The Angry Woman Suite (3 page)

“But … what about
your
real
mother?” I’d asked. “Did she die like my real father died?”

“No. She … left. When I was a little girl. Papa raised me by himself, until he married Grandma. Look, Elyse, some things are unpleasant—there’s no point talking about them.”

I’d no problem with Papa and Grandma having gotten married; that seemed pretty regular, my grandparents being married to each other. And I’d no memory of my tragic real father, although I imagined I must’ve missed Stephen Eric very much when he died. I imagined him as being just like Papa, and I imagined him hating having to leave me behind. But I also imagined it easing Stephen Eric somewhat, knowing he was leaving me and my mother and the new baby in good hands, to my grandparents and Aunt Rose. And, really, it
had
worked out so well, the timing, what with Papa just retired from the railroad and looking for a new place to hang his and Grandma’s hats, and me and Mother newly alone in the house Stephen Eric had bought just before dying.

“Was Daddy Francis very handsome?” I asked again. “When you met him?” I knew the answer. I only asked because Mother liked the question. “Except for his shorter ear, I mean.”

“Just ‘Daddy.’ And, yes, your daddy was the handsomest man in the world. And there’s nothing wrong with your daddy’s ear. Please don’t bring that up again. Now, Elyse, there’s something else we need to talk about. I think it best if we keep talk of your real father to ourselves. Otherwise, where we’re going, people might think I’ve been divorced and, well … divorce is unacceptable—”

“But—”

“Besides, having to explain about your real father makes me sad. And it makes your daddy feel funny. Francis Grayson
is
your father now,” she added with authority. “He’s letting you use his name and I expect you’ll show the proper gratitude. We owe your daddy everything, getting us out of this hell-hole.”

I looked around. I didn’t understand “hell-hole.” Our house was colorful, and Papa had worked hard papering everything with yellow roses. But I did understand these two things: divorce was terrible, like getting the mumps. And my mother wanted me to swear never to tell about Stephen Eric being my real father. She wanted me to pretend to the world that Daddy Francis was my real father. Which was fine enough: it took nothing away from me, living a fairytale to put a smile on my whisper-soft mother’s beautiful face. In fact, I felt benevolent granting Mother her wish, and so I sealed Stephen Eric inside a place in my heart, in a new and hastily structured place reserved for safekeeping rare, unused things, things too important to toss away.

“You never know,” Papa always said, “the things you’ll find a use for. Never, ever throw anything away,
mein Liebes
. Never, ever, ever.”

Another thing Papa always said was that I wasn’t picky enough about people, the way I went right up to strangers and sat myself down in their laps. He didn’t say this critical-like, because Papa was never critical, just matter-of-fact. Although at the start of things, Francis had been merely an afterthought, another face, another uncle, in Mother and Aunt Rose’s crowd, he’d let me sit on his lap whenever he’d visited, and he’d made Mother laugh and show her dimples and dip her head so that her dark hair rippled, and so of course I’d accepted Francis, no questions asked.

It was a whirlwind thing. One minute Francis was one of my fly-by-night uncles, and the next he had Mother in Reno, marrying her. He moved into our house and made Papa turn quiet, and Bean and I, who’d shared a room with Mother, sleep on the living room couch instead, wedged together like sardines.
He was staying
. A month later, my new daddy got orders. The Air Force said we had to live in Biloxi, Mississippi. I didn’t understand that my grandparents and Aunt Rose weren’t coming with me to Biloxi. I didn’t understand even when Papa helped Francis load the car with all our things and none of his or Grandma’s or Aunt Rose’s. I didn’t understand until Papa hugged me tight and his voice turned shaky.

“
Süsses Mädchen
, you will be brave. A year is not a long time. And you will have grand adventure in Mississippi. You will remember everything and tell me of your grand adventure,
nein
?” I gave a little cry, suddenly understanding.

Papa said quickly, “Listen, Elyse, nothing is black and white in this world, even though we try very hard to make it so.
Verstehst du?
”

“No,”
I moaned.

Papa tried again. “Life is like a ship, Elyse. Sometimes it blows forward, sometimes back. But just when you think your life is sinking, someone rows into the harbor and tosses oranges onto your deck.”

I stopped crying. “Oranges?”

“When I was a boy coming to America, nearly everyone on our ship got sick. We weren’t allowed to dock. It looked bad for us. But when the other German settlers got word of our predicament, they rowed out, bringing bags of oranges with them. They tossed the oranges onto our deck.”

“The oranges made you better?”

“Viel besser.
And most of us got well. We made it to shore. And you will make it too, Elyse. Now, chin up. There’s a brave girl.”

I hiccoughed, trying not to cry. Grandma said she wanted to hold me, so Papa passed me to her and I put my cheek against one of Grandma’s arms and watched my tears roll down the notched white fat of it.

“Well, that’s it,” I heard Daddy say for what had to be the billionth time. He rechecked the ropes that held our tarp-covered suitcases and boxes to the top of the car, also for the billionth time, then held out his arms. Grandma handed me over. My immediate future didn’t include choice. “I’ll do right by her,” Daddy promised. “And Bean, too.”

I looked at Papa, beseeching him, but his narrowed eyes were on Daddy, not me, trying to see through Daddy’s “dense and complicated.” I could tell Daddy saw Papa’s disapproving look, because I turned my head just in time to see Daddy’s lips go thin. Thinking Daddy might cry because Papa had hurt his feelings without meaning to, I instinctively put a hand on Daddy’s cheek. “Daddy—” I started, but Mother, using her impatient voice, interrupted, telling Daddy to put me down.

I watched longingly out the back window of the car, until Aunt Rose waving her white hankie disappeared from sight, until my fat grandmother was reduced to a mere speck, until Papa was non-existent—and then I wailed. I wailed with a vengeance. I wailed like nobody had ever wailed before. I keened, rocking back and forth, arms clasped tight around my middle, as if to hold my broken pieces together.

“Let her cry,” Daddy said tenderly some time later, after I’d shuddered into exhausted mewling and Mother had begun sighing her exasperated sigh. Daddy patted her hand. “It’ll work out, Diana. It’s for the best. You’ll see.”

It was then, at Daddy’s tender tone—a gentle man’s voice, a voice that led me to believe he understood—that my heart gravitated toward Daddy and I began to love him,
really
love him, even while still loving Papa; and it was also then that I resolved to have a grand adventure, not yet understanding that Mississippi is a world apart from California, and that missing people, one in particular, their smells and cussing and a hollering that sounds like love, is not a straightforward thing. Missing someone is a crazy-quilt kind of thing: acceptance one piece, but right above the acceptance patch is another patch, this one made of grief, plus two more grief patches over at the side rising up to slap you down—generally right after you’ve got yourself convinced you’ve figured out the gist of life’s pattern.

And neither did I understand, then, that men could be so different from one another. It took me a long time to work that one out. Probably until Aidan Madsen, the man who brought me oranges and books, was firmly entrenched in my life. Which was about the same time I understood that the crazy patches on my quilt were outnumbered by the saner ones.

And that I would survive.

***

I didn’t find out about Daddy’s nerve problem until our second day on the road. It was very hot, but not the kind of hot like back home in Sacramento, where there are lots of nice shade trees. This hot was unrelenting, and it was humid. Daddy had to stop the car every now and then so the radiator wouldn’t boil over, and waiting for the car to cool he paced and smoked and chewed his lower lip, even snapping at Mother once, making her cry. I wanted to cry, too. I’d never been so hot and miserable, but because Bean was quiet, and Mother was telling her what a good girl she was (plus, I’d decided I now loved Daddy, so I wasn’t looking for his disapproval), I pegged crying for nothing but tagging me as the brat. Our only hope was conversation, so we could all forget just how awful the heat was and get on with a grand adventure the way Papa wanted us to.

I felt sorriest for Daddy, the way his wet shirt clung to his back, and him looking so worried about the radiator, so I asked if it was true he’d forgotten Mother until just before they got married, and he said no, it wasn’t. Mother had been pulling my leg. He’d remembered Mother clear as anything because who could ever forget someone so snotty? And the reason he’d canceled dinner with Mother and Aunt Rose that first night was because of an emergency. When I asked what the emergency had been, Daddy said I shouldn’t try talking to him anymore because it made his nerves feel shot.

I was crushed and uncertain again.

That night in our motel room, while Mother was giving me and Bean baths, and Daddy was outside pacing, Mother confided that Daddy’s nerves
were
stretched a little thin and that it would behoove me to keep that in mind.

“It’s not the heat or the driving so much, I don’t think,” Mother said, bending over the tub and soaping my back. “The truth is, your daddy has a sadness deep inside him, and sometimes … well, sometimes that sadness just comes out, and he gets a little testy.”

“Testy?”

“Mad. Daddy gets mad. He loves you very much, though, Elyse, and it’s our job to let Daddy know how much we love him back. Sometimes that means being very quiet.”

Bean nodded gravely, as if she understood this, but I asked, “But
why’s
Daddy sad?”

“Because,” Mother said, “the music died. Rock and roll killed it.” Mother blew a stray lock of her hair out of her eyes, rinsing Bean. Sweat beaded on her forehead. I stared, fascinated. I’d never seen my perfect mother sweat. She said, “And then there was that business with the women who brought him up, and those horrible deaths—”

“Deaths?” Duck bumps sprouted on the back of my neck.

Mother got brisk, shaking out towels to dry me and Bean in. “Forget what I said. Just never you mind.”

Mother’s words made me more unsure, and I was seized by a new, sudden yearning to
super
-classify everything, to try and make better sense of Daddy’s sadness so that our move might conform to an adventure I’d have a little more control over. But I couldn’t classify anything; I didn’t have enough information. And I couldn’t ask questions; I was supposed to be quiet. So the remainder of our journey to Mississippi was silent, and by the time we got to the furnished house in Biloxi that a friend of Daddy’s had rented for us, I had begun obsessing over “horrible deaths,” and my tongue was near swollen from biting down on it to keep from asking who had died so horribly—and what “horribly” meant specifically.

It was late at night and Mother put Bean in a crib, and me to bed, and I fell hard asleep, only to awaken in the middle of the night on soggy sheets; I’d wet the bed. And then I cried for the second time. I cried from shame, for wetting myself, and I cried for Papa and for the way
he’d
always encouraged me to start conversations. I cried for his thrilling stories and games and the way he’d wrap blankets around me at night, like hugs. I cried for Grandma and Aunt Rose, their raucous laughter. I cried for walls lined with cabbage roses. I cried because I’d never known such misery. I cried until Mother came to me, until she gave me her special kisses, until she changed my sheets and tucked me back into bed, and I clung to her, loving her madly.

And every night after that, for the longest time, I wet the bed and cried for Mother, and every night she came to me.

I was not a stupid child.

But one night Daddy came for me instead. I heard him before I saw him and stopped crying, struck dumb by the noise he made, clapping his hands hard, furiously. His face, when he flung the bedroom door open and snapped on the overhead light, was purple with rage. I cowered against the headboard and screamed. Stark naked, Daddy glowed white, except for the long sausage-like thing dangling between his legs, which was red as his face. He yelled at me to
piss off!
And then he yelled for Mother to come and get her worthless child, and then he slammed the door shut behind him and stalked off.

Who was that man?

I raked the blanket with my fingers, waiting for Mother to come soothe me, to explain about the man who looked just like Daddy—but then after what seemed forever and no Mother, I gathered the tattered shreds of my bravery around me and got up to shush Bean, who’d started squalling when I’d screamed. Then I crept back to bed and waited some more.

Mother never came.

And as the night wore on I became convinced of the reason why. The man who looked like Daddy had done something awful to Mother, maybe using that long, red thing of his to hit her with, probably even killing her with it, because she had such a worthless child. I cried silently, so I wouldn’t get Bean to squalling again. I cried from my heart, from that place where I’d put Stephen Eric for safekeeping. I cried all through that night, desperate over what had happened to Mother, and petrified over what would become of me and Bean, convinced we were doomed to endure horrible deaths, too.

I had to think, to come up with a plan. Bean would look to me to lead. I had to take care of Bean. I was the eldest—I had to be responsible now that we were on our own. I prayed for a miracle, for Stephen Eric, for our sudden savior to rise from the dead and take me and Bean out of Mississippi, to take us back to Papa in Sacramento, to safety.

Somehow, I slept. It was daylight when I woke. I heard noises. I smelled Bean’s diaper and my damp sheets, and I was thirsty … I tiptoed out to the kitchen. Mother was alive
and
making breakfast! I ran to her, sobbing relief, burying my head in her apron. “Mother!” I cried. “Oh Mother!”