DAHLIA
SO NOW WE’RE RUNNING SOME KINDA HOME FOR UNWED MOTHERS? Is that what we’re doing here, Louie?”
We were lying in the dark, him on the edge of sleep, me stewing. Jane had been camped in Jimmy’s room for more than a week, that hulking bag of hers resting deep in the closet—with no sign of leaving. Ever, I liked to emphasize when Louie and I argued about it.
“The kid’ll be ten . . . twenty . . . dropping off his own pregnant girlfriend. For heaven’s sake, Lou, where do we draw the line?” Louie walked away every time—except the once.
“Sometimes there is no line, Dahlia. Isn’t that what you been telling me all these years?”
Dear God. There was nothing more aggravating than when he quoted me back to myself. I was about to say so when he sauntered off again.
In bed, however, there was no escape but into himself. He burrowed deep into the blankets.
“I don’t mind helping out, but she’s been here ten days now.”
That didn’t get a rise out of him, so I went on, speaking louder. “I’m sorry, Lou, but she’s no relation to us. It’s about time her own family—”
“And the rest of them are relations?” he said, seizing on one line and ignoring the heart of it.
“Jimmy and the girls were little when they came. And we decided to take them in; we asked for it. This one—”
“This one’s carryin’ Jimmy’s kid. You think I’m gonna sit back and watch him end up with someone like the Deans or the one who left Agnes laying in her crib for a year?” Though it was dark, I could feel the energy of his hand slicing through the air. “Over my dead body.”
In the past, I’d been the one to navigate Louie’s grunts and growls as I argued to let a child stay, or to make room for just one more. I put my hand on his and listened to his breathing until it grew steady again.
“And you think I haven’t considered all that? It’s just . . . Jimmy’s gonna be away so darn long. Once Jane gets her figure back . . . well, you know what’s gonna happen.”
“And the baby?”
“There’s plenty of help available from the state if she applies.”
“But the girl loves Jimmy. She says—”
“I know what she says, and right now she means it. But six years, Lou. Think of it. She’ll be bringin’ boyfriends here next—to Jimmy’s room. I guess that’s fine with you, though . . .”
Again, I butted up against his rocky silence. So he was going to make me confess everything, was he? Well, so be it.
“It was bad enough when they came for Jon, but after everything with Jimmy—I just don’t have it in me, Lou. Getting attached only to . . .”
This time he was so quiet I was sure he was asleep. It wasn’t till I turned away and started to drift off myself that he spoke.
“You know, Dahlia, every day I hear you braggin’ about all the places you been. How nothin’ stops you—not when someone slows a car to yell at you. Nothin’. Even when that kid pinged you in the back with his slingshot, you kept goin’. A fella would think you weren’t scared of anything. But inside—” He took an audible inhalation. “—Inside, you’re more chicken than ever.”
I bolted up straight in bed. “Louis J. Moscatelli, are you calling me a coward?”
“You’ll have to answer that one for yourself.”
Again, he turned his back, and in less than a minute I heard the low rhythm of his snore.
If that wasn’t just like him.
While he slept on, I spent half the night trying to figure out where Jane would go if we kicked her out, the other half worrying how Jimmy would take it all. Meanwhile, what in the world would happen to the poor creature growing inside her belly in the next room? The one she planned to name James. “Not Jimmy, either, I want my boy to be called by his proper name,” she stipulated every time.
Sometimes, when she said it, I peered out the window, almost seeing the ghost of that two-year-old turning somersaults in the backyard.
“I don’t have it in me, Lou,” I repeated in the dark. “Do you understand? I don’t have it in me.” The same words he’d said to me the last time I’d taken to my bed. He snored louder.
And for all my thinking and analyzing and fretting, what did I come up with in the morning? Nothing but a thumping headache—same as always.
Louie shook his head when he saw me reaching for my Anacin. “Someday you’ll learn. What’s that thing Agnes’s coach says? Don’t anticipate; participate.”
“So now you’re quoting happy jargon from a coach? You of all people?” I stormed away, still nattering to myself. “What next, Louie? Norman Vincent Peale at the breakfast table?”
He almost smiled, but not quite. “Might not be a bad idea.” Then he grabbed his lunch pail and left me in my stew.
If that wasn’t just like him.
IT WAS WARM and breezy the night before Agnes flew out to Wisconsin for the nationals. Louie was trudging up to bed when she called us out to look at the sky. Jane claimed to be under the weather, which meant she planned to spend the next hour or two in her room bawling. And none too quietly, either.
But on this particular night, the rest of us felt as if we had to honor Agnes’s wishes, however silly they felt. We filed out, even Louie, grumbling about the long day as he went.
“Have you ever seen it so bright?” Agnes said, opening her arms wide as if to pull the sky into herself. “I didn’t want you to miss it.”
“They’re stars, Agnes,” Louie sighed—sounding more like himself than he had in the last few days. “We’ve all seen ’em before.” He started for the house.
“No, look—she’s right, Lou.” I put my hand on his arm. “It’s almost like that puzzle I did a while ago. What was the fella’s name?”
In the light of the moon, I saw Zaidie roll her eyes. “Van Gogh, Ma. Vincent van Gogh. You’ve done a few of his. I got you a book from the library about him and everything, remember?”
In the past, I might have taken offense at her tone, but not that night. She was eighteen and about to leave everything she knew, and mixed with the excitement, I could tell she was as scared as I was.
“When I was working on that puzzle, I thought he was crazy, but now . . . now I see what he saw.”
I dragged Louie to the picnic table where we’d never once in all our years picnicked. “You know, we should pick up some hot dogs at the N. P. and have a cookout out here sometime, Lou. I could make up my Jell-O mold and a nice potato salad, maybe invite the neighbors over.”
“Don’t get crazy, Dahlia,” he said. “No matter how far you walk, we’ll never be that normal.”
The girls would have sniggered, but their eyes were fixed on the sky. I noticed they were holding hands, almost unconsciously, the way they did when they were little.
“You know what it reminds me of?” Agnes asked. “The night Jimmy got out his bat and sent that ball flying over the Guarinos’ fence and beyond. He wanted me to know how good it felt to win something—not just for yourself, but for everyone around you. And not just to know, but to feel it.” On a night just like this one, I did.
“I tell Coach Lois that was the beginning of it all for me. And you know what she says?”
We all turned to her.
“She says that whenever I’m tired or the competition is too tough, or I just think I can’t—especially then—all I have to do is close my eyes and go back to that night. See the ball Jimmy hit for me, soaring for the moon. Hear his yell, and then all of yours.”
“Does it work?” Louie asked.
“Every time, Dad. Every single time. And not just when I’m in the pool.”
THE NEXT MORNING, the house was more empty than it had ever been. I put on the magenta lipstick I’d bought at Apex Drugs to give me courage, and walked to the five-and-dime. With the money she’d earned at Hanley’s, Zaidie had bought most everything she needed for college, but I wanted to give her something from Louie and me. After poking around for a good half hour, all I could find was a plain blue notebook and a nice Paper Mate pen to go with it. Same as I gave her on her eleventh birthday.
On the next block, I found myself peering in the window of Mather’s Furniture, and then inexplicably wandering inside. I took in the fancy velvet couches (for heaven’s sake, how would you ever get the stains out?) and the new geometric tables and chairs.
Mr. Mather came sidling up behind me like those salespeople types do. “Mod, they call it. Very popular these days.”
“Hmph.”
Hoping to shake him, I sauntered away till I found myself standing in front of a fine-looking baby crib. It was a lovely off-white color.
The salesman followed. “A real beauty, isn’t it? And there’s a bureau to match, if you’re interested. Are you expecting, Mrs.—”
“Moscatelli—and heavens, no. I’m an old woman, sir. Forty-six last month.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a lady around that age shopping for her nursery,” he began before the name registered.
By the look of him, he’d heard about me or my kids. But keeping his eye on a potential sale, he quickly brought his face back to neutral. “We have a layaway plan, Mrs. Moscatelli, if you’re purchasing a gift for someone you know.”
“Not someone I know, Mr. Mather. My grandchild.” It was the first time I’d said the word out loud—heck, the first time I’d even thought it. The force of it almost knocked me over.
Apparently, it was visible, too, because poor Mr. Mather forgot about selling me anything as he took my elbow. “All right there, Mrs. Moscatelli? Can I . . . call someone for you? A drink of water, maybe?”
“The heat must’ve got to me,” I said, though the air-conditioning made the place downright chilly. “If it’s all right, I’ll just have a little sit-down on one of your mod chairs up in the front.”
Mr. Mather brought me a glass of water anyway, and since there were no other customers in the store, he took the lime-green chair opposite my screaming yellow one.
“So this is the new style, huh?” I asked when I regained myself. “Hideous, if you ask me.”
“Uncomfortable as hell, too,” he said, shifting in his seat. The man had a fine set of teeth when he smiled.
It wasn’t till I was ready to go that the salesman in him returned. He handed me his card. “If you come back, ask for Artie. I’ll give you a good price on that crib.”
I stared at the card as if I was seeing much more than his phone number and the store’s hours of operation. “I’ll talk it over with my husband . . . and the mother . . .”
Then I looked up at him. “A grandchild. Imagine.”
Again, he showed me those fine teeth.
On the way home, I turned my thoughts back to the notebook and pen I was carrying in my bag. You could hardly call it a present, but it was all Zaida ever wanted. I’d bought a bow and a card, too. But what could I, who didn’t have her gift of words, possibly write inside it? Now that she was leaving, with Agnes to follow soon enough, what could I say to the girls who had come to me like Jimmy, in the fabulous migration of souls, and given me back a world that was dead to me?
AND YET, FOR all my newfound bravery, Louie was right. There was one place I still hadn’t dared to go. I still hadn’t climbed the precarious fourteen steps to the attic. I still hadn’t faced the boxes stacked in the corner, particularly the one full of pictures of the late Dahlia Garrison. The hopeful, yearning fool who had died beneath the golden tree. And beside them, the only thing of Jon’s I couldn’t bring myself to part with: that damn train. One thing at a time, I told myself.
I went to the kitchen and made me a nice cup of tea while Flufferbell took the chair opposite me. Then I glanced at the clock above the stove: 1:03 p.m. By that time, Agnes would be in the air, flying to the nationals, where, win or lose, she would swim as if her life depended on it. And Zaidie, who had borrowed the car to drive Jane to the prison for the first time, would sit in the parking lot, nervously waiting to see how the visit went. Though they still weren’t exactly back together, I was grateful when Charlie Putnam offered to go along for the ride. With any luck, he’s taking her hand right about now. Meanwhile, that sniveling mess of a girl Jimmy thinks is the prettiest one on earth is setting her flinty eyes and walking inside to tell him the news about a child he’ll hardly see till he’s six. And over at Louie’s Texaco, the good man who went out every day and did his part to repair what he could breathes in the fumes of his life, picks up his wrench, and continues.
What could I do but put on my shoes, start down the street, and see where the day might lead?