Things Remembered (12 page)

“Fair enough. At least I know where I stand. But if it's not too much to ask, would you mind telling me what it is about me that you don't like?”

“I wouldn't know where to begin.”

“Anywhere you'd like.” Calm again, Anna brought the bowl of pulp to her side of the table and began extracting seeds as if only mildly interested in what Karla might say.

Karla started to leave and then changed her mind. She was through running from Anna. She sat down at the table again, plunged her hand into the bowl with the pulp and began extracting seeds also, as if it were some kind of contest between them. “Did you know Mom liked to read? She always had a stack of books by her nightstand and at least one in her purse.”

“What has that got to do with why you don't like me?”

“Nothing. I don't want you to be able to say I didn't keep my end of our bargain.”

“Marie learned to read when she was three years old,” Anna said. “By the time she was seven, she'd read every children's book in the Rocklin library and we were making weekly trips up to Auburn so she could check books out there. But I didn't know she kept it up when she got married. I guess I thought she'd be too busy being a wife and mother.”

“And she liked to sew.” Karla looked at the orange goo on her hands, grabbed the towel and wiped them off, and went back to digging out the inside of the pumpkin. “She made a lot of our clothes—hers, too. One Easter she made all of us matching dresses. They were yellow and blue and pink with a white belt.”

“She made me a pillow,” Anna said. “I think it must have been out of the same material as your dresses.” She'd put the ornately constructed pillow with its basket-weave pattern and pink welting on the end of the sofa where no one ever sat, and then, when Marie died, in a plastic bag in the closet away from light or heat or bodies that might cause it damage. She was saving it; she didn't know why or for whom, only that she couldn't bear to have it anywhere else or to see it damaged in any way. “Wait a minute, I'll show you.”

Anna didn't have to search her closet; she knew right where to look. Lovingly, knowing she was touching cloth her daughter had touched, looking at stitches her daughter had sewn, holding a gift Marie had made especially for her—the last one she had ever made—Anna took the pillow from its bag and went back to the kitchen.

“Is this it?” she asked.

Karla looked up from the pumpkin. “Oh, my God,” she said in a choked whisper. “I'd forgotten all about your pillow. I remember Mom making it. . . . She worked so hard to get all the pieces to fit. . . . She was so proud of the way it turned out.”

“Would you like to have it?” Karla would never know how precious the offering or how hard it would be for Anna to let go of this gift from her daughter.

“Yes,” Karla said, moisture shimmering in her eyes. She looked from the pillow to Anna. “I'm sorry I told you about the baby. I'll call Heather tonight and tell her what I've done.”

“No—don't. I'll act surprised when she tells me and she never needs to know.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor, but instead I ruined it for you both.”

“No you didn't. You wanted to give me more time to enjoy knowing there would be another Anna in this world. How could I be mad at you for that?”

“Are you sure about the pillow?”

“There isn't anyone else who would understand. You and I are the only ones left who remember the dresses or Marie. We're the ones with the memories, the only ones who really know what a special woman she was. When I die, you'll be alone in this, Karla. Please, don't let us waste this precious time we've been given. You have to think of the things you might someday want to know about your mother and ask me now.”

“She left this terrible hole in my heart when she died.” A lone tear rolled down Karla's cheek. “I keep thinking it will close one day, but it never has. I used to be so angry with her for dying, for leaving me alone, for not even saying good-bye, that I would go off by myself and scream as loud as I could that I didn't love her anymore.”

“Did it help?”

“Nothing ever helped.” She took a tissue from the box on the refrigerator and wiped her eyes. “Did you know I went to Tennessee to see her and Dad's graves when I graduated from college? It was my graduation gift to myself. I was hoping it would make me feel closer to her, but all it did was make me angry all over again that Grandma and Grandpa Becker threw such a fit about not letting Daddy be buried in California.” Again, she wiped her eyes, as if stopping the tears before they fell denied she was crying.

“How do you remember that?”

“I don't know. Some things are just there.”

“It was so hard for me to leave her in Tennessee,” Anna said. “I wanted her to be with Frank, but couldn't bear to think of her separated from your father. Did you ever go again?”

Karla shook her head. “Once was enough. I learned that who she was and what she gave me isn't buried in some cemetery. My mother is as much a part of me as my arm or leg, and she always will be. I accept that now.”

“You have your anger,” Anna said with sorrow. “I have my regret.”

Chapter

9

S
usan stopped by on her way home from work later that night, Cindy Taylor in tow. “We had some extra decorations left over that we were going to put up for you,” she said to Anna. “But I see someone beat me to it. The porch looks great. And I love the ghosts in the trees.”

“We brung some cookies, too,” Cindy said.

“Brought,” Susan automatically corrected.

“
Brought
,” Cindy dutifully mimicked.

“Come in,” Anna said, holding the door. “I'll trade you pumpkin seeds for the cookies. Fresh-roasted this afternoon.”

Susan put her hand on Cindy's shoulder and guided her inside. “Should you be eating all that salt?”

“We made some without.” She'd learned to deal passively with all the well-meaning but irritating questions that came with having people know her condition. She looked at Cindy and smiled. “I haven't seen you since summer. How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“And your father?”

“He's working.” She followed them into the kitchen. “Somebody's dog got bit by something and he had to operate on it.” She perched on the nearest chair. “Mrs. Stephens is going to take me home with her so I can play with Bobby until my daddy can come and get me.”

“The woman who usually picks up Cindy is on vacation so I told Mark that she could come home with me.” Susan reached into the bag she'd brought and took out a plate of sugar cookies shaped like ghosts and witches and decorated with frosting and sprinkles.

“I fell off the swing today,” Cindy announced.

Anna gave what she hoped was a properly concerned look as she offered Cindy the bowl of pumpkin seeds. “Did you get hurt?”

“Just my knee.” She lifted her knee up for Anna to see. “But it's better now.”

“Where's Karla?” Susan asked.

“At the bank arranging to have my safe-deposit box drilled open.”

Susan laughed. “Wait until I tell Allen. He's convinced I'm the only one who ever lost a safe-deposit key. I told him it happens all the time.”

“Is he home today?” She and Allen had worked out an arrangement where he took care of the things around the house that Anna couldn't do for herself and she put whatever she thought was fair payment into a college account for Bobby. “I wanted to talk to him about pruning the pyracantha when he has the time.”

“He's just starting his four-day-off cycle now. I'll have him call you. Can you believe it, he's finally going to be home to take Bobby trick-or-treating. I think he's more excited about it than Bobby is.”

Allen was a firefighter with the Sacramento Fire Department and had a work schedule that confounded Anna. To her it seemed he was either always working or always home. “Did you make Allen a costume?”

“He made his own—Dracula. Pretty original, huh?” Susan looked up at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. “Oh, good, Karla's back. I wanted to ask the two of you to dinner this Saturday. Allen's father called last night from his fishing trip and said he was bringing back the mother of all salmon and that we were to have the coals fired up and waiting.”

“I can't answer for Karla, but I'd love to come.”

Seconds later Karla came in, spotting Cindy before Susan. Her frustration and anger over banking bureaucracy faded at the smile that lit the little girl's face. “We meet again,” she said.

“I'm going to Mrs. Stephen's house. Wanna come? We're going to eat salmon.”

“Wrong day, Cindy,” Susan said. “We want Karla to come on Saturday.”

Karla looked to Anna. “We've been invited to a barbecue at the Stephenses's,” Anna said.

Karla was rarely spontaneous with invitations or replies, but obviously Susan was expecting an answer right away. “I don't know. . . . Anna, what do you think?”

“I already said I was going.”

“Then I'd love to come, too. Thank you for including me.”

“How does between five and five-thirty sound?”

“Great. What can I bring?”

Susan thought a minute. “I hate making desserts. Would you mind?”

“Cake would be good,” Cindy chimed in. “With chocolate frosting.”

Cindy was a new experience for Karla—nothing like Jamie and Jason, who were shy around strangers and difficult to get to know. “Then cake it is,” Karla told her.

“Allen will be pleased.” Susan grabbed her purse. “Gotta run. I still have to stop by the store to pick up dinner.”

Cindy climbed down from the chair and joined Susan. “Thank you for the seeds,” she said to Anna. “They were really good.”

“I'm glad you liked them.”

“Wait a minute.” Karla took a sandwich bag out of the drawer. “You can take some with you.”

Cindy hesitated. She moved close enough to Karla to whisper, “I didn't really like them very much.”

Karla put the bag back in the drawer. “Me either,” she said softly.

Anna stood on the porch next to Karla and waved as Susan drove away. “Shame on you for lying to that child.”

“I didn't lie to—”

“How could you tell her you don't like my pumpkin seeds when I could see for myself how much you enjoyed them?”

Karla laughed out loud. “I'm sorry, Anna, but if it was pumpkin seeds or starvation, I'm afraid I'd have to give it serious consideration.”

Susan and Allen lived in Stanford Ranch in a house rescued from the normal postage-stamp-sized backyard by being located on a cul-de-sac. Allen had turned the pie-shaped quarter acre into a showplace of planters, walkways, and grass. The trees by the barbecue sported lights shaped like leaves, and the wooden deck held an assortment of chairs and three tables laden with food.

Susan greeted them, added the cake Karla had baked from a mix that afternoon to one of the tables, found a chair for Anna, and then took Karla on the rounds to meet everyone.

“The guy rolling around the grass with the kids is Mark Taylor.” Susan had saved him for last.

“Cindy's father,” Karla supplied. “Did I meet his wife? I'm usually good with names, but I'm having trouble remembering everyone tonight.”

“Mark isn't married—at least not anymore. He and Linda divorced about three years ago. She was a singer in a rock band when they met and thought she was ready to give it up for hearth and home but then discovered she didn't just like being on the road, it was the way she defined herself. She was lost staying home and making everyone around her miserable.”

“Too bad she didn't figure out how she felt before Cindy was born.”

“Don't tell Mark that. He thinks Cindy was the best thing to come out of their marriage. Actually, he and Linda are still good friends. Sometimes when she comes to see Cindy and can only be in town for a couple of days she even stays with them.”

Karla dismissed the man wrestling with three energy-filled preschoolers as someone trying to hang on to a woman long gone. She recognized the symptoms; she'd had the disease.

Allen came up to them balancing three glasses of white wine, the stems tucked between the fingers of one hand. “Chardonnay of slightly questionable vintage for the ladies,” he announced. “Take a taste and if you think we should save it for salad dressing, I'll pour another round.”

Karla took a tentative sip and was surprised at the quality. “It's wonderful,” she announced.

Susan agreed. “Where did you get it?”

“Mark. It's part of the case the guy sent him for saving his dog.”

Karla tried it again. “He must have been very, very grateful. This stuff wasn't cheap.”

“You might tell Mark. The only way he can tell cheap from expensive is if you leave the price on the bottle.”