A Christmas Memory, page 11
“I miss our family,” I said.
My father was quiet a moment, then said, “I miss it, too, son.”
“Then why don’t you just come home?”
He didn’t answer. The silence grew painful, and I was glad when a banjo player started plucking a happy tune.
Finally my father said, “I wish it were that easy.”
Maybe it was desperation talking, but I felt unusually bold. “It is really easy,” I said. “Just come home and don’t leave.”
He breathed out slowly. “Things get more complicated when you’re older. Since Mark died, it hasn’t been the same.”
“What’s most not the same is that you’re gone, too.”
I guess he didn’t know what to say to that. Finally, he said, “Eat your pizza.”
A few minutes later my father paid the bill. We took the leftover pizza home in a box. I wondered if Mr. Foster would let me feed pizza to Beau.
CHAPTER 30
My father and I didn’t say anything on the way home. The night I had looked forward to had turned into a big disappointment. I wondered if he would ever take me out again. I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be soon.
As we turned onto our street, I saw the flashing red light of an emergency vehicle.
“I wonder what’s going on there?” my father said.
As we got closer, we could see there was a fire truck in front of our house, along with a half dozen other cars. There was an ambulance parked in the driveway behind our station wagon. Anxiety exploded in my chest. As soon as the car stopped I jumped out and ran into the house.
There were more than a dozen people crowded inside our front room and dining area. I recognized my aunts, who were with their husbands, but I didn’t recognize anyone else until I saw Mr. Foster. He was sitting on a chair, leaning forward on his cane. I had never really seen him out of his house, so he looked out of place in this crowd of people. I went to him.
“Why is everyone here? Where’s my mom?”
He looked sad. “Richard, your mama tried to take her life.”
My heart froze. “Is she still alive?”
“Yes. Help got here in time.”
Just then I heard shouting. I looked over to see what was going on. My oldest aunt, Wilda—the matriarch of the family—was standing in front of the bedroom door, barring my father from entering.
“Get out of my way,” he said. “This is my house.”
“No, it’s not.”
“She’s my wife.”
“You could have fooled me,” Aunt Wilda said sharply.
The man next to her, probably my uncle, was a tall, burly man, with thick arms and a full beard. He was at least half a head taller than my father. He stepped in front of my dad, the two men looking threateningly into each other’s eyes.
Just as the situation looked like it might erupt into something even more terrible, one of the ambulance attendants shouted at them to move as they brought my mother out of her room on a gurney. I ran to her side.
“Mom.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at me but didn’t say anything. I looked over to my father. He looked as helpless as I felt. I followed her out to the ambulance. The men lifted the gurney into the back, then shut the door as I blinked back my tears. I was gulping and ticcing.
Mr. Foster walked up behind me and put his hand on my shoulder. “She’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll pray for her.” As the ambulance backed out of our driveway he looked over at my father, who had been standing next to it. “You need to be with your papa.”
I just sniffed.
He walked over to my father and said something, then he patted my father on the arm, turned, and hobbled back to his house. He was moving slower than usual.
As the crowd dissipated, I walked over to my father. He put his arm around me. Neither of us knew what to say.
CHAPTER 31
I didn’t go to school for the rest of the week. There was talk of sending me to stay with one of the aunts, but I told my father that I would rather live in the chicken coop. He told everyone that I was his son and that he would be staying here with me.
Neither my father nor I was much on cooking, so almost every night we ate out, which, back then, was a rare treat. We went to McDonald’s, Arctic Circle, and a new taco place called Taco Time. I loved going out but especially spending the time with my father. I was just glad to finally have him back home. Like it used to be.
While my father was at work, I stayed inside and read. I finished The Hobbit and started the Hardy Boys—a series about two teenage brothers who were amateur detectives and solved all sorts of crimes, from diamond smuggling to racehorse kidnapping. It was good adventure, and more and more I discovered the power of losing myself in books. It was the only time I didn’t fret about my mother.
I didn’t go out to the garage to work on my robot. I guess I had finally abandoned him for good, leaving him to be infested by mice on the garage floor.
More than anything I wanted to see my mother. Thursday, I asked my father if we could go see her. He called the hospital, but they said she wasn’t allowed visitors. When he asked how long she would be there, no one seemed to have an answer.
It snowed off and on for the rest of the week. Twice a day I went out and shoveled our driveway so it wouldn’t get too deep for me to handle. I did the same for Mr. Foster’s driveway as well.
Thursday, when I went up to Mr. Foster’s door to tell him that I had finished shoveling his driveway, he acted different than usual. It was the very first time that he didn’t invite me in. He also said that Beau wouldn’t be needing a walk. I went home feeling very sad. Even the Hardy Boys couldn’t take my mind from my sadness.
It snowed that night, so Friday morning I went over to shovel Mr. Foster’s driveway, but he wasn’t even home. I could see his car’s tire tracks in the snow. Up to then I had never seen him leave his house, though he could have when I was at school.
It was late afternoon when he finally returned. I went up to his door to get Beau, but he didn’t answer, which only hurt my heart more. I wondered if I had said something wrong, like I had when my mother slapped me.
Later that afternoon the young Black woman I’d seen a few weeks earlier came over again. I was out in my driveway when she pulled up in front of his house. This time she waved to me. I didn’t wave back. I didn’t like her. I wondered who she was and why she got to go inside, and I didn’t. Maybe she was his new friend. Most of all, I wondered why Mr. Foster didn’t want to see me when I needed him the most.
All the while, the Christmas season was gaining on us. It was less than ten days until Christmas, and four days until Mr. Foster’s birthday.
Earlier in the week I had asked my father if he would take me Christmas shopping on Saturday, since that was his day off. He promised he would.
Saturday morning, I poured myself a bowl of cereal, then took it in the front room to watch cartoons while I waited for my father to get up. During the final minutes of George of the Jungle, the phone rang. I ran for it, hoping it was my mother.
“Hello.”
An older woman asked, “Is this the Evans residence?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is your father home?”
“Just a moment.” I knocked on his bedroom door. “Dad, someone’s on the phone for you.”
“Thank you,” he said back through the closed door. I heard a muffled “Hello.” I walked away wondering who it was.
About a cartoon later my father walked into the front room. He was showered and dressed.
“All right, sport,” he said. “Have you had your breakfast?”
“I had cereal.”
“Great. I’m just going to grab a coffee and toast and then we’ll be on our way.”
A couple of minutes later he walked out of the kitchen carrying a coffee mug and a piece of buttered toast with a bite out of it. “This is good bread. Did your mom make it?”
“Mr. Foster made it.”
“Maybe we should have been eating over there.” He settled into a chair. “So where would you like to go Christmas shopping?”
“Can we go to the Cottonwood Mall?”
He grimaced. “You know it’s going to be the busiest shopping day of the year. The mall crowds are going to be insane.”
“I don’t care,” I said.
“All right. Get your coat and let’s go.”
“Wait,” I said. “I need to get my money.” I ran to my room and took twenty dollars out of my safe. I really felt rich.
The Cottonwood Mall was about ten minutes from our home. It was Utah’s first enclosed mall and had opened just five years earlier. It was, as my father predicted, insanely crowded. We parked in one of the few remaining spaces at the south end of the mall and walked in through the JCPenney entrance, which is where I wanted to go.
My father said he had some shopping of his own, so we agreed to meet up in one hour at the pet store near JCPenney. Fortunately, I had my Mickey Mouse watch.
I had already decided what I was getting everyone for Christmas. I was buying two neckties, one for my father and the other for Mr. Foster.
In the mid-sixties, necktie fashion ran the gamut from traditional apron ties to silk ascots and cravats to skinny, flat-ended ties. I asked a salesclerk to help me pick out my ties. He asked me who the ties were for. After I told him he said, “Sounds like we want to stay a little more conservative. Wide ties are on their way back. I have something just right for the mature gents.”
The price of silk ties ranged from 97¢ to $1.47. I bought my father a dark brown tie with rust and gold stripes. My mother had a dress nearly that same color, so I thought they would look good together. I got Mr. Foster what he had suggested when he told me that he wanted a necktie—a navy blue silk tie with gold diagonal stripes.
After the clerk had wrapped up my ties, I went over to the women’s department, where I bought my mother a purple scarf with pink and gold geometric patterns and Vivara Parfum—a foreign-sounding perfume that the lady at the counter recommended. “Vivara Parfum, your girl will swoon,” she sang. I don’t know if she made that up or if it was their slogan.
I just had Beau to shop for. My favorite store in the mall was the pet shop—the same one I’d walked through back in October when I went school-clothes shopping with my mother.
Even though I went there to get something for Beau, I ended up spending almost all my time just looking at the animals. The place echoed with the sound of barking. They had a whole wall of kennels with all sorts of dogs, though, I thought, none as cute as Beau.
There were other mammals, like white mice and guinea pigs and hamsters in metal cages with spinning wheels. I wondered if I could sell them some of the mice in our house, since my bottle deposit income had drastically declined because it was nearly impossible to find bottles in the snow. Considering how many mice we had around our place, I could be a millionaire.
But the real draw for me was the exotic animals. They had a bright green iguana, a baby alligator with yellow eyes, a three-foot-long boa constrictor, and an entire wall covered with aquariums, with a wide assortment of exotic fish, including blind cave fish and ghost catfish—a transparent fish you could see through. (You could even see its heart beating.) There were colorful Amazon frogs and angelfish. In the corner of the store near the register, they had a thick-glassed aquarium with a real piranha. This was back before the fish was deemed contraband.
My father arrived early to the pet store carrying two large bags, so I had to stop browsing and shop in earnest. I bought Beau a new leather collar with blue and red gems and a maroon wool dog coat. I thought Beau would really appreciate it on our walks since it had been so cold out.
The store even sold doggy shoes that fastened onto a dog’s legs with drawstrings, but I figured that Beau was more likely to chew on them than to wear them. I thought they might be kind of embarrassing for him too, since no other dog was wearing them.
After the mall, my father and I drove over to the Iceberg, a drive-in just a mile from our home that was famous for thick milkshakes and hamburgers. Unlike the mall, the drive-in wasn’t crowded, probably since it was already past two and still snowing. Weather aside, this was turning out to be a pretty good day.
I ordered a cheeseburger, a bag of french fries, and a banana and caramel milk shake. My father and I sat down with our food near the back of the drive-in.
My father took a bite of his hamburger, then asked, “How much did you spend on your Christmas shopping?”
“That’s private,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Of course it is.” We ate for a while in silence, then he said, “I bet you’re going to be glad to get back to school next week.”
I looked at him. “Why?”
“Routine is the bread of life.”
“Moldy bread,” I said.
He grinned. He took a sip of his drink, then said, “The hospital called this morning. They’re releasing Mom tomorrow.”
I wondered why he had waited until now to tell me. “What time?”
“They said I could pick her up anytime after one.”
I was happy to hear this.
“I’m going to stay until Monday to make sure she’s all right.”
“You’re leaving again?”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Son…” He breathed out slowly. “You should know I’ve come to a decision. I think it would be better all around if your mother and I got a divorce.”
I stopped eating. Maybe breathing. My eyes welled up with tears. When I could speak, I asked, “Why do you hate us?”
“I don’t hate you,” he said.
I looked at him for a moment, then shouted, “Well, I hate you!” I sprang from my seat and ran out of the restaurant. My father shouted at me to come back, but I was gone. I just wished that I hadn’t left my coat behind.
In running away I had cut through several yards and found myself lost. For at least a half an hour I meandered through unknown neighborhoods until, for the first time ever, I was glad to see Lincoln Elementary. I walked to my school. It was Saturday, and snowing, so the schoolyard was as empty as Mrs. Covey’s soul.
I walked over to the swing sets, brushed the snow off a plastic swing seat, and sat down. I began to swing back and forth. Snow collected on me as tears rolled down my cheeks.
The sky was already dark with cloud cover, but now the sun had fallen below the horizon, leaving me alone in the dark. The temperature fell with the sun, and after an hour I was shivering so hard that my teeth chattered. I wished for the hundredth time that I had grabbed my coat. Still, I thought, I’d rather freeze to death than be home.
Alone in the darkness and the subfreezing temperature, there was only one place I could think to go.
CHAPTER 32
It was late when I climbed the porch to Mr. Foster’s house. After the last few days I didn’t know if he would even answer or, if he did, would let me in. I knocked on his door. His voice came weakly, “Come in.”
Still shivering, I went inside, happy to be out of the cold and embraced by the warmth of his home.
Mr. Foster was sitting in his chair near the fireplace. There was no music playing from the phonograph, and he didn’t have a book. Beau was in his lap, and he was stroking back his fur. It had been less than a week since I had last seen him, but, peculiarly, he didn’t look the same. He looked thinner in the face and shoulders, but his stomach looked bigger. I shut the door behind me.
“Where is your coat?” he asked.
“I ran away.”
He looked sad. “Come sit by the fire.” His eyes looked heavy, the way my mother’s looked during one of her migraines.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
“I don’t sleep well these days,” he said. “Have you heard from your mama?”
I sat down on the floor next to his chair. “My mother’s coming home tomorrow.”
“Praise God. I’ve been praying for her. And your papa.”
Hearing the mention of my father made me angry. “My father says he wants a divorce.” My eyes welled up. “Why does he hate us?”
Mr. Foster was silent for a moment, then said, “He doesn’t hate you or your mama. He doesn’t love himself. When people don’t love themselves, they push the people they love away.”
“Why doesn’t he love himself?”
“Your father blames himself for your brother’s death.”
“No he doesn’t.”
Mr. Foster exhaled lightly. “I understand your papa better than you know.” He paused for a moment, as if he was afraid to say what he wanted to say. When he spoke, his voice was strained. “I blamed myself for my son’s death.”
“You had a son who died?”
“My only son. Isaiah.”
I didn’t understand. “But you said he was alive.”
“No. I never said that.” He looked sadder than I had ever seen him. He looked up at the picture on the wall. “My son died a month after that photograph was taken.”
I still didn’t understand.
“My son died because of something I did.” He pulled Beau in closer. “A long time ago I bought a refrigerator. Everyone has one these days, but back then, it was something special. Especially where we lived.
“When the men delivered it, the people in the neighborhood all came to see what I had bought. They stood in our front yard and watched them take it out of the truck. It was a celebration.
“A few weeks later Margaret and I were working out in the garden when Isaiah came out and said he was going to hide and asked me to come find him. I told him I would after we finished.
“When we went inside, I couldn’t find my boy. I looked everywhere.” His eyes moistened. “Then Margaret opened the refrigerator. Isaiah had climbed inside to hide from me. He had suffocated.” Mr. Foster’s chin began quivering. “I saw horrible things in the war. But there was nothing worse than seeing my own son in that refrigerator.” A tear fell down his cheek.
When he could speak, he said, “Margaret was inconsolable. I knew she blamed me. I had bought the thing, and in her pain she needed someone to blame. When something that bad happens, sometimes we just need someone to put it on. Some people blame God. Margaret blamed me.
