Bitter Sweet (13 page)
The memory brought a stab of longing. At the window Maggie held back the curtain and gazed down at the tidy backyard.
Phillip, I miss you so much. It was always easier to face Mother with you beside me.
She sighed, dropped the curtain into place and knelt to unpack.
Inside the closet some of her father’s old suits hung beside a sealed plastic bag holding her formal from senior prom.
Pink. Eric had asked her to wear pink and had given her a wrist corsage of pink tea roses.
Eric is married and you’re acting like a middle-aged idiot, standing here staring at a musty old dress.
She changed from her linen travelling suit into a pair of new Guess jeans and two of her fib-knit tank tops, blue over white. Around her throat she tied a twisted cotton scaffand added a pair of oversized lozenge-shaped earrings.
When she entered the kitchen, Vera took one look at her ensemble and said, ‘Those clothes are a little young for you, aren’t they, dear?’
Maggie dropped a glance at the blotchy blue-and-white denim and answered, There was no age restriction on the tag when I bought them.’
‘You know what I mean, dear. Sometimes when a woman is middle-aged she can make herself look ridiculous by trying to appear younger than she really is.’
Rage formed a lump in Maggie’s throat, and she knew if she didn’t get away from her mother soon she’d blow up and make the next four days intolerable.
‘I’m going out to Brookie’s tonight. I doubt that she’ll mind what I wear.’
‘Going to Brookie’s! I don’t see why you have to run out there the minute you get here.’
No, Mother, I’m sure you don’t, Maggie thought, and headed for the back door to escape her for a few minutes.
‘Need anything from the garden?’ she asked with forced lightness.
‘No. Supper is ready. All we need is your dad.’
‘Think I’ll go out anyway.’
Maggie slipped outside and wandered around the impeccably neat backyard, past the tidy strips of marigolds bordering the house, into the garage where her dad’s vice and tools were arranged with military neatness. The floor was ridiculously dean, and the television set was perched above the workbench on a newly constructed shelf. Poor Daddy.
Closing the service door of the garage she trailed around the vegetable garden where the beans and pea vines were already pulled up and gone, the tops of the onions drying. In all of her life she never remembered her mother putting off a single job that needed doing. Why did she resent even that?
Vera called out the back door. ‘On second thought, dear, pick me a couple of ripe tomatoes for slicing.’
Maggie stepped between the tomato stakes and picked two to take to the house. But when she delivered them to the kitchen and stepped off the back rug, Vera scolded, ‘Take your shoes off, dear. I just waxed the floor yesterday.’
By the time
Roy
got home Maggie felt ready to explode.
She met him halfway up the sidewalk from the garage and walked with him, arm in arm, to the house.
‘It’s good to see you running out here to meet me,’ he said fondly.
She smiled and squeezed his arm, feeling her frayed emotions smooth.
‘Ah, Daddy!’ she sighed, tipping her face to the sky.
‘I suppose you surprised the daylights out of your mother.’
‘She nearly had a stroke, or so she claimed.’
‘Your mother will never have a stroke. She wouldn’t abide it.’
‘You’re late,
Roy
,’ Vera interrupted from the doorway, opening the screen door and gesturing impatiently towards the white package in his hand. “And I still have to fry those pork chops. Hurry up and bring them up here.’
He handed her the package and she disappeared. Left on the steps,
Roy
shrugged and smiled dolefully at his daughter.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘show me what’s new in your workshop.’
Inside the room with its scent of fresh wood, she asked,
‘Why do you let her do that to you, Daddy?’
‘Aw, your mother’s a good woman.’
‘She’s a good cook and a good housekeeper. But she drives us both crazy. I don’t have to live with it anymore, but you do. Why do you put up with it?’
He considered a moment and said, ‘I guess I never thought it was worth the trouble to buck her.’
‘Instead, you just come out here.’
‘Well, I enjoy it out here. I’ve been making a few birdhouses and birdfeeders to sell at the store.’
She put a hand on his arm. ‘But don’t you ever want to tell her to shut her mouth, to let you think for yourself? Daddy, she runs all over you.’
He picked up a piece of planed oak and rubbed it with his fingertips. ‘Do you remember Grandma Pearson?’
‘Yes, a little.’
‘She was the same way. Ran my dad like a drill sergeant runs new recruits. It’s all I ever knew.’
‘But that doesn’t make it right, Daddy.’
‘They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary before they died.’
Their gazes caught and held for several seconds. ‘That’s perseverance, Daddy, not happiness. There’s a difference.’ His fingers stopped rubbing the oak and he set it neatly aside. ‘It’s what my generation believes in.’
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps his life was peaceful enough, out here in his workshop, uptown at his job.
Certainly his wife provided an immaculate home, good meals and dean clothing - the traditional wifely duties in which his generation also believed. If he accepted these as enough, who was she, Maggie, to foment dissatisfaction?
She reached for his hand. ‘All right, forget I mentioned it. Let’s go in and have supper.’
Chapter 4
Glenda Holbrook Kerschner lived in a ninety-year-old farmhouse surrounded by twenty acres of Montmorency cherry trees, sixty acres of untilled meadow and woods, a venerable old red barn, a less venerable steel pole barn and a network of paths worn by children, machinery, dogs, cats, horses, cows, deer, racoon and skunks.
Maggie had been here years before, but the house was larger now, with a clapboard addition jutting off the original limestone structure. The verandah, once railed in white, had been enclosed with glass and had become part of the living space. An immense vegetable garden stretched down an east-facing hill behind the house and on a clothesline (nearly as big as the garden) hung four rag rugs.
Maggie drove into the yard shortly before
that evening.
The engine was still running when the back door flew open and Brookie sailed out, shouting, ‘Maggie, you’re here!’
Leaving the car door open, Maggie ran. They met in the yard, off balance, hugging, glisteny-eyed.
‘Brookie, it’s so good to see you!’
‘I can’t believe it! I just can’t believe it!’
‘I’m here! i’m really here.’
Pulling back at last, Brookie said, “My God, look at you!
Thinner than a rake handle. Don’t they feed you back in
Seattle
?’
‘I came back here to get fattened up.’
‘Well, this is the place, as you can see.
Pirouetting, Glenda displayed her newel-post shape.
Each of her pregnancies had left her five pounds heavier, but she was middle-age cute, with short brown hair curling around her face, an infectious smile and attractive hazel eyes.
She clapped both hands on her ample width and looked down at herself. ‘As Gene would say- heat in the winter and shade in the summer.’ Before Maggie finished laughing she was being herded to the house, tight against Brookie’s side.
‘Come and meet him.’
On the back step Gene Kerschner waited, tall, angular, dressed in blue jeans and a faded plaid shirt, holding the hand of a barefoot little girl in a nightgown, no taller than his hip. He looked the part of a contented farmer, a happy father, Maggie thought as he released the child’s hand to give her a welcoming hug. “So this is Maggie. It’s been a long time.’
‘Hello, Gene.’ She smiled up at the slow-spoken man.
‘Maybe now that you’re here Glenda can stop fretting.’
The little girl tugged his jeans. ‘Daddy, who’s that?’
He lifted the child and perched her on his arm. ‘This is Mommy’s friend, Maggie.’ And, to Maggie, ‘This is our second youngest, Chrissy.’
‘Hi, Chrissy,’ Maggie extended a hand.
The child stuck a finger in her mouth and shyly hid her forehead against her father’s jaw.
Laughing, they all moved inside while Glenda added,
‘The rest of the kids are scattered around. Justin’s two, he’s already down for the night, thank heavens. Julie and Danny are out riding Penelope, our horse. Erica’s out on a date - she’s sweet sixteen and madly in love. Todd’s working in town, waiting tables at The Cookery. He’s nineteen and he’s trying to decide whether he should join the Air Force. And Paul, our oldest, has already gone back to college.’
The house was spacious and serviceable with a farm-size kitchen dominated by a dawfoot table surrounded by eight chairs. The living room extended the kitchen, great-room style, and was furnished with worn davenports, a console TV and, at the end where the porch had been enclosed, an antique iron daybed flanked by two rocking chairs. The decor was unglamorous, a combination of Sears Roebuck, children’s school art projects, and K Mart wall phques and houseplants, but the moment Maggie walked in she felt at home.
She could tell immediately, Brookie’s family was handled with a firm but loving hand.
‘Kiss Mommy,’ Gene told Chrissy, ‘you’re going to bed.’
‘Nooooo!’ Chrissy flailed her feet against his stomach and draped her backside over his arm in token resistance.
‘Yup, ‘fraid so.’
She took her father’s face in both hands and tried a little female wile. ‘Pleeeeze, Daddy, can’t I stay up for a little while longer?’
‘You’re a flirt,’ he said, tipping her towards her mother.
‘Kiss her quick if you want one.’
Chrissy’s straight long hair swayed around her mother’s chin as the two exchanged a kiss and hug.
‘ ‘Night, sweede.’
With no further complaint the child went upstairs on her father’s arm.
‘There,’ Glenda said, ‘now we can be alone. And true to my word...’ With a flourish she opened the refrigerator and produced a long-necked green bottle. ‘I got a jug of zinfandel for the occasion. How ‘bout that!’
‘I’d love some. Especially after being with my mother for the last three hours.’
‘How is old Sergeant Pearson?” The name went way back to the days when Brookie would step onto the Pearsons’ front porch and salute crisply at the ‘P’ on the screen door before walking in with Maggie.
‘Exasperating as ever. Brookie, I don’t know how my, dad lives with her. She probably watches when he goes to the bathroom to make sure he doesn’t splatter the lid!”
‘Too bad; because your dad’s such a great guy. Everybody loves him.’
‘I know.’ Maggie accepted a goblet of wine and sipped.
‘Mmm, thank you.’ She followed Brookie to the far end of the great room where Brookic sat on a rocker and Maggie on the daybed hugging a plump throw pillow. Maggie gave Brookie a rundown of the criticism she and Roy had received in the brief time she’d been home. Gene came back downstairs, took a sip of Glenda’s wine, kissed the top of her head, said, “Enjoy yourselves,’ and discreetly left the pair alone.
Within five minutes, however, Julie and Danny slammed in, smelling like horses, uncomfortable with introductions but suffering them politely before retreating to the kitchen where they began mixing up Kool-Aid. Erica and her boyfriend came in with another couple their age, boisterous and giddy, searching for the newspaper to find out what was playing at the drive-in theatre. ‘Oh, hi!’ Erica said when introduced to Maggie. ‘We’ve heard lots of stories about what you and Mom did together in high school. These are my friends, Matt and Karlie and Adam. Mom, can we make some popcorn to take to the movie?’
While the popping was in progress, Todd came home, teased his siblings on his way through the kitchen, said, ‘Hi, Mom, is this Maggie? She looks just like her picture in your yearbook.’ He shook Maggie’s hand, then appropriated his mother’s wine glass and took a sip.
‘That stuff’ll stunt your growth. Give me that.’
‘Doesn’t look like it stunted yours,’ he teased, and leapt aside when she took a swat at his derriere.
‘Is it always like this around here?’ Maggie asked when Todd had gone back to the kitchen to steal popcorn and aggravate his younger siblings.
‘Most of the time.’
The contrast between Maggie’s life and Brookie’s was so sharp it prompted a series of comparisons, and when the
They laughed again, drifted into amiable silence, and Maggie reached out a hand for Brookie’s. ‘It’s so good to be here with you. You’re better than Dr Feldstein. Better than group therapy. Better than any friends I’ve made in
Seattle
. Thank you so much.’