Asked For (9 page)

“Oh, posh.” Grandma rocked hard again. “I’m fine. He knows that.”

“I thought things would be different.” Lana watched Grandma go back and forth. “When I married him, I thought it would be like living here with you. I thought it would be easy.” Lana hesitated. “And someday, we’d be all settled, and my dad would come and…”

Grandma stopped and turned in her seat and looked at Lana. “It wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Your mother just made it seem that way. That wasn’t right, and I told her so, but it was her way of taking care of you. You’re grown up now, and you’ve got a chance to do things really right. Work hard and be satisfied with what you got. You know how, just like you and I always did.”

“But…” Lana saw it then. She’d missed it before. Her little drawing, the one of her holding hands with her father. Grandma had pinned it to the wall above Lana’s old cot. “He never came, did he?”

Grandma set her jaw; her lips formed an even line. “Do you want me to say never?”

It sounded like a scream inside, one that was trapped and wanted to get out. It had started on her wedding night, but she knew when she heard it that it had always been there. She tried to ignore it, keep a deaf ear to its cries. In the evenings, when Cletus came home and gave her that look, the one that said how disappointed he was, the scream reared up and grew louder, almost as loud as now. When he rolled off her at night, for some reason it wanted to wail. She never let it. She didn’t want to hear what it said, or hear what it was shrieking now.
He’d never come because he’d never been.

“Oh, Grandma.” Instead of the scream of a wife, Lana’s voice came out like a child’s.

“Lana, you listen to me. You know how to get by on little. You did it for years, here with me, and finding out now what you thought you had wasn’t really there doesn’t change the fact that you were strong and we made it. Whatever you didn’t have, or don’t have now, remember it could always be a lot less.”

Lana gazed around the room at a lot less, a nearly empty house made even emptier without Lana here, without a father here. Ever. Tears blurred the lone cabinet Cletus must have decided was enough when he didn’t get his part of the bargain. Grandma’s house felt like Lana felt—bare, empty, only the fear that there could be a lot less to get by on keeping them going. Cletus could leave, just like her real father must have.

She slid a hand between Betsy and the child that lay in her womb. She wouldn’t scream, she wouldn’t cry.

“The best thing you can do is to love those little girls,” Grandma said.

Lana raised her head. It felt heavy. She felt tired. But Grandma had never talked about love before. The word seemed foreign, coming from her lips with her voice.

“I know you’ll do right by them yourself, but if you want to really love them, you’ll do right by their father, too.”

Do right…let him be king, no matter what.
She’d never felt so hollow. Lana didn’t know if she could. “Like Mom pretended she was doing?”

Grandma frowned and rocked a little harder. The pain Lana felt at her mother’s deception looked like anger on her grandmother’s face. Magdalena grabbed Lana’s arm while Betsy stayed plastered against her chest.

“I know growing up here, just you and me, we did okay, but if there’d really been a man around, a good man, not just an imaginary one…”

The door opened and Jim stepped in with the milk, freshly strained and in a crock, the same crock Lana had used when she lived here. She looked from the crock to Jim, a man now, but once upon a time the boy who’d come and helped her…not helped
her
, but come and helped for pay.

“Thank you, Jim.” Grandma’s voice sharpened. Jim seemed not to hear her, his attention on Lana. “Put it on the table, and that’ll be good. Then go.” Grandma spoke louder, like a hammer shattering crystalline memories.

Jim set it on the table, but then he paused and looked at Lana again. Something in his eyes made her hurt even more than she already did. She clenched her teeth so nothing would get out, and she looked down and aside at her girls. He walked away, she heard him, and then he was gone.

“Jeanie’s sweet on him,” Grandma said.

“She always was.” Lana choked, she batted away tears. “Jeanie had a way around him, teasing and talking in ways I never knew how.” She swooped Magdalena onto her lap and squeezed her and Betsy into a powerful embrace. “Thank you, Grandma,” she said into their hair. “If I can make sure Cletus stays, I’ll be fine, so will these little girls, and so will you. I’ll do my very best.”

Grandma rocked herself forward and shoved to her feet. “Don’t worry about me. It’s those girls that matter most. Not many get a good father,” Grandma said, glancing down. “As you know. Just do your best. That way Cletus will stick around and be there as theirs.”

Grandma’s frail form went across the room to her “new” cabinet. Lana watched her do what she’d always done for Lana, without ever having to say it out loud. Take care of the little girl…in this case the little girls. That was loving. Lana buried her face in her daughters’ hair. She could do this. She would love her daughters by being a very good wife to their father. She could. She would.

Chapter 8

Lana 1933

Cletus stared. His blue eyes had grown hazy around the edges from looking too often near the hot flames of welding. “What’s that?” His voice rattled, as indistinct as his irises, raspy from a throat abraded by the same heat that burned his eyes.

“A flower.”

“A flower? Why?”

The single flower stood in the center of the table, not big enough to bring inside the color or life she’d meant it to. It looked too thin, too incapable of doing what it was supposed to. It looked too much like her.

“I thought it would be nice. For you. And the girls, and Harold.” Harold wasn’t old enough to care about flowers, or food that needed to be chewed, or anything else she put on the table, but he was Cletus’ first son and therefore important, especially in matters where Cletus’ opinions outweighed hers.

Cletus looked at the flower, its stem leaning against and over the rim of the jar she’d put it in. Magdalena loved the flower and hopped up on a chair to stretch over the table and touch it. Cletus’ gaze shot to their daughter. Lana wrapped her arms around Magdalena and swooped her off the chair, holding her in a hug she couldn’t squirm out of.
Get down,
rang in Lana’s ears. Cletus hadn’t said it. She’d been quicker than his impatience. But he’d said it often enough, even said worse.
You’re a bother. You’re just in the way.
Lana had learned to be quick, quicker than his tongue, keeping him from eroding little Magdalena’s laugh, keeping him here where he was supposed to be.

Cletus frowned at Magdalena until she stopped squirming. She caught her father’s glare and returned it with a stare of her own. Lana knew who would come out the winner of this battle of wills. She pivoted to the side, breaking the father-and-daughter deadlock. Magdalena wasn’t afraid to challenge her father. She instinctively knew what should be hers, and she was determined to get it, her way, every loss still a victory in her young eyes.

You did okay without a man here, but it would have been better if…
She set Magdalena down in the next room, then carried Betsy over to join her.
Love those little girls by doing right by their father.
Betsy cowered next to Magdalena. She knew, too, what was supposed to be hers, but she didn’t fight for it, she beat it down inside and melded into the woodwork. Lana glanced over at her son. Harold would be fine right where he was, in a small crib near the table. He was a boy. His battles were already won.

Cletus watched Lana as she returned and stood near the table. “Magdalena loves the flower. She helped me…”

Cletus raised a hand. He was no longer watching her, he was looking elsewhere, staring at the curtains she’d made from Grandma’s dress that morning, the dress that had been Lana’s wedding gown, both panels tied back with the yellow material she’d used for a belt on their wedding day. She said nothing as he looked farther along the walls, to the place she’d hung his medals. She’d lined them up on a board and tacked them where he could see them while he ate.

She’d added little things to their home ever since her trip to see Grandma. It hadn’t been easy to find items to add to their house. She never went anywhere and had no money to buy something even if she did. But she found little ways to improve it, change it, clean and organize it so it was slowly becoming a home. But today she’d done more, put him on display, added color to their dining area. Cletus finished, and his gaze returned to her.

She smiled. “Do you like it?”

He tipped his head as if considering what she’d done. “It’s different.” He drew back his chair from the table and dropped into its seat.

Lana hurried to set the meal in front of him, keeping all the dishes near his plate and away from the flower. She brought both girls from the other room and settled them in their chairs. Cletus waited until she sat before he began serving himself. She watched, glad Harold was quiet in his crib. When the ladles were back in their serving dishes and the only sound was Cletus eating, Lana served her daughters and then herself.

“So where’d the flower come from?” Cletus asked around a mouthful of food.

“The pasture.” She was surprised he wouldn’t know that. She always tended to the cow, but he would know about the wildflowers spread throughout the grasses. She looked up. He was staring at her, but his thoughts were far away, maybe sorting through memories of the pasture while churning his food. “There are lots of them out there,” she added. “All kinds. I should have picked more, but I had my hands full with the kids. I got that one today when I called in the cow. I thought it was pretty. I thought it was…”

“Whereabouts?” Cletus watched her over the top of the flower.

“What do you mean, whereabouts?”

“Where in the pasture?”

There was something about his question, or maybe the way he looked at her when he asked. His eyes were different, the watery blue irises sharper and more distinct. Her heart beat hard in her chest. Where had she picked the flower? She set her fork on her plate, trying to think.

“Rock.”

Lana turned to Magdalena. She was facing her father. She was right. Lana had picked the flower where Magdalena had fallen over a rock.

“To the right of the gate,” Lana said. It came out in a rush. “Maybe two yards to the right.”

Magdalena looked back at her plate and resumed eating. She wasn’t proud of her first real conversation at the table. She’d come to Lana’s rescue, and Lana wondered if her daughter somehow understood that. Magdalena continued to eat, just like her father always did after a brief conversation.

“I guess it’s all right.” Cletus dragged his spoon across his plate and scooped up another mouthful. “Women need those sorts of things. Just wondered where you got it.”

“We do, you’re right. Well Magdalena does, but I don’t. I never expected you to bring me flowers. I wasn’t trying to say…”

“I prefer uncomplicated.” He gave her a small smile.

Lana retrieved her fork and scraped and rearranged what was left on her plate until Cletus was finished. She gathered their dishes and hurried them to the kitchen. She set them down near the stove and looked around the room. She drew in a deep breath. Thank God the smell of lemon was gone. She returned to the table and set his cup of coffee and a plate of leftover oatmeal cookies in front of him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to make a new dessert.”

He took a cookie off the plate.

She returned to her seat, leaving one cookie each in front of her daughters. Later, when he was asleep in his chair in the next room and the children were in their beds, she would take his favorite lemon cake she’d made for him out to the pasture and dump it there. Something would eat it, it just wouldn’t be him. She had to do things his way, she had to keep them uncomplicated. The way he wanted.

Chapter 9

James 1950

There were more gifts under their tree this year than any other Christmas James could remember. He sat cross-legged on the floor next to Carla, the rest of their family behind and around them, waiting to open their presents. He was too old this year to have poked and prodded the wrapped pencils and oranges they always received, pretending they were fancy pens and baseballs, things Mama always said they couldn’t afford. He’d skirted the corner where the tree stood, pretending he didn’t care. Like Pop, the way Pop said men should be. But now, sitting next to Carla, he stared at the gifts and wondered. He was anxious to see which presents were for him.

Magdalena yawned behind him. She sat farther back at the edge of the family, old enough to be married by now, as Pop often remarked, her hair in matted tufts, smudges of black mascara still under her eyes in defiance of what he said. James prayed Pop wouldn’t notice, even if Magdalena didn’t care. She should have taken more time to scrub her face. It was Christmas, and he wanted things to be happy for a change.

Pop thumped his pipe on the arm of his chair, the wooden armrest blackened where he knocked ashes from the pipe’s bowl. This was Pop’s ritual. It gave him a distinction as head of the house. They all waited, letting Pop go through the steps they had all memorized—thump, dig, thump, fill, tamp, light, puff quick and hard, then blow out a cloud of smoke. The ritual made home seem like home, and it made Pop content.

When the scent of tobacco filled the air, Mama stood. “Merry Christmas,” she said. She looked tired and happy at the same time.

“Merry Christmas,” James answered along with his brothers and sisters. His siblings were all older, the voices responding like adults instead of children. But still he felt it, maybe they all felt it, the excitement the season was supposed to bring. “Merry Christmas, Pop,” he said without thinking.

Pop stopped mid-draw on his pipe. He glanced down at James from his chair, his blue-eyed reserve shattered. He lifted one eyebrow, nodded, and looked away. Sometimes at night James heard Mama and Pop talking about him. Neither said his name, but when Pop said, “That boy,” James knew it was about him.