Things Remembered (10 page)

“Fine—as far as I could tell. It was one of those in-and-out things.”

Susan eyed Karla. “You look like hell.”

She hadn't bothered to repair her makeup before going shopping. “Allergies.”

“Doesn't look like allergies to me.”

“It's been a rough morning,” she admitted.

Susan came around the cart, and before Karla could figure out what she was going to do, put her arms around her in a long, care-giving hug. People turned to stare; even the pharmacist looked up from counting pills. Karla was embarrassed and speechless. She wasn't the kind of person people spontaneously hugged.

“Want something to take your mind off your troubles?” Susan asked.

Karla's first instinct was to say no. She always said no to people like Susan, because she felt out of her element with them. “Why not? I've got an hour or so before Anna said she usually gets up from her nap. What did you have in mind?”

She pointed to the cart. “How does feeding oranges and graham crackers to fifteen preschoolers sound?”

“Like riding a roller coaster through the fires of hell.”

Susan laughed. “I like that. Mind if I use it sometime?” Pulling a card out of her purse, she handed it to Karla. “There's a map on the back just in case, but you shouldn't need it. We're in the old Hadley house.”

Karla looked at the card. “The Kids' Place? What is that?”

“My preschool—we talked about it last night, remember?”

“I remember you saying something about a kids' place, but I thought you were talking about your son and your house.”

“I've been in business almost four years now.”

“So you weren't kidding about the oranges and graham crackers,” Karla said. “You should know, I'm not very good with children.”

Susan laughed. “I don't believe that for a minute. Heather said you're wonderful with hers.” She saw that the pharmacist was ready and went to the counter with Karla. “But then, I'm offering you an hour's distraction, not a job.”

“I'd love to see the place.” When was she going to learn to say no and mean it? “I have one more stop, though. I'm looking for one of those pads that go on the shoulder strap of a seat belt. Any idea where I could find one?”

“Try the Chief Auto Store on Fairway.”

“Fairway?”

“I keep forgetting how long you've been away. I'll bet you're glad to be back, though.”

Karla didn't know how to answer her, so she just smiled.

Susan was wrong. Karla did have trouble finding the preschool. She circled the block twice before she recognized the old Hadley home. She'd been looking for something stereotypical, a place with cartoons on the walls and sandboxes behind a chain-link fence. Instead, what she found was a meticulously restored Victorian sporting gray and burgundy and cream paint with old-fashioned swings on the porch and flowerpots overflowing with yellow and burgundy and orange chrysanthemums scattered along the railing. An old farm wagon stood in the front yard filled with bales of hay and pumpkins and cornstalks, driven by a life-sized scarecrow.

Karla wasn't absolutely sure she was at the right house until she stepped on the porch and saw a discreet sign that said the kids' place under the doorbell. Susan came to the door before Karla had a chance to knock.

“I saw you pass by—twice,” she said with a grin.

“This is not what I expected,” Karla said.

“Good. That's the idea.” She held the door open. “Come in. I'll show you around.”

Susan's pride in what she'd accomplished came through in her voice and stance as they moved from room to room and she told Karla that The Kids' Place wasn't an impersonal baby-sitting service, but as close to a caring home environment as she could provide. There was one teacher for every four children younger than four, and one for every five of the four- and five-year-olds. The waiting list held enough children for two additional schools, but Susan was wary of expansion.

“And this is the dining room,” Susan said.

Karla looked at what had once been the back parlor. Five child-size tables were set with plates, napkins, and whimsical Halloween centerpieces. “Nice,” she said. “But then I love everything you've done in here, even the wallpaper.”

“We got the place so cheap we were able to put more into fixing it up than I'd anticipated. At times looking for just the right knob or faucet was like being on a treasure hunt. I found the wallpaper at a restoration shop on a trip we took to visit Allen's family in Connecticut.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Stephens.” A girl with black hair pulled into twin ponytails stood at the doorway.

“What is it, Cindy?”

“Janet wants to talk to you.”

“Thank you. Please tell her that I'll be there in a minute.”

Karla watched as the girl she guessed to be one of the five-year-olds left. “I'll bet she's a handful.”

“Why do you say that?”

“That mischievous twinkle in those big blue eyes.”

Susan laughed. “If I allowed gossiping about the children, I could tell you a tale or two about Cindy. But since I don't, about the best I can do is to tell you those twinkling eyes don't lie. There isn't a tree she won't climb or a challenge she won't accept.”

The hour that Karla had worried would take forever to pass slipped away without notice. As disconnected as she usually felt around young mothers and their stories about child-rearing, she was fascinated by Susan's philosophy on the subject. She believed that under an umbrella of love should be a lovingly structured environment. Manners and social graces were a given, taught at school by example and expectation and reinforced at home. The hands-on teachers were called by their first names to foster close relationships; Susan was called Mrs. Stephens to show respect for her position. It was assumed every child was brilliant and meant to shine in something and that the joy of accomplishment came from inside. Susan's kids came to the preschool every day knowing they were special, because they were treated that way.

Of all the children she met, Karla was most fascinated by Cindy—her easy laughter, her self-confidence, her fearless climb to the top of monkey bars, and her stoic acceptance of the pain that came with a scraped elbow.

Later that night, while Karla was fixing dinner for herself and Anna, she found herself thinking about Cindy, wondering about her parents and what they had done right that so many others had done wrong.

“I can't remember the last time I slept so long,” Anna said from the doorway to the kitchen. “Or as well.”

“I thought about waking you, but then you looked so peaceful I decided to let you sleep.” Karla dropped the steamer basket she'd picked up at the store that afternoon into a pot and lit the burner. “I've got a roast and potatoes holding in the oven. The broccoli should be ready in a few minutes.”

“Why don't we wait out on the porch? The sun's about to go down and I don't want to miss it.”

“You go ahead. I'll set the table.”

“That can wait.” She waved for Karla to follow. “I can tell this one's going to be a beauty. The kind that should be shared.”

Rather than argue, Karla turned the flame as low as it would go and followed Anna outside. “I made an appointment at the bank today,” she said settling sideways on the railing while Anna sat in her rocking chair.

“With Mrs. Foster?”

“She's on vacation. Andrew Clark is covering for her.”

“I don't like him,” Anna said. “He's an overbearing ass and so full of himself his pants have gone up two sizes since he started working there.”

“That's called middle-age spread.”

“When is Mrs. Foster coming back?”

Karla sighed. Even with their agreement, she should have known Anna would set up roadblocks. “I didn't ask.”

“Look at that sky, would you? Did you ever see anything as pretty?”

“I remember Mama telling me that Grandpa never planted anything that would get in the way of you seeing your sunsets.” She had no idea where the memory had come from or when the conversation had taken place. It was just there, unbidden, a gift.

“He was a special man. . . . He loved doing things for others more than he ever did for himself. He spoiled me for anyone else.”

Karla had always assumed Anna had stayed single because she was too old to be interested in dating after Frank died. But the older she became herself, the more she realized how young Anna had been when she became a widow. She'd lived without her beloved Frank for almost thirty years, learning about the plumbing and mowing and carpentry that were needed to keep the house going in addition to working a forty-hour week at the cleaners. She was a year from retiring when she started her second career—that of being a single parent.

“Was it hard living without Grandpa?”

“The hardest thing I've ever done.”

“Even harder than raising three girls by yourself?” In the years she lived with Anna and in the time that had passed since, she'd never once stopped to imagine what having the three of them come to live with her must have been like for a woman alone. Thinking about it now was like being blindsided. The foundation of her long-held resentment cracked and left her as confused and frustrated as a bird trying to fly in a vacuum.

“I must not have told you often enough how much it meant to have the three of you here with me for you to ask that question now.”

“But you were getting ready to retire. You could have gone out with your friends, traveled, moved to the coast—a hundred things other than being saddled with us.” Anna loved the ocean as much as Karla did, and her mother had loved the mountains. She used to talk about the trips she had taken there as a little girl and how she'd promised herself that when she grew up she would have a house that sat on a cliff far out on a point. Once, after Karla had gone off to school, Anna had rented a house in Santa Cruz for a weekend. It was the only real vacation she ever took with any of them. Karla had said she would try to come up so the family could be together, but she hadn't even asked for the time off from work.

“I can't believe you didn't feel at least a little resentment when we showed up the way we did,” Karla added.

“You didn't just show up. You came because I wanted you.”

Was it the three of them she'd wanted? Or did the money that came with them provide some of the incentive? “If that's true, why did it take you two years to decide?” She might be confused about other things that had happened back then, but she was on solid ground with this one.

“Where did you hear that? I tried to get custody the week your mother and father died, but your father's family refused to even consider letting you go. They insisted you were better off with them because I was too old to take care of you properly. It was a difficult argument to counter. If you remember, Grace was only four at the time, and I was sixty-four.”

Karla forced herself to remember that the robust, healthy woman who had controlled her life as a girl now occupied a frail, easily damaged shell. “You must not have tried very hard. As I remember it, none of the Beckers liked having us around. I find it hard to believe they actually fought to keep us.”

“I went so far as to hire a lawyer,” she said, indignant. And then, with irony, “But they had the resources to hire someone better—your mother's and father's money. I'd given up hope when I got a phone call from your uncle telling me the family wasn't going to fight me anymore, that I could have all three of you as soon as I sent the money for the plane tickets.”

“Why haven't I heard anything about this before now? Those two years we were being shuffled around my dad's family, I don't remember anyone saying anything about you at all—good or bad. I never even heard your name mentioned until the day I overheard Grandma and Grandpa Becker making plans to send us away.”

“What about the letters I sent?”

“What letters?”

“I wrote to you every week, sometimes two or three times a week.”

“I never got a letter from you—at least, I was never given a letter from you,” she conceded.

“And the presents?”

Karla shook her head. Even if missing letters and presents bordered on cliché, she had no more reason not to believe Anna about this than Anna had to lie. “I wondered about our birthdays. You'd always sent us something when Mom and Dad were alive, and I couldn't figure why you'd stopped. I finally decided that with Mom gone, you didn't care anymore.”

“No wonder you looked at me the way you did when you got off that plane. I'd never seen such hostility.”

“That's not true,” she automatically protested. And then, “What makes you think—”

“It's all right, Karla,” Anna said gently. “It was a long time ago. You were young and confused about what was happening and how you should feel about it.”

Excuse enough for then, but what about now? Finally, Karla understood that the tone of voice Anna used whenever she talked about the Beckers wasn't neutral to hide her dislike, it was measured to hide her anger. She turned her back to Anna, as much to face the disappearing sun as to close herself off. She needed time to think, to absorb what Anna had told her, to sort through her memories and find the missing pieces that would fit their two versions of the same stories together.

“I still have the letters my lawyer sent and the ones their lawyer sent back if you want to see them,” Anna told her. “They're in the bottom drawer of my dresser. I could get them for you now.”

“If you don't mind, I think I've had enough for tonight. Could we talk about something else?”

“Certainly. The Beckers aren't my favorite topic either.”

She turned back around. “Tell me about Grandpa?”

The runners on Anna's chair gently creaked as she thought and rocked for several seconds before she answered. “Did you know he spoke three languages?”