Suburban Renewal Page 4

  “We’re still using the ones we got for wedding presents,” I said. “And if I bought more, I’d have to figure out where to store them.”

  Sam and Lauren and I were living in a garage apartment that was barely five hundred square feet.

  Mom shook her head in disgust.

  “Your husband makes you live in some rat hole and you act like a church mouse about it,” she said. “It’s time for you to demand your own house. If not for yourself, then for Lauren. A child needs a yard to run and play in.”

  “Mother, she can’t even walk yet,” I pointed out. “I don’t think getting her a backyard is a high priority at this point.”

  “She’ll be walking any day,” Mom said. “She might have started already but realized there wasn’t anywhere to go.”

  I rolled my eyes but spoke with deliberate reasonability.

  “The apartment is a really good deal for us,” I explained.

  Mom sniffed with disapproval. She’d lost interest in the sheets, barely glanced at the towels and had moved on to the china and glassware section. A complete set of fake Christmas Spode was set on a table for ten percent off. Mom was giving it close inspection.

  “I never liked that Mrs. Neider,” she said, casually. “Her husband made his money in nightclubs and she didn’t play bridge.”

  I wasn’t sure which flaw my mother thought was the worst.

  Mrs. Neider was pretty well off but, at ninety, she needed a lot of help. She allowed us to live in the apartment above her garage for only the cost of the utilities. We paid the rent by helping her out. I did her housework, laundry and cooking. Sam took care of the yard work and odd jobs. She could be cranky and crabby, but more often she was easygoing and kind. She loved Lauren and the two kept each other company while I cooked and cleaned.

  “If you’re thinking that women is going to die and leave you something, you know you’re wrong,” Mom stated emphatically. “She’s got five children and a dozen grandkids. Once what she’s got is divided among them, there won’t be a pittance for any outsider, no matter how hard you’ve worked for her.”

  “We’re not hoping to be left anything, Mom,” I told her. “We’ve got a good deal now. With Sam just getting his business started, we need to keep our family expenses at a minimum.”

  Mom was dismissive. “I don’t think you can call a truck and a couple of ne’er-do-well employees a business,” she said. “He’s a shade-tree mechanic without even a shade tree.”

  “It’s an oil-well service company, Mom. There is no reason to have a big office somewhere if all their work is done out in the field.”

  “He doesn’t have an office. He doesn’t seem to even have a paycheck. What kind of work is this, anyway?”

  “Mom, it takes time to get a new business off the ground,” I tried to tell her. “Things are actually going great. He’s building a reputation. He’s got new customers every day.”

  “But he’s not making any money.”

  “He has a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of debt tied up in equipment and he’s got a weekly payroll he has to meet. Starting a business is always a struggle. That’s why everybody doesn’t do it.”

  “Yes,” she said disdainfully. “I suppose most men’s first concern is providing for their wife and child.”

  She was deliberately being disagreeable. Mom could always be this way, and when she was in the mood there was really no arguing with her. But I tried, anyway.

  “Think about when Daddy started in business,” I said. “Those first few years couldn’t have been easy.”

  Mom turned to look at me. We were exactly the same height, so she raised her chin, making it possible to look down her nose at me.

  “Your father waited until he could afford to support a wife before we married,” she said. “He’d finished his degree, had his license and money in the bank before we even thought of starting a family.”

  We were back to that. Somehow we always got back to that. My mother’s disappointment in my “lapse in judgment” never waned. It was as if every day that passed increased her regret of my failure to finish college. There was nothing I could do about that. No further apology that I could make. I hadn’t lived up to her expectations then and I continued to be unable to do so.

  Lauren began to get fussy and I suggested that we interrupt shopping for a little lunch. I wrestled the baby back into her snowsuit and we walked down the block and across the street to Cathy’s Corner Café. The place was cute and girly but the food they served had to satisfy the appetites of working men, as well. The special of the day was obviously chili. As soon as I stepped inside the smell of it hit me like a brick wall. The sweat popped up on the back of my neck and my legs felt as if they were made of jelly.

  “Get Lauren out of her snowsuit, I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I told Mom.

  I hurried toward the door marked Ladies at the back of the building. I barely got the door locked behind me before I was throwing up in the toilet. I felt better immediately, but that didn’t stop the tears from running down my cheeks. I leaned against the cold white bathroom tile and just allowed myself the luxury of a good cry. It didn’t last long, but it did feel good.

  I washed up at the sink and then dug into my purse/diaper bag for enough makeup to repair the worst of the damage. I studied myself in the mirror. I looked tired. I looked old. I looked pudgy. I looked pale.

  I rinsed out my mouth and brushed on more blush. It was the only help I could offer myself. I was twenty years old. I should be at college in the middle of my sophomore year. Instead, I was stuck in Lumkee living in a tiny garage apartment and working as a maid.

  Mom wasn’t the only one who was a little disappointed with my choices.

  I gathered up my things and headed out into the café.

  Mom and Lauren had a table in the corner. Lauren was strapped into a high chair and eating crackers. Mom was conversing with the waitress on the obvious beauty and brilliance of her granddaughter. I had to give Mom credit for that. She may have been upset about my pregnancy, but she adored the baby.

  “Hi, Cindy, how you doing?” I asked, politely.

  Cindy and I were in the same class in high school. But we’d never socialized. I was brainy, involved in everything and relatively popular. She was a lackluster student with no extracurricular activities who’d gotten pregnant in her junior year.

  It was amazing how the distance between our lives had narrowed.

  “Your little girl is a real cutey,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m hoping my next is a girl,” she told me, patting her belly. “Boys are absolutely the worst and there are no cute clothes for them or nothing.”

  I smiled.

  “When are you due?”

  “August,” she replied. “Wouldn’t you know it? I’m going to be big as a house through the hottest part of the summer.”

  “I’m sure it will be worth it,” I told her.

  Mom ordered the chili special. I chose a very bland grilled cheese sandwich.

  “Can you believe that Cindy?” Mom asked when the waitress left. “Bringing another child into the world when she can’t support the one she’s got now. They say her husband went off on pipeline just to get away from her.”

  “That’s what they say about every wife whose husband goes on pipeline,” I pointed out. “Pipeline is a good living. Guys go on it to make money and their wives miss them when they’re gone.”

  Mom’s expression was skeptical, but she let the subject drop.

  I got Lauren’s juice out of the diaper bag and poured it into a sippy cup.

  “She’s drinking apple juice?” Mom asked.

  “Yes, I’m trying to wean her,” I admitted.

  “Really?” Mom was genuinely surprised. “Well, that is good news. The way you bought into all that La Leche nonsense, I was worried that the child would be carrying your breast in her lunchbox at school.”

  “It’s not nonsense, Mother,” I argued. “B
reast milk is best.”

  “So says the most saggy-titted women in the world,” she replied. “I raised both my children on formula and they’ve certainly turned out fine. And I did it without any damage to my figure.”

  I didn’t even want to go into that. I changed the subject.

  “What’s going on with Mike?” I asked.

  Mention of my brother, my all-so-perfect brother, was always guaranteed to distract my mother.

  “Michael is doing wonderfully, of course,” she related. “That big city must be a very exciting place for a good-looking single man. I just hope he’s ready to settle down to small-town life when the time comes.”

  Mike was attending pharmacy school at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. My father’s alma mater. He was making top grades and when he graduated next year he was coming back to Lumkee to become a partner in the business with Dad. That would free up Dad for travel. Mom went on lots of trips with widowed friends and tour groups. Dad always felt as if he had to stay home to take care of the drugstore.

  “I’m sure Mike will settle right back into Lumkee,” I assured her. “Mike always does the right thing.”

  “Yes, he does,” she agreed. “He’s smart, ambitious, hardworking, considerate and kind.”

  I couldn’t argue that. The truth was, I would have loved to resent my brother or be jealous of him. But he was exactly as Mom described. And as a brother, he was unbeatable. He was three years older than me and could easily have made the life of a little sister miserable. But he was always caring and we were close. I could count on him for good advice or a sympathetic ear. I cried like a baby when he left for college.

  “Mike’s a great guy,” I admitted.

  “He is,” Mom said. “And that’s why all of this is so difficult to understand.”

  “What?”

  “I raised the two of you in the same house with the same rules and the same expectations. And Mike has always done so well. While you seem so content to settle for such an ordinary, mediocre life.”

  “Mom!”

  “You’re so smart, so attractive, you have so much potential, yet you settle right into working-class motherhood like one of these no-neck sows with an IQ of ninety.”

  We’d been over this ground so many times, it was like a routine. I knew my lines perfectly. I would respond with assurance that a university degree could still be had after age twenty-five. That as soon as Lauren was safely in preschool and Sam was making a little money, I’d be starting back to college. My dreams and ambitions had not been given up, they were only temporarily dormant. They were altered, but they had not been destroyed.

  I’d grown up thinking I would be a journalist. Like a young, intrepid heroine in one of those well-worn YA books in the public library, I’d be Corrie Maynard, Girl Reporter. That had seemed exciting and full of adventure. I would travel to distant places, meet unusual people. I would drink coffee in Paris cafés with artists and communists. Interview chieftains in the thin air of the high Andes. Report my observations of life on a junk in the Yangtze River.

  With Sam and Lauren at my side, that life no longer held its appeal. I was not a girl anymore. I was a woman. As a woman, I had other interests. I’d learned so much from motherhood. My daughter was absolutely fascinating, much more so, I was certain, than any foreign potentate. Now I wanted to study Early Childhood Education.

  But it seemed that I would not do that, either.

  “Mom, I’m pregnant again,” I said calmly.

  It is hard to make my mother speechless, but that did it. Her jaw dropped open in shock and she just looked at me incredulously. After a moment, her expression of utter disbelief gave way to defeat. She sat back in her chair, a sigh of exhaustion escaping her.

  “Oh, honey, that’s impossible,” she said.

  “It certainly is possible,” I assured her. “People get pregnant every day.”

  “I asked your father if you had a prescription for birth control,” she said. “He assured me that you were up-to-date.”

  “Mom, I think it’s illegal to spy into my pharmacy records.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, waving my words away. “So call a policeman. How did this happen?”

  “In the usual way, Mom,” I told her. “I don’t think we need to alert the Vatican.”

  “But the pill…”

  “I quit taking the pill,” I admitted. “My girlfriends at La Leche explained that all those hormones were getting into Lauren’s milk. That’s not good. And breast-feeding is a natural contraceptive.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

  Mom’s response was disdainful and dismissive.

  “Anyway, it’s happened and I’m happy about it,” I lied. “I want you to be happy about it, too.”

  I glanced over at Lauren, who had finished smashing her crackers into crumbs and was now joyously sweeping them off the table in wide, enthusiastic strokes.

  “How can I be happy when you’re losing your life?” Mom asked.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. “The doctor didn’t indicate that there was any danger associated with this pregnancy,” I assured her. “I didn’t have any problems when I had Lauren.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Mom told me. “It’s not about dying, it’s about not living. A woman with one child, that’s a burden. A woman with two children…” She shook her head sadly. “That’s the end of it. Any life that was your own is over.”

  On some level, I agreed with her. But I railed against it.

  “Mom, that’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’ll still have my own life.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said. “You’ll be too busy. From here on out for the next twenty years you are somebody’s mother and nothing more.”

  “That was your generation, Mom,” I told her. “Women today, we can have it all. Husband, children, career and social life. We’re not limited by yesterday’s gender roles.”

  She was shaking her head. “Two children under age five is as limited as it gets in this world and that’s the truth,” she insisted. “I blame Sam Braydon for it. You’re smart and pretty and you could have had a great life full of opportunity and possibility. He’s stolen all that from you. He’s low class, with a bad background. Good Lord, his own father is a murderer. He’ll never make anything of his life and now he’s dragging you down to his level.”

  I bristled immediately. “He’s my husband, Mother,” I told her sternly. “And the father of my children. If you are going to talk about him with disrespect, my daughter and I will leave.”

  It was no empty threat. Mom knew better than to bad-mouth Sam to me, though I was certain her bridge club was well versed in his shortcomings.

  She didn’t apologize, but she did acknowledge my words with a nod and a moment of silence. If we were to keep a relationship, she knew she had to keep her opinion to herself.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked me finally.

  “What am I going to do?” I repeated her question, puzzled. “Mom, I’m going to have a baby.”

  Sam

  1980

  It’s interesting that with all the up and downs, changes good and bad in the decade of the eighties, what stands out most for me are the two important men who walked into my life. Well, I suppose I couldn’t say that Nate Braydon walked into my life. He sort of slithered in covered with blood and yuck.

  “It’s a boy!” Dr. Kotsopoulos announced.

  “It’s a boy,” Corrie repeated with an exhausted sigh.

  She had wanted a boy.

  “One of each,” she’d said. And, “Every man wants a son.”

  Every man but me.

  All the people that I cared about in the world, all the people that I’d loved and who had loved me…all of them had been women. I liked women. I understood women. Lauren’s birth had been one of the sweetest moments of my life. And she continued to make even my worst day seem more bearable. With her little baby smile and the way she said, “Daddy,” she made
me feel as if I were some uniquely special being, a father. I couldn’t have loved her more.

  But a son. How did a man love a son? What was that all about?

  “It’s a boy!”

  The doctor laid the little slimy guy on Corrie’s tummy. I kissed her on the temple, careful not to block her view.

  “He’s perfect,” I assured her.

  “Perfect,” she agreed.

  I didn’t share any of my worry, my concern, with Corrie. And I completely hid my anxiety from her parents out in the waiting room. But when I called Gram, it just came out.

  “I don’t know anything about raising a boy,” I told her. “I don’t remember anything about my own dad. I always considered that a blessing. But how will I raise a son? I don’t have any idea.”

  Gram giggled, as if I’d said something funny. “You’ll do fine,” she assured me. “Just follow the example of your Heavenly Father, that’s much better than anything you could have learned from Floyd Braydon.”

  It occurred to me to point out that my Heavenly Father had allowed his son to be crucified for the wrongs of other people. Of course I didn’t. I would never have the faith that Gram had, the certainty of her convictions, but I couldn’t help but respect her beliefs.

  “God will guide you,” she said. “Trust in him, do what you know is right. Things will always work out exactly as they are supposed to.”

  I tried to take comfort in Gram’s confidence.

  Two days later, we brought Nate home to our little garage apartment behind Mrs. Neider’s house. Corrie’s parents were waiting in the driveway. They snapped photos of us driving up, getting out, climbing the stairs. It was like having our own personal paparazzi.

  By the time we got into the apartment I was wishing they were gone.

  “I’m so sorry that Michael isn’t here to see him come home,” Corrie’s mother said.

  “He came to see us in the hospital,” Corrie told her. “Babies aren’t really on the top of the interest list for good-looking bachelors.”

  “Somebody’s got to run the store, Edna,” Corrie’s dad pointed out.

  “Here, have a seat, Doc,” I said, offering him my worn easy chair with the hand towels pinned atop the threadbare arms.