The Song Reader (22 page)

I had a habit of going wherever I wanted in the store. Dad always took a long time buying things; it made him really nervous. I was over in the toys when I saw my sister. She was dressed in her pizza shop red-and-white shirt and red slacks. “You’re coming with me to work today,” she said. She picked me up and smiled. “I asked my boss and he said he could use a good table setter like you.”

I was always begging to go with her, and I was thrilled. We were already in her old VW bug, headed out of the mall, when I panicked. “What about Dad?” I crawled on my knees and looked out the back window. “We forgot about Dad!”

“Sit down,” she said. “You need your seat belt.”

“He’ll be scared!”

“It’s okay. I told him I was taking you.”

I was still looking back at the Woolworth’s, but she told me to sit down again before changing the topic to how busy it would be at the pizza place. Friday night and all. Good tips for waitresses and even little busgirls like me.

The sad part was, they knew he wouldn’t call the police. He probably wouldn’t even ask the clerks for help. He would call Mom at work. He would turn to the one person who wanted him to believe I was in danger because he wasn’t watching me close enough.

At some point, Mary Beth must have called and acted like she found me. Maybe she even said I was hurt. I’d fallen in the street. Got lost in the woods behind the mall. Ended up with a stranger who hadn’t harmed me—this time.

I didn’t really care about the specifics; the end result was the same. Dr. Kaplan said they persuaded him, but that wasn’t the word. They taught him I’d be better off without him. They conspired together to make my father go away.

Dr. Kaplan’s voice brought me back to now. “You haven’t answered my question. Are you all right, Leeann?”

“Yes,” I told her, because it was true. I was all right. But after I excused myself to go to the bathroom, I went straight to the pay phone in the front hall and called a cab. Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the backseat, headed to the Arch. I’d left a note with the hospital intake clerk, of course. I didn’t want them to worry I’d disappeared.

The Arch line was much longer than before. It was dark by the time I made it to the top, but the city looked even more beautiful lit by the green and red of tiny traffic lights, the warm yellow of restaurants and hotels, the fluorescent blue of offices being cleaned. I didn’t have to wish I could be part of this someday, because I knew I would be. It only felt like my past was coming closer. The truth was, it was lost forever, leaving me even as I lived it. Except I was the one who would leave in the end, and I knew that, too. This was my future.

W
hen I got back to the hotel, Mike was smoking and making paper airplanes out of the hotel stationery. He already knew something was wrong because Ben had called twice to find out if I was okay. After I called Ben back—and told him I didn’t feel like talking—Mike and I sat on the bed, holding hands, while I told him what I’d remembered talking to Dr. Kaplan. When I said, “This must seem really weird to you,” he reminded me that his family wasn’t exactly the Brady Bunch.

I had the whole story out without breaking down or even shedding a tear, when Mike suddenly became curious why I never talked about my mom.

“I don’t mean what your sister and your mom did to your dad. I’m talking about your mom as your mom. Like you and her.” He was leaning back against the velvet bedspread. We were waiting for the room service we’d ordered—steaks and fries. It was after eight and we were both starving. “You were nine when she died. You must have memories of being with her as a kid.”

Before I could reply, the room service guy knocked at the door. He wheeled in a little table with two covered plates and a vase with real roses in the center. Mike gave him a tip, and I said we should eat now, talk later. “It’s not that interesting,” I told him. “I think that’s why I don’t talk about it. Plus, I really don’t remember very much.”

He didn’t object when I got up and turned on the television, thank God. The truth was, I didn’t like thinking about the way I was with my mom. But I was ten when she died—not nine—and of course I remembered. I remembered all the way back to second grade.

I would wake up in the morning, vowing to keep all my feelings to myself. No matter what happened, I would not cry. I wouldn’t even giggle, because sometimes giggling led to crying by a mechanism I could never really grasp. But then I would look out the window on the way to school and see a dog, for example. Always such a simple thing.

“I wish I could have a dog,” I said.

“Well you can’t,” Mom said. Agnes wouldn’t allow pets. I knew this, but I liked the feeling of wanting things even if I couldn’t have them. It made the world seem bigger and brighter and more alive.

“I love dogs so much.”

“You think you do, but you’ve never owned a dog.”

“I love animals,” I said, louder. “When I’m a grown-up, I’m going to be a veterinarian.”

“You have no idea what you’re going to be when you’re grown.”

“Yes I do.” My eyes were starting to itch.

“I wanted to be a dancer, and I’m the assistant director of claims.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile; it was a just-you-wait-and-see smile. “How many kids you think put my job in their fairy tales?”

“That’s you.”

“That’s everybody in town except the few people who figured out that work is the only thing that matters. Dreams are a dime a dozen.”

I could have saved it so easily. I could have said I’d work hard to be a veterinarian and she probably would have repeated her caution that it might not happen, but her voice would be proud instead of irritated; she’d give me the nod of approval I wanted so badly. I never understood why I went the other way.

“A dog is my dream,” I told her, as smugly as I could manage given the tears rolling down my face. “I’m going to name him Alfred. He’ll have long, long hair but he’ll be an inside dog because he doesn’t like a doghouse. He likes to sleep by my bed.”

And on and on, until we got to school when I said good-bye as stiffly as if she’d just shot my dog. I don’t think she even noticed. I’d heard her tell one of my teachers, “Leeann cries at the drop of the hat and she’ll drop the hat.”

Mom had a seemingly endless list of ways to express the pointlessness of crying.

“No use crying over spilt milk.”

“No use crying for the moon.”

“Your tears and a quarter will just about buy a cup of coffee.”

Every time I cried, she lost respect for me. Sometimes I wanted to slap myself for failing again and again.

“There’s nothing wrong with crying,” my sister would say, slipping me her point of view the same way she thrust coins into my hand after I’d spent my allowance. About half the time, her sympathy would start me bawling again. “Poor baby,” she’d say and hug me so close, my tears would wet the front of her shirt.

She herself never cried, though. And she never criticized Mom.

“Mom is only trying to keep us from suffering the things she did.”

“Mom had such a hard life.”

“If you knew what Mom had been through, you’d see why she wants us to be tough.”

I wasn’t tough, though. I wanted to be, but I just wasn’t. I was good in school and I was a nice girl, according to my teachers. I was well liked; I always got invited to birthday parties. But I wasn’t tough—and I wasn’t a hard worker, at least that’s what Mom said. She wanted me to be more like Mary Beth, who had started her own ironing business the summer when she was only seven. I heard the story constantly growing up. Mary Beth would go to all the houses in the neighborhood, getting a dime for each shirt, a nickel for a pair of pants. She made over fifty dollars and she gave it all to Mom and Dad, to help pay for her school clothes.

At seven, I spent most of my time reading or playing pretend games. In my favorite game, I was a unicorn, prancing through the forest, my white coat gleaming in the sunlight. When people would see me, they would ask if I’d like a ribbon and I would nod my beautiful unicorn head. I had red ones and blue ones and purple ones, and I wore them around my neck as I ran around our apartment. Mary Beth bought them for me because she knew about the game.

I remember one time I asked my sister why she’d started that ironing business. I’d heard about it so many times from Mom, but I’d never heard my sister’s version.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” she said, and shrugged. We were in her Volkswagen, just the two of us.

“But why did you do all that work? I mean, you hate ironing.”

She laughed a little. “I guess I thought it would make Mom happy. It was worth it for that.”

I wanted to make Mom happy, but I also wanted to be happy, and I had trouble reconciling the two. Making Mary Beth happy was so much easier and more fun. All I had to do was draw her a picture or find her a flower or even just tell her something I was thinking about. “I wonder why the leaves turn color.” “I think when I’m grown I’ll live in Canada.” “I wish the people in my books were real. The nice ones anyway.”

“You’re such a great little girl,” my sister would say, smiling. “I’m so proud of you.”

I always wanted this from my mother, but maybe she just didn’t have it to give.

She did try to make sure Mary Beth and I had the things she’d missed out on. I knew the story about Mom’s name almost as well as the ironing story. Mom had grown up Helen Fenton, no middle name, not even an initial. When she had her first daughter, she not only wrote a middle name on the birth certificate, she called her baby by both her first name, Mary, and a shortened version of her middle name, Elizabeth. When I was born, Mom went even further, choosing a first name that was already two names combined and a big middle name, too. Mary Beth told me that Mom started out saying “Leeann Michelle” whenever she talked to me, but it was just too long a name for such a little baby, and finally she settled for Leeann.

Of course the main thing she gave us that she didn’t have was a home. She gave us a place to live, food on the table, clothes for school, a warm bed at night. And I knew what a big deal that was now, watching Juanita take care of my family. I should have known before, watching Mary Beth do it all, except with Mary Beth it always looked so easy.

Sometimes I still felt tricked by how easy it seemed, living with my sister. Easy enough to be permanent.

Mike had just finished my last french fry when I asked him if we could go to sleep now.

“It’s only eight forty-five.” He sounded annoyed.

“Just turn the light off then. You can keep watching TV, but I’m wiped out.”

He didn’t say anything, but he snapped off the lamp. I went into the bathroom and put on my new extra-large Arch T-shirt and my terry cloth sleep shorts, and crawled into the other side of the king-size bed. I knew I wasn’t sexy, but I didn’t care. I was determined to fall asleep, so I could stop thinking about my mother.

Mike was watching some cop movie. I closed my eyes and tried to listen intently to the show, but the thoughts kept coming.

The week before Mom’s car accident, I’d come down with a summer cold. That’s what Mom said it was; Mary Beth said it had to be the flu because I was running a fever.

“I’m going to stay home with her.” My sister was whispering.

“You don’t need to do that,” Mom said. They were standing in my bedroom. I had my pink bedspread pulled up to my shoulders because I was shivering. Mom came closer to the bed and peered into my face. “Will you be all right alone?”

“Yes.” My voice sounded like a frog’s croak; my lips felt like they were splitting with the effort of opening them. But I knew Mom liked that I rarely got sick. I had one of the best attendance records at Tainer Elementary, and I’d heard her tell my teachers that I had a “tough constitution”—I could fight off any germ.

Mary Beth leaned down and put her hand on my forehead. “The last time I took it, it was 102 and it feels worse now.”

“All right. You go on, I’ll call and tell my boss I won’t be in. I can take the time off.” After a moment, Mom pointed to the door. “Go on. You’re late already.”

Mary Beth leaned down and kissed me lightly on the cheek. “I’ll bring you some cake.” I always wanted the cake at her restaurant; it had such thick icing. Her voice sounded sweet like that icing. “Hope you feel better, honey.”

She left and Mom went into the living room to watch TV. I fell asleep for a while, and when I woke up, Mom was sitting on the edge of my bed, announcing that my temperature was down.

“I do feel a little better,” I said, but when I tried to lean up on one elbow, I realized I couldn’t; I was still too weak.

“I told you it’s just a cold.” She stood up and let out a long breath. “You think you can handle being alone for a while? I really need to go in for the eleven-thirty meeting if there’s any way.”

I nodded; of course I could handle it. I’d been alone before when I was sick. The only thing I really hated was vomiting, but I knew what to do if it happened. Make it to the toilet, and if you don’t make it, clean up your mess quickly before the nausea comes back.

It was July, and a very hot day, already pushing ninety when Mom left. I had two fans blowing on me, but when my fever started climbing again, I had to get out of my tiny room. I wandered the apartment, too dizzy to focus on anything or think about what I could do to stop this. Then the nausea started. I must have vomited half a dozen times before my sister came home. I stayed on the bathroom floor, so I wouldn’t miss the toilet, and also because the tile felt cool. I knew I was really bad off because the panty hose drying on the shower bar looked like they were moving, coming alive.

My temperature was 106 when Mary Beth found me. She sponged me off with cool water, gave me Tylenol, put ice in my hands, and kept it up until my fever dropped back down to 102 and I went back to bed. Mom came home about a half hour later. They were standing in the doorway of my room when Mary Beth told her what happened. Mom didn’t make any excuses for herself. She let out a curse and said she’d been wrong to leave me. “Her fever seemed like it broke, but I should have known it could go up again. I made a big mistake.”

She meant it; she felt bad and she told me she was sorry several times. But a few days later, I overheard her telling my day camp counselor that I might miss more camp before the summer was over. “Leeann used to fight off everything that came around.” Mom shrugged. “I don’t know why she’s become so sickly lately.”

I’d only been sick one other time in the last year, but I didn’t bother defending myself. Mom said the word “sickly” the same way she said “whiner” or “crier”: with a sneer in her voice. She herself was never sick. She always said she couldn’t afford to be.

Was there anything about me she did like? Lying in the king-size bed, listening to the gunfire in Mike’s movie, I couldn’t think of a single thing. I’d admitted to Ben that I was a little afraid of her, but I’d never even admitted to myself the other part—until now. I never felt like she loved me.

I didn’t realize I was crying until Mike rolled next to me and pulled me in his arms. When he asked what was wrong, it all poured out. He listened so well it made me even sadder.

“I’m not very tough,” I said, when I could catch my breath between sobs. “I try to be, but then I end up like this, a bawling mess.”

I don’t know how long I sobbed; it felt like forever. When I finally calmed down, I was lying against his chest, he was stroking my hair—and I decided to tell him about Kyle. I wanted him to know why I was reluctant to have sex. I told him the whole story and he was so nice about it, so nice about everything, that I decided tonight was the night; I would do what he wanted. And I was going to tell him so, but I was really tired, I had to close my eyes for a minute. The next thing I knew, it was seven-thirty in the morning and he was already up, taking a shower.

I was sitting on the bed when he came out of the bathroom. I had thrown on my jeans and sweater, but I wasn’t sure what was going on.