What We Keep (16 page)

“Only two weeks till
your
birthday,” Sharla said.

“I know.”

“I got you your present already.”

“You did? When?”

“The other day. You didn’t know.”

I stayed silent, thinking. I had always made it my business to know when people bought my presents.

“You don’t pay as much attention as you used to,” Sharla said, as though she’d heard my thoughts.

“Yes, I do.” My head throbbed. I lay back down.

“I mean to
me
, you don’t pay as much attention to me.”

“Sharla?”

“What.”

“Am I hot?”

“How should I know?”

“No, I mean … I feel like I have a fever.”

She came to sit beside me, put her hand to my forehead. “You’re just tired,” she said. “You were out the whole night.”

“How do you know?”

“I woke up a lot. You were never here.”

Suddenly I remembered my mother, outside in her nightgown. “Sharla, did you see what Mom did last night?”

“When?”

“Last night, out in the backyard, when I was out with Wayne.”

“What do you mean? She wasn’t outside. She was sleeping before you ever went out there.”

“No, she came out, and she was walking around flapping her arms and acting crazy.”

“What are you talking about? She didn’t do that. You dreamed it.”

“I
saw
her, Sharla! Wayne did, too. Ask him!”

“Well, that would be pretty hard to do, since he left this morning.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged, returned to her magazine. “A car came and picked him up. I saw. He got in with a suitcase. He’s gone.”

I stood up, then sat back down on my bed. Something inside me felt pulled in two directions, being slowly ripped. “He didn’t say anything about leaving. He didn’t tell me.”

Sharla picked up a peach pit she’d put at the side of her bed, sucked on it with noisy satisfaction. “Well, he’s gone.”

But I
loved
him, I wanted to say. Of course I did not
say it. The words were too big for my mouth. Everything I had felt—and learned—about Wayne was too big for me, and I knew it. So although the suddenness of his departure made for a caved-in feeling, I also felt a kind of buoyancy of spirit, a return to the safety of the self I knew. I felt the kind of relief you experience when you yank your gaze away from staring too long at something, becoming hypnotized by it; becoming, in fact, nearly lost to it.

Later that day, I went into the teepee to think about things. I saw a rock just inside the entrance, holding down a piece of paper.
Ginny
, it said.
I have to go. You know why. You know everything. Don’t forget anything
. At the bottom of the note were two parallel lines within a circle, identical to those we’d drawn in the dirt. I pressed the note to my chest, then against my forehead. I cried a little. Then I brought the note inside and put it away in my secret box. I knew I would never see Wayne again. That note was the only proof I had of having learned something essential: how to be properly loved.

T
he plane tilts suddenly to the left, then rights itself. Why? I imagine the captain taking his hands off the wheel to stretch, then saying, “Whoops!” But no one else is reacting, at least as far as I can tell.

I close my eyes, rub my temples, think again of Wayne. I wonder what he looks like now. I wonder if he ever thinks of me and our little ceremony. It’s hard to imagine it didn’t mean something to him, that incredible exchange. I hope it did; it certainly meant a lot to me. I’ve tried to explain how it felt to a few people, but it always gets reduced to a that-summer-at-the-lake story, and that’s not what it was. I don’t know quite how I could have believed in so much so soon, how I could have taken such chances. Well, he was a compelling character. Charismatic—Jasmine’s son, after all. If he hadn’t so abruptly left, I wonder what else I might have done with him.

I suppose in my pied-piper delirium I might have subconsciously been imitating my mother. I’ve seen things like that in my own daughters, God knows—over and over, I’ve seen behavior in them that parallels my own, in one way or another. Sometimes I think what you say to kids doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. It’s all in what you do. It really is. It is all in what you do.

I
n Monroe’s lingerie department, Sharla held a nightgown up before me. It was pale blue, decorated with stiff-looking lace around the neck and armholes. “How about this one?” she asked, but she was not really asking. She was demanding. We’d been looking at things for over an hour, and she was tired of it.

“Fine,” I said. I was tired, too. More than that, I felt really sick: dizzy and weak, and my head throbbed.

Sharla paid for the nightgown, then turned to me and said, “Do you want to go and get it gift-wrapped? We have enough.”

Her words sounded as though she were speaking underwater. I stared dumbly at her. I would answer her later. After a nap.

“Ginny?” She walked over and put her hand to my forehead. “Uh-oh. Let’s go.” She started to leave, then looked behind her at me, standing there. “Come on!”

I followed a few steps, then stopped.

Sharla came up beside me, grabbed my arm. “Hurry up!” she hissed. “Do you want everyone to know you’re sick?”

Another difficult question. I shrugged, then sat on the floor.

“Will you
stop
that?” Sharla bent down to pull at me.
The package with the nightgown slipped out from under her arm, and I reached for it, uselessly. It was too far away.

The saleswoman who had helped us, a thin, older woman wearing a navy dress with white polka dots, glasses perched at the end of her nose, came over to us. “What happened here?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

“No,” I said, vaguely, watching the polka dots swim; but Sharla quickly followed with, “Yes. She’s fine. She just fell down a little. We’re going.” She yanked on my arm again, and I lay down on the floor.

“What’s your phone number, girls?” the saleswoman asked.

I closed my eyes. The cool linoleum felt so good against the side of my face. I pulled my knees up to my chest, pushed my fists between my knees. If they would just leave me alone. If they would just pull the shades and tiptoe out now.

From far away, I heard Sharla say the digits to our phone number. “Home,” I thought, and the word suggested such richness I thought I could smell it, sweet and buttery.

“It’s like syrup,” I told Sharla, who was now kneeling at my side, looking around. She was embarrassed; a pretty shade of rose flushed her face.

“What’s like syrup?”

“Home.” I felt wise and benevolent, forgiven and all-forgiving, and very, very light. I smiled.

A moment, and then Sharla said, “Oh boy, you are really going to get us in trouble. It’s Mom’s
birth
day!”

I thought this over for a moment, and then closed my
eyes again. I couldn’t care. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; it was that I couldn’t.

I felt the weight of something on my mattress and opened my eyes to see my mother sitting there. “Are you better?” she asked. “Do you feel any better?” She was wearing rouge and mascara and red lipstick, a nice blue dress. At first I thought she did it to make me feel better, but then I remembered the Tupperware party.

I blinked, yawned. “I think so.”

“You slept well.” She put her lips to my forehead. “Your fever is down. It’s about a hundred now.” My mother had an uncanny ability to estimate fever using her lips alone. She had never yet been off by more than two-tenths of a degree.

She crossed her legs, sighed. “You want some Jell-O?”

“No.”

“Ginger ale?”

“No.”

She looked at me for a long moment, frightened, I knew; it frightened her when we didn’t eat. And so, “What kind of Jell-O?” I asked.

She smiled, relieved. “Cherry, you know how you like that. Would you like me to just bring some up here and leave it?”

I nodded. It would make her feel much better to do that. I could always flush it down the toilet.

The doorbell chimed, and my mother looked at her watch. “Oh, they’re here,” she said, her voice a mix of pleasure and disappointment. And then, “I’ll come up here and check on you, Ginny, but I couldn’t cancel the
party—it was too late. Sharla will stay with you, she’ll be right up.” She went out into the hall, called her.

“I’m getting the
door,
” Sharla called back, and then I heard her welcoming Mrs. Spurlock in her best company voice.

My mother kissed my forehead. “You just let Sharla know if you need anything.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Happy birthday.”

“Oh, never mind about that.”

“We got you something.”

“Yes, I know. Thank you.”

“You’ll open it tonight, right?”

She looked again at her watch, smoothed her skirt. “Of course I will. I can’t wait.” She went out into the hall, called once more for Sharla, who yelled that she was
coming
, though she had not been.

When Sharla finally came into the room, she put a dish of Jell-O on the bedside table, making a point of not looking at me. She walked over to the window, stood silently for a while, staring out. Then she flopped on her bed and turned toward me.

“Well, you went and nearly died right in Monroe’s Department Store.”

“Not hardly.”

“Mary Jo Bennet was there with Francine O’Connell. They walked right past us. I’m sure they saw you there on the floor. They probably thought you were having a fit or something.”

I said nothing. I would not apologize for being ill.

Sharla put her pillow over her stomach, shaped it into
a mound. “Look at me, I’m pregnant.” Then, pulling the pillow off and throwing it to the floor, she sighed. “Do you want your toenails painted or something?”

“I’m too tired.”

“You don’t have to
do
anything.”

True. “Okay.”

Sharla took the red nail polish out of our dresser drawer, shook the bottle. She sat down at the bottom of my bed, legs akimbo, and, using two fingers, lifted my foot by its big toe to put it in front of her. Then she wiped her fingers on the sheet.

“They’re
clean,
” I said.

“They’re your
feet,
” she answered.

Then, despite her disgust, she began painting my toenails carefully, her hand shaking a little with the effort. “Mrs. Spurlock had on pearls with her dress,” she said. “A pearl necklace
and
a pearl bracelet.”

“What color dress?”

“Pink.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. Pink and pearls. Beautiful.

The doorbell chimed again. I heard Jasmine’s voice, followed by several others. They were excited, congratulatory, soothing, confidential. High and female and interesting. The women would be perfumed and wearing high heels and attractive summer dresses in the colors of sherbet and roses. Some of them would have matching sweaters draped over their shoulders. Hair would be styled and sprayed, earrings screwed on straight. Nylon stockings would be shining and making their sandpapery sounds every time the women crossed their legs. I wanted to be down there. I was tired of being sick, now.

“Did you get to taste anything yet?”

“Just some nuts and mints. I’ll get the good stuff later.”

I waited. Sharla looked up. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll bring you some, too.”

I breathed out, satisfied. I didn’t want to eat anything. I just wanted to look at it.

I heard the stairs creak, and then there was Jasmine, standing in our bedroom. Her eyes widened. “Well, look at you,” she said. “Sick as a dog on a day like today.” She pulled a bag out from behind her back. “I wonder what’s in here.”

I smiled, scratched lazily at a mosquito bite.

“I just wonder.” She looked inside the bag. “Oh, yes. That’s a good thing. And oooh, that’s good, too.”

She handed the bag to Sharla. “Give her something every fifteen or twenty minutes,” she said.

“Starting now?”

Jasmine nodded.

Sharla pulled out a
Photoplay
, smiled at the cover, then at Jasmine.

Jasmine smiled back, kissed my forehead like a second mother, left the room.

“She’s never been to a Tupperware party,” Sharla said, leaning over my foot to finish painting the pinkie.

“Her real name is Carol,” I said.

Sharla looked up. “What? I think you’re talking crazy again. Do you feel sicker?”

I’d regretted saying what I did as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Now I welcomed this opportunity to escape from them. “Hoola-moola,” I said.

“Ginny?”

I rubbed my eyes. “I think I need to sleep.”

She groaned, put the top back on the nail polish. “Well, I have to stay here. Can I read your magazine?”

“Read it out loud.”

“But you said you wanted to sleep!”

“I can hear in my sleep.”

Sharla moved back onto her bed, stretched out. “Okay, this is the first story,” she said. “‘Where Rock Hudson goes, girls are sure to follow. And why not?’”

She continued to read aloud in her patient monotone. I closed my eyes, imagining life in Hollywood.

“Did you hear that?” she asked suddenly.

I opened my eyes.

“They’re doing ‘Two Things.’”

“Let’s go.”

I still felt weak, but duty called. Sharla and I tried never to miss the Two Things part of a Tupperware party. Next to the sight of the long table, loaded up with plastic containers for everything imaginable and draped with a dark tablecloth with “Tupperware Home Parties” embroidered on it, Two Things was the best part of the party. It was done as an icebreaker before the demonstration and sales began: the famous “burp” of air from the container when you sealed it, thus guaranteeing freshness of the leftovers; the showcasing of the adorable Popsicle makers, which I wanted desperately but which my mother refused to buy, calling them an unnecessary extravagance. “We can make Popsicles in juice cans,” she always said, but we never did.

For Two Things, all the women sat in a horseshoe before the display table. Then, at the prompting of the hostess, each woman said her name and two things about herself. Sharla and I always had high hopes that
something fantastic would be revealed; nothing ever was. Still, the information was entertaining. Last time, Mrs. Jacobson had revealed that her cat had had seven kittens, named after the seven dwarfs.