My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) (21 page)

What about our mama’s family? Why did she stop singing, if she loved it so much, when she met Daddy? And how did she meet Daddy? I was trying to figure out where to start, what to ask first, when Trusty limped into the parlor.

“Wow!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Whatever you did sure worked. Trusty is walking already!”

But MayJune and I shared a quick, knowing glance—Trusty was not miraculously well. He’d forced himself to limp in here, his jaw stretching in a soundless howl, to get us.

I shouted my brother’s name, shoved the album at Jimmy, and jolted up from the couch, and I rushed to find Will.

F
our days later Dr. Marshall said, “Acute lymphoblastic leukemia.”

At the new wing of Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton he’d ordered a test of Will’s white blood cell count. He’d assessed Will’s symptoms. And his diagnosis was that Will had too many white blood cells. The most common kind of childhood cancer. The kind that was survivable for five years, at most.

I looked at Daddy and said, “But what about that clinic that Mama went to, in Florida?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw confusion snap Dr. Marshall’s face out of tightness back into sloppy folds, and a little voice in my head said,
Dr. Marshall doesn’t know what clinic you’re talking about.

I pulled my hand back from Daddy’s, stared at him, saw in his face the truth I should have known all along—
there was no clinic in Florida.

After I put Will to bed the night we returned from the hospital, I went into the kitchen and lined up his medicines. There seemed pitifully few for such a dire diagnosis. I put
them in front of that broken-down toaster: the bottle of methotrexate tablets. Antacid for nausea. Aspirin for achy joints.

Will was to start with a week’s dose of pills: three on Monday, then one for each of the next six days. The pills, Dr. Marshall told me, were to block the body’s stimulation of folic acid, believed to promote the growth of leukemia cells, and might worsen Will’s nausea and appetite. I picked up the bottle of methotrexate again, rubbing my thumb over the label, reading and rereading “Lederle Laboratories Division, American Cyanamid Company, Pearl River, N.Y.,” telling myself that the name sounded important and serious, a place that could surely make pills that would help Will, that would buy him time during the clinical trials for new medicines that Dr. Marshall had described near the end of our meeting, after the awkward silence when I brought up Mama.

I heard a knock at our door. On our front porch, shivering even though she wore a thick, oversized sweater, stood Miss Bettina. Of course she’d come; I should have known she would. My heart jumped to my throat, but I pushed it down, down back under the ice floe that seemed to fill my chest since hearing Will’s diagnosis. Still, the cold October air made me gasp a little for breath.

That was enough for Miss Bettina. She pushed herself through the door, pulling me to her in a hug.

“Oh, Donna, I just want to talk to you, to explain. Porter told me you know that Rita—your mama—didn’t go to a clinic.” She guided me into the living room.

I sat in the chair across from the couch and folded my arms.

Miss Bettina sighed. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

Even with all that was happening with Will, I wanted to hear about Mama. The truth.

“Rita loved to sing. She always loved singing…. When we were little girls, growing up in Tangy Town, she’d sing while she was hopscotching. Sing while she was jump-roping. Sing in church. It’s the only thing that made her happy. You remember her singing—I know you do.”

She cleared her throat a few times. “Well, you remember her singing sad songs. But I remember when she sang happy songs, too. Songs that made people forget their own sadness. She sang at church. And then she started singing at the Pinewood Club. After a while, I made her outfits for her performances.”

All those fancy dresses in the basement…

“One night two men came in: Porter Lane and Roger Wilkins. We learned later that Porter was twelve years older than we were, that he’d returned to Groverton to work as an executive at the paper mill after college, and moved back in with his mother after her father died. Roger was closer to your mom’s and my age, and your dad had just hired him as an accountant. But all we knew that night was that they were handsome and interested in us. Your daddy, like every man in the place, was enchanted by her beauty and her singing. She laughed off those men—except Porter. They started dating, and so did Roger and I. We had a lot of good times….”

I pressed my eyes shut, trying to imagine a younger version of her, of my parents, of this Roger that I’d never heard of until now, trying to think of them laughing and talking…but
I realized that I was just pulling scenes from movies and books. Stock photos. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t imagine them in this happy past Miss Bettina described.

“Then Harold Litchfield showed up.” Miss Bettina’s voice steeled. I opened my eyes and looked at her. “He was a producer, he said, from Chicago. Wanted to take your mama with him, make a record with her. And so, Rita had a choice—go with Harold, make that record, see what might become of her life if she focused on singing. Or marry your dad.”

“He’d already proposed? Or did he ask her after this Harold showed up?”

I’d meant to stay quiet while Miss Bettina talked, but I had to know.

“He proposed after Harold showed up, told her she had to make a choice, that if she left and came back, it would be no good between them.” Miss Bettina shook her head.

Another question popped out: “Why couldn’t he just go with her?”

Miss Bettina gave me a long look, and we both knew the answer: Grandma.

“He should have,” Miss Bettina said quietly. “But Rita didn’t hesitate a minute. She chose your father; they married. And Roger and I married. Eventually, we moved into these houses, two happy couples.” She paused, then chuckled. “Your grandma sure didn’t like her son moving out with his new bride. But your mom was so happy then. Your father gave her everything she’d dreamed of, talked about as a little girl. The best furniture. The best clothes.”

Now the furniture seemed faded and worn, out of fashion.
And the clothes, well, of course I’d remade those clothes, along with Miss Bettina’s costumes.

Miss Bettina’s tone became somber again. “Rita had you, and I—well. Roger died in France in the war. He left me well-set, and I stayed put and opened my dress shop. For a long time, I think your daddy felt guilty that because of his age he was enrolled for military service but never called up.

“Your mom was kind to me, a good friend. I had trouble with drinking, and she stood by me. She was the only one who did, really. And she encouraged me to get help with a new group she’d read about—your mother was always reading the local newspaper, and papers from other cities, at the library. Alcoholics Anonymous was new here, and I was the only woman who went, so that got some tongues going, I can tell you, but it saved my life. I have your mother to thank for that.”

Tears pricked my eyes and my nose filled, but I refused to sniffle. I blinked back those tears as fast as I could, determined not to cry. Or to care. This was just information. Filling in the blanks. Blanks that Daddy, or Miss Bettina, or someone should have filled in long ago.

“And she helped me even though she really struggled after having Will. She had some difficulty after having you but snapped out of it quickly. With Will it was different.”

“What do you mean—she struggled?”

“Sometimes, honey, women get, well, blue after they have a baby. That’s how your mama was. She always did chafe a bit, after settling down. Truth be told, looking back, I don’t think she really had settling down bones in her. She thought she wanted this perfect life she’d imagined—house,
husband, children—but she always seemed…restless. It just got worse after Will. Porter thought it would make her feel better to get out, to go back to the old club, to dress up, hear the music, even to sing again on Friday nights. I watched you and Will those nights.”

“You mean Grandma didn’t want to babysit so Mama could sing in a Tangy Town bar?”

I’d meant the words to sting, but to my surprise, Miss Bettina chuckled. “No, your grandma didn’t like that one bit.”

Daddy could stand up to Grandma for Mama
. But after she was gone, he couldn’t stand up for us….

And then it struck me. Yes, he had. By not letting her move in and take over, or moving us in with her. He’d let me be a mom to Will, let us stay here, next to Miss Bettina, because he’d seen that was the best thing for us. In his own way, Daddy had done the best he could by us.

Tears stung my eyes again. I dashed the back of my hand to my eyes, wanting to smack away the wetness.

“And then,” Miss Bettina was saying, “Harold returned and your mama left with him. Your daddy always believed that she would come back, and it seemed easier to tell you kids that she was sick. He thought that when she came to her senses, he could tell you that she was better.”

“But he told us she died!” My voice was shaking.

“I know, honey. Not too long after she left, he got a letter from Rita, postmarked from Shelby, Montana, Harold’s hometown. They’d gone there until Harold could get some money together to go back to Chicago to produce records. And Rita wanted a divorce. Your daddy went to see her. You and Will stayed with me.”

I remembered staying with Miss Bettina off and on, when Mama had sick spells, and while Daddy was supposedly visiting her in the Florida clinic.

“When he came back, Porter told me it was over. The paperwork was filed. Their divorce would soon be final. He said she didn’t want anything from him, but he kept sending her some money for a few years until she called him and told him to please stop…that she really didn’t want to hear from him, from anyone in Groverton.”

“Not even from Will. Or me.” My voice was taut, cold. I felt numb all over.

“Oh, honey, your dad feared you’d feel that way, that you’d think you’d done something wrong. But it was just…who your mama was. She was never going to be happy settled down. And I don’t think she was particularly happy running off. Even if the singing had worked out, I don’t think she’d be happy.”

I thought of the photo of Mama from MayJune’s album, how her eyes seemed haunted and dreamy and distant, all at once. I knew Miss Bettina was right.

“And I guess to Porter, she really did die, in a way.”

“Abandoned us, you mean.”

Miss Bettina gasped.

“No! Let’s just say the flat-out truth. Mama didn’t die of cancer. She never had cancer. She wasn’t physically sick. She was just sick of her life, of us—me and Will and Daddy. And never once in the past seven years did you think it might be a good idea to tell me?”

“Oh, Donna,” she said, crying softly. “But in a way, she
was
ill.”

I wanted to lash out. So I said, “I found suitcases of Mama’s clothes. Dresses. Suits. I’ve been ripping apart those clothes. Ripping them apart and making new clothes—”

“Donna,” Miss Bettina was saying softly, “I’ve admired what you’ve done with the materials. Making something new out of those old clothes—honey, that’s a good thing. You’ve got a real talent.”

Great, wrenching sobs shook me then, and in the next instant, Miss Bettina was kneeling beside me, holding me, pulling me to her. I didn’t resist this time. I leaned forward on the edge of my chair, and then fell to my knees and melted into her embrace, letting her take and absorb all the pain that rattled through me.

We didn’t hear Daddy come into the room.

But when we finally pulled apart, wiping our eyes and noses, there he stood in the entry to the living room, staring at us. Well, there he
weaved
, barely upright on his feet. Even in the dim living room light, we could tell that his eyes were glazed.

“Donna,” he said, “you look like your mother, an angel—”

“Porter, shut up and go to bed,” Miss Bettina snapped.

Daddy looked at Miss Bettina pleadingly. “I can’t do this. I can’t watch Will suffer….”

I stood, walked over to my father, and stared up at him. There was nothing in his face of the man I’d been proud of only days before, the man who’d rallied enough to speak up for the union’s campaign for safety. I felt pity—the one emotion I hated to see people feel for me. I smelled the alcohol and cigarette smoke rolling off his breath, off his skin and clothes.

“Daddy, you look at me. This is Donna. Donna! Do you understand?”

He nodded slowly.

“What is going to happen is this: You will get Mama’s old car fixed. You will sign whatever paperwork it takes for me to get a license. I will drive Will to Miami Valley, and you will let the high school know that I will need time away for this. You will tell Grandma that I’m no longer working for her because Will needs me around. I’ve been taking care of Will since he was four. I will take care of him…” I paused, and finally my voice did falter, cracking, as I made myself finish, “for as long as it takes.”

O
n the Friday of the homecoming football game, October 16, I was at home after school, pulling chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. Will and Tony were tossing a football to one another in the backyard. Will had invited Tony to spend the night. And I was planning a night in, too. I told myself I didn’t care that I was missing the game, or the dance.

I put the chocolate chip cookies on a plate. I was getting better at baking—this time, they were only a little burned on the edges. Then I poured two glasses of milk and called Will and Tony.

The boys rushed in, Tony devouring several cookies and gulping his milk, Will going a little slower, but still, eating. He looked at me, gave me a mouth-f-of-cookies grin. I groaned, rolled my eyes, which made him laugh. I noticed the tiredness around his eyes, tried not to let my concern show. I said, “It’s getting chilly out. I think you boys need to play quietly, maybe up in Will’s room, until dinner.”

“Aw, come on, Donna, we’re fine—” Will started, but then we heard the bang of the mailbox lid from the front porch. The boys jumped up from the kitchen table and ran to the front door.