Pulling Home (That Second Chance)

by Campisi, Mary

  “Have faith, Alice,” Marion chimed in. “The Lord only gives us what we can handle and besides, with that doctor son of yours, if he thought it was serious, he’d make her stay.”

  Tilly set her coffee mug on the table and crossed both gnarly arms over her flat chest. “What did she say about it?”

  She being Audra Valentine.

  Alice sniffed and cut square sections of sweet roll. “Of course she denied my plea to let Kara stay on a bit longer. I was even willing to put up with the mother if I could have my granddaughter a week or so extra. But she flat out turned me down, and when that headache episode occurred, she turned her nose up at Jack and said she was taking her child home.”

  Tilly snorted. “What a slap in the face.”

  “I’m sure sorry it had to be this way, I know how much you want to spend time with your granddaughter.” Joyce had twelve grandchildren, all within five miles of her home and she saw them at least once a week. She said it was how traditions were built and Alice agreed. Unfortunately, her own children had other ideas.

  “The woman really does look like her mother, if you change the hair and such,” Marion said. “Boobs were a little bigger I think, or maybe the sweaters were just tighter. Dang, I hate to admit it, she’s a beautiful woman.” When the others glared at her, she merely shrugged and said, “I’m just saying, she is.”

  “And what did it get her or her mother?” Tilly’s beady eyes shrunk to dots. “What did either of them use that beauty for other than no good?”

  “She’s kind of standoffish,” Marion said, “but she isn’t hoity-toity like I thought she’d be.”

  “Why on earth would she be hoity-toity coming from a background like she did? Poor Lenore, God rest her soul, how she ever birthed a daughter like Corrine, I will never know.” Joyce let out a huff and made a quick sign of the cross.

  “What’s Audra do back in San Diego?” Marion asked.

  Alice shrugged. “Some kind of writing. Magazine, I think.”

  Tilly scoffed. “More like living off your son’s paycheck. There’s a reason they call them starving artists.”

  “I guess it would be polite to inquire, but I never had the inclination.”

  “She’d probably fabricate a story anyway.” This from Tilly who wanted nothing to do with loose women or loose morals.

  Alice sighed and lifted the tray of sweet rolls. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I doubt anyone would believe what she said.”

  ***

  Audra sat on Jack’s bed with her back against the wall, staring at a New York Giants pennant. It was a simple headache. That’s what she’d told Dr. Vincent, Kara’s pediatrician in San Diego, when she’d called this afternoon for an appointment. What did she expect of an eight year old whose father suddenly died? The pain had to go somewhere. A simple headache. Audra would continue repeating this until she had proof otherwise because she could not permit her brain to consider any other possibility. And God, wherever He was these days, would not be so cruel as to strike one family, twice in one month. Would He?

  Kara slept next door in Rachel’s room amidst a mountain of ruffles and Barbie dolls. Each year since Rachel’s death, Alice Wheyton bought a Barbie doll, carefully removed the packaging, dressed and accessorized her, and placed the doll on the shelf near the one from the previous year. There were twenty Barbie’s since Rachel’s passing—blondes, brunettes, redheads, swimmers, skiers, dancers, veterinarians, and pilots, wearing sandals, stilettos, clogs, tennis shoes, and cowboy boots.

  Alice vowed Rachel would have loved them all. Kara certainly did. She traced their faces and curls with the reverence of one who realizes she’s been granted a unique gift. Audra remembered Grandma Lenore talking about the tragic loss of the Wheyton’s only daughter. Meningitis, the feared fever of the brain. Audra hadn’t known Christian or Jack then, and had only heard her grandmother speak of Alice as one of St. Peter’s Guild members. How much sadness filled the world every day and yet, people went about the business of breathing, eating, sleeping. Hoping.

  The pains in the world were not only relegated to the deserving. No one was immune, not even the good-hearted or the young. Did the Wheytons think Audra deserved the ill that befell her? What if they knew the truth behind her actions? It didn’t matter because they would never find out.

  She lay on Jack’s bed as the cool breeze from the open window blew over her skin. Alice chose Jack’s room for Audra, an ironic gesture considering the situation. Christian’s door remained closed, the memory of his teen days plastered at eye level. Before she left, Audra would slip inside and revisit the childhood room of her dead husband. She’d only been in the Wheyton house three times as a teenager, never as an adult until this week. It was hard to imagine Jack as a child, peering out the window into the blackness of night or stirring up mischief by dropping a ball or cup of water out the window. Perhaps he’d done both or none of those things. By the time she met him, he was a serious medical student with a constant four o’clock shadow who rarely smiled and spoke little. But there’d been no need for talk in those days. No need at all.

  ***

  Growing up hadn’t been easy. The town all knew about Corrine Valentine—some through gossip, others firsthand, and by the time Audra was eight, she knew, too.

  Grandma Lenore did her best, cooking vegetable soup and homemade stews, canning tomatoes from the garden out back, making Vick’s rub soaks when Audra’s chest grew tight, to ward off the croup, she said, and lemon-honey tea to ease a sore throat. There was always plenty of food, and Audra’s clothes, though often hand-me-downs from Mrs. Mertigan’s grandchildren, were clean and neat. And every Sunday, they walked to St. Peter’s Church, three blocks away, Audra holding her grandmother’s arm as the elderly woman shuffled along, a black sweater thrust over her shoulders, a cotton print housedress covering her ample shape to just below the knees, white sneakers on her bunion feet.

  Corrine never went with them, never even offered to drive them in her Chevy Nova. She was always sleeping at 9:00 a.m.—when she was there. Most times her bed was still empty when they left for St. Peter’s and when she did show up, usually close to lunchtime, her clothes were wrinkled, her white-blond hair a giant tangle, her dark eyes smudged with mascara. Hi, Baby, she’d say, rushing to Audra and giving her a peck on the cheek, barely touching, and a half hug, ignoring Grandma Lenore’s tight-lipped stare. The staleness which clung to Corrine on these mornings still lingered after all these years—Emeraude, Virginia Slims, and alcohol.

  Grandma Lenore tried to compensate for her daughter’s lacking by reading Audra stories from the Bible and teaching her about respecting oneself, honoring one’s word, and keeping the Ten Commandments. Her voice was quiet and tired, but steadfast as she recited her beliefs with her tight gray bun and stooped shoulders, her arthritic fingers kneading bread or pushing a needle slowly through a ripped hem on Audra’s skirt as she spoke.

  Sadly, there was nothing she could do for her own daughter. The old neighbor ladies, Mrs. Gloodinski and Mrs. Rooney threw names at Corrine like loose, wild, embarrassing, and immoral. The other secretaries at Cummings Communication, where Corrine worked for Mr. George Cummings as his personal secretary, called her slut and whore, words Audra looked up in the dictionary one night after she heard Grandma Lenore telling Corrine about the phone call she received from Mr. Cummings’s wife. The other mothers at Audra’s PTA meetings refused to acknowledge Corrine in her tight-knit dresses and overdone makeup. The fathers expressed more interest, their gazes sliding from her full red lips, working around the curves of snug fabric hugging her hips, inching to her tiny ankles and three-inch pumps. She liked it when men said she could be Marilyn Monroe’s sister and flashed each of them smiles, even Mr. Dandwood, who was bald and smelled bad. They smiled back and stared at her in a strange way that made Audra look down at her loafers. If the men’s wives were there, they grabbed their husband’s arms and dragged them away. If they weren’t, then the men, four, five, six of them, sidled u
p to Corrine, talking, laughing, forgetting all about their children’s report cards and papers. Every man loved Corrine Valentine, loved the way she looked, the way she smelled, the way she smiled.

  It wasn’t until years later, when Audra was just shy of fifteen that she realized no man really loved her mother, not enough anyway to keep her from destroying herself. When Stanley Osgooden came into Corrine’s life with his bow ties and starched white shirts, she said, This is the one. This is the one I’m going to marry. He was small built and quiet with pale gray eyes and a soft voice. He’s wonderful. I’m going to get you a Daddy, Audra. Her mother had been so filled with excitement and hope. Her makeup became more subdued, the Emeraude less intense, the nails a light shade of pink.

  Grandma Lenore said nothing, just prayed the rosary and left the room when Corrine started talking about Stanley. Audra began to believe maybe Mr. Osgooden was the one. Finally, finally, she’d have a normal life. A mother and a father.

  One night, three months after they met, Stanley Osgooden made reservations at The Elderberry Den, a fancy restaurant that served surf and turf and prime rib. I know it’s kinda soon, but I just know he’s going to propose tonight, Corrine told Audra as she fluffed up the back part of her blond hair with a teasing comb and slipped into black pumps. I just know it. She hugged her and whispered, You’re gonna have a daddy, sweetheart.

  But Stanley Osgooden hadn’t been thinking of a proposal, at least, not the kind Corrine anticipated. He did want her though, like all the other men did, but his offer had a bit more gentleman’s flair to it. He wanted her to move to Atlanta with him and his wife and two children—he neglected to mention his marital status before that night—and become his mistress. He said he’d set me up, Mama, Corrine told her mother, tears flooding her face, voice suffocated with sobs. He’d set me up real nice. Take care of me. Audra too, if I wanted. More sobs. He didn’t want a wife. He already had one. When will I ever learn? Nobody wants me.

  The tears had been so hard, so consuming, Audra feared they would pour out until they sucked her mother dry, and then she’d crack open, a shriveled empty shell filled with nothing. But then the tears stopped, just like that. Corrine sniffed, swiped her hands across her face and walked to the liquor cabinet where she poured a gin, straight up, swallowed it, coughed, and poured another, and all the while Audra and Grandma Lenore watched and waited, for what, they didn’t know.

  I’m fine, Corrine said, pouring another drink. I think I’ll go lie down a while. Her voice was steady, her gaze firm as she disappeared into her bedroom, drink in hand, and closed the door.

  The next morning Grandma Lenore found Corrine in her black slip lying face down, an empty bottle of valium on the nightstand. Her body was cold, her lips blue. Three months and two days before her thirty-first birthday, Corrine Alice Valentine was dead. Dead too, was Audra’s dream of becoming part of a normal family. Only a few people attended the funeral, neighbors mostly. Mr. Cummings sent flowers but didn’t make an appearance. Stanley Osgooden did neither.

  Everything changed after Corrine’s death. Grandma Lenore shuffled more, clasped her rosary tighter and murmured to herself, in prayer or desperation, Audra couldn’t tell which, wondered sometimes if they were the same. The aches in the old woman’s joints settled in her knees, making walking any distance painful. Audra became the messenger and the delivery person—to the grocery store for milk and bread, the neighbor’s to borrow an egg or spool of thread, the drugstore for liniment. Mrs. Mertigan drove them to Mass every Sunday morning in her navy Caprice Classic. While other girls Audra’s age were sharing secrets at sleepovers or learning new dance steps, she tended the garden, canned the tomatoes, picked and snapped the pole beans, and baked the breads. She gathered the laundry, ironed the aprons and housedresses, dusted the maple table and chairs, and mended her own skirts. She rubbed liniment on her grandmother’s swollen knees, washed the old woman’s long gray hair twice a week and braided it into a bun on top of her head. Gradually, Audra took over the cooking too, soups and stews at first, and then roasts with homemade gravy and chicken with buttermilk dumplings.

  Grandma Lenore curled up after Corrine’s death, shriveling inside herself, one breath at a time until one morning, two days after Audra’s high school graduation, she died. It was a Thursday, bright and clear. Audra had just fixed Grandma Lenore oatmeal with wheat toast, settled her in her rocking chair and tucked the gold and brown afghan around the old woman’s swollen legs. Then she’d gone to the basement to pull out chicken for dinner but changed her mind and decided on beef soup instead. It took a few extra minutes to find the beef cubes and rearrange the packages, and when she returned to the kitchen, Grandma Lenore was leaning back in the rocker, mouth slack, eyes wide open.

  Grandma? But Audra knew, before she placed a hand over the old woman’s heart, she knew. It was then, as she clutched her grandmother’s limp hand between her fingers that the knowledge burst inside her like a cancer cell gone wild, spreading first to her gut, then her chest and finally, her brain, until every cell in her body was contaminated with it. Her family was gone and all she had left was Christian.

  Chapter 8

  “I promised myself if I ever got out, I’d set things straight with Corrine’s daughter.”—Doris O’Brien

  The birds woke Audra the next morning, chirping from the gnarled oak outside the window. She threw back the covers and stretched. If she hurried she could sneak in a run before anyone woke up. She wasn’t avoiding them but Joe Wheyton could stare down a blind man and Alice was too overwrought to concern herself with her husband’s behavior. The man would just as soon kick Audra out if he thought he could keep Kara and get away with it. Christian always said his father was all bluster, that deep down he was a real softy. Doubtful.

  Audra slipped on sweats and a T-shirt and made her way down the steps and out the back door. Holly Springs hadn’t changed much in nine years, especially the middle class area where the Wheytons lived. Her old house of course was on the other side of town. The wrong side. She stretched and began jogging along the familiar streets, past alleys and paths leading to schools and churches, the post office, Kroger’s, True Value. This part of the country had a natural greenness about it that didn’t exist on the West Coast unless someone spread it from an aerator or pellet. In Holly Springs, grass sprouted in lush, rolling clumps along hillsides and banks, surrounding sidewalks and pathways. The foliage too had a healthy sheen to it—green, glossy, and natural. San Diego as seen from the road offered cactus and brown brush, spiky protrusions hugging the ground, so unlike this area. There was true beauty here, in the land, in the surroundings, but unfortunately, not in the people.

  There were those who said West Coasters were hollow and fake, gathering their mantras from the newest gurus to hit the New York Times Bestseller list, honing fashion sense from the pages of GQ and Mademoiselle, choosing mates based on BMI’s instead of compatibility. It was true to some degree. But for all the illusion and emptiness, there were still those who held true values, who believed in right and common sense, who would not compromise integrity. Christian had been such a person. Peter was one, too.

  Fifteen minutes later, Audra ended up on her old street. Hadn’t she somehow known she would have to see the house of her childhood, if for nothing else than to compare memory with reality? A red and white For Sale sign protruded from an overgrown lawn. The house she remembered as powder-blue shingled was now gunsmoke, peeling around rusty gutters and beneath windows covered with plastic. It was a tiny box of a house with a narrow entrance and even narrower windows. Grandma Lenore had taught Audra to clean those windows twice a year with ammonia and newspapers because newspapers didn’t make lint like paper towels did, and of course, there was the cost to consider.

  There was always the cost to consider in those days. Everything costs money, she’d said. What she hadn’t said was why they never had any. She didn’t need to though because Audra knew the difference between what hung in her mother’s closet an
d Mrs. Mertigan’s hand-me-downs. And then there were the perfumes, and the shoes, and the liquor. Audra figured it out all on her own. And people thought she was like her mother? They had no idea. She inched toward a side window and tried to peer through the thick plastic.

  “Audra Valentine?”

  Audra swung around. The woman who had cornered her outside the funeral home and declared she’d been Corrine’s best friend stood three feet away in a lime housedress belted at the waist with a cord that looked an awful lot like a clothesline rope. Doris O’Brien. She wore pink slippers, pink pearls, and pink lipstick. “Where did you come from?” Why hadn’t she heard the woman’s rattled breathing which now clogged the distance between them?

  Doris threw her a wide smile, revealing uneven, dingy teeth and announced, “I’ve been waiting for you. It’s about time you came.”

  “I was only out for a morning run. I had no intention of coming here.”

  The woman grabbed her arm and said, “Of course, you didn’t, dear. No one ever does.” She tightened her grip. “Hurry, follow me. If they see me, they’ll make me go back and I won’t be able to talk to you.”

  Audra followed the older woman toward the rear of the house, noting the bony shoulders, the unsteady gate, the stain on the back of the dress. She couldn’t have been more than forty-three or so, yet she looked much older. Doris stopped by the old crab tree Grandma Lenore loved and released Audra’s arm. She pulled out a pack of Salems, coughed and lit up.

  “I promised myself if I ever got out, I’d set things straight with Corrine’s daughter.” She puffed on her cigarette so hard her cheeks hollowed like a skeleton. “After all, it was the least I could do, seeing as I was responsible for her demise.”

  Got out? From where? “No one ever talked my mother into doing anything she didn’t want to do.” Years of empty promises and an array of men by Corrine’s side had taught Audra that much.