Martha stopped nodding and smiled—like she knew. “Frederick always had a way with words. You know, for a long time, the written word was all we had, what with Frederick being away from me, from us, in another time zone. It’s not that we didn’t have phones back then... I may be old, but not that old.” She looked at Mom and smiled. “There’s this Chinese saying, “Even the palest ink is better than the best memory. It’s true.” She clapped her hands together, making her charm bracelet sing like a little Christmas jingle.
“That’s beautiful,” Mom said, not really specifying whether she was referring to the Chinese saying or the charm or both.
“Frederick wanted us to remember that time—the time where we were an entire ocean apart. He was actually the one who wanted us to write to begin with, not me, even though I’m the one with a major in English,” she said, a prideful smile beaming at me.
We knew. Of course, we knew. I nodded.
“It’s okay, dear,” she said in a way that once again reminded me of Grandma. I nodded again, but the worst part wasn’t over yet; I still owned her an explanation.
“We know it was so wrong, so inappropriate, but we just couldn’t stop,” I explained, still trying to find the courage to go on. “We just couldn’t let it go, even though we knew it was old news, something that had already happened in a totally different century and everything. Right?” I looked at Mom for courage, I suppose. She nodded for me to go on.
I looked at Martha’s friendly face, and then I took another big step up the ladder. Within the next five minutes, I had pretty much explained everything to her. I told her how we—throughout the entire summer—had spent hours and hours in my bed, cuddled up in our matching sleeping bags or blankets, with flashlights, tea and cookies, taking turns reading the letters out loud for each other. I told her how we even had made rules about no interruptions or comments, the number of letters to read each night, and about taking turns reading.
I even told her about Miss T, the wonderful, tiny Miss T, who had reminded me of her in so many ways and who had become such an important part of sharing the letters. And I told Martha how much I had learned from her letters, about love and life, and how it had changed me forever.
And finally, I told her how it had brought me and Mom even closer together. I didn’t leave out any part, except the part of me becoming pregnant (she found that out eventually). I figured it would be too much—alongside everything else—to tell her how she had been a big part of the choice I had made, the choice to keep my baby.
“Once we got to know you, it felt as if we were living and breathing every single moment with you. We couldn’t stop, and I guess our excuse to keep going was that we had no way of knowing if we would ever find you. I guess we never saw that as possible, even though that’s no excuse.” I looked at Mom.
“None whatsoever,” she added, discretely wiping a tear away from her chin.
Martha looked from Mom to me and back. “I think we need some tea. Tea?”
Both Mom and I nodded— in sync.
Martha turned around and grabbed the kettle from the stove and filled it up. “Well, hello,” she said and disappeared behind the kitchen counter. “There you are.” She stood up with a cat in her arms. “We call him The Cat in the Hat, and he’s the laziest cat in the entire world. He only eats real food. No cat food. He’s so spoiled.” She kissed him right on the nose and shook her head. She put the cat back down on the kitchen floor and placed the kettle on the stove, and then she backed out of the tiny kitchen with three cups in one hand and a plate of what looked a lot like homemade sugar cookies in the other.
For a long time, she didn’t say a word. She just sat there, rearranging the cookies on the plate. “Well, I must say that it was very wrong of you,” she finally said, not looking at any of us in particularly, “the both of you,” she added, briefly looking at Mom. “To read someone else’s very private letters. Well, I guess I should be really mad at you, but the thing is...” She looked at me and smiled. “I actually don’t mind. As you said yourself, that was ages ago, and I guess I never told Frederick anything that I should be ashamed of, and vice versa. Well, at least I like to think so.” She turned in her seat and pointed at a little picture frame standing on the coffee table. “That’s Frederick over there. He’s really handsome, don’t you think? He was always so popular with the girls. But I’m the one who snatched him up, right in front of their pretty faces.” She threw her head back and laughed. “I’m pretty sure he would feel the same way about the letters. Maybe he would even be flattered.” She looked at the picture again and smiled.
I turned around and looked at the picture. Frederick had his arms wrapped around a younger version of Martha. They were both balancing on a pair of skies, smiling directly at the camera. She was right; he was very handsome. Next to it there was another frame with a kid’s drawing in it. It was a drawing of a little boy holding on to the trunk of an elephant. It immediately brought tears to my eyes. I looked at Mom. She was looking at the drawing as well, gently nodding her head at me. We had to know. We had survived the first part, the ladder of confession. Now it was time to move on to the second part, the descending truth.
“A sugar cookie? I made them myself.” Martha held out the plate of well-arranged cookies. Automatically, we both reached for them.
“Thanks,” I said, far from craving any kind of cookie this point.
“Thanks,” Mom echoed and exchanged a look with me. It was time. I nodded.
“Martha, we are so sorry, but...” Mom stopped midsentence and looked down at the homemade sugar cookie in her hand. Lost for words, I guess she decided to be polite instead and eat the cookie, but halfway through sticking her teeth into it, she stopped, big tears running down her face.
“Oh dear!” Martha pushed her chair a little closer. “I know you’re both very sorry about all of this, but honestly, as I said, it’s all good. I mean it.” She leaned over and grabbed the rest of the cookie from Mom’s hand. “My mother always used to say, ‘Don’t eat when you’re upset. It will choke you,’ but then again, she was always so dramatic.” She rolled her eyes and smiled, trying to cheer up her not-so-cheerful houseguests.
Mom looked down at the crumbs on the table and took a deep breath. “Martha, we have to know,” she whispered, still looking down into the table.
“Know what, dear?”
Mom took another deep breath and looked up. “What happened to Thomas? Did he... or, um, is he?” She couldn’t finish her sentence. She couldn’t get herself to say it out loud. We both looked at Martha. She was looking out the window with a distant look in her eyes, nodding.
“The letters... the letters stopped,” she said, matter of factly, still nodding. She got up and picked The Cat in the Hat up from the kitchen floor. “I think we need something colder and stronger than tea. I’m having hot flashes from all that tea,” she said.
Suddenly I found myself back in Miss T’s empty-but-cozy living room with Harvey Keitel snooping around somewhere. Hadn’t she said the exact same thing? She turned and looked at Mom. “Are you sure I can’t take your coats, dear? It’s close to seventy in here. Frederick likes it like that. Me? I could live on the North Pole year round.”
Mom nodded and got up and took off her jacket. “Thanks,” she whispered.
Martha grabbed the coat and stared down at Mom’s belly. “Oh dear,” she said, pointing at Mom’s belly with the coat. “Are you...?”
“Oh, yes,” Mom said a little shyly. She smiled and looked at me for my approval, I figured. I nodded. “Actually, we both are,” she said, pointing at me. Martha turned and looked at me with an open mouth. “She’s just so tiny that it doesn’t really show that much yet. And she’s almost halfway too,” she explained. She smoothed her dress down, showing off her belly.
“Oh dear.” Martha turned toward Mom again. “I mean, the both of you and at the very same time. Oh dear,” she repeated.
“I know.” Mom placed a hand on her belly and smiled. �
�It’s a long story, but yes, we are both having a baby and we’re both about halfway.”
Martha looked back and forth at our pregnant bellies with a dazzled look on her face. Even the cat in the hat was looking at us with a weird expression on his squeezed, little furry face. “Do you know whether it’s a boy or a girl? Or should I say boys or girls?” She smiled and looked at Mom.
“One of each. Two spring babies,” Mom said, gently rubbing her belly.
“How wonderful!” Martha smiled a big white smile and clapped her hands together, once again making her charm bracelet sing. “Two spring babies. You know, I always wanted one for each season.”
Mom looked at me and nodded. “I know. We know. That was my dream too, once.”
Martha moved closer to Mom and grabbed both her hands. “Now dear, please do sit down. Standing up too much is not good for your back.” She pulled out a chair and gestured for Mom to sit. “Now tell me. Any names yet?” She sat down next to Mom and grabbed a sugar cookie from the plate.
Mom nodded and looked at me with a nervous smile. I could tell we were both getting to that place where there’s a thin line between laughing and crying.
“We thought about Stella,” she said, still looking at me, “and for the boy... my dad, um, my dad’s name was Thomas, too,” she said, her lips quivering. “So, Ella thought she might go with that.” She stopped to clear her throat. “In loving memory of him—even though he was a big old drunken fart,” she added, forcing a smile.
“Thomas? Oh dear.” Martha leaned back and covered her mouth. “Thomas,” she whispered, clearly upset by the mentioning of the name.
Without warning there was a loud noise from the kettle whistling in the kitchen.
“I better...” Martha got up and left Mom and I sitting there—just staring at each other. We heard Martha blowing her nose in the kitchen. Mom leaned over and handed me a Kleenex. I guess she had come prepared for yet another Kirkland morning of crying. Now we were all blowing our noses.
Martha called from the kitchen, “I’m so sorry for acting so silly. It’s just...” She placed a strong hand on top of her chest like she was afraid her heart might fall out. “It’s just... I still find it so very hard to talk about even after all those years. Those were the toughest weeks, days, and hours of my life.” She placed the kettle on the counter and returned to the table where she sat down again. “Frederick came home for good. He just booked the next available flight home, and he never looked back.” She paused and looked at the picture of Frederick on the coffee table. “I remember he said, ‘My place is where my heart is.’ I was very grateful the day he finally came home to stay for good. We spent the next days and weeks either together or taking shifts at the hospital. I don’t think the doctors ever really thought Thomas had a chance. Mom was there all the time as well. She would bring him his favorite banana-oatmeal cookies, and she would bring me a thermos with coffee and hot milk. I never heard about the Falklands crisis until it was pretty much over. I guess the world kept turning, except in that hospital room. There, time stood still.” She stopped for a moment and looked out the window.
Suddenly I felt Mom’s hand in mine. “It’s okay,” I think she whispered as she squeezed it tight.
“Oh, sometimes it seems like it was only yesterday. No mother should ever have to go through what I went through.” Martha looked down at the plate of cookies. A tear ran down her cheek.
“It’s okay,” Mom whispered, looking at Martha. “It’s okay,” she repeated, this time directed at me.
We hadn’t talked about it, since we had gone to the hospital for Mom’s third ultrasound. Being inside the walls of a gray and cold hospital had reminded us both about Thomas and the letters that had stopped so abruptly, and we had promised each other never to talk about it again. But I knew that she had thought about it as much as me. It’s one thing to make a promise not to talk about it, but to not think about it was easier said than done. The letters had stopped, clearly because it would be too painful to keep writing. Thomas had died at the age of five or six, some thirty years ago, in some cold, anonymous hospital bed. Martha didn’t have to say it out loud. The look on her face was plenty.
“Oh, forgive me for being such a sentimental old fool.” Martha blew her nose again. “But he and Eleanor just came this morning all unannounced, and I’m just so happy to have them here,” she said with tears in her voice. “Sometimes I still have to pinch myself when I see him—my little miracle child.” She leaned back in her chair and dabbed at her eyes.
All of a sudden, the only thing I could hear was this swishing throbbing sound in my ears. Mom and Martha were looking at me, with tears in their eyes, smiling, moving their lips, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I grabbed Mom’s hand and tried to say something, but when I opened my mouth to speak it sounded as if I were speaking through a window of thick glass.
Thomas was alive? And he was here—here in this century? I looked down at the little-boy elephant drawing again. If I had looked closely the first time around, I would have noticed the year “eighty-nine” written in the bottom right corner, and if I had really looked at the details and finish in the picture, I would probably had concluded that this was not the drawing of a five- or six-year-old boy—Picasso or not. Thomas had been alive all this time.
I cleared my throat and tried another attempt to say something. “He’s-he’s here?” I finally heard myself stutter, breaking through the wall of heavy glass. “Mom?”
“Yes, baby, he’s alive,” she said, sobbing. “Isn’t it a miracle?” She moved to the edge of the chair and leaned over to give me a hug, but instead she knocked over her cup of tea—leaving yet another one of her signature marks on the whole tea ensemble—homemade cookies and all. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I always seem to do this,” she said, clearly upset, trying to mop up the mess with a handful of Kleenex.
“It’s okay, dear. It’s all okay. Please just leave it,” Martha hushed. She turned to me and nodded. “And yes, he’s here, and he’s very much alive, thank God,” she said, the last part almost spoken as a prayer. Gently, she dabbed at her eyes with one of Mom’s Kleenex and pointed at a bright-green door in the back of the living room. “He’s out in the yard with Eleanor, my granddaughter.” She smiled and looked at Mom. “John or Paul fan?”
“John,” Mom said in a half-cry-half-laugh, looking down at the mess she had made.
Martha inched closer and wrapped her arm around her. “There, there now! It’s all good. It’s all good, dear. Let’s just sit here for a while. That way we won’t do any more damage.” She looked at me and smiled. “Is your mom always this clumsy?”
I nodded and smiled. “Like crazy clumsy lately.”
“Pregnancy Hormone Gravity Disorder,” she explained.
Mom leaned her head up against Martha’s shoulder and smiled at me, nodding. “What she said,” she agreed. They both laughed. I didn’t know what that meant or why that was so funny, but the sight of them sure put a smile on my face, too. There they were, Mom and Martha, sitting cheek to cheek in some temporary housing facility, sharing a box of Kleenex. I had been right about today; it was definitely both weird and wonderful.
I took a deep breath and looked at the bright-green door. Was he really out there, like, only ten feet away?
As if she had read my mind, Martha leaned over and put her hand on top of mine. “It’s okay,” she said with a soft voice, “you can go say hi. Don’t be nervous.” She leaned back again and smiled.
I looked at Mom. “You wanna come?” I whispered, already starting to feel nervous all over again.
She looked at Martha and shook her head. “I’ll be out in a while. It might be a bit overwhelming if the two pregnant women storm the castle at once.” She smiled in her new comfort zone with Martha and said, “You go now!”
Slowly, I got up and headed for the green door. It’s okay, I told myself. Don’t be nervous! But as I pushed down the handle and felt the fresh air on my face, I realized that I h
ad never felt this nervous in my entire life, and I wasn’t quite sure why. Not until I saw him.
Eleanor Rigby
I don’t know quite what I had expected to find behind the bright-green door—the door of hope—but somehow Thomas kinda looked how I had imagined he would, that is, a grownup version of him. Martha sure had been right about two things: his eyes were beyond blue, and he had that look of “a thinker” about him. His hair was dark and a little too long, and he was wearing a pair of jeans and a pair of red Converse shoes. Standing right next to him was a pretty little girl with long strawberry blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was missing at least three or four teeth.
I took a deep breath and stepped down from the patio.
“Hi,” I said as I approached them, “you must be Eleanor.” I looked at the little girl and smiled.
She instantly reached for her dad’s hand and moved closer to him. Slowly, she nodded and looked up at her dad.
“How did you know that?” she asked, looking at me again. She let go of her dad and placed a hand on each of her hips, trying to come off as a big girl, I guess.
“Well you see, my name’s Eleanor, too, and I have a radar for girls with the same name as me.”
“What’s a radar?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.
“It just means that I can spot another Eleanor when I see one.”
“Huh.” I could tell she was thinking this over.
“And you must be Thomas.” I offered my shaky hand to him. Maybe it looked a little too formal, but I just had to touch him, just had to make sure that he was real—that it was actually happening.
He looked as puzzled as her. “And you are?” he asked, politely shaking my hand.
Lost in Seattle (The Miss Apple Pants series, #2) Page 45
