by Lisa Samson
Marsha picked at the coral-colored polish on her nails, real quiet, and then looked up with a feverish stare. “The heck you can’t!” Only she didn’t say “heck.”
She freed me.
When she invited me to church while I paid up, it surprised me, with the mild profanity and all. But sometimes situations exist where no words are strong enough to describe the pain. Some may call her verbiage tasteless, but Marsha’s only daughter died of AIDS one year before we met, and she wishes now she had known the value of extreme motherhood when her motherhood remained. She’s an instrument of grace because she receives so much of it from God.
Leslie
“NEWLY?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“How are you?”
“Very well, thank you.”
My goodness. And I thought I was formal.
Silence.
Perhaps I hope too much to think he may actually ask how I am doing in return.
“Anyway, Son, I was wondering if you might come up for dinner on Sunday after church? Flannery told me you had a wonderful time playing pool together.”
“Yes, we did. She beat me soundly.”
“Did you let her?”
“What do you think?”
I honestly didn’t know what to think. I barely know Newly anymore. He changed so drastically at school. “You let her win.”
“You don’t know me well, do you, Mother?”
Oh dear. Wrong again.
“Well, that wasn’t why I called. So can you come for Sunday dinner or not? I’ll have Prisma roast a fresh ham. You love fresh ham, don’t you?”
“I used to.”
“But not anymore.”
“No. I gave up pork five years ago.”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes like a grade-schooler. At least my record as the mother most likely to utter the wrong thing stood like the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Well, we’ll have whatever you like then.”
“I can’t make it anyway, Mother, so don’t worry.”
“Oh.”
“I have a date.”
Glory be! “You do?”
“Don’t get too excited, dear. You’ll pop a vein.”
“Who is she?”
“Nobody that you’d know. She’s not from our stratosphere.”
“Oh, Newly.”
My children categorize me neatly as a social snob. Perhaps they know better. But it’s what I know. I’m not exactly the kind of woman that branches out. I’m not at all like my children.
“Better run, Mother. Thanks for the call.”
“Lark would be glad to see you.”
He chuckled. “Oh, that’s a good one. Talk soon, dear.”
Click.
Click. Click. Click.
Click.
In the past eighteen years, I’ve never once been the first one to hang up.
Lark
MARSHA—BENEDICT ARNOLD—FORTENBAUGH promised to take me right home after practice. Instead she parked her real-estate mobile in front of Mick O’Shea’s Irish Pub.
“What’s this about, Marsha?” I held for dear life on to the door handle of her old white Riviera.
She tightened her ponytail. “You need to go someplace else to eat besides the 3 B’s. I mean, come on, Lark. How long has it been since you’ve eaten at a restaurant besides the 3 B’s?”
“Nobody’s business.”
“See?”
“Oh, Marsha. Come on.” Stop sounding like a little kid, Lark! I pictured myself begging my mother to stop talking to an acquaintance at the grocery store so I could get home and go to the bathroom. I even jiggled my leg. “Let’s just go back to Greenway. I’ll ask Prisma if she’d fix us something Irish if you have a hankering for that sort of thing.”
“Nope. We’re going in.” She began rummaging through a straw purse the size of Slovenia.
Just walk right on up Charles Street, Lark. Just go right on home.
But some pretty rough parts lay between there and here. “I can’t afford it. You know I don’t make a lot of money, and now there’s clothes to buy, and I’ll need to replace my furniture when I move out of Greenway.”
Hand now frozen inside the purse, she turned, displaying trooper-on-the-doorstep eyes. “You let the homeowner’s insurance lapse, didn’t you?”
I nodded, willing dry all tears congregating behind my eyes. Stupid. Stupid.
A sigh blew from between her lips. “Oh, girly. What are you going to do?”
“Not think about it?”
“Good grief, Lark! When are you going to learn? Problems like this don’t just go away.”
“Sometimes they do.”
“No, Lark. They don’t. We all make decisions.”
I hate that saying.
She had me right then. That was the thing. Incapable of getting out of the car on my own, I possessed no ability to start walking north. Marsha Fortenbaugh made me her prisoner. Marsha and the ants who returned at the first sign of weakness.
Think, Lark. Think.
Do as she asks and stop fussing, or she’ll detain you that much longer. And you need to get back to the prayer line. “Let’s go in.”
“See? I knew you’d see sense.”
There were a lot of things I wanted to say right back, but I clamped my mouth shut. We all make decisions, right?
Couples milled around this area of Charles Street where a world of restaurants sat behind the sidewalk. You name it; Charles Street claims it. Afghan, Thai, French-Japanese, Italian, Irish. Youngish couples waited in line at the Thai place, and an older couple wielded chopsticks behind the front window at Shogun. The way the sun shone up the street on the marble tower that supported a raging statue of George Washington and the way the flowers bobbed about in the wind created one of the loneliest moments of my life. Even the smells shut me out.
I know we’re supposed to be complete as we are, little human beings encapsulated within our very own coping mechanisms. I’ve even tried to become that. But if that’s true, why do I feel lonely at suppertime, and why do I cry for myself every time a bride and groom say their vows at a St. Dominic’s wedding?
Honestly, for the first time in years I wanted to get good, old-fashioned toasted, like Brad and I used to do at this very same pub years ago. I ordered a pint of Guinness, just like the old days, and a flood of memory enveloped me. Brad’s Dresden eyes. His saucy smile. His hand on mine. The menu frayed behind a rising tide of tears. Consumed by loneliness, disillusionment, and disappointment, Lark Summerville disintegrated further, degenerating to Lark Summerville minus five, a sad, wanting equation no matter how I added it up.
Twenty years I’ve been jerking and popping like an out-of-joint skeleton, wondering which skin to choose, because none of them fits comfortably anymore.
And now the skin of the four years since Flannery left for college shrinks and shrivels and granulates, blown away by the winds of change as though it were nothing more than talcum powder.
I stared at my Guinness. If Queen Marsha, well-meaning or not, granted herself the privilege of dragging me out, I refused to be her court jester. I stayed mum.
So there.
Of course Marsha, being Marsha, banished my silence to an unseen dungeon in some far corner of her kingdom.
“So here’s what I think, Lark.” She fiddled with her drink napkin. “Since you didn’t have insurance, you’re just stuck with the lot, right?”
I said nothing.
“Because the house was paid off, right?”
I nodded. Bought for a song back in those days, it only devoured fifteen years of my life until payoff. In fact, I’d just paid it off three years ago. Figures.
“So sell the lot.”
“Who would want a lot in Hamilton?” I broke the silence. Darn it!
“Maybe your next-door neighbors. It would mean a bigger yard.”
“True. But then what? Where would I go?”
“Stay at home on Greenway.”
“Oh yeah, r
ight, Marsha. It’s right in a residential section. How would I get what I needed? I can’t walk down to any store, there’s no CVS, and I need to be near St. Dominic’s.”
“Why?”
“It’s my job?”
“Take the bus.”
Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. “I’ll pick up all sorts of things on the bus. Strep. Shingles. Some kind of venereal disease. You name it.”
Of course, the waitress arrived right when I said “venereal disease.”
“You can’t pick up a venereal disease on a bus.”
My face grew hot, and I tried to smile at the waitress as she set down my plate of bangers and mash.
Marsha picked up her fork as the waitress walked away. “A horribly apropos-looking meal considering the conversation, Lark.” And despite the circumstances, we burst into laughter.
I jerked awake as if some antagonistic puppet master had yanked my strings.
“Hello?”
“Lark?”
“Yes?”
“How are you?”
Ten P.M.
“Who is this?”
“You don’t recognize my voice anymore, babe?”
“Oh, dear Lord.”
“That’s right, babe. I’m guessing you’re seeing the light.”
I hung up the phone.
I don’t think I meant to really hang up the phone, and if I’d given myself time to think about it, even for two seconds, I might have worked against the urge. I might have gripped the phone until my palms sweated and I turned nauseous, I might have smiled on my end to complete the act, I would have done something other than slam the phone down.
So I stuck my head between my legs and sucked in as much air as possible. Breathe. Breathe.
But not too much. Hyperventilation will not redeem this situation, Lark.
If he called back, I wouldn’t hang up this time.
Don’t let him call back.
He called back.
I yanked it before the ring had completed itself. “You promised me you’d never come back, Bradley.”
“I’m not back. I’m just making a little phone call. Come on, babe, it’s been twenty years. Come on.”
Help me, Jesus.
There is no fear in love. There is no fear in love.
I tried Lamaze breathing. Come on, Lark. Breathe. Talk. Pretend a normal lady lives inside your skin. Think PTA, think dinner parties with friends, think hanging baskets of geraniums. “What do you want, Bradley? I know you must want something.”
“I figured I’d get your mom or something. I tried to call you at your house in Hamilton, but the number rang and rang.”
“How’d you get that number?”
“Information. I got it years ago.”
“You did? Really?”
I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. Yeah, he kept track of me by getting the number, but he never once bothered to call.
“So what made you actually call the number?”
“Well, it’s been so long.”
“Yeah.”
“Like, a really long time.”
“And so?”
Man, I was doing great. Just like Newly would have done if he were a woman in my shoes. Not that Newly would have ever found his lily-white self in my shoes.
“I want to see my daughter.”
He didn’t say “Flannery.” He said “my daughter.” Laying a claim. Driving in a stake at the get-go. Right? Think, Lark. Think. Pretend you’re Leslie. Or even Newly. Newly never experienced a loss for words. Newly never took anything off of anybody.
“Not on your life, buddy. The hard part is done. Besides, she thinks you’re dead.”
And I hung up the phone again because I wanted to, because I said something completely Summerville.
It rang again, and rang and rang. And then rang and rang and rang thirty minutes later.
And I sat by the phone and shook, praying to the Lord that he’d never call Greenway again.
“Larkspur!”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Should I answer the phone next time?”
“No, Mother. It’s one of those telemarketers.”
“This late?”
“I think he was calling from the West Coast.”
Please, God, let him be calling from California.
“All right then. Good night, dear!”
“Good night.”
So I took the phone off the hook and sat up in bed. After all these years, Bradley del Champ steps back into my life. I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Shaking, feeling sweaty and cold, I scooted back and leaned against the tiled wall.
Wasn’t the fire enough, Jesus?
Thanks ever so much.
A bug rammed his armored body over and over against the fluorescent sink light.
Leslie
OH MY. I THOUGHT WHEN A WOMAN reached my age the frantic worry she experienced as a young mother dissipated a bit.
Not so.
Something is afoot with those phone calls! I’m not a nincompoop. But the thought of asking Lark gives me goose bumps. Maybe she’ll sigh a lot tomorrow like she used to do as a young teen, her cue for the inevitable question that would blossom from my lips. “Is there something wrong, dear?”
Yes, perhaps she’ll sigh several times in a row, then I’ll know for certain that she wants to talk.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, I forgot to slurp my fiber again this evening! Well, no time like the present.
Darkness fills the rest of the house. Flannery arrived home a little while ago and kissed me and said, “Grandy, I love you!”
The air-conditioning unit below my window just whirred to life, and I find that a comforting sound. Certainly better than Charles’s snoring, but what I wouldn’t give to hear that buzz saw again.
I click on the bathroom light, avoid the mirror, and mix up a glass of that sandy nightmare.
Hold your nose when you drink, Leslie Lee, and make the going down a whole lot easier.
I’m going riding again tomorrow. I do believe I’ll sleep in and head out in the afternoon. Riding never felt like exercise before this, I’ll admit. But looking at a man like Jacob Marley all the while gives me a little gumption, and eyes like that go a long way in putting a little heart back into a woman!
PRISMA
POOR, QUIET LARK. No longer the fun child of yesteryear, busy cutting and pasting gum wrappers, toilet-paper tubes, strings, and construction paper and assembling them into what she called her “machines.” Busier than a short-order cook and singing church songs all the while. And always too fast. But that was Lark, going too fast at whatever she set her mind to.
She composed her first song at seven, her first choir piece at thirteen, and won a statewide award for it. She learned piano first, then added organ to the mix at sixteen. Heaven lives in her music, I can tell you that, and I tell you the truth, angels already sing her songs in heaven.
Lark has enabled the devil to steal almost everything from her over the years. I know Jesus lives inside her, and I know He allowed her to retreat like she did. And now He’s taken away the last little bit Himself. Kind of like fighting fire with fire, I’d say.
At least no one stole her ability to play. And at least she came back home, gifting me and Mrs. Summerville with a house full of music again. Mr. Summerville actually had a pipe organ from Germany installed all those years ago! Just for Lark.
The other day as I made bread and she sat working a crossword puzzle at the kitchen table, I told her I liked what she had just been playing. “Who wrote that, baby?”
“It’s just something I put together last night as I was falling asleep.”
“You did that in your head?”
She nodded. “It’s the first piece I’ve composed in twenty years.”
What troubles these artist types so? What tortures their spirits and shreds their psyches to bleeding ribbons? What thins out their dignity exposing wide their emotional turmoil?
It’s hard to see someone implode like
she did over the years since Bradley was killed. I don’t know where she’d be without Jesus, and I don’t even want to guess.
Thank the good Lord I love what I do and wake up each morning thinking, “Let’s go, Jesus! Let’s redeem the time!”
We drank a cup of tea together last night on the screened porch at the back of the house. Not Jesus and me, Lark and me, and she confided in me the heartache of coming home again, of living with her mother.
“I don’t know why you don’t just get an apartment until you buy a piece of property for your cabin, Lark.”
“I can’t afford it. Doggone it, Prisma, I’m forty-one years old, and I can’t even afford an apartment.”
Poor baby. “Any chance of getting another job to supplement your income?”
Call me cruel, but Lark needs a little stirring up.
“I let my license lapse. There’s not much around here within walking distance.”
Nice try, baby.
“You know, if you decided to just stay on here at Greenway, you’d be able to play the organ right here. Maybe Marsha would come down here for practice and you wouldn’t have to go up to Hamilton on Wednesday nights. I know Mrs. Summerville wouldn’t mind another body about the place.”
Lark grimaced. “Yeah, right, Prisma. You know you’d get sick of me around here after a while.”
“Are you serious? One of my babies would be back home for good. This place is just too big and old for no one but me, Leslie, and Asil, who’s over the garage and doesn’t count anyway.”
Truth be told, Lark staying here would mean she didn’t learn a thing from the fire. But she needs to know she’s welcome. That we love her.
Got a letter from my son, Sinclair, yesterday. If Mr. Percy had lived to see his son at this stage of manhood, I do believe he might have burst open with pride. As the new editor in chief at some publishing house in North Carolina, Sinclair’s dreams have come true. And Charles Summerville didn’t have to put one dime to that child’s education, I’m proud to say. Not that he didn’t offer. And offer. And offer. But Mr. Percy, he did well enough with our salaries and invested wisely. And with some low interest loans, we had the opportunity to put Sinclair through all of his schooling. Mother and child, both graduates of Johns Hopkins. Now that made me proud, and not in a bad way, more of a thankful way. God is good to those who let Him be. And He’s good to those who don’t. They just don’t realize it.
