I thought of the photo of Mama from MayJune’s album, how her eyes seemed haunted and dreamy and distant, all at once. I knew Miss Bettina was right.
“And I guess to Porter, she really did die, in a way.”
“Abandoned us, you mean.”
Miss Bettina gasped.
“No! Let’s just say the flat-out truth. Mama didn’t die of cancer. She never had cancer. She wasn’t physically sick. She was just sick of her life, of us—me and Will and Daddy. And never once in the past seven years did you think it might be a good idea to tell me?”
“Oh, Donna,” she said, crying softly. “But in a way, she was ill.”
I wanted to lash out. So I said, “I found suitcases of Mama’s clothes. Dresses. Suits. I’ve been ripping apart those clothes. Ripping them apart and making new clothes—”
“Donna,” Miss Bettina was saying softly, “I’ve admired what you’ve done with the materials. Making something new out of those old clothes—honey, that’s a good thing. You’ve got a real talent.”
Great, wrenching sobs shook me then, and in the next instant, Miss Bettina was kneeling beside me, holding me, pulling me to her. I didn’t resist this time. I leaned forward on the edge of my chair, and then fell to my knees and melted into her embrace, letting her take and absorb all the pain that rattled through me.
We didn’t hear Daddy come into the room.
But when we finally pulled apart, wiping our eyes and noses, there he stood in the entry to the living room, staring at us. Well, there he weaved, barely upright on his feet. Even in the dim living room light, we could tell that his eyes were glazed.
“Donna,” he said, “you look like your mother, an angel—”
“Porter, shut up and go to bed,” Miss Bettina snapped.
Daddy looked at Miss Bettina pleadingly. “I can’t do this. I can’t watch Will suffer….”
I stood, walked over to my father, and stared up at him. There was nothing in his face of the man I’d been proud of only days before, the man who’d rallied enough to speak up for the union’s campaign for safety. I felt pity—the one emotion I hated to see people feel for me. I smelled the alcohol and cigarette smoke rolling off his breath, off his skin and clothes.
“Daddy, you look at me. This is Donna. Donna! Do you understand?”
He nodded slowly.
“What is going to happen is this: You will get Mama’s old car fixed. You will sign whatever paperwork it takes for me to get a license. I will drive Will to Miami Valley, and you will let the high school know that I will need time away for this. You will tell Grandma that I’m no longer working for her because Will needs me around. I’ve been taking care of Will since he was four. I will take care of him…” I paused, and finally my voice did falter, cracking, as I made myself finish, “for as long as it takes.”
Chapter 21
On the Friday of the homecoming football game, October 16, I was at home after school, pulling chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. Will and Tony were tossing a football to one another in the backyard. Will had invited Tony to spend the night. And I was planning a night in, too. I told myself I didn’t care that I was missing the game, or the dance.
I put the chocolate chip cookies on a plate. I was getting better at baking—this time, they were only a little burned on the edges. Then I poured two glasses of milk and called Will and Tony.
The boys rushed in, Tony devouring several cookies and gulping his milk, Will going a little slower, but still, eating. He looked at me, gave me a mouth-full-of-cookies grin. I groaned, rolled my eyes, which made him laugh. I noticed the tiredness around his eyes, tried not to let my concern show. I said, “It’s getting chilly out. I think you boys need to play quietly, maybe up in Will’s room, until dinner.”
“Aw, come on, Donna, we’re fine—” Will started, but then we heard the bang of the mailbox lid from the front porch. The boys jumped up from the kitchen table and ran to the front door.
I picked up a dish towel and started wiping up the cookie crumbs. In an instant, Will and Tony were back in the kitchen, Will clutching two envelopes. He tossed one on the damp table.
“That one’s for you!” he hollered at me. “And this…this is from Marvel Puffs!”
“Open it, open it!” Tony shouted.
I looked down at the envelope, stared at my name and address neatly printed in block lettering.
Will and Tony whooped over the long-awaited prize from Sunshine Bakery Company, but I didn’t hear.
I picked up the thick envelope and studied the two three-cent stamps to cover extra postage, the blank spot where the return address should have been, the New York postmark. My heart leapt to my throat. Mr. Cahill…
Casually, as if opening a bill from the milk delivery company, I turned the envelope over, slid my index finger beneath the flap.
I pulled out two pieces of paper and a stapled packet. The first piece, on top, was a note, written on a page of plain stationery:
Dear Miss Lane.
I hope this finds you well. Enclosed please find a copy of a letter I recently sent to the Parsons School of Design—unsolicited, I realize, but I hope it will encourage you in the dreams you should no longer deny.
Sincerely,
Mr. Cahill
How would I ever figure out exactly where he was in a city as big as New York? I shook my head at myself for even wondering and then shifted the handwritten note behind the second page, a carbon copy of a typewritten letter that Mr. Cahill had addressed to a Mr. George Worthington at Parsons.
Dear George:
So nice to meet for cocktails last evening; as I said then you and your lovely Sarah are looking more wonderful than ever. Evidently, administration and teaching suit you—something I’ve always wished I could find stability in, but given my attempt at the high school I mentioned, I’ve realized I’m not suited. I forget about boundaries too easily, it seems.
And yet I’m crossing another one here, but I wish to reiterate my recommendation of a budding young designer, Donna Lane, who I hope will be sending you pages from her design portfolio and an application this coming spring, for consideration for the entering class of 1958. While lacking in confidence and, of course, formal training, Miss Lane possesses that rarest combination—a natural eye for design, a native creativity, and passion. Her artistry bursts forth, in spite of herself. It’s worthy to consider what she could achieve with an education at Parsons.
I know it is customary for applicants to request letters of recommendation and send them along with their applications—but when have you ever known me to follow what is customary? So I’m sending this letter of recommendation in advance of Donna Lane’s application, and without her having requested it. I think you do know, however, that I have an unfailing ability for knowing talent, grit, and potential when I see it.
Sincerely,
Nate Cahill
And behind that letter was the application packet for Parsons School of Design.
For a second, I was too shocked to know what to think, to feel, to do.
“Um…Donna?”
Tony’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, back to the kitchen table, to the moment.
I looked around. Will was gone.
I looked at Tony. “What’s wrong? Did he throw up? Faint?”
“I think he’s just upset. ’Cause of this.” He pointed at a wadded-up piece of paper.
I picked it up, smoothed it out, laid it over the top of the pages Mr. Cahill had sent me.
Will’s letter lacked a personal greeting, or even a signature. The form letter blandly read:
We are sorry to inform you that the response to our One Square Inch of Alaska Territory deed program exceeded expectations. We have exhausted all the deeds available, and unfortunately, cannot send you said deed. However, please make sure to watch for more fun promotions from Marvel Puffs and the Sunshine Bakery Company, coming soon on a cereal box near you!
Later that night, as I cleaned up from dinner in the kit
chen, I had my transistor radio on and tuned to WBEX. The Four Aces were again crooning “Just Squeeze Me”—the song that was playing the first time I’d met Jimmy, only five weeks before. But it seemed like a lifetime.
I had the radio turned low, because Daddy was reading the newspaper in the living room, which really meant that he was napping. I hummed along, trying to tell myself that I didn’t care that I wasn’t at the game, wasn’t going to the homecoming dance the next night.
As I finished drying the plate I held, a brief flash of Mr. Cahill’s letter—carefully refolded and tucked at the bottom of my lingerie drawer, next to my stash of money, the Dexamyl from Babs, the Blue Waltz Sachet from Jimmy—went off in my head, and with that image came a guilty pang. Of course I couldn’t apply to Parsons the coming spring. Even if Will were fine, that seemed so ridiculously out of reach. My plan now was clear—I’d stick with Will through to the end. And then I’d go to New York with my original plan to be a seamstress. But I hadn’t quite brought myself to throw away the note, and letter, and the Parsons application.
I heard a knock at the front door. My heart leapt for the second time that day, this time at the thought, Jimmy! Maybe he’d decided to leave the football game, to come see me….
I hurried through the living room. Sure enough, Daddy was asleep in his dark blue chair. When I opened the door, there stood Grandma, looking nervous, like she was afraid I’d slam the door in her face. Had those tired lines around her eyes, her mouth, run so deeply before? I almost felt sorry for her.
But then she said, “Well, Donna, are you going to stand there gaping at me like you’re trying to catch flies in your mouth, or are you going to ask me in?”
I sighed. “What are you doing here? Friday nights are the busiest—”
“Between homecoming and the strike, the café is nearly empty. I left the staff in charge. And I came by tonight because I figured—in spite of how you messed up with that nice Jimmy Denton—that you’d be at the homecoming game trying to hold your head high, instead of skulking around here. Don’t you know that just makes you look even guiltier? Why—”
“Come in, Mama,” Daddy said. I didn’t move. “Donna, let your grandmother in.”
Grandma gave me a triumphant little smile. I moved aside and she rushed past me, and plopped down on the couch. “Porter, I’m so glad you’re here. I came by tonight figuring Donna would be at the game because I wanted to talk with you alone.” She looked at me. “Don’t you need to go tend Will?”
“He’s fine,” I said. “Resting.”
Actually, I’d found him in his room, where he’d retreated after reading the form letter that denied him his much-longed-for deed. He refused to come down, refused to talk to Tony, refused to have dinner. I’d told him that he could not watch tonight’s episode of Sergeant Striker—no sir, young man—until he came out and had dinner and stopped pouting.
The show would be on in ten minutes. While cleaning up from dinner, I’d envisioned him rushing down the stairs at the last minute, wolfing down his dinner, then sitting cross-legged in front of the TV, his head tilted to the right like it always was when he watched, his untamable cowlick sticking up at the back of his head.
“Is he not feeling well?” Grandma pressed.
“He’s fine,” I snapped. “He’s just pouting because he didn’t get his deed to one square inch of Alaska.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous,” Grandma said. “If he’s feeling well enough to eat, then you must demand that he do so! How else can he build up his strength, fight off this illness?” She looked at Daddy. “Porter, how can you stand for this? Clearly Donna doesn’t have the strength of character to make the boy do what he needs to do.”
“Donna is doing the best she can,” Daddy said. “One late dinner isn’t that important.”
“Why, I’ll just get him down here myself!” Grandma exclaimed, jumping up.
But I was already standing, and before she could take a step toward the stairs, I was in front of her, blocking her way. “No. Leave him be. I will go check on him in a minute.” After you leave.
“All this foolishness over a cereal box promotion? How are you going to care for him if his illness gets worse?” Something in her eyes made me realize that she didn’t believe that Will’s illness was as mild as Daddy had made it sound. And she was, I realized, still hurt and angry that Daddy had refused to bring her to Miami Valley.
“You need me here! You need me taking care of you, of all of you, and you’ve needed me ever since that conniving, money-grubbing, loose woman skipped out on you, and—”
She stopped and gasped, realizing as her words rang out that she’d gone too far. She didn’t know, after all, that I finally knew the truth. I heard the third step on the stairs squeak and my heart dropped. Will. He’d heard every word.
Suddenly, Daddy was out of his chair, standing in front of his mother. I watched in wide-eyed horror and fascination as he grabbed her wrists, just as I had weeks before, and said in a dangerous, low voice, “You will never, ever speak of Rita again like that. In fact, I don’t want you to ever speak of her again. She was hurting and she made the choice to run off, but I never wanted to look at how much she was hurting, never wanted to see—”
Daddy’s voice strangled to a stop. Grandma stared up at him, her chin suddenly quivering.
“But, Porter, you need my help; you’ve always needed my help. If I’d have been here running things all along—”
“No, Mama,” Daddy said softly. “No. Donna is in charge. She always has been, which isn’t right. But now is not the time to change it.” He let go of Grandma’s wrists and shook his head. “Now isn’t the time.”
Rage flashed across her face, but Grandma didn’t say a word. She turned, squared her shoulders, and walked out of our house.
I rushed to the stairs as if I’d been released from a spell.
Will sat on the top step. His face was blotchy, tear-streaked.
“What did she mean, about Mama running away?”
“Will…don’t worry about that. I’m not sure what she was talking about.” The words came out of my mouth before I even thought about what I was doing—perpetuating the lie that Mama had died.
Was it better for Will to learn—then, of all times—that Mama hadn’t died, but had simply walked away from her family? That it was partly because of baby blues brought on by his birth? Or would he be better off thinking what he’d thought all along—that our mama had died of cancer at a clinic in Florida? The truth, and what we’d been told, and what we were now telling Will were all jumbled up in my head.
“Listen,” I said, “Sergeant Striker is just about on. You don’t even have to eat dinner, if you don’t want to. I’ll let you watch it, watch it with you—”
“Don’t care. They lied. They said I’d get my deed if I sent in those box tops.” He started crying again. “I wanted it and worked for it and dreamed about it and followed the Marvel Puffs rules. It’s not fair.”
“Oh, Will. Few things in life are.”
“Some things ought to be, though,” he said softly. Then he stood up, turned, and headed down the hall to his bedroom.
I turned, too, but went to the kitchen, suddenly understanding, suddenly knowing what I had to do.
The first step: Dig that Marvel Puffs form letter out of the kitchen trash can, smooth out its wrinkles, and wipe off the stains as best I could.
Chapter 22
“Smile!”
Babs urged me on, the following Tuesday, from the passenger seat of Mama’s convertible. My eyes were focused on the road before me, my hands clamped on the steering wheel. I had the top up because it was a chilly, rainy morning. I was nervous, both because of our mission and because I hadn’t driven on such slick pavement before. Babs would keep insisting, so I clenched my teeth and smiled.
“No, silly, look at me and smile!” Babs said.
“Do you mind? The road is slick and I’m trying to keep the car—”
A flash o
f light shot in my eyes. Babs giggled while I tried to slow the car and stay steady on the road. By then, I was so familiar with the road between Groverton and Dayton that I knew there were no curves up ahead. I was more irritated than scared that for the moment all I could see were white spots from the bright flash in my eyes.
“Why do you keep doing that, Babs?” This was the third time she’d taken my picture since we’d left Groverton.
“This is a momentous occasion—you talking me into skipping school! And besides, I’m supposed to be the photographer, and you’re the reporter, so I need to practice, right?”
My eyes had cleared enough for me to glance over at Babs. She was grinning, putting on her usual larger-than-life, sassy attitude, even though there was a hint of sadness and weariness around her eyes. And a bruise on her left cheek, not quite covered by her thick pancake makeup. Something she’d done at homecoming—she wasn’t sure what—had irritated Hank, and that night after the dance, after they’d parted from Jimmy and Lisa, he’d gotten rough with her. But, she told me, she must have brought it on herself—she’d had Dexamyl while getting ready, and then the vodka Hank had brought in a flask, so she didn’t quite remember—and besides, Hank was touchy because Groverton had lost its homecoming game 21–7, and he’d apologized so sweetly later.
I told her the sweetest apology in the world didn’t change the fact that Hank was an ass and she didn’t deserve to be treated like that for any reason, certainly not because Hank was upset over a football game score. Babs had gotten mad and not spoken to me for a whole day after that. But then she’d forgotten all about it and agreed gleefully to my plan.
“Come on, you owe me a real smile and photo!” Babs said.
“Why?”
“You’ve got a free pass to skip school anytime now,” she said lightly. I didn’t find her comment insensitive. She was, I knew, upset about Will, but Babs always thought if she could be lighthearted enough, all problems would go away—no matter how many bruises gave evidence to the contrary. “What am I supposed to tell Principal Stodgill?”
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