Toby Lived Here

by Hilma Wolitzer

  “Okay,” Toby said.

  Anne was not so easy to convince or cajole. Once she saw her mother, she wanted to stay with her. Toby was surprised. Anne had become so close to Sylvia, as if she had transferred all her affection without much effort or pain. Now she clung to her mother, the way she had clung to Miss Vernon the first day at the Selwyns’. And their mother seemed distressed, not sure of how to handle it.

  Sylvia took over then. Holding Anne firmly, she said, “Jim must be waiting with the motor running, our ice cream melting. I’m so glad I met you at last, Mrs. Goodwin.”

  Other people were leaving the dayroom and they walked along with the crowd, looking back every few steps to where their mother stood in the doorway, one hand raised to her breast. Toby’s eyes were filling again. But, as if it had been the reservoir for all those tears, her heart was lighter.

  19

  Sept. 13, 1977

  Dearest Mother,

  Eighth grade is pretty good. Susan is in three of my classes, and we have lunch the same period too. I am going to join the science club this term, and also sing in Chorus. We will have a concert in a couple of weeks and I hope you can come to it. Anne is a real second-grade big shot. But she is getting to be a good reader.

  Yesterday, Susan slept over. Her poor little dog is getting worse and she is very worried about him. Her father said she can get another dog, a new puppy, but Susan says she doesn’t want one. She only wants to keep Max.

  Eleven more days until Constance and Arnie’s wedding. We are all excited about it. Anne and I will be junior bridesmaids and will wear long gowns and carry flowers. The wedding is in a church in Forest Hills where Arnie’s parents live. He says he is a nervous wreck, but he acts the same as always. That boy Dennis who used to stay here when Constance did is coming all the way from Ohio for the wedding. And a couple of other people who stayed with Jim and Sylvia.

  How are you feeling? Fine, I hope. Yesterday I got your letter and I have read it three times already. I am glad you like the scarf and wear it all the time. This will be a short letter because Susan is coming over to do homework and practice our songs. Arnie is going to take pictures of Anne and me to send you for your night table. I think of you every day.

  Love and kisses from

  Toby

  20

  SUSAN CALLED AND TOLD Toby to come over right away. She sounded very upset and she hung up before Toby could ask any questions. Toby, who was working in her room on a weather project for the science club, got dressed quickly and walked to Susan’s house. It was Saturday, a gorgeous fall day. The leaves on the maple trees in Susan’s front yard had started to turn.

  Mrs. Schwamm came to the door and let Toby in. “I’m so glad you’re here, Toby,” she said. “It’s a very sad day at our house.”

  “Max?” Toby asked.

  Susan’s mother nodded. “We’re taking him to the vet’s this morning, and Susan is hysterical.”

  “Do you have to do it?” Toby asked, beginning to feel some of her friend’s anguish.

  “Yes. If we don’t want Max to be in pain any more. And he is. It’s difficult for him to walk, or even to eat now. I’m not any happier than Susan is about it. He was mine first, you know.”

  “Where is she?” Toby asked.

  “Upstairs in her room with the door shut. She says she’s never coming out. Max is up there with her.”

  Toby climbed the stairs slowly. She had been feeling so carefree and hopeful since visiting her mother. Now she dreaded entering Susan’s room, dreaded coming face to face with Susan’s grief. She knocked softly on the door.

  “Who is it?” Susan asked, her voice muffled.

  “Me. It’s Toby.”

  The door opened and Susan was standing there, still in her pajamas, her hair uncombed. Her eyes were swollen from weeping, and fresh tears were filling them as Toby went in. In the corner of the room she could see Max, who didn’t even try to rise and greet her this time. He just lay on his blanket, breathing hoarsely. But his tail thumped the floor twice in recognition.

  “I’m not going to let them,” Susan said, slamming the door shut behind Toby. “I’m going to lock myself in and I’m never coming out again. I don’t care what they say.”

  “You’d have to come out sometime,” Toby said.

  “Are you on their side or mine?” Susan shouted.

  “Yours, of course. But they’re not doing it to be mean, Susan. You know that.”

  “I don’t care. How would they like it if somebody did that to them?”

  Toby couldn’t think of an answer to that. She couldn’t think of anything to say that would comfort or help Susan now. She sat cross-legged on the rumpled bed and watched as Susan paced, barefooted, around the room.

  “I don’t care if we starve to death up here. I don’t care if I never go to school again. I don’t care about anything!” Susan cried. And she threw herself so hard across the bed that it shook on its frame.

  Toby stood and went across the room to Max, who made a feeble effort to rise, like a courteous old gentleman, but then fell back again. “He can’t even get up,” she said.

  But Susan didn’t answer. She had pulled the covers over her head and was lying very still.

  Toby sat on the floor next to Max and stroked his long ears. She felt dreadful. Maybe it was better never to love anybody or anything, so you would never have to feel this way. She thought of her own father and knew that wasn’t true. In spite of everything, she was glad she had known him, could remember him, even as memory became fainter and more distant.

  “Susan?” she said, but Susan still didn’t answer.

  There was a knock on the door, and Susan jumped up, dragging the blankets with her. “Don’t open that!” she commanded Toby. “I’m never letting them in.”

  The doorknob rattled and Susan’s father called her. Then it was quiet again and the dog’s breathing was the loudest sound in the room.

  Toby wondered what would happen next. Would they have to force their way in here? Would Susan barricade the door with furniture and try to run away with Max down a ladder of knotted sheets? She turned around and saw that Susan was getting dressed. She was still crying, snuffling and rubbing her eyes as she put on her jeans and a shirt. She wasn’t packing a bag or anything. She just pulled a comb roughly through her hair, blew her nose noisily, and sat down again on the bed. They stared at each other.

  Then Toby went to Susan and put her arms around her. “I know,” she said. They sat there embracing for a few minutes, and then Susan got up and opened the door. Her father was standing there. He put his arm around her neck. “I’m sorry, Babe,” he said. “I really am. Do you want to come with us, or do you want to stay here with Toby?”

  “Here,” Susan said, and they could barely hear her.

  Her father walked across the room and picked Max up. Susan ran to him and put her head against the dog’s for a moment before her father carried him out. After they left, she turned her face to the wall. Toby could see that she was digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands.

  Mrs. Schwamm was in the doorway, watching her, too. “I’m going with Daddy, Suse,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “Toby, can you stay for a while?”

  Toby said yes. Then she listened to their footsteps going down the stairs, and then the slam of the front door, and finally the sound of the car’s motor.

  At that, Susan ran to the window and looked down. Coming up behind her, Toby could see the car as it turned the corner. She remembered some of the things people had said to her mother after her father died. Things like “At least he didn’t suffer” and “He’s at peace now.” Sometimes they would hear the same words spoken over and over again in one day. They didn’t mean very much, didn’t have much power to comfort. She had wished that everyone would just shut up.

  Yet now she felt that she wanted to say something to Susan to make her feel better, that their silence had to be broken. “Do you want to go downstairs?” she asked
.

  Susan shook her head.

  “Do you want to come to my house?”

  Another headshake.

  They sat without speaking for several moments and then Toby said, “Susan, I saw my mother last week.”

  Susan didn’t even look up. “That’s good,” she said dully.

  “I mean, for the first time ever since I came here.”

  This time Susan looked at her. “What do you mean? You were just there a few weeks ago.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Toby said. “I lied to you.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “Because I was ashamed. I lied about a lot of things.”

  “What were you ashamed of?” Susan asked.

  “Of my mother. Of her sickness,” Toby said.

  “Liver trouble?”

  “No. That was a lie, too.” Toby hesitated, and then she said, “She had a nervous breakdown. She’s in a mental hospital. I didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

  “Oh, Toby,” Susan said.

  “I don’t even know why I’m telling you now. Except I want to. I told so many lies I can’t even keep track of them. But I thought you wouldn’t like me if you knew about it. I thought you wouldn’t want to be my friend.”

  “You dope,” Susan said.

  “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  “What about the hospital, with the swimming pool and everything?”

  “I made that up.”

  “I thought so,” Susan said. “But I didn’t want to say anything.”

  “And that’s not all,” Toby continued, now eager to get it all said at once. “The Selwyns aren’t friends of the family. They’re my foster parents. I was ashamed of them, too.”

  “But they’re so nice!” Susan said.

  “I know. I was a dope, like you said.”

  “So you never went to see your mother all that time?”

  “No. And I never heard from her either. I made that up about the letters, too. I kept writing to her, but she didn’t write back.” Saying that now, Toby felt a twinge of the old resentment and pain.

  “But why didn’t she write to you or call you up at least?”

  “That’s what I wondered. But she couldn’t. She was too sick. I was so worried. And then I got angry with her. I thought I was going to have to live here forever.”

  Susan stood up. “You mean now you have to move? Oh, Toby, I couldn’t stand that!”

  “Not yet,” Toby said. “I mean, she’s getting better. Really, this time. But it will take a while. And maybe we’ll move to Queens. The next time I see my mother, I’ll ask her about that. I’m so glad I can tell you about it. I always thought Anne was going to give things away. And she almost did, a couple of times.”

  “She’s such a cute kid,” Susan said.

  “I’ll be happy to lend her to you for a few years,” Toby said, and Susan smiled.

  Then they both thought of Max again at the same time.

  21

  ON THE MORNING OF the wedding, Toby ran to the window to see if it would be a sunny day, as Constance had hoped. She’d said it was lucky to get married on a fair day and that the church would be prettier in sunlight. But it was still dark out and difficult to judge the weather. Toby had awakened too early, something she did whenever she was this excited about anything. Even the birds weren’t up yet, and the air had a solemn stillness. But from somewhere else in the house she could hear movement, footsteps. Anne probably, she thought, up trying on her gown again. She would wear it out before the wedding.

  Toby went downstairs in her pajamas, barefoot so as not to wake anyone. She found Sylvia sitting in the kitchen alone, drinking a cup of coffee.

  “You too?” she asked Toby. “I do this every time one of my kids gets married. A little alarm goes off in my head about 4 a.m. and I come down here. To think about them, I guess.” When Toby hesitated in the doorway, Sylvia said, “It was lonely, though. And I’m glad to have company.”

  Toby went in and sat down next to her, resting her chin on her folded arms. Would Sylvia do this for her wedding, and for Anne’s? They weren’t really her kids. They had their own mother and in a few weeks they would be gone from here forever. It was what she had wanted more than anything else in the world, to be reunited with her mother, to be a real family again. Why didn’t she feel happier? Would she always want to be somewhere else, and then miss the last place even before she left it? She never thought she would have such tender feelings about this house, about the woman sitting opposite her now, her gray hair pulled painfully tight in rollers, her coffee cup held in a small, weathered hand. When had that hand, and this room, become so familiar and so dear?

  “I’ve had six brides,” Sylvia said, “and even more grooms. The boys outnumbered the girls around here. But I’ll confess I always favored the girls, myself.”

  It occurred to Toby, then, that soon after she left, someone else would probably take her place in this household, in her bedroom, and she felt a wave of envy and despair.

  “Sylvia?” she said. “Are you going to have more children here soon? I mean, after Anne and me.”

  “Oh, Toby, I don’t know. We’re grandparents now, Jim and me. A couple of old coots. Maybe the social services will think we’re over the hill pretty soon. We feel so lucky every time they let us have a couple more. Like with you and Anne. We hadn’t had anyone for six months before you, and we were worried that they had retired us.”

  “You’re not so old,” Toby said, remembering her first impression of them.

  “Thanks, dear. I’m glad you don’t think so. But things are slowing up, down here,” she said, pointing to her slippered feet. “And up here, too,” she added, touching her head. “My own parents lived to a ripe old age and were active right to the last, though. Maybe I’ll inherit that from them.”

  Toby was reminded of her own secret worry that she would inherit her mother’s mental illness. She had never shared this with anyone, not even with Susan, as if saying it aloud would be the magic to make it so. But now it pressed at her, and she wanted to know, even if the truth was going to be awful. “Sylvia?” she began, and then stopped and fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers, moving them in a little circle in the center of the table.

  Sylvia waited.

  “Could I get what my mother had? I mean, could Anne and I inherit that, like being tall or short, or the color of your eyes?”

  “No, Toby,” Sylvia said. “I don’t think so. What happened to your mother happened because she stored up her feelings for such a long time, because she was grieving but wouldn’t let herself grieve, because she was angry and wouldn’t let herself be that, either.”

  “Angry?” Toby asked. “Who was she angry with?”

  “Well, it’s a different kind of anger. But I guess she was angry with your father. For leaving her like that.”

  “But he didn’t leave her, he died!” Toby cried. “He couldn’t help it!”

  “I know,” Sylvia said. “And she couldn’t help her feelings, either. But she was ashamed of them, and they hurt too much. So she pushed them down, kept them inside her, simmering, simmering away like a pot of soup, until it all boiled over. And she had that breakdown.”

  “Oh,” Toby said. Her hands were still.

  “And I don’t see how you can inherit that. You can learn to do it, though, to bottle up your feelings like that.”

  “I did, for a little while,” Toby confessed.

  “I know you did,” Sylvia said, and as she said it, the sun rose, lighting her face and then slowly the whole room.

  “Did you sleep with those rollers all night?” Toby asked.

  “I tried to sleep,” Sylvia said. “It was like a bed of nails. Or a head of nails. Constance wanted to comb it out for me yesterday, but I told her that wasn’t proper work for a bride on her wedding eve.”

  A bride, Toby thought, remembering the shimmering gown and illusion veil that Constance had given her a glimpse of through plastic wrapping, the day she h
ad picked them up from the store.

  Then Anne and Jim came downstairs. “We heard voices,” he said. “Annie figured it was burglars coming to steal her dress.” He went to the window. “Nice day.”

  Nice wasn’t the word for it. But Jim was famous for understatement. It was a glorious, beautiful, wonderful day. After breakfast, they all went upstairs to bathe and dress. Arnie had hired a car to take them to the church. Jim had protested. He could still drive, couldn’t he? He wasn’t that decrepit. But Arnie wanted them to travel in style. And he confided to Toby that Jim’s old car might decide to die on the way. He had to be there to give Constance away. They all had to be there.

  Anne was the first one dressed. Her dress and Toby’s were yellow organdy, gauzy-thin, and with taffeta slips underneath that whispered with every movement. Toby’s felt cool and slippery next to her skin. They had hats, too, large and open at the crown, and with long streamers to hang down their backs. The florist arrived in his truck while they were dressing and delivered their bouquets, daisies and baby’s-breath with knotted ribbons to match their dresses. There was a corsage of speckled orchids for Sylvia and a white boutonniere for Jim.

  His hands shook as he pinned the corsage to Sylvia’s dress.

  “You’re going to stick me one of these days and make yourself a widower,” she said. “I’d think you were used to it by now.”

  But her own hands weren’t too steady as she pulled out the rollers and ran the brush through her hair.

  “Do you want me to do the back?” Toby asked, and Sylvia handed her the brush.

  “Bless you,” she said. “My fingers are all stuck together. I guess it’s from not sleeping so good last night. I do that every time. I’ll be doing the same for you some day,” and Toby felt a rush of happiness.

  Anne went to the window to look for the hired car. Her hat was a little lopsided and Toby noticed a small gray stain on the hem of her dress. She had tried it on every day that week, parading in front of the mirror in rehearsal for the real thing. She sang “Here Comes the Bride” so many times that Toby wanted to plug up her ears.