Anywhere But Here (24 page)

Then after college she wanted to stay and get her master’s degree. She went out to California, the first time in 1954. I remember
because that was the year Art got sick. He had cancer of the colon. I thought it was because he wouldn’t take the time, when he was out with the mink, to come and go to the bathroom when he had to. He worked so hard, he would just wait and hold it. But now his brother and two sisters died of it too, so it must have been in the family. He was young to be so sick, only fifty-five.

We had to go to the Mayo Clinic and the doctors there did what they could. But they told us it wouldn’t be long. They couldn’t say just how much, but less than a year, they were almost sure of it. So right away, we called Adele—we had a hard time getting her, too—and we asked her to come home. And she wouldn’t. I never understood why she didn’t then—because she and Art were always close, he did loads for her. She was just like Milton. So far away and her own father dying. She kept postponing and postponing, she said she had a test, then her orals. I was scared she wouldn’t make it before he died, and oh, he wanted to see his Del. And for months there at the end, he wasn’t so good. But she did make it. That’s one thing I have to say for Adele. She is lucky.

Then right after Art passed she wanted to marry this Hisham. I probably should have stood up to her more, but I didn’t know either. I was just plain tired after a year of nursing him. And it’s not easy to stand up to her. She gets mean when she doesn’t have her way. I’ll tell you, many times I’ve been afraid of her.

That last summer before Art died, Carol and I drove out by the bay and picked a stone. He had worked very hard all his life for his money and I wanted to get him a nice stone. I was glad that I could. So then after I spent lot of time planting flowers. I went out almost every day to water. And it is a nice stone. I always think that pink granite is the prettiest. It stays.

You want to know about your mother and I suppose that’s natural, sure, a person wants to know about their family and you haven’t had too too much of one. But I don’t know what I can tell you. She’s always been a mystery to me, too. I just don’t know about her.

Well, after they were married, they moved around for a while, here in Bay City, always renting. They got a lot of Granny’s nicest
furniture and her good china dishes and I’d like to know what they did with it all, because Adele hasn’t got any of it anymore. Then they were flying back and forth from his family in Egypt, too, I think for a while they thought they might live over there. But your mom couldn’t take it. She couldn’t eat the food. The food that was their equivalent to butter, she couldn’t keep down.

I was there once too, oh, she wanted me to go and see his family. When I went on the tour with Em, I stopped on the way back from Austria. I’ll tell you everything was so dirty, everywhere was dust and they just sat outside in their dirt. She said his parents were real wealthy like kings over there, but not that I could see. It was just so very very dirty.

Your mom got pregnant over there. I’ll tell you, Ann, you’re lucky to be healthy, because your mom was real sick when she came home. I didn’t believe her when she told me she was seven months. She was down to nothing, eighty or ninety pounds. She said she couldn’t eat the food over there, she couldn’t keep it down. I suppose that’s why you turned out small, because your dad was tall, six foot something. And then you were early, in an incubator. Your dad made it just a few weeks before you were born. I remember him down by the sidewalk and the little bit of lawn outside Saint Peter and Paul’s. He was smoking a cigarette and looking up at the windows, I suppose trying to see in your ma’s.

He was a funny one, the things he said. You couldn’t always understand him. “So congratulations,” I said to him. “How does it feel to be a father?”

And he was always shaking his head. “Beauty is a betrayal,” he said. “It’s always for itself, never for you.” Now do you know what that meant? I didn’t either. I still don’t.

For a while when you were a baby, they lived in one of those little cottages by the bay. Well, I don’t suppose you’d remember, you were real small yet then. You lived in that red cottage at the end. He taught classes over at Saint Norbert’s College, but he couldn’t make a go of that. He made a speech out there once and they all said it sounded just the slightest little bit on the communistic side and they didn’t ask him back the next year. Then, he
was selling Volkswagens and pretty soon, Jimmy got him started with the vacuum cleaners.

Once I went over to visit your mom in that cottage. It was during the day, and your dad wasn’t there, he was out working, I suppose. Well, here it was middle of winter and you were toddling around in just a diaper. On that bare floor. With no socks or shoes. And there was hardly any heat in those cabins, either. Well, we went to the bureau and got a little jumpsuit to put on you. But when we came to the feet, Adele told me she didn’t have any shoes for you. She told me, “Hisham says that babies don’t need shoes.” Well, over there, the babies probably don’t
get
any shoes.

So I don’t think you had the easiest time. But then I suppose it didn’t hurt you. I went out that day and bought you socks and shoes, three or four pair. I thought that would last a little while.

Then it wasn’t too long and you all moved in by me. I suppose they couldn’t keep up with the rent on that cabin. And the house wasn’t so empty anymore then, the way it was with Art gone. I think it was better for you, too. We had Benny right next door, he was just a year ahead, and even when you were both babies, you always played together nice.

How old were you, three or four, when your dad left? He came and went a couple of times—Adele gave him money to fly back and forth from Egypt, they thought he could get money from his parents, but I don’t think that ever came to much. Then, the last time, he charged up all those bills. That time he went to California. I guess he thought he could get famous there. He was a handsome man. For a long time, I watched for his face on the television. The bills started coming a couple weeks after he left. Then we knew he wouldn’t come back. Expensive luggage, tailored suits, shirts, shoes, socks, hankies—I suppose everything he thought he’d need for a big, fancy trip. He and Adele were good for each other that way—they both liked to live high on the hog.

Well, I just paid the bills, we didn’t want the talk. We paid it all, and it was steep, and then that was the end of it. And not too long after, my own mother got sick, your granny. So I had to go
down to Malgoma and settle her things and move her up to my house. Oh, was I mad. Before I got there, just the week before, two such antiquers, young men, came and cleaned her out. She gave them her best pieces for almost nothing. Between what Adele got and sold Lan-knows where and those antiquers, there was hardly anything left. But there were two things I wanted. The piano was still there, that I used to practice on when I was a girl, and it had such a nice round bench. I wanted that bench. And above the piano hung one frame with eight oval holes cut out of the paper and pictures of the eight sisters inside.

Well, my mother was a tough one, such a one. Two things I wanted, neither worth much, and she wouldn’t give them to me. She made sure the piano and the piano bench and that picture stayed with the house when she sold it. That was the way she wanted it to be, and what she wanted she got. When she came to live with me, she was the boss, even sick. You probably don’t remember her much because those years she stayed to herself. She didn’t like kids anymore. She just didn’t have the patience. I used to buy presents for Ben and you at Christmas and try and say they were from her, but she shouted from the den, no, no, they’re not from her, she didn’t buy you anything. And she wouldn’t come in and see the Christmas tree. She stayed alone in her room. Do you remember we had goose for Christmas? Granny always liked goose.

Then Carol’s Hal got that horse. Oh ye gods. Hal always had a scheme and it never went right, ever. He was sixteen years old and we went to a church bazaar, here at Saint Phillip’s. They were auctioning off a pony. I remember I fought that day with your mom because once we got there and each gave in what we brought, your mother and that Lolly started giggling and giggling. Oh, they thought something was so funny.

“Well, what are you laughing at,” I said. “Why don’t you let us all in on the joke.”

It turned out those two had baked a pie and when they were done and it was in the oven, they figured out they’d forgot to put in sugar. They each thought the other had put it in. But then when
they took it out of the oven, it looked just fine, and so they brought it and gave it in anyway.

I told them that wasn’t at all nice and that just made them giggle some more. Ugh, when they got started, watch out. I was thinking, Well, what if a poor family bought that pie, one that really couldn’t afford it, but just said, oh, the money goes to the church and it would be a nice dessert for Sunday supper. And then they got that sour thing. Well, I let them laugh and I went all over, to all the booths, and tried to buy that pie back. But I couldn’t find it, no, somebody must have bought it already. I just hope to God it was a family that could afford to throw it out.

For years already, Hal had been collecting silver dollars. Whenever any of us got one in our change, we’d save it for Hal, for his collection. When they announced the winner of the big auction that day at the bazaar, they said Hal’s name for the pony. Carol almost fainted. “What am I going to do with a horse?” she said. He’d spent all those silver dollars on that pony, seventy-three of them. He thought he’d take the neighborhood kids on rides for a nickel or a quarter and that way earn some money! He always had a scheme. I told him, if he’d just once hold on to his money.

It was a brown and white spotted pony, not trained or anything. Some farmer must have donated it. We called him Silver Dollar. Well, pretty soon, when it didn’t all pan out the way he’d thought—there weren’t many kids in the neighborhood and they didn’t want to pay to ride that pony, it was slow, they could go quicker on a bike—Hal lost interest in it. We had to nag him even to feed it and brush its hair. It lived in that old shed where Adele’s horse had been.

Wouldn’t you just know, Granny was the one who took care of it. She got up at five every morning and hauled out that big pail of water and oats. She was the one who brushed that pony. Even after they took the leg off, she hobbled out there on crutches. She was a tough one, such a one.

I’m still sorry I let them take that leg, I think that’s why she died. She just didn’t want to live anymore when she couldn’t move
around. They said her heart was like a girl’s, she could have lived lots longer. But she’d had the tumor in the leg. That they had to get rid of. Those last months were hard, with her in bed, I got up all hours of the night, changing the bedpan, she was so ashamed, she wouldn’t let anyone but me in there. And then she was losing her hair, too. She was a proud, proud woman. It was hard for her.

She died on your seventh birthday, in the morning, before any of you were awake. I wasn’t sorry. She’d lived a long, long life, she was ninety-one when she died and she didn’t really want any more. I was up with her all night. We didn’t talk much. We weren’t ever close and she wasn’t one to pretend. But I’d taken good care of her all that time and she knew it. She never had bedsores, she always had her things around her, I fixed her just what she wanted to eat. She had to admit I’d been good to her. And I was glad to have done it. Then when she died, at five thirteen in the morning, she looked happy, she got this big smile and her hands just opened at her sides. Carol was there then, too, she saw it. And then I knew, that was the end of something.

Adele and I talked and we decided to go ahead with your party. Why not, it didn’t make any difference to you kids and she had everything already planned. She had a cake from the bakery in the icebox. And because Granny was so old, we weren’t sad. She would be happier where she was.

So I sat on the phone to the funeral parlor and with the priest. And then again, too, we had detectives looking for Milton. They’d been looking this time for weeks already. And I saw outside the kitchen window, Hal taking you kids for rides on Silver Dollar. He went round and round the garage, so slow. I suppose your mom paid him something, that was probably the only time he made his money on that horse. Not long after Granny died, we had to give the horse away. Some people on a farm took him, where they had little kids. They came in a truck and got him.

You were wearing white that day. A white eyelet blouse and shorts and white anklets and white tennies. I remember from the picture: you had a big white bow in your hair. Your mom planned a nice party for you. Some of Chummy and June’s came, Hansens, and that Stevie Felchner, whose parents rented the little orange
cottage in back by the barn, and those Griling kids. You can see in the picture, after all these years, you can still see how the other little children look clean and had decent clothes and shoes and those Grilings didn’t. There were the two girls your age, Theresa and Mary, and the one they didn’t have too much longer, that retarded girl, Annette, who went away to school for them up in Okonowa. I remember they each brought you presents. Everyone’s was nice, something the mothers bought and wrapped, except the Grilings’. They each brought something they’d just bought, in the bag from the store. I suppose the dad or whoever gave them their money, gave each one fifteen cents or a quarter and they each went in and picked out what she wanted. I don’t remember what Theresa or Mary brought anymore, jacks or something, you know, a regular present. But this Netty brought you such a cellophane bag of chocolate candies. I suppose that’s what she would have liked for herself. She couldn’t play with toys much. But it was a warm day and they were all outside and I suppose she was carrying it around, holding it in her hands, and by the time you opened your presents, hers was all melted, just one gooey bag of chocolate and the kids laughed.

Your mom had all kinds of things planned: games, pin the tail on the donkey, she’d bought firecrackers that came out like red, white and blue parachutes you kids could chase across the yard. So while you were all busy with that, she came in and found me. She had a supper planned for the kids after, she’d ordered that cake from the bakery a week ahead. She had sparklers and those black firework snakes for you kids to light after you ate.