Zola said I better go to the office and check out the e-mail. I said no, I’d stay. There was too much work to do. I couldn’t leave it all to her.
“No, no. Go,” she said. “You have to. It could be an emergency. You shouldn’t put aside your own needs for someone else’s.”
Did that ever make me feel like a jerk.
Zola was acting like I was so nice when nice had nothing to do with it. The only reason I wanted to stay was because I hated getting mail from my family. It always made me feel mad or sad or—worse—both.
Mum’s letters always sounded great. “My dearest little Telly.” “Darling Telly.” “Sweetheart.” She wrote just about every day by hand on paper, in an envelope with a stamp.
Like this was the olden days or something. Who would take the time to do that nowadays? I had to admit that that alone was probably a pretty good sign she loved me.
She always gave me the complete weather report and the minutes from whatever volunteer meeting she just came back from and lots of news about how everyone was doing:
Dad is exhausted. Fern Haliburton went into heavy labor at two yesterday afternoon and didn’t give birth until 11:30 this morning. She said some atrocious things about her husband and other well-known members of the community, but Dad said that was just the pain talking and it’s hardly grounds for divorce.
Grammie has been playing a lot of bridge lately. She has a new friend who seems to be as devoted to the game as she. I do hope that she’ll introduce us to this mystery man soon, at least before they go off on that little trip together.
Dad and I are feeling very optimistic about Bess. We’ve had some spirited interactions with her and have come to believe that her energy and passion will in the long run serve her well.
What’s so bad about that?
Anyone else would say nothing. I was probably just being really childish and self-centered, but I couldn’t help it. Every time I read one of Mum’s letters I remembered that week I had to look after Mrs. Longaphy’s cat. She absolutely loved that cat. Cuddles. She gave me these really long instructions about how to prepare his food, how often to clean his litter box, how to do his hair and how to pet him. He liked the fur between his ears all ruffled up and then smoothed back down with long, slow strokes. Mrs. Longaphy was worried that Cuddles would be really lonely,51 so I had to promise to spend twenty minutes with him at least twice a day. Once in the morning and once at night.
And I did. I brought my instructions with me, and twice a day I went through the list and ticked everything off. I did everything for Cuddles that I was supposed to. I did exactly what Mrs. Longaphy would have done if she’d been there.
But there’s a difference between somebody doing something because they want to and somebody doing something because they have to.
And that’s what I mean about Mum’s letters. Call me stupid, but they made me feel like Cuddles. Like I was number five on her to-do list or something. (1. Turn Bess into a responsible member of society. 2. Save endangered marine maggot from extinction. 3. Gather a dozen free-range eggs from cooperative chicken coop. 4. Clean fridge. 5. Write Telly so she knows we love her.)
And there was another thing. Mum never actually told me anything. Never told me what really happened. Never told me the good stuff. I mean, what exactly did Fern say about her husband and “other well-known members of the community”? Was Mum suggesting Grammie had a boyfriend? And my favorite: What did she mean by “spirited interactions” with Bess? Last time Bess had spirited interactions with someone they laid assault charges against her. I started to worry that Bess might have burnt down the house this time or locked Dad in the basement until he agreed to pay her way to Australia or something.
Why couldn’t Mum just come out and tell me the truth?
She probably thought she was doing the right thing—sparing me the gory details—but all she ended up doing was making me feel like I wasn’t part of the family anymore. Like
I couldn’t be trusted with the real story. She used code words when I was home too, but at least when I was there I could see what was really going on and decide for myself whether I wanted to crawl into Dreemland or not.
I guess it’s not fair coming down on Mum like that. At least she wrote. Dad only sent me goofy postcards—the kind with a so-called unretouched photo of a fish wearing glasses, say, or a giant mosquito chasing a little tiny person down the beach. He’d scribble some stupid joke on the back like “I wondered where my specs went!” or “I heard there was a bad bug going around!” and then just filled the rest of the card with x’s and o’s.
I didn’t mind. Dad’s like me—not much of a talker. So it’s not like I expected him to send me big long chatty letters all of a sudden. It did really bug me, though, when he sent me the same stupid fish card twice. I know Hemeon’s Drugstore doesn’t have many postcards to choose from, but he could have at least come up with a different joke. (It wasn’t even all that funny the first time.)
As for Bess, she’d never written to me before. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a good sign.
51 She almost didn’t go to her own daughter’s wedding, worrying about Cuddles.