In some ways, Lynette is my favorite child. I’d never admit that publicly, I barely admit it to myself. But I guess the youngest is always special, especially when she comes later. She has such a gawkiness about her, she’s like a little duckling. And it isn’t just that she’s eleven. She isn’t as pretty as the other two—something happened to her chin: It forgot to grow, or grew too slow. It gives way to her throat at a very steep angle, just kind of disappears. I guess I’ve always felt a little more protective of her because of that, and because she’s the youngest.
June Marie is the prettiest—a natural blond, blue eyes and dimples. She looks like a little doll and has a personality to match: always cheerful, always alert. She was my first, and I’m thankful for that—she was an easy introduction into the trials of motherhood—but her heart belongs to Daddy. As soon as Karen was born, June Marie turned her attention to Jerry. They took care of each other in those first few months while I was busy with Karen and ever after that June Marie continued taking care of her father.
And then there’s Karen. Dear, dark Karen. Karen insists on black. I made her a dress for the tenth-grade dance this spring, and she insisted on black. We looked through all the patterns together, all the pastels and puffy sleeves, all the full skirts and lacework—I would have loved to make one of those for her—but she insisted on black. Straight and simple, too severe and much too sophisticated for a tenth-grader, if you ask me. But I don’t argue with Karen. She’s stubborn as a blueberry stain. Black she wants, then black she gets. I did sneak in an appliqué of bright colors on the inside hem though.
These are my girls, my backup group. My boop-she-boop singers, my own Ronettes. I actually taught them the shoop-shoop song one day a couple of months ago, one of the greatest songs from my day.
Well is it in his face?
Oh, no, that’s just his charms …
In his warm embrace?
Oh no, that’s just his arms …
If you wanna know if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss.
That’s where it is!
It’s in his ki-yi-yiss.
That’s where it is!
A great song. A truly great song. I got them all lined up behind me, showed them how to twirl their hands and shuffle about just like the Ronettes. Or was it the Shirelles? They didn’t know what to make of me. It’s never exactly been my style to dance around the house singing, but sometimes in the year since all that messy stuff happened with Jerry I’ve just felt the need to check out for a while, just become someone else for a while. Anybody. A singer, a stooge. A Flemish acrobat. I feel as if different parts of me are suddenly spinning in different directions, but all the parts are only spinning, I don’t gain any traction. I don’t always know when this strange sensation is going to come over me and it’s a little disconcerting, but I’m trying to learn to live with it, trying to let it go. I figure it’s probably good for me to let off a little steam now and then.
It’s either that or just lie down and watch TV all day, after all. Just sink into inertia. Eat candy. Smoke cigarettes. Drink. There’s a part of me that would love to do that, but I can’t, I’ve got to hold it together. I’m suddenly a team of one, pulling a load that was heavy for two. So if I get a little strange now and then and want to take a vacation … well, where is the person who’ll judge me for that?
They’re everywhere, that’s where they are.
Everybody is watching me. Or at least that’s how it’s felt sometimes.
I ran into Gretchen VanderVelt in the store one day a few months ago, in the produce department. She was fondling a melon, her wattles quivering slightly, her eyes bugging out. I was right next to her before I saw her, and as soon as she saw me she set down the melon and clutched my arm.
“I just want you to know,” she said, “I think that it’s just marvelous the way you’re continuing on with your life.” She looked at me with pity. “To be left alone with three young children. And three young children who’ve been through so much …”
I stared at her, too stunned to speak. It had been nine months since Jerry had gone and here she was still talking about it.
“Do you know, at the bank,” she said, “the teller was talking about it to me. About how well you seem to be doing.”
I looked around to see who might hear and tried to pull myself free from her, but I would have had to pry her fingers off me with a claw hammer.
“You have a lovely family,” she whispered. Why did she whisper that part, I wondered, and trumpet the rest of it? “Those girls are beauties, every one. Well, I’m sure the little one will grow into it. And it just makes my heart break to think of their father—” She broke off and gazed at me, shaking her head. I wanted to throttle her. “Is there any way I can help?” she said.
I patted her hand and kept patting it until I was almost spanking it. “No,” I said coldly. “We’re doing fine. Thank you so much for your concern.”
Finally she let go of me and gave me this condescending smile. I picked up the melon she’d been holding and plunged it into her shopping cart, right on top of her eggs. “Don’t forget your melon,” I said, and then I marched away.
I was furious for the whole afternoon, to think that she was using my life as a soap opera, something to watch and cluck her tongue about. To think the whole town was doing that, as if there were no people involved, as if we were only actors being paid to say our lines and could go home at night to a different life, probably in a limousine, or go out dancing at a nightclub. Going out to a nightclub, hah. Going out to McDonald’s is more than we’ve been able to muster sometimes, feeling as watched as we have. I felt like I could have murdered that woman, standing there in the market. But I smashed her eggs instead.
I’ve got to say it felt good.
It amazes me that in the midst of all the public humiliation, June Marie went out for the talent show. I couldn’t imagine she’d want to put herself on public display and I asked her if she was sure about it—if she’d really thought it through—but she was adamant. All her friends were doing things, and she wanted to be a part of it. And who was I to say no? She’d always been an extrovert, right from her very first breath, and she was on public view anyway, all the time, as a cheerleader. Why should any of that change? What were we supposed to do, stop living our lives? I just hoped that none of the kids would laugh at the irony of her song. She was singing “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.”
I made her the dress, from the photograph on the album. I got an old wedding gown at Goodwill and rebuilt it to make it look like the strapless white ball gown in the picture. I fudged it a bit, needless to say—I dispensed with the beads and added some sheer fabric to cover her shoulders and arms. Between that dress and Karen’s black thing, sometimes I felt like I didn’t have time to eat for a couple of months there after Jerry was taken from us. But it was just as well, it was fine. I needed to keep my hands busy. If I’d stopped moving, I would have been done for.
Especially in the middle of the night. There were several months there when I never slept through an entire night. I’d wake up at three or four, regular as clockwork. At first I’d just lie there with my eyes shut, pretending I was still asleep, hoping I could will myself to be “out” for a few hours more. There’s such a cruelty in sleep: When you need it most, it eludes you. But then I caught on it was not to be. So when I woke up at three or four, I didn’t fight back anymore. I just got up and went about my business, measuring and cutting fabric, pinning, draping, planning.
And life went on. Life still goes on. I go to the bank every morning and do my job. I come home at night and take care of my girls. I listen to their successes and failures, their worries, their plans, their musings. With Jerry gone, I don’t have the time to do all the things I used to do. So June Marie does most of the shopping. Karen cleans the house every weekend. And Lynnie sets and clears the table, and puts the dishes in the dishwasher. I used to do all those things myself, but now we have our little systems. I like it, in a way. I like to see the way the girls have accepted responsibility—much, much more than they used to. We manage pretty well, in fact. We run a pretty tight little ship.
But sometimes at night I miss him. Sometimes at night I feel an ache, a longing. Not a yearning for him so much, I think, as for what we used to have together. When something happens during the day, something funny or interesting, I start to tuck it into my mind like you’d tuck a rabbit into your sleeve, to pull out later and amaze someone. Then I remember I have no audience. The girls, they have their own stories to tell, and some of the stories I have to tell I wouldn’t tell to them; they wouldn’t understand them. I feel like I felt when my brother was killed—this sense of an enormous absence, a void where there’s supposed to be something. But when Stevie was killed, I had Jerry to comfort me. Now there is no one to comfort me. Just my pins and needles, my dressmaker’s dummy and my books. And my girls. My backup group. My shoop-shoop singers. My reason to live.