by Kris Radish
Meggie heard Mrs. Jeske yelling back, but she was too far into the house for Meg to make out a full sentence, just words, “Wait . . . sick . . . laugh . . . moving . . .” Nothing that made sense.
Meggie held her breath. Mr. Jeske was striding toward the car and Mrs. Jeske stood on the tiny concrete porch, throwing what? Clothes and books and his cigar box. It was too dark to see, but in the morning the lawn would be littered with so much stuff that the grass had disappeared. It looked like a tornado had touched down on just that tiny square spot split by a once-tidy sidewalk, now the scene of an incredible battle.
Before her parents woke or anyone in the neighborhood bothered to grab their newspaper off the front lawn, Meggie took a handful of garbage bags from the kitchen and slipped out the back door, around the side yard and across the street.
She packed socks and deodorant and tennis shoes and pants into the bags. It was an amazing adventure. An old belt. A packet of letters wrapped inside of a paper towel. Some screwdrivers. Meggie imagined that Mr. J's entire life was just lying there for the world to see the moment it woke up. Near the bushes along the front window she found a Rolex watch and a gold ring.
“Holy crap,” she whispered. “His wedding ring.”
Meggie didn't want to drop the ring in the bag. She looked around the yard, and then saw the tiny metal hanger below the front windowsill that cranked open the winter storm windows when it was time to put on the summer screens. She slipped the ring over the end and pushed it to the bottom. The ring disappeared like magic into the handle.
Meggie carried all the bags around to the back of the house and set them down near the garage door. She never told Mrs. J who picked up the yard, but she watched like a spy as men came and went, as Mr. J showed up and tried to break down the door, as a parade of not-so-nice neighbor kids egged the windows, left piles of dog poop in burning bags on the doorstep, as all the women in the subdivision stayed away and never invited Mrs. J to parties and meetings.
This is what Meggie remembers now as she walks to the back door more than twenty years later and climbs over boxes and chairs and finds Mrs. J, hands on hips, drinking wine in what's left of her bedroom at 11:05 A.M. the day before Thanksgiving.
“Meggie, you sweet thing, how nice to see you.”
They hug, and without asking Mrs. J pours her a glass of wine and they sit, shoulder to shoulder against the bare wall, feet pointing toward the house where Meggie spied on her all those years ago.
“My mother didn't tell me you were moving,” Meggie says, glad to sit and talk to someone who she liked, no matter what her mother had told her. Mrs. J always gave her a ride when she saw her walking and laughed at her jokes and told her she was going to knock the socks off the world.
They rush past the “stuff”—Meggie's still-fresh marriage, graduate school, where Stacey and Jill are living—and then the leap, with the second glass of wine, into the present, which is a place Mrs. J has always loved to embrace.
“My mother didn't tell me you were moving.”
“Jesus, honey, your mother still thinks it's 1958 and that I should have stayed with a man who hit me, slept around and then got pissed when I started to sleep around.”
“So all those horrid rumors are true?”
Mrs. J laughs from a place wild and free. A place that makes Meg just a bit jealous.
“Hell, yes.”
“Remember the night he left?”
“Which time?”
“Summer, July . . . I think I was in first grade or something.”
“The night he came in the front door and Jack Blakely went out the back door?” Mrs. J laughs.
“You are so wicked, Mrs. J.”
“That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me, honey.”
They both sip their wine, and Meggie reaches back and remembers the garbage bags and the ring.
“Good God, did you ever find the ring?”
“What? What ring?”
Meg tells her the story. The soft breeze, the yelling, the garbage bags, and Mrs. J almost drops her wineglass into her lap.
“You did the garbage bags?”
“Yep. It was me.”
“My God. I had no idea. I had no idea. Do you know what that meant to me? It gave me a hint of hope that someone else knew me and my life and wanted to help. It was you? Wow. It was you.”
“The ring.”
“John's wedding ring?”
“Did you ever take it off the window?”
“Meggie, I thought it got sucked up in the power mower. I never found it.”
Meggie rises as if she has been shot, grabs Mrs. J by the hand and rushes with her over the top of the boxes and into the front yard.
The untrimmed bushes have taken over the front of the house. They have formed a protective fort around the windows.
Meggie goes right to the window, pushing past the tangled bushes and moving her hand without even looking to the edge of the handle. The ring is there, but it has molded itself between the handle and the window through many cold winters and hot summers. Meggie looks around, finds a rock that will fit in the palm of her hand and she pounds the ring until it comes loose.
“Here it is,” she exclaims, holding it up like a treasure.
“Sweet Jesus,” Mrs. J manages to say, laughing.
They sit on the doorstep then, not caring who will see them drinking wine and fondling an old wedding ring before noon. Meggie waves once to her mother, who spies them sitting there, and Meggie knows there will be hell to pay before she helps get the turkey into the oven.
“So, where are you going?” Meggie asks, tipping her glass toward the boxes and leaning in toward Mrs. J.
“I'm moving to Hawaii.”
“Serious?”
“Serious as death. I've been planning this for a long time. I have a job, a few friends over there, and I doubt if I'll ever come back.”
“Wow.”
Meggie is thinking how Bob would never let her go to Hawaii. She is thinking about how tied she suddenly feels to a life that seems to be telling her everything and never listening.
“All those years ago, the way people treated you, how did you manage to keep your sanity?”
Mrs. J puts her arm around Meggie, her fingers dropping gently against her shoulder, and Meggie leans in under the circle and stops breathing.
“I didn't care what people thought, honey. Everyone wanted to do what I did. Everyone wanted to live how I lived. No one had the courage to do it.”
“Really?”
“Of course really. Sweetheart, look at your own parents. They never were and they're still not happy. Mrs. Swobada is on medication, and half this block of finger-pointers is sleeping with someone they are not married to. There are so damn many lost dreams on this street, it's a frigging wonder anyone can get out of the driveway.”
“Am I blind?”
“We see what we want to see.”
“That makes me pretty blind.”
“Meg, why did you get married?”
Meggie wants to breathe again, but she cannot. There is a weight pushing against her chest that feels as if it is going to crush her lungs.
“I know what I am supposed to say,” she whispers. “But I can't say it. I can't.”
“Oh, sweetheart, listen to me. Please listen.”
Mrs. J puts her hands on Meggie's face and draws her within an inch of her own face. Meggie smells the sweet scent of wine and something strong and powerful, something that could push back a train.
“Anything is possible,” Mrs. J says. “Anything at all. You don't have to be like everyone else and you don't have to listen to anyone else and you can be your own person and live how you want to live. People will always try to say things about you when you do something like I did, because you make them think.”
“What do you mean?”
“It's frightening when someone else does something you know you should do and you cannot do it. Change scares the living hell out of people.”
“Like you kicking out your husband and staying in the house and getting a job?”
“That and moving away, saying no. Not marrying. Being alone. Everyone is so goddamn afraid of being alone. What they don't get is that we are alone no matter who we are with.”
Meggie starts crying without realizing it. Tears drip from her eyes and across her face and drop onto Mrs. J's fingers.
“Why are you crying, baby?”
“I'm scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“I think I've already made a ton of wrong decisions. I don't know if I can be like you.”
Mrs. J has pulled Meggie onto her lap and she is running her fingers through the hair that has fallen across her face.
“The world is a mess. It isn't easy to be different and to do what you feel is right for you, just you, and not for your mother or for the minister or for all the people who think they control our morality.”
Cars pass, someone waves, Meggie imagines her mother across the street peering from the side bedroom, and she wants to get up and go home but she cannot move.
“Was it hard?” Meggie asks.
“Oh yes. Imagine living how I did with all those eyes on me. I was always on display. But I think it would have been much harder to live the other way. I just couldn't do it anymore. I needed to be truthful.”
They talk about hopes and dreams and what it means to be a woman in a world where you have choices but the men are still in control. Meggie hears about how Mrs. J worked for so much less at the bank than the men who did the same job and how she had to fight to get Mr. J to help her pay for the girls' college and how even in a world where 50 percent of couples were eventually getting divorced, her community looked at her as if she had a disease they might catch if they got too close to her.
Meggie stays a long time. She hauls some boxes and gets the Hawaii address, and when she leaves, Mrs. J presses the gold ring, tarnished with years of weathered waiting, into her hand.
“Keep this and remember that you can always choose, you can always start over. You can always put the ring wherever you want to put it.”
Meggie kisses Mrs. J and then she puts the ring into her jeans pocket and she rushes across the street without looking back, because she knows her mother is waiting. She knows.
Bob has disappeared.
Pieces of his life have been removing themselves one by one from our house for weeks now. Shoes, golf clubs, entire sections of his closet, piles of junk I may never have noticed until I went looking for him have vanished, fallen through the ice into the depths of a lake the size of the moon.
Maybe Katie knows. I catch her flying through the kitchen on the way to who knows where. She has that “I'm always late” look oozing from every ounce of her flesh and from one end of the house to the other—grabbing cookies, changing socks, checking her phone messages, throwing me a kiss.
“Honey, when was the last time you saw your father?”
She has to stop and think, which is a good thing, because she may not have stopped for anything else in a very long time for more than five seconds.
“What day is it?”
“Monday.”
She's thinking, moving her foot, afraid to stand still, it seems, and what comes to her mind makes her stop everything, which is a rare occurrence.
“Shit, Mom, it's been days.”
“How many days, do you think?”
She thinks again.
“Saturday, maybe. Mom, don't you speak to him?”
A million memories flash in front of my eyes. Don't I speak to my husband? Did I ever speak to my husband? Years ago, when we lay awake all night on a bed the size of an air mattress, did we speak or did I just listen? Did I speak to him when I wanted to quit teaching and when the kids were little and I thought I should stay home more? Did I speak to him when I wanted sex and he didn't? Did I speak to him when I noticed he never came home anymore? Did I speak to him when I felt as if the center of who I was supposed to be had been stolen? Did I speak to him when I felt such a surge of sorrow after my aunt died that I could barely walk? Did I speak to him when our son fled from this house because he was being suffocated by all the unsaid words? Did I ever really speak to my husband?
Katie stops me by grabbing my hands and shaking them.
“Mom, where did you go?”
“Thinking.”
“About?”
“Speaking to your father.”
“How long has it been?”
When I look at Katie, really look at her, I see that she is no longer a girl. This is no news, but this time it registers in a place in my brain that makes my heart start-stop for just a second. Behind her wild eye makeup, shades of orange and black, I see the hint of my baby girl, but beyond that, everything else I see—full lips, the way she carries herself, the swaggering lilt of young beauty, her self-assurance, smell, the way she holds my hands, the fullness of her breasts and the glow of strength pouring out from her skin—she reeks of womanhood. My daughter takes my breath away, and in that same breathless instant I know I cannot lose her like I lost her brother. I cannot go through the wondering and the missing and the guilt and the loss, and so in one second, the second when I remember how I promised myself I would never hold on to my children when they were ready to fly, I decide to tell her something I have rarely told anyone. I must tell her the truth, and then I can let her go. I cannot at that moment think of anything more courageous that I have ever done in my entire life.
“Katie, we have to talk.”
I grip her hands so tight, she lets out a small moan. If I let up she may move away. I cannot let her go. Not just yet.
“Mom?”
“Where are you going right now?”
“Just to pick up Colleen.”
“Stay, okay? I have to tell you something really important. Can you stay with me?”
Katie does not hesitate, which brings me to the edge of a place that I see as a valley so wide and beautiful that I wonder if I can ever walk through it with my eyes open and not faint. I need her. She sees it and she puts her arm around my shoulder and walks me to the saggy couch out on the back porch. She knows this is my favorite place in the house because from there I can see the unbroken line of the horizon to the west and I can place my mind right there on that thin line and rest in silence. I have been unable to do that anywhere else in the entire world.
“Mom, I'm here. Tell me.”
She sits on an old wooden box, feet placed alongside mine, her beautiful hair pushed behind ears that are delicate anchors on each side of her head, and she stops her world—like a friend, like a woman—and enters mine.
And I begin.
I tell her everything. Mexico. Aunt Marcia. How unhappy I am. How this desire to be alone, maybe live alone, has risen up inside of me in such a fierce manner that I cannot stop it. I tell her I am afraid and I talk on through my embarrassment about how I have always—almost always—done whatever everyone else wanted me to do.
“Why, Mom? Why did you do it?”
“I guess I was scared. I never wanted to disappoint anyone. My mother. Your grandfather. The people at school who took a chance on me. Your father. It was one thing after another, and I never bothered to get out of the stream long enough to decide if I even wanted to be in the water.”
“So why now? What happened?”
I tell her even that. I tell her how I came home and how I heard a rolling thunder from the bedroom and how I watched her father and the flower woman. And she smiles.
“Awesome.”
“Awesome?”
“Well,” she says, quickly patting my hand, “sad but awesome that it was the moment that took you to where you needed to go.”
Is this my daughter? Is this the brat who pounded through the house five years ago and who told me she hated me when I wouldn't let her have a sleepover homecoming night with boys? Is this the girl who begged me to let her drop out of school in eighth grade so she could ride her bike to California?
The teenager who threw the telephone down the hall and whacked her brother upside the head when he looked at her—simply looked at her? Who is this grown woman who has my nose and hips and shining eyes and long, tapered fingers? Who is she?
“It's your father. Your father who was screwing around! How does this make you feel?”
“Mom, it's okay. He's been kind of a jerk for a long time. He's never here. Heck, we can't even find him today, and neither one of us has seen him since—what did we decide—last Saturday? He's just, well, Bob, my dad.”
She's thinking serious thoughts again. When did this happen?
“Mom, he's obviously been unhappy too. Shit—people, even my parents, they shouldn't be miserable. And I can't stop seeing you sneaking up the steps and them making love and that old bed squeaking and . . . well, it's not a pretty picture.”
I feel a pang of guilt. “Is this too much for you?”
“Mom, I'm almost eighteen. I know stuff, you know?”
That sounds better. I feel like I did when her brother called everyone “hey dude.”
“Katie, don't do things just for me.”
“Like what?”
“College, although that's kind of important, marriage . . .”
“Mom, that was your life. I know your marriage was a mess—I watched it, for crying out loud—but you've done things. Look at your research and what you've done with your students. You've done things other moms haven't. This other junk, it's just taken you a while to get it out of the way.”
I say it so fast, I don't even realize it's coming. “I was trying to find your father so I could let him know I'm going to file divorce papers tomorrow.”
“No shit, Mom.”
“I hate it when you talk like that.”
She laughs. Where have I heard that laugh? It's a mixture of lovely, honest-to-goodness hilarity and something deeper—like she knows more than I do.
“Katie.”
“What?”
“You laugh like your Aunt Marcia. Oh my God. That's it. It must have skipped a generation.”
“What skipped?”
“That, well, that ability to live like she did.”
“It hasn't skipped, Mom. You are just one slow-ass learner.”
