All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 10
“I’m trying—I was wondering if you ever need someone to babysit. I do babysitting.”
“Do you? You’re so sweet. What makes you think I have babies to sit for?”
Miranda shrugged.
“Do I look that old?”
The little girl’s Adam’s apple seemed to expand in her throat. “No.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m just kidding.” She winked.
“Oh.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirteen.” A fib.
“Thir-teen. Have you babysat before?”
“No.”
“Hm. Do you have any references?”
“No. Except my father maybe? I live two blocks that way.” She pointed.
“Do you have little brothers or sisters you’ve babysat for?”
“I have two brothers but they’re older.”
“Ah. Well, that’s too bad. What’s your name?”
“Miranda.”
“Miranda. Miranda what?”
“Miranda Larkin.”
“What a pretty name. Where did you get such a pretty name?”
“My mother, I guess.”
“Well, I love it. It’s a name for a movie star.”
“Her name was Jane. She did not want me to have a boring name like hers.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Well, she picked a beautiful name for you, Miranda. Not boring at all. I tell you what: you give me your phone number and maybe we can try it for an hour or two sometime. I have two little girls. They’re seven and nine. You could come meet them. How does that sound?”
“Good.” Miranda smiled. Her face almost cracked, it had been so long since she’d looked forward to something, not back.
The woman hoisted the grocery bag up against her shoulder and cradled it there while she fished around for a pen in her purse. This was a big leather shoulder bag that drooped against her waist and seemed stuffed with all sorts of happy cluttery mothery things. Miranda loved even the sound of those things clacking around in the woman’s purse, so like my heavy, overstuffed purse, which Miranda used to rummage around in.
“Okay, shoot,” the woman said when she had found a pen.
Miranda recited her phone number and the woman scribbled it on the crumpling side of the shopping bag.
“You’re gonna call?” Miranda said.
“I promise.” The woman let her pen drop down into the open mouth of her purse, then extended her hand and Miranda shook it. “It’s very nice to meet you, Miranda. My name is Mrs. Bowers.”
Miranda watched the woman leave, then she quick-marched away, too, escaping before the magic of the encounter could dissipate. She wanted to carry it home with her, this hopeful new secret.
* * *
—
And Jeff? Well, there is something you have to understand: if ever a boy was perfectly made to frustrate his father, it was my Jeff. He was forever tossing wet towels on his bedroom floor. He left his dresser drawers open every time he got dressed. (Once the entire dresser tipped over when Jeff opened all six drawers at once.) He would dump his things wherever he happened to be, leaving a trail behind him as he went—book bag, jacket, sneakers, socks. He had elaborate justifications for his sloppiness. Why ever wash a bath towel, he would say, when the towel cannot be dirtier than you, since it only touches you at your cleanest, after you’ve just bathed? Why close a drawer or make a bed when you are just going to reopen the drawer and unmake the bed in a few hours? Why clean a soap dish when the dirt is soap? Why fold underpants? He was Dan’s perfect opposite. Dan liked his underpants ironed. He insisted his socks be folded, not balled. He washed his hands in scalding-hot water, even to the point of having to wave them under the water a few seconds at a time. Dishes required even hotter water, the hottest that Dan could get out of the kitchen faucet. He scrubbed each dish without mercy, then, holding it gingerly by the edges, he rinsed it under the boiling water, then filed each steaming dish neatly in the dishwasher. And books! Even I used to get in trouble with Dan over the books in the den. He would flip out if I put a paperback in with the hardcovers, or a trashy novel among his serious-looking histories and biographies. He didn’t like it if I added a book that was too beat-up. (Dan had a magical ability to read an entire book yet leave it looking untouched. I never could. My books always had cracked spines or torn dust jackets, no matter how I tried to baby them.) Sometimes I did these things anyway, just to needle my husband, but with Jeff it was unintentional. He was oblivious, like a dog that frustrates its owner by shedding. When I was there, I kept the peace by discreetly cleaning up after Jeff or nudging Dan to laugh about it. I called them Oscar and Felix. It was cute, it was a running joke.
But in the first year or so without me, the differences between them took on a sharper edge.
One sunny Saturday morning, Dan watched from the kitchen window as Jeff mowed the backyard. The whole house vibrated with the buzz of the lawnmower engine.
Jeff pushed the mower in goofy, wandering lines up and down the long yard. He was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a T-shirt and his favorite sneakers, green suede Puma Clydes, which he always fought us for, even though they cost thirty dollars and wore out in half the time. He trucked along behind the lawnmower, bent at the waist, often looking down at his feet rather than in the direction of the lawnmower. Sometimes on his wavering path he would miss a spot, and he would have to circle back to trim the patch he’d missed, then try to figure out where he had left off.
Standing at the kitchen sink, Dan watched all this with growing annoyance. From his position, elevated above the yard, he could see the crazy, drunken tracks the lawnmower was leaving in the grass. He tried to ignore it—the carelessness, the lack of discipline—but eventually it was just too much. It offended him. He marched out to the yard, gesturing with his hand in the air, turning an invisible key, telling Jeff to turn off the lawnmower.
The lawnmower shut down, and there was a sudden, luxurious quiet.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“You told me to mow the grass.”
“Look at this! Who taught you to mow like that?”
“Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t? You don’t even see it?”
“See what?”
“The mess you’re making.”
“Are you joking? What mess? I’m mowing the lawn like you said.”
“Look again.”
“I’m looking!”
“Look at the grass!”
“What grass? It’s all grass!”
“Look at the pattern you’re making.”
“The pattern? Who cares about the pattern?”
“I do!”
“Why?”
“That’s not the point! Why don’t you just do it the right way?”
“There is no right way.”
“There is. Why don’t you just make the lines straight, like a normal person?”
“You’re mad because the lines in the grass aren’t straight? Are you fucking serious?”
“Watch your language. I’m mad because you’re doing the job wrong.”
“You can’t mow the grass wrong. That’s not even possible. Either it’s mowed or it’s not.”
“This is our house, it’s our property, I want you to take care of it.”
“It’s the backyard! No one even sees it! We don’t even see it. No one comes out here.”
“I see it!”
“Oh my God, Dad, it doesn’t matter. It’s grass.”
“It does matter! Everything matters.”
“How can everything matter?”
“Jeff, everything you do matters, especially when no one’s looking.”
“Why?”
“Because this is who you are. If you cut corners on this, you’ll cut corners on the next thing, and the next. How do you think that’s going to go in the real world? Are you just going to tell your boss, ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s good enough’? No! The way you mow the grass is the way you do everything.”
“That’s why you’re so angry?”
“Yes. Just do it right.”
“Honestly you just sound mental right now.”
“Jeff, this is our home, okay? We live here. And every time we look out and we see the yard looking all crazy like this, it sends a message. You know what that message is? The message is: ‘This place doesn’t matter anymore, we’re just letting it go. We’re just letting everything go.’ And you don’t care.”
“The grass says all that?”
“Yes. The grass says all that. Lookit, just do me a favor and do it right, okay? Go up and down in a straight line, like a typewriter, nice and neat, not like some drunken lunatic did it. Back and forth, back and forth. It’s not so much to ask.”
“This is…”
Dan took a deep breath and exhaled through his nostrils. Patient, intransigent.
“Fine. Whatever. Straight lines.”
“I don’t even know what you’re fighting about. The whole thing’ll take you five minutes. Just go back over it.”
“Wait, go back over it? You mean mow the grass I already mowed?”
“Of course!”
“You want me to mow the same grass twice?”
“That’s the right way. You can’t leave it like this.”
“Oh my God, I wish Mom was here.”
“All right, enough, we’re not starting that.” Dan waggled his hands: none of that. “This discussion is over. Just do it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine. Okay. Thank you.”
Dan stood there a moment, unsure how to resolve the thing that still seemed unresolved between them, and when he could not think of a way to address it, he turned and walked away as Jeff raised his middle finger to his father’s back.
* * *
—
That fall, Alex went away to college, yet another loss, leaving only the three of them. Life went on. The daily routine reasserted itself: up and into the shower in the morning, school, activities in the afternoon (sports for Jeff, ballet twice a week for Miranda), homework in the evening. The children were left to sort out their feelings mostly on their own; their father did not believe in “psychobabble” or the professionals who practiced it. The unresolved mystery of my disappearance made it impossible for the kids to grieve and get it all out and move on as best they could, the way they might have if I had just died in my bed.
To the public, within a year my case faded from memory. The strangeness of the story was not enough to hold people’s interest forever, and the plot had stopped dead. In the end, most of the public believed I had been killed, I think. From that camp, about half thought Dan had done it. There were a few who figured I had just up and left, which was not as farfetched in 1976 as it might be now. It was easier to disappear then, to create a new identity, a new life. Missing-spouse stories used to show up in the news, especially the dishy supermarket tabloids, which I loved—the husband who went to take out the garbage and never came back, that sort of thing. I used to be fascinated by these stories, ironically enough. Sometimes the papers would print the epilogue too: the husband or wife who turned up years later, living under an assumed name. Those stories were even more delicious to me. The most popular destination for these runaways seemed to be Florida. I don’t know why. I guess that, like water running downhill, they headed south until they ran out of road. In any case, my story was over. The revelations were at an end, and people moved on.
For the children, obviously, things were much, much harder.
One night in November, the reduced family sat down to supper, still at their old places around the Formica table in the “breakfast room,” which was what the realtor who sold us the house called the little nook off the kitchen. We never actually ate breakfast there. Breakfast we wolfed down at the kitchen counter, standing or on stools, reading the newspapers that were always scattered there, listening to The Today Show on the little black-and-white. We used the breakfast room only for supper, but we went right on calling it the breakfast room anyway, probably because, when we first bought the house, Dan and I were tickled that we could afford a place with a room dedicated just to breakfast. Now, with Alex and me both gone, Jeff and Miranda still went to their accustomed places at the table, which left my old spot unoccupied.
To his credit, Dan made an effort to maintain supper as a nightly family ritual, as it always had been. He learned to cook a few things—very, very badly—especially a tarragon chicken dish that Jeff liked. (He liked it so much we called it “Chicken Jeff.”)
Dan was not as successful at drawing the children into conversation, although, to be fair, Jeff and Miranda never talked as much as they used to. Dinners were generally quiet and sullen, unless Miranda was in one of her loopy, effusive moods (rare now) or Dan was cross-examining the kids about their day. Most nights, you could hear the silverware clink on the plates or the yom-yom sound Jeff sometimes made when he chewed.
On this night, Dan put down his fork and knife and said that he had an announcement to make.
“I have good news and bad news,” he said. “Which one do you want first?”
Jeff: “Bad.”
“Okay. There’s something I need to do that I think maybe could be a little difficult for you kids. For all of us. I need to go to court about your mother. I need to get a judgment—a judge has to say your mother is officially dead. It’s just for legal reasons. It’s just a technical thing.”
Miranda: “But you said she’s not dead, you said we don’t know.”
“It’s true. But she’s not here, and we are, and we need to go on. The sun comes up and we need to go on with our lives as best we can.”
“But you said.”
“It’s true, Mimi, I said that. It’s just, we need to do certain things so we can go on living. There’s a lot of stuff you kids don’t see, stuff that moms and dads have to think about.”
Jeff: “Like what?”
“Well, like insurance. Or like I need to be able to sign papers as your sole parent, for school or hospitals or whatever. Or like making plans for my estate. What if I died? What would happen to you kids?” Dan had thought this last item was a dull, lawyerly point, but he saw the horrified look on Miranda’s face and immediately backtracked. “It’s not going to happen, Miranda. It’s just an example.”
Jeff rolled his eyes. His lips tightened. He gave Miranda a look, and she relaxed. It was a look only Jeff could have given her. It said, It’s okay, I’ll be here even if Dad dies. Miranda adored Jeff. She looked up to Alex, but she adored Jeff. (I remember when the kids were young—eight and ten or so—we used to go on walks in the neighborhood, and Miranda would ride piggyback on Jeff’s back. That is an image I will always keep of those two: Jeff carrying his little sister on his back as she jumps up and down with excitement or lays her head on his shoulder, him bent nearly double under the weight of her.)
Jeff: “How can a judge know if she’s dead or not?”
“He can’t. No one can. But it’s been a year, there’s a presumption. The law allows a surviving spouse to petition for a judgment like this so we can…you know, kind of close the books and move on.”
“You keep saying that, move on. What if I don’t want to move on?”
“What else can we do?”
“Show a little faith. Wait for her.”
“Jesus, Jeff, look around you! Do you see her? You think she’s just going to walk in the door? She’s not here. It’s just me. What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t want you to do anything. Why do we have to do anything?” Jeff looked down at his plate. He could not tolerate his father’s expression now, his cool logic, the smug, lecturing tone. He thought that if he could, if he were bigger, he would smash his plate right in his father’s face.
“There comes a time.”
Jeff shook his head but kept his eyes down, avoiding his father’s face.
Miranda looked stricken. Bad as Dan’s message was, she was even more uncomfortable seeing her father and brother spar like this. It made the whole family feel fractured, fragile. It could all fall apart so easily, the family could spin into pieces and she would be left alone.
Jeff: “What was the other news, the good news?”
“The good news.” Dan made an encouraging, phony little grin. “The good news is Sarah is going to move in with us.”
Long silence.
“That’s the good news?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God.”
“Won’t it be good to have a…a mother in the house?”
“She’s not our mother.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You can’t just pick a new mother—”
“That’s not what I meant—”
“—some random woman and call her our mother.”
“—and you know it. Come on, Jeff, you’re not listening. Jesus, give me a break, would you? All right, I shouldn’t have put it that way, all right? I’m sorry if I offended you.” He turned to Miranda, seeking a more sympathetic audience. “How about you? Don’t you think it’ll be nice to have another girl in the family?”
“No.”
“No? Don’t you like Sarah?”
Miranda shrugged.
“Well, Sarah likes you. She loves you both.”
Jeff: “Loves me? She doesn’t even know me.”
“Of course she does. And she’ll get to know you more. She wants to know you more, if you’ll let her. That’s your decision.”
“Apparently it’s not.”
“Well, you know, Jeff, you could give her a chance, let her in a little.”
“Let her in. It’s our house. Don’t we get a vote on who can live here?”
“It’s not our house, Jeff, it’s my house.”
