“She thinks that’s my name.”
“Don’t you want to tell her what your real name is?”
“Naw.” He waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, what does it mean to rustle up a couple of cows and make them cry?”
“It means to serve up a couple of hamburgers with onions.”
“Oh.” I leaned back against the padded bench and looked hard at Daddy. He was gazing intently after Darlene, watching as she moved behind the counter, where she pulled the coffee carafe from the burner. She was young and pretty, with wide blue eyes and heavily sprayed blond hair that turned up into a perfect flip at the ends. She moved with an ease and a confidence that told me she’d been doing her job for a long time, though she couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. Probably not even that old.
She carried the coffee back to our table and filled Daddy’s cup almost to the brim. As she poured, she indicated my presence with a quick roll of her eyes in my direction. “Your niece is real cute, Nelson. How old did you say she is?”
Daddy rubbed his cheek thoughtfully. “She’s eleven,” he said at length. “She’ll be twelve in May” – he looked at me – “right, honey?”
I nodded. At least there was one accurate statement floating around the table.
“Well now, she’s going to be a real heartbreaker one day. You’d best keep your eye on that one once the boys start coming around.” Darlene’s full red lips turned up in a smile, and she actually winked one blue eye at Daddy.
“That’s what I aim to do, if I have any say in the matter,” Daddy said.
“Sure I can’t get you some cream for that coffee?”
“No thanks, Darlene.”
“All right. You just holler if you need anything.”
The front door opened and a trio of teenagers came in; Darlene turned her attention to them.
I looked at Daddy questioningly. “She thinks I’m your niece?”
He shrugged, took a sip of the hot coffee. “People get confused. It’s hard to remember one customer from another.”
“Oh.” I finally unsheathed the straw and stuck it in my milk shake.
“So listen, Roz,” Daddy said, “how is everyone? How’s your mother?”
I stopped sucking and swallowed hard. “Mom’s not so good right now.”
He looked up at me abruptly, his brow heavy with concern. “How come? What’s the matter?”
“It’s Wally,” I blurted. “He ran away.”
Daddy’s eyes searched my face a long time, as though looking for evidence that I was lying. Finally he repeated what I’d just told him. “He ran away?”
“Yeah.” The word came out a whisper.
“When?”
“Just a few days ago. He left a note saying he was going to join the army.”
I waited for Daddy to say something. One corner of his mouth twitched, as if he wanted to smile but wouldn’t let himself. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, but his voice was lilting, and I didn’t believe him.
He had never liked Wally; I knew that. And Wally had never liked him. But I thought Daddy would at least be worried for Mom’s sake.
“Mom’s pretty broken up about it,” I said.
He lowered his eyes to the coffee cup. His hands cradled it for warmth. “I can imagine she is.” He lifted the cup to his lips with both hands, blew ripples across the steamy surface, then sipped at it several times. When he lowered the cup back to the saucer, he said, “I wish there was something I could do to help, but . . .” He shrugged and shook his head.
“I know.” I stirred my shake with the straw. “Mom doesn’t know you’re here. How could you help?”
“That’s right.” He seemed to wince, like the thought hurt him somehow. “Listen, Roz, I’ve got a job, I’m working – ”
“Where?”
“That doesn’t matter. There’s plenty of call for construction workers around here. When I finish this job, I’ll find another. Anyway, I’m saving money, putting it in the bank. I’m not spending it on booze. Not one red cent. And I’m going to AA, just like I said I would. I’m serious, Roz, I’m not going to drink anymore. One day, when I see your mother again, I’m going to be a new man, a changed man.”
He stopped as abruptly as he’d started. When he finished his ramble, there was only one thing I wanted to know.
“When will you see Mom again?”
He shook his head and sipped his coffee loudly before answering. “When the time is right,” he murmured. He lifted his eyes to me, and I saw a kind of desperation in them.
“How will you know when the time is right?”
“I’ll just know.”
I thought of Tom Barrows. I thought of how Mom didn’t care if she loved him or not, how all she wanted was stability, whatever that meant for her. Probably a man who didn’t drink, a man who wasn’t angry, who brought home a paycheck, who worked so she didn’t have to, who put money in the bank and still had money to spend. Tom Barrows was all those things, and maybe someday Daddy could be too if he worked at it the way he said he would. But if Daddy took too long, it would be too late. Tom Barrows would have already burrowed his way into our household, claiming Daddy’s spot for himself.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, Little Rose?”
But then I thought better of it. He didn’t need to know about Tom Barrows. Not yet, anyway.
His eyes grew small as he asked, “What is it, Roz?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.” He pulled a napkin out of the shiny aluminum holder and started rubbing circles on the table where my milk shake had dripped. “So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”
“We’re going to Grandpa’s, same as last year. Only this year I guess we don’t have to travel so far.”
“Uh-huh.” The circles grew larger and larger.
On impulse I said, “I wish you could be with us this year.”
He didn’t look up. He crumpled the napkin into a little ball and tossed it aside. He didn’t say anything.
“Maybe by next Thanksgiving?” I prodded.
He finally met my eyes. “For sure by next Thanksgiving.” His voice aimed to reassure me, but the piercing indifference of his gaze chilled me to the bone.
Our first letter from Wally arrived the day before Thanksgiving. He had hitchhiked back to Minnesota and was staying with friends while waiting to head out to basic training. He wouldn’t tell us who his friends were, and we didn’t recognize the return address, but at least we had a way of being in touch with him. Mom wrote him back the same day, and the next day when we went to Grandpa’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, we had something to be thankful for. We knew where Wally was. His plans for joining the army hadn’t changed, but at least we didn’t feel so cut off from him.
With our plates piled high with turkey and all the trimmings, I looked around the table at my newly altered and seemingly shifting family. Mom and Valerie sat across from me, Tillie beside me, with Grandpa and Marie at either end of the table. Strange to think that we had been here the previous year, at this very table with Daddy and Wally, eating an identical meal. At that time Tillie must have been the rightful owner of the house on McDowell Street, where she would have been living alone. What a difference a year can make.
Tom Barrows didn’t join us for Thanksgiving, which gave me one more reason to be thankful. Mom had invited him, but he’d had to drive his mother to Chicago. They were celebrating the holiday with one or the other of his siblings.
“Pass the cranberry sauce, please, Roz.”
I snapped out of my thoughts and reached for the bowl. “Sure, Grandpa. Here you go.”
“And while you’re at it, the sweet potatoes.”
“Here they come.”
“Everything’s delicious,” Mom said to Marie.
Marie dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. “I’ll pass your compliments on to Betty,” she said. “She cooked the whole thing single-handedly.”
I thought about Betty, their cook, and asked Marie where she was.
“Oh, well, she went home, of course,” Marie replied. “To be with her own family.”
“Did she have to cook a turkey for them too?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Roz. I don’t meddle in her private affairs.”
Tillie gestured at the food on the table and shook her head. “We have enough turkey here for her and her whole family and probably half of DuPage County to boot. Betty might as well have stayed and brought her own crew over here. Saved her from cooking another turkey if she’d done that.”
Marie blinked rapidly several times. “She’s our cook, Mrs. Monroe. She’s hardly family.”
“So you can’t eat Thanksgiving dinner with someone who isn’t family?”
“Well – ” Marie started, but I interrupted.
“She already is, Tillie,” I pointed out. “She’s eating with you, and you’re not family.”
“Bite your tongue, Roz,” Tillie said. “You don’t have to be related by blood to be family.”
“Uh-huh, yeah. You told me that a hundred times before.”
“And I’ll tell you a hundred times again, and one of these times you’ll believe me.”
“Well, whatever you are, Tillie,” Mom said, “thank God you’re with us.”
Tillie nodded. “He’s the one to thank, all right, and I’ll be with you till he calls me home. Won’t be long now, I suppose.”
Marie gasped loudly, and the color drained from her face like someone had pulled a plug. “This is Thanksgiving, Mrs. Monroe,” she said sharply. “Surely there are better things to talk about than death.”
“Who’s talking about death?” Tillie retorted. “Did I say something about death? All I said was someday God’s going to call me home.”
“Well yes, and that means – ”
“And when that happens, I plan to shed this skin and finally fly. Does that sound like death to you?”
Marie sputtered, but Grandpa laughed outright. “Whatever you plan to do when you die, Tillie, my guess is you’re going to outlive us all.”
“Ah, no thank you, Archie,” Tillie said. “No, I’ll leave the living to the young folk. When the good Lord calls, I’m going straight up and straight on till morning.” Her plump hand sailed over the table, and we all watched it fly upward. It stopped and hung suspended just beneath the chandelier for a minute before it finally drifted back down to her lap.
Everyone got quiet then and went back to eating.
I thought about Daddy, wondering where he was and what he might be doing. I thought maybe he was eating a couple of weeping cows at the Hot Diggity Dog Café with a waitress who didn’t even know his name, who called him Nelson instead of Alan and who called me his niece instead of his daughter. But then I realized the café was probably closed, this being a holiday, so I couldn’t imagine what Daddy was doing while everyone else in Mills River was gathered with family, though I hoped he wasn’t alone. I hoped he wasn’t lonely. I wished I could call him and wish him a happy Thanksgiving, but I didn’t know where he lived or how to get in touch with him. I couldn’t call or send him a letter or travel to his house to see him. I was always waiting for a note in my desk telling me when to meet him next, and since our last meeting more than a week ago, I hadn’t heard from him.
“What are you thinking so hard about, Roz?” Tillie asked.
I looked up, startled. “Nothing. Why?”
“You’re frowning so, you look like the weight of the whole world is on your shoulders.”
I shrugged my shoulders in response, as though to show Tillie they weren’t weighted down by anything at all. “I don’t know. I’m not thinking about anything. Really. Nothing. I’m just busy eating.”
“Aha!” Tillie cried. “ ‘The lady doth protest too much!’ ”
“What?”
“Shakespeare!” Gramps chimed in. “She means, Roz, that if you really weren’t thinking about anything, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to convince us you weren’t.”
“What do you mean, Gramps?” By now I was really confused.
“But, Archie,” Marie interrupted, “one’s thoughts are a private affair. The child doesn’t have to tell you what she was thinking.”
Grandpa frowned and gave a small nod. “No, dear, you’re right. Then again, I’m not the one who asked her.”
“Asked me what?” I asked.
“What you were thinking. I believe that was Tillie. Wasn’t it, Tillie?”
“I was wondering why she looked so pained, is all,” Tillie said. “But of course she doesn’t have to tell us. Though, if she told us what her question is, then maybe we could give her an answer.”
Grandpa looked back to me. “Did you have a question, Roz?”
“I don’t think so. I – ”
“Archie, just leave the child alone and let her eat.”
“But, Marie, I – ”
“First, we talk about death, and then we have to badger a child just to find out what kind of insipid – ”
“Why don’t I begin to clear the table,” Mom cut in. She jumped up quickly and started gathering dirty dishes. “I’ll put the coffee on so we can have it with dessert.”
“I’ll help you, Janis,” Tillie volunteered.
“I’ll help too,” I said, pushing back my chair and standing up. “I’m ready for dessert.”
With all the jumping up and the grabbing of dirty dishes and the rush to make coffee and get dessert, the discussion about what I was thinking was dropped and forgotten. Except by me. I told myself to be more careful in the future and not to think too hard about Daddy when there were grown-ups in the room. If they could ever penetrate my thoughts to learn that Daddy was in Mills River . . . Well, it was a good thing thoughts were a private affair and no one could read my mind.
Mara and I sat cross-legged on my twin beds, with Valerie on the floor between us. Valerie made little cooing noises as she touched a plastic bottle to the puckered plastic lips of her doll. With the doll nestled in the crook of her arm, she rocked gently as she encouraged her baby to drink.
“What’s your baby’s name?” Mara asked.
Valerie paused and looked up. “Ginger,” she said.
“That’s a pretty name.”
Valerie nodded and went back to rocking. Mom was making supper and had asked us to watch her. Tillie was on one of her rare visits to her son Johnny’s house. Apparently discussions were underway between them as to how to help Tillie’s missionary son get settled back in Mills River after the first of the year.