What We Leave Behind (2 page)

She hung only one picture of him in our house. It was their wedding day. It wouldn’t have helped Mom with her successive boyfriends to have a variety of her dead husband’s photos prominently displayed. It was the picture I thought about that afternoon in Dr. Norton’s office, and how Mom looked so happy and beautiful. Her blonde hair was pulled back high on her head, the olive skin was clear and glowing, and her blue eyes sparkled against the fancy lace dress. He was as good-looking as any man I’d seen in the movies, and sometimes I’d pretend he wasn’t really dead, but somewhere posing as a famous actor. When I’d go to the movies, I’d pick out the most handsome man on the screen, the one that closely resembled what he might look like seven years later. At the end, I was always the last to leave the theater—which undoubtedly irritated whoever I was with at the time—because I was busy searching for his name in the credits. The leading man would pass, then the supporting actor, and by the time the key grip was mentioned, the songs that played in the film, and the thank you to whatever city was featured, I’d feel the let-down creep into my heart.

But back to the photo. They were standing next to each other, close in so many ways, her shoulder tucked into his side, hip touching leg, dress touching jacket. Their individual parts fit together perfectly. They were holding the cake knife, his hand pressed against hers. I bet they were laughing at something, a private joke maybe, because there was a twinkle in her bright blue eyes as she looked up at him, a blush across her face; and the photo became for me the image of ideal, a union that no one could penetrate.

I closed my eyes and breathed it all in. At the time, I was sitting on Dr. Norton’s worn-out couch, but I was somewhere else. I could see them so clearly in my head, their loving faces, the flowers around them, the room. The picture was theirs, a moment captured now long since passed, but I knew, I just knew, I was conceived in love, even when the memory belonged to them, and its impact would swell around all of us for years.

That's not what got to me in Dr. Norton's office, though. No, not entirely. What passed through my mind while sitting on her frumpy couch started with that picture, but turned into something like this. Every time I passed their wedding picture in the hall, I would recognize the startling truths: I would never be held like that, I would never feel as safe and protected as my mother looked that night, I would never hear my father call me beautiful as he must have exclaimed when he saw his bride-to-be in that dress. And even though I was his daughter, and he my father, we would always be connected, and yet very, very separate.

I never understood why Dr. Norton stayed with me as long as she did. I was comfortable within the shell I had built around myself and refused to come out. Weeks slipped into months, months into years, and not once did I disclose the truths that flooded my insides.

“We’re not making sufficient progress,” she told my mother after our two-year anniversary. “She’s bright, articulate, witty, but she won’t let me in. Maybe it’s time to think about a different therapist.”

I was furious at her for giving up on me just as I was starting to enjoy our afternoons, mostly because I knew I had the key to what she wanted. The more I held onto it, the more amusing our discussions became. So instead of letting her know on our last day together that I was upset she was saying good-bye, I smiled, politely thanked her for her time, and walked out of her office.

Stopping at the drugstore on the way home that afternoon, I added petty theft to my resume of misdemeanors by stealing my first cassette tape. It was the soundtrack to
Grease
. I also stole a pack of cigarettes, not that I smoked.

Beth, my best friend, slept over that night. She never asked me about my therapy sessions, and I didn’t offer up any information. It’s not that I thought it was weird. I happened to understand the whole Freudian thing more than most twelve-year-olds, and having an
analyst
gave me an added sophistication.

Beth was the most beautiful girl in our school and probably the most popular. Her hair was a deep shade of brown and fell straight down her back. Her blue eyes were so clear and wide, they gave the impression she was perpetually surprised. High cheekbones, flawless skin, and what many called a button nose were a sharp contrast to my “strong nose,” sprinkling of freckles, and the inches that separated us in height—four, to be exact. I think she became my best friend because she secretly longed to depart from the hullabaloo of the popular circles and join me on my expedition to madness. Unfortunately, she was never good at madness. She was nervous and uptight about getting into
trouble
, and worried incessantly about upsetting her parents. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” she would ask, and I would roll my eyes at her while toilet papering the neighbor’s tree. She kept watch, trying not to laugh, living vicariously through me, as I would do the same with her—imagining what it would be like to be so sought after and adored by every boy and girl in Tremont Middle.

We were sitting in my family room watching our usual round of movies that night, music blaring in the background, munching on popcorn, when she came across the items from the drugstore.

“Whatcha got in the bag?” she asked, remnants of popcorn falling out the sides of her pouty lips.

“Nothing,” I answered, shielding my valuable stash.

“It’s not nothing,” she said, imploring in such a way that I almost wanted to tell her.

“Just some stuff.”

“You’re lying, Jessie Parker. You know I can tell when you’re lying.”

I said, “It’s stuff, private stuff, has to do with my analyst.” Besides, it wasn’t so untrue. That I was pissed at her for dumping me was of no business to Beth.

“Really?” she asked, engrossed by this discovery. “Can I see it?”

“No, you can’t see it. It’s private.” But I liked that she was excited about it.

“I thought we shared everything with each other.”

“Well, not this,” I answered.

“Come on, Jess. That has nothing to do with your therapy sessions. Just show me.”

I was planning on it anyway, but sometimes with Beth you had to build the momentum.

She took the cassette tape in her hand and asked, “What’s the big deal?  It’s a cassette tape.”

“I stole it.”

“You did not.”

“Did too.”

“That’s so cool,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t mean it.

“You think?” I asked.

She nodded, if a slightly undecided tilt of the head can be called a nod.

“Then check this out,” I said, pulling the pack of Benson & Hedges out of the bag.

“Why’d you get those?” she asked. “You know how I feel about those things.”

Everyone
knew how Beth
felt
about things. She was a walking commercial for Hallmark.

“You’re crazy, Jessie.”

What I didn’t tell her was that they were the last pack on the shelf and I didn’t want some poor soul to grab them and get lung cancer or contribute to the already toxic levels of pollutants in the air. She wouldn’t have believed my altruism because it clearly might have rivaled her own.

“Did you finish it yet?” she asked me, changing the subject completely.

“Finish what?”

“Come on, Jess, you know.”

I held off on the enthusiasm. “Yeah, it was good.”

“You didn’t love it? I loved it.”

“It was good,” I said.

We were referring to
Forever
, Judy Blume’s latest book. Beth and I were obsessed with Judy Blume. We had plodded through
Blubber
,
Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing
,
Deenie
, and
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
in record-breaking speed, with
Margaret
being the pinnacle, the literary work we judged all other books against, until
Forever
. With
Margaret
, we witnessed our chests blossom from flat boards to mosquito bites, culminating in the extremely delicate and life-changing ritual of menstruation. We celebrated with Margaret and hoped for the same surge of hormones in our own bodies by the book’s end, but much to our frustration, that didn’t happen, no, not until we got to reading
Forever
.
There
began the hormone surge.

Forever
was not the same identifiable literature that had answered most of the questions and concerns I had about the awkward, teenage years. This particular book stumped me.

“Didn’t you just love Michael and Katherine together?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“And what’d you think of her with Theo?”

I hadn’t thought much about it. I was still harping on other things. She hadn’t noticed my silence when she said, “Ralph. Isn’t that the funniest thing you ever heard?”

She was referring to Michael’s penis. That was the name he had given it. I laughed, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

“I can’t wait to be in love,” she said, “just like Michael and Katherine.”

“And look where it got them,” I sadly stated, disillusioned that their great love was compromised by a boy named Theo.

I didn’t tell Beth this, but I read
Forever
four or five times that week, or at least parts of it. I earmarked page eighty-five until the pages were folded and worn. You could set the book down and it would flop over, opening itself to the page of discovery, and what I now think of as the awakening of my own libido. The particular passage caused these sensations in my legs and down
there
that I didn’t quite understand. I would go to the bathroom after reading it and wipe myself, feeling the dampness upon the soft paper. What was happening to me? Was I peeing in my pants? It didn’t smell like pee.

At first I liked what I read, the feelings between Michael and Katherine, the tenderness, but then it got confusing.
He rolled over on top of me and we moved together again and again and it felt so good I didn’t ever want to stop—until I came
.

Came where? I didn’t understand. If she was there with him, how could she just be entering the scene? Had Ms. Blume made a mistake? My knowledge of sexuality was clearly limited at the time. I grasped the car in the garage concept, but no one had ever explained to me what happened when the battery in the car overheated, or that the car could overheat when it wasn’t even in a garage.

I didn’t ever want to stop—until I came
.

I repeated it in my mind over a thousand times until it became a mantra, and not because it perplexed me, but it brought the tenderness to an end. Something was amiss, I knew that, and I didn’t have the courage to ask Beth when a glance in her direction told me she very much understood the things I didn’t.

“Do you think you’ll name your boyfriend’s penis?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What would you name it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I told you, I never really thought about it.”

Beth’s emotional radar was on high alert. “You don’t have to be so dismissive,” she said. “I’d name it Richard, in case you were wondering.”

Yeah, that was exactly what I was wondering
.

“’Cause then I can call him Dick for short.” Now that actually got a laugh out of me.

We lived in a quiet neighborhood in the valley. It wasn’t glamour, it wasn’t squalor, just the life my mother and I shared—the in-between. My mother was a good woman, and though we didn’t have a lot of money, and my father left us with even less, she never passed along the brunt of her worries, never extended her gripes and grievances my way.

My mother liked to flitter. What I mean is, she would flit around the room like Tinkerbelle. I think a nervous energy took over her body after my father’s death, a need to be at all places at all times. She’d sidle up to you before you even knew she was in the room and like a trained flitterer, satisfy all your whims with one little swoop of her wand before she’d flutter off to the next recipient. This was my mother’s way of dealing with her pain; keeping busy, fixing, helping and caring, drew people to her and served her well in her job as a nurse at the local hospital. In fact, the years after my father’s death were my mother’s most productive work wise. She was promoted to head nurse in emergency. My mother, when she would stop her flitting, was quick as a whip. She was smart and industrious.

Mom wanted to get married again, and she desperately wanted to have more children. She was always saying, “Jessie, you can’t use filthy words like that. You have to be a role model one day. Who knows? You might be a big sister.” Procreation was living proof that she was young enough and lovable enough to be a woman, and not what the ladies around town called a
widow
.

“Widow sounds so wretched,” she would say to me when I sat in her bathroom with her and watched her apply makeup.

The men would come in droves. I told you, my mother was an attractive woman, and because of her combined Mary Poppins and fairy godmother skills, men were always parading around the house. When they’d pull up in the driveway, I’d run to the kitchen for a white paper plate and a marker, the supplies needed for my little game. She would be putting on perfume, flittering around, snapping on a last earring, and I’d be peeking through the curtains. “Don’t do it,” she would say, and I’d reply, “I’m not,” and she would say again, “Jessica, don’t do it,” and I’d say, “But Mom, I can’t help myself,” and she’d relent, finally asking, “Okay, what is it?” and I would scribble on the paper plate and just before the doorbell rang, I’d hold it up.

This careful assessment of her date on a scale from one to ten usually determined the amount of perfume she would throw on herself as well as the outcome of the evening. My mother had grown to trust and rely upon my filtering process. The displeasure on her face when a man scored below five was unbearable. “A two,” she asked me one night, “just a two?” I nodded, sorry for her, thinking she might not want to answer the door, but she always did. She went on every single one of those dates, even the twos and threes.