The Lost Mother Page 5

  Old Bibeau had fallen into silence. Gladys and Margaret were clearing the table. Henry told his son to help, but Gladys wouldn’t hear of the guest of honor doing a bit of work. When she picked up her father’s plate, he growled at her to get her hands off; couldn’t she see he wasn’t done? But everyone else was, and she wanted to bring out the birthday cake, she said. They’ll just have to wait, the old man said. All he had left were a few carrots, which he didn’t even touch. Or want, Thomas thought bitterly. The old man had to be in charge at all times.

  Thomas always knew when his father was getting mad. He’d lick his lips a lot and take long deep breaths the way he was now. Old Bibeau seemed happier now that he had Henry Talcott to himself. He was telling him how someone from the bank had come out last week to see if he needed any kind of a loan. As if he was some kind of fool. As if he didn’t know what the thieves were up to.

  His father only nodded. “Crazy times,” he murmured when the old man paused for comment. Even Thomas knew how foolish old Bibeau sounded. It was his constant obsession, that his land, his rock-heaved, spent pastures were coveted by everyone. It was all the old man had left, this falling-down house, twenty-three acres, and a thirty-five-year-old daughter no one wanted either.

  “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!” Gladys and Margaret sang in surprisingly sweet harmony, carrying through the doorway a chocolate cake blazing with candles. “Happy birthday, dear Thomas. Happy—”

  “I’m not done yet!” the old man growled and hit the table with his fist.

  “… birthday to you!” Gladys set the cake in front of Thomas. He closed his eyes and wished his mother would never leave again. Then, he blew out every candle.

  “I know what you wished for.” Margaret looked around, eyes glowing.

  It was suddenly very still. Outside, the rain had stopped.

  “I said I wasn’t done, didn’t I!” The old man shoved his plate away.

  “Oh, Dad, please. It’s his birthday,” Gladys said quietly.

  The old man was boiling with bitterness. He had lost Henry’s respectful attention, and all his daughter worried about were these two brats, whose own mother didn’t care about them. He watched sourly as Gladys gave Thomas her gift, wrapped in white butcher paper on which she had drawn brown-eyed daisies. It was a blue and white striped shirt. Thank you, he said, holding the huge shirt to his chin. It was a little big; to last the year, she explained. More like ten years, he thought, wanting her to sit down so he could see the door when it opened. The next gift was from Margaret. Wrapped in a scrap of cloth, it was a smooth, thick birch stick. He thanked her happily even though she had just grabbed it on the way in to have something to give. And here it was, Gladys announced, his very special twelfth birthday surprise. Something he really, really wanted. She handed the small package also wrapped in butcher paper to his father to give to him.

  “Here, Thomas. This is for you.”

  Already disappointed, he was still opening it. No matter what was inside it was not what he wanted.

  “A two-blade, nickel-plated Palomino jackknife!” Gladys grinned.

  “Brand-new,” his father said, the grave nod alerting him that the crime had not been forgotten and the lesson was far from over.

  “You can use it on the stick I gave you.” Margaret’s jaw trembled.

  There would be no more surprises. Gladys was cutting the cake. Thomas got the first and biggest piece. She told him that this was father’s favorite cake too, chocolate with chocolate frosting. Once, she was telling both children now, on her tenth birthday instead of the white cake Gladys liked best, her mother forgot and made chocolate. “I burst into tears, so then next time when it was your father’s birthday, he had his mother make a white cake with chocolate frosting.’

  “I did?” Henry Talcott seemed surprised and embarrassed.

  “Yes, you most certainly did.” Gladys grinned.

  “Where’s my piece?” old Bibeau finally asked. He’d been simmering. Gladys said she’d been waiting for him to tell her when he was ready.

  Whatever he muttered was lost in the sudden volley of thunder. Margaret stared at the door. “I think someone’s out there.”

  Just more rain, her father said as she went to the door and looked out. She turned back slowly.

  “That reminds me,” Gladys said placing a big slice of cake in front of her father. “What was Farley doing here this afternoon? I saw his truck. He was leaving when I came up the road.”

  Old Bibeau cut a chunk of cake with his fork and put it into his mouth.

  “What did he want?” she asked, beginning to eat herself.

  “None of your goddamn business!” old Bibeau snapped with a hateful stare.

  “No, but I …” she stammered, turning from the children. Her face was red. “I just thought maybe he wanted to ask about the—”

  “Shut up!” old Bibeau spat, pointing with his fork. “Just shut the hell up.”

  Her eyes closed for a moment and she seemed to sag over the table. She was ashamed. She rose quickly and went into the kitchen. With that, Henry put his napkin on the table and stood up. He told his children they’d better be going now.

  “Oh, come on!” old Bibeau bellowed. He waved both arms. “Stay! You stay. She’s always doing that, and she knows damn well it’s none of her business.” He looked toward the kitchen. “But the problem is she’s got no business of her own!” he shouted.

  Thomas’s father licked his lips. He took a deep purposeful breath as he stood over the old man. He leaned so close, his voice so low and hard, Thomas thought sure his father would hit him. “You shouldn’t be treating her like that. Especially in front of people. It hurts her pride.” He spoke quietly so she wouldn’t hear.

  “Her pride?” Red-nosed, the old man exploded. “If she had any pride she’d be married instead of turning into a.… a dried-up old stick nobody wants.” He seized Thomas’s whittling stick from the table. “And that includes me!” he shouted, flinging it at the kitchen door.

  Her letter arrived days later. His father tore open the envelope and began to read. “August twenty-one,” he sighed, then shook his head as if in disbelief. “She wrote this on your birthday.”

  “She did? What’d she say?” Thomas couldn’t stop grinning.

  His father took a deep breath. “Let’s see … she says, ‘I am thinking of you today. Twelve years old. Imagine that! My little boy is growing up so fast.’” There was silence as he read the rest to himself. The children stood in front of him, neither one moving. Henry hunched on the edge of the cot, the letter close to his face. He must be reading it again, Thomas thought. It was short, just one page. Seeing the loops of his mother’s delicate handwriting raised an ache in the boy’s heart. Her fingers had touched that paper. His father folded the letter.

  “Read the whole thing!” Margaret cried. “Please, Daddy!” She tugged at his sleeve.

  “I did.”

  “No, you didn’t. You only read about Tom. What about my part? What’d Mommy write for me?”

  Thomas watched his father’s chin sag as if he’d just had the wind knocked out of him. His father looked away, down at the floor. Even as he spoke, Thomas knew it was a lie. All of it. Probably even the “thinking about you” part.

  “She said she misses you very much and that she wants you to be a good girl,” he was telling her.

  Thomas sat on his cot, studying his father’s struggle, alert to every pause, every clearing of his throat. He was amazed his father could lie so easily.

  “A very good girl. She wants you to be sure and help Tom and me.”

  “Help you do what?” she asked and Thomas bristled watching her, Margaret the receiver of all helping, giver of none.

  “Help us … help us …” He looked down, stricken by her expectant gaze, by her trust.

  “When’s she coming home?” Thomas asked with a coldness born of his sudden conviction that things had changed forever. Until now his brain had been like a clock,
referencing each disappointment, fear, or deprivation as just another tick, moving him a second, minute, hour, day closer to the comfort of his mother’s arms.

  The next day his father didn’t go out looking for slaughtering jobs. He spent most of the morning working on the truck. Thomas sat on the front fender whittling a short knobby stick, not watching so much as biding his time.

  “This here’s the camshaft,” his father murmured, reaching into his back pocket for a smaller wrench. “Gotta get some of this here gunk off.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Pay attention now, Tom. You gotta know how to do things. You can’t be expecting others to do for you. You gotta be self-sufficient …”

  Thomas had stopped listening. He was remembering how his mother used to busy herself scrubbing woodwork or shaking out throw rugs when his father got in one of these moods. Anything to be out of his way. He was just too hard on her, Aunt Lena would say. He should have married Gladys Bibeau if all he wanted was a farmhand. His sharp temper had driven her away. Thomas was sure of it. Having been the object of much of his father’s displeasure these last few months made him forget the long stretches of his mother’s silences in which she barely spoke, even to her children. Dr. Creel said Jamie’s death had done her in. But Thomas remembered Aunt Lena saying it was Jamie’s birth that made her feel horribly trapped. She said his dying only confirmed it for her. On days like this Thomas yearned for those few months they’d lived in town, where they’d moved after Jamie died and they’d lost the house. He could overlook the tension at home because when they would go out shopping or just walking, his mother was a different woman. Animated and cheerful with everyone along the way. That she could be two such different women was a mystery. But then he would be too caught up in her happiness to puzzle over it for long. Everywhere they went people loved his mother. He loved his mother. Until that day she just up and left.

  Last night in the dark, he had watched his father take the letter from his pocket and slip it into his tobacco pouch. He had been counting on reading it as soon as his father left for work this morning, but then the truck kept stalling when he tried to start it. Thomas jumped off the fender. He said he was going to see what Margaret was doing. His father said she was cutting pictures out of the ladies’ magazine Gladys had given her the other night. Thomas said he’d just take a look anyway, see if she wanted a drink or anything. There were still some of those apples left, his father reminded him. They’re sour, Thomas said, and his father’s head drew back from under the hood.

  “I paid good money for those apples,” he said, scowling in the hot sun.

  “I just said they were sour. I didn’t say I wasn’t going to eat one!” he called back.

  His father hadn’t paid a penny for the apples, but had traded work for them. That’s how they got most of their food, from the different farms he butchered for.

  “Don’t you be talking to me like that!” his father barked, pointing the wrench and squinting with one eye as he came toward him. Grease smudged his cheek. “You be grateful for every thing you’ve got even if it’s a no-good, sour apple, you hear me? You hear what I’m saying?” His fingers clenched Thomas’s upper arm, squeezing into the bone.

  “Yessir.”

  His father glared down at him. “And don’t be writing your mother any more letters.”

  Thomas stared back. That was wrong. Nobody could tell him such a thing, not even his own father.

  “What’d I just say? Don’t just stand there looking at me, say it!” His father squeezed harder, pulling Thomas until his cheek pressed against his father’s sweaty chest. “Say it!”

  “Why? Why can’t I write to her?”

  “Because!” his father snarled, holding him so close Thomas could smell the rage seething in his unwashed sweat. “Because I said so.” His father’s rank heart beat against his ear. He didn’t dare pull away. The seizure had become an embrace, more desperate in its grief now than the anger.

  Nothing made sense. And for the rest of that day and most of the next, his father stayed nearby. Thomas had no opportunity to look for his mother’s letter. It was late afternoon when the sputtering truck finally drove off. His father was afraid he needed a new battery. He had just remembered Mrs. Cobb, the old woman in Pawlet whose husband had fallen through the ice and drowned last winter. If his truck was still around she might be willing to trade some of its parts to have her hog butchered. Or for whatever else needed doing on her farm.

  “How far’s Pawlet?” Margaret asked their father.

  “Sixteen miles.”

  “But that’s far. What if the truck breaks down. How’ll you get back?”

  Don’t worry, he told her. He’d be fine as long as he kept the motor running. And if he did get held up, her big brother knew what to do. There were still some eggs and pole beans left. And salt pork, he called down from the truck, to give them a good flavor. “And get more wood. We’re running low,” he hollered in a squeal of shifting gears.

  He and Margaret headed toward the tent, dragging along, both thinking the same thing. The truck sounded real bad. His father never left for work so late in the day as this, Margaret said grumpily. He has to. Times are bad, Thomas said, searching for the tobacco pouch. It was exactly where his father had hung it the day before, on a nail behind the wooden crate they stored the canned goods in. Margaret asked if they could go out in the boat. Maybe in a while, he said, slipping the letter out. He told her he’d be right back. He had to go to the bathroom. It was the only place he could get away from her. Her kitten trailing behind, she followed him to the lean-to. When was a while, she called in at the blanket. When he was done, he called back, struggling to see the handwriting through the deep shade. If he stepped outside or even lifted the blanket she’d know what he was reading.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said with a giggle. “So you must be sitting down then, huh?”

  “The sooner you leave, the sooner I’ll be done!” he yelled, sounding again like his father. He peered from the side of the blanket and saw her move off only a few feet. “Go wait in the boat,” he shouted. And if she didn’t there wouldn’t be any boat ride. Margaret ran down to the pond and he stepped outside.

  August 21

  Dear Henry,

  How dare you use the children in your twisted efforts to make me come back to you. If it is pity or guilt you hoped to instill in me by having Thomas write, please know that you have failed miserably. I am, of course, concerned for the children’s welfare, but I am absolutely unable to have them here on my paltry earnings. And you know this! This room is small even for me, and my landlady would throw me out into the street if I were to bring children here. I tried and failed at being a good wife. I can do no more and you know this. Please inform the children of our unfortunate situation. If you do it in a reasonable and kind way, then they can accept the truth. I long ago accepted your disregard of my feelings, Henry, but a letter like Thomas’s makes me see just how cruel you really are. I have tried to be completely honest. And now you must do the same.

  Sincerely,

  Irene

  Please tell the children that I am thinking of them.

  So now he knew. It was all a lie. She wasn’t coming back and she didn’t want them there either. She wasn’t working hard to save enough for them all to be together again. This was it, that tent, that trampled grass leading down to the muddy pond edge, he kept thinking as he rowed out to the middle of the still, dark water. The silvery sky was a hot mist of light trying to burst through a bubble. It was an ache, and it hurt so much he couldn’t even look at Margaret for fear he would cry. She just kept talking, chattering on about nothing all the while their life was ending. He longed to reach over and pinch her until she cried. He resented her happy ignorance. She should also be hurting in the knowledge that only bleakness lay ahead: a life of tents and bucking, smoking trucks; instead of their mother’s kiss goodnight their father’s blunt orders to wash out their underpants, to throw more lime into the latrine, to eat s
our apples and shut up about it. Instead now, she called for him to look, giggling with delight to see her kitten so perfectly poised on the stern. He seized the oars and began to row again. Hard, fast as he could, poling the oar blade deep into the dark water to change course.

  “Thomas! Thomas! Stop!” she screamed with the sharp turn. She leaned out as far as she could, straining to reach into the water. He kept rowing. She scrambled toward him over the seat. He had to go back. The kitty had fallen over the side. “Please, Thomas! Quick before he drowns!”

  How frightened she was. Horrified. Devastated that something she loved and needed so much was gone. “Please, Tommy!” she bawled with snot bubbling from her nose, her eyes swelling red. “Please get kitty before he drowns.”

  Of course he would. Would dive into the dead emptiness, deep down where an entire wagon and team of horses had vanished into bottomless muck.

  “Back there!” she sobbed as his head burst through the surface. The boat was already drifting. He swam, thrashing in the direction she pointed to. But there was nothing there. No kitten. He swam back and, holding on to the side, told her to look under the seat. Behind the tackle box. Maybe it was hiding. But no, she had seen him fall in. She had seen him bobbing in the water. “He was trying to keep his head up!” she wailed.

  “Cats can swim, can’t they? Can’t they?” he screamed back, for of course he had thought they could, had assumed it would just paddle behind them. Give her a little scare. Teach her a lesson. But what? That the cruelest people were the ones she loved and trusted most. Please don’t cry, he begged, but he was crying too.

  The letter in his pocket was wet, the smeared ink running into the creases when he opened it. Later, when it was dry, he folded it and slid it back into the tobacco pouch on the nail behind the box of cans.

  His father came home as the night sky lowered. The old woman had given him the truck battery, but not for the expected exchange. She had sold her pig just last week, but her well had gone dry. She needed a new one dug and couldn’t afford to pay anyone. The battery was his, if he would dig the new well. By his estimation the job would take three straight days of digging. Four at most. His father said he was sorry about the kitten’s drowning. He held Margaret on his lap for a long time and told her he was glad nothing had happened to her because he loved her so much. She told him how brave Thomas had been jumping in to save it. His father looked over and didn’t say anything.