Dreamsleeves

by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

  “Our house” is out in the country, about a twenty-minute ride from here. It’s a big brick house with a porch and two chimneys and a grassy field big enough to play a real baseball game in and so many trees for hide-and-seek that no one would ever find me. There’s a stream where we’ll swim and float on rafts and there are apple trees, six of them, I counted, apple pie all year long.

  The place needs “a ton of work,” Dad says, but he’s not afraid of “a little elbow grease.” We stop by to check on it nearly every Sunday when Dad takes us out for a drive. B, C, and D race to the tire swing hanging from that thick tree limb or they toss pebbles into the stream. Mom plans where she’ll plant a vegetable garden. Dad scopes out the perfect spot for a garage to hold the classic cars he wants to own one day and another spot where he promises to build my mother her very own little “writer’s house.”

  Me? I rub dirt from the windows and look inside.

  There’s a huge stone fireplace, furniture covered with sheets, bookshelves from floor to ceiling, a crystal chandelier, and a wide staircase leading upstairs. I’m guessing from all the windows I’ve counted — there are sixteen — that there might even be enough bedrooms up there, or maybe up in the attic, for me to have a room of my own.

  “Are you sure we can afford it, Roe?” Mom says to Dad.

  “Of course, Mags,” he answers, not a care in the world, like he’s Daddy Warbucks. “I’ve got a special account all set up. Don’t worry. I’m going to take good care of my girl. That’s a promise.” Mom blushes when he calls her “my girl.”

  There’s been a FOR SALE sign on our house for two years now. Every time we pull up the driveway, I hold my breath, afraid the words will have changed to SOLD.

  Dad says he’s almost got enough money, “just a few more good commissions.”

  My mother keeps getting more and more anxious that someone will buy the house before we do (I considered taking the FOR SALE sign home with us last time, but my conscience got the better of me). Dad says, “Stop worrying, will you, Mags? This place isn’t going anywhere. It’s way overpriced. It needs a new roof, new windows …”

  I think maybe Dad’s waiting for just the right time to surprise us. He loves surprising us, like last Christmas when I really, really wanted a guitar and nearly cried when there wasn’t one under the tree on Christmas morning.

  “Maybe Santa forgot, A,” Beck tried consoling me.

  “Maybe next year if you’re better,” Callie said.

  Everybody opened their presents and we finished breakfast and we were just about to leave for church when Dad went into his closet-office (I call it that because it’s supposed to be a coat closet) and he came out with a big box. “What’s this?” he said, looking all confused. “It’s got your name on it, A.” He smiled at Mom.

  “My guitar! Oh, thank you, Dad!” I hugged him. He had tears in his eyes.

  Dad likes playing Santa Claus. He likes being the hero.

  Maybe this Sunday we’ll drive to our house and Dad will hand Mom the keys and say, “It’s all yours now, babe.” Or maybe it will be on Mom’s birthday next month … or their anniversary. That way we could still be moved in and settled by the time school starts and then have our first Thanksgiving there, turkey with trimmings and apple pie, of course.

  I hear the kitchen door close, then the car starting up in the driveway down below.

  “A?” My mom is calling me. She gently pushes open my bedroom door. “Will you go to the store for me?”

  “Sure,” I say. It’s a way to escape this house for a while. My dad keeps me locked up here like I’m in prison. I can’t ride my bike past the park. I can’t leave the yard without permission. I can’t go out at night. I can’t talk to boys or go on dates. “When you’re in high school,” he says.

  I put on a top and some shorts and sneakers. Maybe I have time to stop by Maizey’s house, too. She’s usually up early like me.

  In the kitchen, my mother is pouring milk into Dooley’s cereal bowl. D is racing his red car around the bowl and then the sugar bowl and his juice glass, too. Vroom, eeeek, vroom, vroom. “Careful, Dool,” Mom says.

  Eddie’s in his highchair, kicking his chubby legs against the table. Mom shakes a few Cheerios onto his tray and he sets to picking up the O’s between his thumb and pointer fingers with an expression of great determination.

  “I need you to get a quart of milk and …” Mom stops talking and runs to the sink. She coughs and spits, then throws up.

  “Mom!… are you okay?” I move toward her, reach out to touch her back.

  My mother spits again. She turns on the faucet and splashes water on her face. As she dries herself with a dish towel she glances out at the bird feeder she suction-cupped back on the window now that Nana’s gone to California. Nana had told Mom to remove it because she said the seeds were floating down past Nana’s kitchen window to the ground and luring up rats from the river.

  Mom said the rat part was ridiculous. She said it under her breath, but I heard her.

  Good for Mom sticking that bird feeder back out there now that Nana’s gone to California. It’s nice to see the birds again.

  A tiny brown bird lands, peck-pecks a few seeds, then whee is off again, free.

  “I’m fine, A,” Mom says, sighing a long, loud sigh. She turns and looks at me.

  As soon as I see her eyes, I know.

  She’s pregnant. Number six is on the way. “You’re having another baby? Oh, Mom, no! You can’t! You almost died with Dooley and Eddie….”

  “Shhh,” Mom says, looking at D, but he’s too busy speeding to pay attention.

  “Careful, Dooley, you’re making a mess,” I say, grabbing a rag to sop up the goop before it sticks to the linoleum and I’ll have to work extra hard scrubbing it off later. “Mom, why? The doctor told you not to have any more….”

  When my mother is expecting, her blood pressure soars and her body swells up and near the end all she can do is lie on the couch like a beached whale, uncomfortable and worried, waiting.

  “It’ll be a November baby,” she says quietly.

  “Oh,” I mumble. What else can I say? My mother doesn’t look like I should say congratulations. This doesn’t feel like a happy moment.

  Mom wipes her mouth and studies her face in the little round mirror hanging from a nail above the sink. Strange place for a mirror, but sometimes Dad takes such a long time in the bathroom with his “nervous stomach” that one of us will need to brush our teeth in the kitchen.

  My mother moves a strand of brown hair off of her forehead and slap-pat-pats her cheeks to bring some color. My mother used to be so beautiful, but now she’s pale as laundry-line sheets, and tired and pudgy, older. She doesn’t dress up nice anymore, black stretch pants and smock tops mostly. I can’t remember the last time she wore lipstick.

  “First!” Dooley shouts, swooping an imaginary race flag. The cereal bowl topples to the floor. “Ooh, sorry,” he says, so genuinely remorseful it’s hard to get mad at him.

  “Hand me my pocketbook, A,” Mom says, motioning to the counter.

  Mom fishes out her wallet, calculates the cost, and counts out the money. “Get a loaf of bread and a pound of cheese. You can do grilled cheese for lunch again.”

  Good. I am a spectacular grilled-cheese maker. My secret is that I add a little “something extra” each time. When the butter’s melted in the frying pan and I put down the bottom bread slices and then lay on the cheese, I’ll sprinkle on some shredded bits of ham or bologna or sliced tomatoes or pickles before I put on the rooftop slices of bread. Once, I added peaches with a little spicy mustard. It was delicious.

  Beck and Callie think it’s so exciting when I make grilled cheese. They sit at the kitchen table watching me like television.

  “Whad’she put in there this time?” one of them will ask the other.

  “I don’t know. Whatdaya think?”

  “I don’t know. Guess.”

  Yesterday, the refrigerator was empty, bu
t I found a slice of sausage pizza left in the freezer from Callie’s birthday. Hmm…. I let the slice thaw out and then I chopped it up good and spooned the crumbles evenly on each of our sandwiches.

  “This is your best one yet, A,” Beck said with conviction.

  I felt proud.

  “Here,” my mother says, giving me a quarter. “Buy yourself a donut.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Jelly donuts are my very favorite. Whoever invented them was a genius.

  “You and those donuts,” Mom smiles, touching my cheek.

  I get the quarters Nana gave me so I can buy Maizey a donut, too. I need to tell her I’m sorry for acting so cold on the phone last night and invite her to come over today. When the little ones are napping we can start working on our tans or practice our cheerleading moves.

  “Hurry back, A,” Mom says, looking at the clock. “I need to get ready for work.”

  And off I go on my morning jailbreak.

  All points bulletin, alert, alert, Inmate Number 1, Aislinn aka “Dream” O’Neill, is escaping the prison yard. The convict is armed with quarters and is known to be fond of donuts…. Jelly.

  Whales in mid-ocean,

  suspended in the waves of the sea …

  And dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open …

  — D. H. LAWRENCE

  Outside, I hurry down the back steps, past Nana’s flowers, nodding to the little gnome statues — “Red,” with the red cap and white beard reading a book, and “Green,” with the green cap and brown beard hoisting a beer stein. “You should stop drinking,” I scold and pull my bike out from behind the garbage cans.

  Wheeling my bike down the side of the house, across the lawn and our gravelly driveway to the city sidewalk, I take deep breaths of morning air, feeling free, free, free, bubbling up inside. When it reaches my throat I open my mouth and a song flies out:

  Up, up with people!

  You meet them wherever you go

  Up, up with people!

  They’re the best kind of folks we know….

  Miss McMahon taught us that song in fifth grade. I loved Miss McMahon with her beehive hairdo and crazy-patterned minidresses, blue eye shadow and shiny pink lipstick. Every morning she would smile and raise her hands like a conductor and our whole class would stand up and sing that song, belt it out loud, swaying our hips and clapping our hands like we were on The Ed Sullivan Show on TV. Boy, were we good.

  Every once in a while, our principal, Sister Benedict James, in her black-and-white penguin dress with the brown rosary beads and crucifix belt, would rap-rap-rap on the window, then open the door and stick in her pruney face all scrunched in a scowl and Miss McMahon would nod respectfully and say, “Good morning, Sister James,” then turn to us and say, “Okay, people, down we go.”

  Up, up with people!

  You meet them wherever you go

  Up, up with people!

  They’re the best kind of folks we know

  If more people were FOR people

  All people everywhere

  There’d be a lot less people to worry about

  And a lot more people who’d care.

  Miss McMahon was the teacher who made me want to be a teacher someday. She also inspired my singing. One time she said, “Aislinn, you have a beautiful voice.” I’ll always remember that moment. That’s what a teacher can do for someone. Miss McMahon moved away before I could tell her how much I loved her. Miss McMahon was so kind, I almost told her about Dad’s drinking.

  It was right around fifth grade, when our class moved up to the upper-grades floor at school, that things really started getting bad at home. My dad was drinking every night now, not just the weekends anymore. He had switched from beer to liquor and, after three or four drinks, if something made him mad, he’d start shouting and swearing, his face so red it looked like he’d explode. I tried harder than ever to keep him happy, to keep the mad from crossing over to the madder. I would come home from school, quick do my homework, help make dinner, clean up the kitchen, read stories, give baths, tuck the little ones into bed, then lie awake, wide, wide awake, listening until I knew he’d conked out on the couch and we were safe….

  Turning my bike at the corner, I nearly collide with Mike Mancinello.

  Mike Mancinello!

  “Hi, A,” he says, smiling, his long brown bangs dipping down over his hot-cocoa brown eyes. He’s wearing jeans and a Yankees T-shirt, a gold chain around his neck. There’s an empty canvas sack in the basket; he must have been delivering papers.

  Oh my gosh. My heart goes pitter-patter-flippity-flip-flop. Mike Mancinello, the nicest, smartest, funniest, cutest boy in the world is smiling at me. Me. Me. Me.

  Mike looks nervous, like he doesn’t know what to say. Gosh knows, I don’t either. I think of how he said “sit here if you want” on the bus the other day when that awful Sue-Ellen had taken my seat next to Maizey. My seat, with my best friend, Maizey.

  I should have seen it coming. Sue-Ellen started out bribing Maizey with packs of gum and then she invited her to watch a show on her brand-new color console. Maizey asked if I could come, too, but I had to go straight home, of course. I try being nice to Sue-Ellen, truly I do, but after what she did to me in fourth grade … when I saw Sue-melon-face sitting in my seat, my seat next to Maizey, I was so blood-boiling jealous I thought I might scratch her face or worse, start crying, and then Mike said “sit here if you want, A,” and suddenly bluebirds were singing.

  “Okay, well … see ya,” Mike says, shrugging his shoulders, looking confused.

  His voice jolts me back to the moment but off he pedals, before I can pop a hello or good-bye or any decent word out of my mouth.

  Jeesh. What is the matter with me? I was so busy thinking, I forgot to talk. I hope he didn’t think I was rude. What if he thinks I don’t like him? Him, the boy who helped me with math. Him, the boy who really listened when I read my rainbow poem in front of the class and clapped, clapped, when I was finished. Who knows when I’ll get another chance to talk to him? I can never go places where boys might be. My father won’t let me talk to boys, not even on the telephone.

  The sidewalk pavement is bumpy and cracked with little shaggy grass islands springing up here and there, where only smooth pavement should be. I focus on not swerving into the road, where cars are whooshing past me on their way to important places. My father doesn’t let me ride my bike around the city, but Mom does when he’s away. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she says.

  I head past the park where we have our Town Picnic in August. There’s a flurry of white in the sky and then a flock of seagulls swoops down. Seagulls. They look so funny here, little misfits, far away from their ocean home.

  On cool mornings like this after a hot night, sometimes there’s a foggy mist over the park and if I look close I see tiny dewdrops glistening on the grass. I stop and watch a gull dip its head sip, sip, sipping drops so different from the humongous sea it’s used to.

  Seagull, such a pretty word. Before I knew that having more babies could kill my mother, I once told Mom and Dad that when they got to G in the alphabet, they should “name the G one Gull.” Dad burst out laughing, holding his stomach, tears in his eyes. Mom rolled her eyes and sighed. I wonder if Mom told him about the new baby yet?

  Someday I would love to see the sea. It looks spectacular on TV, and oh what a beautiful sound it makes! My uncle Tommy, aunt Flo, and the saints, they’re rich, have a lake camp up north and I love swimming there, especially in the morning before the motorboats roar. The lake water is cool and peaceful and silky-soft on my skin. But the sea? The sea looks like it would shake you right up, all those waves and bubbles and foam. I bet seawater is sizzly, maybe it tickles and makes you laugh. I would love to know how it feels to swim in the ocean so I could compare it to a lake. Mom and Dad keep promising a beach vacation “someday,” but with saving all the money for our house, and a car, and now with another baby coming, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. />
  An engine rrr-rrr-revs up and a man rides a lawn mower out of the park maintenance building. The seagulls lift up and fly off noisily, caw, caw, caw. I wave as they pass over my head. A feather floats down. I pick it up. Maybe it’s a sign.

  Mrs. Garbowski’s store smells like donuts, yum. Maria Carroll is just leaving. “Aislinn, hello!” she says, so happy to see me.

  Maria Carroll is the prettiest, nicest lady ever. She and her husband, Leo, live across the street from our church. They are the youngest married people I know.

  The Carrolls always buy four instead of one of the giant candy bars I have to sell every year to raise money for our school. Back when I sold Girl Scout cookies they bought two of every flavor. And when I sell Christmas cards through that catalog in the fall, Maria orders the most expensive line, three boxes, and I make a nice bonus.

  I don’t think the Carrolls are rich or anything, they are just really kind to me. Whenever I call on them selling something, Maria always insists I “have a bite to eat and visit for a while.” She makes amazing lasagna, and sugar cookies the size of my hand.

  Maria has a satchel on her shoulder with a peace symbol on it. “I start school today, A,” she says, excited.

  “College?” I say.

  “Yep, I’m taking a psychology course at Hudson Valley. Getting my feet wet before I go full-time in the fall. Say a prayer for me.” She laughs. “It’s been a few years since I was a student.”

  “Oh, you’ll do fine,” I say.

  “Stop up and visit us soon, okay?” Maria says. “We miss you.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Good luck!”

  Mrs. Garbowski puts my groceries in a bag and the donuts in a separate little white bag, tucking in a napkin. “In case you want one on the road,” she says, smiling.

  I put the bags in my basket and set off. Waiting for the light on the corner by Maizey’s street, I lift out a donut and take a bite. Hmmm. The sugary powder coats my lips and the sweet grape jelly glides over my tongue, yum. Someday when I have money I’m going to buy myself a whole dozen of these every week, no, every day. I wonder how jelly would taste in grilled cheese?