39

 

“A LOUNGE? YOU mean as in selling liquor? So people can sit and drink?” Mom was thunderstruck.

“That’s generally what one does in a lounge,” Dad said sardonically.

“Dear God. My father will roll over in his grave.”

“He might come back to haunt us if everything goes belly up.”

“I suppose that would be much worse, but I still don’t like the idea.”

“We had to apply for a liquor license to hold functions,” he countered. “You knew there’d be alcohol. Did you think folks would throw parties here if they couldn’t have a drink?”

“I thought we were going to host weddings and anniversaries . . . in a chalet. That’s classy. If we turn the place into Parsons’ Lounge, we’ll be nothing but common barkeeps.”

“Say, I think I’ll buy you one of those lace-up bustier things—like those German gals in the Hofbräuhaus with the big bazooms!” Dad held his cupped hands out in front of his chest. I burst into a peal of giggles.

“George,” she chided, making eyes in my direction, as if my tender sensibilities might be injured. He responded to her reprimand with gleeful chuckles. She scowled indignantly. He laughed uproariously. “Be serious. “We’re trying to raise a young lady. What kind of life is she going to have? Think of the things she’d be exposed to; you know how men get when they drink.”

“Calm down, Tina. What I had in mind is not some dive where men come to get drunk, but a classy lounge were ladies and gentleman come to socialize . . . share a few drinks and a laugh in elegant surroundings. I’ll hire a short order cook, and we’ll be a lounge and grill. We’ve got a great dance floor too, and we can have a live band on Friday and Saturday nights. It won’t be much different from a catered affair, really. The drinks will cost a bit more. Nobody’s going to spend their money to bring their wives and girlfriends to a nice place if all they want to do is get drunk off their . . .” He looked at me and smirked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mom began, but her resistance was waning.

“We can pull it together by New Year’s Eve.”

“How on earth are we going to manage that? It’s Christmas! You can’t hire a cook by then. Where are you going to find a bartender?”

“I can tend bar. I’ve done it before.”

“I see. So you’ve worked as a bartender, too? George Parsons, is there anything else I don’t know about you?”

I smiled, assuming it was a humorous rhetorical question. My father didn’t answer. He got that faraway look in his eyes that I’d seen before, and the mirth began to melt at the corners of his mouth until he resembled a sad clown.

 

“OHMYGOSH.”MOM PUT her hand over her heart. “I don’t believe it. When did you have that thing made?” She pointed with the other hand to the large electric sign on wheels that had just been delivered to the driveway. Dad plugged in a long extension cord, and the red neon letters lit up on both sides:

 

Parsons’ Lounge and Grill

Beer, Wine, Cocktails

Wednesday is Ladies’ Night

Live Music Weekends

 

Over the top was a giant flashing red arrow that would indicate the direction of our driveway: right if you were traveling east and left if you were heading west. The line to entice the ladies inside for half-price drinks ran from right to left, then fell off the edge like a waterfall before magically appearing on the other side. It even had a flashing pink martini glass with what appeared to be a little olive, tilted jauntily to one side.

“Isn’t it great? We can put it out by the road, and folks will see it coming from either direction.

“I like it.” I put in my two cents.

“But George, where did you get the money for that? I thought we were broke.”

“I ordered it specially made weeks ago. I’d almost forgotten about it.”

“You’d planned this for weeks . . . without even consulting me?”

“Look, I didn’t know how this thing was going to play out, so I hatched plan B—”

“Do you know what the worst part of this is?” she interrupted. He shrugged. “You told me about this so-called plan of yours only two days ago . . . as if it were up for discussion. You tacitly lied to me.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be crazy about it.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Tina, think of what’s at stake here—your inheritance, my father’s property. If we don’t generate some income, we won’t be able to make the next mortgage payment. We’ll fall behind—maybe fall so deep that we won’t climb out in time. The bank will take everything. My father will lose the land, house and all.”

“He should’ve thought of that before he let us walk blindly into a disaster waiting to happen—before we sunk everything we had into this cockamamie venture. If it weren’t for Arthur Cunningham, we’d be loading up that ridiculous car,” she gestured toward the Bel Air, “and heading back to Racine to beg on my sister’s doorstep.”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

“Well, then I’d leave and take Cassandra with me.”

“Mom,” I pleaded, “don’t say that.”

“Fine, so go then,” he snapped, “but you’d have to go Greyhound.”

“What?”

“I’m making payments on the car, too.”

“We bought that car with cash.”

“And I took out a loan against it when we were running pretty low on that commodity.”

“Jesus Christ,” Mom cried.

“Maybe we could sell some of my clothes?” I offered.

“See?” Mom pointed at me. “See what you’ve gone and done? Do what you want, George . . . run a bar . . . run a strip joint . . . you can run a goddamn brothel for all I care. I’m going home to my sister. We’re going inside,” she told me. I stood frozen to the spot. She placed a firm hand on my shoulder and ushered me toward the house. “I’m taking Cassandra home.”

 

MY MOTHER’S RESOLVE was as short-lived as her temper. She broke down and cried as soon as the kitchen door shut behind us. “What are we going to do? Oh God, I just don’t know anymore,” she choked out between sobs. “I’m so sorry for dragging you into this. I’ve been a terrible mother.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Uprooting you from your friends and school . . . Tearing you from my sister’s arms . . . I was so selfish. Gudrun is right, I’m a selfish, selfishwoman. No, she was right the first time: I’m nothing but a selfish little girl.” My mother plopped onto a chair, folded her arms on the kitchen table and wept with her face buried in the cocoon of her inner elbows. When she looked up, her tousled blond hair and tearstained face made her look like a distraught child. I silently handed her the box of Kleenex and sat down across from her. “You see,” she said with a snuffle, “now, you’re comforting me. I’m supposed to be the adult. I’m supposed to be in control, but I just can’t take it anymore. I’m exhausted. I give up.”

The odor of stale cigar smoke wafted across the kitchen. Grandpa Parsons was standing in the hallway, scowling in our direction. “Shouldn’t you be fixing dinner?” he grunted.

“Why don’t you fix it yourself?” Mom retorted, and got up to leave. I headed her off and ran interference with Reuben.

“Excuse us, please,” I said, while rejoicing inside that the stinky old man wasn’t my real grandfather after all. At that moment it suddenly occurred to me: I wasn’t related by blood to the Schimschacks. Thank God.

He stepped aside, and we filed into the narrow hallway to my parents’ bedroom. My mother went inside but didn’t close the door behind her.

“Mom, may I talk to you?”

“Come in, shut the door, please.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself . . . you’ve had a tough time,” I began.

“My sister said I was spoiled . . . that I had it easy.”

“Well, maybe you never had to work so hard, but Mom . . I know.”

“What do you mean? Know what?”

“Everything—about Dad’s illness, about how you lost your baby boy,” I whispered. “I’m so, so sorry about baby Eddie.” My mother’s face twisted in fresh pain.

“Your aunt told you all that? Over Thanksgiving?”

“Only because I asked questions. I’ve wanted to talk to you about it for a while, but it never seemed like the right time.” I took a deep breath. “Last September before my birthday, I . . . uh . . . I have to go get something from my room.” Mom sat looking bewildered as I jumped up to retrieve her private box.

“Where did you find that?” she asked in alarm as I set it on the bed.

“It got stacked in my room last July and shoved under the bed with my games.”

“It wasn’t even supposed to be here. I meant to leave it stored back in the attic. Your father must have grabbed it without checking and loaded it onto the truck.”

“Sparrow opened it by mistake, and I looked through it. I knew I shouldn’t . . . I felt terrible afterwards.”

“So you saw your adoption certificate,” she stated blandly.

“Adoption certificate? No, I didn’t dig that far. After I read about little Eddie, I closed it up again. I didn’t know how to tell you what I’d done . . . I didn’t want to make you sad. Anyway, when I confessed to Tante Gudy, she got even more upset than I expected. She thought I knew more than I did and ended up telling me more than I knew.”

My mother hid her face in her hands. “What else did she tell you?” she asked without looking up.

“I know how Grandmother Sigurdsson died and why you couldn’t have more children . . . and how Tanta almost got kicked out of the house, but you and Dad ended up adopting me.”

“Ooh,” she moaned softly. “I always knew we’d need to talk about it someday. I just didn’t think it would be so soon. And I certainly wouldn’t have picked now. But what about you? Are you alright with it?”

“Ya . . . now I am. It was hard at first.” I told Mom how I came to have a new hairstyle.

“Oh my God. Gudrun must’ve shit a brick. I mean, were her feelings hurt?”

“No, not really. She was actually pretty calm, considering.”

“Well, as I said before, I just love your haircut. It’s adorable on you. I wish I could’ve taken you to the beauty shop years ago, but I just couldn’t.”

“I know—and that wasn’t fair to you.”

“Oh, Cassandra . . . all those years, it’s like you were caught in the middle of a tug o’ war. I guess I let go. Gudrun’s a helluva lot stronger than me.” Mom smiled though her tears.

“Ya, and sometimes she’s a little scary,” I admitted. “I’ve always been afraid of disappointing her. But overall, her strength is a good thing, I think.”

“Oh, I agree. I wouldn’t have felt that way before all this happened, but she was absolutely right about the house. Thank God Morfar had the good sense to leave her the house. And some day, it’ll all be yours; it was a smart decision and I’m glad for it.”

“Mom, you can always live there with me when I’m grown up. You never have to worry.”

“Thank you, Cassandra. That makes me feel good and at the same time just awful. Good because you’re such a wonderful girl. You’re so much like her, like your real mother. So strong and capable. But I feel like a complete failure. My daughter is offering to take care of me because I’ve made a mess of my life.”

“The mess isn’t all your fault, and it may still work out. But I want you to know, I still think of you as my real mother, and she’s still Tante Gudy. Want to know something funny? When I was very little I didn’t understand that tante meant just any old aunt, since I only had one. I thought it was a kind of special title. Like this big, wonderful, all powerful lady was the one, the only, Tante.”

“I can see why. I used to refer to her as Queen Gudrun behind her back.” I chuckled in appreciation of the sentiment. “She was a very strict mother to me, so Old World. Gudrun really did work hard to raise me and care for Papa. She was always perfect in every way; you could’ve knocked me over with a feather when she told me about Mr. Salvatore. Ah, Gudrun did tell you about Silvio, didn’t she?” she added hurriedly.

“Ya, and she showed me the picture. I look a lot like him.”

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, but how do you feel about your father? I mean, myhusband.”

“He’s always been Dad. Still is. Things were going great between us.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but we’re lucky he stuck around after I couldn’t have more children,” Mom said. “A lot of men would’ve bailed, and that’s a fact.”

“And you feel lucky to have a husband at all; that’s why you put up with so much crap.”

“My God, Cassandra—what a thing for an eleven-year-old girl to come out with. Is it so obvious?”

“You’re not the only woman who puts up with crap from a man. Look at poor Anna.”

“So you know about that too? But I wish you wouldn’t say crap . . . it’s not ladylike. Oh, Cassandra, when did you get to be so grown up?”

“I watched the goats breed. Sparrow explained the rest.”

“I see. But if I were Anna, I sure wouldn’t put up with John Wind coming and going as he pleased all these years,” Mom declared hotly. “That nasty thing Mr. Gorski said in front of you—well, there’s truth in it. I can’t understand why Anna lets herself be so degraded.”

“I’m not sure she even knows, but it probably has something to do with being left by that bum, Lester. And she carries the hemophilia. Sparrow said her mother never meant to have her, ’cause she was afraid of having another boy like Timmy. They were relieved she was a girl. After that, Anna had an operation so she couldn’t have more kids.”

“So in a way, she and I are in the same boat. I was wrong to cast stones; maybe if I’d been left high and dry in a shack, I’d have ended up just like Anna.”

“That’s why I plan on going to law school. Nobody is going to leave me high and dry. I’ll have a home, thanks to my wonderful aunt; and thanks to you, I’ll have a good job.”

“You’ve got nothing to thank me for,” she said sadly.

“If you hadn’t had the guts to break away from your sister and try something new, I never would’ve known how tough life could be. I was spoiled, too.”

“I’m so sorry that all this has turned you sour toward men. We really can’t have a normal life without them. I mean, how can you have a family without a husband? We can’t all be old maids, like my sister.”

“No, I guess not. And I’m not against getting married someday. I want children, too. I just don’t want to be helpless.”

“Well, if any girl can figure out how to pull that off, it will be you. Cassandra, you are the smartest girl I’ve ever known. And I’ve always loved you, even if I wasn’t always able to show it.”

I got up and put my arms around her. “I love you, too.” She grasped my arm and laid her head on my shoulder.

“Do you want to talk about your adoption with your father?” she asked after a bit.

“Eventually, yes. Tante was going to tell you both over the phone after it all came up, but she changed her mind when Dad . . .” I was thinking of how to put it delicately.

“Got himself thrown in the slammer?”

“Ya, that. But he’s got enough on his mind right now. I think it would be better if we held off.”