What We Keep (17 page)

We sat at the top of the steps, leaning forward to hear better. Joan Phenning said that her favorite food was brussels sprouts and that she had two beautiful boys. Sharla and I looked at each other. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, that’s what we called her two beautiful boys. Mrs. Five Operations said she had reached the six-month mark after her laminectomy and could now lift grocery bags. Also that she had a new recipe for a cold cucumber soup in her purse that she was willing to share with anyone who was interested. My mother said she expected gigantic roses later this summer and that today was her birthday. There ensued a happy chorus of “Ohs!” and “Happy Birthdays!” And then we heard Jasmine say, “My name is Jasmine Johnson. I wanted to be an actress and I never loved my husband.” There was a stunned silence. Then a titter, and some rustling sounds. And then, “My name is Jane Samuelson. This summer we’re going to Wyoming, and next week my older daughter Janie will be getting her braces off. And—well, I wanted to be a dancer. But that’s three.” Sharla and I sat immobile. We did not look at each other. The next woman, Eileen Hansen, went back to the usual format, saying what her husband did and how many children she had. After Two Things was over and Sharla and I went back to the bedroom, she asked, “Why does Jasmine
say
things like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sometimes she is so
weird.
”

“Yeah.”

“Why does Mom
like
her so much?”

I picked up my bowl of Jell-O. “Because she’s so different.”

“Huh,” Sharla said. “That would make someone
not
like her.”

“Not everyone,” I said. The Jell-O was wonderful. It slid effortlessly down my throat. I wanted more.

My father brought pizza home for my mother’s birthday dinner. She’d said she didn’t want to leave me to go to a restaurant when I was sick, though I felt much better. “Twelve-hour virus,” my father had pronounced, then tousled my hair. “Right? You’re better already, right?”

I’d nodded. He didn’t like it when anyone was sick: he had to make it into something nearly gone as soon as it arrived. When Sharla was hospitalized for a week with her tonsils, he was beside himself; that was the most serious thing that had happened to us. He called the nursing station relentlessly when visiting hours were over; he held Sharla’s hand the whole time he was there with her; he told her as soon as she awakened from anesthesia that she was all better. It was an odd feeling, being sick around him; you felt secure in his assurance that you were fine; but you felt frustrated, too, at the distance between what he said you felt and what the truth really was.

After pizza, served unceremoniously on our usual dinner plates and accompanied by a salad my mother made, my father presented her with a large package, and Sharla put our gift on top of it. She’d used Christmas paper to wrap it; my mother smiled at the sight of flying reindeer in August. “I wanted to get it gift-wrapped,”
Sharla said, “but Ginny got sick.” She looked accusingly at me.

“This is fine,” my mother said. “More interesting. It’s nice to have something unexpected once in a while.” She untied the red ribbon. “Let’s see what’s in here.” She took off the paper carefully, folded it. Then she lifted the box cover and held up the nightgown. I looked closely; I’d forgotten what we’d bought.

“Do you like it?” Sharla asked.

“Yes, I do. Very much. Look at this pretty lace trim.”

“I mostly picked it, because Ginny was sick.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but could think of nothing to say. It was true.

“But I couldn’t have done it without her.” This seemed extreme, but as I was the beneficiary of Sharla’s remark, I let it stand.

“I’ll wear this tonight,” my mother said.

Next she opened my father’s gift to her. It was a set of copper-bottomed pans. “They’re beautiful,” my mother said. She picked up a smaller, wrapped box that had been put in with the pans. “But what’s
this?
” She shook the box, looked at my father out of the corner of her eye. Then, playfully, she asked, “What did you do, Steven?”

“Open it,” he said.

It was a can of copper cleaner.

“Oh.” My mother smiled, nodded.

“Do you like those pans?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’ve always told me how much you love copper-bottomed pans. This is the whole set.”

“Yes, it is. Thank you, Steven.”

“That’s not all, though. That’s not all. How about some cake?”

“There’s cake?” my mother asked.

“From Schickman’s,” my father said proudly. He hiked up his pants, smoothed the back of his hair.

“Oh, Steven, you didn’t have to go there.” Schick-man’s was the bakery across town; their cakes were delicious, but very expensive.

“It’s your birthday,” he said. “I love you.” Sharla and I looked at each other, smiled.

Our father went into his den, returned with a pink box. He opened it with a flourish.
HAPPY
35
TH
! was written in purple frosting across a large white cake, beautifully decorated with latticework, pink frosting roses, and candied violets.

“What a lovely cake,” my mother said. “Of course, it’s … Well, I’m thirty-six, you know.”

My father leaned over the box. “What the—” He stepped back, thought for a minute. Then, “Oh, Marion,” he said. He picked up her hand, kissed it. “What must you think of me. Of course it’s thirty-six, I know that. I was in such a hurry to get home, I didn’t even check at the bakery to see if the thing was right. The girl must have misunderstood me when I phoned in the order.”

My mother went to the silverware drawer, returned with a knife. “It’s all right. It will taste just fine. It will taste wonderful. I’d rather be thirty-five anyway.”

“I’m so sorry,” my father said. “I know I told her right.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I looked at the curve of my mother’s eyelashes against her cheek as she started to cut into the
cake; she was still made up from her Tupperware party, and she looked very pretty.

“Why don’t you go out dancing?” I asked.

Both my parents looked at me.

“I’m fine now,” I said.

“You want to, Marion?”

My mother laughed.

“Go!” I said. “Or go … I don’t know, somewhere.”

“You want to go out?” my father asked again.

“Well … I don’t know, maybe we should.” She sat down, the knife still in her hand. “Where should we go?” She was happy now, expectant. Beneath the table, I saw her foot reach for the heels she had slid off. I felt proud of myself.

“I don’t know. Maybe … I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

Her smile froze, then faded.

“You just think of a place,” he said, “and I’ll take you there.”

She looked away, shrugged. “Never mind.” Her voice was soft.

“What’s wrong?” He crossed over to her, took the knife out of her hand. “Just
think
of a place, Marion, and I’ll
take
you!”

She looked up at him. “Why don’t
you
think of a place, Steven?”

He stood there. Blinked. “Okay,” he said, finally. “Well, let’s see. Let’s see.” He sat down at the table with us, folded his hands before him. We waited. The cuckoo clock sounded, absurdly: it was seven o’clock. I found this sad, somehow; it seemed too early and too late both.

My mother took the knife back from my father, cut
into the cake. She smiled, lips tight. “Let’s just eat this, okay? I don’t need to go out. I feel better staying home when Ginny’s sick.” She cut one piece, then another, then another, one more; handed them out. The silence felt draped around us.

Finally, “I’m
better!
” I said, to no one, apparently. Sharla sat still at the table, staring into space, then picked up her fork.

We ate in silence. And then the cake was put in the refrigerator, the thirty-five having been clumsily changed into a thirty-six. My father used a fork to do it. He wasn’t careful enough; it didn’t really work.

There was one awful year when my husband forgot my birthday. Usually, he would serve me breakfast in bed—that was always one of the best presents. But this year he said nothing about my birthday all day. I wasn’t worried. It was a Saturday, and I kept waiting, thinking he had a surprise party planned. The kids didn’t mention my birthday either, but that wasn’t unusual—they were only four and six. Sharla called that afternoon when Mark was at the hardware store. She asked what he had given me and I said nothing yet, that I thought he had some big surprise planned. Then I asked if she knew what it was. “No,” she said, and I could tell she wasn’t lying, and it was then that it began to occur to me that he had forgotten. I didn’t tell her that, though, nor did I tell my father and Georgia when they called a few minutes later. They, too, asked me what Mark had gotten me. This time I did not smile and say I thought he had something planned. This time I felt like punching them for asking.

Mark remembered right before we went to bed. He
felt terrible. He got dressed and went to an all-night grocery to get a card and a bouquet of flowers, and the next day he served me a spectacular breakfast in bed.

But what happened on my mother’s birthday, that was different. It was completely different.

T
he morning after the Tupperware party, I awakened feeling fine. I left Sharla sleeping and came into the kitchen to see my mother sitting at the kitchen table, a small book before her. “What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a book of poetry. By Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Jasmine gave it to me for my birthday. That, and this.” She pointed to her neck, and I saw a thin gold chain, holding a locket.

“That’s pretty. What’s inside?” I knew already: photos of me and Sharla. I couldn’t wait to see.

“Nothing, yet.” My mother tightened her hand around the locket.

“You can use my school picture,” I said. “Part of me would fit.”

“Good,” she said. “Yes. I’ll do that.”

I sat opposite her, looked at the book she had open to somewhere in the middle. “Why did Jasmine get you a
poetry
book?”

She looked up. “I love poetry.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

She got up, went over to the refrigerator. “Do you want scrambled eggs?”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. Something was.

“Nothing.”

A silence, thick and unrelenting. She stood waiting before the open refrigerator door, her back to me. “I’ll just have cereal,” I said, finally.

The next morning, our father stayed home from work. “For nothing,” he said. “For fun.”

He had never done this, and it astounded and delighted Sharla and me. It also frightened us. We looked at our mother for signs of life-threatening illness and found none. We looked at our father, at ourselves. All seemed well: skins were pink; eyes were clear; no one limped or coughed or moaned. All seemed well except that our father was staying home from work. It was like finding two yolks in an egg: a bonus, but an anomaly that made you a bit nervous.

My mother seemed suspicious at first, then guardedly happy. We all sat in the living room in our pajamas, thinking about what we might do. My mother wanted to go on a picnic, but outside thick gray clouds moved restlessly about, as though the sky had been set for a slow boil. It looked like we were in for yet another day of storms.

“It’ll clear up by noon,” she said. “I’ll make some potato salad.”

She started potatoes cooking, then went up to dress. By the time she came down, the rain had started. Fat drops splattered against the window, drummed at the gutters; the wind whipped the branches of the bushes
and pulled blossoms off the flowers in the garden. She stood at the kitchen sink, looking out the window, immobile.

“Let’s have a picnic anyway,” my father said.

My mother looked at him.

“Inside, I mean.”

“Inside?”

“How about in the living room?” He was dressed in his Saturday clothes: khaki pants, a plaid, short-sleeved shirt open two buttons at the throat. His hands were in his pockets, as though seeking protection behind that thin fabric; he looked to me like a boy asking for his allowance early.

“I don’t know about having a picnic inside,” my mother said. “What would be the point?”

“Fun!” I said.

She nodded. Did not smile. Although her mouth moved slightly, as if she were trying to.

While she finished making lunch, the rest of us sat at the kitchen table, keeping her company. Sharla and I had a stack of magazines. We were “doing houses,” as we called it, cutting out things to put in our piles. If you saw a dress you liked, you put that in there and it was yours, hanging in the closet of your dreams. If you cut out a Cadillac convertible, it was parked in whatever garage you imagined (and Sharla once imagined a garage with a swimming pool in it). Today, I dropped a white cake with cherry-fluff frosting in my pile, then added a hat and coat ensemble, then an entire kitchen. Sharla was concentrating on furniture; thus far, she had a nubby green tweed sofa, a Sylvania television, and a club chair. My father watched us for a while, then took a magazine for
himself and began cutting things out. He told us he was going to make a collage. We stopped our own work to watch him: he taped a pair of brown wing tips inside a DeSoto, taped a roast onto a Frigidaire dryer. He found a white picket fence and taped a woman behind it; next to that, he put the face of a fair-haired child looking out of a window.

My mother finished with the ham sandwiches and came over to watch my father, hands on her hips. Then she, too, sat down and began leafing through magazines. She cut out a pair of red high heels. Next she cut out the picture of a small bird, and, with great care, cut his wings off. These she affixed to the heel of the shoes. She stared at her creation, then sat back, her arms crossed.

“What have you got there, Marion?” my father asked.

My mother smiled, shrugged.

“Where are those shoes going?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Wherever it is, it’s fast,” my father said.

“Hey, Mom,” Sharla said. She held up a picture of an airplane. “Want
this?
”