What We Keep

  I suppose in my pied-piper delirium I might have subconsciously been imitating my mother. I’ve seen things like that in my own daughters, God knows—over and over, I’ve seen behavior in them that parallels my own, in one way or another. Sometimes I think what you say to kids doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. It’s all in what you do. It really is. It is all in what you do.

  In Monroe’s lingerie department, Sharla held a nightgown up before me. It was pale blue, decorated with stiff-looking lace around the neck and armholes. “How about this one?” she asked, but she was not really asking. She was demanding. We’d been looking at things for over an hour, and she was tired of it.

  “Fine,” I said. I was tired, too. More than that, I felt really sick: dizzy and weak, and my head throbbed.

  Sharla paid for the nightgown, then turned to me and said, “Do you want to go and get it gift-wrapped? We have enough.”

  Her words sounded as though she were speaking underwater. I stared dumbly at her. I would answer her later. After a nap.

  “Ginny?” She walked over and put her hand to my forehead. “Uh-oh. Let’s go.” She started to leave, then looked behind her at me, standing there. “Come on!”

  I followed a few steps, then stopped.

  Sharla came up beside me, grabbed my arm. “Hurry up!” she hissed. “Do you want everyone to know you’re sick?”

  Another difficult question. I shrugged, then sat on the floor.

  “Will you stop that?” Sharla bent down to pull at me. The package with the nightgown slipped out from under her arm, and I reached for it, uselessly. It was too far away.

  The saleswoman who had helped us, a thin, older woman wearing a navy dress with white polka dots, glasses perched at the end of her nose, came over to us. “What happened here?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I said, vaguely, watching the polka dots swim; but Sharla quickly followed with, “Yes. She’s fine. She just fell down a little. We’re going.” She yanked on my arm again, and I lay down on the floor.

  “What’s your phone number, girls?” the saleswoman asked.

  I closed my eyes. The cool linoleum felt so good against the side of my face. I pulled my knees up to my chest, pushed my fists between my knees. If they would just leave me alone. If they would just pull the shades and tiptoe out now.

  From far away, I heard Sharla say the digits to our phone number. “Home,” I thought, and the word suggested such richness I thought I could smell it, sweet and buttery.

  “It’s like syrup,” I told Sharla, who was now kneeling at my side, looking around. She was embarrassed; a pretty shade of rose flushed her face.

  “What’s like syrup?”

  “Home.” I felt wise and benevolent, forgiven and all-forgiving, and very, very light. I smiled.

  A moment, and then Sharla said, “Oh boy, you are really going to get us in trouble. It’s Mom’s birthday!”

  I thought this over for a moment, and then closed my eyes again. I couldn’t care. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; it was that I couldn’t.

  I felt the weight of something on my mattress and opened my eyes to see my mother sitting there. “Are you better?” she asked. “Do you feel any better?” She was wearing rouge and mascara and red lipstick, a nice blue dress. At first I thought she did it to make me feel better, but then I remembered the Tupperware party.

  I blinked, yawned. “I think so.”

  “You slept well.” She put her lips to my forehead. “Your fever is down. It’s about a hundred now.” My mother had an uncanny ability to estimate fever using her lips alone. She had never yet been off by more than two-tenths of a degree.

  She crossed her legs, sighed. “You want some Jell-O?”

  “No.”

  “Ginger ale?”

  “No.”

  She looked at me for a long moment, frightened, I knew; it frightened her when we didn’t eat. And so, “What kind of Jell-O?” I asked.

  She smiled, relieved. “Cherry, you know how you like that. Would you like me to just bring some up here and leave it?”

  I nodded. It would make her feel much better to do that. I could always flush it down the toilet.

  The doorbell chimed, and my mother looked at her watch. “Oh, they’re here,” she said, her voice a mix of pleasure and disappointment. And then, “I’ll come up here and check on you, Ginny, but I couldn’t cancel the party—it was too late. Sharla will stay with you, she’ll be right up.” She went out into the hall, called her.

  “I’m getting the door,” Sharla called back, and then I heard her welcoming Mrs. Spurlock in her best company voice.

  My mother kissed my forehead. “You just let Sharla know if you need anything.”

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Oh, never mind about that.”

  “We got you something.”

  “Yes, I know. Thank you.”

  “You’ll open it tonight, right?”

  She looked again at her watch, smoothed her skirt. “Of course I will. I can’t wait.” She went out into the hall, called once more for Sharla, who yelled that she was coming, though she had not been.

  When Sharla finally came into the room, she put a dish of Jell-O on the bedside table, making a point of not looking at me. She walked over to the window, stood silently for a while, staring out. Then she flopped on her bed and turned toward me.

  “Well, you went and nearly died right in Monroe’s Department Store.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Mary Jo Bennet was there with Francine O’Connell. They walked right past us. I’m sure they saw you there on the floor. They probably thought you were having a fit or something.”

  I said nothing. I would not apologize for being ill.

  Sharla put her pillow over her stomach, shaped it into a mound. “Look at me, I’m pregnant.” Then, pulling the pillow off and throwing it to the floor, she sighed. “Do you want your toenails painted or something?”

  “I’m too tired.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  True. “Okay.”

  Sharla took the red nail polish out of our dresser drawer, shook the bottle. She sat down at the bottom of my bed, legs akimbo, and, using two fingers, lifted my foot by its big toe to put it in front of her. Then she wiped her fingers on the sheet.

  “They’re clean,” I said.

  “They’re your feet,” she answered.

  Then, despite her disgust, she began painting my toenails carefully, her hand shaking a little with the effort. “Mrs. Spurlock had on pearls with her dress,” she said. “A pearl necklace and a pearl bracelet.”

  “What color dress?”

  “Pink.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. Pink and pearls. Beautiful.

  The doorbell chimed again. I heard Jasmine’s voice, followed by several others. They were excited, congratulatory, soothing, confidential. High and female and interesting. The women would be perfumed and wearing high heels and attractive summer dresses in the colors of sherbet and roses. Some of them would have matching sweaters draped over their shoulders. Hair would be styled and sprayed, earrings screwed on straight. Nylon stockings would be shining and making their sandpapery sounds every time the women crossed their legs. I wanted to be down there. I was tired of being sick, now.

  “Did you get to taste anything yet?”

  “Just some nuts and mints. I’ll get the good stuff later.”

  I waited. Sharla looked up. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll bring you some, too.”

  I breathed out, satisfied. I didn’t want to eat anything. I just wanted to look at it.

  I heard the stairs creak, and then there was Jasmine, standing in our bedroom. Her eyes widened. “Well, look at you,” she said. “Sick as a dog on a day like today.” She pulled a bag out from behind her back. “I wonder what’s in here.”

  I smiled, scratched lazily at a mosquito bite.

  “I just wond
er.” She looked inside the bag. “Oh, yes. That’s a good thing. And oooh, that’s good, too.”

  She handed the bag to Sharla. “Give her something every fifteen or twenty minutes,” she said.

  “Starting now?”

  Jasmine nodded.

  Sharla pulled out a Photoplay, smiled at the cover, then at Jasmine.

  Jasmine smiled back, kissed my forehead like a second mother, left the room.

  “She’s never been to a Tupperware party,” Sharla said, leaning over my foot to finish painting the pinkie.

  “Her real name is Carol,” I said.

  Sharla looked up. “What? I think you’re talking crazy again. Do you feel sicker?”

  I’d regretted saying what I did as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Now I welcomed this opportunity to escape from them. “Hoola-moola,” I said.

  “Ginny?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “I think I need to sleep.”

  She groaned, put the top back on the nail polish. “Well, I have to stay here. Can I read your magazine?”

  “Read it out loud.”

  “But you said you wanted to sleep!”

  “I can hear in my sleep.”

  Sharla moved back onto her bed, stretched out. “Okay, this is the first story,” she said. “‘Where Rock Hudson goes, girls are sure to follow. And why not?’”

  She continued to read aloud in her patient monotone. I closed my eyes, imagining life in Hollywood.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked suddenly.

  I opened my eyes.

  “They’re doing ‘Two Things.’”

  “Let’s go.”

  I still felt weak, but duty called. Sharla and I tried never to miss the Two Things part of a Tupperware party. Next to the sight of the long table, loaded up with plastic containers for everything imaginable and draped with a dark tablecloth with “Tupperware Home Parties” embroidered on it, Two Things was the best part of the party. It was done as an icebreaker before the demonstration and sales began: the famous “burp” of air from the container when you sealed it, thus guaranteeing freshness of the leftovers; the showcasing of the adorable Popsicle makers, which I wanted desperately but which my mother refused to buy, calling them an unnecessary extravagance. “We can make Popsicles in juice cans,” she always said, but we never did.

  For Two Things, all the women sat in a horseshoe before the display table. Then, at the prompting of the hostess, each woman said her name and two things about herself. Sharla and I always had high hopes that something fantastic would be revealed; nothing ever was. Still, the information was entertaining. Last time, Mrs. Jacobson had revealed that her cat had had seven kittens, named after the seven dwarfs.

  We sat at the top of the steps, leaning forward to hear better. Joan Phenning said that her favorite food was brussels sprouts and that she had two beautiful boys. Sharla and I looked at each other. Tweedledee and Tweedledum, that’s what we called her two beautiful boys. Mrs. Five Operations said she had reached the six-month mark after her laminectomy and could now lift grocery bags. Also that she had a new recipe for a cold cucumber soup in her purse that she was willing to share with anyone who was interested. My mother said she expected gigantic roses later this summer and that today was her birthday. There ensued a happy chorus of “Ohs!” and “Happy Birthdays!” And then we heard Jasmine say, “My name is Jasmine Johnson. I wanted to be an actress and I never loved my husband.” There was a stunned silence. Then a titter, and some rustling sounds. And then, “My name is Jane Samuelson. This summer we’re going to Wyoming, and next week my older daughter Janie will be getting her braces off. And—well, I wanted to be a dancer. But that’s three.” Sharla and I sat immobile. We did not look at each other. The next woman, Eileen Hansen, went back to the usual format, saying what her husband did and how many children she had. After Two Things was over and Sharla and I went back to the bedroom, she asked, “Why does Jasmine say things like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sometimes she is so weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why does Mom like her so much?”

  I picked up my bowl of Jell-O. “Because she’s so different.”

  “Huh,” Sharla said. “That would make someone not like her.”

  “Not everyone,” I said. The Jell-O was wonderful. It slid effortlessly down my throat. I wanted more.

  My father brought pizza home for my mother’s birthday dinner. She’d said she didn’t want to leave me to go to a restaurant when I was sick, though I felt much better. “Twelve-hour virus,” my father had pronounced, then tousled my hair. “Right? You’re better already, right?”

  I’d nodded. He didn’t like it when anyone was sick: he had to make it into something nearly gone as soon as it arrived. When Sharla was hospitalized for a week with her tonsils, he was beside himself; that was the most serious thing that had happened to us. He called the nursing station relentlessly when visiting hours were over; he held Sharla’s hand the whole time he was there with her; he told her as soon as she awakened from anesthesia that she was all better. It was an odd feeling, being sick around him; you felt secure in his assurance that you were fine; but you felt frustrated, too, at the distance between what he said you felt and what the truth really was.

  After pizza, served unceremoniously on our usual dinner plates and accompanied by a salad my mother made, my father presented her with a large package, and Sharla put our gift on top of it. She’d used Christmas paper to wrap it; my mother smiled at the sight of flying reindeer in August. “I wanted to get it gift-wrapped,” Sharla said, “but Ginny got sick.” She looked accusingly at me.

  “This is fine,” my mother said. “More interesting. It’s nice to have something unexpected once in a while.” She untied the red ribbon. “Let’s see what’s in here.” She took off the paper carefully, folded it. Then she lifted the box cover and held up the nightgown. I looked closely; I’d forgotten what we’d bought.

  “Do you like it?” Sharla asked.

  “Yes, I do. Very much. Look at this pretty lace trim.”

  “I mostly picked it, because Ginny was sick.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but could think of nothing to say. It was true.

  “But I couldn’t have done it without her.” This seemed extreme, but as I was the beneficiary of Sharla’s remark, I let it stand.

  “I’ll wear this tonight,” my mother said.

  Next she opened my father’s gift to her. It was a set of copper-bottomed pans. “They’re beautiful,” my mother said. She picked up a smaller, wrapped box that had been put in with the pans. “But what’s this?” She shook the box, looked at my father out of the corner of her eye. Then, playfully, she asked, “What did you do, Steven?”

  “Open it,” he said.

  It was a can of copper cleaner.

  “Oh.” My mother smiled, nodded.

  “Do you like those pans?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve always told me how much you love copper-bottomed pans. This is the whole set.”

  “Yes, it is. Thank you, Steven.”

  “That’s not all, though. That’s not all. How about some cake?”

  “There’s cake?” my mother asked.

  “From Schickman’s,” my father said proudly. He hiked up his pants, smoothed the back of his hair.

  “Oh, Steven, you didn’t have to go there.” Schick-man’s was the bakery across town; their cakes were delicious, but very expensive.

  “It’s your birthday,” he said. “I love you.” Sharla and I looked at each other, smiled.

  Our father went into his den, returned with a pink box. He opened it with a flourish. HAPPY 35TH! was written in purple frosting across a large white cake, beautifully decorated with latticework, pink frosting roses, and candied violets.

  “What a lovely cake,” my mother said. “Of course, it’s … Well, I’m thirty-six, you know.”

  My father leaned over the box. “What the—” He s
tepped back, thought for a minute. Then, “Oh, Marion,” he said. He picked up her hand, kissed it. “What must you think of me. Of course it’s thirty-six, I know that. I was in such a hurry to get home, I didn’t even check at the bakery to see if the thing was right. The girl must have misunderstood me when I phoned in the order.”

  My mother went to the silverware drawer, returned with a knife. “It’s all right. It will taste just fine. It will taste wonderful. I’d rather be thirty-five anyway.”

  “I’m so sorry,” my father said. “I know I told her right.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I looked at the curve of my mother’s eyelashes against her cheek as she started to cut into the cake; she was still made up from her Tupperware party, and she looked very pretty.

  “Why don’t you go out dancing?” I asked.

  Both my parents looked at me.

  “I’m fine now,” I said.

  “You want to, Marion?”

  My mother laughed.

  “Go!” I said. “Or go … I don’t know, somewhere.”

  “You want to go out?” my father asked again.

  “Well … I don’t know, maybe we should.” She sat down, the knife still in her hand. “Where should we go?” She was happy now, expectant. Beneath the table, I saw her foot reach for the heels she had slid off. I felt proud of myself.

  “I don’t know. Maybe … I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

  Her smile froze, then faded.

  “You just think of a place,” he said, “and I’ll take you there.”

  She looked away, shrugged. “Never mind.” Her voice was soft.

  “What’s wrong?” He crossed over to her, took the knife out of her hand. “Just think of a place, Marion, and I’ll take you!”