The Nelsons would invite anyone who was very important to sit at their table with them, mayors who were visiting, bankers, every now and then a movie star, the one who was never the star of the picture but whose face you saw everywhere and seemed so familiar. On the night that the hotel opened the Clatterbucks came and they sat at this table. June told me about it, how she made herself a yellow organdy dress and her father bought her a pair of shoes that were dyed to match. "There was music all night long," she told me. "Two bands, so that when one of them got tired the other would just step right in and start playing the same song. It never ended." It was the only time the Clatterbucks ever ate at the hotel.
"All these years I've been here and I've only eaten in this room twice," my father said. "The first night I came here and on my sixtieth birthday." Then he turned to Thomas Clinton. "Course, I'm in here all the time, painting, steadying tables, keeping up with things."
"I remember the night you came," Sister Evangeline said. "You couldn't look at the girls, you were so embarrassed."
"I thought I'd be here a couple of days, a week at the most."
"Things don't always work out like you think they're going to," Thomas Clinton said, and even though I knew he didn't mean anything by it, it put a kind of shadow over everything.
"Dinner's good," I told Lorraine. "You're getting the hang of this."
"I'm not Rose," Lorraine said, not caring a whit about saying her name to this nervous crowd. "But I'm getting there."
"Rose was a good cook?" Thomas said.
"The best," my father said. "She cooked three meals a day, every day she was here."
"That's funny," Thomas Clinton said absently. "I don't really remember her cooking at all."
"It's hard to imagine Mom not cooking," I said. "What was she doing if she wasn't cooking?"
"Driving," Thomas Clinton said. He got a look on his face like the old men in town get when they're telling war stories, like it should be an awful memory but it's been so long ago it's turned into something else. "I couldn't get her out of the car to save my life. Rose was a born driver. There were times I would think I never should have taught her how."
"You taught her to drive?" I said.
Thomas Clinton nodded. "I remember the day she got her license."
"She taught me to drive," I said. It made me so happy. For just that minute things fell into a line. Things made sense.
"She didn't drive so much," my father said. "When she was here."
It was like candy, talking about her this way when we were all together. We all knew we shouldn't, that at any second it would flip over and be too much. We could get angry or brokenhearted at one wrong turn, so we stopped. If people do have more than one life in a lifetime, they should be careful to make sure the different versions of the past never overlap. My mother had tried to do that, and when she knew she couldn't hold the two worlds apart anymore, she left.
"What will you do when you leave us?" Sister Evangeline asked.
Thomas Clinton ran his finger idly along the side of his dinner fork. "Go back," he said. "I have some time. School doesn't start for almost two months."
"You're a teacher?" I said. I had never thought to ask before what he did.
"Math," he said. "I guess I should try to have a vacation, go and see something. I don't know. It doesn't seem very appropriate."
"But you won't keep looking for her?" I said.
Thomas Clinton looked at me, and I knew from the expression on his face that that was exactly what he had been planning on. "No," he said. "I wouldn't know where to start."
"Go away for a while," my father said quietly. "Take some time off. Go fishing on your way back, through Arkansas. Great fishing in Arkansas. Do you fish?"
"I have," said Thomas Clinton.
My father nodded. "Then that's the ticket," he said.
After dinner my father went into the pantry and got a bottle of Jack Daniel's off the top shelf. It had been a Christmas present to him from all of the girls a few years back. He made a big deal out of hiding it because Habit was dry, even though nobody cared about those things anymore. He and Thomas Clinton stood out on the porch and had a quiet drink. I couldn't hear what they were saying from the kitchen, only the soft thud of the moths flying into the screen door, attracted by the light. Lorraine cleared the table, and I took Sister Evangeline into her room. "I'm tired," she said.
"It's late."
"That man," she said. "Have you ever seen anyone so sad?"
"No," I said.
She pulled the bobby pins out from the sides of her coife and slipped it off of her head. She scratched her scalp. I saw that the bandage was back on her hand. She'd put it on herself and not done a very good job.
"Is this bothering you again?"
She nodded. "I don't know what it is."
I went into her bathroom and got some Bactine, the box of gauze, scissors and tape. "Let me," I said, and sat down beside her on the bed. I was scared as I took the dressing off, scared that it might be bad. But it wasn't bad. There was just a neat little hole in her hand, like she'd stuck herself with something. "How did you do this?"
"I can't remember," she said. "It just showed up. It only bleeds a little sometimes. I just don't want to get a mess on the sheets."
I squirted it with the Bactine and wrapped it up again. I tried to make it neat, the way my mother had. "That's better," I said.
"It would be nice if he had something," she said.
"Who had something?"
"Thomas," she said.
"Like what?"
"I don't know," she said. "Something of his own. Something to hold on to. Like me and Son have you and you have us. You have to feel for the ones that are alone."
"Maybe we should ask Mr. Clinton to stay," I said, because all of a sudden it made perfect sense to me. He could live in my mother's house and take her place at the dinner table.
"Things don't work that way, pet," she said. I knew that, but it didn't mean I didn't want it.
I helped Sister Evangeline into her nightgown and hung up her dress. "Say your prayers," I said to her when I got to the door. It was a joke. I said it every night.
"Stay a minute," she said.
I came back to her bed and stood next to her. "What is it?" I said.
Sister Evangeline looked out her window and saw the half-moon on the other side of her curtains. I saw it too. "I miss her," she said, her injured hand folding around mine. "I miss her something awful."
Once Sister was asleep, I went back down the hall to the kitchen. "About time," Lorraine said. "Half the dishes are done already."
"Sorry," I said, tying a dishtowel around my waist. I looked out the kitchen window onto the back porch. "What do you think they're talking about?" I said.
"I know what they're not talking about. I can tell you that much."
"I'll kind of miss him," I said. "I don't know why. It sure as hell is awkward. He just seems so lost."
"I know what you mean," Lorraine said, and handed me a plate to dry. "It's like he's familiar or something."
"That's the problem with this place," I said. "Everybody leaves." As soon as it was out of my mouth I realized what a stupid thing it was to say. Lorraine was leaving, too. Not for a while, but she'd go. I never knew how I always managed to forget that about the ones I liked.
"You know what," Lorraine said, resting her soapy hands on the edge of the sink for a minute and staring out the window. "Sometimes I really think I'd just as soon stay."
By the time we'd finished up my father and Thomas Clinton were gone and Lorraine went upstairs to her room with Loelle and I went out into the night alone. I was halfway across the pasture when I stopped and sat down. Then I stretched out in the grass and looked up at the stars. The whole thing seemed a little funny. Funny because it wasn't so bad, when by every right it should have been. It was just a dinner. That was the thing my mother should have seen. How nothing was a big deal, we just ate. Then afterward the two men had drinks
on the porch and we stayed inside, talking and cleaning up. I felt nearly hysterical, because really, it was dull. If anyone had come by they never would have known there was anything unusual about the picture. That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.
My father had left the porch light on, and I turned it off when I came inside. I went upstairs and stood by his bedroom door for a minute. I didn't think he would be asleep already. His back was turned to me and I watched his steady breathing. Maybe he felt better now, knowing that it wasn't just him, knowing that it wasn't anything he had done.
"Dad?"
He rolled over and squinted at me. "You okay?" he said.
"I'm fine," I said. I stayed in the doorway, my hands against the frame. "I just wanted to tell you I was home and say good night."
"Good night, Sissy," he said.
"Dad?"
"What?"
"What were you two talking about out there? I know it's not any of my business, but I was wondering. You were out there a long time."
"Fishing," he said. "We were talking about trout fishing."
"Not Mom?"
"God, no."
"But he's okay, isn't he? He's a nice enough guy."
"Yes," my father said sadly. "He's a good man." Then he sat up on one elbow. "Give your old man a kiss good night."
I walked into the dark room, keeping my hands out in front of me even though I could see pretty well. I sat down on the edge of his bed and my father held me to him. "You're my girl," he said.
"You bet," I said.
I went into my room and saw the light in my mother's house was still on. Thomas Clinton was up, and I thought about calling him or maybe going back over, even though I didn't know what I would say.
When I woke up the next morning, the first thing I thought was, I've missed him. I didn't get a chance to say good-bye. I threw on some clothes and ran over to my mother's house. I was almost at the door before I realized how crazy it all looked. It wasn't even much past dawn. I didn't know why I was up. My sneakers were soaked through from dew and they made a light squishing sound when I walked. I wanted something, an address, a phone number. If we were both keeping an eye out for her, well, then our chances were doubled, weren't they?
Then Thomas Clinton opened the door. Just opened it, like he was expecting me. He was wearing a different suit now, a darker one. He was wearing a blue tie with a red stripe running through it. He said good morning.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't be here so early. I don't even know what time it is. Is it early?"
"Not really," Thomas Clinton said.
"I just woke up and I thought you'd be gone and I wanted to tell you, you know, good-bye and everything."
"I was sitting at the table," he said. "That's why I saw you."
We stood like that for a while. Him inside, me in the wet grass. "Why don't you come in," he said.
"Sure," I said.
He had a little bag, not much bigger than a good-sized briefcase, sitting next to the door. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't be driving cross-country in a suit, but then I guessed it was his business. "I found some coffee," he said. "In the cupboard. Would you like some coffee?"
"Okay," I said. He had been looking for things, too.
"I wanted to tell you again, how much I appreciate everything you've done. You've been very generous, all of you."
"It's not like you were any trouble or anything," I said. "We don't get many visitors in Habit. We're always glad when people come by." I sounded like the board of tourism.
Thomas Clinton set a cup of coffee in front of me on the table and I knew he must have just washed it out after having his coffee because my mother only had one cup. "Would it be all right if I asked you a couple of things?" I said. "Things about my mother?" I looked down into the cup of coffee and caught half of my own reflection there. "She didn't tell me a lot. I mean, you probably figured that out and everything."
"Sure," he said. "Shoot."
"Did my mother have any brothers or sisters?" I said.
"No."
"Any other family?"
"Some cousins, I think. Joe would know. I'll write his address down for you. He'd be glad to hear from you."
"Did she—" I stopped for a minute because I didn't know exactly how to say this. "Did she want to be anything, do anything special?"
He shook his head. "Your mother loved to drive, aside from that, no, I can't remember anything." Thomas Clinton tapped his fingers on the table, thinking for a minute. "I have something you might be interested in," he said. He went over and brought his suitcase to the table, then he opened it up and took out an envelope with pictures in it. "This was our wedding," he said.
There, in case I had doubted it, was proof that my mother had been married before. She looked so beautiful I couldn't take my eyes off of her. She looked happy in a way I had never seen her look, not even once. She was wearing a slim white suit with two big buttons at the collar and a wide-brimmed hat. Her gloved hands held the arm of a man who was clearly the young Thomas Clinton. He looked even happier. It was a picture of two people who had meant to be married forever.
"I have a couple of them," he said. "This is her graduation picture from high school. This is her, in front of the apartment building we lived in when we first got married. That's San Diego. This one, here, that's in Marina del Rey."
There were half a dozen of them. A picture of my mother in front of the Pacific Ocean, waving. Her hair was wet, she must have just been swimming. She was wearing a suit that was covered in flowers. No one was ever so beautiful.
"I like to travel with these," he said. "So I can show them to people. Ask if anyone had seen her." He tapped the one of her standing in front of an apartment building he told me was in San Diego. "That one," he said. "That's my favorite."
There were two pictures of Helen, my mother's mother. In one of them she was young and looked very much like my mother, only a little bit smaller, more delicate somehow. In the other she was older. She was sitting in front of a Christmas tree with a man. His arm was around her waist. "That's Joe," Thomas Clinton said. "Helen's husband."
I wanted to look at the pictures forever. They seemed to make up for everything, secrets and lost time. Here I could hold her in my hand and look and look, like I was drinking her. I could stare at her the way I always wanted to but didn't because she would catch me and put her hands on her hips and say, "What?" like I wanted something. But I didn't want anything. I really wanted only to watch her.
"You can have one," he said. "I'll have copies made for you when I get home, but if you want to have one now, you can."
I couldn't pretend. I couldn't say, oh no, really, that's okay. I wanted one. I wanted the wedding picture, but I thought that would be wrong. I wanted one I could show to my father. "This one," I said, taking her high school picture. It was the best one for me. It was the picture before either husband, when she was just herself.
Thomas Clinton nodded. "That one's nice," he said. He drew the others neatly toward him and put them back in their envelope. "I left my number by the phone," he said. "You'll call me if you hear anything? I won't come back. I don't want you to worry about that. I'd just like to know."
"Sure," I said. "You do the same." I was pretty sure I understood better than he did that she wouldn't be coming back, even if I'd only been without her a week and he'd been without her for years.
I walked him out to the car, the picture of my mother in my shirt pocket. "I should say good-bye to everyone," he said. "It's just so early."
"I'll tell them," I said. I could see that he wanted to get going. He didn't want to face us all together again.
"Well," he said, and held out his hand to me. I shook it. "It was nice to meet you, Cecilia."
"You too," I said.
Thomas Clinton got in his car and drove down the road toward the Green River Parkway. He put his hand
out the open window and waved to me, and for some reason I had such a tightness in my chest when I watched him go. Maybe I was just tired of all the leaving, or maybe it was his sadness I felt as he went back toward California alone. At least it was daylight and he had said good-bye. Then all of a sudden I remembered I didn't know what my mother's maiden name was. All this time I'd thought it was Clinton. The car was already gone. I would have to write to him.
I wanted to sit down in the middle of the road and stay there for the rest of my life. Whenever someone came by and said, Hey, Cecilia, what're you doing there in the road, I'd tell them, missing people was a full-time job, being sorry about what was gone was going to take every waking minute now, so much time and energy that I had no choice but to stay right on that spot until they all decided to come back. I meant it as a joke at first, but then I looked down at the gravel and I really thought about it. I couldn't wait for them. They weren't coming back. I'd been trying all my life to figure out what was going on, with my mother, with all those girls that come and then go away. But now I wanted to forget. Right then I decided, as much as I'd wanted to know before, from here on out I didn't want to know at all.
Over near the shed I could see my father working on his shutters, down on his knees, scraping away. I waved to him but he didn't see me. As I was walking up toward Saint Elizabeth's, I started thinking about Lorraine. Don't ask me why, but I had this sudden picture of Lorraine and her baby staying on and me taking care of them. Lorraine was in the guest room and I was walking through the kitchen of our house, holding the baby on my hip. It all looked so real in my mind, not like it was going to happen, but like it had already happened and I was only remembering it. And I knew then that that was the thing Lorraine had been talking about, her sign from Saint Theresa, the thing that would work itself out if she just had faith. It was me. I was her sign from God.