by Dan Noble
I try to speak, but my mouth goes dry. After a false start, I have to try again. I shake my head. The past is never far behind.
“Mom!” If she’s not teasing, she’s seriously perturbed. “You are naughty.”
“What would make you say such a thing?” I say, already failing to cram back the fears, the unanswered questions. She’s just a child, I tell myself. She’s probably angry with me for forcing her to eat peas. Still, on some level, I’m always lying to her, and children have excellent instincts about such things. There it is, all around us: this indignant feeling of knowing the seemingly impossible is what’s happened, and the coordinating instinct to simply deny it.
“You moved my necklace.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I saw you. You thought I was upstairs, but I wasn’t. I’d already come down and I saw you take it off the kitchen table and bring it in this room.”
“Don’t you tell fibs, Rose. That is a very naughty thing to do.”
My heart is racing. I don’t like the feeling of someone making me unsure of myself. It’s too easy to let the doubts begin.
“I guess I’m sorry,” she says, slowly, strangely, feeling the nap of my wool sweater in her pincer grip. How do you know what’s real, Millie?
“Now, go eat your snack,” I say, patting her behind, my heart racing with the undeniable conclusion: it’s back. I’ve pushed it off but here it’s come after me.
Mother’s secret.
Back in the laundry later, the buzzer goes. pausing with my hands atop the dryer, I try to picture myself at the time Rose mentioned: when she’d gone upstairs. But I was just in the kitchen. The incident disturbs me. Why would she say that? Has Kennedy been saying things about me that would make her doubt me? This is a terrible, awful thing. I am the good mother. I have dedicated my life to being everything my mother wasn’t.
I have to stop thinking about it. Nonsense. Hormones. I’m sure of it. There are more important things to fill my head with. Like, how I am going to bring up the subject of cancer with my husband. Still, I can’t stop thinking that maybe Rose is like Mother. Maybe there is something different about her, too.
2
MILLIE
As a child, it all seemed innocuous enough. Mother drilled the same words into me as she buttoned me up at the front door: “Do you have your book? Always carry a book with you, so you can ground your reading experience in real life,” she’d say. How cultured. How well-rounded.
“But why-uh?” I wanted to know. I’d stopped plugging my ears with my fingers long ago, but there were always things I couldn’t explain, and thinking of them only made me feel like a failure, a simpleton who couldn’t get it.
“Never mind why-uh. Like most things in this life, you have to work it out for yourself.” I was six. I had my book, but often no snack or extra underwear. I assumed she thought I’d eventually find a way to read myself out of sopping pants. I never doubted she loved me, but she was self-contained, and specific about what was important (books).
“Mom! Mom!” I’d yell once she’d turn and head for the school gates.
“What is it?”
But it was never anything. I wanted everyone to see this formidable woman was my mother.
My readiness would get tested, the way we did in school for atomic bomb explosions. In line at the echoey bank, under the gothic ceiling, I’d ask, “Can I have some goldfish?” She’d fish in her purse for a moment before saying, “Sorry, darling. I forgot them. Do you have your book?”
“Do you have your book?” I’d ask back when I felt stroppy. But she ignored such things. She knew I didn’t mean them and I didn’t need to apologize.
Between the queue’s velvet ropes, my mind careening between the exact likeness of my hair—dark, thick, and ropy—to Mother’s, though hers was braided and mine in two ponytails, and those square cushions of bubblegum in the machine at the door. I watched as another girl’s mother pinched a penny from her pocket and handed it to her hopping daughter, who carefully placed it in the slot and cupped her hand beneath the chute as she turned the dial that set the gum cascading.
I made a face, but Mother wouldn’t look at me.
What could I do but start reading my book? I’d enjoy it. The time would move faster; still other times, I’d get bored. But I couldn’t see what the big deal was. Why should I stick my face in a book when I could play with her, pretend this bank was our castle, and we the queen and princess?
I started to equate books with isolation. When Mother read, she wasn’t with me. And before I could understand how I felt, or what it might mean, I would lose my temper, stamp my feet and yell terrible things like, “If you don’t pay attention to me, I’m going to cut your head off!”
“If that’s how you feel,” Mother would say. And her disappointment would be enough. I’d regret it immediately, tears filling my eyes and my arms wrapped around her leg. How could I mean those words so much in one moment and feel such incredible remorse the next?
Beneath the gaze of those capacious eyes, Mother’s dark features at their most severe, my face tingled, my stomach lurched.
She said, “I’m not messing around, Millie. This is serious stuff that will make or break your life.” I’d read all the more, to please her, but I only felt lonelier, and like more of a failure.
If I had only known how bad the “break” was going to be, maybe I would’ve listened more carefully.
3
MILLIE
It’s no use trying to write off the coinciding discoveries of the necklace where I know Rose had not left it and the receipt as unimportant. I can’t bring myself to believe one can’t help the other. It’s my first thought: I can fix this. I can leave his cancer (god, that “c” really is terrible—kuh, kuh, kuh it echoes) wherever Mother left her depression and her speech. There is a way. I don’t know what it is, but in her young obliviousness, Rose has stumbled upon it. She is a Reader. But to what extent, I have no idea. The years of therapy beg me not to go here, but they lose.
The pull is so strong.
In the kitchen, I slip on my foil-lined gloves and try to find catharsis in Palmolive suds fighting grease in the sink. It’s all I’ve got. In the living room, I can hear Ernie’s earnest voice. Everything makes sense on Sesame Street.
I repeat: I’m here, grounded, sane, providing a stable environment for my husband and daughter, who may now need it more than ever. Fiction is fiction and fact is fact. God, I hate those words Dr. Samuels taught me so many years ago. Why do I always say them?
My husband may have cancer, Cancer, Kancer. A shiver rocks me. And whatever it is Mother had done all those years ago when she finally disappeared, healed my broken ankle overnight. Either she’s passed on the power to Rose, or I’m just as crazy as she was and it’s manifesting right now, in a moment of extreme stress. Can my daughter do what I believe she can? The time prior to seeing that fucking receipt feels like an oasis I should be able to reach again. Despite everything, I have to at least try.
I scan my memory for something grounding to focus on. My mind rewinds to last night, Kennedy and I in the bedroom. It’s my favorite part of the day, when Rose is off to sleep, all the domestic duties have been done, and it’s just the two of us, peaceful, more joyously satisfied with our lives than two people deserve to be.
Propped up with my litany of pregnancy pillows, I looked up from the book I was reading, The Culture of Motherhood, to share with Kennedy the nugget I’d just read.
“In Sumatra, pregnancy is considered an ‘in between’ state—not yet a mother, no longer simply a virgin or bride. She is liminaire—of the threshold—and must undergo rituals to both protect herself and others from the contagion of danger she presents.” I shared this line because it sounded beautiful to me. The image, not exactly concrete, but attractive, kept presenting itself to me throughout the night. Don’t forget me, it said.
“That’s why I’ve got
a mistress,” Kennedy said. “To protect myself.”
“You’d better not.” I kissed him. He pulled me to him.
“Yes, I remember history giving us some great remedies—much better than today: What have we got? Leeches, blood-letting, lobotomies, and my personal favorite, female genital massage.”
I wriggled my brows and let my knees fall open. When he reached for me, I snapped them shut and continued talking. I loved the genuine smile I brought to his face—dimple and everything. I didn’t see him reproduce it much outside of Rose’s and my company.
“I’ve been taking a multicultural angle on protecting this pregnancy. I’m follow the Jamaican tradition—no coconuts lest the baby be cross-eyed, no stretching my arms overhead and risk grotesquely stretching the baby’s neck.” But in my head, the lovely sounding word liminaire still seduced me. I often felt that way—of two worlds.
“No Fox News lest Bub be Republican,” Kennedy said. The dimple was so big I could stick my thumb in there.
“Says JFK. Anyway, I thought we’d see what tossing in one of those conservatives to the family dynamic was like. It’s so boring being an all-red household in a red state,” I said, then finished off the book’s no-no list: avoid ugly things or the baby will be born in kind.
“Okay,” Kennedy said, “I guess we won’t be seeing any of your friends from Rose’s school.”
I rolled up the book and whacked him with it.
He scoffed. “What? Should I say that one with the cleavage up to her neck and the velour track suit tight in all the wrong places—you know the one I mean—is attractive? Are we—”
“Are we what?”
“Liars,” he said. The dimple vanished.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking about unzipping that woman’s hoodie.” He smiled but didn’t manage the dimple. Odd. “Also, I didn’t pick my own name. My mother should have thought a bit harder. Names are important. They have significance, weight. Just look at the name of that doctor your mother had. Who goes around in life with the surname Pinocchio? Especially if you’re going to become a doctor. How can anyone trust a person named for a wooden puppet known for lying?”
“Well, I never trusted him. Maybe the name clouded my view.” I didn’t want to go down that path. Not with how good everything was presently. “Back to the book,” I said, steam-rolling on to tamp the nerves beginning to pulse around my eyes. “I steered cleared of ugly stuff for a week,” I told him. “But I found that left me mostly at home or walking around with my eyes fixed to the ground, bumping into things. So that one didn’t work out well.”
“Not fair to blame the remedy. You always walk around bumping into things.”
“Do not.” Maybe we are liars, I thought as I stood and stubbed my toe on the nightstand.
4
MILLIE
A little later, when Rose goes down for her two o’clock nap, I tiptoe to the door, swing it swiftly closed to avoid the creak, and retreat to my office next door to quietly think. I’ll have at least forty minutes before she wakes and I need to make the most of it.
Turning on the soft, faint light of the anglepoise, which is positioned with the neck tucked away from me, I sit in nearly as much darkness as my daughter. In the lamp’s circle of light, I see the persistent dance of those fibers of our lives that resist cleaning, their victory dance, and can’t help thinking of Mother and when this office, exactly as it is now, was hers.
This fear of losing the one I love and need most is breathtakingly familiar in here; Mother was my first lost love. I can literally feel the sensation of my brain seeking out solutions. We. Can. Do. This. And I don’t even know the problem yet.
Next door, Rose’s breathing must be slowing, her rear end skyward. I hear her mouth muscles involuntarily sucking every now and then.
I pick up the phone to dial Kennedy. Any normal wife would insist on knowing the truth immediately. But I hold the receiver until the dial tone gives way to a busy signal. Kennedy is not the kind of man who wants his wife to share in his burdens. In fact, healthy or not, we wouldn’t have the relationship we do if I didn’t let him take care of us his way.
I recall the day we met as if it were yesterday. I rest my head on Mother’s desk and conjure it. We met at my most aimless time, only months after Mother’s disappearance. I was trying on a simple life and arranging myself the best I could to make it fit.
During my first office job, though it was a fifteen-minute walk past dozens of perfectly good diners, luncheonettes, and delis, I always went to Three Guys’ Diner on Madison and 93rd to fetch Mr. Tyler’s ridiculous lunch. My employer ate the same thing every day, and I’d learned not to get it wrong.
When noon rolled around, Chico, the Three Guys’ counter man, and the two grill cooks waited for me. “Hola, beautiful lady,” Chico would say. And then he’d wait. He liked me to repeat the order, even though he knew the drill.
On one of those days, there was a handsome man in brown pants standing off to one side of the counter, reading a neatly folded section of The Times, as if waiting to pick up his own lunch. I waited a second before ordering, in case Chico would let me off the hook with this guy standing there. He didn’t.
I grimaced. “Tuna fish on lightly toasted rye with one slice of tomato, two paper thin purple onion rings and a pickle spear—sliced into strips and spread across the sandwich, three centimeters apart.”
Chico rolled his hand out for the finale.
“And a chocolate chip cookie—slightly raw.” The three of them in white kitchen jackets applauded.
They gave me a hard time, which I pretended was a big bother, and in exchange they always got the order just right, which meant a peaceful afternoon. I placed a high price on peace back then.
After Chico and the grill cooks settled down, the man looked up from his paper, flashing me a conspiratorial smile as if he’d been listening and decided he was on my side. He had thick dark hair and the kind of skin that looked like it always needed a shave; I wasn’t sure if it was this, or something deeper that gave him that aura of gravitas. He was a bit older than I was, maybe ten years, but still I took notice of him.
“You’re weird,” the man said.
“I know,” I said, “but that isn’t my lunch.”
“Oh,” he said. His eyes blinked a mix of confusion and amusement. He had a pleasant glow and all the right angles, like he could advertise soap.
We both turned our attention to the sizzling grill, the thick, greasy smell of which scented the whole place.
“Then why are you weird?” he asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I answered.
“I do.”
I was so used to pretending to be this simple secretary that this exchange caught me off guard. Why had I been my actual self with this stranger, told him the truth? Perhaps because he seemed sincere, and his directness was refreshing.
I said something bold like I never had allowed myself to since Mother’s disappearance, which was about five months earlier by that point. “Well, I’ll meet you for a long dinner one night and tell you all about it.” I couldn’t imagine what brought me to say something like this, the kind of thing the teenaged me used to say at moldy basement keg parties, envisioning Mother saying as much to her Parisian men nearly twenty years earlier.
Maybe it was the dream I’d had of my mother—smoking in the garden, a rhododendron sprig woven into her braid—the previous night that had propelled me. I always had the most vivid dreams, and bits of them would flash up throughout the day as if still playing out somewhere.
All day, I’d heard her words from back in the era my father had been around, stirring in me the most potent mix of desperation and solidarity: “It’s you and me against the world.” How it must have shocked my father to witness such a transformation in her.
He squinted, spreading his lips into a bright smile. “Depends what you consider long. I’ve only got about two days, three tops.”
Overpowered by his gaze, I looked down, my eyes landing on his pants’ zipper. A jolt shot through me, still I didn’t look away. I couldn’t tell if he noticed or not, but when our eyes search each other’s out once again—long after he’d gone back to his paper and I pretended not to watch—something in his stare penetrated deeper, as if in exchange for my bold behavior. As if we’d bypassed the usual boundaries.
As he accepted his I heart New York bag from Chico, the man held my gaze long and steady before turning toward the exit. I watched his shirtsleeve tighten at his shoulder and bicep as he pulled the door. I noticed it tremble slightly and wondered if this meant he was as affected by the meeting as I was.
Sashaying back to the office, I swung Mr. Tyler’s I heart New York bag, redolent of tuna fish, in loop-da-loops as I began to dread the mound of paperwork which amassed the bulk of my job. It was the smallest of comforts to me that Mother would never know what I did for a living. Meaningless words were anathema to her.
At least my mother wouldn’t—if we discussed such things—scold me for having left without making a date with that man who said he had two days, three tops for me. She wasn’t like that. When it came to men, in the real world at least, Mother was a lot more like me. Old fashioned.
She believed in letting things happen naturally. Relationships were complicated, tactile things, not some generic concept. I had this fact memorized by the time I was five.
Remember this, I thought. This is a significant moment. I couldn’t articulate why. But I felt it. And I saw his shuddering. It fit into a pattern in my life: things I could not explain. And as always, I was pulled toward the mystery, needing to see where it all led.
