Chap. 3: Disappointments (Marianne)

Ryan Blodgett called me at 10:30 the next morning. I had just dropped my car with Cory, my high school friend, for a quick service before the trip. He has a shop down the corner from our old place and Ma says that we should try to help him out as much as we can. Cory still can’t read more than a sentence or two at a time.

“Education never stuck on him,” Ma said.

Of course Ryan would call at 10:30 the morning before I left town to look for my dead father. That’s my luck.

“You can’t possibly be grading all weekend,” he said.

That was a stupid thing to say. Of course I could. We’ve all done it. I would be grading for 48 hours – minus a couple to watch old movies -- if I wasn’t taking this trip.

“You should come out with me,” he said. “We could go outside. You know, for a walk. Remind ourselves what sunlight is.”

The offer was insensitive, but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know that I’d taken emergency leave from the school, that I had to drive in a cramped car with three siblings to a place I’d never been and would probably despise. That currently, my sense of reality was sliding off the edge of the earth.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do anything with you this weekend.”

My annoyance had crept up from my stomach and worked its way into my tongue. I’d been devouring him with my eyes for a year -- and this was the moment he chose. Ryan’s unexpected offer fed my anger at the universe. It was so inopportune, so unfortunate. It strengthened my belief that good things didn’t happen on my side of the street. But my words sounded worse than I’d meant them to.

“Wow. Ok,” Ryan said. “I’ll just stay in my cave with my papers.”

I tried to recover. This was Ryan, after all. Ryan. Blond and green-eyed, tall and so slender that most of my family would tease him about his girlish figure. His eyebrows were dark and perfect.

“Maybe some other time?” I asked. “Maybe next weekend?”

I hated myself for promising something I couldn’t make good on. Would I be home next Saturday? I didn’t know how deep this rabbit hole would be.

The line was quiet for a few breathless seconds. I could sense his confusion. Maybe it was mine.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course that would be fine.” His voice had become gentle. Had he sensed something in my voice?

My frustration hit a new high. In a flash, I could see a different kind of weekend, spent with him. He would take me for a picnic (outside), to the botanical garden, maybe even to the Cloisters, where he would translate all the Latin inscriptions on the gilded banners at the sculpted feet of martyrs and virgins. I would pretend I couldn’t read them for myself. He would talk about art and music and things that were happening in the world. We would talk about teaching: our beautiful students, and the evil ones.

A weekend with Ryan would have nothing to do with corner grocery stores or family dinners crouched around chrome-edged tables in stuffy kitchens. No silent sisters or grieving mothers to balance before they tipped too far over the edge. Ryan seemed to operate outside of family bonds and neighborhood entanglements. And here I was, like a moth to flame. It also made me insanely jealous.

Ryan promised me we’d have fun next weekend, not to worry.

I hung up the phone and thumped my forehead against the kitchen wall. The potentially blissful weekend with a green-eyed man vanished as I watched the phone cord swinging against the wall. Before me was the certainty that I’d have to lie to my mother and NoNo, that I’d be sitting in a car with Joe and his nervous legs for 24 hours, that we’d have to scour South Florida for someone who couldn’t be there. That I’d lost a hoped-for chance to be with a person who was so far beyond the ridiculousness of this story. At that moment, I really couldn’t stand it.

And then the phone rang. It was Cory, telling me that I needed at least two new tires to make the trip.

* * * * * * * * * *

Matty met me on the sidewalk outside Ma’s house. I was hoping for divine inspiration as I walked up the stairs to the front door.

We really hadn’t thought the whole thing through.

“So what’s the story?” Matty asked. For once, I’d like Matty to make up the story. But he never could tell a convincing lie, even when we were kids. He’d much rather avoid being asked anything directly, which resulted in his being elusive, a bit sneaky.

“I was thinking we could say that Kiki wants to go down there to see the beach. We could say that she’d been reading about it and you know how she gets. Once she has an idea.”

There were several ways this plan could backfire. First of all, Chiara did not care about the beach. She was better than Matty at making up a story, but she wasn’t convincing. She would surely confirm any story I made up, but she knew she couldn’t make other people believe it. Especially NoNo.

Also, NoNo never believed anything we told her, even if it was true. When I told her I’d taken a job at Briarly, she wanted to know why I didn’t take a job at the public school down the street. She was sure it was because I didn’t want to keep living at home with them. She wouldn’t accept that I wanted to work with children who were not typical. And let’s be honest: I did want to live on my own.

That was the problem with NoNo. Even if you had a really good excuse or reason for something, she was great at rooting out something deep and dark. It might not have influenced a decision or course of action, but it might have been there, lurking behind everything. And she was always sure of the worst when it came to people, including family. Maybe especially family.

“We have to go in at some point,” Matty said.

He was right, but irritating.

“We’re going with the beach story, then,” I said. “That will be fine. NoNo won’t buy it, but what story would she believe?”

Matty nodded once and headed up the steps. I admired his stoic approach to NoNo and Ma. He always knew it would be difficult, but he never turned away. I couldn’t tell if he was brave or fatalistic.

Ma already had her apron on and the house smelled of sauce simmering on the stove. That was normally a Sunday smell, but Ma had started leaving the house on Sundays more and more, bringing communion to elderly parishioners and staying with them to chat and help them clean up their places a little. She didn’t have all day for cooking anymore.

“Marianne, Matty” she said, taking our hands. She looked surprised, even though we always visited her on the weekends.

“I’m just cooking. NoNo is at the shops.”

I didn’t look at Matty, but I could feel that he was relieved.

“Are you hungry?” she said.

Matty was always hungry, and Ma loved it.

“I’m good,” I said.

We walked through to the kitchen and I poked my head around the corner to wave at Aunt Beatrice. She squinted up at me, like she was looking through a thick mist to see my face. As soon as she recognized me, she brightened up and waved.

“So,” Ma said, “What’s doing?”

Matty shoved a cookie into his mouth and concentrated on chewing. So helpful.

“Well, we actually have something on this week,” I said.

Ma continued to poke at the sauce with a wooden spoon, not looking at us.

“I thought I’d take the kids with me to Florida this week, seeing as they’re training up a new teacher at the school and they want to give her time alone with the students.”

It came pouring out of me just a little too quickly. The stirring continued. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Beatrice had suddenly become interested in the conversation. I could feel her staring at my profile, squinting as if she could see the words tumbling from my mouth. My temperature felt like it dropped a couple of degrees since I’d sat down.

“Oh?” said Ma. That was all.

“Yes. And Chiara has this thing about beaches all of a sudden. She was listening to some friends talking about it, about some vacation they’d had down there, and how the beach was so great, so now she’s been bugging us all to go.”

I crumbled a cookie onto the vinyl tablecloth.

“And you know how it is when Kiki is onto something.”

I glared at Matty, who was sitting with his back to Beatrice. That was a mistake. Of course she would know what we were up to—at least, we’d always assumed that she had some way of reading our minds—but it made me uncomfortable to give any outward signs of lying.

“Yeah,” Ma said, still preoccupied with the stove. “She does obsess about things.”

She banged the spoon on the edge of the pot and then turned to us, spoon raised in her hand. Ma looked like an icon of St. Rita, patroness of housewives. She was only missing the headscarf—something she hadn’t worn since the late sixties.

She smiled a little and continued. “Well, that will be nice. How long will you be down there?”

It was too easy.

I looked quickly at Beatrice, who had turned her head away to stare out the back window. She’d already lost interest, like she knew what would happen next. Of course she did.

“I hadn’t really thought it through,” I said, finally telling the truth. “But I have to be back to work next Monday, so…”

“Did you call Triple A?” she said. “They can make a trip tic for you and that will make it so much nicer.”

Matty finally joined in, wading into safe waters.

“Yeah, Kiki called them. She loves the whole map thing,” he said. “Also, she’s got an atlas that she marked up already.”

Ma put down the spoon, wiped her hands, and moved to ruffle Matty’s hair. He would never be too old for this, apparently. I felt uncomfortable about the ease of this conversation.

“Ma,” I said, “Are you really ok with us going, just like that?”

Matty looked at me like I’d suddenly gone insane. I was poking a hornet’s nest and we’d almost reached safety.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t like the idea of you going on a wild goose chase, but I’m happy that you’re trying to help.”

Matty looked at her as if he’d been transfixed. She knew.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Had Joe somehow given her the letter without telling us?

Ma sat down in the chair opposite me and wiped her hands on her apron.

“Beatrice and me were talking the other day,” she said.

I looked over at Aunt Beatrice, who sat, nearly transparent, in her silk chair by the window. She refused to look my way.

“I see,” I said.

My mind was racing. I didn’t know if we should talk openly about the letter, or if now was the time to ask Ma the million questions I’d had about the day that Pop left the house. I didn’t know if she wanted me to tell the truth, or if she preferred the way we were going about things when we walked through the front door.

“Good,” she said. “I just want you to be careful. It’s a long ride. Do you have enough money for gas and tolls?”

This was my answer.

We would proceed as planned, no revelations necessary.

We had hit a kind of tipping point, a place where an important choice might have been made.

For the second time that day, an alternate scene played out in my head. One where we talked about all that had happened and made a clear plan together. We might have broken through to normality in one conversation. I felt our lives skittering down one path, while the other went off into a brighter distance without us.