A nice dream. Carolyn cleared dishes. She scraped Dawn’s cold scrambled eggs into the garbage while imagining talking with her mother like that. When had there ever been a time when she hadn’t needed to be careful about every word she said?
Her mother set the pile of papers and box on the table. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” While Carolyn washed dishes, her mother and Dawn sat at the table, going through papers. “Deed to the house, car and life insurance policies, Social Security cards, wedding and death certificates, living trust, burial arrangements, list of bank accounts . . .” She fanned the papers, pausing over one. “Oma’s naturalization papers. I forgot I had them. She was so proud when she passed the test.”
Mom set the certificate aside. “Oma said we were the real American citizens. Those born to it didn’t appreciate it. She made us all study as if we had to take the test too, to earn the right to call ourselves Americans. She thought that until Trip went to war and then Charlie . . .” She picked up an envelope yellowed by age. “The letter from Charlie’s commanding officer . . .” She held it for a moment and set it aside unopened.
Carolyn dried her hands and picked it up. While her mom opened the box filled with smaller boxes, Carolyn opened the letter and read.
. . . offer my heartfelt condolences on the death of your son. . . . excellent young man . . . well-respected by everyone who served with him. . . . could always count on him . . . brave . . . a pleasure to know him. . . . will never forget . . .
Mom lifted out a black velvet box and snapped it open. “Papa gave me these pearls on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.” She took them out and handed them to Dawn.
“They’re beautiful.”
“You keep them.”
“I can’t, Granny. They should go to Mom.”
Carolyn folded the letter back into the yellowed envelope and put it on the table. “Granny wants you to have the pearls.”
“You and Mitch gave me pearls for my sixteenth birthday. Remember?”
Carolyn’s mother looked hurt. “I’m not slighting your mother, Dawn. Mitch gave her better pearls than these for Christmas two years ago and a bracelet and earrings to go with them.”
Dawn fingered the necklace. “They’re lovely.” Her eyes grew moist. “Save them for my daughter.”
Her mother closed the box and opened another. Unfolding a lace-trimmed embroidered handkerchief, she showed off a gold, pearl, and jade brooch. “I gave this to Oma on her eightieth birthday. You . . .” Her voice faltered. “You were gone. Anyway, Oma would want you to have it.”
Touched, Carolyn accepted the box. “I don’t remember ever seeing Oma wear this.”
“She didn’t. Not once. I doubt she ever took it out of the box.” Mom pointed. “That’s real, not cheap costume jewelry. I wanted to give her something special, something she would never buy for herself.”
Carolyn understood all too well. “Like the cashmere shawl I gave you for Christmas a few years ago? or the pendant I gave you for Mother’s Day?”
Mom’s eyes widened. “They’re too special to use for every day.”
Carolyn searched her face. “I thought you didn’t like them.”
“Of course I like them. They’re the nicest gifts I’ve ever received.”
Dawn interrupted. “Maybe Oma felt the same way about the brooch, Granny.”
Mom shook her head. “I thought she’d love it, but she said I’d wasted my money.”
Seeing the sheen of tears in her mother’s eyes, Carolyn took the brooch out of the box. “This is exquisite, Mom. Maybe she was afraid to wear it.” She pinned the brooch to her sweater. “It’s beautiful. I’ll cherish it. Thank you.”
Eyes glistening, Mom gave her a wobbly smile. “You’re welcome.”
Dawn’s blue eyes shone. “Perfect.” She propped her chin in the heels of her hands. “This is exactly what I prayed for all across the country.”
“What?” Carolyn’s mother looked blank.
“That we three could just sit and talk about things that shaped our lives and our relationships.”
Carolyn had spent years sidestepping questions, pushing memories back, training herself to live in the present. Dredging up the past wasn’t her idea of an answer to prayer. She felt her mom’s glance and didn’t meet it.
Dawn rose. “Why don’t we go through the boxes from the garage?” She went into the living room, not waiting for them to follow. “They should be full of memorabilia.”
Carolyn’s mother studied her. “You don’t seem particularly enthused.”
Carolyn hadn’t moved from her seat. “Are you?”
Her mom pushed her chair back, but didn’t get up. “Maybe we should talk about the past, Carolyn. God knows, you’ve been weighed down by it for years. And so have I.”
Was that how she saw it? “There are some things I don’t want Dawn to know.”
“Do you think anything could change how much Dawn loves you?”
“What about you?”
“Me?” Her mom searched her face, comprehension seeping into her eyes. “I’m your mother.” She shook her head. “I wonder if we know one another at all.”
“Are you two coming?” Dawn called from the living room.
Dawn had already opened a box and pulled out a navy blue dress with white cuffs, faded red buttons, and a red belt. “Wow! This looks like old Hollywood, Granny.”
“Your great-aunt Cloe designed and made that for me when I went away to nursing school.”
“You’d get a small fortune for it on eBay now. Clotilde Waltert Renny first design . . .”
“Hardly the first.”
Carolyn opened the Pictures box and found all the pictures that had once hung inside the front door of the Paxtown home: Charlie in his football uniform, in his cap and gown, with his Army buddies; his Army portrait with the ribbons mounted below. A dozen pictures of Charlie, all framed beautifully. Not one of her. Carolyn rocked back on her heels.
“What’s wrong?” Carolyn’s mother looked from her to the box. “What did you find?”
“Pictures of Charlie.”
Dawn lowered an ashes-of-roses dressing gown. “Are you okay, Mom?”
The hurt rose, squeezing tight around her heart. “I’d better get the presto logs. Just in case the generator goes out.”
* * *
Dawn put the dressing gown aside and pulled over the box her mother had opened. “Pictures of Uncle Charlie.” She took out a high school graduation picture. “I remember these. They were on the wall in the Paxtown house.” Every picture was of Charlie, a few of Granny and Papa with him.
“Our memorial wall.”
Granny used to tell her stories about her uncle: how well he played football, baseball, basketball; how popular he had been, how handsome. Mitch had added to her uncle’s legend by telling stories about their teenage angst and antics, things Granny and Papa wouldn’t have known. “Did he and my mom get along?”
“More than got along, honey. She idolized him. They were polar opposites. He always watched out for her. Charlie was outgoing. Your mom was shy. He had lots of friends. She was a loner. Charlie was like my brother, Bernie. Everyone was so taken with him they never noticed his little sister.”
“Mitch told me he had a crush on Mom in high school. He wanted to ask her out, but never got up the nerve. That’s why he came back to Paxtown—to look her up.” Dawn set Uncle Charlie’s picture on the coffee table. “Did you ever meet Mom’s friend, Rachel Altman?”
Granny tilted her head. “So she told you about her.”
“A little.”
“Carolyn brought her home once, just before Charlie went to Vietnam. They were both still attending Berkeley at the time. Rachel came from wealth. She rented a house. That’s when things started to go downhill. They dropped out and disappeared. We didn’t hear from your mother for two years, and then one day, I came home and there she was sitting by the front door.”
Dawn sat on the couch and curled her legs up under
her. “Were you angry with her?”
“Angry?”
“She was gone so long. It must have been awful for you and Papa.”
“You can’t even imagine how awful.” Granny sounded distressed. “Don’t ask her about those days. She was worrying just now in the kitchen, thinking it would make a difference in how you feel about her. She doesn’t want to talk about it. We tried a few times to open the subject, but learned to leave well enough alone.”
Dawn wasn’t convinced. “Maybe if she talks about it, it won’t haunt her so much.”
“She put it all behind her and moved on with her life.”
“I’d like to know who my father was.”
Dismayed, Granny shook her head. “Did you ever think she might not know? And asking would just make her feel worse about it.”
“I love her, Granny. No matter what she tells me, that’s not going to change.”
“So do I. That’s why I don’t ask.” Granny’s mouth worked, as though she fought tears. “Just leave things alone. I lost her once; I don’t want—”
The back door clicked open. Mom came in with a box of presto logs and set them beside the fireplace. She gave Dawn a questioning glance. “Is something wrong?”
Dawn shook her head and couldn’t think of what to say.
Mom looked at both of them and headed for the back door again.
Dawn struggled to her feet. Pain stabbed into her side. Sucking in her breath, she went outside and leaned over the rail above the stairs. “Mom, wait.”
Mom glanced at her, expression bleak.
“You don’t have to leave.”
Her mouth curved in disbelief. “You should go back inside and stay warm. You don’t want to catch cold. ” She went down the steps and disappeared around the corner.
55
Carolyn stepped inside the storage area under the garage and pulled the string attached to a swaying overhead light. She hefted another box of presto logs and set it near the door. She’d take it up in a little while. She wasn’t in any hurry to go back upstairs and walk into another private conversation.
She could use an AA meeting right now. She felt at home among others who had struggled with life. She felt Jesus’ presence there. He’d come to redeem sinners, hadn’t He? He’d raised her up from out of the mire and planted her feet on His sacred ground. Sometimes, she forgot the past entirely, until something or someone reminded her again.
Carolyn breathed in slowly and exhaled. She had other things to think about . . . and no time to feel sorry for herself.
Most of the stuff under the house would have to be hauled away, like the red vinyl and chrome kitchen stools from the Paxtown house. Why had Mom and Dad hung on to them all these years? The metal frames had rusted and the seats cracked. Dad’s fishing poles, net, creel, and box of flies hung on one wall, along with his brown chest-waders, two pairs of hiking boots, and an old backpack. An old AM/FM radio sat between stacks of National Geographics bound in bundles of twelve. Dad said they’d be worth something, someday. Water-damaged and worthless now, the whole collection would have to be lugged up to the road and taken to the dump. She wondered what Dad would say if he knew the entire collection was now available on CD-ROM.
Removing a canvas cover, Carolyn found a fertilizer spreader and push mower. The Jenner house didn’t have a lawn. She opened a coffinlike chest and stepped back from the stench of molding blankets and towels. Not even a rat or mouse would make a nest in there. She found Charlie’s old Lionel train, complete with engine, cars, caboose, tracks and railroad signs, station house and town buildings. Christopher would have enjoyed setting this up when he was a little boy. Had Dad forgotten about it or left it in storage because it hurt too much to be reminded of Charlie?
Another box held Charlie’s high school yearbooks. She sat in the red Adirondack chair she’d given Dad for his sixtieth birthday and opened the 1962 Amadon yearbook. Leafing through the pages, she found his senior picture, hair neat and short. She found Mitch’s picture. She loved his smile. She found other pictures of Charlie and Mitch: kneeling in the front row of the varsity football team, helmets on their knees; standing with other members of the basketball team; Charlie, head back as he laughed while hanging out on the senior lawn with friends. Friends had scrawled notes everywhere.
“I still miss you, Charlie,” Carolyn whispered and closed the book. Her brother had always had a contagious laugh. Had he lived, he’d be married with grown children and grandchildren by now.
She put her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. Her heart still ached. Being cooped up and feeling like a third wheel didn’t help. Mom and May Flower Dawn were close. That was good.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
She couldn’t undo the past. She couldn’t reclaim what had never belonged to her.
God, grant me the courage to change the things I can.
Maybe it was time to talk about the past . . . if she could do so with love. As much as she wanted to say it didn’t matter, it still had the power to torment her. She’d come out to the beach a hundred times and written her sins in the sand, watching them wash away. But the guilt and shame always came back to haunt her.
“God won’t take you where His love won’t protect you,” Boots had told her. “You lived through it. You’re a survivor. The past doesn’t have any power over you anymore.”
Only the power she gave it.
Boots knew about the circumstances of her pregnancy. Carolyn had told her about her life in Haight-Ashbury and Rachel Altman. She’d even confessed her relationship with Ash—sordid, abusive, heart- and soul-crushing. But she’d never told her about the beekeeper who lived next door and what she’d done with him.
God, grant me the wisdom . . . Your will, not mine be done.
Your will, Lord. Not Mom’s or mine or even May Flower Dawn’s.
Calm again, she stacked the yearbooks on top of the box of presto logs and headed back upstairs.
Mom sat in her recliner, reading a magazine. She glanced up as Carolyn came in the back door. “It must be freezing down there.”
“Cold and damp, but not too bad.” Dawn was asleep on the couch, the white afghan tucked around her. Carolyn set the box of presto logs on top of the other one and put the yearbooks on the coffee table. “She’s awfully pale.”
Mom put the magazine away. “She is, isn’t she? And so thin.”
“Did she tell you what made her drive across the country?”
“Just what she told us already. Pregnant women get strange urges. Maybe we’re like salmon. We want to return to the stream where we were born.”
“Then she should’ve headed for LA.” Carolyn saw Mom wince and wished she hadn’t said it. “I found Charlie’s high school yearbooks.”
Pain flickered across Mom’s face. “I haven’t looked at them in years. I won’t have any room for them when I move.”
When she moved, not if. “I’d like to keep them, if it’s all right with you.”
“Of course. You probably want some of the pictures in that box, too. I have my favorites hanging in the bedroom. I’ll take those with me.”
The lights flickered. Carolyn opened a box of presto logs. “I need to break a couple of these so we have kindling, and I’d better do it now before we lose power.” Mom told her where to find Dad’s hatchet and suggested taking one of the grocery bags under the sink to carry the pieces.
Carolyn chopped two logs into thick, pancake-size chunks; tucked a few old newspapers in the bag; and went back inside. Just as she closed the door behind herself, the lights went out and the heater shut down.
“Well, there it goes.” Mom sighed. “At least we still have some daylight, but the house is going to get cold. There won’t be heat downstairs. Why don’t you bring your things up? Dawn can sleep with me in my bed and you can have that room. We’ll keep the fire going and leave the bedroom doors ajar.”
Carolyn rearranged several boxes. “First things
first, Mom. We’ve got fuel; now we need to figure out how to cook.”
“There’s a Coleman stove under Dad’s workbench.”
Carolyn went out to find it.
* * *
Dawn awakened to rain splattering the windows and a crackling fire. Granny sat quietly reading Oma’s journal. “Where’s Mom?” Dawn pushed herself up slowly, rubbing at her side.
“Out in the garage.” Granny put the journal aside.
It was growing darker by the minute. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A couple of hours. You must have needed it.” Granny studied her. “How do you feel now?”
“Groggy. Hungry.”
“Your mom is trying to find the Coleman stove. We’ll need it if we’re going to cook. The generator went off. I’m out of propane. No light, no heat, no stove.”
Dawn heard her mother come in the back door and move around in the kitchen before entering the living room. She sank wearily into the chair closest to the fire. “Finally found it under the garage. It was with Dad’s fishing poles.”
“Logical place for it.” Granny nodded. “Did you see a down sleeping bag?”
“Yep, but it’s mildewed.”
“More stuff for the dump,” Granny muttered.
“I’ll use Dawn’s bedding, Mom.”
Granny took the flashlight and went into the master bedroom. She came back with a pile of clothes. She dropped a dark green sweatshirt and pants onto Mom’s lap and a navy blue set beside Dawn. “Dad’s. I meant to offer these things to Mitch and Christopher, but I kept forgetting. Take off those dirty pants, Carolyn, and put on the sweats. You must be frozen through.”
Mom laughed. “After all the trips in and out of the garage and up and down those stairs, I’m nice and toasty.”
“Well, you won’t be for long.”
Mom went to change. Dawn pulled on the extra layer. Papa’s sweatpants pooled around her feet. She laughed. At least they fit her waistline. “Don’t I look fetching?”
Granny chuckled. She went back into the bedroom and returned with thick pairs of Papa’s socks. She insisted on warming the stone soup. “It’s my house. I’m supposed to be the hostess.” They ate in the living room, Mom sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the fireplace, Dawn and Granny in the two yellow swivel chairs on either side of her.
Her Daughter's Dream Page 43
