Thank You for All Things (11 page)

“The wooden rocking chair was still in the room, cluttered by the old spare bedroom set Brian’s mother had moved back up from the basement, and I’d sit in that chair rocking for hours, holding myself and crying. Brian couldn’t take it. One night when he came home drunk and found me rocking, he lost it, telling me to get over it already.”

Mom puts her hand over her mouth again, then removes it and takes Mitzy’s hand. “Oh, how that must have hurt,” Mom says, sounding more like Oma than Mom. “I can’t believe Brian would say such a thing. Well, I’m not doubting you, I’m just saying that Brian … he was always so …” She reaches out with her other hand and takes both of Mitzy’s.

“He was drunk. Really drunk. As he was most of the time by then.”

“But still, that’s no excuse. God, that pisses me off. That baby was his son too. Oh, Mitzy. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I didn’t know. Had I, I would have come, no matter where I was or what was going on with me.”

Mitzy dabs at her eyes. “I thought of calling you. You were my best friend, Tess, but how could I have called when I wasn’t there for you when
you
needed
me
the most?” They mumble apologies, then Mitzy says with a sad, slow laugh, “Remember when the only thing we feared about pregnancy was getting fat and getting stretch marks?”

“Yeah,” Mom says. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

Mom looks up, scanning the room to find me, and I quickly grab a wooden ornament off the shelf and pretend I’m admiring it. I start humming to show her just how wrapped up in my own little world I am.

“About two weeks after that incident, Brian had three of his buddies over, helping him build a deck. He’d wanted a deck for some time, and his folks bought us a kit for our anniversary. I couldn’t have cared less. Anyway, I was in the kitchen making subs for their lunch when Brian came in and headed for the nursery. When he came back through the kitchen, I could see he had something tucked under his arm. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was.

“Brian had won a football—signed by Brett Favre—in
a raffle right after we learned that I was carrying a boy. He decided to put it away and give it to Dylan on his tenth birthday. When I went outside to see what he was up to, there he was, tossing that football into the air as he dove off the unfinished deck, reenacting some play or other, I guess. His dumb friends were laughing. He got to his feet and was about to toss it to one of them, and I just went nuts.

“I charged him. Clawing and kicking at him. And when I got the ball from him, I dropped to my knees and bawled until spit was stringing out of my mouth. The guys left in a hurry, of course, and Brian just stood there staring at me, his fists clenched.

“I knew I was acting crazy, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted him to stop me. To hold me and tell me that he understood. That I’d feel better in time. That he loved me. Anything. Instead, he told me, ‘I’m outta here,’ and he left.”

Mom lets go of Mitzy’s hands so Mitzy can rummage in her purse for a Kleenex. After she blows her nose, she looks up at Mom and continues.

“I never heard from him after the divorce, but every year on Dylan’s birthday there’s a basket of fresh flowers on his grave that I like to believe come from him.”

The waitress comes then, carrying our sandwich plates on a round tray. She talks all chirpy, oblivious to the tears in Mom’s and Mitzy’s eyes. She’s wearing a nose ring in each nostril and dreadlocks filled with beads in assorted colors. The bottom of each drab brown lock has been dipped in white wax and dotted with pink at the very tips. “Those look good, don’t they? I’m starving myself. Is there anything else I can get you girls?”

Mom shakes her head.

“Any refills on your drinks? Extra onions for your sandwiches?” Ms. Dreadlocks takes the pencil that’s stuck in her
ratty mess, and she scrapes at her scalp as she talks. “I like lots of onions on my tuna. It doesn’t do much for the breath, but, hey, it tastes good. And I like to crumble a few of those kettle corn chips inside the bread too. The extra crunch is good. I was just telling—”

Mom scoots my plate closer to hers, as she looks up at the woman in disbelief. “Crissakes. What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see you’ve interrupted a private, emotional conversation here? And if you’ve got to scratch your head, for crying out loud, don’t do it over our plates! What could possibly make you think we’d want you interrupting our conversation, much less powdering our croissants with your dead skin cells?”

Mitzy’s dark eyes get even larger than they already are, and a cloudburst of laughter breaks out of her.

“Well, really …” Mom says, as the waitress leaves in a huff, and Mitzy laughs all the harder.

Still laughing, Mitzy waves for me to join them.

Mom scoots over so I can slip into the booth. Their coffees are half gone, and the ice in my soda is melted. “I’d ask for a pitcher of water, but she’d probably spit in it now,” Mom says.

Mitzy laughs, as though she does not have tears clinging to her lashes. Mom doesn’t laugh, though. She is looking down at her plate, her shoulders as limp as the Bibb lettuce peeking out from her sandwich, then she reaches over and rests her hand on my leg (a gesture driven, I’m sure, by thoughts of how sad it would have been had she lost me when I was born). Mitzy looks at Mom, tilts her head, and smiles sadly. “I’ve made you sad, but you don’t have to be. I’m okay now, hon.

“I’m living in delicious sin with Ray Dayton. He’s ten years older than us, so you probably don’t remember him,
but he is the sweetest, most considerate man in the world. The first time he made me laugh, I started crying. I didn’t say why. I didn’t need to. He took me in his arms and said, ‘Dylan would want his mommy to be happy again.’ That was it for me. I fell head over heels in love with him that second.”

“How long have you been with him?” Mom asks.

“Lemme see. Going on three years now.”

“Any wedding plans?”

Mitzy picks up her fork and knife and begins cutting her tuna-stuffed sandwich in half. “Nah. He’d like to. He’s in his forties. He’s ready for kids.”

“And?” Mom asks.

“I can’t go through that again, Tess. Just can’t. But I can’t ask him to give up his dream of having children either, so I don’t know.”

I look at Mom, who’s looking at Mitzy with one of those let’s-talk-more-about-this-later looks.

“What about you?” Mitzy asks suddenly. “Anyone special in your life?”

“There
was
,” I say, and Mom tells me to shut up and eat, forgetting already how lucky she is that I didn’t die at birth. Mitzy takes her cue and shuts up about it too.

They catch up on gossip about their graduating class, and then, while I’m munching my last potato chip, Mitzy says, “Oooh! Oooh! That reminds me! I read your book,
The Absent Savior
!”

“Well, I knew about the retired schoolteacher from Vermont who read it and wrote me … I was wondering who the other person was,” Mom says, laughing at her own joke, even though I know she doesn’t think it’s funny. “How’d you find out about it?”

“From Pamela Kort. I ran into her one day, right here in Coffee Beans. I hadn’t seen her since graduation. She got
her thighs lipoed, and she looked great. Anyway, she’s out on the East Coast now, teaching at the same university that published your book. She told me all about it, and I ordered it online as soon as I got home. Oh, Tess. All I could think of when I read it was how Louis was right. I meant to write you through your publisher and tell you that, but … well. I’m sorry.

“Anyway, it was a beautiful book. And it wasn’t hard to see that the ‘absent savior’ in the book was really Rachel’s father, not Asher. It was her relationship—or lack of it—that—”

Mom interrupts Mitzy by glancing at her watch with such exaggeration that a 1940s starlet would have felt threatened. “Shit! Sorry to interrupt you, Mitz, but, wow, where did the time go? I’ve got to get this stuff back to Ma. I can’t believe she hasn’t called me yet.” I scoop my pickle and grapes up as Mom scoots me out of the booth with her butt.

“Oh, okay.” Mitzy looks a little dazed. “How long are you staying in town?”

Mom sighs. “A day or two at the most. Ma asked me to stay a few, but no way can I do that.”

“Let’s get together, though. Please? How about my place. Breakfast, tomorrow morning?”

Mom nods and Mitzy quickly jots her address on a sticky note, and then they play tug-of-war with the check.

They hug on the street, then Mitzy hugs me. “I’m afraid your mother and I hogged up all the time, and I didn’t even get to find out one thing about you.”

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “There isn’t all that much to tell, since I’m still only a child.”

Mitzy laughs and hugs me again. “Precocious, just like her mother, I see.”

As Mom and I walk to the car, an older woman pauses to give us a second glance, and Mom grabs my sleeve. I have to trot to keep up with her.

By the time we get to Oma’s car, Mom is her old self again: quiet, emotionless, lost in her own thoughts. I know about personas, of course, those masks we wear to make impressions on others. And seeing Mom as she is now, and remembering how animated and soft she was with Mitzy, I wonder which—if either—is Mom’s true self. “We’ll grab the groceries and get back,” she says. She’s distracted as we shop, and she doesn’t say a word as we drive home. That is, not until we’re pulling up the drive. Then she stares up at the dirty-snow-colored house and mutters, “Someone shoot me. Just frikkin’ shoot me.”

I
T’S EVENING
, and Mom and Milo are at the kitchen table, engrossed in their work, while I help Oma dry the dishes. Mom and Oma aren’t speaking, because a bit ago they had an argument about Mom suddenly wanting to head back to Chicago that very instant. Oma guilted her for even thinking of having two children on the road in the middle of the night, and now the only sounds in the kitchen are the tinkling of plates as we put them away and an occasional huffy sigh from Mom.

Oma sets her cup of lemongrass tea on the counter and asks Milo—who has his nose almost scraping his book on the table, his inhaler in hand—if he’ll help her get Grandpa
Sam to the bathroom so she can give him a bath. Right now he is in the living room, flicking channels again, the volume suddenly blasting. “Oh, dear,” Oma mutters. “There he goes again! He’s been doing that with the clicker all day. Come, Milo.”

Oma goes into the living room and asks Grandpa Sam nicely for the remote. The channels keep flipping, and then Oma doesn’t sound so patient. “Oh, my God! Sam, give me that. Give me the remote!”

I hear the stations flick quickly, so I think it’s Grandpa still doing the flicking, but then Oma shouts out, “Oh, my God. What channel was that? They said after the commercial … here! Tess, come here. Quick!”

I race into the living room, where Grandpa Sam sits in his lift chair, his arm outstretched, his hand still clutching the remote, even though Oma is manning it. Mom is right behind me. “Jesus, that thing loud enough?” she says, half drowning the voice of the reporter, who’s saying, “And in Chicago, fire rips through a recently condemned apartment complex on the lower south side.”

Oma waves her hand at the TV as the pretty black reporter says, “Sylvia Decker is on the scene with this live report …”

“I saw it while he was flicking!” Oma says, then she shushes us, even though she’s the only one talking.

The camera shifts to a burning building, and my throat tightens when I realize it’s our building, red lights splashing against the brick, flames shooting like protruding tongues mocking the screams of sirens and people. Mom gasps.

I recognize a face from the stoop, and I search the crowd huddled on the street, looking for the rest of the tenants I
know. I don’t know many of their names, but I know their faces. I look for the little girl who handed me the leaf, and her dark-skinned mother with the rust-colored hair. I search between shoulders for the faded, little old Japanese man I call “Mr. U” because he is so bent over that he looks like the letter
U
tipped on its side. I look for the strange man two doors down who leaves his door open when the summer heat is oppressive—even if he is in his underwear—and you can hear his parrot talking in human words with more clarity than the old man uses when answering him. I don’t know any of them well, really, yet I’m suddenly worrying about them all as if they are family when I don’t find them in the quick camera shots. “Many of them probably moved out already, Lucy,” Oma says to comfort me.

The camera slides up the side of the building, revealing fire shooting out of every window on the second floor and smoke billowing out of the rest. I feel like crying. Our building was butt-ugly, as Mom often said, but it was home. And everything but what we have here with us is melting and burning up, including our computers.

The cameras move to the front stoop, where masked firemen are carrying out bodies on stretchers, two with white sheets sheathing their faces. Some people are being helped out of a window into a metal cage, their faces darkened with soot and smoke and fear as they are lowered to the ground, where paramedics wait to clamp oxygen masks over their faces. Seeing them, I forget about our things and the building itself and worry about the people again.

“That son of a bitchin’ slumlord!” Mom says. “He couldn’t wait until the building was evacuated before he torched it, now, could he?”

“Oh, dear, I had a sinking feeling just last night that
something bad was going to happen. That’s what made me stop you from leaving,” Oma says, as though her lemongrass tea had already done its job.

Sylvia Decker yammers on, shouting, saying nothing, because there’s nothing she knows beyond what she can see, which is exactly the same as what we can see.

“Oh, God,” Mom groans. “All of our things. Our books. Our clothes. Furniture. Everything.”

“Did you have renter’s insurance?” Oma asks.

“How in the hell could I have renter’s insurance? I could hardly make my rent.”

“Our computers. My notes …” Milo says, and he looks ready to cry. Oma sits down beside him and pats his back as though she’s burping him. “They’re only things, Milo. Things can be replaced.”