Daughter Dearest

The phone in the kitchen demands attention.

            I sprint to answer it, holler through the house as I run. “I got it.” I grab the mustard receiver from its wall mount and press it to my ear. “Hello?”

            “Hey. What’re you doing?” It’s Karen, my best friend. She only lives a block away but it’s too cold and too late on a school night to meet on the corner to yack. I stretch the phone cord taut and huddle, legs criss-crossed-applesauce, in a corner of the dining room. 

             I cover my mouth so Mom can’t hear me. “Algebra, but it can wait. What’re you doing?”

            Karen and I chat for over an hour. Even though supper was ages ago, Mom doesn’t leave the kitchen. At one point I hear her announce to no one in particular, “Think I’ll make Toll House cookies.”

             More than once I spy her shadow as she hovers near the doorway. I twist myself even closer to the china cabinet, tuck the phone between me and the wall. 

~~~~~~~       

One day during my lunch hour in downtown Cincinnati (I lived and worked there in the 80s), I was walking toward Fountain Square and these two gals—mother and daughter—came at me, arm in arm. The younger woman’s grin was the spitting image of her mom’s.   When I stepped in front of them, they stopped walking and talking, their limbs suddenly stiff, their eyes wide.

            The mom gathered her girl close. “Yes?”

            “You all don’t know how lucky you are,” I said. I swatted my hand at their togetherness. “I wish— I wish me and my mom were like you two.” I blinked away the burn of close tears.

            In that moment, they seemed to melt. The mother reached out tentatively, rested her manicured hand on my forearm.

            “Why, you should tell her that, honey. Surely she wants the same.”

            I bit my lip and shook my head. “Nah, we’ll never be like you two. Enjoy what you have.” Before they could say anything else, I ducked inside Lazarus Department Store.

~~~~~~~

A couple years back, I got to thinking about the Ten Commandments, the one that says honor your father and mother.  I did okay with Dad but Mom was different. We were never  close but that afternoon as I puttered around the house, I thought maybe, just maybe, things'd be better if I came up with a list of good stuff I remember instead of . . .  

            I arranged myself, my journal, and fountain pen at the dining room table, cradled a mug of coffee, drew its hazelnut steam into my nostrils. Seconds then minutes passed as I tapped my pen on my front teeth, crinkled my forehead, and waited for good stuff to arrive. Then all of a sudden, there it was: good stuff.

            I like scallops, but Mom loved them first.

            My mother adores stories. I do too.     

            Mom used to take me shopping and in between Stone and Thomas and Nassar's, at McCrory’s five and dime, we'd order club sandwiches, wavy Lay's potato chips, and made-in-front-of-you cherry Cokes.

            "This'll pick us up," Mom always said.

            In the evenings, we’d sit side by side on the sofa and she’d teach me how to embroider. My French knots never got as good as hers.

            My mother was a nurse. I never told her but I thought that was pretty cool. She got so freaked out when my brothers beat each other up, it was hard to believe she could stomach blood and guts. From the hallway outside her bedroom, I used to watch her bobby pin her stiff and quirky nurse’s cap into her dark curls. No one told me how much I resembled her, not till years later.

            Sometimes we'd dress up and drive downtown to the Elephant Room in the Hotel Frederick for lunch. I’d clutch the armrests of my chair as the sweet, super old waiter with shiny mahogany skin scooted my chair in. I’d peek under the snowy table cloth to watch my patent leather Mary Jane shoes dangle above the plush, crimson carpet.

            When the waiter asked for our drink orders I’d cross my gloved hands in my lap and peer up at him.

            "May I have a Shirley Temple, please? With two maraschino cherries on a pink plastic sword?"

            Every year, out in our backyard when the weather warmed, Mom showed me how to grow lilies of the valley, zinnias, and Shasta daisies.

            "Poke your finger inside there," she'd say as we crouched beside a clump of snapdragons. "It's like a tiny mouth, don't you think?”          

            On summer mornings our Keds sneakers would leave green trails in the silver dew as we made our way to the pussy willow bush on our property’s edge. Mom would smile as she stroked the furry catkins.

            "Don't they feel like kitten paws?"

            I don't remember Mom saying no much.

            "Since I'm in fourth grade now, can I have my birthday party at the roller rink?” I asked her that one night as I sliced green olives for the salad.

            “That sounds fun.”

            One evening as we watered the garden I presented her with my heart’s desire.

            "Can I take horseback riding lessons with Karen? I checked, a half hour lesson costs ten bucks."

            “I think we can manage that.”

            “I’ve had my driver’s license a month now. Is it okay if I take the car tonight?”

            “Ask your father.”

            “Can I go to Myrtle Beach with Suzy, Stretch, and Natalie after graduation?”

            “Is it okay with their folks?”

            Mom did tell me no once, after she found Suzy's Eve cigarettes in my room, in a drawer, under my undies.

            "Do not ever, ever smoke cigarettes,” Mom said. Her mouth was a thin, coral-colored line. “You'll die of cancer. My best friend from high school's husband had to get a talk box put in his throat because of cigarettes."

            “But you smoke.”

            “That’s beside the point.” I whimpered as she gripped my wrist hard and marched me into the bathroom.          

            "But Mom, they're not mine. Suz— This girl I know asked me to hold them for her and I forgot to give ’em back. I swear."

            She pursed her lips and squinted. "Nice try. Now flush them this instant. I mean it.”

~~~~~~~

For the past few years, from time to time, I’ve been sending her my stories, some of them real, some not. I fold then crease them, tuck the pages into the stamped and addressed envelopes and hand them to the mailman. It’s wonderful to get real mail these days, not just bills. I wonder if Mom feels like she’s getting a present when she opens her mailbox and sees a letter from me?    

            When the phone rings these days I squint at the caller I.D. screen. Is it her? What’d she think of the last story I sent? Did she think I did good?

            “I liked your latest story,” she told me just the other day. “You’re getting better, you know.”

            Now here I sit with this one. And a stamped addressed envelope. It’s almost Mother’s Day. To send or not to . . . 

Remembering Grace

Who knows when and where Gracie went to the bathroom? Not me. She never once held up her finger and said, “Excuse me while I use the little girls’ room.” I was afraid to ask if she and Mac even had one so whenever I had to go, I’d tell her, “I think I hear Mom calling. I better see what she wants. Be right back.”

            Maybe Gracie had a pee bag tucked inside her girdle like some old folks do. Or perhaps the green shed that Mac built against their back fence before I was born was actually an outhouse. It didn't really matter though since Gracie and I spent most of our time in her living room and kitchen. 
            In the living room, instead of regular chairs, there were two chaise lounges with gleaming silver frames. The cushions were glossy fake leather the color of Christmas trees. If I hovered my mouth an inch from the surface and blew, a milky fog would appear. When I wiped it away, I could see black capillaries in the pine shine.

            There was a sofa in the room too, in front of the window that paralleled our house, but I never sat on it. It was made up with flowered sheets and a pink quilt so I figured Gracie slept there. You don’t just walk into someone’s house and plop down on their bed. That’d be rude. I wasn’t sure where Mr. Mac slept, maybe on the second floor all the way to the left. I had no way of knowing because Gracie never took me up there.

            Most days I’d lay on the left lounge, ankles crossed, and Gracie’d recline on the right one. In the summertime we’d watch Phil Donahue in the mornings and Beverly Hillbillies in the afternoon. After supper I’d run back over and we’d watch Lawrence Welk. While we watched the tube, Gracie’d make lace doilies or embroider dresser scarves. I’d nibble my nails. Sometimes she’d rock herself to standing, go over to the mantle, and fetch one of her collectible miniature pitchers, the ones painted to look like American presidents.

           She'd hand it to me. “Hold this, Pet, instead of biting your nails.”

            “I don’t go too far down,” I’d say. “I just nip off the raggedy pieces.”

            One time she held up a dresser cloth by its top corners. "Ta da!" she sang.
            I shook my head in wonder. Gracie made the best French knots ever.

            “Do you have a hope chest, Pet?” she said.

            I shook my head. “No, ma’am. What’s a hope chest?”

            Her eyebrows flew up then the corner of her right eye fluttered. She did the exact same thing whenever she heard someone take the Lord’s name in vain.

            “A hope chest is what a young lady uses to store things she’ll need later in life, when she’s married.”

            I scrunched up my nose, stuck out my tongue.

            “Then I don’t want a hope chest. No way I’m getting married. I’ve lived all my life with three brothers I don’t like much and a daddy I do. That’s enough men for me. I wanna be like you when I grow up. Live all by myself with a blue parakeet named Dicky Bird.”

            She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth, closed my right hand in hers, and led me upstairs for the first time in my life. We entered the first door on the right. There was a bed against one wall, a dresser across from it, and an ironing board over to the side, under a window. When Gracie bent to plug in the iron, I almost asked why she didn’t sleep up here since it was so pretty, but something pinched my lips and kept me quiet, a rare thing.

            I smiled at the black and white portrait of her and Mac that hung on the wall. He wore a dark suit and Gracie was in a dress, same as always. I imagined the dress was cobalt blue and its crouton-looking pattern, butter yellow. I went over to stand in the sunbeam that was pouring through the window. I squinted against the light as I pulled a deep breath into my lungs through my nose. When it came back out, it seemed frayed and silvery gray. I super duper wished Mr. Mac was still alive. He was a big man and the world had seemed safer with him in it, right next door.

            Gracie left the room for a minute, to get water for the iron. While she was gone, I turned around slowly in the middle of the room, tried to memorize the details in case she never brought me up there again. I bet Mac and Gracie slept in this room every night of their married life, fifty some odd years, him and her nestled together like quotation marks.  Maybe that’s why she slept down in the living room now. Because she missed him so. Perhaps it hurt her heart to lay all alone under their wedding ring quilt that still had someone's teeny pencil marks on it, between smooth and cool, bleached bright white by the sun, percale sheets. Or perhaps this was a shrine to Mac and she only visited once a week or when she had pressing to do. I searched the room to see if maybe she had a small candle to light in remembrance of him like they did at the big Catholic church I could see from one of my bedroom windows. My best friend Karen had taken me to mass there once.

            I traced the picture frame then used my pointer finger to cover the place where Mr. Mac’s heart had been.

            “I always had a feeling about you, Big Mac,” I said inside my head, “that I could ask your help with anything and you’d give it.” For some reason though, I’d never asked him for anything, never did manage to work up the nerve.

            Gracie smoothed the dresser cloth along the length of the ironing board. Licked two fingers and pounced them on the iron’s surface. Her spit sizzled. She covered her needlework with a clean, white cloth and set the iron on top of it carefully.

            “We’re going to press this,” she said, even though I was pretty sure she’d be the only one ironing, “and then we’ll wrap it in tissue paper. I’ll keep it here with me until you’re ready for it.”

            I didn't argue because something about her tone assured me I wouldn't win. Gracie knew stuff. I don't know how, but she did. In that moment, studying that picture, I wondered if Mr. Mac did too.