Winnie boarded the church van Friday afternoon with all of her gear and put her window down to wave at me as they pulled away for snow camp. She seemed to have gotten over the whole episode with Andie, but I noticed she no longer spoke directly to her anymore. Who could blame her for self-preservation?
Andie seemed to alternate between barely controlled elation and withdrawal, which was probably her own plan for self-preservation. I knew she was in deep denial about her grandparents regaining custody, but there was nothing I could say to convince her of that.
I was elbow-deep in chocolate haystacks when the phone rang on Friday night. I picked up the cordless with two slick fingers, expecting it to be Winnie calling from a pay phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, babe.”
The phone slid like a piece of peeled fruit, and I caught it just before it landed in the batter. Struggling to maintain my cool, I answered, “You don’t get to call me that anymore.”
Just hang up, I told myself. Self-preservation.
The sound of Russell’s voice stirred the dust of countless nights spent mourning the poor fit of my life with his.
“Go away, Russell.” Just hang up.
He swore.
I nestled the phone in the crook of my neck and turned on the faucet full blast to rinse my hands, one at a time—trying to wash away the soiled parts of me.
“Look, Marty. I don’t want to start nothin’.”
“Then why did you call?”
“Just checkin’ in to see how my girls are doing.”
“Your girls?” I wrenched the water off, and the pipe squeaked.
“Deja and Winnie, they there?”
“Leave them alone. It’s too late for you, if that’s what you think.”
“Can’t we have a normal conversation for once?”
“You lost that privilege years ago.”
Silence on his end. Maybe he’ll hang up and go away. My heart echoed, Maybe he won’t call for another two years.
I hated the way he could still make me feel.
“How’s Carl?”
“He hates you more than ever.”
More silence. What was stopping me from hanging up?
“You still baking? Starr, she makes a pretty good rhubarb pie, but between you and me, she can’t make apple for the life of her.”
I felt my shoulders align naturally. “What do you want, Russell?”
“All right, Marty. You don’t want to talk? Fine. You know, I could pick up the girls for spring break, if I wanted to. They haven’t seen our place yet. Maybe stop by Sugar Pine Point. Camping. Jet skiing. Bet they’d like that.”
I licked my lips, tasting chocolate. It was a power play, and it had drawn the response he wanted.
“That’s going to be pretty hard to do when Sugar Pine doesn’t open until after Memorial Day. Don’t you remember?”
“You’re harpin’ on that again.”
“Yeah, well it stands out in my memory.”
“It worked out, didn’t it? We found a campground.”
“In Forest Grove. Down the road from our house. It took all day, just to find a place to pitch a tent in the dark. We were twenty miles from the girls’ beds.”
What was wrong with me? Why was I arguing with him about things that happened years before? I wiped sticky chocolate from my cheek. “It’s not important anymore.”
“So maybe I’ll pick them up and take them to Bodega Bay instead. Starr hasn’t seen it. When’s spring break?”
Was he deliberately choosing these places to bait me? Before Ginger had gotten sick we’d spent a miserably wet weekend there because he hadn’t checked the weather forecast ahead of time. We had to buy clothes at Salvation Army just to keep the girls dry.
“Dress warm. And take ponchos.”
He swore. “Yeah, yeah.”
I felt wicked. “It could be a good thing, you never know. Maybe Starr and Deja will really hit it off.”
“Starr’s fine with it. Anything I want to do is just fine with her. Now listen, Marty, I get visitation, and if I want them for the summer, I can have that too. The judge said so.”
Why now? I stifled a sharp retort, knowing that the girls would become pawns between us. Was it possible that he simply regretted all the time spent away from them? Could he be missing them?
“So … this Andrea,” he said, feigning nonchalance. “She workin’ out all right?”
“AnDRAYa,” I corrected him, without thinking.
Amazing, how much Deja sounded just like him.
“She look like the others, or what?”
A desire to protect Andie injected my veins. My own failures with her were fresh in my heart. “Leave her out of this, Russell.”
“She’s my kid. If I want to see her—”
“The courts won’t let you take her.”
“What do you mean? I’m the father.” He paused. “You tellin’ me I’m not the father?”
I could lie and say Andie wasn’t his, just to protect her, but the truth would come out, and he would only use it to make me look bad to the girls. I couldn’t stand to lose any more daughters. I glanced toward the door and lowered my voice so Dad wouldn’t hear if he came through from the garage. “No, of course you’re the father,” I said. “The court’s just being very … cautious, that’s all.” I moved the phone to my other ear and leaned into it.
“Yeah? How?”
“They send out a worker once in a while.”
“A worker? What kinda worker?”
“You know, a court worker. A social worker.”
“Why’s that?”
I really didn’t want to tell him that Andie wasn’t completely mine yet, that she may be up for grabs. I already regretted that I had more or less given her up already.
“They have to go by the book. Until it’s all settled.”
“I thought it was all settled.”
“It is, pretty much,” I lied. “It’s just court procedure.”
There was silence on his end. I heard the screen door slam in the distance beyond him, and he lowered his voice. “She look like the girls? You know, more than, than …”
He couldn’t even say her name.
“More than Ginger?” I finished.
“Well, yeah.”
I thought of Andie’s silvery blonde hair, and her blue eyes with the same hazel flecks as his. How she moved like a young colt off the halter on the rare occasions when she felt truly at ease. “She looks like Winnie.”
“That right? Blonde hair?”
“Lots of it.”
“Shoot, Win didn’t have no hair for so long, I thought she was going to be a baldie. She still roly-poly?”
I smiled in spite of myself. “I guess you could say that.”
He chuckled. “Little Butter Baby.”
A memory played out, bittersweet. Russell, shirtless, carrying bald Winnie in the crook of his arm like he was cradling a bowling ball. Her skin white against his farmer tan.
“Russell,” I said, leaning back against the counter. “Why did you call? Really?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve been thinking. I don’t know where … you know, it’s comin’ up on March and that.” He paused. He must have been gathering courage. “I don’t know where her grave is.”
When I didn’t—couldn’t—answer right away, he took it for refusal, and his voice pitched. “I got a right to know, that’s all. She’s my kid.”
The moment of familiarity between us dispersed like mist, and we were back on the same footing.
“There aren’t that many cemeteries in town. Get Starr to help you.”
He swore. “For cryin’ out loud, Marty, she’s my kid! I got a right to know.”
“No, Russell,” I said before hanging up. “I thought you might, but you don’t.”
Mercifully, Russell’s call came at the beginning of the weekend of Winnie’s absence, and I could lick my wounds in private without her around. I had nothing to give anyone at that point, not even my sweet, needy baby girl.
It’s amazing to me that you can be away from someone for years, and within seconds you’re back at the same place like it’s bookmarked, no matter how hard you try to be strong. Your thought processes have built-in memory, triggers so predictable that the mere mention of a name can kick them into gear. That could be the only explanation for why I sank into depression after my conversation with Russell. Toward the end of our marriage, nothing I did was good enough. I wasn’t good enough. Being reminded of that only served to magnify my failure with Andie.
I tried not to think about his threat to use his visitation rights. In a twisted way, Starr and I were silent allies, making sure he never had contact with the girls. It was disconcerting to realize that we were both in it for selfish reasons.
Ginger’s anniversary loomed, and I bent mentally to meet it. Sunday afternoon, I opened the freezer for a package of hamburger, and frozen baked goods spilled out into my arms. I scrambled to catch baggies and loaves, shocked that the freezer was so tightly packed. I turned to set them down on the table, only to find it was already stacked with plates and pans of goodies. Chocolate chips, peanut butter blossoms, brownies, oatmeal bars, scones, nut bread, biscotti—food was everywhere.
I sagged into a kitchen chair, not even mindful of the frozen baggies burning through my sleeves. When had I made all this stuff? I struggled to remember my activities over the past few days.
A thought sickened me. Winnie was gone. Was I overdosing on baking, or was it that ordinarily Winnie’s constant grazing kept the table clean?
Winnie got back Sunday night with her face sunburned, full of stories about her weekend at camp. We always forgot to pack the suntan lotion. Every other sentence was about her new friend, Rae. I suspected that she was trying to make Andie jealous, but it didn’t seem to be working.
I guess I started sleeping a lot, and I came in late to work one morning, which rarely ever happens. I had to ask Robert to make three overrides on my register in the first hour I was there. I could tell he was irritated. He gave me a look after the third time, and told me to “get it together.”
I saw Jo step away from her register, march over to Robert, and back him into a corner. She grilled him, leaning in with her arms folded across her chest and her chin in the air. She nodded over to me, and he looked down at my feet. Whatever she said next took him by surprise. He threw his hands in the air and stomped off toward the manager’s office.
Jo came over and put my CLOSED sign on the belt, announcing to the rest of my customers that Stephanie could help them on aisle three. Then she shooed me back toward the employees’ lockers.
“Listen, you need to go home.” She opened my locker and pulled out my purse, threading the strap over my shoulder. When did she learn my locker combination?
“I’m okay,” I protested, pulling the strap off my shoulder.
“You’re okay? Look at your feet.”
I looked down. I was wearing two different shoes.
“You plan to wear the other pair tomorrow?” She put my purse strap back on my shoulder and unzipped my bag. She dug around in it and came up with my keys. “Now, I’m guessing you’ve hit overload, because this isn’t the first crazy thing you’ve done lately. You’ve got too much on your plate, is all. Take the rest of the day off—Doctor Jo’s orders.”
“But Robert …”
“Don’t you worry about Robert. His wife would love to know he always schedules Candy to close on the nights he works late.”
I stood for a moment, but my feet wouldn’t move. I sagged onto the bench. “Russell called.”
Jo stopped fussing, obviously caught off guard. “Oh, you poor lamb.” She sank down beside me, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the narrow bench, and threaded her arm through mine.
I filled her in briefly on my conversation with Russell and ended with a confession of how I’d basically burned my bridge with Andie.
She listened quietly without offering a quick fix. “Do you think you can make it home okay?”
Home. The place I least wanted to be at that moment. I nodded.
She patted my knee and announced that she needed a smoke.
I got up, and she hugged me the way my own mom would’ve done. I had to fight back the tears.
I took her advice and left work, but I couldn’t make myself go home. I took the interstate and went east, ending up in a little gold rush town in the foothills. I wandered into antique shops, quiet and reminiscent of gentler times when court visitations and DNA were unheard of. Old buildings that smelled like the ranch house in Elko, with the blue-and-white dishes from my childhood stacked alongside printed tablecloths and tin tumblers with fading colors where little fingers had gripped the sweating cups on hot summer days.
My brother, Charles, always drank my Kool-Aid concoctions, no matter how bitter or how sweet. I licked my lips, mildly surprised to find no traces of grape or cherry lingering there.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten, and I pulled in at Starbucks. When I got out of the car I realized I was still wearing my orange apron and yanked it off. I ordered plain coffee and had every intention of curling up in a cozy armchair with a newspaper from some faraway city to lounge for as long as I wanted. But listening to the chatter of the young professionals in line ordering one-pump-light-chai-passion-tea-whatevers, with room, made me feel self-conscious with my plain-Jane tastes, and I took my coffee back to the car to drink alone.
Sitting in the car with the silence throbbing all around me, I did an impulsive thing. I put on my seat belt, turned on the ignition, pointed the car north toward the interstate, and took off. I just drove. I didn’t care where I was going. I had no idea, and that was the point. I drove very fast for hours.
I rolled the window down so the cold air slapped my cheeks, and rested my arm on the door, driving one-handed. I pushed down the voices flailing at me to turn around and go home and do laundry or bake, or be there for the girls, for heaven’s sake. Tuning the radio to a heavy metal station drowned the voices out. I turned it up loud and focused on the landscape, how it changed from foothill to flat to a bowl ringed with mountains.
I suppose every woman has contemplated leaving at some point in her life, just with the clothes on her back and her purse, with her stress following her, driving her on. I wasn’t so different.
Hours later I ended up in Redding. I sat nursing another coffee at a McDonald’s by the freeway, shaken to the core. The longer I sat watching the little families come into the enclosed playground, and the old men eating alone, the more I knew the choice was right there, laid out before me.
For a while I actually contemplated leaving it all behind, and the thought frightened me. I was a balloon untethered, rising above all my problems. How easy it would be. Then a child caught me by the string.
That child was me.
I became my brother’s shadow from the time I was old enough to keep up. There were seven years between Charles and me, and I confidently rode his coattails to adventure. Exploring the boundaries of our ranch, escaping imaginary bandits, he kept my secrets and kept me safe. I idolized him.
But even at my young age, I knew that Dad was hard on Charles. Nothing my brother did ever pleased Dad. Something happened between them the week Charles turned eighteen. I covered my ears and hid in the bathroom, too young to understand why they argued, but knowing it was bad. When I realized he was leaving, I chased Charles down to the end of the dirt lane, my bare feet sending up tufts of fine powder to grit in my teeth, and my tears running hot fingers down my face and neck. He stopped and hugged me roughly. Then he held me away from him and told me to go back. That was the last time I ever saw him.
I was that child all over again. Those feelings of abandonment and bereavement were resurrected the moment I saw the Redding exit sign and realized how far I’d gone.
I really didn’t want to cause my family any more pain than they’d already gone through. When it came right down to it, we were all in it together. It’s hard to explain, except that I knew God was telling me that the choice was really more about me than about staying or leaving. I would be the same person, with or without them.
I couldn’t change Deja or Andie or Russell. I couldn’t change the fact that I was a divorced woman whose pulse still skipped at her husband’s voice, living with her widowed dad and kids, with a precious child buried in a crummy district cemetery without even a proper headstone to mark her grave. I couldn’t change my mistakes from the past, my regrets about lost loved ones, or my personal failures. I could only go on from there.
Was it possible that the change could happen inside of me? Would I be the same person when I returned? There were things I needed to let go of. I had to find a way to let go of Russell and my bitterness toward him. I had to abandon the dream of a perfectly functional family. My family was just right. Quirky, yes, but perfect in its own brand of dysfunction. I had to relinquish my need for Andie to replace Ginger, and I had to admit that maybe—just maybe—I had suspected I had the wrong child from the very beginning.
And at the same time, I had to take steps toward the future, even if it involved taking risks. I could make long-range plans to open a bakery after the girls were grown, couldn’t I? And I could love Andie even if she never loved me back.
I had to turn around. I guess most women do. I chewed on it the whole way home, oddly touched that the God of the universe saw me as worth the trouble to flag down on my way out of state. Maybe I didn’t fit in my skin exactly, but knowing that I’d made the choice to return home made it better drape my contours, ever so slightly.
The hand I’d been dealt was what it was. In the next few weeks, I’d have to fasten my seat belt and brace for impact. Ginger’s anniversary loomed ahead in the shadows.
It was dark when I pulled in and parked beside the truck. Dad looked up from his basketball game when I came in and said gruffly, “Where you been, girl?” like I was sixteen again.
“Driving,” I said, plopping down beside him on the couch. I threaded my arm through his, not allowing his worry to come between us. He looked a mixture of irritation and relief.
“Driving.” It was something he understood. “Where’d you end up?”
I rested my head on his shoulder. “Redding.”
“Surprised the car made it that far.”
“Is everyone in?”
“I fed ’em and set them to doing their homework. You might want to call Jo. She called twice.”
I kissed him on the cheek. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Dad. I just needed to think.”
He patted my knee, nodding silently. “Supper’s on the table, if you’re hungry.”
I went into the kitchen and ate my cold plate of hash while standing by the sink. Afterwards, I went to the girls’ rooms.
Winnie hugged my waist and scolded me for being late. When I checked in Andie’s room, she looked up without speaking, blinking like a little owl. Deja asked, “Where did you go, Mom? We had to eat Grandpa’s hash for dinner. It was so gross. I need to take some junk food for English tomorrow to suck up to Mr. Gotsch. Cookies or brownies or something.”
“Don’t worry. We have tons in the freezer,” I said, closing their door. “Good night, girls.”