Chapter 11 – GLENNA #3
In another year, she’ll have been gone as long as I knew her.
I slowly spin. Over her desk is a corkboard with newspaper and magazine clippings, printed song lyrics, pictures I colored, old polaroids from before I was born, more pins. ERA YES . Animal Liberation . Never Another Battered Woman .
The clippings have turned yellow.
There’s the wall with the window looking out on the alley. The wall with the bookshelves. Grown up books on the top five shelves. Chapter books for me on the bottom. When I was little, Mom kept picture books there and a coffee tin filled with crayons.
And then there’s the wall with the photographs.
There’s a collage of Mom’s side on their various wedding days—great grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa, Mom and Dad.
The photos go from black and white to technicolor to glossy.
In the older photos, the bride and groom both gaze serenely at the camera.
In my parents’ picture, my mom is smiling up into my dad’s face, and he’s grinning up to his ears, his eyes on her.
When they got married, they were both younger than I am now, but they seem so sure of themselves.
Then there are my baby pictures taken at the Sears studio in Shady Gap.
A polaroid of me conked out on my dad’s belly.
He’s propped a record on my diapered butt, and he’s reading the back of the album.
There are school pictures, and shots of our little family in front of the newspaper, and at the opening of Peace, Love, and Beans and at picnics on the beach at Lake Patonquin.
All of those are to the left of the door. To the right, the photos are much more random. Some aren’t quite in focus. Some have the shadowy print of a stray finger in the shot. There are pictures of my grandparents on their farm. The neighbors who live downstairs and their cats. And my parents.
My mother washing dishes with her hair in a top knot, the sides shaved.
Dad and Mom headbanging in pajamas, jumping on the couch.
Mom sitting cross-legged on the floor of this office, working on a project, file folders and clippings spread out around her, my small bare feet in her lap.
And in every photo, she’s smiling at me behind the camera.
I took all of these photos with my first Nikon.
When did I stop taking pictures of people?
When she died.
When I “gave up on everyone.”
But I didn’t give up. I got run over. Yeah, I clung to Toby like a life preserver, but I was drowning and alone and thirteen-years-old. And just because you regret the way you made it through something doesn’t mean you can’t also be proud as hell that you did get through.
I never stopped taking pictures. I never stopped looking for something beautiful. Even when I couldn’t see my way forward through my own eyes.
I drop my head back, for once letting go, letting the feelings do what they will.
And they don’t go on a rampage. They don’t choke me. They rise cautiously. Gradually. As if they’re trespassers in a haunted house.
I miss my mom so bad.
And wherever she is, she misses me.
I open my eyes. She worked for hours at this desk, and when she stopped to think, she’d look up at her corkboard. She’d take a minute to turn her head right and stare out the window at the sky. Or she’d turn her head left, and she’d look through my eyes.
She would have wanted me to thrive. Go away to art school. Dump Toby Guilfoyle the first time he disappeared at a party, leaving me alone on a stained couch with a bunch of drunk strangers.
She would have wanted me to not blame myself when I wasn’t strong enough to do any of those things.
She would have known that eventually, I’d be okay.
I let the understanding fill me, flow through my tired, achy body, and I don’t shove it down. I accept it. Finally.
She would have been proud of me.
Wherever she is—she is .
My tired eyes are pooling again when there is a soft knock at the door.
“Rabbit?”
I guess Dad’s between calls. I sniff, blink a few times, and stand just as he opens the door.
“What’s going on, Rabbit?” He pokes his head in. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I realize I never found my bra, and I fold my arms high over my chest.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He knows I’m not, but he’s also never pressed me to talk about my feelings once in his life. “Did you eat breakfast yet?”
“No.”
“Want to make us some cheesy eggs?” He waggles his thick gray eyebrows.
I muster a watery smile. “Yes, Dad. I will make you an egg white omelet.”
He grimaces, but as always, he doesn’t turn me down. “I do have a question before you get to it.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you know why Cash Wall has parked his truck half on the sidewalk out front, and he’s staring up here with that dog of his?”
“He is?”
Dad chuckles. “The dog’s hanging his head out the truck window. Howls every once in a while. Surprised you didn’t hear it back here, but I guess you had the door closed.”
What the hell?
He is?
Of course, he is.
There’s a part of me compelled to do what I always do—go to the kitchen, mute the chaos inside me with mindless chores and worrying about Dad.
But instead, this time, I don’t. I go to the living room.
I don’t get too close to the window. Dad didn’t lie.
Cash is leaning against his truck, cap on backward, staring up, hands shoved in his pockets and a boot heel resting on the side bar.
He’s scowling. He looks miserable as hell.
Dad sidles up beside me. He’s grinning, getting a real kick out of this. My cheeks heat.
“Date went well, then?”
“No comment.”
Dad chuckles. “I’ve never seen a sadder face before in my life. Except maybe the dog.”
Granger is resting his head on the open window and all his jowls are drooping. Every so often he glances over at Cash, bays at the apartment, and then settles back down. Poor dog. It’s not his fault his owner’s a—a—
Cash Wall.
“You got lucky with Mom.” I don’t know why I say it in this moment. It just comes out.
Dad nods in complete agreement. “Love is weird like that. We met, and we knew. Never wanted to be apart after that. Grandma tried to convince her she needed to play the field—that she was too young to settle down—but your mom had made up her mind. I’m lucky we got all the time together we could have, and we didn’t waste time on doing what people thought we should do. ”
I rest my head on his shoulder.
Down on the sidewalk, Cash keeps glaring up.
“But then you’ve got Lil Willis. Damn fine woman. Thought she’d married a good man—hell, we all thought so—and here she is thirty-five years later, and she realizes she doesn’t even know the guy. But do you stop loving him?”
I honestly have no idea.
“And what about the Achesons?” Dad goes on.
“What about the Achesons?
“Well, they didn’t meet until they were both twice divorced. That’s a bad bet if ever I heard one, but they seem happy as clams.”
They have a bicycle built for two. It all seems a little too perfect, but what do I know?
“And then there’s the Putneys, married for twenty years, and he wakes up one day and realizes he’s been missing out. He divorces Gail and takes up with Bev Hoskins, but apparently the grass isn’t greener, ‘cause now he’s sneaking around with Gail at the Overlook Motel.”
“How do you even know that?”
“It’s my job, Rabbit.”
I lift my head to give him a look.
“I saw them come out of the Overlook the other day. I happened to be driving by.”
“Poor Bev Hoskins.”
Dad sighs. “Love is strange. That’s my point. There’s this grand idea of how it should be, but I don’t think it’s ever that way.”
“You and Mom.”
A corner of Dad’s lip quirks up, hidden by his beard. It’s a rueful, wry expression. “No. It shouldn’t have ended like that. Not as soon as it did.” He exhales again. “Life doesn’t hand you ‘should be’s.’ Never has, never will.”
I wind my arm around Dad’s waist and give him a squeeze before he gets too sad. He does his part and puts on a wan smile.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” I say. “I don’t love Cash Wall.”
Dad plants a smack on my cheek. “Maybe not, Rabbit, but that poor bastard down there has got it bad for you.”
Then as he’s laughing, his phone rings, and he makes a beeline for his laptop.
Through the window, I can hear Granger’s forlorn wail.
On my way to the kitchen, for a second, I step up to the window. For Granger. So he knows I’m not abandoning him.
Granger catches sight of me and howls. Cash straightens, blocking the sun with his hand.
My heart leaps.
For an instance, our eyes meet, and I’m walloped by a rush of feelings, a gust of wind through a door that somehow got thrown open inside me. My eyes prickle.
There’s so much. It overflows, and I can’t begin to know how to deal with it or what it all means.
I scrub my eyes with my sleeve.
Cash frowns. He reaches over, takes Granger’s paw, and slowly waves it at me. Up, down, up. Granger patiently lets him, casting me a woeful, bloodhound stare all the while.
Well, now I’m leaking tears.
I raise my hand and press my palm against the cold window pane. Just for a second. So Granger knows I haven’t given up on him entirely.