“Hold on, honey-bun, we’re almost there.” Startled by the hiss of language, the baby turned his head under the sailor cap and blinked his black eyes. He liked the sound of his mother’s voice and was willing to wait patiently for it to come again. She had been so quiet lately. The car sputtered to a halt. Cathy cut the motor, looked out at the familiar landscape, took its deterioration as a personal rebuke. You can surely believe a widow lives here, she thought as she took in all the details: peeling paint, diseased fruit trees, the overgrown bushes hiding the small house behind spindly green fingers. “Up you go!” she crooned to her son as she deftly scooped him out of his car seat. The baby kicked his legs gleefully as she swung him onto her hip. “You’re such a good traveler, aren’t you? Yes you are yes you are.” The baby stuck his thumb in his mouth and sighed. His mother pulled her camera out of its bag with her free hand, framed her childhood house, and shot it from the long safe distance of the street. Cathy felt the pulse in her temple throb rhythmically as she closed the distance from the car to the front porch. She rang the buzzer twice. No response. She slammed the flat of her hand against the bell and held it for a long sustained cry. “Mom!” she yelled. “I know you’re in there!” The door opened slowly, horror- movie style, and an eye peered out beneath the chain safety latch. “Yes?” came a prim, suspicious voice. “ Mom!” Cathy barked. “It’s me! Let me in!” The exposed eye blinked rapidly; a flurry of scratching sounds, and the two women grabbed each other, baby wedged between them. The mother pulled daughter and grandson into the hall, slamming the door behind them. She fastened the vertical row of locks, mumbling, “The neighborhood has gone down a little. You locked up your car, didn’t you?” Cathy nodded. This old-lady fussiness disoriented her. She had expected something else, something familiar and feisty. The women walked through the worn rooms to the kitchen. A floorboard creaked exactly where Cathy expected it to creak; its tiny dip made her seasick. She tried to concentrate on the sound of her mother’s voice, hear it through the silly subject matter – some nonsense about a forgotten old friend. It was the sound of her mother’s speech that Cathy craved, the way it spilled into her consciousness like silk from a spool. She imagined the inner workings of her ears as prisms, reflecting and refracting her mother’s words like light. She wanted this comfort for her and her son. She had traveled miles to get it. “I’ll make tea!” the mother declared. She indicated Cathy’s old place at the table, and Cathy pulled the chair out dreamily. She looked around at familiar objects from her childhood, animal canisters, the rooster- and- hen shakers. The same linoleum was on the floor, yellowed now, corners curled up. Shifting on her seat’s rough spot, she could feel where duct tape had bandaged a rip in the plastic. “That new?” Cathy asked, nodding at the tea -kettle. This one had a handle that burst into a bouquet of ceramic flowers at the tip- not her mother’s usual taste. “ Are you kidding me?” her mother replied. “I’ve had a dozen kettles since you flew the coop.” Cathy busied herself with guiding her son’s fat little legs into the booster seat and made no reply. It would be safer that way. The older woman poured out the tea. She had never been a crier, but now sudden fat drops flowed down her cheeks and dripped off her chin. Cathy looked up; it took her a moment to register what was going on. She could usually deal with anything, even with her mother’s blindsiding remarks, the casual ones that cut so deep and clean the wound would seem painless for one delirious second. But these tears-- Cathy simply obeyed her instincts. She rose from her chair and folded her mother in her arms, cupping the back of the old lady’s head. Wracking sobs came out scratchy and hoarse, unpracticed. There were words, but Cathy tried not to understand them. It would have been like eavesdropping. Suddenly the baby took in an enormous breath and screamed. Cathy pushed her mother away, maybe more roughly than she should have, but the bright red baby took precedence. She cradled him like she had just cradled her mother. “You’re good with him,” her mother murmured. “Surprised?” Cathy asked. “Not at all. I always knew you’d be a good mom. Even though you insisted your dolls be bare- naked at all times. Remember?” “Got any apple juice?” Cathy replied. This wasn’t going the way she expected. The baby sucked at the juice greedily. “Look at him go!” said his grandma. “You hated apple juice. Always so finicky.” Cathy’s mother tongued a tooth noisily, a tic that Cathy had forgotten. What did it mean, again? She couldn’t remember; she couldn’t remember for the life of her. The grandmother bent over her grandson. “He doesn’t look like you,” she said doubtfully. “ Is he even American? He looks a little foreign to me.” Her breath tickled the baby’s ears and made him giggle. Cathy steadied the bottle while her mother continued to peer at the boy. “All Americans are a little foreign,” Cathy shot back, neck and shoulders tensing up. Home sweet home. “Can I hold him?” the old woman asked. Cathy handed the baby to his grandmother and he settled in her arms with a little sigh. “Do you know that we girls are born with all the eggs we’ll ever have, right at birth?” she whispered to her daughter. Cathy shook her head. “We carry those eggs for years before they become our children. I think that’s why we love them so darn much, when they finally do show up.” Suddenly there was a fumbling at the back door, some muffled words. Cathy froze for a split-second, then quickly gathered her mother and son in a huddle. “Speaking of children! That’ll be Barb, from next door,” the mother said as she tried to loosen her daughter’s grip. “I told her you’d be here today.” Cathy nodded, relaxed a little. She reached back in her memory for details about this neighbor. I probably won’t even recognize her after all this time, she thought. Why should I? But then Barb burst into the kitchen, and her grin was indelible as an image on film. She swept Cathy into an unceremonious embrace, squealing greetings. The sound of her deja-vu voice brought history flooding over Cathy. “And who is this handsome little man?” “That’s my son, Roger,” Cathy said. Her mother began to cry. Barb turned to the older woman with soothing words and a hug. She explained to Cathy in such an intimate tone it gave Cathy goose bumps, “Jean still cries whenever she hears your father’s name. It’s so cool you named the kid after him, though. Roger would have liked that.” What have we here? What’s with the house keys, the hugging and first- names? Maybe I’ve made a huge mistake. “I’ve got to put the baby down now,” Cathy said, staring at Barb. “You and ‘Jean’ have a nice chat.” It had been five years since Cathy entered her childhood bedroom. She looked around at things she had put out of her mind: the ballerina lamp, the chenille bedspread, cheap ceramic dogs marching across the dresser. The walls were bare, just the way she liked, exactly as she had left them. Cathy set her tote bags down and carefully placed her camera on the dresser. The desire to record the room before the next thing happened, whatever would change her memory of it, rose from a cache of recollections. When Barb moved in next door, both girls had been seven years old. Cathy had taken her new best friend by the hand and proudly walked her around the neighborhood, introducing her, for some reason, as her new little sister. Barb took that status seriously, deciding, for one thing, it meant that their rooms should match. For the first week, whenever Cathy looked across the hedge that separated the houses, she could see Barb in her room, grabbing at her parents and pleading,” But she’s like my sister!” So the bedrooms mirrored each other. Cathy sneered at the copycat, but felt betrayed by any show of individuality. Barb put posters on the walls – pictures of horses and ice- skaters. Later, it was boy-bands posturing in absurdist hairdos, Madonna in her muscled phase. Cathy made fun of her for that. You’re so immature, she had said. When the baby had been changed and dressed for bed, Cathy pulled open a bureau drawer, hoping to find something she had left behind, a pack of stale smokes, maybe. And there they were, just waiting, a blast from the past: Kools menthol, her old brand. She palmed the pack, and wondered vaguely why it wasn’t stiff with age. When she pulled out a cigarette it smelled fresh. She whistled low and murmured, “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” The baby kicked his legs and gurgled as if he recognized the line from his favorite story. “Aunt Barb will tell you your story tomorrow,” Cathy said as she tucked her son in. “Apparently she’s a member of the family now.” In the morning, Cathy woke in that state that affects travelers: she couldn’t place the bed she was in, didn’t understand why the window was on the wrong wall. Little Roger began to whimper. “It’s OK, honey,” Cathy cooed as she leaned down to touch him. “We’re home with Gram. She’ll take care of us.” Mother and son descended the stairs, bundled together as if they were one creature. “Who’s visiting this early?” Cathy whispered, startled by the sound of voices. She rounded the corner and strode into the kitchen, saw Barb and Jean at the table, deep in conversation, heads inclined toward each other. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have your own house?” Cathy muttered, waving away Barb’s greeting and the hurt look that followed. A photo she had once taken popped in to her mind: a camera pointing toward a mirror set directly above it, yielding a smaller photograph of the room’s components, all hopelessly incoherent and distorted. Yep. That’s us, right this minute. “Sleep well, Mom? I slept like a log. Except for some weird blinking light that woke me up once. Can we go shopping today?” “You can do anything you want,” Jean replied absently. “I wasn’t asking permission, Mom,” Cathy huffed. “I just assumed you’d like to spend some time with us. Plus, I need to get Roger a few things.” “Of course I’ll go with you, wherever you like,” Jean said, trying to set things right. “I don’t drive anymore, though, so you drive and I’ll navigate. How’s that?” She slapped her hands cheerfully on the table. “OK,” said Cathy. “But if you don’t drive anymore, how do you get around?” Jean paused for a second. “Barb takes me to appointments and things. She’s been very good about it since Dad died.” Barb grinned at Cathy, her mouth full of cereal. It’s a funny thing about memories, how static they stay. Cathy and Jean tooled around town all day, hit the K Mart, Wal-Green’s, the old Dairy Queen – all where Cathy had left them. She could have driven those streets blind, or blind drunk. Only the trees had grown and changed: Cathy found that she resented them for taking up so much space. It was rude somehow, the way they made the buildings look so tiny and insignificant. If I were fish eyed, I’d be better off, thought Cathy. Yes, panoramic vision could report on the entire picture, put everything in its place, make absolute sense. Everybody knows everyone else in a little town. Jean exchanged hellos with friends who greeted her in the shops or hooted at her at the stoplights. Cathy, surprised that many of these were her old classmates, asked her mother, “Didn’t anybody leave town after high school?” “Well, sure, most of them did, and they mostly stayed gone for awhile, finding themselves, y’know, but then they came home again. Everyone on our block grew up in the houses they live in now. They either bought the houses from their parents, or else they moved into the basements or attics. In fact, the rest of the town calls our street Boomerang Avenue, cause of all the returnees.” Cathy was aghast. “It must be something in the water,” she mumbled. They stopped at the food court in the mall. “I just need to sit for a minute,” she said. Her mother’s eyebrows shot up quizzically. “I’m OK,” Cathy said, but, really, she wasn’t. The town had taken on a sci-fi feel to her. The landmarks were there, the basic structure, but it was populated with people who had morphed into their parents. She was suddenly unsure of her perceptions and their identities. She felt herself grow transparent, tempted to expose her secrets. It might be a relief to tell her mother where she had been. She was a little surprised that the gory details hadn’t been dragged out of her by now. To start something, Cathy asked, “What’s Barb’s story?” When her mother’s features hardened stubbornly, she found herself whispering, “How could you let her take my place?” When they opened the front door that evening, both women were exhausted from the strain of managing the news. Neither one had given in to easy bonding. Maybe this is that formal feeling that comes after great pain, like in the poem, Cathy thought. The baby had fallen asleep in his car seat and fussed at being wakened. The women carried Roger and the shopping bags into the house silently, as if they were afraid of disturbing the equilibrium of their world. “So we’ve run out of things to say already?” Cathy teased her mother. Jean began to smile but changed her mind. “ Who’s that arguing with Barb in the basement?” she whispered. Cathy flew downstairs to find out. A bulky man, dressed in a denim shirt with his name embroidered on it, stood by the furnace. He seemed stunned to see Cathy. With a cartoon gesture, he slung his enormous thumbs through the loops in his tool belt as Barb tried to explain his presence. “This is Bobby- you remember, from school! Don’t you remember? He used to run the audio-visual machine. He’s looked after us since your Dad died, helped with all the yard work and the handyman stuff.” Barb’s voice took on a desperate tone and she seemed on the verge of tears. Cathy grabbed her by the wrist. What did she mean by “us”? The shiny seam of a scar on Barb’s wrist suddenly caught Cathy’s attention. It shut her up, and she raised questioning eyes to Barb, who was already answering the unspoken question. “That’s from our blood- sister ceremony, remember? We were nine, and you cut me too deep. I had to get stitches. You felt so bad.” Fighting back a lurching nausea, Cathy suddenly couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face. She blinked rapidly to clear her focus, though that trick always gave her a headache. She saw Barb’s sympathy, undiluted by time. It was the second time she had seriously hurt Barb. At the hospital, after all four parents were sure Barb would recover, they turned their attention to Cathy, who sat sucking her thumb in a chair much too big for her, unable to speak or cry. Her father had yanked the digit out of her mouth and slapped her hard. ‘I thought you learned your lesson with that stupid William Tell game! You nearly blinded her then! And this time you nearly let her bleed to death with that silly ripped up bandage! When someone doesn’t ever say No to you, you have to be all the more careful what you ask of them.’ Jean invited both Bobby and Barb to dinner, which they all prepared while Cathy rested on the couch, a cool cloth on her head. Their cheerful bickering reminded her of cranes flinging balls of mud at each other as homecoming gifts. She endured Bobby’s heavy- handed flirting as punishment for her earlier inhospitable behavior, and answered his innocent, intrusive questions honestly, in a way she could not have answered the women. Not yet, anyway, not this soon. By the end of the meal, she found she had shot a whole role of film at the table, as she often did when she had a good time. Later, when the pictures came out, she would give a little in her judgement of all of them. Maybe this is what a family looked like now. Who’s to say? That night, after the baby had been tucked in, Cathy suddenly realized what the blinking light that disturbed her sleep the night before must have been: when she and Barb were growing up, they signaled each other goodnight with a ‘secret code’ of light pulled from their matching ballerina lamps. Now, as Cathy looked through her window at Barb in her identical room, reading in her identical bed, she patiently waited for her friend’s light to click off. Then, she waited for the message in the stuttering dark. Nothing. Cathy took a deep breath and reached for the chain on her own lamp. Hoping that the velocity of light was still the fastest thing in nature, and that she was not too late, she began to pull the goodnight signal. It came to her easily, even after all this time.
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AuthorCheryl Snell is an award-winning poet and novelist, author of the new family saga Bombay Trilogy, a retelling of her previous novels Shiva's Arms, Rescuing Ranu, and Kalpavriksha. Archives
October 2020
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