Anywhere But Here (40 page)

“I don’t know if I want you going back in that car with them. We don’t know how she drives, anything. You could be dead.” She shook her head. “I’ll worry all day. Why don’t I just drive you and we’ll take them out some other time. I could even bring the bunch of you here to the beach. Some Saturday or Sunday. You kids can lie in the sun. I’ll bring a book and go sit by myself a little so you kids can talk alone.”

“If you drop me off now, I won’t have anything to do until ten.”

“You could study in the library. Get ahead with your work.”

“I want to stay,” I said.

“Oh, okay,” she said. “Well, have a good time.” She looked enviously back at the restaurant. “I have to get going or I’ll be late. You make sure she drives carefully. Okay, promise me that.”

“I will.”

She walked a few steps then turned back. “Wear your seat belt.”

I’d never worn a seat belt in my life. My mother and I never used them. “Okay,” I said.

I stood at the door watching her. When I turned back towards the table, I couldn’t help thinking of how she was walking alone, all that way back to where our car was.

CAROL

9
HAPPINESS AND ACCIDENTS

W
hen I look at those old pictures I hauled out for you, I see things I didn’t see at the time. Mostly Hal, I guess. How unhappy he was. He’s always got some goofy expression, holding his fingers up, rabbit ears over your head or making a face. Never anything just sincere or natural. Never a smile. I suppose Hal had it hard. Jimmy traveled three, four days a week those years, when Hal was growing up. He went on the road selling water softeners. Jimmy was Northeastern Regional #1 for Aqua-Max. And even just Brown County is a lot of little towns. I knew his route by heart in those days and I used to keep a little patch from the Wisconsin map torn off and taped up by the telephone. I put pins in it, so Hal would always know where his father was.

Benny was just happier, you can see it, in all the pictures, he’s got that grin. That just looks like Benny to me. There he is in his costume by the boat. He was ring bearer for Brozek’s wedding. You know, we did a lot, we really did things, when the boys were young. We had the boat and the snowmobile, and then for a long time we went up to the trailer.

We went to Disneyland, the four of us, we drove out in the mobile home. That was the first trailer and it wasn’t a big one, but we had fun in it. It had bunk beds where they each slept and a kitchenette. We saw a lot that way, driving. Didn’t you go to Disneyland too once with your mom and dad? I thought you and your mom flew out there. She was like that, whatever we did, you had to do, but better. So, if we drove the trailer out, you flew. But it was the same Disneyland we saw once we got there.

We traveled a lot then because Jimmy won trips as bonuses. And did he ever sell the water softeners! That was a good time for us and we liked the water softener people. They had fun. When you went somewhere, like a convention with them, they partied. We’d go out. These people with the Rug Doctor are all Jehovah’s Witnesses. And they really sort of stick together. They come with their families, they bring the kids along to everything. And they don’t drink or dance, so there’s not much you can really do with them. They’re nice and all during the lectures and the meetings, but then, after, in the evenings, they don’t really socialize with you if you’re not one of them.

And you, too, look at you. You’re real happy in those old pictures. You can tell you and Benny are friends, even though you’re not looking at each other—you’re each holding up your toys, he’s got his roller skate hanging down and his drum, you’ve got your deer. And all those packages behind you. Your mom always went overboard at Christmas. I think we still have that dollhouse somewhere in the basement. But look at your eyes and mouth. You look so grateful, like you’re almost going to cry. I remember how you were. You and Benny had a good period when you were little, lot of people don’t even have that.

I think you did change after your dad left, you and your mom both. Or who knows, maybe it was just getting older and going to school. You seemed quieter. I think you always studied a lot. But you didn’t have that smile with the open eyes that you had when you were real small. When you were small, you always looked so grateful, nothing like your mom. I think Benny always kept that, but then Benny had it easier.

I worried about you. We felt bad for you with your mother. We thought you’d be the one to have it hard.

I remember once you wanted to go to school with Benny. He was in kindergarten then, not even real school, and I wrote a note and so you went. And Ann, you loved it, you just always liked school. You wanted to go again, and you went once or twice more. Then they were having a field trip. They were going to go on a bus to see Hansen’s Dairy. The teacher sent a note home, the parents had to sign permission, a few days before. Oh crumps,
all those years of notes and permission forms, every time you’re absent, you have to have an excuse when you’re sick to get out of gym. They really are hard on kids. Harder than needs be.

Well, I wrote your name in, too, and signed it, but when you came off the school bus that day, you and Benny both had notes pinned to your sleeves from the teacher. You weren’t a five-year-old, she said, you weren’t in the class, no, you couldn’t come, you’d have to wait until next year. Now that seems mean, doesn’t it? I don’t know, maybe she had enough in her class already. But you wouldn’t think one more would be any trouble. They had those ropes with the loops on them and you kids would each put your hands in one loop and go like that, roped together, when they took you across the street. It looked pretty in spring, when all the girls wore their nice summer dresses. I suppose they took those ropes along on field trips. So they never had to worry about losing you.

I remember telling you that, that you couldn’t go to the dairy. You had to stay home. You were just mortified. I said it real fast, I didn’t think it would be such a big deal, I was probably doing something else, unloading groceries, who knows what anymore. Well, your chin puckered up and wobbled, I could see you just trying your hardest not to cry and you didn’t, not that I saw. You walked out of the screen door, with your hands real stiff by your sides and your head high. Your mother probably taught you that.

But with all your mother’s messes, you turned out okay. Our kids were the ones who had the trouble. I will say this, your mom was right about one thing: education.

We didn’t put as much stress on school. Hal had good marks all through grade school and the highest in his class on the Iowa Basics. I always thought that was why Adele liked him; she figured they were two of a kind, both smart in this family of averages. Benny always came home with Cs. I tried to help Ben with his schoolwork, but Jimmy didn’t care too much. After work, he’d take Ben outside and toss a football until it was time for supper. He thought they should learn more outdoor things. Sports. I suppose that’s normal with boys.

I sometimes wish I had a daughter. I would have liked that, I think. You know, going shopping and just talking, the things you do with a girl. You were a little like a daughter when you lived here.

I remember once you had a part in the school play. You were going to be Mary. I guess it must have been the Christmas pageant. I don’t know anymore, but it was something they had in the auditorium and they invited all the parents and the grandmas. The mothers were supposed to make the costumes. So your mom was going to send you in your summer sandals and this long muslin robe, just a beige thing, like a bedspread or a curtain really, that your dad left in a closet. It was from where he came from. She didn’t make a veil or anything. That was going to be it.

“For Mary?” I said to your mom. “For a boy, maybe, one of the shepherds, but not for Mary.”

She always had an answer for you. “Well,” she said, “that’s what they wear over there, in Jerusalem. That’s where it happened, you know.”

You couldn’t say a thing to that, because she’d been there and I hadn’t. That much at least was true. But this was Saint Phillip’s in Bay City, Wisconsin, and I
had
been here plenty. I don’t care what they wear over there in Egypt, I knew they didn’t wear that
here
when they were Mary in the Christmas play. So I bought some nice thick velvet, a remnant, it was a beautiful color with your hair, a deep, rich blue, and I sewed you a gown. She didn’t mind, she just shrugged and let me do it. And we made you a white veil and a thing around your neck out of a starched sheet. You looked real nice. Your mom went and clapped and all, but here you were Mary and she seemed distracted. After, she came up and pulled on your collar. “You look like a little pilgrim,” she said.

But she was funny because the next year you were an angel and she made a tremendous costume for that. I remember because she did it in Gram’s garage and she got that gold glittery paint all over everything. On the lawn mower and the wheelbarrows. Gram said she never had been able to get it off the floor. The cement is still gold under the car.

“And how many people get to drive in on a yellow brick road,”
your mom used to say. She got it from that Lolly. I didn’t think it was so funny. I saw Gram’s point.

One of those Griling girls was an angel with you, and your mom made a costume for her, too. Your mom took sheets and old white gloves and your tennies. Each of you had to give a pair of your old tennies. Then she bought big pieces of tagboard and she cut out wings. She untwisted coat hangers and made you each haloes that stuck way up over your heads.

She laid it all out on the garage floor once when Gram was at church and she spray-painted it all with gold. You can still see the angel shape from the cement that’s not gold on the floor.

Well, it did look good, just great. You two were the best angels Saint Phillip’s had ever seen. I think they even gave you some extra lines to say—I suppose they couldn’t have such well-dressed angels just stand there doing nothing. You read real well, nice and clear, even then in the second or third grade.

And after the pageant, the Griling girl came running up to us, crying. I think it was Theresa. They’d gotten Bub Griling to come, the older sister brought him, she was the only one that had any sway, they said she looked like the mother.