The Guineveres (20 page)

 

Win's Revival

My mother said we were going for a ride, and I didn't think to ask why she was shoving Grandfather's old trunk into the back of the car. “Help me, Guinevere,” she said, so I did as I was told, because I always did as I was told, especially since my incident at school.

My mother held one end, and I grabbed the other, gripped its metal edges, and angled it into the car. The trunk was heavy; it smelled of mothballs, and its leather peeled in places, flipped up like browned rose petals. Grandfather usually kept the trunk in his closet—he'd brought it over with him from the Old Country—and sometimes I found it as good a place as any to sit and hide, the closet door cracked just enough so it wasn't too stuffy. I loved that old trunk. Its leather warmed quickly, and it was wide enough so I could lie across it, my legs hanging to the floor, to where Grandfather kept his shoes. In these moments, I'd run my hands along its edges and imagine its history. I wondered what it was like in the Old Country or if it was a better place than here, more fitting, somehow, for people like me.

My mother had been avoiding me since my incident, still sleeping at breakfast, and gone until after I had cleared the dinner plates. She had dark eyes, big bones, and a sharp nose like Grandfather, like me, which had the effect of conveying sternness, even when she was in the best of moods. When she glowered, however, she could inspire fear, the heart-racing kind, so I'd been hiding out on Grandfather's trunk for hours just to be safe, doing homework or sleeping or practicing piano on the cardboard cutout of a keyboard, since we couldn't afford the real thing. Whenever I did see my mother, she cried. I believed it was my fault, and I felt badly, really badly, because more than anything I wanted my mother to be happy. Sister Fran might say that's proof of putting others before yourself, which is virtuous. But I didn't feel virtuous. I felt alone.

We'd moved in with my grandparents since my father “went away,” and I knew my mother felt lonely, too. She couldn't handle it when I made much noise, dragged my feet on the linoleum, chugged my Coca-Cola too loudly, or accidentally burped from too many bubbles. “Please, Guinevere,” she'd say, lighting a cigarette and pouring herself another vodka. She wore lipstick, which stuck to the rim of the glass in greasy, fish-shaped marks. “You'll never get a man that way.”

What did I want a man for, besides? I wasn't even fifteen. The boys in my class wore fuzz on their chins; their posture was unbalanced, tipped forward, as though cell division had proven exhausting. If these were the men my mother was talking about, I'd gladly pass.

Grandmother would rest her warm hands against my cheeks. She didn't talk much—my mother claimed she was “slow”—but I loved her just the same. “Let her be,” she'd say, looking at me. “The girl is good.”

I did the best I could in school, though I can't say I was happy there. I never excelled in my classes, but I never failed, either. Often I found that what came easy to others didn't come as easily to me. I had to try harder, which didn't seem fair. During gym class, however, I could outrun any of the girls or climb the knotted ropes so quickly that Linda Carol called me a tree witch. I'm not sure where the tree part came from, but I don't think she meant it in a mean way. Linda was the kind of girl you'd call “sturdy”—long, thick arms and legs, and a waist that came in small around her middle. I loved that her last name was a first name, too. She touched up her makeup while standing at her locker between bells, but she could just as easily jump cannonball-style into the school's pool, even after our teacher told her not to because it wasn't ladylike. The feral boys clamored around her in a pack, and as much as I wanted to hate her, I couldn't help but think she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. I found myself staring at her, wondering what it'd be like to be one of the boys who put his arm around her high waist, wondering what'd be like to have Linda's warm body pressed up against my own. I'm not sure where these thoughts came from, but they scared me.

School distracted me from my home life, but things got worse around the holidays. One day I came home and found my mother passed out in the bathroom, her hand still clutched around a vial, tiny white pills spilled out on the floor like a Connect-the-Dots game. I called for Grandfather—he'd know what to do—but nobody was home, so I ran to the neighbors' house, and they called the emergency line. My mother revived with the help of the paramedics, two men dressed in matching white outfits with sorry looks that spread across their faces when they saw me holding my mother's hand. But I never cried. Not once.

Mother was angry with me for a week for calling on the Vogels. Said she could never face them again, so she might as well move somewhere far away where she wouldn't be recognized. I only ever wanted to please my mother, but I felt I could never do anything right.

“I was fine,” she said. “I was just tired.” She hugged me, which was something she didn't do often, and her fat tears landed on my head. She kissed my cheeks and buried her nose in my hair. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing, just stood still as a mannequin until she finally let go.

I knew her behaviors related somehow to the fact that my father “went away.” I can't say I was surprised he left, so I'm not sure why anyone else would be. My mother and father fought all the time, except when they were ignoring each other. “Please, Meredith,” my father would say. At least he was polite about it. Nobody told me where he had gone, but “away” suggested it wasn't a vacation, and he wouldn't be returning with souvenirs like he did when he had jobs out of town. “Away” meant “not here,” and though I was never told, I knew he wasn't coming back. I'd never see him again. But I didn't cry about it.

At night, I heard my mother talk to Grandmother in a drunken whisper, which actually meant she spoke loudly, not whispering at all. “It's all so embarrassing,” my mother sobbed one night. “I saw Mona Thomas at the grocery store, and she turned her cart down the cereal aisle to avoid me. Me!” I could tell by her voice that my mother had been drinking. Grandmother, for her part, responded in a kind tone, and my mother cried harder, accusing Grandmother of taking
his
side. I began to imagine a story about my father's new life in a different city: a wife and a kid, a small house just like ours. I wondered if he looked in on his new kid like he used to look in on me at night when he thought I was asleep. I'd keep my eyes closed, playing possum, because if I did, he'd stand there for a while, and I could feel the weight of his shadow above me. If he found me awake, he'd simply shut the door, his footsteps fading down the hallway. Father had never been around much—he was frequently off traveling for his job, though I was never clear what that was, exactly—but those times he was home, he called me names like “kid” and “hon.” I liked it when he did that, called me by a nickname. Made me feel like I was special, the same way it did when Linda Carol called me a tree witch, I guess.

My mother appeared to be getting better after what she called her “fainting spell.” She began cooking again and even made my favorite dessert twice in one week, banana pudding with vanilla wafers. She brought out the Christmas decorations early—she knew I loved Christmas—and had the tree all trimmed one day when I arrived home from school. The blue lights sparkled at even intervals, and if I squinted while I looked at them, I could pretend I was in a snow globe, like the ones I had seen at the department store where my mother had taken me only a few days earlier for a new pair of shoes.

“Why do I get new shoes in the middle of the year?” I had asked my mother after she flagged down an attendant, a balding man who resembled a weasel, with a long neck and close-set eyes. Usually I got a pair of school shoes in the fall and a pair of sandals in the summer. New shoes were a luxury we could rarely afford. The weasely man returned with a metal foot measure and knelt down on the floor in front of me. He looked up and waited.

My mother ignored my question. “Someday, Guinevere, a man will kneel down before you, and it won't be to measure your feet.” My mother may have been drunk; I smelled alcohol only faintly, so it may have been her perfume. I slipped off my loafer and placed my socked foot onto the grid. “Let's hope you say yes,” she said. The department store clerk slid the measure around my foot with the look of a man performing a specialized science.

I was allowed to pick out any shoes I wanted, so I chose a pair of white saddle shoes, like the ones Linda wore to school. Plus, my mother nodded approvingly once the clerk helped me lace them up and asked me to pace across the room to see how they fit. I never wanted to disappoint my mother.

But somehow I did. At school, Linda had called me a tree witch again. This time I wasn't climbing a rope. Her lips were moving in slow motion, forming O's, then parting as she smiled, her tongue resting on her teeth. We were standing in the locker room, the only girls left, and I moved in close to her, so close that I could smell her hair. I had never done anything like that before, had never smelled anything so sweet, not like candy, but like apples and air, like autumn itself. She tucked her hair behind her ears, and I could see her face and a mole that rose from the surface of her neck. I wanted to touch it, that mole, her neck that sloped so gently, like a straight line and a curve all at once.

Linda kept blinking quickly, nervously, like she was thinking the same thing. She had dark eyes, like mine, but hers were round and bright, and I swear they sparkled, even in the dim light of the locker room. Her jawline was straight, and her chin came to a tip, like the point of a heart. Her skin was smooth and even as sand, but lighter than mine. She kept biting her lip, like she was thinking that it was confusing what she was feeling right now, but it was kind of okay, too. She moved in closer to me, or me to her. And we stood there and we stood there. And I thought maybe she was daring me to go first, like when she called me a tree witch and dared me to go higher. So finally I just did it—just pressed my lips against hers, and it was the warmest sensation I ever felt, like my whole body might explode from warmth. Like it'd been dark inside me and someone had finally turned on a light bulb. I buzzed in my limbs, and in other places I didn't know could buzz.

We may have been like that for a second, or maybe minutes. Just kissing and standing and touching each other lightly on the arms and neck. But then Linda pushed me away, hard, with the tips of her fingers. Her expression dropped. She scrunched her shoulders forward and turned her head. “I'm not like you,” she said, but her voice didn't sound like when she'd called me a tree witch. There was no kindness to it, just a hard edge that cut me across my chest until I was breathless.

I felt my body grow cold, then hot, and I did the only thing I could. I reeled back, and with all my weight, I punched her. I punched Linda Carol, right in the face. She cupped her nose and blood ran from beneath her hand. And at that point I didn't feel anything, not remorse or regret, not even the usual gut-heaviness I felt when I looked at her.

My mother didn't yell at me when she picked me up from school, suspended for a week. “My daughter … the boxer,” she said. “I'm so embarrassed.” Then, later, Linda's mother called. My mother cradled the phone with her shoulder, a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other. I listened from the stairs, holding the rails like prison bars. “My Guinevere would never do anything of the kind,” she said, then waited, slugging back quick gulps of vodka. “I've never heard anything more preposterous in my life.” More waiting. More drinking. “Well, if that's the case, blame her father.” She slammed down the phone, and it made a high-pitched ding that sounded louder in the silence. My mother wouldn't look at me. But I didn't cry, not even when she turned away from me with a look of disgust and walked into the kitchen.

I spent the next few days hiding from my mother, from my shame. I spent much of my time tucked away, sitting on Grandfather's trunk, keeping up with my homework. Grandfather told me that education was key, that if I stayed in school I could do anything I wanted, anything at all. Not like him. He'd dropped out of school back in the Old Country. Grandfather used to let me sit with him in his workshop while he tinkered with the car, or changed the oil, or built boxes for the chicken coop he had in the backyard. He taught me how to swing a hammer, all the way through the nail so you get the most leverage. Once he let me help him saw down a dying ash tree by the side of the house, showed me how to measure the tree around, how to cut a notch so we'd know which way the tree would fall. Grandfather praised me for catching on so quickly, said that I was smart and strong and that girls like me didn't come along very often. If I couldn't be good like my mother wanted me to be, and if I couldn't be pretty like Linda, I wanted to be smart. And even if school didn't always come easily to me, I convinced myself that if I tried hard enough, everyone would see in me what Grandfather saw. That even if I wasn't book smart, I was still smart in my own way. I liked being called smart. It meant I could figure things out on my own; it meant that I didn't need anyone.

I was sitting on Grandfather's trunk, struggling over some math problems when I heard the bell ring and then the commotion downstairs. Someone was knocking into things, tipping over lamps and tripping over furniture. I knew it was my mother, and I knew she was drunk again. Grandmother began crying, and Grandfather, who was usually so calm, yelled, “Meredith, please,” just like my father used to. Then it grew really quiet. Mother was nowhere to be found at dinner, and Grandmother and Grandfather ate in silence.

“You're a good girl,” Grandmother said.

I nodded, took another bite of tuna noodle casserole that had grown cold on my plate. I didn't feel good.