All That's True (17 page)

I don’t know what’s going on with my mother and father. They’re being very kind to each other. We’re on our way to Henry’s funeral. Beth is wearing her little black dress that she used to say everyone should have. Now I know why. I don’t have a black dress. My mother says I should wear my navy blue one that has little squares on it. I hate that dress, but I’m too sad to argue.

My father drives us over to the funeral home, Evans and Matthews. It’s an enormous older house that has many sections to it. It’s quite beautiful and looks like a house that an old couple might still live in. The house has black shutters on all the windows and little flower boxes below each one. It doesn’t look like the kind of place that would have dead bodies in every room. Whenever I see this house, I picture an old woman pouring iced tea on the front porch and saying, “More, my dear?”

But this is the house where they have Henry and he’s not having any tea, that’s for sure. They have him in the third room on the left with a little sign with his name out front. Henry Lewis. I run my hands over his name, wishing I could erase it. I don’t want it posted here. I’d rather see it someplace else, like maybe in the newspaper for doing some kind deed, which would be just like him, or maybe in a garden book showing off his herb garden with Rosa standing right by his side smiling. I think of all the things Henry could still be doing and something grabs hold of my chest and won’t let me breathe. I swallow hard and take my father’s hand. He pats my shoulder and says it will be alright. Henry’s in a better place, he says. That’s a stupid thing to say. He’s in a box. I just nod my head and squeeze my eyes shut and try to stop the tears.

It’s a pretty nice box they have him in—I’ll give Evans and Matthews that. It’s lined in satin the color of cotton and Henry is dressed in the gray suit he always wore on Sunday when he drove us to church. He’d park the car and then come sit beside us. He’s not Catholic but he never let that stop him. He’d lean down on the kneeler and wink at me. My mother loved having Henry join us. She thought she’d converted him. But in truth Henry was a Baptist. He said he stopped going to that church when he found out a bunch of them were hypocrites.

“How did you know?” I asked him.

He said it was written on their other face.

“Their other face?”

“Yes,” he said. “The ones I ran into had two of them, one for church and one for the world.”

I guess he thought the Catholics don’t—have two faces that is—but if you ask me, they have too many opinions.

So now I’m staring at Henry and his face is frozen in place and I’m wondering why they call this a wake. Then I remember reading that centuries ago people were often buried alive and no one knew except when the graves were unearthed for some reason and they saw the claw marks, so the English—I believe it was the English—starting having viewings where they stayed up all night long and viewed the body to see if it would wake. And I’m standing here and picturing Henry sitting up and saying, “Hi Andi, why did they embalm me?” And I burst out laughing and I cannot stop laughing. I keep hearing Henry saying, “Andi? Andi? What’s going on here?” My mother is about to faint. She has her hand on her neck and is taking deep breaths and my father has his arm around me and is saying, “Andi, stop it! What’s wrong?”

Everything’s wrong. Henry’s dead. My father’s having an affair with Donna. My mother knows. I lost the love of my life before I had a chance to have him as the love of my life, and I’m just feeling all-around miserable. And he asks what’s wrong.

***

My father is moving out. His suitcases are already packed. They’re in the front hallway. I’d love to go and just dump everything that’s in them out on the floor. Throw a tantrum. Instead, I sit in the library, doing nothing. When I peek around the corner I notice my father is coming my way. I go back and sit down. He enters the room and scratches the back of his head, like maybe he’s more at a loss as to what to say than I am.

“Andi,” he says. He takes a seat next to me on the leather sofa. I’ve always loved this room. Now it will never be one of my favorite places again. I’ll always remember it as the room my father sat in before he left us. That makes me cry. He puts his arm around me.

“Andi,” he says again. “Your mother and I have decided this is for the best.”

“Best for who?” I ask. My father hands me his handkerchief. Of course it smells of Herrera for Men which makes me cry all the harder.

“It’s complicated, Andi,” my father explains. “Your mother and I need some time away from each other to think things through. But I’m not leaving you. I’ll be available whenever you want to see me.”

“So, you’re leaving Mom,” I say. “Just like that, after all these years. Just break up our family. Throw everything away.” I blow my nose into his handkerchief and hand it back to him. My father takes it and looks at it and then looks at me, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s usually never speechless, but he is right now. He must really be upset, too. He stuffs the handkerchief into his back pocket, which isn’t something he would normally do. He’d drop it on the floor and let Rosa tend to it. Already he’s acting like he doesn’t live here.

“You’re getting a divorce,” I say. I want it to be a question but it comes out like a statement.

“That’s—that’s one of the things we’ll need to discuss, your mother and I.” He puts his arm around my shoulder. “When you’re older, Andi, you’ll understand that these things happen. People grow apart.”

He takes hold of both my shoulders and turns me around to face him. “Right now, I’m more worried about you. Your mother told me you stayed out all night on the ship. Andi, do you have any idea what could have happened to you?”

“But nothing did,” I say. “We just drank all this stuff and got sick and then just passed out and when we woke up we got out of there. They didn’t even know we were gone. They were worse off than we were.”

“I want you to make better choices in the future,” he says. “We can’t be there for you every waking moment. We can’t lock you in your room. We want to have faith in you, to know that you’ll be okay.”

I’d like him to make better choices, too. I’d like him to stop seeing Donna and stay home where he belongs. But I nod my head like a good daughter and tell him I will make better choices. I’ve learned my lesson.

“Are you ever coming back, Daddy?”

“I don’t know, Andi. That’s why I’m going away—to find out.”

My father leans over and kisses me on the cheek and pats my head. “Take care of your mother, okay? She’s going to need you right now. She’s not feeling well at all.”

Right, like he could care.

Bridget’s back. She and Vivian weren’t happy to see us leave the cruise ship, but they managed to have a pretty good time regardless.

“The Parade of Chefs the last night was so cool,” Bridget says. “They marched around the dining room waving hankies and the music was loud enough to blow the roof off.”

She also got to feed the stingrays and windsurf in Labadee. And there was a beach party they went to on the north coast of Haiti.

“It was at Dragon’s Breath Point,” Bridget explains, “where all the pirates used to hide out. These guys cooked our food right in a pit on the beach.”

We’re in my bedroom playing Clue. I move my token into the library and then move Mr. Green and the rope in with me. “I say the crime was committed in the library by Mr. Green with the rope,” I say, convinced I’m right. Bridget immediately produces Mr. Green’s card and disproves my theory. She’s won the last three times. It takes a good memory to win this game and the only thing my memory is good for lately is remembering my father has left my mother and I’m miserable.

Tonight we’re going over to visit Amy and Jeffrey and baby Joshua. I’m really looking forward to that. The only thing is—my father won’t be going with us. He’s leased a furnished condominium near Lenox Mall. It’s on the twentieth floor and has a view of the Atlanta skyline. All of the furniture is sleek and modern. It looks exactly like what a rich bachelor would have. It’s really beautiful and I hate it. The furniture is stainless steel and black with chocolate-brown and white throw pillows. And there’s large vases of fresh flowers in the entryway, which has an enormous mirror over a credenza with a sculpture of a horse resting on top. Double doors lead to the corridor outside his unit, where there are two elevators side-by-side that remind me of the ones they have in fancy hotels. And there’s an elaborate sign outside the building that says, The Landing at Peachtree.

My father’s three thousand square foot unit has three bedrooms. If he’s just going away for a while to think, why did he take such a big place? Exactly. He’s going to divorce my mother and is too much of a coward to tell me. Sometimes when I look at him now I want to stick pins in his face, but mostly I just want to throw my arms around his neck and beg him to come home for good.

Bridget taps my knee. I stop daydreaming and go back to the game. “I say Colonel Mustard did it in the kitchen with the knife,” she says. I have nothing in my hand to prove otherwise. Bridget checks the envelope and sure enough it’s Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the knife. I don’t know how she does it.

“You win,” I say. “I’ve had enough. How about you? Want to get something to snack on?”

She nods her head and collects the game board pieces. I gather the cards and the board and put them back in the box and slide it under my bed. We head to the kitchen. Rosa is there making chicken enchiladas. My mouth starts to water. If it were possible I’d eat the air. It smells that good.

“Want to stay for dinner?” I say.

“I can’t,” Bridget says. “My dad’s taking us out to eat. Donna has something important she wants to share with us, or so she says.”

“God! Maybe she’s going to tell your dad she’s seeing my father.”

Bridget shrugs her shoulders. “She’s getting her real estate license. I think it’s about that. She’s all excited because she’s going to work for Harry Norman Realtors.”

“What for?”

“Don’t ask me,” Bridget says. “I have no idea.” She looks at the clock on the wall next to the breakfast table and heads for the door. “I gotta go. I told my Dad I’d be back by five.”

***

I’m bouncing Joshua on my knee and he is having the best time. He already has his two bottom front teeth and one coming in on top. He leans against me and starts chewing on one of my buttons.

“No no, Joshua,” I say and gently pull it out of his mouth. “You could choke on that, you little monkey.” I scoop him up in my arms and dance around the room with him.

“Careful, Andréa,” my mother says. “He’s not a doll.”

She’s sitting at the kitchen table and looking at a baby album Amy has put together. Jeffrey has a late class this evening. He’s working days now in my father’s law firm and going to school at night. My father is going to take him into the firm when he graduates from law school. But that’s ages from now. He hasn’t even gotten his undergraduate degree yet, but my father has it all planned out.

It suits me fine. It means they’ll be staying in Atlanta and we’ll get to watch Joshua grow up. I wonder if it hurts my mother to look at him. He looks like the pictures we have of Alex when he was a baby. If it does hurt her, you wouldn’t know it. But then, maybe she’s in so much pain over my father leaving that she’s come to expect her life to be just one big pain after another. At least she’s not drinking. She’s going to her meetings again every day. Maybe that’s what’s holding her together, those meetings and the friends she’s made there.

It really surprises me that my mother is staying sober. If anything could make you want to knock yourself out it would be the fact that your husband has left you for a younger woman. But, even though it surprises me, the fact that she is sober does not feel like something I can count on. It’s too soon to tell.

Presently, I’m keeping busy by volunteering at the nursing home. So far they haven’t assigned me any new people to visit. I just wander around and make sure everyone is okay wherever they’re sitting. I ask them how they are and if I can get them anything. I’m waiting for one of them to say, “Sure, girlie, I’d like a gin and tonic.” Like that would be coming right up. Most of them just stare at me. It’s really sad. I don’t want to live to be this old if all I do is sit in a wheelchair and drool.

Of course, I’m still visiting Mrs. Sterling, and she’s back to being her feisty self. In fact she’s making a play for the new man on the block.

“He’s a looker,” she says.

And she’s right. He is very good looking. He still has all his hair and is tall and tan. His name is George and he’s eighty-five years old, but you’d never know it. And he’s in good shape. The first thing he asked when he got here was, “Where’s the gym?”

They don’t have one, but they let his son bring his weights and install them in a corner of the library. So now every female here that still has her faculties is camped out in the library every morning at eight a.m. to watch him do his stuff.

Regardless of Mavis’s wrinkles, she is a fine-looking woman and she’s the one that catches George’s eye. Whenever I get here at lunchtime they’re always sitting next to each other. Mrs. Sterling turns to me and says, “Hello, Andi. Guess how many push-ups George did today?” He does them while he’s parked on his knees, but still that is really something. Most of the other men here are just sitting in wheelchairs or being wheeled to the hospital on a gurney.

George always turns to me and says, “There’s our angel—the prettiest one in the bunch.” He’s a charmer, alright. He has Mavis wrapped around his finger. I still read to her, but George joins us and he has me reading poetry. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I should get extra points in English for this. Today I’m reading “A Thought For a Lonely Death-Bed.” Talk about depressing. Mavis asked for that one. But the ending is pretty:

But stoop thyself to gather my life’s rose,

And smile away my mortal to divine.

Since Mr. Sterling is gone I picture George gathering her in his arms as she takes her last breath and it pinches a little corner of my heart.

George asks me to read “A Woman’s Shortcomings.” And Mavis laughs and says, “Don’t look at me. I don’t have any.”

“This one is an ode to lasting love,” George explains.

I get to the part that says,

Unless you can swear “for life, for death!”

Oh, fear to call it loving!

So George must be right. It is about lasting love. And Mavis did love Mr. Sterling to his death, so her being with George feels okay. Now they’re holding hands and Mavis has never looked happier. And she never says curse words around George. That part’s nice. And when I read, I never have to shout at them.

Still, I miss Mr. Sterling. He had so much spunk. I can still hear him. He’s yelling in my ear, “WHAT’D YOU SAY, GIRLIE?”

***

Beth has decided to go to law school and has applied to Emory so she can continue to live at home. This is making my father very happy. “You can join my law firm, once you graduate. Keep it in the family.”

I hope he is not counting on me following in her footsteps. I have no desire to be a lawyer. Actually, I have no desire to be anything right now. Life is just too depressing at the moment to want to do anything.

Beth makes the announcement at dinner. She even taps her spoon against her water glass to call us to attention and waits for Rosa to join us.

Rosa puts her arms around Beth and kisses her on the cheek. “Is good,” she says. “Make your father big happy, yes?” Rosa looks at me and nods her head.

Like I am interested if my father is big happy. He should be miserable for what he’s done. My mother doesn’t talk about him other than to say he’s called and wants me to call him back, that sort of thing. But in my heart I know she is hurting. My mother has always been devoted to my father and that is not something that ends just because he leaves. This is why I am afraid that my mother will start drinking again. Eventually she will not be able to keep herself together. I tell myself it’s a matter of time. That’s another reason why I’m so depressed. Why can’t I believe in her? Beth does. She says, “Mother is making great strides. She’s stronger than you think.”

But how does she know this? And how can she be so sure? The only thing I am sure of is that life is not ever going to be the same. My father has not come back and it doesn’t look like he’s going to.