Promises to Keep (26 page)

Like love?
I wondered. If only Mom would fall back in love with Daddy, everything would be perfect.

“Well,” I said mildly, trying to curb my growing excitement, “I’m going to go finish my homework.” I stood and dragged the chair back to the desk.

Tillie looked up at me. “Only two more days of school until Christmas vacation starts.”

I nodded. “Are you going to be with us for Christmas?”

“Oh yes, I’ll be here. On Christmas Eve I’ll be going to church with Johnny and Elaine, but I always like to be in my own home on Christmas morning. It will be just us girls, you know. You, me, Valerie, and your mother. But we won’t let that keep us from having a good time.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

No Wally. No Daddy. And thankfully, no Tom Barrows.

I took one step toward the door, and when I did an image flashed through my mind: Tom Barrows sitting at the café counter drinking coffee and reading the paper while Daddy’s fist opened and closed on the tabletop.

“Something the matter, Roz?”

Tillie’s voice drew me back. She had stopped in midstitch and was staring at me with concern.

“Huh?”

“You look like something’s bothering you,” she said.

“Oh.” I shook my head. “No. Nothing. Well, I’ve got a lot of homework.”

Maybe Daddy had threatened Tom Barrows and maybe he hadn’t. It didn’t matter, so long as Tom was out of the picture. The way was clear now for Daddy to make his move. I hoped he’d do it soon.

An overcast sky left the streets of Mills River in an early twilight. The walk from the library to Marie’s Apparel might have been hopelessly dismal had it not been for the colored lights that shone from store windows and from the branches of the trees lining the sidewalks. With Christmas right around the corner, I longed to feel the familiar excitement of the season, but I couldn’t deny the sadness nudging at me as I trudged through the cold and the snow.

My heart tightened in my chest, and tears burned my eyes. That afternoon, school had let out for Christmas vacation and wouldn’t start up again until January. My desk, the repository for Daddy’s notes, was off limits to me now. I’d been hoping he would leave one more, asking me to meet him again at Hot Diggity Dog. I’d dreamed of his giving me a Christmas gift, something small and easy to conceal, but something that would let me know he loved me. The summons to meet him never came, though, and now it was too late. Maybe he could contact me some other way, but I couldn’t imagine how.

Meanwhile, Mara would be going to Chicago in the morning to meet her father. I had just left her strolling through the aisles of the library’s fiction section, looking for something to read on the train, something that would impress her father when he met her on the platform, the book tucked nonchalantly under her arm as though it belonged there.
Silas Marner
? I wondered.
David Copperfield
? Or why not go all out and choose
War and Peace
? It wouldn’t be quite so heavy if she checked it out in paperback, though it would still be weighty enough, of course, to make a lasting impression on William Remmick, English professor and book lover.

Mara, with her bright eyes and nervous laughter, was the picture of giddiness. It was all arranged. Her grandparents would accompany her on the 9:05, which they would ride to the end of the line. Her father would meet them at the station and spend a few hours with Mara while her grandparents did some Christmas shopping in the city. Mara and her father would have lunch, talk about their lives and literature, exchange Christmas gifts – she had a small volume of Langston Hughes that she’d signed
With love from Beatrice
– and forge a lifelong bond that would keep them together even while they lived out their lives apart.

Clenching my jaw and clutching my books more tightly, I tried to push the thought of Mara and her daddy out of my mind. I was on my way to meet Mom at work so we could drive home together, but at the last minute I decided to turn down Second Street instead of sticking to the usual route. It would be a roundabout way to Marie’s Apparel, but it would take me by the café. Maybe, just maybe, Daddy would be there, sipping hot coffee while warming his hands on the cup.

The plate glass window of Hot Diggity Dog was rimmed with blinking colored lights. Someone had painted a Santa hat on the dancing hot dog and had written
Ho Ho Hot Dogs!
in a cartoon bubble near his head. He was surrounded by a storm of hand-cut paper snowflakes stuck to the window with Scotch Tape. Finding an open patch amid the blizzard, I pressed my forehead against the icy glass and lifted one gloved hand to the side of my face so I could peer inside. A few customers sat scattered here and there, but Daddy wasn’t among them.

My breath steamed up the window, so I rubbed a circle with my glove to clear the fog. As I was doing that, Darlene came to the door and leaned out into the cold. “You looking for your uncle Nelson?” she asked.

I nodded dully.

“I haven’t seen him around here for a while. Last I heard he’d got a temporary job in the city.”

“Chicago?”

“Yeah. Didn’t he tell you?”

I shook my head.

“Well,” she went on, “it sounded like he’d be gone a couple of weeks. Three at the most. He should be back soon.”

“Okay,” I whispered. My throat was tight, and I knew that if I didn’t go soon I’d break down crying in front of Darlene.

“Listen, honey,” she said as she hugged herself and shivered, “it’s freezing out here. Why don’t you come in for a nice cup of hot chocolate?”

But I didn’t want to go inside. I didn’t want to be in there without Daddy.

“It’s all right,” Darlene went on. “It’ll be on me. Besides, your uncle Nelson is a generous tipper. I owe him one.”

I looked up at the waitress, her cheeks now reddened by the cold, her teeth beginning to chatter. She was still talking, but my mind was whirling, and I couldn’t make sense of the words. I wanted to ask her why she thought my father was my uncle Nelson, and what he told her when I wasn’t around. I wanted to ask her what she really thought of him, beyond the fact that he was a generous tipper. Did she think he had it in him to be a good husband, a loving father, a man who didn’t drink, didn’t get angry, didn’t lash out with his fists or threaten to drive his whole family off the road and into a tree? Did she think I could trust him when he told me he would change?

I wanted to ask her all these questions, but I didn’t say a word. Because if she didn’t even know his name was Alan and not Nelson, how could she be expected to know anything about him at all?

“Look, honey, you got to make up your mind because I need to shut the door. I’m letting all the cold air in.”

I took one step backward, then turned and started to run.

“Well, all right, honey,” Darlene called after me. “Maybe next time.”

I didn’t look back. There had to be a safe place ahead of me somewhere, if only I could run far enough to find it.

chapter
35

Two days later when the doorbell rang in midmorning, I opened the door to find Mara standing on the front porch. She was wrapped up against the cold in a long woolen coat and knitted cap; only her eyes stared out from above the scarf circling her face. For a moment neither of us spoke as I stared into those unblinking eyes, those two dark pools of something bittersweet.

“Did you see him?” I asked.

She nodded. Tears rose up out of the depths of the pools.

I looked back over my shoulder to see whether Tillie had left the kitchen, but she hadn’t. Mom had already gone to work. I motioned for Mara to come in, and I shut the door behind her. She slipped out of her boots first, then untangled herself from the massive coat. She pushed the hat and scarf into one sleeve, and tossing everything onto the couch in the living room, she followed me upstairs to my room.

We positioned ourselves on the beds, cross-legged. I waited. After a moment she lifted a hand to her locket and said, “He doesn’t look like this anymore.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Older. His hair is turning gray.”

“That’s an old picture.”

“Yeah. It was taken before I was born. It’s more than twelve years old.”

“People change a lot in that many years.”

She nodded. “Yeah, they do.”

I waited another minute. When she didn’t go on, I said, “Well, what was he like?”

“He was like . . .” Her voice drifted off as she squeezed the locket. “He was like . . .”

“Yeah?”

“He was mostly like I imagined, I guess, except for looking older.”

I could feel myself frowning. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

She pressed her lips together and squeezed her eyes shut. After taking a deep breath, she looked at me and said, “I was so scared, Roz. I’ve never been so scared.”

I nodded. I understood.

“All the way up there on the train, I thought I was going to be sick,” she went on. “I held on tight to
War and Peace
with both hands until the cover was all sweaty. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t do anything but look out the window and wonder what was going to happen. When we got to the station in Chicago, I felt all weak, and I didn’t think I could even walk off the train. So I held on to Grandpa’s arm real tight, and I think he knew how scared I was because he kept saying, ‘It’ll be all right, child. It’ll be all right.’ ”

She took another deep breath and wet her lips with her tongue. “When we got off the train, the station was crowded with people everywhere. I kept looking around, but I didn’t see anybody that looked familiar. Then finally Grandpa said, ‘There he is now, Mara. See him?’ I looked around and didn’t see him, but I saw a man coming toward us, a tall white man wearing glasses and a hat that covered his hair. I didn’t see anything about him that looked like the man in the photo.

“You know, it’s funny, Roz, but I’d always pictured myself running into Daddy’s arms and giving him the biggest hug he ever had in his life. But when I saw him and it was real, I couldn’t do it. When he was still a little ways away, he took his hat off and kind of smoothed his hair down and then nodded at Grandpa like he recognized him. They knew each other from before, you know, back when Mama and he . . . well, you know.

“So he came up to us, and he shook hands with Grandpa and Grandma first before he even looked at me, and Grandpa had to tell him, ‘Bill, this here’s Mara.’ And then he looked at me and held out his hand, and I shook it and I couldn’t believe he was my daddy. I couldn’t believe it, Roz. And he said, ‘I’m glad to finally meet you, Beatrice,’ and I just kind of mumbled something, and I could tell Grandpa and Grandma were looking at each other and wondering why he’d called me Beatrice when they’d just told him my name was Mara.”

“But,” I interrupted, “isn’t Beatrice your first name?”

“Yeah, it is, and they know that, but no one ever calls me Beatrice. Except Daddy, when he says good-night to me on the radio. So I guess he couldn’t see himself calling me anything else.”

“So what happened after that?”

“Well, those three talked for a little while about the plans – you know, where everyone would be and when we’d meet up again. And then we left the station, and next thing I know Daddy and I were in his car driving out of the city. I asked him where we were going, and he said we were going up to Evanston for lunch, to a place he knew up there. I didn’t ask him why we didn’t stay in Chicago, because I knew. He couldn’t be seen with me there. Everyone would say, ‘Hey, isn’t that William Remmick, the guy on the radio? So who’s that little Negro girl with him?’ And the next thing you know, word would get around and his wife would find out, and she’d ask him who I was and he’d have to lie about it, or he’d have to tell her the truth. Either way, he couldn’t let it happen.”

She paused. I nodded, urging her to go on.

“We didn’t say too much at first,” she said, looking far off beyond the walls of my room. “I think he might have been nervous, because he turned on the radio and kept changing the station. I put the book on the seat between us, and he said, ‘You reading that?’ and even though I hadn’t started it, I said yeah, I was reading it. He said I was taking on a challenge, but he was glad I liked to read, and I said, ‘When I grow up I’m going to be an English professor just like you and maybe even a writer.’ For a minute I thought he looked kind of proud, like he was glad I wanted to be like him. But he didn’t say anything. He just kind of nodded and fiddled with the radio, and then he lit a cigarette. I didn’t even know he smoked.”

As Mara spoke, I tried to picture her sitting in the car with her father, the two of them stiff and formal, the tall white professor fidgeting behind the wheel, the little dark-skinned girl sitting prim in the passenger seat. I imagined her hair pulled back and tied with ribbons, her winter coat buttoned up to her chin, her patent leather shoes polished to a shine. Her gloved hands would be in her lap, her laced fingers kneading each other nervously.

“He was smoking the cigarette,” Mara went on, “and blowing the smoke out a little crack in the window, and he didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he finally just said, ‘You know, Beatrice, sometimes things just don’t work out the way we hope they will.’ He sounded real sad when he said it, and I thought maybe he was talking about our getting together, like maybe he hoped it would somehow be different or I would be different or something. But then he said, ‘I want you to know up front that if it’d been up to me, I’d have married your mother. I didn’t want to let either of you go.’ And I said, ‘Maybe you should have just married her then and kept us both,’ and he looked even sadder and said, ‘Sometimes things get too complicated, more complicated than you can imagine.’ I told him I didn’t see why it was so complicated to just go ahead and marry the person you love, and he said maybe I would understand when I was older.”