Yesternight (29 page)

November 12, 1930

F
aye Russell, a seven-year-old girl with bobbed red hair, sat down in the chair across from my desk at the Portland elementary school in which I now worked on a full-time basis. Naturally, the child reminded me of Janie O'Daire, as redheaded little girls were apt to do.

I took a moment to compose myself. Another incident earlier that day had already thrown me out of sorts, and the timing of Faye's arrival half-convinced me that the universe aimed to put me on edge. To taunt me. To test me. I aligned my pencil next to my notebook and engaged in the soothing breathing techniques Dr. Benoit had taught me in our sessions.

In through the nose, out through the mouth,

In through the nose, out through the mouth . . .

“Welcome, Faye,” I said, and I folded my hands on my desk. “As you may already know, Mrs. Schmidt sent you into my office because she's concerned about you being so sad in her classroom. Is everything all right at home?”

Faye pulled on the skirt of her blue and yellow dress, which hung over a frame that lacked any meat. I anticipated her answer before she even said it. In fact, our attendance at the school was dropping at an alarming rate because of the response I knew her to be on the brink of giving.

“Daddy lost his job,” she said, her tone hushed, her big brown eyes cast toward my desk instead of at me.

“This has been the case for many fathers over the past year, I'm afraid.” I unclasped my hands. “How has your life at home changed because of him being out of work?”

“Who's that?” Faye pointed at my photograph of John, taken in a studio two months earlier, to commemorate his fourth birthday.

I'd forgotten that I had turned his photograph away from my view when I'd first sat down that morning. Feeling guilty for doing so, I slid the frame back toward me and saw the fair hair and striking eyes that so resembled his father's.

In through the nose, out through the mouth,

In through the nose, out through the mouth . . .

“That's my son,” I said.

“Did
his
daddy lose his job?”

The question chilled the backs of my arms. Again, I straightened my pencil and debated how best to answer without sharing much of my private life—without causing more fears about fathers and loss.

“His daddy hasn't worked for a long while,” I said, my mouth dry. “Now, tell me about your father. How is he behaving now that he's without work?”

Faye proceeded to share with me the same accounts of family hardships I'd been hearing from far too many children ever since
the crash of the stock market the autumn before. Fathers hunted for jobs with stooped shoulders and dark-ringed eyes. Tables wanted for food. Mothers cried and spoke in nervous voices. Tummies ached. Children dropped out of school to help out at home.

My troubles of the morning seemed so odd, so petty, in comparison to what the pupils endured.

Twenty minutes later, Faye walked out of my office, her tears dried, her emotions purged, and, after her, at least a dozen other children entered my unfussy little quarters that day. I assisted the students, consoled them, tested them, dabbed at their tears with handkerchiefs, and, hopefully, sent them away standing a little bit taller than when they had first slouched their way through my door. One boy described a dream he kept having about eating lamb chops with mint jelly, but most students didn't share their dreams with me. None of the students ever spoke of past lives—to my great relief. Until the day when I would open a newspaper and read about Janie O'Daire breaking codes, developing theorems, or whatever she might do with her fantastical mind, I didn't care to think about the topic of reincarnation anymore.

I was done with that chapter.

At the end of the school day, I buttoned up my coat and fitted my wool hat over my head.

“Have a good evening,” said our principal, Mr. Carver, with a pat of my shoulder. “Keep doing what you're doing to cheer up these kids. We lost two more today.”

“Yes, Mr. Carver.” I nodded. “I'll do my best.”

“You're a treasure.”

“Thank you.”

He peeked over the shoulder of his smart gray suit and straight
ened a lock of auburn hair that had fallen across his forehead. We'd slept together once, in the squeaky backseat of his Oldsmobile, my legs and black shoes raised in the air, his pomade greasing my cheek, a condom providing an essential barrier between us. Dr. Benoit had called the tryst a detrimental step backward and warned me I could get fired from a job that represented a vast improvement in my career.

I considered it progress.

I hadn't shed one drop of Mr. Carver's blood in the aftermath.

J
OHN AND
I
lived with Bea and Pearl in the same Northeast Portland neighborhood in which the elementary school was located, one neighborhood to the north of my parents' house. A November chill had arrived in just the past week, and my walk to fetch John from my mother proved more painful to the cheeks and hands than in recent days past. Normally, I would stride with a brisk step through such weather, but today my legs lacked the enthusiasm to rush. My chest hurt too much to exert myself. In fact, I had to stop and grip the edge of a picket fence with my feet braced two feet apart, while my shoes disappeared into a blanket of red and gold leaves.

You must have imagined what happened this morning,
I told myself.
It was just your nerves, frazzled by the drinks you shared with the blond fellow you met in Dr. Benoit's waiting room last week. That's all it was. A touch of guilt.

I pushed onward to Mother's; to my son.

And yet I couldn't stop dwelling on breakfast.

John had dawdled as usual over his food, taking a hundred years just to finish a slice of buttered toast.

“Hurry up, John,” I had said, carrying my own dishes to the sink. “Grandma's waiting.”

He didn't respond at first, and I assumed him to be doing as I'd instructed, eating his breakfast posthaste. I lowered my glass to the sink and filled it with water, and I thought nothing of the silence, or of the fact that John might be watching me. The water spilled over the edge of the glass, so I reached for the faucet and turned it off.

“Do you remember when you hit me in the head, Alice?” asked a voice from the table behind me.

I whirled around, my plate still in hand, and the room tilted sideways. John smiled and broke off the crust of his toast.

“Wh-wh-what did you just say?” I asked him, my knees bent.

“You took your shoe and went”—John lifted his right hand and brought it down like a hammer—“
whack, whack, whack, whack
. Do you remember that”—he grinned again, a dimple marking his left cheek—“Alice?”

My plate slipped from my fingers and broke against the tiles with a crash that brought Bea running into the kitchen.

“Is everyone all right?” Bea skidded to a halt when she saw me clutching the edge of the sink. “Alice?”

I couldn't breathe; I couldn't move. John had resumed chewing his toast and refocused his attention on the crumbs scattered across his plate. He snaked his left pinkie through the mess.

“Alice?” asked Bea. “What happened? Why are you so ghastly white?”

I couldn't answer. I couldn't do anything. Bea rubbed my aching-cold back and assured me that everything was all right, but even she didn't know the full story. No one did. No one but Michael had known about the shoe. My family believed we had gotten
caught in a blizzard and that Michael heroically left the car to seek help. My parents and Margery even believed that he and I had married in Kansas. I'd told his mother, when I'd telephoned her to break the awful news, that Michael had gone on from Kansas to Nebraska to escape his problems on his own, and I'd followed after to check on him, after the storm blustered northward, but I'd found he'd perished in the blizzard. I penned the same story in a letter to Tillie Simpkin, and she'd written back to thank me for watching out for him. Mr. Harkey had dug up only one single, questionable bone in his garden. He couldn't add to his show any photographs of a mass grave; no discoveries made by “Mrs. Gunderson Herself!” And yet he and his poor, frazzled wife remained so generous and helped me with all arrangements and police interrogations.
A violent dispute between a married couple,
was the official report.
The deceased abandoned the scene of the fight from a second-story window, banged up his head on the drop down, and subsequently froze to death.

“Please don't ever call me Alice,” I told John when at last my throat relaxed. “That's not what you call your mother.”

“I didn't.”

“I heard you, John.”

“My name's not John.”

Bea mussed his blond hair. “Finish your breakfast, little monkey. Mama's waiting.”

“My name's Michael.”

Bea's jaw plummeted. Her head whipped my way, and she sent me a look that mimicked my own state of shock.

I fled the room and spent the next ten minutes with my head wedged between my knees, forcing blood to return to my brain.

And now, as I approached my parents' house that November afternoon, five years to the day after I'd arrived at the Gordon Bay Depot, I thought of all the books my little boy enjoyed—the mysteries, the seaside adventures, the tales of wandering dreamers. His little drawings of ships and seagulls and houses perched on ocean cliffs decorated the walls of our home, as well as Mother and Father's. I'd never once taken the child to the coast. I used to believe the drawings represented his longing to see where his father had been born.

But . . . now . . .

No, don't go down that road again, Alice. Don't assume.

I inhaled a breath that puffed up my chest and opened my parents' front door.

“Hello!” I called, my voice ringing through the front hall. “I'm here!”

John galloped out from the kitchen in the back and cried out, “Mommy!”

“There's my darling.” I bundled him up in a hug and smelled chocolate in his hair. “Grandma must have baked you cookies.”

“He insisted upon helping,” said my mother, moseying our way, untying her apron from her waist. “He's quite the little chef.”

I stood up and took hold of John's sticky hand. “Has he been a good boy today?”

“Of course,” said Mother, straightening the back of his collar. “He bumped his knee on the kitchen table and had a cry about it, but Grandpa lured a penny out of the knee and made him feel much better. Didn't he, Mikey?”

I stiffened and inadvertently squeezed down on John's hand.

“Ow!” he cried. “Mommy! You're squishing my fingers.”

“I'm sorry.” I slid my hand out of his. “Why did you just call him Mikey, Mother?”

“He insisted that's his name today.”

“Well, I'm not so sure that I like it. Don't you remember . . . ?” I gritted my teeth. “His father's name . . . ?”

“He was only playing, Alice.” She bent down and kissed the child on the top of his golden head. “I'm sure it's a natural thing to pretend, especially for a boy who's never met his father.”

My own father jogged downstairs and also said his good-byes. He helped John into all of his outer garments, gave him a pat, and then John and I set off for home, our gloved fingers intertwined, his little feet scrambling to keep up with mine.

“Slow down, Mommy.”

I kept my lips pursed and peered straight ahead at the path of leaves and shedding trees before us. For each one of my footsteps John traveled three.

“You're going too fast!”

“Do you remember the snow, John?” I asked.

He fell silent.

“Do you remember a hotel in Nebraska?”

John snickered and pointed at the yard that we passed. “There's a cat sitting in that tire swing over there.”

“John!” I squatted down in front of him and grabbed him by both arms, which frightened him enough to flinch. “Tell me what you remember. Why did you say that thing this morning about a shoe?”

He merely blinked.

“Why are you insisting that your name is Mikey? It's John Lind O'Daire, not Michael. Your name is John.”

“It is now, Alice.” He cast me a sidelong glance. “But it didn't used to be.”

His words knocked the breath straight out of me. His eyes—that beguiling O'Daire palette of blues and greens—glinted with a knowing expression.

A moment later, his attention switched back to the tire swing. “Oh, look! The cat's rocking the swing.”

I stood up but lost my balance. My arms and right foot shot out to save me from collapsing.

John tiptoed into the yard with the cat. “Can you write down a story for me when we get home?”

“Wh-wh-what story?”

“A story about the swinging cat. If I tell it to you, will you write it down?”

I closed my eyes and swallowed.
In through the nose, out through the mouth . . .

“Yes, darling, of course.” I rolled back my shoulders, drew more air through my nose, steadied my nerves. “I'm . . . I'm always happy to write down your stories for you.”

John skipped back over to me and retook my hand. “I think I'll name the cat Jolly.”

“That's a fine name for a cat.”

“I think so, too.”

“Sh—shall we go home and tell Aunt Bea and Aunt Pearl about Jolly and your day with Grandma and Grandpa? Was it a good one?”

“Yes.” He jumped over a crack in the sidewalk.

“Are you a happy boy?”

Another jump. “Yes.”

“Good. Let's be quick so we can warm up. I don't like walking in the wind when it's so unbearably cold.”

“Me neither.”

“I know, sweet—” I cleared the thickness from my throat. “I know you don't like the cold, sweetheart.”