by Lisa Wingate
Mary came in as I was recovering. She looked exhausted, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. She forced a smile when she realized I was awake. “I hear you’re doing well today.”
Yes, I thought, and the word came out, “Essshhh.” I was disappointed with the sound of it.
Mary smiled again. “See. That was better.”
“Eeeyyye?” I wanted to ask why she’d been late this morning, why she looked sad.
She didn’t understand, and I experienced the usual moment of irritation at being unable to communicate. I wanted to comfort her, to be useful for something.
“You look good today,” she said, moving the pillows on the lower half of the bed, changing the position of my legs. She took the brush from the nightstand to comb my hair. “How about we fix your hair? You’ve got such pretty hair, Mrs. Parker.”
I wanted to tell her she had beautiful hair—thick, in a glossy, chestnut color. It was a shame she kept it wound up in a bun like that. She was a lovely girl, even in her plain, unassuming clothes and with no makeup.
A noise from the doorway caught her attention, and she glanced up, surprised as the door pushed open wider and her little boy slipped through. The top of his head crossed my vision as he bolted to her, holding up a piece of paper with a Magic Marker drawing on it.
“Mama. Wook! Twain-twain!” he squealed, tugging at her skirt and trying to show her the drawing. “Man make twain. Woo-ooo-woo!”
Mary scooped him up, blushing and stepping back from the bed. “That’s a pretty train, Brady, but you’re not supposed to be in here. You’re supposed to be in the TV room until the day-care van comes. Where’s Cindy? She said she’d keep an eye on you.”
“Her in da pod-dy,” Brady replied, unabashedly.
Mary frowned toward the door. “Where’s Brandon? Why isn’t he watching you?”
“B-andon talk the twain man.”
“Mr. Fisher?” Brady shrugged, and she explained, “The man you met last night? The one who told you about his trains?”
Brady nodded vigorously, then swiveled in her arms as his brother skidded through the door. “Brady, you stupid! You’re supposed to stay down there!” Brandon’s high-pitched voice echoed around the room and escaped into the hall. A few doors down, the moaning woman called out in response.
Mary silenced Brandon with a finger to her lips, then set Brady down and turned to me, her cheeks red, her eyes nervous and fearful. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker … I really apologize … I … we had a mix-up this morning and missed the early bus. The day-care van’s coming back to get them. Brandon’s going to be a little late for school, huh?” Laying a hand on Brandon’s head, she forced an encouraging smile and turned him toward the door.
Down the hall, the moaning woman wailed for help, and Brady’s eyes grew large.
Mary reached for his hand. “Come on, guys.”
I wanted to tell her to wait, not to take the boys away. “A-aaate,” I heard myself say, and my hand jerked toward Brady’s picture. I tried to conjure the name for the thing that pulls a train, but the words were a jumble in my mind. “Tss-eee?”
Mary squinted, trying to make sense of me. I moved my hand toward the paper again.
“Tss-eee,” I repeated, growing hopeful.
Brady clutched his chubby hands around the bed rail, wrinkling the paper as he climbed up like a little boy on monkey bars. “Her wanna see twain,” he interpreted, his bright eyes turning my way with a look of eureka.
“Yeee-sssh!” I cheered, suddenly triumphant.
Mary smiled indulgently. “Just for a minute.” She glanced toward the door. No doubt she had work to do, and she was already behind from being late this morning.
Hooking an elbow on the railing, Brady tapped my arm and began describing the parts of his train engine. That was the word— “engine.” I felt another small burst of victory. I wouldn’t lose that word again.
I soaked in the little-boy scent of Brady, the feel of his nearness, the precious ring of his high voice. He was a very bright boy. He knew a lot about trains. Perhaps Mr. Fisher had given him an education.
Claude appeared in the doorway, finally. “Well, there you boys are. Y’all disappeared on me,” he said, and wheeled himself into the room.
We were all gathered around the picture, and Brady had shinnied in next to me, when Dr. Barnhill, whom I remembered from my stay in the hospital, came by. He frowned sternly, surveying the commotion.
Mary scooped Brady off the bed, blushed, and steered the boys, then Mr. Fisher, toward the door. “Sorry, Dr. Barnhill,” she mumbled, slipping past him.
“Mary.” His reply held little intonation, then he turned to his charts.
“Morning, Doc!” Claude called back.
“Good morning, Claude. How’s the pacemaker doing?” Dr. Barnhill answered without looking up.
Claude’s hand made a hollow sound, thumping his chair. “Right as rain, Doc. I ain’t had a single spell since it got put in. You should of seen me dancin’ down the hall while-ago.”
Dr. Barnhill chuckled and shook his head as he turned to me. “Looks like you’re feeling well enough for visitors, Mrs. Parker.”
“Yyy-eeesh!” I answered, and Dr. Barnhill smiled again.
CHAPTER 7
Rebecca Macklin
In the morning, I awoke suspended in time. Blinking against the slanted light, I took in the deco-style ceiling fixture, with its ornately filigreed brass arms and the Tiffany globe of hovering dragonflies. As a child, I’d loved to lie in bed late and watch the sun trail across the ceiling, giving life to the dragonflies. I imagined them like the Skin Horse and the Little Wooden Doll—living beings trapped in suspended animation, awaiting freedom with breathless anticipation.
Watching them again, I felt my childhood self, like a spirit lying atop me, her form relaxed, comfortable, unhurried, her fingers resting loosely against the pillow. I slipped into the memory, and my body was small and wiry, like Macey’s—bold with life, with confidence. Fearless.
I’d almost forgotten her, the spirit that floated like a gossamer mist over me now, the girl who lived in this place. She died the summer I turned twelve. She took on fear; she took on the pain of rejection, anger, guilt, self-recrimination; the idea that, if she’d been a better girl, a better daughter, there wouldn’t be so much dividing. Dividing possessions, dividing money, dividing family. Dividing her.
Eventually, the dragonflies were only bits of colored glass.
I can’t let that happen to Macey, I told myself. I can’t let her take it onto herself. Even as the thought traveled through my mind, I realized that part of me had been preparing for this day for seventeen years, since Kyle and I met at a convention in San Diego. He was a young lawyer with a Pepperdine education, and I was a hotel concierge, working my way toward a law degree, even though my mother thought it a ridiculous idea. She wanted me to enroll in retail design classes and take over the shop. But at twenty-eight, after having dropped out various semesters to nurse her through lupus flares, I wanted a life of my own, now that her illness had gone into remission. I wanted to be independent, to become something so substantial that even my father would have to stand up and take notice. My success would be proof that I didn’t need him, after all.
When I met Kyle, I was attracted to him because he was nothing like my father. Where my father was always reserved, a quiet man, a brooder and a thinker, Kyle was outgoing, a charmer, a people person. He was tan and athletic, a California boy with honey brown hair and the most incredible blue eyes. I was so struck by him the day we met that I knocked over a cup of coffee and doused his briefcase while trying to give him directions to Coronado Island. He just smiled and asked if he could buy me another cup. I said yes, and we spent three hours that evening talking in a café, watching the sun descend over the ocean. After that, I couldn’t think about anything but him, and even though my mother tried in every way to prevent it, we flew to Lake Tahoe and got married on a mountaintop four months after we met. For years af
terward, my mother pointed out the impetuousness of that decision. Such rash choices usually lead to disaster, she said.
I was determined to prove her wrong. I made up my mind that Kyle and I would have the perfect life. We could achieve it if we worked hard enough. He took a job with a firm, found his way into the lucrative arena of real estate law. Brokering big-money corporate deals suited him, and he was good at it. I finished law school, passed the bar, and moved into immigration law, which seemed a perfect fit for me, after having lived overseas as a child. When I found out I was pregnant with Macey, we made plans to take on a partner and start our own firm so we could spend more time together, perhaps cut back the workload a bit to accommodate the demands of parenthood. Shortly after the firm was formed, Macey came along with wispy blond hair and her father’s blue eyes, to complete the picture.
The perfect picture. Why wasn’t that good enough for Kyle? Why wasn’t I good enough?
The cell phone beeped in my purse, warning that the battery was low. What would Kyle say if I called right now? What would he say if I confronted him about the scene in the café?
Deep in my head, an old, familiar admonition warned that I should be practical, careful, not do anything until I was home. Never, ever trust a man to do the right thing, Rebecca, my mother advised. A woman can’t afford to be pie-in-the-sky. A woman has to look after herself… . She always followed up with the assessment that, if she’d been smart, she would have hired a better lawyer during her divorce, gotten more. She would have taken the house on Blue Sky Hill. She would have sold it to one of the salvage companies that bought old houses in decaying parts of town, and plucked out the valuable items—stained glass, ornate doors, fixtures, tin ceilings, trim work, wooden floors, expansive mantelpieces—then left the carcasses behind for demolition.
If only she’d been smarter about the divorce, she would have watched that house come down, rather than seeing Hanna Beth move into it.
She’d be livid if she knew you were here, a voice whispered inside me again. She would hate every part of this.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I raked my hands into my hair, combed it back and looked toward the hall, listening for sounds. There was another peanut butter and jelly sandwich plate by the door, with a glass of tea, the ice cubes still fresh this time. Apparently, Teddy was up.
The rhythmic sound of hammering in the backyard caught my attention, and I walked to the window. Teddy was on the red stone patio, clumsily hammering three boards together to make a bench. When he finished and set it upright, the bench was uneven, one leg longer than the other. It listed to one side like a sinking ship as he picked up several potted plants and put them on top. The backyard, a neatly manicured maze of paths and gardens, was filled with an odd conglomeration of lopsided scrap-lumber potting benches. Tiny plants grew in everything from wineglasses to discarded restaurant cups and cutoff soda bottles.
I stared in amazement as Teddy placed potlings on the newest bench, then wiped his hands on his pants, picked up his tools and disappeared into the tiny garden house beneath my grandmother’s pecan tree. Family legend said that she’d removed a planned sunroom from the blueprint of the house, so as not to destroy the tree.
Surveying Teddy’s menagerie beneath the sprawling shade of the pecan, I wondered if he had always spent his days building benches and filling them with makeshift pots. Where did the plants eventually go? Right now, the backyard was overrun with Teddy’s creations.
I considered the question as I took my toiletries and clothes to the bathroom, showered, and dressed. The overhead fixture had burned out in the night, but the light from the long oval window was sufficient. Pulling my damp hair into a clip, I felt almost prepared to take on the day, to face my father. In the mirror, I saw in myself his hazel eyes, his dark hair. My mother always claimed those characteristics came from her family, but we both knew they didn’t.
What would my father see when he looked at me? Would he see the forty-something woman with my mother’s face, her nose, her lips, her high, arched brows, but his eyes, his thick, dark hair? Perhaps he wouldn’t recognize me at all. Perhaps I would come as a shock to him, a strange woman descending his stairs.
The idea was unsettling, frightening. Teddy said my father became angry sometimes. If that happened, how would I handle it? What would I do? I had no experience in dealing with an Alzheimer’s patient. If he was confused enough to get lost in his own neighborhood, to take sleeping pills in the middle of the day, what else would he do? What had happened in this house since Hanna Beth was taken to the hospital?
Bracing my hands on the counter, I gripped the edges, trying to contain my unhelpful imagination. The first thing, the very first thing, I needed to do today was track down this Kay-Kay, find out why she left, and get her to come back. After that, the house needed to be brought into a livable condition, and groceries purchased. Hopefully by then, after talking with Kay-Kay and Hanna Beth’s caretakers at the nursing center, I could figure out what should happen here in the long run. The sooner I cleaned up the mess and made some sort of arrangements, the sooner I could return home and try to figure out my life.
Even though it seemed a ridiculous waste of time, illogical in so many ways, I stayed at the mirror long enough to put on makeup. I wanted my father to see me looking my best. Or perhaps I was only delaying the inevitable. When I was finished, I went back to the bedroom and laid everything carefully atop my suitcase—folded, ready for a quick exit.
Gathering my courage, I descended the stairs slowly, one step at a time, craning to look around the arch, to see if anyone was at the bottom.
The entry hall and the living room were empty, illuminated only by natural light from the windows, the house impossibly quiet. I checked the kitchen, then walked through the French doors onto the patio. The air smelled good this morning, fresh with the feel of spring, and sweetly scented by the dampness of a vine growing on the trellis by the chimney. The plant was in beautiful shape, obviously well cared for and painstakingly pruned. Maybe someone came to tend the flower beds—a yard man or gardener. Maybe whoever cared for the yard could help me find Kay-Kay.
“Teddy?” I called, weaving through the menagerie of planting benches toward the garden house. “Teddy, are you in there?”
He came out with a seedling cupped in his hands. Passing through the undersized door on my grandmother’s miniature gingerbread creation, he ducked and turned sideways. “Hi, A-becca. Good morning, good morning, good morning!”
It occurred to me that Teddy held none of the resentment toward me that I held toward him. I felt a sense of guilt, a vague unwanted regret for all the nights I’d lain in bed hating him. “Thanks for the sandwich.” I nodded over my shoulder toward my room.
Teddy squinted at the window. “It’s ohhh-kay.” He stretched the word in the middle, staring upward until he lost his balance and stumbled off the stone path. He pointed into the pecan branches near my room. “It a dove, got a nest in the tree. Mourn-ind dove.” Curling his lips, he made a birdcall that was so lifelike it caused a bird to answer from somewhere in the hedge near the fence. “There she id,” he said with satisfaction. “There mama bird. Jus’ like the book You My Mother? I got that book.” He turned toward the house, seeming to have forgotten the seedling plant in his hands, and decided instead to search for his copy of Dr. Seuss’s Are You My Mother?
“I’m sorry I slept so long last night. I really meant to pick up a pizza or something,” I said, wondering what should come next.
“I like pizza.” Teddy’s brows rose, his eyes broadening with anticipation.
“I’ll order some later. It looks like you’re about out of groceries.” Which was an understatement. My father and Teddy were surviving on two loaves of bread, a jar of jelly, and a tub of generic peanut butter, as far as I could tell. And that brought up another question—how could anyone walk out and leave them in this condition?
“Kay-Kay bring the gross-ries.” Teddy looked toward the bay windows on the
breakfast nook, as if he expected her to appear there any moment.
Clearly, Kay-Kay hadn’t brought groceries in a while. “Teddy, do you know how to get in touch with Kay-Kay? Where she lives, or her phone number? ”
Teddy’s fingers began kneading the plant roots, sending a shower of potting soil over his tennis shoes. He shook his head, his expression narrowing with apprehension.
“I’m not mad,” I interjected quickly. “I just thought I should probably call her about the groceries.”
“Kay-Kay bring the gross-ries.” The anxiety in his hand movements increased until pieces of root drifted downward with the soil.
“Oh, I know,” I rushed out, once again vaguely aware of his size, his strength, the fact that I had no idea what he was capable of. “I thought probably I could call her and see when she’s going to come with the groceries. Maybe I could pick up some extra things. Did she bring you the bread and peanut butter and jelly?” I clung to the momentary hope that someone was visiting regularly, providing food, at least.
Teddy shook his head. His shoulders sagged forward, and he blinked rapidly. The mother in me recognized that body language. He looked like Macey caught in the act and searching for an explanation that wouldn’t get her grounded.
“Did someone else bring the peanut butter and jelly?”
Teddy shook his head, still hooding his eyes.
“Did Daddy Ed buy it?” Another negative response. “Did you buy it?” The nearest grocery store was miles from here. There was a car in the garage, but surely Teddy wasn’t allowed to drive it. Surely my father didn’t drive anymore.
Teddy began weeping, his shoulders shuddering with wracking sobs. His hands closed over the plant, crushing it.
“It doesn’t matter,” I soothed, feeling nervous and inadequate. “It doesn’t matter, Teddy. Don’t worry about—”
