8

 

Again, my mother makes two cakes. This time I ask for peanut butter icing instead of my usual white and Robert adds sprinkles to his chocolate. The four of us will be eating cake in our sleep.

“So do we have any ice cream to go with this?” I stick my finger in the gooey frosting and lick the creamy sweetness while my mother hustles around the kitchen preparing our birthday celebration for later that night.

It doesn’t take me long to realize that smoked corn won’t be on the menu after I watch Grandpa move himself from his sunny place on the back porch to his recliner in the TV room. My bones ache along with his. He hunches over when he walks now, making the trek more difficult. Forgotten are the exercises he performed like a ritual every morning to stay in top shape. After Grandma died, he’d shrunk into himself like a leaf saying good-bye to the hot summer.

I look around the neat kitchen, a familiar meeting spot for my mother and myself. How many times have I shared with her here my disappointing romances or my excitement over a new idea to paint? It has never changed in appearance as far back as my memory can stretch.

Two towels appliquéd with apples rest over the bar on the stove while a matching third one hangs through the kitchen door handle. Mom can’t get enough hand towels. She probably has a lifetime supply. Same with mugs. I’m always afraid to open a cabinet in case one might decide it’s time to seek freedom.

She stops her chore of cleaning carrots and turns around. Her forehead buckles with worry. “You know, I forgot. I’m so sorry. Do you mind running over to town and getting a half gallon of whatever you want?”

“Sure. Let me ask Robert what flavor he wants.” I already know of course. Same every year. Chocolate. But asking will let me tell him my plans.

 

****

 

Because we didn’t get cable TV until I was almost a teenager, I watched reruns like The Waltons with my mother. For the most part, everyone in that family got along. Occasionally, one of the kids might get angry with the father or mother, but it always worked out by the time the hour ended. I thought maybe our family was like that until the whispered arguments between my parents became more frequent. I decided TV was fiction and their fights were real life.

I’ve always wondered why my father took to my brother more than me. It wasn’t as though Robert went out of his way to get Dad to do more with him. When I asked my mother once why my father always took Robert golfing and not me, she said it was because Dad loved the sport.

At this point, in her telling, my mother’s gaze drifted to the back fields. She pulled on her hair and paused. Then she said something about him being gone too much and she didn’t like to be home alone with twins. That’s when she skipped to the part of him becoming an accountant and how grateful she was that he took up that career. I didn’t find the clippings until later and understood why Mom wouldn’t tell me the truth.

I waited two weeks and then told her I knew. She’d blushed hard and fumbled with the dish she’d been washing. “He loves both of you. He just loves golf the same amount.”

I always wondered when he ignored us at the dinner table if he wished we had never been born. I wonder now as I park the car in front of the office if he will care that I have come to see him and if he cares that I am trying to fix us.

His office is located in a nicer section of town in an old 1800s two-story brick building with the name of his company painted in gold letters over the door. We’d spent an entire summer cleaning and painting for his grand opening when he decided to start his own business. He’d paid me to paint his office. Money I spent quickly on a set of new paints.

The upstairs apartment is small and dingy and usually rented out for storage. But apparently, the accommodations don’t bother him.

Pangs shoot through my stomach—not from hunger, but from fear of speaking to him. I’ve always suffered with stomachaches when I get nervous and have to work hard at squelching them when I golf. I don’t need to double over at the markers.

Chalky florescent lights greet me as I open the door and enter the building. I notice Dad’s office in the back room is still lit. The staff has left for the day. Part of me feels sorry I’ve missed them, especially Kate who treats me like her own daughter whenever I stop in. She keeps a stash of candy kisses in her lower desk drawer. I’d thought for years they were only for me until I saw her popping a few into her own mouth one day after school.

My heart beats faster (in rhythm to my churning stomach) and I take a deep breath before calling out, “Dad? Are you back there?”

He comes around the doorway looking like I expected he would, wearing a dark tie (he never wears the bright ones we buy him for Christmas), white shirt, and crisp ironed pants fresh from the dry cleaner since he doesn’t trust my mother to not double crease them. His forehead looks like a fork has plowed through it and his thin lips collapse upon recognition.

I want to turn around.

“What are you doing in town?”

We size each other up. “It’s my birthday, in case you’ve forgotten.” Yeah, I’m good at being sarcastic when I have to be, only I hadn’t intended to be today. I lower my eyes and take another deep breath.

“Happy Birthday,” he says. “I’m sorry I forgot.”

I raise my head to study his face. It’s crinkled with stress—his crow’s feet have grown deeper, and the gray in his hair looks almost white.

“Why are you over here, Dad? Why don’t you come home?”

It’s his turn to look away. His shoulder falls against the doorjamb and his fist finds his pocket where he jingles loose change. He makes me think about how he always did that when we waited for someone in line or the few times he attended church with us.

“Did your mother send you?”

I shake my head. “She hasn’t talked to me about you. I wanted to talk with you myself.” My voice takes on a life of its own, shaky and low-pitched, sliding out of my mouth faster and faster. “They need you at home, Dad. What’s wrong with you?”

My words pull him straight. “It isn’t your business. Go back to Florida. Go back to school and see how it feels to want something so badly and then fail at it.”

I swallow hard at his attack. “I won’t fail. I won’t let this family down. Not like you have.”

He shakes his head again and I swear if we weren’t inside he would have spit. My tears burn in the back of my eyes. The last thing I want is him to see how much he hurts me. I spin on my heels and rush out the front door more determined than ever to be the hero my family needs.

 

****

 

We play three more rounds of Spades until my eyes droop from lack of sleep.

“Does anyone want more cake? There’s plenty.” My mother starts to rise.

Robert shakes his head and pushes back from the edge of the table. He still sleeps downstairs and I can see he hopes to retire soon.

“Robert, why don’t I help you to bed?” she says next.

“I’m good, Mom. Go ahead and visit with Bobbi. I want to read my Bible before I crash.”

I look away as he struggles to stand and as he takes painfully slow steps toward the front room. Mom told me he hopes to be walking on his own within a month or so, but he still has a long way to go before he’s the old Robert.

“How about we get a cup of tea and sit out on the front porch?”

“I’d like that. It should be cooler out there.” I nod to the breeze blowing in from outside through the screen in the dining room window. My mother goes to the kitchen while I follow. I set out the rose teacups and pluck two bags from the stash she keeps in the silver canister next to the stove. Within seconds, the teakettle whistles and we carry our warm cups to the rocking chairs to sit side-by-side. The night hushes around us except for a determined chorus of crickets and an occasional bullfrog from the pond behind the house.

I love these moments, and soon I manage to push the scene with my father to the back of my thoughts.

“Have you found a church down there yet?” Of course she would ask me sooner or later (sooner, actually).

“Not yet. I’ve been busy with school.”

“I joined a fellowship class last month. I met four nice women my age.” My mother smiles, probably remembering her day.

“Amanda’s pregnant.”

Her look of surprise tickles my chest. “Wonderful! I’m so happy for her. Her mother will make a terrific grandmother.” She lets her eyelids close and rocks back and forth in an easy rhythm. Is she thinking of rocking her own grandchild someday?

I set my cup down near my feet. “I saw Dad today.”

Her rocking stops and then starts up again. She opens her eyes and keeps her look glued straight ahead. “And what did he say?”

When my mother speaks in that faraway tight voice, I never know how to proceed. Usually I tell her to forget it and chase her down another time. But I only have a few days home and I need to figure out what’s going on with them.

“Not a whole lot. Something about being a failure. Is he coming home?”

She places her own teacup next to mine and lets her head fall back against the hard wooden chair again. She closes her eyes once more and stays that way for so long I am afraid she’s fallen asleep. “I don’t know much about anything, Bobbi. My life is off course, and I’m afraid I’m lost.”

If she’d told me she wanted to jump in the river and never see the surface again, it couldn’t have scared me more. My mother never gives up on anything.

I remember one time when I was in the fourth grade and we were dressing up for the May Day festival. Robert and I were going to be horses so that meant we had to make masks out of paper bags and wear brown spotted vests. She whipped those vests up in seconds but somehow we couldn’t make our masks look like horses. We finally ran out of paper sacks.

I started to bawl that I would be the dumbest looking horse in the whole class and Robert rolled his eyes saying he didn’t want to dress up like a stupid horse, anyway.

Well, my mother wasn’t about to give up. She proceeded to drive to the grocery store, paid the clerk for ten more brown bags and took them over to the art department at our local college.

I won the prize for the most realistic looking horse.

“So what are you going to do?” I ask in a voice I can barely hear myself.

“I’ve asked God that same thing, but He keeps telling me to wait. He has plans for me.”

I search her profile in the dim light coming off the garage. Tears run down her cheeks and she finally wipes them with the back of her hand. I’ve never seen her so resigned.

“Do you believe that about the plans?”

“I have to,” she says simply.

“Dad should be here, not in some dumb apartment.”

“I can’t stop him. I found that out a long time ago.” Her voice quivers.

“So you’re going to wait on God and see what He says?”

She reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “He’s had a plan for me since before I was born. I have to trust Him, don’t I?”

I lay my head back and gaze into the night sky where the stars spell their names to me. Is it possible?

Does God have a plan for me as well?