Chapter 31 #3
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
I saw by his face, how serious he looked, that he was really asking.
Not for him, but for me. It was a good question.
Whatever my father said to me, whatever he refused to hear, it couldn’t feel worse than his pretending that New Jersey had never happened, and wanting me to pretend the same.
Maybe that lie helped him. Maybe he once believed that it would help me as well. But it hadn’t, and I was done with it.
“Point taken.” I gave Leonard’s hand a squeeze, careful, as always, of the nub. “Just not in front of the kids. Soon as they’re gone, I’ll go talk with him.”
Phoenix followed him out. He shut the bedroom door behind him, but the wall was thin enough that I heard him say he was going to walk the dog, and that the dog himself had asked, privately, if Skip and Shirley would please come along.
“We’ll go where we can see the Hollywood Sign,” he added, and I thought that was smart, a way to get Janet to go along without making her feel like a child.
We had a mirror above the dresser, and I stood and looked in it.
I didn’t wave this time, just looked at my eyes, tired and tear-burned, my mascara smeared.
I was twenty-six years old, a grown woman.
I could face my father and say what I thought, what I felt.
If he wouldn’t love me anymore, I could bear it.
And there was a chance that he really would hear me.
I worked to guard myself against this hope, even as I gathered courage.
Phoenix’s nails clicked against the floor, and I knew he was doing the little dog dance he did whenever Leonard put on his shoes.
I heard my father’s voice. “I’ll go, too,” he said.
I pressed my hand to my heart, as if just that would console it.
“Nora could take you to see it later, Mr. Chesnow.” Leonard’s voice was friendly, but there was firmness to it. “You all could have a minute to yourselves here. To talk.”
“I’ll just see it now,” my father said.
Mae whispered something, though I could only make out my father’s name. If he replied, I didn’t hear it. I stayed where I was, listening as the door to the hallway opened. I heard the jingle of Phoenix’s collar, and footsteps descending the stairs.
I opened the door to find Mae and Janet on the couch. Janet had moved from the armrest down to the cushion where Skip and Shirley had been sitting. Her arms were crossed, and she was glaring at the floor. My reappearance must have inflamed her further, for she immediately turned to her mother.
“Anything else you’ve been keeping from me? My God. What else is there that I don’t know?”
Mae looked too annoyed to answer. Janet turned to me.
“Did you know about my father, Nora? That he’s still alive?”
“I did,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I knew before you did.”
Mae rolled her eyes. “Don’t be mad at Nora. I told her not to tell you. You were in fourth grade when I told her. You couldn’t have kept a secret if I’d tied it to your wrist.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. Mae gave me a hard look.
I imagine she felt judged by me, and I admit she would have been right.
But I still loved my stepmother, and I believed I understood her.
She was tough and bighearted and shrewd.
She had no problem lying to protect herself, and doling out the truth as she saw fit, even to those she loved.
But I could also imagine Janet’s bewilderment, having learned the truth about her father so late.
I knew a woman from work who’d been in Bakersfield during the earthquake in 1952.
She wasn’t hurt, but she said she’d been anxious ever since.
Years had passed and still, she no longer thought of ground as firm.
Janet touched her hand to her forehead. I thought she was still thinking of her not-dead father, but she looked at me and asked, “It was when you left for Arkansas? To help my grandmother?”
I nodded.
She looked at her mother, incredulous. “Grandma was in on it?” She started to laugh, but when she saw my face, she stopped. “I’m sorry, Nora. It’s awful. I just had no idea.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know you didn’t.” I went over and sat in the folding chair, where Leonard had been sitting.
Janet squinted. “That old woman at Haslam’s, who got so upset with you. She said something about a baby, a grandchild. Was that Leonard’s mother?”
I expected Mae to say no. I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Lifton being described this way. But Mae said yes, that was right. She’d been avoiding my eyes, but now she looked at me frankly.
“She knew you and Leonard were in California, and that you’d gotten married. She wanted your address so she could write. I wouldn’t give it to her.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Janet shook her head. “You told me she was Nora’s old teacher who’d lost her mind. Even then I knew something was fishy. She was crying, right there in the bookstore.”
Mae inspected her bright nails. “I had nothing to say to that woman.”
I appreciated the loyalty. I didn’t tell her that Leonard’s mother must have tracked down our address by some other means. Over the years, she’d addressed most of her letters to Leonard, who sent them straight to the trash, unopened.
“Why can’t she have your address?” Janet asked. “What did she do?”
I explained as best I could. It was strange, how those years of confusion and anguish could be reduced to a few facts, all conveyed in less than a minute. And still, beneath the winged liner, Janet’s eyes grew wide.
“How could they have done such a thing?” she asked. “His own parents? They’re awful, both of them.”
I nodded. It was true. And also not completely true. Exactly two of the letters Mrs. Lifton mailed to our address here had been addressed to me. A few years back, I’d opened one, just out of curiosity. Inside a card, she’d written,
Dear Nora,
Please know I still think about you, and Leonard, and your child, often. And I’m still so very sorry.
Geneva
On the front of the card was a picture of a painting by Salvador Dalí.
The caption said the painting was The Elephants, and I looked at it for a while.
Two elephants with impossibly long, skinny legs faced each other across an expanse of desert, the sky orange and red behind them.
At their feet, a man and an angel, small as mice, held out their arms to each other, and there seemed a great distance between them as well.
Maybe Leonard’s mother used that card because she had it on hand.
But what I felt, looking at it, was her sorrow.
Still, I’d thrown it away.
“I think they moved back to New York,” I said. His mother’s most recent letters, all unopened, had an NYC postmark.
“Maybe she did,” Mae said. “He’s still in town. I’ve seen him. You can bet I don’t stop and say hello, but it’s him.” She took a breath. “You know she divorced him.”
I leaned back, too stunned to speak. I myself was a divorced woman, talking to another divorced woman. But still. Mae and I were rarities. You just didn’t hear about many people getting divorced. Especially people like the Liftons.
“The notice was in the paper,” Mae said. “She’s the one who filed. But he fully recovered. Already remarried. That was in the paper, too. Younger than he is. Leonard doesn’t know?”
I shook my head. If he did, he would have told me.
“Where did you have the baby?” Janet asked. “In Arkansas?”
I told her I’d been in New Jersey, at a home for unwed mothers.
She still looked a little dazed. “Did Bobby know?”
“He figured it out,” I said. “And judged me for it.”
Janet didn’t seem to think this was possible, and she asked if I was sure.
I told her I was most certainly sure. He just wouldn’t come out and say it.
Like father, like son, I said. It was at this point that Mae jumped in, making excuses for my father.
He’d been so excited to see me, she said.
I’d just caught him off guard. He’d spoken without thinking.
“He needs to start thinking,” I said.
Janet wanted to know if Leonard and I had tried writing to anyone in New Jersey, just to see if they’d give me any information.
I told her yes, we’d tried. The social worker who answered my letter was new on the job, and said she’d never met Miss Berry, though she’d seen her name on some of the older files. She couldn’t tell us anything else.
“Even if she could have,” I said, “our baby would be eight. She wouldn’t know us.”
Mae gave me a worried look. “Are you still coming down to Anaheim?”
I waited before I answered. I wanted to spend time with Mae and Janet, and get better acquainted with Shirley and Skip.
And to be fair, I could see things from my father’s perspective.
When I’d first come back from New Jersey, he’d made a contract with me, the terms clear.
All these years later, I was the one who’d broken the contract. But it was fine with me if it broke.
“I’ll still go,” I told Mae. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
I wasn’t just trying to make them happy, though it was clear that was the answer they wanted.
I knew if I stayed home, I’d regret it. I could be civil to my father, and try to see the good in him, as he perhaps had to try with me.
We’d be able to get through a couple of days, with only the facade of love, at Knott’s Berry Farm, and at Disney.
Then I’d say goodbye, and come home to my real life with Leonard, and all we’d assembled here.