Blue Plate Special

by Michelle D. Kwasney

  I feel Green Mountain watching me. “You okay?”

  When I smooth my hair back, my scalp is damp with sweat. “I’m fine. Why?”

  “Well, you’re shaking, for one thing. And your face is white as these bedsheets. Something tripped your switch, big time.”

  Suddenly, I feel exposed. I picture Mom’s closed door the night of the Phone Call, wishing I had my own to duck behind. But since I don’t, I put the vibe out instead: Do not enter. I slide my chair away from the bed. When it comes into contact with the wall, I focus on the hallway. The nurse’s station. The bright florescent lights that flood the long ivory corridor.

  Changing the subject, Green Mountain asks me, “Did your ma ever tell you how her father died?”

  “In a car accident,” I answer, still staring into the hall.

  She reaches into her drawer again. I turn to look as she removes a strip of black-and-white photos. There are four of them, printed vertically on a paper the size of a bookmark. “Well, since we’re strolling down memory lane together”—she holds them out for me—“this is him and me in high school. Only picture I have of us.”

  I take the pictures from her and study the images, shocked that Green Mountain was so, well, skinny. She looks more like I imagine Mom might have looked as a teenager.

  “Only time in my life I was thin,” she says, reading my mind. “I’d always gotten picked on for my size and, well, other things…” She tugs on her sweater sleeve. “But when I met him”—she smiles down at the boy’s face—“for the first time ever, it mattered to me how I looked. Then, after he died…” Her voice trails off.

  “You stopped caring again?”

  She looks away. Nods. “Uh-huh.”

  I study the boy. He’s got wire-rimmed glasses and spazzed-out hair and needs braces, but obviously none of that matters. Because it’s clear the skinny girl who is my grandmother and the boy who is my grandfather are in love. Majorly.

  “We were supposed to go out on a date the night he died. I’d planned to tell him I was pregnant. Never got to, though. Driver ran a red light”—she claps her hands together, and I jump—“barreled straight into him.”

  I hand the photos back. “That’s terrible.”

  “I wish I could go back in time,” she continues. “Keep him on the phone a little longer. Or tell him I had homework and couldn’t go out. Anything to keep him from crossing that intersection when he did.”

  When I glance toward the hall again, Mom’s standing in the doorway. “Where have you been?” I ask her.

  She crosses the room and leans against the arm on my chair. Her coat smells like the outdoors with a hint of something else mixed in. Coffee beans, maybe. “When I couldn’t find you,” she says, “I went for a walk. I got a tea at Starbucks down the block and planned to bring it back here, but then I ran into a friend from high school, Carol Ann. Her husband, Dan, has a job here selling insurance. They just had their fifth kid.”

  Mom goes on and on. When she comes up for air, I whisper, “TMI.”

  “Oh.” She glances at her mother, who’s glancing back at her. Their eyes connect. Quickly Mom turns away, staring out the window at the sky, which has turned a silvery gray. “So,” she asks her mother, “how long will they keep you here?” Her words sound stiff, like she’s imitating an automated phone voice.

  “Not much longer, now that my blood pressure’s back to normal. Or as normal as it gets with me.” Green Mountain squints at Mom. “How’s your blood pressure?”

  “Actually it runs a little low.”

  “Good.” Green Mountain says.

  “How did the exam with your doctor go?” Mom asks her.

  She shrugs. “Okay, I guess. He put me on Tamoxifen. And he wants to start me on chemo, in case the cancer’s anywhere else.”

  A silence spreads over the room. It’s loaded with an electrical charge, reminding me of the static before a storm that always makes my arm hairs prickle. Minutes pass, feeling like hours.

  Green Mountain smoothes her sweater sleeves.

  I wipe dust off the toes of my Mocs.

  Mom glances at her watch. “Ariel, I never got to call your aunt Lee. I’m sure she’s home by now. Could I borrow your cell phone?”

  “Mom…” I say, talking quietly out of the side of my mouth. “…You just got back. Don’t you think you should visit for a while first?”

  “Well, whaddaya know?” Green Mountain says, louder than necessary. “I’m missing General Hospital. You two don’t mind, do you?” As she points the clicker at the TV I know exactly what she’s doing. She’s beating Mom to the punch—putting her second to a soap opera before Mom can put her second to a phone call.

  As the sound from the television fills the room Wild Hair swats the curtain again. “Turn that thing down!” she snaps. “I’m trying to sleep over here!”

  * * *

  Mom and I trek outside. She collapses on a bench, and I flip my phone open. Power it on. Hand it to her.

  Nibbling her lip, Mom presses Aunt Lee’s number. Then she waits.

  “Oh, Lee,” she breathes out, “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

  Mom listens intently, nodding. “Not all that well. It’s very stressful. Yes, she’s my mother, but we’ve been strangers for sixteen years. I hardly know what to say.”

  A breeze whistles through the trees, and a leaf lands in Mom’s hair. I reach over, picking it free.

  After several minutes, Mom says, “Ariel? Sure, she’s right here.” Mom passes me the cell. “Aunt Lee wants to talk to you.”

  I take the phone from her. “Hi, Aunt Lee.”

  “Hi, sweetie. How are you holding up?” I hear papers shuffling. I’ve seen Aunt Lee in action. She can never just sit and talk.

  “Okay, I guess. I had a really bad headache, but she, um—my grandmother—she gave me some Excedrin, and it helped.”

  “Good. A headache’s the last thing you need at a time like this. What’s your grandmother like?”

  Mom taps my knee, pointing toward the parking lot. “I need to get something from the car,” she whispers.

  I nod, watching as Mom walks away. “She’s all right. I know she was a terrible mother when Mom was growing up, but, well, she hasn’t exactly had an easy life.”

  More paper shuffling. “Really? What has she told you?”

  “Like how she lost all this weight in high school for her boyfriend. But then he was killed in a car accident before she could tell him she was pregnant.”

  There’s silence on the other end, and I’m thinking maybe I’ve lost her. But when I check the face of my phone it’s lit, and I have plenty of bars. “Aunt Lee?”

  She clears her throat. “Sorry, Ariel. I’m here.”

  “Aunt Lee, my grandmother, she, um…she has these horrible scars.”

  “Well, sweetie, she couldn’t very well have a mastectomy without them. She’ll probably want to consider reconstructive surgery.”

  “No. That’s not what I mean. When the nurse was taking her blood pressure, my grandmother’s sleeve was pushed up, and I saw her arm. It looked like she might have gotten burned or something.”

  More silence.

  Finally, Aunt Lee says, “What’s your grandmother’s name, Ariel?”

  “It says M. Murdock on her door.”

  “That couldn’t be her, then,” she mumbles, like she’s thinking out loud. “Unless, of course, she married someone else after her boyfriend died…” In her regular voice, she asks me, “What does the M in M. Murdock stand for?”

  “I don’t know.” I glance across the parking lot at Mom, who’s rummaging through our trunk for something. “Aunt Lee? Are you there?”

  “Yes.” She clears her throat. “I’m here.”

  “You sound funny.”

  Her desk chair screeches back and forth several times. “I feel funny.”

  “Aunt Lee, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”

  “Ariel, do you remember the Kurt Vonnegut book I gave you last summe
r?”

  “Sure. Cat’s Cradle. I loved it.”

  “Then you remember the concept of the karass, and how we’re unknowingly bound to certain people?”

  “Of course,” I say, surprised she has to ask. She and I talked about the concept for, like, hours. We agreed she and Mom and I are all part of the same karass.

  “A karass is propelled forward by conflict,” she continues.

  “Aunt Lee, please, why are you telling me this?”

  “Because, it’s possible our karass just got a lot more complicated. Ariel, you need to find out your grandmother’s name. If it’s Madeline—Madeline Fitch would be her maiden name—I know her. Madeline and I went to the same high school. There in Elmira. In the fall of our senior year, we were thrown together by, well, circumstances.”

  “What kind of circumstances?”

  “Let’s just say that Madeline—she helped me through a very difficult situation.”

  A can top pops. I picture Aunt Lee at her desk with a Dr. Pepper. I wish she were drinking it here instead.

  “Around Thanksgiving,” she continues, “Madeline’s boyfriend died in a car accident. Madeline started working at Grand Union after school. She and I didn’t travel in the same circles—not that Madeline really had a circle, all she had was her boyfriend—but sometimes I’d stop by, to see how she was managing. She wouldn’t talk to me after he died, though. She’d stare right through me like she’d constructed a fortress around herself no one would penetrate again.”

  Aunt Lee pauses, sipping soda. “By spring—I remember it was close to Easter because I was at Grand Union buying chocolate eggs—I noticed Madeline had gained back the weight she’d lost, but there was something different about her. By the time the school year ended, it was obvious she was pregnant.”

  “So what happened?” I ask.

  “I never found out. I gave Madeline a gift at graduation—something I hoped would help her—but I never saw her after that. I always wondered if she put her baby up for adoption, or if she decided to raise it herself. Though, I have to admit, I couldn’t imagine her caring for a child. After Tad died she seemed so withdrawn, so depressed.”

  Aunt Lee exhales a slow breath. “Oh, Ariel, this is too bizarre. If your grandmother is Madeline Fitch, the baby she was pregnant with could be your mother.”

  I’m totally numb. I can’t even think, I’m so stunned.

  “Ariel,” Aunt Lee says, “are you all right? Say something.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m just…trying to take it all in.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean.” After a long pause, Aunt Lee adds, “Ariel, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I have to. From what I’ve gathered the few times Desiree has mentioned her mother, I’m guessing she was a terribly neglectful parent. And please don’t take this the wrong way because I’m not trying to defend her actions, but, well, if her mother is Madeline Fitch, the woman’s had a very tragic life.”

  “What are you saying, Aunt Lee?”

  “Perhaps, if your mom can see past her own hurt”—she pauses—“then maybe she can forgive her mother.”

  Mom reappears, starting up the walk toward me. It feels like she’s been gone light-years. “Aunt Lee,” I say, “Mom’s coming back now. What should I do?”

  “Find out your grandmother’s name. And go from there.”

  “If Madeline Fitch is my grandmother, do you want me to give her a message? Should I tell her Lee Stemple said hello?”

  “That name won’t mean a thing to her,” she answers. “I used my full name in high school, and I wasn’t married to Glenn yet. But yes, you can tell her Muralee Blawjen sends her best.”

  Madeline

  When I get home, Mom’s in her room, door closed, singing along to her radio.

  As I’m breaking lettuce in a bowl for a salad the phone rings. Answering it, I smell Mom’s boozy breath on the receiver.

  “Hi,” Tad says, “where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get you since I got back.”

  I glance at Mom’s closed door, praying she didn’t hear the phone ring. That she didn’t pick up and talk to Tad. “Sorry,” I say. “I had to help a friend with something.”

  “Really? You never mentioned having a friend.”

  His saying that makes me sound so pathetic. I’m kind of irritated he pointed it out. “Yeah, well, I do.”

  “What’s your friend’s name?”

  I reach for a cuke and a tomato, start dicing them into neat squares. “Muralee.”

  “What’d she need help with?”

  “It’s private. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh.”

  I steer the conversation back to him. “What are you doing?”

  “Fixing a roof leak. Wanna see a movie when I’m done?” He drops his voice and adds, “At the drive-in?”

  My period still hasn’t shown up, so the coast is clear. “Sure. What time?”

  “I’ll pick you up around six.”

  I glance at the kitchen clock, wondering how I’ll be ready that soon. I have to change out of Tad’s clothes. And shower. And redo my makeup. And style my hair. “Okay,” I say, “I’ll see you out front.”

  “Madeline, um, maybe you could invite me in for a few minutes this time. Since you met my dad, well, I thought maybe I could meet your mom.”

  My heart leaps into my throat. I stare at Mom’s closed door again. “No, I—”

  “Look, Madeline, if you’re embarrassed about your place, don’t be. Remember, we live in a trailer park.”

  When I don’t answer, Tad says, “I love you, Madeline. I mean what I told you—I want to know everything about you.”

  My eyes fill, and my heart settles back in my chest. “Everything?” I whisper.

  “Everything,” he repeats.

  Mom’s bedroom door groans open. She starts toward the kitchen, coughing her raspy cigarette cough.

  “I’ve gotta go,” I blurt out, and hang up. Fast.

  Mom crosses the kitchen, drops two empty beer bottles in the trash, and reaches in the fridge for another. When she sees me standing there, pouring dressing on my salad, she jumps. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she half-says, half-slurs.

  I poke my salad. Tomato innards ooze around the tines of my fork. “Yeah, well, I’m here.”

  She steps closer. “Remember the man I told you about? The one with the vanilla pipe tobacco? Guess what?”

  “He switched to black cherry and now you don’t like him anymore?”

  “No.” She slaps my arm, giggles, takes several swallows of beer. “He gave me his phone number, so I called him. He asked me out for a drink.”

  Poor, stupid Pipe Man. He has no idea what fate awaits him. No one asks Leona Fitch out for a drink. She could drain his savings account before the night’s over. But, hey, maybe it’ll be worth it. Maybe she’ll give him something to remember her by, like she did with my father. Whoever that sucker might be.

  My mother sidles up next to me. “Oh, honey, I think he might actually be the one. You know how you just get that feeling sometimes?”

  I nod. “Actually, I do.”

  Of course, she doesn’t ask me how I know. I’ve been dating Tad for months and I’m out almost every night, but still she hasn’t caught on.

  “Anyway”—she gulps more beer—“Dusty and I are—”

  “Dusty?” I laugh. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “He was named after Dusty Cooke, the Yankees player.”

  I roll my eyes and take another bite of my salad. “Since when are you interested in baseball?”

  “I’m not, silly. I’m interested in Dusty.” She slaps her knee and cracks up, like she said something incredibly funny. Then she gets all serious. “Oh, Maddie, wait’ll you meet him. You’ll see what I mean. This one’s husband material. Maybe me and you are finally done with those cemetery trips. Wouldn’t that be nice? If we never had to go back to Cherry Hill?”

  It’s hard to imagine not having t
o perch on the rock beside Sophie DeSalvo’s concrete angel or shiver from the mist of the nearby fountain. Not having to listen as Mom’s slurred words hang like tarnished stars from the flat, black sky while she mourns another loser.

  Mom reaches in the junk drawer for a piece of gum. When she opens the wrapper, the stick breaks into stale, brittle shards. She shovels them in her mouth anyway. “Dusty and me have so much in common,” she continues, talking and chewing. Gum chips cling to her teeth. I look away, disgusted.

  “Like what?” I ask, more curious than interested.

  “Tons of things. We both love John Lennon.”

  “Everyone loves John Lennon,” I snap. I glance down at Tad’s Impeach Nixon T-shirt. “It’s not like you both love Richard Nixon or think he shouldn’t have been impeached. Now that would prove you’re soul mates.”

  She ignores me. “Dusty and I both cried when we heard Elvis Presley died. Can you believe it? A man who cries and admits it?”

  “Terrific,” I say flatly. “Where’s he taking you for a drink?”

  “Well, he not exactly taking me.”

  “But you just got done saying—”

  “Dusty doesn’t have a car.” She checks the kitchen clock and brushes past me. “So I’m driving.”

  I follow her and yell, “No way! They revoked your license, remember? If you get caught driving drunk again, you could go to jail.”

  “I don’t plan to get caught. I plan to be careful.” She opens the coat closet and holds up a blue jacket I bought at the thrift store. It has a warm lining, and I thought it would be perfect for the drive-in since it’s the end of the season and the nights are chilly. “Is this yours?” she asks, like it’s impossible I’d own anything that nice. Or that small.

  “Yeah, it is. Put it back.”

  She slips one arm in a sleeve.

  I glare at her, this pathetic excuse for a mother who takes and takes and takes. The woman Tad wants to meet. Yeah, right. I can’t wait to graduate, start my own life, and get the hell away from her. “Put it back,” I demand. “I’m wearing that tonight.”

  Her other arm glides in. She buttons the front, admiring herself in the mirror. “But it looks so nice on me. And it’s Dusty’s favorite color.”