My mother and sister were scheduled to visit that weekend; my sister would stay until it was time for her to go to Holton-Arms for the new school year. As usual, on the rare occasions when my mother visited, I always hoped she would refuse to go back to the sanatorium, even though I’d been warned not to expect that; according to Brickie and Dimma, she was still sick.
Liz arrived first from Camp Furman, very tan, with dirt under her fingernails, which bore remnants of orange nail polish. I could see golden stubble on her legs, and her long red hair had been chopped off at the ears and stuck up in shocks and knots all over the top of her head. Kiss curls hooked on her cheeks stiffly, as if they’d been pasted there. Dimma was horrified.
“What on earth have you done to yourself?” she demanded.
“What?” Liz said with bogus innocence. “I learned how to tease it.” She grinned. “Don’t you like it, Dimma?”
“It’s not appropriate for a girl your age, and we are going straight to Garfinckel’s to have it repaired before your mother gets here. If it can be repaired.” Dimma ran her fingers over Liz’s head, smoothing the hanks that spiked up randomly. “What did you do—use an entire can of Aqua Net?”
“Mama won’t care—she teases hers.” My mother wore a short pompadour, clipped on the sides and high on top like the Everly Brothers’, except that she dyed it platinum. At least it had still been that color when I last saw her.
I knew the truth about Liz’s hair—that she had been brushing only the top of her long mane at camp, not underneath, and a tangled mass like an orange Brillo pad had developed, at which point she’d had to cut it all off. This had happened before, and I’d been the one to chop out the matted mess and smooth the remaining hair over the damage. Somehow this had gone undetected. “You look like Clarabell,” I said.
“At least I don’t have scabs on my head,” she said, eyeing my ringworm. “I heard that enemas cure scabby heads.”
This alarmed me because my grandmother believed enemas were good for everything. She often threatened me with them to scare me into better hygiene or behavior, but enemas had been administered a couple times. Dimma said, “That’s enough, you two. His head is clearing up.” It wasn’t; it still itched viciously.
Dimma called Garfinckel’s salon and told Liz to go take a shower, not a bath, and to wash her hair thoroughly with the Breck. Liz stomped upstairs to her room with her suitcase and slammed the door. In a minute, “A Big Hunk o’ Love” was blaring. I followed Dimma into the kitchen. “She shaved her legs, too,” I mentioned casually.
“Damn it.” Dimma lit a Chesterfield. “She’s headed straight for Florence Crittenton.” Florence Crittenton was a place where girls had to go to have babies if they didn’t have a husband, which I was a little confused about. Dimma went to ladies’ lunches to help them. She said, “She’ll end up like…God in heaven.” She shook her head but didn’t finish the sentence and began rinsing out ashtrays at the sink. Dimma used a lot of expressions with religious words in them, but we didn’t go to church. I supposed that was why she said them—to make up for it. I wondered if she was saying that Liz would end up like God in heaven, but that made no sense, and in my opinion Liz was not destined for heaven.
Dimma and Liz returned later, Liz sporting a sleek pixie cut à la Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, another of Elena’s favorite films, and a red nose from crying.
“Now you look like Bozo,” I said, running out of striking range. I was a little bit glad to have Liz home but didn’t have any idea of how to show it. I felt like Max, who secretly liked Beatriz but tried to act as if he didn’t. And I wished I could have my mother all to myself.
Liz yelled after me, “Why don’t you go drink some Clorox with your dopey friends?” I’d once accidentally drunk some bleach that had been in a 7 Up bottle, and had to have my stomach pumped.
“Dear Lord, deliver us,” Dimma said, shaking her head. “Can you two, for the sake of your mother, please try to get along?”
Brickie had already driven down to St. Elizabeths, my mother’s hospital, which was just off Alabama Avenue in Southeast Washington. I badly wanted to go, especially since Brickie was taking Dimma’s gleaming cream-colored Cadillac, but he said it wasn’t a good idea. I thought he was worried, maybe, that I’d get TB or something, but couldn’t I also get it from my mother? Another thing that made no sense to me, but I didn’t press it.
They returned late that afternoon. For a second I didn’t recognize my mother—I just saw a pretty, well-dressed lady being helped out of the car by Brickie. She was so thin and pale, practically the color of Brickie’s tawny roses blooming in a bed next to the driveway, and normally in summer she was gorgeously tan. An inch or two of black roots showed bizarrely in her ice-colored hair. Then I noticed she was wearing a navy-blue shirtwaist that I liked, and her lipstick was her usual color, Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow, so I felt better. Brickie, carrying her suitcase, announced happily, “Here’s our girl!” Dimma rushed out the screen door to hug her, then held her at arm’s length, telling her how wonderful she looked. At a loss for words, I ran to her, too, squeezing between my mother and Dimma, and wrapped myself around her.
“My baby!” she said, letting loose of Dimma and folding herself over me. “Oh, I missed you so much!” When we separated I saw tears in her gray eyes. “You look wonderful! Did you miss me?”
“No,” I said, suddenly a little angry.
Dimma said, “John.”
Mama just smiled. She hugged me again, planting little smooches all over my face, which I hoped would leave Cherries in the Snow smudges. I felt my anger melt away, and tears coming on, but I wasn’t going to cry. “I’m much better now,” she told me. “I’ll be coming home for good soon, I promise.”
Dimma said cheerfully, “Of course you will be, darling.”
But I wanted her home for good right now. My mother ran into the house and up the stairs, calling my sister’s name. I couldn’t help myself and yelled after her, “Liz cut her hair! She has an ugly orange pinhead now!”
Brickie was in a great mood, for a change. He had always doted on my mother, his baby girl. I helped him clean the spider junk off the screened porch and we sat down to a long-awaited family dinner. Estelle had made her spectacular crab cakes—jumbo lumps of meat, one egg, a little mayo, a sleeve of crushed saltines, a pinch of Old Bay—along with corn fritters, green beans, and deviled eggs. The adults had cocktails and beer, and Liz and I were allowed to have a little beer served in Dimma’s champagne coupes. Even my sister seemed happy, and my mother said she loved her hair, and that they would do their nails together tomorrow, and that Liz could help her touch up her roots. To me she promised a trip to Rock Creek Park to find some crayfish, and she wanted to see all my new spiders, and we could all go to the Moon Palace, my favorite Chinese restaurant, for dinner. Everything was so nice, heartwarming, actually, like we were on Father Knows Best. I was sad for a second, thinking about fathers knowing best, and mine being gone, but I’d see him soon enough for our annual beach trip, and I wasn’t going to let that ruin the lovely moment. We ate and drank, engaging in pleasant small talk.
I told her about our plans for the Fiesta. “Please can you stay for it, Mama? It’s going to be right here at our house!”
Liz smiled slyly at Dimma. “How’d that happen?”
“It’s for a good cause,” Dimma replied. “And I hope it might keep some people occupied, and out of trouble for a while. It’s important to encourage children to have good causes—doesn’t everybody think?”
“I think it sounds like a wonderful idea, John!” my mother said. “I’d love to come, but…” She patted her heart softly, or maybe she was indicating her lungs. “Dr. Overholser doesn’t think I’m well enough to come home just yet.” My own heart sank, even though I’d known better than to get my hopes up.
“You boys can always plan another Fiesta next summer,” Brickie said. “If this party goes well,” he added, a little pointedly.
“Or maybe at Christmas!” I said, hope springing eternal.
Liz said, “Well, I’m here now. I can help with the party.” She scooped up a deviled egg.
“Umm…okay,” I said, surprised, and not sure I wanted to share the glory for what I believed would be an epic success. So that Liz would know she couldn’t be the boss, I added, “Elena has been helping us, too. And Beatriz.” I took a sip of my beer, spirits buoyed.
“How is Elena?” my mother asked, touching Brickie’s velvety roses on the table. “She sent me a sweet note at the hospital, saying she was going to look out for you while I was gone.”
I was not going to spoil the mood by mentioning anything about Josef’s increasingly disturbing behavior, so I concentrated on submerging my crab cake in the tartar sauce dish.
“Elena is a kind person,” Dimma said.
“Kind, yes,” Brickie said, passing the green beans around.
We chatted about the neighborhood, Liz’s new school, spiders, Brickie’s flowers. I was content. We were like a normal family.
Then the warm scenario was suddenly interrupted by a deep melodic voice calling from the street:
My knives, my knives, my knives are very sharp!
But my heart, my heart, my heart is so tender
Please bring me your knives,
I’ll make them cut well!
Pretty ladies, here comes your tenderhearted vendor!
Brickie, in the midst of passing the platter of crab cakes, froze. Then he snorted, “Harry Belafonte needs to tally his bananas somewhere else.” No one else said anything. “Another scrumptious crab cake, my dear?” he said pleasantly to my mother, who was looking down into her lap. Her roots stood out like a black scar on her scalp. She didn’t answer Brickie, and he set the platter down. He reached over to my mother’s lap and squeezed her hand. “It’s important that you eat, sweetheart.”
“The crab cakes are especially good tonight, aren’t they?” Dimma said evenly. “Estelle was very happy that you girls would be coming home to enjoy them.”
The singing continued. I knew it was James, the Jamaican knife-sharpener, coming around in his truck and summoning customers with his siren song. Max and Ivan and I liked James; he let us get in the truck and look at his knives, scissors, and tools while he sharpened them for Maria, Mrs. Friedmann, or my mother. All the ladies in the neighborhood liked him. He was handsome and cheerful, with a boisterous, musical laugh. Hearing his song now, I knew that something at our table had changed, but I had no idea what. My mother looked up at Brickie with a weak smile. “I think I would like more crab,” she said.
Brickie placed a crusty cake on her plate. “You need to put some meat on your bones.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” my mother said. “Mama.” She turned to Dimma. “Please be sure to tell Estelle how delicious everything is. I’m sorry I won’t see her.”
Not knowing what else to do, I reached across the table, grabbed a corn fritter, and stuffed it into my mouth. “Wow—that’s four, Piggy,” Liz said, her normal crankiness restored.
“That’s enough of that,” Brickie said in his most severe voice. James’s singing faded away into the evening. For a few minutes there was nothing but the clatter of porcelain and silver.
“Have you met any new people at the hospital, darling?” Dimma asked breezily.
“There are some nice people,” my mother said. “But not many interesting ones.” She pushed some food around on her plate. “Not anyone as interesting as Mr. Pound was, anyway.” She looked profoundly saddened.
“Oh, I’ll bet he was interesting,” said Brickie, his voice brittle. “I’m sure he had a lot of interesting things to say about his buddy Mussolini.”
Dimma said, “John.”
I yelped, “Mussolini got shot and they hung him upside down in a gas station!” I was proud to have something to contribute to the conversation, but nobody seemed interested and everybody was either sad or mad.
“How come nobody wants to know if I met any nice people at camp?” Liz said.
My mother smiled. “Well, did you, sweetie?”
“No,” she said sourly. “They’re all square and stupid and smell like mildew.”
My mother turned back to Brickie. “Daddy, that political mess is over now. Mr. Pound was just a harmless old man. He only talked about Italy and poetry with me. Dr. Overholser thought a lot of him, and didn’t think he was…sick.”
“Well, maybe they’ll take a look at his brain like they did Mussolini’s and they can figure out what the hell was wrong with him, then.”
Dimma slapped the table hard and gave my grandfather a fierce look.
“Do people collect brains?” I said.
“Don’t worry—nobody will be interested in yours, Scabby,” Liz said, sneering. “They probably won’t even be able to find it.”
“John, will you get us a couple more beers?” Brickie asked.
I brought the beers, glad for a job. I bowed as I presented a bottle to my mother—“Your wish is my command, madame”—and the grown-ups laughed more than they needed to. My mother hadn’t touched the crab cake but drank her beer thirstily. Then she said, quietly and as if she were far away, to no one but to everybody:
What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
She smiled faintly. Dimma said, “That’s lovely, dear. You remember that my mother knew Mr. Pound’s mother in Philadelphia, don’t you?”
I asked, “What’s ‘dross’?” Nobody answered.
After dinner, my mother said she was tired. She went around the table, kissing everybody good night, and went to bed. I went outside to find the boys and discuss what I’d heard, particularly about Mussolini and brains.
“Yeah,” Max said. “They have his brain in a jar.”
“But how can you tell if somebody is bad by looking at his brain?” I wondered aloud. “What does your brain have to do with TB?”
Max gave me a long look.
Ivan spoke up. “Maybe Mussolini got an earwig in there. That’s what Maria says will happen if you don’t wash your ears. They’re called tijeretas in Mexico.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard one of Dimma’s bridge ladies say that Italians and French people don’t take baths.”
Max asked, “Are earwigs the same as screwworms?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But Brickie told me that we should look out for screwworms. The government once dropped a planeload of something called Smear 62 in Florida or somewhere to get rid of them. Brickie said they eat flesh from open wounds.”
“Gah!” said Max.
“Maybe he was just trying to scare you,” Ivan said. “To make you quit fooling with spiders.”
We thought about these things for a minute, since we weren’t particular fans of baths, either, and we certainly had plenty of open wounds all the time. I changed the subject. “Did you see James?” I asked.
“He sharpened my knife,” Ivan said, showing us. “For free!”
“He never comes around at dinnertime.” Max paused for a second before adding, “Maybe he came to see your mom.”
I was shocked by this remark, but I also felt a prick of recognition. If it was true, it made sense of what had happened at dinner. I could only say, “My mom’s TB is better and she’s coming home for good soon.”
“Maybe your mom had to go away because she liked James too much,” Max said, nonchalantly poking a stick at a spider. “Not because of TB.”
“Your mom likes James, too.” I didn’t want to continue the conversation. I was numb with the sudden realization that ever since my mother had left, I’d had suspicions about the sanatorium story, which had been the easiest thing to tell me and Liz, but I’d bought it willingly, not wanting to think otherwise. Since James was colored, I knew my mother couldn’t like him too much, like a boyfriend. Could she? Maybe it was just one of the outrageous things Max often told us, like when he said that my sister was being sent to Holton-Arms because she was trying to “mate with boys,” or that he thought he’d seen Elena making out with Dawn Allgood’s boyfriend. Max wasn’t trying to be mean; it was his way of cluing Ivan and me in to adult things, even if he didn’t know if they were true. It couldn’t be! I felt like a chump. Needing to change the subject, I said, “Let’s get a jar for lightning bugs.”
“Okay,” Max said, punching my arm affectionately.
“I wish you guys wouldn’t mash them,” Ivan said with a sigh.
The sun was just about down, the very last of it dimming in the trees. The cooling air and descending dark flushed the lightning bugs from the lawns, and they rose, becoming blinking stars against the early-night sky. Unfortunately for some of them, Max and I would crush them on our bike tires so their iridescence would look cool as we rode up and down Connors Lane, a bat or two swooping overhead, until we were called in for the evening. Ivan would keep his lightning bugs in the jar by his bed, like a lantern, and let them go in the morning.