by Paula Garner
As the evening wore on and I tried in vain to amuse myself with TV and homework, I wished I had accepted Gab’s invitation to watch a movie at her house. All I had wanted to do was to talk to Luke, but here I was with nothing to do but fret and pine and stare at our picture.
Finally, at eleven, my mom returned. I was lying on the sofa, gnawing on an apple and half watching Anthony Bourdain buy a duck press in Paris — it operated like an instrument of torture, and I thought maybe Eli would like one just for decor.
She glanced up at me as she slipped her shoes off by the door. “Hey,” she said.
I ignored her. I didn’t want to share anything with her. Luke was a secret she had kept from me, and now he was a secret I wanted to keep from her. At some point the compulsion to interrogate her might eclipse my need to distance her, but I wasn’t there yet.
“Is there anything to eat?” she asked on her way to the kitchen.
A question I’m pretty sure Leila’s or Gab’s parents never asked them . . .
“I didn’t make you anything, if that’s what you’re asking.” I heard the refrigerator opening and closing, then the cabinet, then the utensils drawer. She was eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon. It was her go-to maneuver for impatient hunger. Suddenly it grated on me. She didn’t shop and cook something amazing, like Leila’s mom would. She didn’t order in sushi or deep-dish pizza, like Gab’s mom would. She ate peanut butter from the jar and left me to my own devices.
I flicked off the TV and went to bed without saying good night. I read a book, periodically eyeing my phone, until 1:00, when I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore. Nothing from Luke. Why? Not one tiny message? No Hey, great seeing you, too?
Nothing.
In the morning I found out why. His messages were stamped at nearly 2:00 a.m.
Jules, it was amazing meeting you, too. It still feels surreal. I keep staring at the picture of us.
I’m in Milwaukee — never made it to Lawrence. Bad news: my mom took a turn for the worse. She’s been in the ICU all afternoon and evening. She’s breathing better now, and when her oncologist comes by for morning rounds, we’ll know more. I hope she can be discharged soon. She hates the hospital.
Going to try to get a few zzz’s at the house before heading out early for Appleton. I have lessons in the morning and a rehearsal in the afternoon.
More soon!
I felt like my insides were caving in. Why did such terrible things have to happen? My heart went out to Luke, and to his mother and father, and, yes, to myself, too. Because I wanted a chance to know her. And I wanted to enjoy Luke, enjoy getting to know him, and now everything was terrible.
I wrote back, Oh Luke. I’m so sorry. My thoughts are with you all. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do. And please keep in touch.
I wondered if he’d told his parents about me. I mean, I could understand if he didn’t — they had actual life-and-death issues going on, after all. But if he had told them, how had they reacted? Were they happy? Did the news make his mom smile, even in the midst of everything? Even though I couldn’t remember them, I felt a strong urge to do whatever I could to make these people’s lives a little bit better. After everything they’d done for me, it felt like the very least I could do.
I didn’t hear back from him the rest of Sunday. Or Monday. I fretted about him — and his mother. What if she wasn’t okay? Would he tell me?
At lunch on Tuesday — Valentine’s Day — I sat with Gab, since Leila had a different lunch period, and felt sorry for myself out loud. We sat at the corner of a long table, heads close so we didn’t have to yell over the racket.
“Just message him again,” Gab said, pulling off her hoodie and letting it hang off the back of her chair. “What do you have to lose?”
“I don’t want to be a pest. He said he’d write more when he could.” I stared out the long bank of windows that overlooked the football field. I wondered if Luke played any sports. I guessed he had to protect his hands. Running, maybe? He could be a runner with that lean build. There was so much I didn’t know about him. And oh, how I longed to know everything.
Gab scooped a pita wedge through a little Tupperware of hummus, sending an invisible plume of cumin and garlic into the air — a pungent contrast to the greasy burger-and-spaghetti smell in the cafeteria. “Here, eat something.” She pushed her food at me, but I held up my hand to stop her. She leaned down and rummaged through her backpack. “I bought a Valentine cookie from the GSA fund-raiser.” She offered a cellophane-wrapped neon-pink monstrosity.
I shook my head. “I can’t. I feel sick. And I can’t message him. I’d just feel so pathetic. He has important things going on. His mom might be dying!”
She set the cookie on the table. “Then ask him about that! Ask how she’s doing.”
“I can’t. What if he feels like I’m intruding?”
“See, that’s your problem,” she said, shaking a carrot stick at me. “You’re too self-conscious, and you always assume the worst. You should take more chances, do things that scare you.”
Spoken like a person with a dependable safety net at home. If I had Gab’s parents, I might be bold and fearless, too. All I had was my mom, and if I fucked up — or if she fell off the wagon — then what? Who would I have then? Every move I made in life was analyzed and calculated for its safety rating.
After school, I endured a yearbook meeting, where I turned in a copy of one of the baby photos from the social services file. Fifteen months old, I stood laughing in front of the piano, one dimpled hand on the bench, my pajama’d feet planted in a pair of men’s dress shoes. I looked silly and happy — and just enough like myself to make it interesting. No doubt my mother would be upset that I used a foster care picture, if she knew. But my mother paging through my yearbook? Slim odds.
After the meeting, I trudged to Laroche’s for some dubious comfort of the Eli variety — and some sure comfort of the chocolate-and-butter variety.
No scarf or mittens today. In the sun it almost felt warm. February in Chicago was a lot like me: a study in yearning and hope. Whether the temperatures have been brutal or mild, the snowfall massive or meager, the one abiding truth about Chicago winters is that they are long. When the northern hemisphere reaches for the sun, signaling the end of another icy era, it’s like a meteorological lifeline.
Banks of snow melted along the sides of the street, unveiling last fall’s leaves, twigs, and spruce needles. The crisp smell of wet stone and the rush of water down the street gutters seemed to promise a spring at last.
Nearing Laroche’s, I noticed a new window display at Tina’s, featuring a mannequin wearing the most incredible hat — a pillbox style with a velvet ribbon and a black netted veil, probably from the forties? I had to see it up close.
Tina glanced up from the register as I came in. “Jules!” she called, looking over her bejeweled horn-rimmed glasses. She was wrapping something in white tissue. “I’ve been hoping you’d come in. I’ve got something for you. Give me a minute.”
“Sure,” I said. She knew my tastes really well, owing to the years of my ogling special items in her store, only to walk out with a couple of four-dollar sweaters or a like-new jacket for a song. I just hoped that whatever she found this time wouldn’t be more than I should (or could) spend.
I made my way to the mannequin to examine the hat. It was breathtaking. I slipped it on and stepped over to the mirror for a peek. Why didn’t women wear hats anymore? They were so incredibly flattering. Regretfully, I placed it back on the mannequin’s head. Even if the price tag weren’t a bit rich for my secondhand blood, where would I wear it?
I turned away from the mannequin and flipped through some ancient issues of Ladies’ Home Journal, full of flapper style and adorable hairdos. Then I spotted a weathered spiral-bound cookbook. Charleston Receipts. I knew that “receipts” was an old word for “recipes,” so I picked it up and paged through it. It was put out by the Junior League in the 1950s, and it
looked like it. There was a lot of focus on serving the lord, the church, and the men. The women’s names were all “Mrs.” followed by her husband’s name. The book was filled with recipes for shrimp, oysters, punches . . . I tried to envision a version of a Thorne miniature of a 1950s South Carolina home. A coastal town in the South, postwar, during desegregation . . . What would that be like?
“Jules.” I turned as Tina bustled past racks of Mason jars and vinyl albums, her overgrown gray curls springing from her head. She held an old cookie tin.
“Oh, look at that!” I took it from her. “Is it American? Or English?” I turned it over and the contents shifted.
“English. Came from an attic at an estate sale,” she said. “Coated in about a quarter inch of dust. I don’t think it’s been touched since the nineteen seventies — maybe earlier. Open it.”
I set it down and prized the lid off, then drew in my breath.
Buttons.
“Now those are old,” she told me, shaking a pen at the tin. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
I stared into the tin, overwhelmed by the hundreds of pieces of history inside. “They’re incredible,” I whispered. Metal buttons, glass buttons, ceramic buttons, enameled buttons . . . Flowers, words, birds, shells. Uniform buttons! All of the people whose hands had touched these, all of the places they’d been!
When I glanced up at her, she was grinning at me. “I thought you’d like it,” she said.
“How much?” I asked, hoping she’d say anything even remotely reasonable.
“It’s yours,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “You’re the one it belongs with.”
I set the tin down and hugged her. “Thank you, Tina.”
She pulled away, looking pleased. “I wanted to ask you, too . . . what are your plans for the summer?”
Summer seemed a million years away. I would be going away to school and I didn’t even know where yet, so summer was beyond my ability to consider. “I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing so far.”
The door to the shop opened, and she turned and called a hello to the customer. Then she stepped closer to me. “Listen, Anne’s daughter in Boston is expecting a baby in June, and Anne wants to spend a few months with them, you know, helping out. I’ll need someone to fill in while she’s gone, and of course I thought of you.”
I warmed inside, pleased she’d thought of me — and excited. The idea of handling pieces of history every day instead of Miracle Whip and meat was appealing. “I would love that,” I said. “Thank you so much!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, her eyes crinkling. “It only pays ten dollars an hour, but you’ll get first pick of everything I bring in, and I’ll give it to you at my cost.”
“That sounds great.” Ten bucks an hour wasn’t bad, and old and special things for cheap? Yes, please.
“Let me give you an application. It’s just a formality — mostly so I have your contact information.” She turned to head back to the counter. “Hope you’re not allergic to dust!”
“Nope!” I called back to her. “I love dust!” Ugh. I love dust. What an idiot.
I headed out with my treasure in tow, spirits lifted by the job offer and the promising clatter of the buttons in the tin. At Laroche’s, I managed to get myself in the café door with only a single, civilized ding of the bell. The smell of peppermint hovered under the heavy coffee aroma — someone must have ordered one of those disgusting holiday lattes, with the peppermint syrup and crushed candy over the whipped cream topping. Fucking Valentine’s Day. “Hey, you,” I called, approaching the counter where Eli had his head in a book, his black hair falling over his face.
He said without glancing up, “Did you know that in New York City, more people die by suicide than by murder?”
I tilted my head at him fondly. “You are just a ray of sunshine, you know that? God, I miss you at school.” I leaned over and gazed through the glass. Two chocolate croissants left. I thought of Luke with a stab of longing. “Where’s the boss?” I asked.
“Bank, I think. Here.” He grabbed the tongs and put a croissant on a plate.
“Bless you.”
“What’s that?” he said, nodding at my tin.
“Buttons. From Tina’s. She offered me a summer job.”
“Awesome — you’d love that, right?”
“It’s perfect.”
“Want coffee?” He poured some into an English Yuletide cup without waiting for an answer. I took a big bite of the croissant. My nervous stomach made an easy exception for this item.
“So.” Eli gave me a not sure I should even ask look. “What’s going on with Hottie McPianofingers?”
I shook my head. “Eli, no. His mom — she’s really sick. She might be dying.”
His expression morphed into something raw and unguarded. “Man. That’s harsh.”
I could have kicked myself for not thinking about what I was saying. Eli knew better than anyone how “harsh” it was.
Suddenly Madame V. appeared from the back. She screeched at Eli in French, her expertly lined eyes flashing with fury. She pointed to a cup left at the counter by the window, to the fingerprints on the display case, to some napkins on the floor by the garbage receptacle. My heart went out to Eli as he took his lashing and jumped into action. I skulked off to the counter.
As I ate, I gazed out the window at downtown Maplebrook. People filled up their gas tanks. Withdrew money from the ATM. Emerged from Lou’s Quikmart with sodas the size of silos. No one went into or came out of the vacuum cleaner repair shop, per usual. Could there possibly be enough malfunctioning vacuum cleaners in the Maplebrook area to keep a store in business? It seemed implausible. Maybe it was a mafia front.
I opened up my tin and sifted through the buttons, dreaming. I wished there were some way to ask each one about its past, some way to know the mysteries locked inside old objects. What could I study in college that would set me up for a career in antiques? Something sort of like an archaeologist, only less science-y.
When I was finished with my croissant and coffee, I brought my dishes over to the counter. “Hey, what time do you get off?” I asked Eli softly.
He wiped down the espresso machines. “I’m closing, if I’m not fired first.”
I leaned across the counter “Eli? Honey?”
He looked over at me.
“You should really think about college. You’re too good for this stupid job.”
“Truman Capote said the only reason to go to college is if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or something.” He sprayed the counter with blue glass cleaner. “If you want to be a writer, and you can write and spell, there’s no need to go to college.”
“You’d only be a year behind,” I said softly. On impulse, I pulled his head across the counter and kissed him on his lily-white cheek. He made a face, but I could swear I saw a trace of a smile underneath.
“Hey,” he said. “Old man’s out of town. You wanna get drunk tonight?”
I hesitated. Avoiding my mom appealed to me, and a distraction from obsessing about Luke for a while sounded kind of lifesaving. But there was always my personal neon skull-and-crossbones hanging over the entire subject of drugs and alcohol. Was there some kink in my DNA strand that would suck me over to the dark side and make an addict of me? Would getting drunk once lead to becoming a drunk?
No. I’d had champagne with Gab and Leila last October, and I hadn’t had (or wanted) anything since. It didn’t even interest me, the idea of frequent boozing or drugs. I wasn’t that kind of person — I was too worried about being in control and playing it safe. But today a drink or two did not sound like a terrible idea. I didn’t know if it would distract me or just numb me, but at this point, with everything I had going on, I’d welcome either.
“Earth to Jules.” Eli waved his hand in front of my face.
I nodded. I was not my mother. “Let’s do it,” I said.
“Cool. See you later.”
I headed out for the walk home. The sky had
darkened to a deep indigo glow, a few streaks of pinkish-peach lingering at the horizon. With each step I took, I considered the buttons rattling in the tin and how many thousands of sunsets they’d seen on untold hundreds of people. I thought again of uniform buttons and war years and letters and Red Cross girls and USO dances. I lost myself in fantasies of times past, wondering what book or movie might carry me away to the times and places I imagined.
As I approached my house, the lights in my mom’s studio glowed brightly through the closed blinds. She was home.
Inside, I dropped my backpack and left my coat and shoes in the foyer, breathing in the smell of paint and peppermint tea. As I passed her studio, she said, “Hey, how was your day?”
“Fine.” I took a step back and paused in the doorway. She was fucking up the sky. She stepped back and looked at her work, head tilted, then turned to me. “What’s that?” she said, eyeing the cookie tin.
“Buttons from Tina’s. Don’t worry, they were free.”
She squinted at me. “What are you going to do with buttons?”
I sighed. More useless things — that was clearly her thought. “I am going to love them,” I told her. I thought about telling her about my summer job, but I wasn’t feeling very share-y where she was concerned. “I’m going to Eli’s in a while,” I said.
“Eli’s?” Her lips drew into a thin line. “Jules? Does Eli do drugs?” She picked up her no soup mug of tea, her expression tense.
I was a little alarmed that she might actually have some Spidey sense about my plans. I overcompensated by being defensive. “No. Why do you think that? Because he looks different? He does not do drugs. I don’t do drugs. I’m not you, Mom.” I turned and headed for my room, ignoring the guilt I felt for dealing an unnecessary blow. And then I bristled at the guilt, because wasn’t my response warranted?
I lay on my bed and thought about Luke, staring at our photo and replaying moments from our meeting at Laroche’s for the thousandth time. I could still see his fleck-y eyes, his warm smile and pretty teeth. I thought about things he said, ways he reacted to things I said. I hoped he thought I was interesting and smart. I wondered what I’d be like if they hadn’t taken care of me, if I had ended up with a less-loving family for those nineteen months — months I’m sure Gab would say are critical. Maybe I’d be different today. How much of my personality was the result of my early childhood experiences?
