Читать книгу At the Center - Dorothy Van Soest - Страница 10

THREE

May 1972

Jamie’s sinewy arms and lanky legs sliced through the air. He bounced across the deck and skidded to halt, and his best friend Tommy slammed into his back.

“Mom, guess what?” Jamie said.

Mary Williams had just finished washing down the picnic table. She put the bucket of soapy water and the wet sponge down. “What, sweetie?” She folded her son in her arms, taking in the smell of him.

“If you cut a worm in half you have two worms and you can cut it in threes or fours or even more. A man at camp showed us how to dissect them and Melissa almost fainted but I didn’t.”

“Wow, that’s really something. How about you go wash your hands now. There’s a treat for you in the kitchen. Soon it’ll be time to get ready for the parade.” Mary puckered her lips and Jamie giggled, gave her a little kiss.

“Race you to the door,” Jamie said as he and Tommy took off like lightning.

Mary picked up her bucket and followed the boys into the house. Memorial Day, for most people in the small town of Basko, signified the end of another long midwestern winter and the beginning of summer, when the air would once again be filled with the smells of charcoal grills and freshly cut grass. But for Mary, today marked the nearing of Jamie’s seventh year as her son. It was a celebration of the emergence of a life as flawlessly designed as the backyard tapestry of regal pines and brilliant white birch, a life with hopes and dreams as bright as the daffodils and tulips blooming next to the garage.

Jamie and Tommy, their hands still wet, sat in their usual places at the kitchen table, where Mary had placed pastry crisps, still warm from the oven, and two glasses of milk.

“I wish my mom knew how to make these.” Tommy took a noisy gulp of milk from his favorite glass.

“I know how, don’t I, Mom?” Jamie puffed up his little chest, as proud of himself for sprinkling sugar and cinnamon on top of the pastries as if he had landed a rocket on the moon.

“You sure do, sweetie.”

The cinnamon crisps, made with leftover dough from the meat pies that were still in the oven, were Jamie’s favorite snack—just as they had been Mary’s when she was a child. That made her think about her own mother, how having only one child had been, at times, too heavy a burden for her, although she’d tried hard to be a good mother in between the dark spells. Whenever Mary found herself wishing she’d been able to bring her mother the same kind of joy Jamie brought her, she’d tell herself it was best not to think too much about some things. Then she’d redouble her efforts to create the childhood for Jamie that her own mother had been unable to create for her.

Just then the door leading to the garage opened and Wayne walked into the kitchen, wiping his dirty hands on his jeans. “Hey, boys,” he said. He grabbed one of the pastries and shoved it into his mouth. He glanced at Mary with a sheepish smile and reached for another one.

“Get your greasy mitts off,” she said, slapping at his hand. “It’s about time you stopped tinkering with that old truck of yours and got cleaned up. Your folks will be here any minute.”

Wayne curled his lips into a pout. She laughed, handed him another cinnamon crisp. At times like this, she nearly forgot what it had been like before Jamie. Before Jamie, when shame ruled her life, like an unrelenting dictator in a desert of barrenness. All the medical procedures she and Wayne had undergone back then, all their attempts to find the right moment and the right way to conceive, had led to the truth that she would never feel a baby, a new life, growing inside her, and that it was her fault.

—

Mary’s descent into a state of sadness and hopelessness back then was subtle at first. She couldn’t decide what to have for breakfast. She couldn’t concentrate enough to read the newspaper. She began to wonder if she was incapable of doing anything right. Sunny days seemed cloudy and dreary. She was often irritated with Wayne, suffocated by his attempts to help. Their marriage lost its meaning for her, now that they would never realize the dream they’d shared since junior high school of creating a home filled with children.

She questioned whether she loved Wayne anymore. She’d burst into tears over nothing. Some days she found it hard to get out of bed.

She thought more and more about what a welcome relief it must have been for her mother when she committed suicide ten years ago.

One morning when she lay in bed, once more unable to face the day, Wayne brought her breakfast.

“I talked to a social worker.” He put the tray down and placed his hand on hers. “About taking in a foster child.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Just to see how it goes. Maybe later we can think about adopting. Please, Mary. We can’t go on like this.”

The love in Wayne’s eyes reached Mary’s heart and cut through her pain. “Okay, I’ll talk to a social worker,” she’d said, “but that’s all, just talk.”

In the end, she agreed to give foster parenting a try. There was no way she could have known then how that decision would change everything. The moment Jamie was placed in her arms and she saw his scrunched-up three-day-old face peeking out from the fluffy blue blanket, she fell utterly, hopelessly, in love with him. She wondered if this was what other mothers felt, if it was possible that she might be experiencing the same kind of joy, the same kind of pure love they reported feeling after giving birth. Maybe the price she had paid for this gift of life had simply been a different kind of pain than the physical pain they experienced. With Jamie’s arrival, life became a carnival of laughter and discovery and love. How wrong it seemed now to consider that it had been born in such desperation.

—

“Knock, knock!”

The cheery voice of Wayne’s mother came through the back door. Rose Williams, a petite woman with a stoop to her back and the perpetual smell of roses about her, stood on her tiptoes and hugged her son.

“And you, my dear,” she said, planting a kiss on Mary’s cheek, “are as gorgeous as ever.”

Mary smiled indulgently. Her mother-in-law had a propensity to be fast and loose with the compliments. Like the time she told the pastor’s wife her new hairstyle looked ravishing when any fool could see what a botched job it was. But she meant well, and Mary loved her.

“Where’s Dad?” Wayne asked.

“Checking his new Cadillac for scratches before he comes in,” Rose said. “You know how he is.”

A few minutes later Harold Williams roared into the kitchen and slammed a six-pack of Coke down on the counter. He patted Mary on the back and with an exaggerated sniff tipped his head toward the oven.

“Now those meat pies are something even I couldn’t make,” he said. “Course, I’ve never tried.” He chuckled.

Mary ignored him. Wayne’s father could be a challenge sometimes, but he was devoted to his family—unlike her own father, who’d moved to Florida after her mother died and dropped off the face of the earth.

“Hi, Grandpa Harold.” Jamie’s brown eyes lit up with excitement.

“Uncle Harold.” Wayne’s father tousled Jamie’s hair.

Mary gritted her teeth. No matter how many excuses Wayne made for his father and no matter how often he and his mother joked that the man had simply been born stubborn, she wasn’t going to let him off the hook on this one. Jamie was her son, and that made Harold his grandfather, and that was that, end of discussion.

“I bet Grandpa would like to dig worms with you,” she said.

“Wanna, Grandpa Harold? Please?” Jamie grabbed his grandfather’s hand and pulled him toward the door. Tommy tagged along behind, his freckled nose twitching on his goofy-looking face.

—

Half an hour later, Mary called them in to get ready for the parade. She instructed Jamie to wash the mud from his hands and then change his clothes. She laid out his new red, white, and blue T-shirt and his clean jean shorts on his bed. Harold hurriedly changed into his old World War II army uniform. Since he always marched with the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Memorial Day, he had to leave early.

“I’ll be right behind the American Legion Band,” he told Jamie before he went. “Don’t forget to wave to me.”

It was only a two-block walk to Main Street, but by the time they reached it, everyone in town was already there. Wayne lifted Jamie up on his broad football shoulders so he could see over all the heads. When the veterans came into view Jamie waved his arms so hard he nearly fell from his perch. Mary gasped and Wayne increased his grip on his son’s ankles.

“Here I am, Grandpa! Over here! Here!”

“He can’t hear you, sweetie,” Mary shouted up to him. “The band’s too loud.”

Couldn’t he at least nod to his grandson? she thought. Doesn’t he know we always watch the parade from in front of the five-and-dime store? She glanced down at her mother-in-law, sitting on a lawn chair by the curb and watching her husband with a face blank with restraint—or was it simply a lack of awareness—that was as remarkable to Mary as it was irritating. But then Rose looked up at her with a warm smile that melted her frustration.

The parade, which made up in passion for what it lacked in size, seemed to be over as soon as it started. The town cop rode by on his motorcycle and people started to fold up their lawn chairs and head toward picnic lunches with their families.

Back home, Mary, Wayne, and Rose carried the food out to the deck while Harold—still in his army uniform—regaled Jamie with war stories. Tommy showed up like he always did when it was time to eat. Jamie reached for one of the meat pies—stuffed with ground pork and beef, potatoes, rutabagas, carrots, and onions and displayed on a platter like spokes on a wheel—and smothered the crust with ketchup.

“Hey, chief, don’t you have a birthday coming soon?” Harold said with a wink.

“I’m going to be seven,” Jamie said with his mouth full.

“What kind of party you having this year?” Grandma Rose asked.

Jamie jumped up from the bench with both hands raised in the air. “Pirates!” he yelled. “Mom’s gonna make a sign for across the driveway that says Landlubbers Beware, and we’re gonna cover the picnic table with black and make it into a ship with a skull and crossbones flag on a mast in the middle. We’re gonna have a treasure hunt and play games like walk the plank and pin the eye-patch on the pirate and everything.”

“Don’t forget movie time,” Wayne said.

Mary saw Jamie shrug. She wondered if he might be embarrassed to have his father show films from all his previous parties and point out how much the boys grew from year to year. She would have to talk to Wayne about it.

“The invitation is a treasure chest,” Jamie said. “There’s a map inside. Can I go get one, Mom?”

“Of course, sweetie.”

“My, my,” Grandma Rose said after Jamie and Tommy had disappeared into the house. “He was so tiny when you first took him in. Just as if he were your own.”

Mary bit her tongue. She thought of all the times she cooed and sang to the rhythm of the rocking chair while Jamie sucked on the bottle until his little belly was round and his eyes closed in contentment. All those times she obsessed about ear infections, sniffles, and fevers. How she celebrated his first smile, first laugh, first word—Mama—first steps.

“He’s a cute kid all right,” her father-in-law said. “But you could be in for trouble if he’s still with you when he’s older.”

Mary sucked in her breath.

Rose winced. “Now, Harold, dear...”

“Dad doesn’t mean that the way it sounds.” Wayne put his hand on Mary’s arm. She shrugged it off.

“I’m just saying,” Harold muttered under his breath.

Mary leaned forward, her eyes flashing. “You’re just saying what, Dad? You’re just saying what about my son?”

“Here it is!”

Jamie rushed over to his grandpa, waving a party invitation in the air. His face glowed. Mary smiled, but inside she was shaking. She had steadfastly refused from the start and always would refuse to consider the possibility that this beautiful child could ever not be her son. She hated the way Wayne worried that if he were taken from them, she’d be devastated and go back to the way she was before. Things had been agonizingly tense between them the two times Jamie’s birth parents came to visit, but fortunately, after Jamie turned one, John and Josephine Buckley disappeared. On Jamie’s second birthday, Mary had announced that from then on his name would be Jamie Buckley Williams, and after that Wayne stopped saying anything to her about being worried and she stopped noticing that he still was.

“Jamie Buckley Williams.”

“What? What’s wrong, Mom?”

Alarmed to realize she’d said Jamie’s name out loud, Mary pulled him into her arms. “Nothing’s wrong, sweetie,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”