you write back to me? Here is the address again in case you lost it.

  105-17 63rd Dr., Rego Park, N.Y. 10181

  Love and XXXXXXXXXXX

  Toby

  7

  CONSTANCE ARRIVED WITH HER boyfriend, Arnie, at noon on Sunday. She was a tall, heavy young woman with frizzy brown hair and the biggest hands and feet Toby had ever seen. Standing alone, she was awesome, but next to Arnie she was somewhat diminished, because he was even larger. What a noise they made when they came into the house! They were all so glad to see one another, acting as if they were a real family. Arnie shook hands with Mr. Selwyn and he kissed and hugged Mrs. Selwyn, practically lifting her off the floor. “Now watch my ribs, Arnie,” she warned him.

  “Two fractures the last time,” Mr. Selwyn said, and everyone laughed.

  Constance embraced them and called them Mother and Dad. Were her own parents dead? Toby would try to find out later. Now she just stared at them. But she and Anne didn’t escape notice, either. “And who’s this?” Arnie wanted to know, and he really seemed interested. When they were introduced and he took Toby’s hand, she was sure hers would be crushed, that it would be like shaking hands with King Kong. She was surprised at how gentle his grasp was.

  On the third finger of her left hand, Constance wore a tiny diamond engagement ring, which she looked at every few minutes, even under the tablecloth at lunch. She was a beautician and she told Toby and Anne that they had gorgeous hair. “Some of my customers would give a million dollars for hair as thick and shiny as yours,” she said.

  “It’s like our mother’s,” Toby told her. She was happy to have a chance to mention her mother, as if to remind everyone that she and Anne didn’t belong there, were only temporary guests. Earlier, when Mrs. Selwyn was preparing the soup for their lunch, Toby said, “My mother used to make that a different way, with mushrooms in it.”

  Mrs. Selwyn asked if she’d like to help with the cooking and make the soup her mother’s way. But Toby didn’t want to. She didn’t even really like mushrooms; she only wanted to say something about her mother then, too.

  Sometimes at night, she’d go into Anne’s room and ask her if she’d thought about Mommy that day. And Anne always looked solemn and said yes. Now Anne ran her hands lovingly over her own hair, and looked pleased and proud.

  “You always pick the prettiest girls, Mrs. S.,” Arnie said, and Anne was clearly delighted. He and Constance spoke about their wedding plans and about Arnie’s job at a photo-developing lab, where he did the printing and enlarging. They kept looking at each othe
r across the table and holding hands and smiling.

  After lunch, Constance asked Toby if she could visit her old room for a few minutes. They went upstairs together and Constance had to duck where the ceiling slanted or she would have bumped her head. She reminded Toby of Alice in Wonderland, after she had eaten the cake and grown big.

  “It still feels like my room,” Constance said. “It always will, I guess, even if ten other girls live here.” She ran her fingers over the name and date carved into the night table, and laughed. “Oh, I was a holy terror in those days. I was really a tough kid.”

  “When did you do that?” Toby asked.

  “The day I got here. That night, anyway. I was about your age, and mad as hell. If I’d had any matches, I’d have burned the place down. I waited until it was dark and I used a flashlight. I took a little knife from the kitchen downstairs. Ruined that, too. God, I was feeling so mean!”

  “Do you mean because you wanted to go home?” Toby asked.

  “Home? Good grief, no! That was the last place I wanted to be. Running away was kind of like my hobby. The cops knew me better than they knew their own kids. They always found me and brought me back again. I don’t know why. Nobody was very glad to see me when I got there. But I was the oldest. I guess they needed me to take care of the little ones.”

  “Didn’t you have a real mother?”

  “Sure, poor thing. She had ten children, eight still living when she was done, and then she just lay down and died. Oh, he cried and cried. Even the bottle didn’t help him then. Bought her a blue silk dress for the viewing. Probably the first new one she’d had in ten years.” She shook her large head, as if to clear it of memories. “Well, what about you, hon?” she asked Toby. “Are you getting along okay here? Aren’t Jim and Sylvia the greatest?”

  “They’re okay, I guess,” Toby said. “I mean, they’re very nice. But I’m not staying too long, you know. My mother’s just a little sick.”

  “Right. I heard about that. It’s a nervous breakdown, isn’t it?”

  Toby was startled. Nobody else had referred to her mother’s illness as a nervous breakdown, although she had heard the expression before. She tried to make exact sense of the words. Nervous. She certainly knew about that. She’d been that way herself, sometimes before a math test in school, getting that fidgety feeling and her breakfast forming a threatening lump in her belly.

  And a breakdown was something cars had on the road. When her father was still alive, they had a car, and on Sundays they drove into the country or out to the beach. Sometimes they’d pass a stalled car on the road, its hood up and people standing around it, staring into a cloud of steam. But what did that have to do with her mother?

  Constance looked down at her ring, turning her hand slowly so that the diamond would catch the light from the window. “Arnie and I are getting married in September,” she said. “Would you like to come to the wedding?”

  “I’ve never gone to a wedding,” Toby said. “But I probably won’t be here by then. That’s a long time from now, and I’ll probably be back in Brooklyn with my mother. Thank you, anyway.” She tried to imagine Constance as a bride, in a delicate white gown and carrying a bouquet of flowers. It was easier to picture that angry girl digging her name into the night table by the dim glow of a flashlight. She was so big and sort of wild-looking. When she sat on the foot of the bed, the other end of the mattress stood up in the air, and Toby could hear the springs complaining.

  “Well, the invitation stands, kid,” Constance said. “Jim is going to give me away, you know.” She paused, admiring her diamond again, and then she said, “Don’t count on anything and you’ll never be disappointed.”

  Toby wasn’t sure what she meant, but she smiled politely.

  Constance stood up, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt. “They never fixed that table. Never sanded it down, I mean, and Jim is handy. He can fix anything. I wasn’t even punished for it. At home I would have been murdered for a lot less. At night I used to run my fingers over my name in the dark and it made me feel better. Calmer. I don’t know why.”

  Then Arnie came up the stairs with Anne riding on his back. His footsteps were like a giant’s, and Anne squealed and shrieked with pleasure.

  Toby wondered if she remembered piggyback rides their father had given them a long time ago. Then Anne and Arnie came into the room and they all went downstairs together. “I’ll call you next week, Mother,” Constance said at the door. Mr. Selwyn gave her a copy of the Daily News and he kissed her goodbye. “Drive carefully, children,” Mrs. Selwyn called from the front door.

  That night, when Anne and Toby were helping the Selwyns with the dishes, Mrs. Selwyn asked Anne what she’d like in her lunch box the next day.

  “Tuna fish, Mother,” Anne said.

  8

  AT FIRST, ANNE SWORE she never said it. Then she said she didn’t mean it, that it was only because Constance had called Mrs. Selwyn that. When Toby argued with her, insisting that people never say what they don’t mean, Anne became angry instead of defensive and she said, “You don’t call them anything and that’s worse, it’s bad manners. Even Mommy says so!”

  “Mommy?” Toby cried. “Mommy? I’m surprised you even remember her. And I wouldn’t talk about bad manners if I were you, Anne Goodwin. You zoop your soup and leave your crusts and suck your thumb and you’re a big, stupid baby!”

  “I am not!” Anne yelled.

  It was the afternoon after Constance and Arnie’s visit, and Mr. and Mrs. Selwyn had gone to the supermarket together. Only the girls were home, and the two caged canaries, who sang sweetly during the quarrel.

  “You are too!” Toby yelled back, and she marched out of the room and went upstairs, banging her feet hard on every step. The little vases and china figures shook and rang on their shelves.

  But Anne wasn’t finished. She hated not having the last word, and she went to the foot of the stairs and called up, “I am not, I am not! You’re the baby, Toby, and you’re a dumbbell and an idiot, and I hate you!”

  Toby didn’t answer. She’d slammed the door of her room, but Anne’s voice came through clearly, anyway. Toby was shaking, and even worse, she was aware of tears waiting to be released. The room was slightly out of focus, the wallpaper flowers an undefined stream of color, and the bed a snowy blur. She rubbed her fists into her eyes and against her itching nose. That little baby wasn’t going to make her cry. She had been through worse days without giving in. Their mother never cried. You just have to live. Toby remembered her mother saying that after her father’s death, and slowly she began to feel less troubled. Her heart wasn’t thumping as fast and her breathing was calmer.

  Her hands were still trembling, though, and she picked up Jane Eyre and opened it at random to give them occupation, and to find further comfort in the book. The words jumped a little on the page and she had only read “Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That sky with its high and light clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm—this placid and balmy atmosphere?” when she heard running footsteps on the stairs. It’s that brat, she thought, wanting to make up, and I’m not going to. She tried to concentrate on the words, but Anne began calling as she ran. “Toby, hurry up! Help! Toby, help!”

  Toby jumped up, flinging the book aside, and opened the door. Anne was standing there, her eyes large with terror. “I let them out, like Mommy says,” she said. “And they’re flying everywhere, and I can’t get them back!”

  She ran downstairs, with Toby following right behind her. When they were almost there, a small yellow streak swooped past in the hallway, and then another, and Toby saw little black and white turds spotting the floor and the furniture. “Get a towel!” she ordered, and Anne hurried off to the bathroom, grateful for something to do. “And shut the toilet!” Toby called after her. Once, in school, a girl had told the story of a pet parakeet that dived into the toilet and drowned after seeing its reflection and thinking it was a friend. Now she remembered how Mrs. Selwyn covered
the cage at night to quiet the birds and help them fall asleep. If she could throw the towel over them, maybe it would have the same effect, and she could pick them up and put them back, before the Selwyns came home. If the birds weren’t dead by then. They could dive into a mirror or a window, or even into each other. They flew past now with the grace and daring of trapeze artists, narrowly missing a midair collision, and with what seemed amazing speed in such a small room. Something plopped onto Toby’s head as they went by.

  Anne came rushing back, the towel over her own head, and she was shrieking again.

  “Oh, be still!” Toby said, and as if she meant them, the two birds lit on the round table in front of the sofa. “Give me the towel,” Toby said to Anne, in a softer voice. “And don’t move quickly. They’re scared, the poor little things.”

  “Why did I have to close the toilet?” Anne whispered back, passing the towel in slow motion. “They’re doing it all over the house, anyway.”

  Toby smiled. “I’ll explain later. Is the cage door still open? I mean wide open?”

  Anne nodded. “What are you going to do?”

  “Never mind,” Toby said. “Just go over to the cage and make sure the door stays open.”

  Anne did as she was told, and Toby spread the towel and tiptoed cautiously toward the resting birds, hoping her movements wouldn’t alarm them. Their heads swiveled so quickly they seemed to be looking everywhere at once with the bright black seeds of their eyes. She knew she could get bitten. Her mother had once told her that a cornered and frightened animal will do that sometimes, even if it’s really gentle by nature.

  “Shhh,” she said, although Anne hadn’t made another sound and was standing still, her hand poised on the open door of the cage.

  In one swift motion, Toby threw the towel over the nearest bird, sending the other one up again in a flurry of falling feathers. As the small, covered form struggled, she grabbed as gently as she could and held on. Through the thickness of terry cloth, she could feel the canary’s heartbeat, surprisingly strong for such a tiny creature, and working even more desperately than her own.