Approaching the place where I made them get out, I see a gray station wagon stopped at the side of the road, its directional signal blinking. There’s a man squatting beside them, talking to them. Oh god! Oh no! I slam on the brake, fly out of the car, and run toward them, screaming. “Get away from them! Don’t you dare talk to my kids!” He stands, hurries back to his car, calling over his shoulder that he was only trying to help them. “What kind of mother leaves her children by the side of the road and—”
“Shut up!” I reach them, grab on to them, hold them tightly to me. “Get out of here before I call the police!”
“Someone ought to call the police on you!” he shouts back. Slams his car door and takes off, his back tires spitting up gravel, his signal still blinking.
I was only gone for a few minutes. I only wanted to teach them a lesson. But oh god, what if . . . what if . . . what kind of a mother . . .
I drive away, sobbing. From the backseat, Ariane consoles me. “It’s okay, Mama. I told him you were coming back. We won’t fight anymore.” When I look in the mirror, I see Andrew staring at me, in stunned disbelief still.
Later, sitting at the counter of the five-and-ten, I watch them eat their sundaes. Ask them if they’re going to tell their father. They shake their heads. And when, that weekend Orion spells me and I’m free to go off on one of my hunting expeditions, I drive around, looking for that secondhand shop. When I finally find it and pull up to the front, there’s nothing out on the sidewalk. I get out of the car, look at the sign in the window. There’s a big red ex across the word GOING and, above it, the word GONE. It’s dark inside, but in the pile of stuff that hasn’t yet been cleared out, I see the coyote and the fisher cat. I’m too late. The piece I’ve been imagining for the past three days, constructing in my head and sketching out on paper, will never be made. . . .
My eyes fill with tears. I turn and look out the window so that Minnie won’t see. All she did was make an empty threat, but I actually left them there and drove off. Tried to scare them. Maybe that man who stopped was just trying to help them. I hear him again: What kind of a mother . . . A terrible one, that’s what kind I was. A mother who was angry and resentful and so focused on her art that . . . They deserved someone better—someone as patient and even-keeled as their father. I probably shouldn’t even have had kids. . . . But they turned out all right, didn’t they? Survived my mistakes. Oh god, I can’t wait to see them. Hug them and hear about their lives. Not so much Marissa; I’m caught up on my New York daughter. Sometimes I wish she’d give me less information about what she’s up to. Not so the twins: Andrew, who’s private and closemouthed the way so many men are, and Ariane, who’s always so busy with her work. I’m hungry to see them. To be with the three of them.
“You okay back there, Miss Oh?” Hector asks. Our eyes meet in his rearview mirror. I nod, tell him I’m fine. “You mind if I play some music?”
“No, not at all.”
He turns on the radio and finds a Spanish station. “That too loud?”
“No, no. It sounds nice. Salsa, right?”
He nods, smiles back at me. “This is Victor Manuelle. He’s one of my favorites. Him and Los Van Van. They’re great, too. Nobody makes salsa and merengue music like the Cubans.”
“Is that right?” For the next several miles, we listen to the music, the commercials in rapid-fire Spanish.
“See that sign, Africa?” I ask the boy. “Can you read what it says?”
He squints. “Three . . . Rivers . . . whassat next word?”
“Wequonnoc,” I tell him.
“Three Rivers, Wequonnoc . . .”
“Nation,” his mother says. “Where your brains at, boy?” She turns to me, shaking her head. “What they teachin’ them at that school anyway?”
“Three Rivers is where we’re going,” I tell Africa, overriding his mother’s embarrassment. “So that means we’re almost there.”
He nods. Sticks his finger in his nose and digs around in there until Minnie bats it away. Maybe Viveca was right. I probably should have just hired a car service. This has been one long, difficult ride.
A few minutes later, it gets worse. Africa begins to whimper. “What now?” his mother asks him.
“My tummy hurts.” When she tells him to sit still and think about something else, he says he can’t. That it really hurts. “Mama, I gon’ be sick!” And sure enough. His head lurches forward and his little belly begins to heave. When I tell Hector to pull over, he nods. Steers into the right lane and then onto the shoulder. But it’s too late. Minnie’s grabbed the big straw bag that she’s packed their clothes in and opened it wide. She shoves Africa’s face down into it and he heaves everything he’s been eating and drinking.
“It’s all right, baby. It’s okay,” she says, wiping his face. “You feel better now?” He nods, rests his head against her bosom, and she takes hold of his small hand and closes her own work-worn hand over it. It’s the first tenderness she’s shown him since we left New York. Hector carries the soiled straw bag around to the back and locks it in the trunk, but the stench lingers. Back on the road again, we ride with the windows open, the wind blowing in our faces.
“This the one?” Hector asks me. I tell him it is, and he takes the exit.
We pass over the bridge and into downtown Three Rivers. It all looks the same: cars lined up at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru, people standing at the window of the Dairy Queen where Ariane worked one summer. I’m struck with how much fatter people here are than the ones in weight-conscious Manhattan.
The farther up Main Street we ride, the more I see that things have changed. The sporting goods store where we used to buy the kids’ sneakers has gone out of business and become a secondhand furniture store. Rosenblatt’s is still here, I see, with the same family of chipped-nose mannequins in the window looking out with their vacant eyes. The Fart family, Andrew nicknamed them one afternoon, to the giggling delight of his younger sister. A number of small ethnic food places have opened along the main drag now: Rosa’s Tacos, Little Saigon, Jamaican Meat Patties Made Fresh Daily! Probably a result of all the immigrants who work entry-level jobs down at the casino. And for the unemployed, here’s a pawnshop. . . . An everything-for-a-dollar store where Blockbuster used to be . . . A check-cashing place that promises WELFARE CLIENTS WELCOME.
At a traffic stop, a haggard man of undeterminable age holds up a cardboard sign: OUT OF WORK. PLEASE HELP ME FEED MY FAMILY. When I reach into my wallet and pull out a ten-dollar bill, he approaches, takes it, and god-blesses me. “At least the bums in Connecticut don’t got squeegies,” Hector says. Another man hurries across the road in front of us. I recognize him: that guy from the newspaper—the one who owns the place on Bride Lake Road where they found those mummified babies. Remembering that bizarre story, I cringe. The light turns green. We move forward.
After the Stop & Shop, Main Street becomes North Main, and then Sachem Plains Road. Single-family houses give way to farmsteads and wooded lots for sale. It’s early still, but some of the leaves have already started turning. Several of the trees look blighted. Approaching our road, we pass the dairy farm where we used to take the kids for hayrides and Halloween pumpkins. Africa grabs his mother’s arm. “Look at them giant cows!” he says, pointing to a cluster of Holsteins grazing in the field.
“Giant?” Minnie says. “What you talking about, dummy? They just regular size.”
“They bite?”
“Oh, no,” I assure him. “Cows are very gentle animals. Would you like Hector to stop so you can get out and get a better look?”
“No!” It’s sad that a boy his age has never seen cows before, except maybe in picture books. I guess to a kid who’s probably never been out of inner-city Newark before, they must seem more frightening than gunshots or junkies in the streets. Minnie’s told me that Africa was with her that time an addict knocked her to the sidewalk and ran off with her purse.
“Take the next right,” I tell Hector, and when he
does, the car begins its climb up Jailhouse Hill. The Halvorsens have painted their house a different color. It used to be blue and now it’s putty gray. The Blackwells have put on an addition. A little boy rides his Big Wheel in old Mrs. Fiondella’s driveway. Orion mentioned that she’d died last year, and that a young family had moved in. I smile, recalling the gifts Mrs. Fiondella would leave on our front steps every August: canned tomatoes and peaches; zucchinis the size of caveman clubs; bouquets of basil, the stems wrapped tightly in wet paper towels and aluminum foil. She took a shine to Andrew, especially; after he had shoveled her walkway or raked her leaves, she’d come over and want to pay him. “No, that’s okay,” he’d tell her, and she’d follow him until she’d cornered him, waving away his protests and stuffing dollar bills into the pocket of his shirt. With the exception of crabby old Mr. Genovese across the street, there was a sense of community here back then; it was a nice neighborhood for the kids to grow up in. At our place in New York, the guy in the apartment next door barely manages a hello when we step into the elevator together. “The driveway coming up on the left,” I tell Hector. “You can pull right in.” It’s strange to see a Realtor’s sign on our front lawn. There’s no other car. Andrew and the girls must not have gotten here yet. Maybe they stopped along the way for lunch.
“Where we at?” Africa wants to know. I tell him this was where I used to live. “Who live here now?”
“Just my ex-husband.” Minnie tells him to stop being a busybody.
Hector takes out the luggage. Walking up the front steps, I reach into my purse. Finger, at the bottom, the house key which, for some reason, I’ve never mailed back to Orion. He was surprised when I told him I didn’t need the combination to the Realtor’s lockbox. “Come on in,” I say, swinging open the front door. The three of them enter, wide-eyed and shy.
“How many rooms in this place?” Hector asks.
“Nine.”
“Nine rooms for just hisself?” Minnie asks, amazed. She’s probably wondering why I’d give up this house to live in a New York apartment, even one as spacious and elegantly appointed as Viveca’s.
They follow me into the kitchen. Hector takes out his cell phone to call his sister. He’s left his kids with her this weekend and wants to make sure they’re behaving, he says. Africa’s head swivels back and forth between the den and the counter where the little television is. “That guy who live here got two TVs?” he says. “Wow, he rich.” I smile, neither confirming nor denying. I open the door to the built-in that holds the ironing board and flop it down. Take out the flat iron and plug it in.
I make a plan. Minnie will iron Hector’s wedding clothes while I go downstairs and throw Africa’s and her soiled clothes in the washing machine. Minnie says I don’t have to do it; she can wash them out in the sink at their motel. But I insist. “They ought to be out of the dryer in, oh, an hour and a half. Hector can stop by later and pick them up.” I open the fridge. There’s a six-pack of ginger ale in there, a bottle of tonic water. “Who’s thirsty?” I ask.
“Me!” Africa says. Hector looks up and shakes his head.
“Minnie? How about you?
“No, ma’am. Thass a good idea, though. Hidin’ the ironing board out of sight like that. I ain’t ever seen nothin’ like that.” When I hand Africa his can of soda, he gulps it down. His mother frowns at him. “Where your manners at?”
“Thank you,” Africa says.
“You’re welcome, sweetheart. Would you like to watch TV?”
He nods, reaches for the remote. “You got Spike?”
I shrug. What’s Spike?
“Never mind no Spike until you go in, use the toilet. That okay, Miz Anna?” Of course, I tell her. Africa says he doesn’t have to go. “You do so have to. I know what it mean when you grabbin’ yo’self like that. Scoot!”
“He knows better than that,” Hector says into the phone. “Is he there? Put him on.” Phone in hand, he wanders into the living room.
Minnie licks her finger and touches it to the iron. Picks up the shirt that Hector’s brought and places it on the board. It’s black, red, yellow, and white—the style that Tony Soprano always wore. “This shirt is louder than a po-leese siren,” Minnie says. Amused by her own joke, she grins, then covers her mouth with her hand. She’s so self-conscious about those missing front teeth. It’s one of the few times I’ve ever seen her smile. Maybe after Viveca and I get back from Greece, I can give her the money for some new ones.
Africa emerges, the toilet still in midflush. “Get back in there and wash them hands!” Minnie says. He says he washed them. “Don’t you be tellin’ me no stories. And leave the door open so I can see you doin’ it.” After he’s complied, he comes back into the kitchen and picks up the remote. Whizzes past a dizzying number of stations until he finds what he’s looking for. I head down to the basement with the vomity clothes.
A few minutes later, nearing the top of the stairs again, I overhear the tail end of a conversation between her and Hector. “Me neither, but I can’t say no to no thousand dollars. When we get back, I’m gon’ fire that babysitter’s ass. Backing out on me like that at the last minute. Hmph.”
Blinking back tears, I hear Viveca’s reproof: They don’t want to be your friends, Anna. They just want to come to work, do their job, and go home. Thinking about Viveca reminds me: the Josephus Jones painting I’m supposed to bring over there. I turn around and tiptoe back down the stairs to get it.
But where is that painting? Did Orion leave it upstairs after we showed it to her that day? Stash it back up in the attic where we found it? Maybe he’s put it in one of these storage cartons.
I look through the boxes without finding it, but in the last one, I find, instead, the old family scrapbook my brother gave me—the one our mother kept. Donald had the photos copied for himself and let me have the originals. I sit, open the album. I haven’t looked at it in years.
The first photos are black-and-white Polaroids of Mama and Daddy during what must have been their courtship. In the one where they’re kissing, Mama’s wearing his big, clunky class ring on a chain around her neck—the ring I’d sometimes finger when I’d sneak into their bedroom and look through their bureau drawers. Did it get thrown out? I wonder. Does Donald have it? It weighed a ton, I remember. . . . In another picture, they’re at some kind of carnival or fair. It’s summertime. Daddy’s in cuffed jeans and a striped T-shirt, the sleeves tight against his biceps. Mama’s wearing pedal pushers and a blouse with puffy sleeves and she’s carrying a stuffed animal he must have won for her. On the next page there’s a color picture, professionally taken. OLAN MILLS, it says in the lower corner. They’re at some kind of dress-up affair, posed beneath a trellis decorated with crepe paper and fake-looking flowers. Daddy’s in his uniform—his dress whites, so he’s already out of high school and in the navy. Mama’s wearing a pastel pink semiformal: spaghetti straps, a full skirt. Her heels and wrist corsage match the color of her dress. I lift the picture away from its red corners and look on the back. Mama’s handwriting: Me and Chick at my senior prom, May 25, 1947. The night we got engaged! Their wedding invitation is on the opposite page. Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Sullivan request the honour of your presence at the marriage of their daughter, Myrna Cathleen to Mr. Charles O’Day. . . .
Pictures of their wedding reception, their honeymoon. They both look so young, barely out of their teens. . . . Here’s one of Daddy on the deck of a ship, his arms around two other sailors. . . . Mama in a maternity top, Donald as a baby, and then a toddler cross-legged on the floor beneath a sad-looking Christmas tree . . . Daddy standing in front of the barber shop where he used to work with Uncle Brendan . . . Here’s me in my christening gown. Me as a two- or three-year-old in a bulky snowsuit . . . Donald and me dressed for Sunday church—Easter, maybe. I swallow hard, studying the one of me sitting on our old living room sofa, holding baby Grace.
I should close the book now. I remember what comes next. The final picture before all the empty pages—
the last photo she put in before she and Gracie died. . . .
It’s us at Fort Nipmuck—in the picnic area next to the old Indian monument. I remember that day. First we took a hike to Wolf Rock. Then Daddy lit a charcoal fire in one of the little fireplaces and roasted hot dogs. In the picture, we’re wearing coats and jackets. The trees are mostly bare, the ground carpeted with leaves. Late October, maybe? Mama’s seated at the picnic table holding Gracie on her knee. I’m leaning against her other leg, squint-smiling at the camera the way my own kids used to do. Daddy must have taken this picture because he’s not in it. But Donald and Kent are. Don sits on the tabletop to the left of Mama, his high-top canvas sneakers on the bench seat. Kent stands on the other side of her, next to me. His coloring and Andrew’s are different, but their eyes, their jawlines: they’re the same. It unnerves me to see, once again, how much my son resembles Kent.
If it’s October, then Gracie is about two months old. She has five more months to live. Mama, too, although from her peaceful smile, you’d never know it. . . . I force myself to look at him again. Kent, who at the time I adored. I was four when that picture was taken, and now I’m fifty-two. Old, just like Africa said. But I’m my little girl self, too, feeling him pull me out of the freezing water and onto that roof. Pulling me closer to him when we’re on the tree limb. I can hear it again: the roar of that rushing black water. . . . But it’s all turned out all right, I remind myself again.
Has it? You sure of that?
Go to hell, Kent! Leave me alone!
I slam the scrapbook shut. Get up and shove it back into the box. Kick the box. Kent is just an old picture in a photo album stuck back inside a cardboard box in a home where I no longer even live. For all I know, he may be dead by now. And if he is, then I’m the only secret-keeper. What happened will die when I die, and no one else will ever have to know. . . .