Zanna was right. Not that year. And not the next. They changed apartments when Colleen needed a bed of her own. And then, after a few more years and Bonnie was born, it was time to pack up and move for real, not just across town. They were joining the vast American pilgrimage to the Next Great Job.
Zanna hadn’t looked at the painting in years. When they moved to this apartment she had put it in the back of a stack of canvases that she knew would never be seen, not in this age of modern art, and then she’d gotten busy with momming her way through Patty’s first year of school and Lyle’s habit of catching the worst case of every childhood disease and Colleen’s belief that a silent house was perfect for testing her screaming ability every night.
So when Bug came over to help them box things up for the move—as much to mourn for the fact that he’d be the only one of his family in California now, as to help—Zanna didn’t think to steer him away from the painting of Betty pitching that stone.
When she realized that he’d been gone from the living room—or “Boxing Central,” as Hal had dubbed it—for a very long time, she got up to go looking for him, and found him in her “studio,” sitting in front of a painting, his cheeks streaked with tears. He wasn’t even looking at the painting any more. Just looking nowhere, staring into himself, or into the past.
Then she knew at once which painting he was looking at, and she was stricken with remorse.
“Oh, Bug, I never meant you to see that.”
He shook his head and held up a hand to stop her.
She came over and took his hand and sank down beside him and put her head on his shoulder. “I took a Polaroid of that moment,” she said. “I had to finish it because . . .”
“Because it’s Betty,” said Bug.
“Is it? It’s certainly the way I see her.”
Bug nodded. “She’s still like that, you know.”
“I do know. I finished it after she was in leg braces, Bug. Because I saw she still had that . . .”
“Fire,” said Bug.
“But I never meant to make you face her that way, before the polio.”
“Are you kidding?” He looked at her in wonderment. “No, of course—you didn’t want to bring back—but don’t you see? We thought we were the only ones who still saw this Betty. The girl behind the leg armor. Can I show it to Sylvia?”
“Are you sure she’ll feel the way you do?”
“She’ll feel the way she does, whatever that is, but she should know this painting exists.”
“If you want it, Bug, it’s yours. It was always for you.”
He started sobbing and turned and held on to her.
“I take it that’s a yes?” she said.
He nodded into her shoulder.
Later, when the painting was wrapped in brown paper for the long drive back home, Bug rested his hand on it and said, “She’s not beat yet, you know. She moves around the house without the braces as much as she can—leaning on walls and furniture and whoever’s nearby, but without the metal on her legs. She’ll never run, but she’ll walk. And she can’t throw a fastball like a big leaguer any more, but whatever she throws hits what she was aiming at.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“I’m just saying that she won’t be beat. That’s why this is still a portrait of our little girl as she is, and not just as she was.”
Then he shook hands with Hal (because that was after men forgot how to hug each other and before they remembered again) and gave a kiss to Zanna, and then he was gone.
So were they, a few days later, the moving truck taking all their worldly possessions, including her paintings, across the country, while Hal and Zanna took turns driving a ’56 Buick full of squirming poking whining laughing singing children along the two-lane highways that linked the cities of America, a frail web dotted with Burma Shave signs and one-pump gas stations and motor courts that you inspected for fleas before you paid the night’s rent. It was a glorious trip that the older children never forgot. The kind of trip that in later years would make Zanna turn to Hal and say, “Wouldn’t you like to pile the kids into the car and go somewhere?”
To which Hal would say, “Why not just put the iron on high and press my head? That’ll be much cheaper and faster.” But he knew what she meant, and hugged her for the memory.
Bug didn’t make it back home for the next summer’s reunion, or Christmas either. And the next few reunions were darkened by Todd’s accusations against Patty and Lyle, and then by Zanna’s accusation against Todd, so the subject of Betty’s painting didn’t come up.
Betty was there herself, anyway, so who needed the painting? No one saw leg braces by then. In fact, Hal once speculated that Bug had stayed away from family gatherings for that year or so because Betty didn’t want to go until she had the braces off for good.
She was vivacious and full of talk, and she happily tended the littlest kids while the older, more athletic ones took off on adventures she could no longer keep up with. But she was sturdy enough on her legs to chase after toddlers who were trying to make their getaway, and she had a gentle hand with the little ones.
Zanna wondered sometimes about her painting of Betty—wondered mostly if Betty herself had ever seen it, and if she remembered being that girl. But then, she couldn’t wish for Betty to see it, because despite her cheerfulness, it was impossible to know what grief the girl might still suffer, hidden from all eyes except, perhaps, those fierce eyes in the painting.
Then came the invitation to Betty’s wedding. She was nineteen, which was older than many girls, but still young enough to suggest that her physical frailty, those impossibly skinny legs, had not been much of an obstacle to her finding a boy who’d value her. And to Zanna’s delight, Betty had asked to have her wedding in the same church where her parents had gotten married.
Which meant that the big family picnic was held in June that year instead of August, for this was the first wedding in the generation and, except for Davy’s oldest, who was clerking for a state supreme court justice and couldn’t get away, they were all there.
Zanna was the last one into the chapel, it seemed—so many last-minute things to attend to, getting her own kids ready and respectable—and Hal already had them inside before she was done with her last primping in the rear-view mirror and came up the steps into the church.
There in the foyer, on an easel behind the guest book, was her painting of Betty, in an ornate wooden frame with a small brass plaque engraved with the title: “Betty Silencing the Neighbor Boy.”
It was just about the last thing Zanna expected to see.
“I think this painting constitutes fair warning to the bridegroom, about what he’s getting into, don’t you think?” Hal’s arm slipped around her shoulders.
“You’re supposed to be sitting on the kids to keep them quiet.”
“Let ’em scream,” said Hal. “Hollering children—that’s the proper prelude to a marriage, not that stupid wedding march.”
“I can’t believe they used this painting,” said Zanna. “The portrait of the bride is supposed to be a beautiful color photo in her wedding dress with a blurred background. Like a goddess.”
“Oh, this is a goddess all right,” said Hal. “Or at least one of the Furies.”
And then, completely to her own surprise, Zanna turned to her husband and clutched his lapels and pressed her face into his tie and tried very, very hard not to cry.
“You’re getting face powder on my tie.”
“The only makeup I wear is lipstick,” said Zanna. “But I’ll kiss your tie if you want something to complain about.”
“Are you kidding? I could hold you like this all day. Let ’em bury us in rice.”
“We really should go in,” said Zanna.
“You first.”
She pushed against him even harder, and he held her tighter, and then at the same moment they each let go. She was smiling now. “They liked the painting,” she said.
“More to the point,” said Hal, “Betty likes the painting.”
“You think so?”
“Nothing is displayed at the wedding without the bride’s consent, or she might stamp her pretty little foot and the world will end.”
“I wonder what the groom thinks of it.”
“From the look in Betty’s eye, I’d say he should keep his objections, should he have any, to himself.”
At that moment, Bug and Betty rushed into the foyer from one of the waiting rooms, with several local women herding the flower girls and the ring-bearer, who were the most solemn people. Not one of them spared even a glance at Hal and Zanna, standing near the door. Zanna looked from the woman holding her father’s arm to the girl in the painting and, yes, even at that age, Betty had already been the woman she would grow up to be; and even after polio, Betty was still the girl she had been back then.
“They already knew,” whispered Zanna.
“Who knew what?” asked Hal.
“My parents—they already knew the man that Ernie would grow up to be. Because they knew the boy.” Then she glanced at the painting and Hal nodded.
The signal was given from the door, the wedding march started, and the parade began, with Hal and Zanna watching from behind.
When the bride and her father had gone, Hal stepped forward and caught the door. For a moment he and Zanna waited, watching Betty and Bug go up the aisle. You had to be watching for it to know Betty had a limp. Though of course, Zanna realized, that very thought meant that she had been watching for it.
“I just had a terrible thought,” whispered Hal. “If kids don’t change when they grow up, what about Todd?”
“Todd’s turned into a human,” said Zanna. “That was just a phase.”
“I’ve read Wind in the Willows. I know all about Mr. Toad.”
“Todd will turn out all right. He’s Bug’s son, isn’t he? And my nephew.”
“Make sure you tell that to the judge at the sentencing hearing.”
“You’re evil, Hal,” said Zanna. “Now let’s make our humiliating dash up the aisle and see if we can get into our seats before anybody says ‘I do.’ ”
The wedding was lovely—none of that hippie nonsense about saying made-up vows and reciting bad poetry. If Betty had been that kind of young woman, she would never have brought this party to her grandparents’ church.
After the ceremony, by the time Hal and Zanna had suffered through all the teasing about their late arrival, the painting had been removed from the foyer so it wouldn’t get knocked over, and they didn’t see it again that day. Betty’s new husband was an athlete, by the look of him, and after she threw the bouquet, he scooped her up, dress and all, and ran down the church steps, with Sylvia screaming, “Don’t drop my baby!” while everybody else laughed and cheered and threw rice. Then he set her, gentle as a rose petal, into the passenger seat of the convertible they had borrowed for the occasion, and with a few happy tootles on the car horn, they were off.
The picnic was the next day. It was just like always, except Sylvia was a little teary-eyed during the cutting of the cake, and Bug looked a little dazed.
Then there came the time, into the summer evening, as the sun was nearing the horizon, when everything was packed up and loaded into cars and the families began the drive from the park to the folks’ place, as Grandma’s and Grandpa’s old house was called. Only, again without a word being said, the cars all took a side trip to a cemetery where they parked, and most of the adults began the quiet walk to the well-known gravesite.
Mother almost never cried during these visits, so it was a real surprise when she burst into tears this evening. It only lasted a moment, but she seemed to feel she owed an explanation. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t help thinking how much I wish I could have seen Ernie walk up that aisle. And then wonder what his children would have looked like. Really, I know it’s silly of me, and now I’ve spoiled everybody’s day and . . .”
Father silenced her with an arm across her shoulder. “Nobody minds. We were all thinking the same thing. It doesn’t spoil anything, to miss the ones who aren’t here.”
Zanna had been thinking the same thing, only about her twin, and remembering that there were things her twin got to do that she had missed out on. So maybe it all came out even in the end.
She couldn’t say that to anyone, though. She just held Hal’s hand and smiled at her mother when she looked her way.
It was Sylvia who made Mother feel better about having cried. “I know it’s not the same thing, Mom,” she said. “But there was somebody else missing at today’s wedding.”
Everyone waited for her to say who.
“We had her portrait on an easel in the foyer.”
Mother and Davy and Lucy all started to protest, but Bug silenced them with a gesture. “We know Betty’s the same girl,” he said. “We know that. But she led a different life. She had a different childhood. That’s all Sylvia meant.”
Then Sylvia, tears in her eyes, walked over to Zanna and clasped her hands. “That picture has meant so much to us, I hope you know that. And it was Betty who insisted on showing it. We meant to keep it private, but she said you wouldn’t mind. She said, After all, I was standing on top of a picket fence in the front yard when I threw that stone. I meant to be seen by everybody!”
They had a laugh at that.
And then Davy said, “It’s not the same thing as losing a child outright, like you did, Mom and Dad. Or having a child go through such suffering as Betty did. But Lucy and I were saying to each other, how much we miss the little ones, now that they’re growing up. Every stage of their lives, from scraping poop off their butts to putting Band-Aids on their knees, it goes by so fast, and you can’t hold onto it, it’s just there and gone. And just because you miss the child that’s gone doesn’t mean you don’t love the woman or man that’s still with you.”
There was a long moment of silence after that. Then Father said, “Well, I’ve had about all the wisdom I can take for one day. Who wants to go back home with me?”
He led the parade of children back toward the cars, and Lucy and Sylvia and Hall soon took over the shepherding, and in a few moments Father slipped back, and there they were, just the five of them who had known Ernie, gathered around his grave and the grave of the baby sister that only Ernie, of all of them, had ever had a chance to know.
There came a time like this at every family gathering—in a hot summer evening after the picnic, or on a crisp Christmas night, when Davy, Bug, and Zanna gathered with their parents at Ernie’s and Dianna’s graves.
Sometimes they spoke cheerfully of their memories of Ernie, and of each other as children, all their past brought together into the present moment, being there with the people who had been with them then.
Sometimes, like this time, Mother wept.
And one time, years later, when he was very old and had been brought to the gravesides in his wheelchair, Father wept too.
“It never fades,” he explained. “You don’t think of them as often, but when you do, it’s like an old injury that aches when the weather turns.”
They murmured their understanding, and it was true, they did understand. Not because their own feelings for Ernie were as sharp as their parents’ feelings, but because they had children of their own, and they knew.
Father added, as they wheeled him away from the graves: “Won’t have to miss him much longer.”
And he didn’t. The next family gathering was only a few months later, and this time there were three graves. Mother had arranged for Father’s tombstone to include her name and date of birth and even the dash before the space where her death would be recorded.
“But Mother,” said Bug. “It’s morbid. As if you’re just waiting to die.”
“I am,” she said irritably. “You think I can’t read a calendar?”
“Well, don’t be in a hurry about it,” said Davy, putting an arm around her.
“I can be in a hurry if I want to,” she said. “Oh, your father can wait—he spent half his life jangling the car keys, waiting for me, so he’s used to it. And Ernie—you think I don’t know he’s been busy, wherever he is? That wasn’t a boy to sit still. But that girl Dianna. I don’t even know her. Did you think of that? I don’t even know her, and I’ve waited a long enough time, I should think!”
But she had eleven more years to wait—long enough to see all three of her children become grandparents in their own right, and to have pictures taken of her holding each of five different great-grandchildren, along with the baby’s parents and grandparents. She loved the pictures. “There it is, right in that snapshot—a whole genealogy, a family tree! And I’m the root. Don’t you forget that!”
Then she, too, was laid in the grave that waited for her. The family plot was complete now; when it came the others’ time to die, they would be in their own family plots somewhere. Only the children who died without families of their own needed to lie where their parents lay.
The family reunions ended then. Without the folks’ place to gather at, there seemed little point in it. But from time to time, when they had a reason to be near, Davy, Bug, or Zanna would take a side trip to that cemetery in the town of their childhood, and lay flowers on the graves, and speak to beloved parents and long-lost siblings.
What they didn’t realize, but would have been very glad to know, was how many of their own children also found at least one chance, in their comings and goings through the world, to visit those graves, and lay flowers there. For even though they had never met these children whose names were now so weathered on the stones, they had been part of their lives all the same, part of what it meant to be a family, part of their understanding of that vague and difficult word love.