Some Things That Stay Read online

  Back at the house I change out of my dress and into my blue-jean shorts and a red-checkered blouse. I put on my bra too, because I’m not going to go to Rusty’s fort today, not that I don’t want to, but because of my curse. I wouldn’t want him to try anything with that. When the Burns come and Mrs. Burns asks me to help her in the garden, I say sure.

  She never called me about the recipes, but she smiles at me like she really means it. I still don’t know if she’s just being nice because my mother’s sick, or if she likes me. Her eyes don’t cloud up anymore when she looks at me, so maybe she’s seeing me, and not just someone who is her son’s age, a reminder, of sorts. Her really seeing me is a bit scary. I wonder what she sees.

  The tomatoes have finished blossoming and are beginning to grow and turn red. We stake the plants and tie them up with coarse rope.

  “Where do the tomatoes come from?” I ask Mrs. Burns as she ties a knot. “I mean, plants absorb water and minerals out of the dirt, but it doesn’t seem like enough to make tomatoes, or zucchini, or cauliflower. If all the vegetables growing eat the dirt, then you’d expect the dirt to get used up, but it stays there. I don’t understand.”

  Mrs. Burns wipes a hand across her forehead. “The Lord only knows because I sure don’t.”

  I am strangely satisfied with this answer. I don’t think I was asking the question for an answer, really, it was more a test, to see if she answered like my mother would have, with every ounce of information she possessed, followed by the suggestion we look it up at the library. Mrs. Burns’ answer is the one I want, not because it involves God but because it’s the answer I imagine most moms give. “Well, I bet they’ll be good tomatoes, anyway,” I say.

  “I’m sure they will.” Mrs. Burns looks around the garden. It looked like nothing before, but now, even though it’s not nearly full, it has some promise. “Come August, you will have more tomatoes than you can eat. Which reminds me.” She rolls the rope up into a ball, tucking the end into the hollow center. “I want to show you something.”

  Before she does, we put all the tools away in the barn. She wipes off the cutters and oils them, washes and dries the trowels, stores the extra stakes by size, and puts everything away in a thick wooden box.

  “Okay, follow me.” She leads me to the back of the house, to the back door that no one ever uses because it leads only down dank steps to the basement. When any of us go to the basement we just walk through the mudroom behind the kitchen, then down the steps. Not this way.

  Mrs. Burns runs her fingers through her tight curls and then straightens up as much as she can. “Okay,” she says to herself. “Okay now.” She puts a hand out to hold the door handle, then twitches, like Kip does when a fly lands on his ear. She opens the door and we go down.

  I’ve been down here plenty, to do the wash. There is a big black furnace, and the washer and wringer. There are also shelves with tools and boxes of nuts and bolts, and an old generator on the floor. A door opens into a room with canned stuff, which I looked at once but my mother said to leave alone. Mrs. Burns leads me to the room with the dozens of shelves and the hundreds of canned fruits and vegetables. Along one side is store-bought stuff, like nuts and Spam and miniature hot dogs. The other side is home-canned stuff, with labels on the top of the jars.

  “That row is strawberry and raspberry jam, some peach too. The next is apple butter, blueberry jam, and rhubarb jam. Then there is applesauce and tomato sauce. Now, these are beans, and those are baby onions, and all that is pickled tomatoes and peppers. The bottom row is pickles. I want you to eat them.”

  “Well, my mother said not to.”

  “I’m sure she did. And that was just right, but you know what, there is just too much here. It will go to waste. You will be doing me a big favor. I’d hate to think of all that labor going to waste. You know, I think I’ll take some jam.” She goes into the main part of the basement and gets a basket, then fills it up. Even though she’s taken over a dozen jars, the shelves still look full.

  “Why did you make so much?” I ask.

  “Something to do, I guess. And we had Timothy to feed. He was thin, but he loved pickles.” She looks at the row of pickles. “Please, Tamara, eat as much as you can. All of it,” she says, meaning the store-bought cans too. “It won’t last forever.”

  “You did this because of the bomb?” I ask, noticing that there is a row of canned milk too.

  “Well, some. I always canned fruits and vegetables, but, yes, I thought we should be prepared. It seems pretty silly now. That bomb shelter is a sad sight. If they do bomb us, Tamara, I just hope Mr. Burns and I go to the Lord quickly. I don’t want to be one of the people left to clean things up. You can. I’ll leave that to you young-uns. Maybe you won’t make any more bombs after you have to clean up that mess.” She shrugs. “But tell you what, even if you make yourself sick on pickles and jams, there will be enough for when the bomb does fall, because come September, you and I will be canning, I’ll guarantee it.”

  “Do you want to take some of this other stuff?” I ask, pointing to the store-bought cans. “You paid for it.”

  Mrs. Burns shakes her head and moves toward the basement stairs. “To tell the truth, my sister’s basement looks pretty much like this. I just don’t like her peach jam and pickled tomatoes as much as I like my own. She has raspberry jam though that will knock your socks off.”

  We go back the way we came in. When she gets out in the sun she puts the basket down and kind of shudders, like a dog shaking water off. It’s not because of the cobwebs though, it’s the smell of the house she doesn’t want left on her clothes.

  Mr. Burns is coming down the hill and he waves to us, a big wave. We both wave back.

  “Can you believe it?” Brenda says with a grin.

  I can believe it, but still it amazes me. We are sitting at her picnic table, supposedly doing math. Brenda has just told me the girl she was talking to outside church today is pregnant. She’s fifteen. Just like me.

  I swat at a fly on my leg. There are way too many flies, big stupid black flies that circle and land, circle and land, no matter how many times I swipe at them. Then there are horseflies, bigger than the black flies and smarter; they hide under benches, and when I’m not paying attention, they land on my thigh and bite. They’re slow though, and can be killed, although it leaves a mess of blood and squashed fly. Finally there are the deer flies, with their triangular-shaped wings, who buzz in tight circles right above my head until the drone drives me crazy. Then they pretend they have gone away by suddenly becoming quiet. That’s when you know they have landed in your hair. I’d go inside, but Brenda can’t come in my house and I don’t want to go in hers. If we go in the barn, Brenda will jump around on the hay bales. The picnic bench seems to hold her relatively still.

  “What is she going to do?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” Brenda says, frowning at me. “Get married.”

  “At fifteen?”

  “She’s pregnant,” Brenda says, as if I didn’t understand her the first time.

  “Yeah, but …” I don’t bother finishing, because it is obvious. That’s what she’ll have to do. “What’s he like? The father?”

  “A stupid idiot. Lindy has no taste. It’s Kevin Hooper. He’s in the grade above you, but he should be going into twelfth grade this year. They flunked him when he was in fifth. He shot his baby-sitter with his dad’s rifle when he was seven. Shot her in the shoulder. Can you believe it?”

  Now this I can’t believe. “No. How could he do that?”

  “With the rifle,” Brenda says.

  “So when will she get married?”

  “Pretty soon. She’s due in November.”

  “Where will they live?”

  “With his parents. Her dad said even if Kevin does marry her, he’ll kill him if he sees him.”

  “How can he not see him? What about at the wedding?”

  “Well, that would be in the church, so he wouldn’t kill him in a church,
not on her wedding day.”

  “Will she go to school?”

  Brenda shakes her head. “I doubt it. Kevin’s mom is a little funny in the head, I don’t think she could take care of the baby.”

  “What about the girl’s mom?”

  “She’s dead,” Brenda says with a shrug.

  This I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to hear about dead moms. “So, do you understand what a variable is?”

  Brenda pinches up her mouth and sucks on her bottom lip, rubbing on her chin until there’s a red mark. I let her think, if that’s what she’s doing. “Nope.”

  I have been explaining variables to Brenda for the last hour, but she refuses to learn. I want to strangle her.

  “Okay, last time. It’s a letter representing a number. There will be enough clues in the problem to figure out what it is.”

  “Why not just tell us the number in the first place?”

  “It’s a way to make you think, Brenda, to move the numbers around until things balance out.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to think about moving numbers around. What the hell good is it going to do me?”

  “You’ll pass eighth grade.”

  “Oh. Okay. But it still stinks.”

  “Now look.” I write a problem. A + B = C.

  “There are no numbers!” Brenda says. “How the hell am I supposed to figure it out?”

  “It’s not a real math problem. It’s just something to give you an idea of what a variable is. Now look, I’ll give you some clues. A equals Lindsay. B equals Kevin. So C is what?”

  “The kid!” Brenda yells, proud of her fine deduction.

  “Right. Now three times C is what?”

  “Three kids.”

  “And a ton of diapers!” I say.

  “Stinky, shitty diapers!” Brenda shouts.

  “So, you see, a letter just stands for something. Here, look at this problem in your book.” I point out a simple algebra problem. Her eyes glaze over.

  If Brenda passes her math test next week, it will definitely be a miracle. On the scale of one to ten, I’ll give it an eight. I’m going to add them all up. When they hit a hundred, I’ll believe in God. But I’m going to deduct some points for making my mom sick, so it won’t be so easy. I figure if there is a God, He’s got the advantage. If He’s real, He’ll prove Himself, even if I stack the deck.

  During the last week in July it’s over ninety every day. It’s so humid the clothes never dry on the line. At night, the heat makes it hard to sleep; the sheets stick to my skin, and even with the window open my room feels small and airless. Above me, boards creak. My mother would say they are swelling with humidity. I think Timothy is pacing, restless, bored, and hot. I know I am.

  Rusty and I go to his fort, but the heat of our bodies in that shower-curtain-capped place becomes sickening and after only minutes we pull apart and decide to leave. Also, Robert has begun to follow us around. Twice, Rusty and I had to stop making out when we heard my brother trying to sneak up on us, his footsteps crackling on the layers of old dry leaves. The first time I chased Robert all the way back to the house and beat him up on the lawn. The second time he got away from me and hid in the pine trees for hours. When it gets cooler, I’ll beat him up, just for reminders. It’s too hot right now.

  Mosquitoes are everywhere. They love the raw edge between the fresh new skin and my old broken and peeling scabs. So I stay in our house and listen to my records or the radio. I do everything slowly, like sad music. I sweep the floors, vacuum, and dust, pretending to be an old lady, an ancient servant who works for a reclusive millionaire. I cook dinners, making a small dent in the canned food, mostly the store-bought ones. I know how to make a good grocery list now, because if I forget something my father won’t drive me back. “Make do,” he says. He doesn’t care what we eat.

  I hate doing the wash the most, so I leave it until there is nothing left to wear, then do it all day long. Robert helps, but he complains so much I always end up hitting him and he cries and I get sent to my room.

  Wednesday my father surprises us by saying he will take us into Westfield for a movie. The last movie I saw was Stalag 17, over a year ago. But my sister will not leave her room, and my father will not leave her alone for that long. I open her door and tell her I will kill her if she doesn’t leave her stinking room, but she doesn’t even look up from her book. I tell my father to stop getting her books from the library and bore her to death, but he just sighs.

  I think about Timothy more and more. Whenever I open my bedroom door the curtains move. I think he sneaks down from the attic to his old room when I’m not around—like my sister sneaks downstairs when we’re out—just to keep in touch with what used to be. I think he wants to be caught, wants to be seen. Wants someone to talk to him. Sometimes, when I’ve been sent to my room for hitting Robert, I tell him how awful my father is. I tell him how unfair everything is. I don’t tell him about Rusty and me. It would be like teasing him to tell him good things about life.

  There is another letter from my mother.

  Dear Tamara, Robert, and Megan,

  I have done something rather bold. I told the doctor if he didn’t allow me to read I would refuse to eat. I have lost a bit of weight, so he agreed, on one condition: I eat more than I have been. I requested books about TB, and found some fascinating information I want to share with you. Some very famous and talented people had TB. (And died from it, since they weren’t lucky enough to live in this time of modern medicine.) Keats, Chopin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, D. H. Lawrence, Eugene O’Neill, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and many others. They say that TB affected their minds, causing them to become more creative as they got sicker; some of their most exciting and imaginative works were written in the last years of their lives. Apparently, because of the disease, there is an actual change in the brain that causes it to be greatly stimulated. I think it would be interesting if you did some reading on the subject. It’s best to understand the things that affect our lives. (Rather than turn to the crutch of religion for support.) Yes, your father tells me you are still going to church, and I must admit it worries me. (I never commented on the cross you sent me, Tamara, and I know you meant well, but I gave it away.)

  Tell Helen I think of her, and the conversations we had, and that what bothers me is her superiority, and her belief that having religion makes her moral, and just, and good. That is a choice each human on this earth has, regardless of religion. You, my children, are examples of that. You are good, moral, decent, loving, and thoughtful. I don’t have to thank a god for that. But I want to thank you.

  I am doing well. There are moments, as now, when everything seems bright and clear, more clear than ever before. I suppose it is a possibility that these moments are the effect of the TB, but I must admit I relish them. There are other times when I am morose and slow and miss you all so terribly I can’t think straight.

  Time’s up. Miss you. Love you,

  Mother

  I can’t believe she is so eloquent and so sick, so much the same and so different. She writes with more love than I can ever remember. It’s like a letter from someone who is saying the right things because they are really saying good-bye. I give the letter to Robert. When he’s done reading it he goes upstairs and gives it to my sister. He doesn’t come back down. The house is so quiet I can hear the heat rise. It must be very hot in the attic. I think about dead people all day.

  The next day, a letter comes for my father. I steam it open again. He never noticed the first time, even though the envelope was funny-looking from the steam and the rubber cement I glued it back together with. It looked like it fell in a puddle.

  Dear Stuart,

  My mind races, questions torment me. I sweat at night with worry. The nurse says if I don’t stop being so restless, she will take away the books. I’m afraid I burst into tears when she said this. It didn’t help. I am writing this note while the nurses have a meeting. My temperature i
s high today, but one of the other patients gave me her pen and paper. I will owe her something. That’s the way it works.

  During my first week here, I felt like an utter failure, as a mother and a wife. For giving in to TB. For leaving you all so easily. But from the moment I heard the doctor’s diagnosis, I have become a coward, meek as a lamb. I have been afraid of TB my whole life. I watched my father cough blood and become flesh and bones. He, too, refused to go to the doctor until it was too late. The sanitarium he died in was not a good sanitarium, not like this one. More than half the people died.

  But lately, I have moments when I come out of the fog of depression and fear, and see life as this glorious thing I need to fight to keep. The fight is not easy. The way to fight it, they say, is to do nothing, to take my shots and rest, and I do believe they know what they are doing, but I lose a little of me, or a lot of me, by this constant inactivity. Without stimulus, I am atrophying, dying inside. I am terrified now of what I am becoming. But in the bright moments, when my brain works, I see possibilities I have never seen before. I have begun to think about my mother. She and my father, like you and I, were devoted to each other. From the moment he died, until her car accident four months later, she was like a hollow shell. Could she have really driven into that tree on purpose? The idea haunts me. You must promise me, that if I die, you will keep me alive in your heart, but move past my death, find the joys in life that we have already known, the joys that are out of my reach right now, but still sharp in my memory. You must live on, positively, not just for the children, but for yourself. Promise me.

  I am very, very tired right now, and I should put this down, but I want to tell you that I love you a million times more than you will ever know. My joy is knowing you love me in the same way I am a lucky woman. TB has taught me how lucky I have been.