The Promise of Home

by Darcie Chan

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t have money for lunch.”

  “What? Why would you say that? I give you money to buy a lunch ticket each week.”

  Ben paused for a minute before he quietly answered her. “Because they keep taking it.”

  “Taking it? ‘They’?” Karen’s voice rose as she realized what her son was telling her. “Who’s taking your lunch money?”

  “Two big kids. From the middle school.”

  “Do you know who they are? Do you know their names?”

  “Not really. One of them is Billy, I think. I don’t know the other one, or their last names.”

  “And where does this happen?”

  “Usually on the bus, on Mondays. The first time, they twisted my arm and said they’d hurt me worse if I didn’t keep giving them the money for the lunch ticket. Or if I told anybody.”

  Karen remembered him favoring his left arm about a month before. He’d told her he wrenched it swinging on the monkey bars.

  At that moment, she felt a searing rage unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She was ready to rip her son’s prepubescent bullies to shreds, regardless of the fact that they, too, were children. She would allow no one to harm her only child, and it was all she could do to keep her voice steady as she drew Ben into her arms and tried to reassure him.

  “You’re being bullied, Ben, and you did the right thing, telling me. I love you so much, and I promise you that I will not allow it to continue. Nobody is going to hurt you again.”

  The very next Monday, she and the middle school principal met Ben’s bus as it arrived at the school. Ben exited and stood beside his mother. They waited as other students filed out until her son nodded. The principal cleared his throat and stepped forward as the final two passengers—two tall, older boys—came out of the bus.

  “Good morning, Billy and Darren. Walk with me, please. We need to have a little chat in my office.”

  One of the two kids had glanced around to glare at Ben, but Karen caught his eye and stared him down with the wrath of a mother grizzly protecting her cubs.

  The boys denied any wrongdoing until the principal had them empty their pockets. Only then, when they had produced the five- and ten-dollar bills she had subtly initialed before giving them to Ben that morning, were they forced to admit their actions. School suspensions for the two had followed quickly, and Karen smiled to herself as she remembered the boys showing up at her home with their parents to apologize to Ben.

  If only all wrongs could be righted so easily, she thought. Karen feared the worst and prayed constantly that Nick would be found alive and unhurt and returned to her in one piece. The uncertainty of the situation taunted her, forced open her imagination to any number of nightmare scenarios, each worse than the previous one. She moved from the sofa only when the silence and the uncertainty became too much to bear. If she sat alone in her house for one more minute, she really would lose it.

  Even as she felt increasingly helpless in her struggle against the familiar darkness—which seemed to be growing stronger, despite her efforts to keep it at bay—she realized the importance of minimizing the time she was alone. Her work as a teacher’s assistant kept her busy on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but today was Monday. Ben was at school and wouldn’t be home until closer to three o’clock. Right now, there was only one place she could think to go to find some semblance of companionship and comfort without having to hear and try to respond to questions about Nick.

  The Alzheimer’s care facility where her father lived was only fifteen minutes away, on the north side of Rutland. She visited frequently, and the receptionist smiled when she came in. “Hello, Mrs. Cooper. Nice to see you. Willie’s just gotten his lunch, but you can go ahead in, no problem.”

  “Thank you.” As she signed her name in the visitors’ log, Karen returned the smile of the woman behind the counter, though doing so made her face feel like brittle, immovable plastic.

  Her father was seated at a table in his room. An attendant sat next to him, holding a spoon of food she had scooped up from a tray in front of him.

  “Hi, Maureen. I can help him with that,” Karen said. She approached her father, put a hand on his back, and bent to kiss him on the cheek. “Hi, Daddy.”

  He said nothing as he turned to look at her. His face reflected childlike innocence, but his expression was empty emotionally and devoid of recognition.

  This first contact at the beginning of every visit was the hardest part for Karen. Each time she arrived, she carried the dread of seeing her father’s vacant stare as well as a sliver of hope that her father would indicate in some small way that he knew her. She searched his eyes, focused on every twitch of his facial muscles as a possible sign that there was something left of him, of memories of his family and of her, inside his diseased mind.

  But when, like today, there was nothing to indicate that she hadn’t been erased from her father’s memory, her sliver of hope became a sliver of glass, painfully slicing its way deeper into her heart.

  She understood what Alzheimer’s was doing and would continue to do to her father. Nevertheless, she wondered whether his memories of her were still there somewhere, locked away inside the darkest recesses of his brain. It comforted her to think they were, and that even as his disease entered the most advanced stage, he hadn’t truly forgotten her.

  “I’m Karen,” she told him as Maureen relinquished her seat and left the room. “I’m your daughter, and I came to visit you.”

  “Oh.” His brow furrowed, and Karen held her breath. Then his forehead was smooth and relaxed again, and he didn’t say anything more.

  “Here, Daddy, let me help you with your lunch.”

  Karen sat down beside her father. His lunch tray held meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy, along with peas and a dessert serving of fruit salad. She picked up the spoon the attendant had left. It held a small bite of the meat and potatoes, and her father complacently opened his mouth for it. He chewed very slowly, and Karen watched him carefully to make sure he was able to handle the food without choking. At some point, she knew, his disease would rob him of his ability to chew and swallow.

  She focused her gaze on the side of her father’s face. His strong jawline was unchanged by time. As a younger man, he had worked so hard to support their family. Sometimes he’d had to take a second job to make sure she and her mother and brother were taken care of, and he’d always done it without hesitation or complaint. And yet, he managed to spend enough time with her and her brother to maintain close relationships. It made her all the more grateful that she was able to help care for him now, to return some of the love he had given her in a tender, tangible way.

  “Are you ready for another bite? Here you go, Daddy.” As he worked on chewing the second mouthful, she looked him over carefully. Her father had gotten noticeably thinner over the years after his diagnosis, but his weight had stabilized after he’d entered the care facility. He was clean-shaven and wearing his typical outfit of gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, each of which had a sewn-in tag that read WILLIAM MANNING.

  Karen waited to give him another spoonful and looked down at his feet. He was wearing clean white tube socks and his usual house shoes, navy corduroy with sturdy rubber soles. How many times had she stood on those feet as a little girl?

  She remembered a period during her childhood when he had worked as a truck driver. The money from that job had been enough to support the family, but it had required him to be away from home most weeknights. Back then, every Friday had brought great excitement when he arrived home, and Saturday nights were more fun than a party. Her mother always fixed a big dinner on Saturday evening, doing her best to make up for the lack of family time during the workweek. And after dinner, before they gathered around their old television set to watch a program or a movie together, there was the dancing.

  Her parents always went first, swaying around the living room to whatever love song her mother ch
ose while Karen and her younger brother, George, sat on the sofa, groaning and covering their eyes. When their mother disappeared to the kitchen to tackle the dishes, George would put on the latest pop hit, and he and their father would dance themselves silly, trying to one-up each other with their latest moves. Her father had actually tried to break-dance once. The memory of him lying on the carpet with his legs up in the air, attempting to spin around on his back, still elicited giggles from her.

  Karen’s turn was always last. She chose a song once in a while but usually humored her father by letting him put on Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” It was his favorite, and she liked it, too. When she was very young, she would stand on his feet as he maneuvered them both around the room. Slowly but surely, as the years passed, the song had become their anthem. They danced to it to celebrate her making the honor roll in middle school and after her high school graduation. It had been the obvious choice for their father-daughter dance at her wedding.

  As she grew up and went through various stages of life, the words of the song took on new and deeper meanings. Even during times of great sadness—her years of living an ocean apart from Nick, and her mother’s sudden passing from a brain aneurysm twelve years ago—the song had given her strength. It was a celebration of the beautiful things in life and the friendship and love between people. It was a song of hope.

  “Here’s another bite for you, Daddy. Peas this time.” Karen gently inserted the spoon in her father’s mouth. “You’re doing such a good job with your lunch.” Her father continued to stare straight ahead as he chewed, as if he were alone in the room.

  She wasn’t sure what prompted her to start talking about Nick’s disappearance. True, she had left her house wanting to avoid discussing her missing husband, and she knew her father was no longer capable of carrying on or even understanding a conversation. Maybe that was just it. Though he was no longer himself, the man sitting next to her was still her father. She still loved him dearly and felt comfortable talking to him. But whatever words she uttered would disappear into the room without a reply. It was a one-sided unloading of fear and anxiety, stress, anger, and sadness, and a release she desperately needed.

  “I’m so afraid, Daddy,” she choked out after she had told him everything. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, and I don’t think I can go on if he doesn’t come home. I know I’ve got to, somehow, for you and Ben, but I can feel the depression pulling me under again. It’s so much stronger this time, Daddy. Some days I wish I could just die.”

  Karen stopped speaking, shocked by hearing herself say those words. It was the first time she had articulated her recent suicidal thoughts. Overwhelmed, she set the spoon down on her father’s lunch tray and covered her face with her hands.

  After a few minutes, as she struggled to compose herself, she realized that her father had turned to stare at her. His brow furrowed again, and he seemed to study her face. Slowly, he raised a hand and touched her wet cheek with one finger. “Louie?”

  Her initial surprise at his question quickly turned into grateful elation. It was the first time in several weeks that her father had said anything meaningful. Even though it was one word, she knew what he was trying to ask.

  “Sure, Daddy, we can dance,” she said, gently taking his raised hand and squeezing it.

  There was a portable CD player on a shelf in the room, with a small stack of discs beside it. Karen rose and went to the shelf, selected one of the CDs, and loaded it into the machine.

  The instrumental introduction to the song seemed to have no effect on her father, but when he heard Louis Armstrong’s gravelly voice, he turned toward the music, then looked at her and smiled.

  “Can you stand up, Daddy?” she asked with her hand outstretched. After a moment, her father grasped it and got to his feet unsteadily. She kept hold of his hand as she slowly positioned herself in front of him and placed his other hand around her waist. She began to sway in place, in time to the music, and her father followed her lead. Their role reversal wasn’t lost on her, but it didn’t matter. She was so thankful for this moment, a father-daughter dance that might well be the last she would ever have with him.

  When she looked up at his face, his eyes were closed, but he was smiling. She was reminded again of how wonderful the world was, and how their special song was one of strength, and love, and hope.

  —

  On Monday after school let out, Claudia stopped by the bakery on her way home. While she usually tried to limit her visits to the bakery and its myriad delicious and incredibly fattening offerings, it was time to start thinking about a cake for her wedding. The fact that Ruth would be making it was all the better. Claudia had yet to try something from the bakery that wasn’t superb.

  Humming to herself, she pulled open the door to the bakery and was surprised to see the DiSanti sisters talking at the counter. Emily held a disposable cup of coffee in one hand and a takeout bag in the other. Emily’s older sister, Rose, was standing behind the register. Claudia regularly saw Emily around town and had spoken with her several times, but it had been several months since she had seen Rose. With her perfect blond hair and fashionable attire, Rose was the last person Claudia expected to see working the counter at the bakery.

  She would never forget the day last July when the sisters had moved to Mill River. After backing her U-Haul truck into Emily’s car, Rose had been anything but apologetic. The only other time Claudia had had any contact with Rose was the day a few weeks after their initial meeting, when she and Daisy Delaine had found Rose’s son, Alex, unconscious in the yard after falling out of a tree. It’ll be interesting to see how she behaves, Claudia thought now. The two times I’ve seen her, she’s been either totally rude or understandably hysterical.

  The sisters stopped talking and looked toward the bakery door as she entered. Emily gave her a warm smile. “Hey, Claudia. How’s it going?”

  “Hi. Pretty good,” Claudia said. “I came by to see Ruth, if she’s here. I wanted to look into ordering a wedding cake.”

  “Oh, how exciting!” Emily said with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm. “Sounds like a lot more fun than what I’ll be doing in a few minutes.”

  “Which is?” Claudia asked.

  “Replacing an old, leaky toilet,” Emily said casually. “I’m just picking up a sandwich for my dinner before I head up to the mansion to work for a while longer.”

  “Wow, you’re putting in long hours,” Claudia said. “Is everything coming together?”

  “Yeah. I think the inside will be spectacular by the time your big day’s here, but there’s a lot to do right now. I’ve gotta run—hey, you remember my sister, Rose?”

  “Of course.” Claudia made eye contact with the older DiSanti sister and smiled cautiously.

  “I can try to help you with cake questions,” Rose said quietly. “I’ve been covering for Ruth when she needs a little time off.”

  “I’ll leave you both to it,” Emily said as she headed for the door. “See ya.”

  “So, when are you getting married?” Rose asked once Emily was gone. “And congratulations, by the way.”

  “Saturday, December twenty-first. We figured a holiday wedding would be beautiful, and we’d get to see our families right before Christmas. Kyle’s mom is going to stay with Rowen so we can get away for a quick honeymoon sometime between Christmas and New Year’s.” To Claudia’s surprise, Rose was smiling and listening attentively. “I have to be back teaching on January second, and Kyle doesn’t have much time off, either, but we didn’t want to postpone a honeymoon until the summer.”

  “So, it’ll be short but sweet,” Rose said. “Where do you plan on going?”

  “Sanibel Island, in Florida. Neither of us has been there, but it’s supposed to be quiet and beautiful, and it’s known for tons of gorgeous shells washing up on the beach.”

  “And it’ll be much warmer than Vermont in December,” Rose said. “It sounds really nice. What are you thinking about
in terms of a cake? Ruth will be back tomorrow morning, and I could leave her a note with the basics, at least.”

  “We’ll have about sixty guests,” Claudia said. “Our colors are silver for the bridesmaids’ gowns, with red roses. I thought it would be nice to have part of the cake chocolate and part vanilla so that people can have whatever they prefer.”

  “Hmmm.” Rose was taking notes on a pad of paper. “You know, I think Ruth has a photo book here somewhere.” When she knelt behind the counter, Claudia peeked over it and saw her pulling out and examining various binders and books from a shelf. “Here it is,” Rose said as she stood up and laid a three-ring binder open on the counter. “All the photos in here are of cakes Ruth has made. Take a look and see if you like any design in particular. Or if you have a picture of a cake you like from a magazine or something, you can bring that in and show her. She could probably duplicate it.”

  Claudia barely heard the end of Rose’s sentence. The photos in the cake binder were stunning. There were so many tiered masterpieces, some covered with delicate icing flowers and others with smooth, elegant exteriors highlighted by swirls and pearls and ribbons. She flipped the page and gasped.

  The picture there took up a whole page. The cake was a nontraditional design, with the various layers held on separate platforms that rose higher and higher, like a spiral staircase. The icing was smooth, but each layer had glistening bands of lavender around the base and a spray of matching lavender roses cascading over the top.

  “This one is amazing,” she told Rose. “Simple and really beautiful.”

  As Claudia stared at the picture, the bell on the bakery door rang, but she didn’t realize that someone had come up to stand beside her until Daisy spoke.

  “Oh, Miss Claudia, that is such a beautiful cake!” the little woman with gray, curly hair breathed as she peeked over her arm at the picture. “Maybe it has a special potion inside to make it float in the air like that.”

  Claudia smiled down at Daisy and then made eye contact with Rose. Rose smiled in return and spoke kindly to Daisy. “I think Ruth actually calls them floating tiers. She has the stand in back. It’s made of clear plastic, so the cake layers look like they’re hovering in midair.”