Cinnamon

  "Most people are afraid of the dark." she said. "They'll never trespass on our privacy."

  There was some old furniture up here, dusty and worn. If Grandmother Beverly ever made the trek up the second set of narrow stairs and opened the attic door, she would gasp and vow instantly to have it immediately cleaned out. None of it had any real value anymore. That was true, but there were other kinds of value than monetary value. For Mommy and me this small, dusty room had always been cozy, inviting, comfortable.

  Dust particles spun in the beam of the light, glistening like particles of diamonds. It had been a while since Mommy and I were up here. When we were coming up here more frequently, we did do some cleaning, washing down the two windows and sills, vacuuming and some polishing. We wanted it to maintain its special charm, but we wanted it to be clean enough to inhabit as well.

  If there were rodents up here, they were excellent at keeping themselves invisible. We never found any droppings and the worst thing we did discover were spiders. Mommy thought we should leave some of the webs untouched. They weren't poisonous spiders. She called them nature's housekeepers who kept any other insects in check.

  There were some areas of dampness, places where rain had seeped through or in between cracks. We would bum incense to drive away any musty odors or sometimes spray some flower-scented air freshener.

  I went directly to our incense burner and lit a stick. Then I opened the window so the tiny smoke, would spiral in that direction.

  Mommy and I always felt the attic had been someone's hideaway at one time or another. On the floor there had been a brown oval rug, worn through in many spots and very faded: why would anyone have put a rug up here if it wasn't a place for some sort of retreat or privacy.

  "Maybe the children used it as a playhouse," Mommy suggested, "or maybe Carolyne Demerest had a lover and brought him up here for romantic trysts," she pondered, her eyes widening with excitement.

  We both decided that was more fun and elaborated on the story. Carolyne Demerest had fallen in love with the young groundskeeper. "Who was a closet poet, leaving the poems tacked to a special tree."

  "And she fell in love with him through his words!"

  "Just like Elizabeth and Robert Browning," I added.

  "Exactly, and the first time they met up here..."

  "It was snowing. The window was glazed and she sat in this old rocker wrapped in a heavy shawl she had made herself."

  "He fell to her feet and held them against his cheeks and said..."

  "I have dreamed all my life of this moment,"

  We both laughed and laughed. What fun it was. I could almost hear her laughter now and feel her hugging me. We were like sisters. truly. I was the sister she had wanted, and her daughter and best friend forever and ever.

  Mommy. I cried looking at the empty rocking chair.

  I sat there on the small settee and wondered what she was dreaming in her deep sleep, what were the images and the words. What could hold her so firmly and keep her from wanting to see and be with me so much that she couldn't overcome her mental problems?

  Surely, I'll wake up tomorrow morning to the sound of commotion, lots of footsteps, doors opening and closing, a car horn and some cries of delight. I'll rise from my bed and look down at our driveway where I will see a car stop and Mommy step out, looking like her old self, strong, full of energy, joyous at the sight of her beloved old home.

  She would be cured and the first wards out of her lips would be. "Where's Cinnamon? Where's my little girl?"

  Mommy. I would cry inside, Mommy.

  And I would practically fly out of my room. descending the stairway so quickly that I couldn't remember my feet touching a step, and then I'd go charging out the front door and into her awaiting arms.

  She would hold me and kiss me and say. "Don't worry, sweetheart. I'm back.

  "All will be well again." she would promise.

  She and I would enter the house and she would look up at the wall and demand to know where her two works of art were.

  "Who dared take them off the wall?"

  Daddy would hurry to the basement-- or wherever they had been hidden-- and he would rush to get them up.

  "Sorry," he would say. "I just wasn't paying attention to these things." "Well, now that I'm home, see that you do," Mommy would tell him.

  And Grandmother Beverly would pop like a bubble and be gone along with all the other demons that haunted our home.

  We could change the channel on the television set. We could play our music and light our candles and talk to the lonely dead spirits.

  And never be afraid of the darkness.

  3 Playing the Part

  I fell asleep in my chair, dreaming about the love story Mommy and I had created in the attic. It wasn't what I had intended to do, but it almost didn't matter that I didn't come up with a story to tell the Nosy Parkers in school. I decided to simply ignore their curiosity and hope they would stop gaping at me, but Grandmother Beverly was right about gossip, especially about gossip concerning us. It had its own life, its own momentum. People act like they don't want anything to do with you, but as soon as they can learn something about you, they seize it and then take great pleasure in spreading the news, especially if it's bad news. It didn't take too long, less than forty-eight hours, actually.

  Classes at my school might as well have been interrupted and an announcement delivered over the public-address system that went something like. "Attention, attention. Two days ago Cinnamon Carlson's mother had a mental breakdown."

  That was how fast the news about my family spread. Reactions of my teachers went from aloofness to pity to looks that said, "It's not surprising to me."

  The only teacher who did show sympathy and concern was Miss Hamilton. When the bell rang to end class, she asked me to stay a moment. She waited for the rest of the class to leave and then she turned to me, giving me her best long face and saddest eyes and asked how I was doing.

  "I'm fine," I told her.

  "I want you to know you can come to me anytime. Cinnamon. Please don't hesitate." she said as

  if we both suffered from the same disease. Well, she lived alone and, these days. I felt alone; maybe loneliness is a disease, but everyone has his or her own way of curing it, I thought. If she knew some of the things I did, like talk to the dead Carolyne and her son Abraham at their gave sites, she might not be so anxious to have me try out for one of her plays.

  I nodded, kept my eves down, and left as quickly as I could. Clarence was waiting for me in the hallway.

  "What was that all about?"

  "Act One. Scene Two," I said.

  "What?"

  "Nothing. Forget it. I'm hungry," I said and

  marched off to the cafeteria. Clarence had to sit near a window and preferably one on his left side. If there wasn't a seat free that satisfied him, he would eat outside at the bench tables we used in the early fall or spring, no matter how cold it was. Fortunately, today, a day with a dreary overcast sky and a constant northerly wind, there were free seats at a table right below a window. He rushed to it and put down his books to claim the place. I followed and put my books beside his before going into the lunch line.

  Sometimes. I brought my lunch, which usually consisted of a container of yogurt and an apple, but with all the commotion at home. I had not had time to buy any yogurt and Grandmother Beverly certainly hadn't bought any for me. She didn't consider it to be proper food. She called it novelty food or, if anything, a dessert. It did no good to read the description of nutrients on the side of the cup.

  Today. I thought I would just have some soup and a platter of chicken salad. When I glanced to the right. I saw the heads of other students practically touching temple to temple as they gazed my way and cackled. In moments. I expected to see eggs rolling under the table.

  I got my food as quickly as I could and returned to our table. No one else had sat there yet. "So, they moved her?" Clarence asked as he started on his platter of macaroni and chees
e, eating from the left side of the plate.

  "This morning," I replied. "I'm going to visit her right after school."

  "Your father. too?"

  "No. Hell be there at night after his dinner meeting in the city, or so he says."

  "Don't you believe him?" Clarence asked, surprised at my tone of voice.

  I was silent, thinking about the last two days. Mommy's illness had rejuvenated Grandmother Beverly. She now had the strength and stamina of a forty-year-old. The morning following Mommy's being taken to the hospital. Grandmother Beverly was up ahead of Daddy. I heard her moving about the hallway and down the stairs.

  Because Daddy was a broker on Wall Street, he had to be out of the house very early to make his commute and be ready for the opening bell at the stock market. I never saw him at breakfast during the week, but up until the last year or so. Mommy would get up to be with him. Grandmother Beverly sometimes didn't rise until I was about to leave for school, and she never rose early enough to say goodbye to Daddy in the morning.

  Suddenly, she was doing it.

  By the time I was dressed and down to breakfast. Daddy was already gone, of course: but Grandmother Beverly was still in the kitchen. I heard the dishes clanking as well as pots and pans. Curiosity quickened my footsteps. I stopped in the doorway and what I saw shocked and confused me.

  "What are you doing?" I asked her.

  She had taken all of the dishes out of the kitchen cabinets, and the pots and pans as well, and was reorganizing everything.

  "This kitchen was never set up intelligently." she replied. "Cups and dishes and soup bowls all scattered about in different cabinets, and the pots and pans... why are they under the salad sink? They should be nearer the stove. You know how hard it was to find a can opener in this kitchen? Just ridiculous to have all this chaos."

  "Mammy never has any trouble finding what she wants. She's going to be very upset when she nets home." I said.

  "She'll get over it quickly, especially when she realizes how well organized it is now. If she gets home," she added in a mutter so low, I barely heard it.

  "You can't do this," I insisted. "Put it all back where it was."

  "Don't be silly, Cinnamon. Now eat some decent breakfast in you and go to school," she ordered. "What do you have, eggs, cold cereal?"

  "Does Daddy know you've done this?" She turned and raised her eyebrows.

  "You think I need my son to tell me what's right and what isn't? But to answer you, yes, he does," she continued and turned back to the cabinets. "Not only are things in the wrong places, but these cabinets need to be relined with cabinet paper. What good is it to wash your dishes and then put them on a dirty shelf?"

  "They aren't dirty."

  "Oh, you know? When was the last time you did any real housework here? When I was your age, I had to make all the beds and dust the furniture in the living room before I could go to school, even if it meant I'd be late."

  "Brilliant," I said.

  I turned and marched out of the house.

  "Cinnamon!" she called after me. "Where are you going without your breakfast?"

  I didn't answer. What she heard instead was the door slamming behind me.

  Now, two days later, she had completed her revamping of the kitchen and was working on the living room and preparing our dinners. However, up until now, she had been left to eat them by herself. Daddy was working late and I didn't come home for dinner either night, going directly to the hospital to sit with Mommy. She slept most of the time I was there, and when she awoke, she was full of questions about Sacha and plans for what she would be doing when Sacha was released from the prenatal intensive care unit.

  "I just know we'll both be better about the same time," she told me.

  I wondered what she thought was supposedly wrong with her, but I was afraid to ask. I was actually afraid to ask her any questions. She would cry often and then say, "It's all right. I'll be fine."

  I tried talking about the house, tried to get her interested in coming home quickly.

  "Grandmother Beverly is changing things," I said. "You need to get better and come home quickly.'

  "Is she? That's all right. We'll just change it all back," she told me.

  For a moment I thought she was returning to her old self, but then she added. "I just can't wait to show her Sacha, to show her what a beautiful new granddaughter she has, a granddaughter she never wanted. How sorry she will be for the things she's said. Won't she be, Cinnamon?"

  "Yes," I said weakly.

  As long as Mommy was like this. Grandmother Beverly felt the power that comes with being right, predicting accurately and then never letting us forget it. She was practically beating Daddy over the head with this tragedy daily, shoving his face in the reality. washing out his mouth with her soap of truth.

  The first two nights, he came to the hospital directly from work, looking fatigued, defeated. The market happened to be down, too, and that was depressing him. Some of his best clients were blaming him for his recommendations, he said.

  "When they make money. I'm a hero. When they lost. I'm an idiot."

  "Why did you ever want to be a broker. Daddy?" I asked while he and I sat at Mommy's bedside watching her drift in and out of sleep.

  He shrugged.

  "Money always excited me. There's nothing more beautiful than watching a small investment become bigger and bigger and then knowing when to sell. There's all that suspense. Right there in front of me events are transpiring that will affect people's lives, lose or make their jobs, destroy their retirement pensions or turn them into wealthy people. I Eke being part of that. I feel... plugged into the current that runs the country. Does that make sense?" he asked almost wistfully.

  "I guess so," I said.

  Actually. I had never heard him speak so passionately about his work before and for a few moments. I was actually mesmerized. Most of the time, he moved about so methodically, thinking and acting with a surgeon's care-- analyzing, scrutinizing every little thing, right down to the portion of soap powder it took to wash floors. I was beginning to wonder if he was emotionally dead, if he cried or laughed or cared warmly about anything, especially Mommy and me.

  "Are you upset about losing the baby?" I asked. "Sure," he said. "But..."

  "But what. Daddy? Don't say Grandmother Beverly might have been right. Don't dare say that," I warned him.

  "No. Not exactly. I just wonder if Amber would have been strong enough for it, for raising a child from infancy again. She seemed so fragile. I began to wonder if we had done the right thing. Not because of her age," he quickly added. "I just wonder if she had the temperament for it."

  "She had it. She would have been a wonderful mother to a new baby," I insisted.

  He nodded, but not with any confidence. He simply nodded to shut me up.

  We were both quiet then, both lost in our own thoughts, almost strangers on a train who just happened to be seated side by side. I had no idea where this train was heading.

  All these events and discussions passed through my mind when Clarence asked me if I believed my father when he told me he would visit Mommy at the mental hospital after his dinner meeting.

  "No." I finally replied. "I don't believe things he tells me these days. Lately. I keep finding his lies scattered all around the house."

  "Huh?" "Never mind." I said. "I have other things on my mind at the moment."

  After school I got into my car and headed for the Chester Alton Psychiatric Hospital, a privately run institution outside of Yonkers where Mammy had been placed that morning. It was just far enough to be a good long ride. The car was really Mommy's car, but even before she had become pregnant and had her aches and pains, she had hardly used it. I already had logged twice as many miles on it than she had.

  It wasn't just hard to believe I was on my way to visit my mother in a mental clinic: it was painful and actually very frightening. I could feel the trembling start in my legs and slowly vibrate up into my spine as I drew closer a
nd closer to the clinic.

  When I parked and got out, the building looked intimidating. It was so white that with the afternoon sun slipping out from under clouds, the reflection made me reach for my sunglasses. The moment I saw my image in the car window, a whole new persona came over me and helped me face what I had to do: visit my mother in a mental hospital. It was just too difficult to do it as her daughter.

  I brushed back my hair, took a deep breath and moved forward like an actress about to step on a stage. It felt good, liberating. I walked differently, held my head differently and stepped up to the front entrance. Pretending was like wearing a mask and when I wore a mask, no one could see how terrible and how frightened I felt inside.

  The lobby was deceiving. It wasn't that it was too immaculate-- the tile floor gleaming, the furniture looking brand new. It was too cozy, too warm. I was expecting almost as much security as a prison with bars on all the windows and patients wandering about in house gowns, babbling or just staring vacantly at their own empty minds and sterile walls.

  However, these walls had many pretty pictures, oils of pleasant country scenes, people with happy faces, bright flowers. There were fresh flowers in vases on tables and magazines neatly organized in a rack on the right wall. On the left was a small area with a television set. Three people sat on a sofa, all nicely dressed. I had the sense that one of them might be a patient, but there was no way to tell who were the visitors and who was the patient. Maybe they were all patients.

  I thought the place resembled an upscale hotel lobby more than it did a psychiatric clinic.

  A pretty young nurse sat behind a reception counter. She looked up and smiled at me as I approached.

  "May I help you?" she asked. For some reason she reminded me of my dentist's assistant, her teeth glittering through that Colgate smile. I was almost expecting her to follow with. "Do you floss?"

  "Yes," I said. "I'm here to see Amber Carlson.'"

  "Amber Carlson?" She looked down at a large book and turned the page. reading. "Immediate family only," she muttered.