Glitter and Glue (15 page)

My mom put her arms on Mrs. Maroney’s shoulders and said to me, “How would you like this crazy gal right here to be your mother?” and everyone laughed. Mrs. M. was jokey and she bought me an ice cream once, but even so, I didn’t think I was supposed to be some other lady’s daughter, and it threw me that my dad had liked someone else before he liked my mom.

“Come over to me, Nelly Norrigan!” Mrs. Wilson said. She lived on our street and had a Swedish accent and liked to pinch my ear. Her first name was Birgitta, but all the Pigeons called her BiBi. She pulled me into her in a way that made me feel special. “What do you think about all this, little Nelly Norrigan?” I told her I thought it was time for me to take her on in backgammon and she said, “Ooh
la la
, little girlie feeling brave.”

We set up the board. My mom came over, and I played like she’d taught me. I rolled my dice with the cup, I did the lover’s leap, I made points in my home base. But soon enough my mom drifted off to play cards on the screened-in porch, and as her shadow pulled away from the board, I rolled something crappy and panicked.

“Ooh, playing it safe, Nelly Norrigan.”

I should have taken a risk, left a man open. I knew it was dumb, but my mom leaving before I was finished flustered me. I wanted her to stand by, be my witness.

A few mornings later, back at Lewiston, I roll over and pull the clock closer so I can read it. Seven-thirty. Shit. I hustle into the kitchen, cleaning my glasses on the shirt I slept in.

“Morning, Kelly,” John says.

“Hi. Can I help with lunches?”

“Ta.” John is finally letting me take something over.

“Hi, Kelly,” Evan says, appearing behind me. It’s strange to see him at this hour. Maybe he couldn’t sleep. “Morning, John.”

John turns to face his stepson. “Good morning, Evan.”

“I checked on Pop,” Evan reports, as if this is standard family procedure. “He’s up. In his chair.”

“I’ll look in on him,” John says. “Thanks.”

Evan glances at me on his way out of the kitchen, not touching the morning paper and offering no explanation for his untimely appearance.

While I finish the lunches, John goes outside to cut some blooms from the bushes out front. He brings in a large bouquet, hydrangea, I think, and ties it together with string.

Later, with the kids at school and John painting, I wait for Evan to come in for
Santa Barbara
, but he never does. For lack of anything better to do, I rearrange the cookbooks, balancing the
skinny, tall spines with the squatter ones. I wipe down the windowsills and get going on the silverware drawer, removing all the knives, forks, and spoons to clean out their plastic beds. The drawer itself, inside and out, needs attention, which means all the drawers in the kitchen do, which in turn implicates the walls, the baseboards, the whole room. Rehabilitation is addictive. I bet this is why John paints all the time, drawn to work that carries the promise of daily progress and inevitable completion, living for the day he can stand back with his hands on his hips and say, “Our house was shabby and unkempt, and now look, it’s shipshape!”

Eventually, after reorganizing the pantry and wiping down each shelf with cleaner, I decide to make Toll House cookies. I have less than an hour before pickup, and I’d rather the house smell like a bakery than a hospital.

While the last batch bakes, I change my shirt, redo my ponytail, and rub some extra deodorant in my pits. There’s nothing happening with Mr. Graham, or apparently Evan either, but still, I have my pride.

“Okay, I’m heading out!” I call to John while I set the cookie tray on an extra oven mitt.

“No, no, I got it,” he says, stepping into the kitchen with a fresh shirt on and his hair combed, reminding me of the day I met him.

“I thought I’d get them so you could keep painting.”

“No more painting. Today, uh, today is Ellen’s birthday, so the kids and I are going to take her flowers.”

“Oh.” I stand upright.

“Martin wants to give her his pinwheel.”

“Of course. I’ll be here then.”

After John leaves, I lower myself into a chair and find that
I’ve bowed my head and crossed my hands the way I used to in church after taking Communion. I picture Martin piercing the ground with his plastic pinwheel and Milly tilting a bouquet against her mother’s headstone. The words
Dear God
come to mind. That’s how I started all my petitions growing up,
Dear God
, like I was writing a letter from Camp Tockwogh. Nothing else comes to me after that, so I just say it again.
Dear God. Dear God
. I cover my mouth, looking over my knuckles, my eyes landing on a framed photo of the kids, determined not to cry, because who the hell am I to be crying? I don’t know anything. My mom is fine, right where I left her, waiting for me to come home and grow up, or come home grown up.

When the kids and John get back, I look them over for signs of grief—ruddy eyes, grass stains on their knees—but they seem the same.

“That was all right,” John says, sounding pleased.

“I’m so glad,” I say, happy that he’s happy, or happy-ish.

After dinner, John tells the kids they can sleep with him tonight, and as they dash to their room to get in pajamas, he leans back against the counter. “I think it really went well.”

I stop the faucet. “I’m so glad,” I repeat.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at the event from a distance, like a foreman surveying his construction project.

For a moment we stand there, still strangers, but friendly strangers, strangers who can share space, strangers who care, until the kids appear in the doorway ready for Daddy. Now that I understand what today is, I want to find Evan and make sure he knows that somebody is worrying over him, but he never
comes in, and I suspect he’s working overtime at the store, stocking shelves and breaking down boxes like a madman, trying to hear the sound of his mother’s voice saying something perfect, something like
I see you working so hard, honey
, something like
I’m here, I promise
.

As a treat after yesterday’s trip to the cemetery, I decide to take the kids straight from school to Darling Harbour to go paddle-boating.

The rental hut is easy to find, and after a short wait, a girl around my age whose name tag says
MEGGIE
hands us three life preservers and points us toward a row of colorful plastic boats.

“Righto, then, have yourselves a go.”

The American in me, conditioned by a thousand TV ads for personal injury lawyers, wants paperwork to sign, a deposit, critical instructions about where not to go. “Go on now,” carefree Meggie says to us.

“Ta,” I say, and the kids look at me like I’m a total sham. “What? Can’t I say
ta
? Ta, luv! Ta, darling! Good on ya. No worries, mates.”

“That’s not how we talk!” Milly shouts.

“Ah, my little sheila, that’s a bit dodgy, now, isn’t it?”

“You sound like a pirate!” she says, squinting at me.

“Arrr—”

Martin runs to the boats. “Let’s do this one!”

“I’m going in the back,” Milly says, carefully climbing on.

Martin’s next to me, a yellow life vest hanging loosely off his shoulders.

This is the kind of mother I’m going to be. The kind who gets up and goes, does funny voices, who lives a tourist’s life in
her hometown, sifting through the paper looking for outings and activities, festivals and nature walks and community potlucks, inspiring her children with her endlessly redoubling energy!

I pedal madly, propelling us by inches. Martin slides forward to help but his feet barely touch the pedals. I sit up straighter to get some leverage. We ride awhile in silence, picking up a nice current. The harbor is huge in front of us. I hope they’ll remember this. I should’ve brought my camera.

After a while, Milly asks, “When do we turn back?”

“Never!” I reprise my pirate voice.

As we get farther out, the water gets choppier. My thighs are burning, but I don’t mind, because this is what I’m here to do: wake them up, thrill them, snap them back into their childhoods.

“This is far!” Martin says, glancing back at the dock, which is small now.

I squeeze his knee. “Not far enough! We’re going to the ends of the earth, laddie!” I paddle faster and harder. Little waves splash in around our feet.

“When do we go back?” Milly asks.

“We have loads of time!” I paddle on. “We have the boat for an hour. Look out there—see those guys!” I point to a family way out in front of us.

“That’s really far,” Martin says.

There’s a moment of quiet.

“Should we sing a sailing song?” I suggest.

No response.

“Come on, mates, sing something for me to paddle to.”

“I want to go back!” Milly shouts. I turn. She has the fire of the betrayed in her eyes. “I want to go home! Now!”

“Oh, honey, we can turn around. Watch this. I can turn us
right around, and we can go back.” She is not satisfied. She starts to cry. “Look, there’s the docking area. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She cries louder, her usual stoicism falling off like a costume that never really fit.

“We’ll get there! Look how fast I’m going,” I say desperately. “As fast as I can paddle.” She cries bigger still, bigger than she is, as big as machine-gun blasts.

“I can paddle, too!” Martin says, wanting to help.

As I light my thighs on fire paddling us to shore, I think,
Thank God her mother can’t see this
. It’d be torture to watch someone mistake your daughter’s autonomy routine for actual fearlessness.

That night at bedtime, Martin begs me to read him a section from Milly’s
Seven Wonders
book. “Please, just a little?”

I slip into bed next to him and start reading about the Pyramids in a quiet monotone, so Milly will know I remember that the book has bad associations for her. “ ‘The Pyramids were made by thousands of slaves.’ ”

“What are slaves?”

“Um, people who work but don’t get paid. People who have to do whatever the boss tells them to do. They have no choice.”

“Like you,” Martin says.

“No,” I laugh. “I get paid, and I have a choice. I can say no. I can quit.”

“You get paid?”

“Of course she does!” Milly calls out from her bed around the corner.

“I do.”

“Who pays for you?”

“Daddy does,” Milly answers.

“Your dad pays me to help out, to clean up, to drive—”

“You can quit?” Martin asks.

“I
can
. I could. If I needed to. If things were unfair or something.”

“Is this fair?” he asks, referring to all of it, I suppose.

“For her!” Milly chimes in.

“Everything’s going great.” He checks my expression for signs of deceit. “We’re good, I promise.” With the matter more or less resolved, he turns back around. I squeeze him, wondering when to remind him that, fair or no, even if I wouldn’t mind staying a little longer, I still have to leave in early July.

As we move into the “Statue of Zeus” section, Milly sighs like a librarian who’s told us to hush once already.

“ ‘Zeus—,’ ” I start.

Milly throws off her comforter, and for a moment I think she’s going to storm out of the room and peel around the house, looking for someone to petition.
Daddy! Pop! Ev! They’re reading the stupid boy book and I can’t sleep!
But her father is working an overnight flight, her grandfather is too old to be awake after 7:30
P.M.
, and her half brother is at the supermarket.

Martin elbows me to keep going.

“One sec, bud.”

Milly comes around to Martin’s bed, her ponytail almost shot, her hair falling around her face the way it does, implying her future self.

“Hi,” I say, projecting nonchalance.

She stands at the side of the bed, her eyes on an illustration of Zeus. “When is Daddy coming home?”

“Not until tomorrow.” I lift the blanket. “Wanna get in? I
was just going to read one more section—” She looks around, biting her lip. She stares at us, hating her lack of options.

“Fine,” she says, and wriggles between my legs, tobogganstyle. I’m barely breathing as she rests her head on my chest. “Go,” she says.