Chapter 33 #2
“Where’s this coming from?” He was breathing heavily, his neck starting to flush.
I pointed at my heart, and then at my head. I didn’t know if he had her address, if he’d even saved one of her letters. If not, it seemed likely she’d write again.
“Have you been writing to her?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “You’re her son. You’re the one she wants to hear from. You can say it’s not my business. But it is, Leonard. Because I love you. And I think you miss her.”
He ran his palm over the top of his head. “Why not my dad, while we’re at it? Why not invite him, too? Have a big party for them.”
“She’s said she’s sorry,” I said. “She said she was sorry to me. I bet she’s said it to you. That makes her different from your dad.”
He was silent.
I sat up a little more. “I’ve been thinking about how you said she lost her courage around him. You told me that a long time ago, before you even went to Korea. Mae noticed it, too. She told me that after she and my father went over to meet them.”
“You’re saying she was his puppet?” He made a sour face. “No brain in her own head? She did it, too, Nora. She lied to your face. And she lied to me, again and again.”
I nodded. All this I knew. But I also remembered the day I bicycled over and found her on her patio. She’d looked ill. She’d looked like she’d aged twenty years in two.
“She must have been out of her mind with worry, not knowing if you were dead or alive.”
He looked at me. “What she did. What she took from us.”
“Leonard. She was worn down like I was.”
The one eyebrow went high and stayed high. “It’s not the same,” he said. “It’s not the same at all. You didn’t lie to me. You didn’t lie to anyone.”
“No,” I said. “I just signed our child away. Goodbye. Good luck.”
He shook his head. “Not the same.”
But it was the same. I couldn’t believe he couldn’t see it, though for years, I hadn’t seen it myself.
She and I had both been scared and exhausted.
And maybe Mr. Lifton could be just as relentless as Miss Berry, and just as certain about what should be done.
I didn’t know what Leonard’s parents’ marriage had been like, or why his mother had lost her nerve around him.
But I did know that by the time she lied to me, she’d spent years—not days, not months, but years—not knowing if Leonard was dead or alive.
“She loved you,” I said. “I didn’t know your dad. I was hardly around him. But she loved you, Leonard. And she’s sorry.”
When he looked up, his eyes were dry. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t either. At the end of the song, he went back to work on my ankles. Still, I knew he’d heard me.
—
The first time he wrote to her, he sent a postcard.
Baby steps, I thought. She wrote back right away, and he replied with a proper letter.
That Christmas he sent her a card with two pictures—one of Marcus in his baby Santa suit, and another of all three of us.
We both signed it, and though I signed With Love, Leonard only signed Merry Christmas.
On her birthday, in July, he called her long distance, and she got to hear Marcus babble and say his first and favorite word, which was Hi!
I was on the other side of the room, but I could hear her laughing and cooing, that same musical voice of hers.
After she and Leonard had talked for a while, I got up and asked him to hand me the receiver.
I wished her a happy birthday. That was all.
But she said thank you. Thank you, Nora. Then she said it again.
—
She flew out to see us when Marcus was almost two, quick but unsteady on his feet, and able to shriek with delight and clap his hands whenever his appropriately favorite song, “Wild Thing,” came on the radio.
In preparation for the visit, Leonard and I spent time teaching him the word Grandma and pointing at the picture that she’d sent.
The hope was that he wouldn’t receive her as a stranger.
I’d written to her that we were doing this, and the day she arrived, she was dressed exactly the same as in the picture—the same yellow bolero jacket, same pillbox hat, even the same earrings.
The trick worked. As soon as Marcus saw her in baggage claim, he shouted out “Grandma!” as if I’d paid him to do it, and all the other people waiting for their bags turned and smiled.
But Geneva—she’d asked me to call her Geneva—looked so nervous, and as I carried Marcus toward her, her eyes stayed focused on me.
I kept smiling, trying to put her at ease.
Leonard had said he’d pick her up, so she was likely caught off guard.
“Welcome!” I said, and went right in for a hug, my free arm encircling her waist. Even though I stood up on my toes, my chin didn’t clear her shoulder.
I heard her say, “Oh! Oh!” and she sounded happy enough, but when I leaned back, I saw Marcus had a hold of her hat, which was pinned to her hair.
I got him to let go and apologized, then turned to tell him it wasn’t nice to grab other people’s hats.
When I glanced back at her, her hat was askew, and she herself looked unsteady. Her nose was running, her eyes bright.
“He looks just like you,” she said. She didn’t seem displeased. She put her hand to her heart, just for a moment, then started to unpin her hat.
“Leonard got called in,” I said. “But he’ll be home tonight.”
Fifteen years had passed since I last saw her, that day on her back patio, when she’d lied to me, and also hugged me, and told me I was captain of my ship.
She’d put on weight, enough to not appear sickly, and once she’d freed herself from the hat, she looked as sophisticated as ever.
Her long gloves were the same shade of beige as her shoes.
Under the jacket she wore a sheath dress and a long chain necklace with a gold square for a pendant.
When I offered to take her hat so she could hold Marcus, she tucked the pendant under her dress and opened her arms.
I don’t think she saw me get out my camera, which worked out great.
In the first shot, she and Marcus are nose to nose, wide-eyed, taking each other in.
In the second, she’s laughing, her head thrown back, and he’s reaching for one of her earrings.
In the third, he’s laughing, and she’s beaming love, and they’re both turned to the camera, to me.
—
We had much to distract us at first: getting her bag; taking another picture of her, this time in front of the airport’s UFO centerpiece; then traffic; then showing her the house and the guest room, which had a little closet I’d finished cleaning out exactly one hour before she’d arrived.
She changed clothes so she could play with Marcus on the carpet while I made lunch.
Even when we were eating, we mostly focused on him.
She told me that Leonard, too, had been an early walker and a late talker.
While I cleaned up, she put Marcus on her lap and sang “Yankee Doodle” to him, which he loved.