The Lost Mother Page 20

  “Well, it’s been an adventure then, hasn’t it?” She smiled and returned his hand, placing it in his lap because he had forgotten that it was his, so unaccustomed was he to the touch of another.

  By the time his punishment was over, Margaret was very sick. She had come down with a fever in the middle of the night. She could barely walk, her joints ached so, and there was no food and little liquid her stomach would tolerate. She had been carried next door to the infirmary, a smaller brick building with high-windowed, southerly oriented porches where the young convalescents lay drying out their lungs in the brief afternoon sun. She stayed there for three days. And for three days of recess her brother stood idly in the play yard. More than alone, he felt unconnected. Something might happen at any time. Groomes or any of the older boys might take a dislike to him and beat him, a violent gust of wind might pick him up and carry him even farther away from the few people who knew him. As if to brace himself, he stood with his back hard against the rough brick wall. At meals he ate nothing except for the sweet pastries, the cakes and cookies Sister Mary Christopher had slid into the oven and out, the only kitchen task her poor sight would allow. He longed to be back there. By the time he left she had known everything about him, even about his double-blade, nickel-plated Palomino jackknife and his father’s arrest for trying to get back only what was his. Well, almost everything; he told her about Jesse-boy, but not about the pictures or breaking his nose, or about Mr. Dexter’s joyful yelps and the ruckus in the air, or about tipping the kitten overboard. To its death. Or about his mother leaving because she had hated him, and him, her; then, but not now, even though it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing seemed to.

  A week had passed. No visitors came, but few of the other children had visitors, so it didn’t seem so bad. He saw Sister Mary Christopher and another nun walking through the play yard and was shocked to see her limp. He ran, waving, but by the time he got near she had disappeared inside the building. He felt bad that she had ignored him. He shouldn’t have talked so much. She was probably afraid he’d start up again and she wouldn’t be able to get rid of him.

  “Hey, Talcott! Your sister’s out of the infirmary!” Monty called after him. “I just saw her. She’s back in the main house.”

  He wasn’t supposed to, but he ran inside and up the noisy metal stairs. The door to the girls’ side was locked, as always. He rang the bell, then knocked, rang the bell again, butting his toe against the brass foot plate. Sister Mary Marion finally opened the door, annoyed to find a boy here. She was the girls’ principal. Yes, she said, Margaret had been brought back to her room. She was better, but still weak. Bed rest had been ordered. For at least a week, she told him. He asked if he could see her. Just for a minute. To say hello. No, she said. Margaret had to rest. The next day when he asked to see Margaret again, the same nun told him no again. He came the third day and asked if she was strong enough yet. A tall, imperious woman, Sister Mary Marion stared down at him, her height and piercing stare reminding him of Gladys. He could see his sister in five more days. But not a moment sooner. Did he understand that? Because if he did not, she would have Sister Mary Martin, the boys’ principal, explain it to him. Yes, he did, he said, his voice raised in panic before the moving door could close. Margaret would get better faster if she could see him, he shouted. “She gets scared real easy, but if she—”

  “Thomas!” Sister Mary Marion stepped outside. The heavy oak door closed behind her. “You have an unnatural need of your sister. You must learn to need no one but yourself. Someday soon you and your sister may be even more separated than the way you are here by a wall. Some of our children don’t stay very long. They join other families. And if that happens, you’ll have to get used to being on your own. You may have to let Margaret go, Thomas.” She opened the door and stepped inside. “We all have to do it at some point in our lives.” She said this softly, kindly, with concern in her small, pained smile. “It won’t be so hard. Really.”

  He stood by the door as the girls filed through, their voices filling the play yard. He was looking for the girl with the rosy cheeks. She had been holding the jump rope with Margaret the last time he’d seen his sister. “Hey! Hey, you!” he called, catching up to her. “You know my sister, Margaret? Margaret Talcott.”

  She nodded, but wouldn’t look up.

  “Here. Give her this note.” He held out the paper folded into a small tight square. “Please? It’s from me.”

  “No. We can’t pass notes. We’re not supposed to.”

  “But I’m her brother. She’s sick. It just says hi,” he said, opening the note and holding it out. “See? Here. Read it.”

  “Hey, Tailcutter!” a voice called. It was Groomes. He had begun calling Thomas Tailcutter, which for some reason made everyone laugh. “Who’s this, your little girlfriend?” He came surrounded by four boys, each a head shorter than him. The youngest was Monty. Humiliated, the girl fled. “Let me see!” Groomes snatched the note from him and read it aloud.

  Dear Margaret,

  I hope you are getting better. I tried to see you three times, but the sister said I couldn’t. Please send a note back to me. I am very lonesome. I miss you very much.

  Love,

  Thomas

  The four boys hooted with laughter, none louder than Monty.

  “Give me that!” Thomas danced around Groomes, trying to grab the paper. Groomes held it over his head, now pretending to read more. “You are my dear darling and I want to kiss you and make—”

  With an almost effortless lunge Thomas was on Groomes’s back. Both arms were locked around the thick neck and beefy head. Swearing, Groomes spun around, trying to throw him loose, but Thomas held on until Groomes staggered then tripped. With Thomas still a weight on his back he landed on his hands and knees. From behind, Thomas began to pummel his head. A crowd of boys had gathered. Some, who had been bullied in the past by Groomes, shouted for Thomas to give it to him, to hit him, kill him.

  “I will. I will,” he grunted and punched the side of Groomes’s head so hard pain shot up his arm.

  Someone was pulling Thomas’s arm. “No-good dirty bastard, you no-good dirty bastard,” he was still sobbing as the two nuns yanked him to his feet. Groomes’s eye was bleeding. He crouched with his face at his knees. He was sobbing too.

  “You come with me, young man,” the nun insisted, attempting to drag him from the play yard. He knew he should let her subdue him and go to his punishment, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t walk with her, couldn’t be dragged into that enormous building again, so he pushed free of her. As hard as he could. She was a blur of black as she caught the railing.

  There was talk of sending him to St. Leo’s Home for Troubled Boys. Instead he was given another detention. In addition, he would take every meal at the sisters’ long table and eat in silence. None of the nuns spoke to him. He was passed bread and butter, beets and potatoes, chicken in its perpetually dreary fricassee sauce, all without anyone looking at him. No one would believe that he hadn’t struck the nun, only tried to get free of her. Sister Mary Christopher didn’t believe him either. For two days she hadn’t said a word beyond instructing him in his chores. Today they were alone in the kitchen. She had given him a bowl of butterscotch pudding. It was delicious, he said, scraping his spoon around the rim for the skim of pudding there. Would he like another, she asked, and he ate this one more slowly. She said she’d made the pudding herself. Yesterday, after Sister Mary Frances left the kitchen.

  “So you can see good enough to cook?” He was surprised.

  “I see well enough to do a lot of things.” She stacked another dirty pan on the pile. “But I have to be careful.” She laughed, and he smiled gratefully. “Or else I might burn the place down.”

  “So are you blind?” He turned on the water.

  “Well I can see you.” She stood close, but seemed to be looking at a spot above his head. “I can’t make out the details, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” He began scrubbing a
pan. “Well that’s good,” he said over the running water. “Were you born that way?”

  “Now that’s a personal question, isn’t it?” She sounded surprised. Her hand passed lightly over the drainboard until it found her wide spatula he had washed. She dried it then hung it on the nail next to the oven. He watched her limp around the kitchen, hands grazing every surface, not searching as much as gauging, reaffirming where she stood or what she passed.

  “I didn’t hit that lady, that sister, you know.”

  “You better learn to control your temper.” She brought him another pan to wash.

  As he scrubbed he tried to explain how Groomes had grabbed the letter for his sister and read it out loud to everyone.

  “But it wasn’t Groomes you were really mad at, now was it?” She ran her finger along the bottom of the pan, checking for grease before she dried it.

  “Sure it was him.”

  “No. It was really Sister Mary Marion you were hitting for not letting you see your sister. And that lady on the farm you told me about. And that terrible old man. And your mother, she’s another one you’d like to sock, now wouldn’t you?”

  “No! I’d never do that.”

  “Yes you will.” She wiped her hands, then flipped the towel over her shoulder. “Soon enough. That’s where you’re headed, you know. Probably even hit Margaret one of these days. If she gets you mad enough.” She had been stacking the muffin tins and putting them on the wooden shelves. “If you haven’t already hit her, that is,” she said, turning. Her magnified, half-closed, dull eyes stared past him.

  He scrubbed harder, resentment boiling. She couldn’t even see or walk straight, what did she know about anything?

  “You don’t want to end up in jail like your father, do you?”

  He spun around. “My father didn’t hit anyone! He was just tryna get his things back, that’s all!”

  “And isn’t that what you were trying to do too? Get what was yours back? Your note? Your sister?”

  He wouldn’t answer. He didn’t have to. She wasn’t even supposed to be talking to him.

  “Thomas.” She touched his shoulder, leaving her hand there. “I could see as well as you once. I didn’t even limp. I could run and do everything the other children could. But then one day someone was mad. He wasn’t even mad at me, but at something that had nothing to do with me. And right then I guess I screamed too loud or ran in too suddenly. Anyway I startled him, and he picked me up and threw me down the stairs.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Four.”

  “Who did it?”

  “That doesn’t matter. He did what he did and nothing was ever the same again.”

  “So then when you got older and you … you … well, then you came here and you decided to be a nun.” The question turned so convoluted because he had almost said, when you couldn’t do anything else.

  “They sent me here then. Right after. They were poor. And it was too hard to see me like that. Like this,” she added with a light, little laugh.

  “I’d hate it if I couldn’t see too good! I don’t know what I’d do!” he said angrily. He was beginning to understand how hard a world this was, how cruel people could be, not just old Bibeau, and the Farleys, and T. C. Whitby in Belton, Vermont, but people he hadn’t even met yet.

  15

  Margaret was better. He saw her passing in the corridor or at meals in the far corner of the crowded dining room. She had lost weight. Her dress hung in deep folds over her bony frame. Sometime during her illness her thick hair had been cut into a bob, but badly. It stuck’ out like a fuzzy fur hat around her wan face.

  It had been snowing for three days. Christmas was next week. Every classroom window was decorated with the snowflakes and striped candy canes the children spent the last hour of every school day cutting from paper and coloring. Margaret’s snowflakes might be hanging in his mother’s window. Maybe she’d saved them to hang on the Christmas tree. He was convinced they wouldn’t be here for Christmas. She wouldn’t let that happen. Even if she was still sick, she’d come for them. Or at least visit them. Maybe she hadn’t because she wanted to surprise them on Christmas morning. He didn’t care if there were no presents. Being with her would be the best present of all.

  “Take your seats, children,” Sister Mary Andrew called excitedly with a wave of her hand, passing them along, one after another into the auditorium. “Take your seats. Take your seats. Where you always sit. Come along. Let’s not keep the nice ladies waiting now.”

  Little ones up front. Taller children behind. Boys on the left. Girls on the right. As always. Thomas strained in his seat for a glimpse of Margaret. He could just see the bushy top of her head. On the stage feet moved under the crimson curtain. High heels. Ankles. There were ladies up there. Real ones like his mother. COLLERTON LADIES AID SOCIETY, said the red and gold letters on the sign. The lights dimmed. His heart was racing. They had walked through a snowstorm last year to get to the Bibeaus’ so she could ask Gladys for a ride into town. Aunt Lena was having a party and his father still wasn’t home. His excuse would be that his truck had broken down in the middle of nowhere, but Irene said he had conveniently forgotten. His father hated parties, especially Aunt Lena’s. They were loud, with Uncle Max telling dirty jokes and everyone drinking and smoking, even the ladies. By the time Gladys dropped them off, wet and shivering, the party was well under way.

  “Look everyone! My baby sister’s here! She made it! All the way in from the farm!” Aunt Lena called half drunkenly.

  “I have to get out of there. I have to,” his mother said in a low, strained voice.

  “What, and leave handsome Henry?” Aunt Lena laughed, tripping a little as she tried to take off Margaret’s coat. She hadn’t undone the collar button. “You won’t do that and you know it.”

  The curtain opened. The right side dragged, then stopped. One of the older boys hurried out from the wings and forced it back. Sister Mary Sebastian, the director, introduced the ladies and thanked them for not only entertaining the children every year but for all their hand-knit caps and mittens and scarves that were so greatly needed and deeply appreciated. The ladies in their blue choral robes smiled out at the children they could not see beyond the bright, dusty footlights. A silver-haired lady’s head bobbed as she began to play the piano.

  “Silent night, holy night. All is calm. All is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child,” they sang.

  The children watched, listening intently. Of course his mother wasn’t up there. She would never surprise them like that. She would just simply come. Even if it meant walking through a snowstorm to get to them.

  “Sleep in heavenly pee-eace. Slee-eep in heavenly peace.”

  A great warmth swelled in his heart. He squinted until there were only blue shapes in the blur of lights. The words and the music ached inside of him. Any moment now his chest would burst wide open, with what, he did not know, but it was wonderful, even though it hurt.

  The standoff between Thomas and Groomes had lasted this long because he had ignored the loud, lumbering bully. Groomes still called him Tailcutter, still jostled him in the cafeteria line, spilling his milk, but a new guidepost had taken hold. Thomas was afraid that if he got in another fight his punishment might be not seeing his mother on Christmas Day.

  The color was back in Margaret’s cheeks. She had a lot of friends. Now whenever he saw her she seemed in a hurry to be off. She was either arm in arm with one of the girls vying for her attention or excelling in yet another jump-rope contest, dodge ball, or Red Rover, Red Rover. Resenting her happiness, he watched her across the play yard. Nothing here was fun for him. It hadn’t taken her long to forget about him and all they’d been through. Her turn came for High Water, Low Water. So far no one had jumped as high as Margaret. The girls holding the rope lifted it higher. Starting even farther back, Margaret ran and then right at the last minute sprang easily over the rope. Now it was lifted chest high. Some of the girls on the side covered
their mouths. She walked back, then stood a moment, fists clenched, staring fiercely at the rope. In a movement so imperceptible he was sure no one else saw it, her head and upper torso rocked, readying herself. She burst forward. Certain she would fall this time, he squinted as the brown blur cleared the rope, then fell. The girls screamed and converged on her.

  “Margaret Talcott! What on earth are you trying to prove?” a nun said, helping her up. Blood ran down her legs from her scraped knees. She was crying. He ran to help, but two girls were already on either side of her. He stood in their way. “I’ll bring her.”

  “Back with the boys now,” the nun said, waving him off.

  “My friends’ll bring me,” Margaret said in a small, choked voice.

  A chill passed through him. Never had she sounded so much like their mother.

  “Move!” the girls said, then helped Margaret limp past him.

  “Hey, look,” Groomes called pointing as he sulked back. “Even the girls don’t wanna play with Tailcutter. That’s how queer he is.” With Groomes following, baiting him all the way, Thomas walked the length of the play yard. When he came to the building he climbed to the top step then sat down, arms folded on his knees. “Whatcha crying for, Tailcutter? Girls hurt your feelings, you skinny crybaby,” Groomes taunted from below. “C’mon down, crybaby. C’mon, I’ll play with you.”

  Through his tears everything was distorted. Even Groomes wasn’t Groomes anymore, but a ridiculous voice. And just as he had known Margaret would fall, he could feel his mother’s longing. Right now, at this very moment she was thinking of him the way he was thinking of her. He knew she was because he could feel her ache inside. For a moment it was like being together.

  “Please sit down, Thomas.” Sister Mary Sebastian closed the door and folded the sides of her heavy skirt onto her lap so she could fit into her chair. She was a large woman with a long face, a pitted nose, and thick black eyebrows. Thomas couldn’t help staring at the hairs on her chin. She leafed through the papers on her desk until she found one she wanted. As she read it his mind raced. This was either going to be very good or very bad. A visit to the director’s office was serious business. He was either going home or being sent to St. Leo’s Home for Troubled Boys. But he’d been on his very best behavior. Even this morning when he got out of bed and slipped his feet into shoes filled with ice cold water he had only dumped them out and ignored the snickering. Groomes’s torments had accelerated. Yesterday an ice ball had hit Thomas between the shoulders, knocking the breath out of him for a few seconds. Groomes smirked as he packed another one between big striped Ladies Aid mittens.