Father was asleep in the recliner in front of the television. The war was still going on.
16
The next morning the rain came. One of those warm summer downpours that follows the opening up of the sky and a great movement of air.
There was a note from Father in the kitchen. “Went riding with Otto.” K was sitting at the table with a mug of coffee. Even her skin looked pale and gray in this light. “He didn’t want to wake you,” she said. As I reached for the door of the refrigerator, I felt a presence occupy my body, as though I were outside myself watching the morning break over us. K, or the semblance of K, returned to thumbing one of the women’s magazines Mother had delivered to the house.
It wasn’t unlike Father to set out at that hour. He was often at his best in the morning when the sun had released him from the confinement of his bed.
I poured two tall glasses of juice. K and I stumbled into the living room and the drone of the television. K was lax to settle on any one program. The images on the screen barely registered. I just needed some buzzing between us.
The phone was ringing after a while too.
It was a woman. It was Mother. Or it sounded like Mother would sound if she was shouting across some long field.
“Is that you, Jeanie?” she said. “Do you still have that same twang in your voice? Is that how you sound?”
“It’s still me, Mom,” I said, unsure of the answer myself as I was saying it.
“Oh,” she said.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just a little nervous.”
“Why?” I said.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m always a little nervous in the afternoons.”
“Oh,” I said, pausing for a moment to scan the mist in the field visible through the window over the sink. The world outside looked not unlike one of Father’s Bob Ross imitations, faint and hazy around the edges. The tree line barely etched in with his chisel. “It’s still morning here.”
“Anyways,” Mother said. “Your grandmother just burnt her pie.”
There was a pause then. I could hear the air rushing over the receiver. It sounded as if Mother were shouting in a vacuum, a long narrow tube laid next to a highway. Occasionally, a car whooshed by.
“It’s still morning here too,” she said.
She’d run to Granny Olga’s old gaping house. There was enough space there for getting lost. There, she fostered what the children of all first generation immigrants feared, an innate feeling that the day to day was long and hard and struggling but as the city teamed around you progress was being made. The struggle was the pride of it. It was only in the face of adversity that Mother was ever truly free. Under Mother’s feet, there was the kind of ice made for skating. It was thin. But she was light.
“Where’s that?” I said. “Where you are.”
“Here,” she said. “Outside of the Stewarts.”
We’d used the pay phone there together once when we’d forgotten a carton of cream that Granny Olga had wanted. Or a certain spice. We’d rung her up with a dime Mother had found wedged between the seats of the Toyota. “White pepper,” Granny Olga had said. “Creamed corn.” “Remember that,” Mother had said as she went back into the store. “Or she’ll have our heads, the both of us.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Mother said.
“No,” I said. “You didn’t. I just got up.”
“Well fine,” she said. “Is your father around?”
“He’s out,” I said. “He went riding with Otto.” I paused, trying to steady my breath.
“Well that’s fine then too,” Mother said. “Some things are as they are.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well,” she said. “Look after your sister.”
“I will, Mom,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “Oh, and Jean. Look after yourself a little too.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Is there anyone there with you?” she said. “Or did he leave you two to your own devices? I hate thinking of you two left to your own devices.”
“K’s here,” I said, looking into the living room at the doughfaced girl lolling on our couch.
“Is that her name?” she said. “I thought it was Kat or Katherine. Yes, it was Katherine. I remember meeting her once and thinking she looked like Catherine Deneuve.”
“Maybe it is,” I said, examining the girl’s face more closely as she tapped her cigarette out the window and yawned.
“I’ve been mistaken for a Katherine you know,” Mother said.
“People used to say I looked like an actress. I could’ve been in films.”
“I know,” I said. “I remember.”
“I know you know,” she said laughing a little. “Does it scare you that your old Mom was once mistaken for someone other than who she is?”
I didn’t know who Catherine Deneuve was. I looked in at K, or Kat, or Katherine, the small pudgy-faced girl stomaching around on our couch with her legs stretched skyward. I imagined her as she would look as a Catherine. Her hair done up in a wave that gave several inches of rise to her face and highlighted her cheekbones making her look finer than she was.
I could imagine someone mistaking Mother that way.
“No,” I said. “I’m not scared.”
“Good,” Mother said. “That was all some time ago anyways. Now I’m your mother. You know me as your mother. I still want you to think of me that way.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well,” she said.
Her voice dropped out after that. I had the feeling that the line had died. There was the static. And the distance. And the Stewarts. Mother was saying something about K again.
“Is she often over?” she said.
“Not too often,” I said.
“Well,” she said. “I meant to talk to you about that before I left. I meant to talk to you about men and their ideas.”
“OK,” I said.
“I don’t know if you know what I mean yet,” she said. “But one day you will and we will talk about it.”
“Right,” I said.
“Well good,” she said. “Then one day soon we’ll talk about it. In the meantime, keep an eye out for me.”
“Sure, Mom,” I said.
“I don’t know what’s going on over there, but you know what I mean about your father and that girl.”
“Callie?” I said.
“No,” she said. “Katherine. Or whatever girl he’s hired to replace me. Don’t let her get her claws into him. And call me if she does.”
It was hard to imagine the plump teen lounging on the settee next to the window raising her claws to a man. All K dragged out of the world was a relief from momentary inertia. Even when her boyfriend stopped by, when she rose up into him in the doorway and kissed him on the mouth, the most she drew out of him was the faint stench of sweat. Afterwards, she released the smell out the window and was back to her smokes.
“OK,” I said.
“Your father thinks he could do no wrong,” Mother said. “The way you girls coddle him.”
“He’s my father,” I said.
“Well sure,” she said. “But he’s a man too. And sometimes he’s not half the man you’ve raised him up to be in reputation.”
“Reputation?” I said.
“It just means keep your eyes out for your mother. And don’t you go rising up into his arms too often either,” she said. “He’s lonely, you know. Yes. I imagine he’s quite lonely there.”