Freddie had said I had to come, and I was flattered.
It was a Saturday late in fall. Sunshine. Trees bare. Smell of burning leaves. Geese overhead flying south, honking like only geese can honk. One of those last days before snow. The chickens were cackling away in the yard, taking advantage of the weather while they could. Jack the cat, spread out like a safari rug, was sunning on the porch. Daisy, just beyond the raspberry bushes, was probably dropping some more of those pies that Freddie, calling them golden, added to the compost piles.
Speaking of Freddie, he’d been busy all morning. Still was, but now dressed for company in brown plaid shirt and charcoal pants that, though not color coordinated, looked good on his broad-shouldered slender frame. He was in the kitchen, doing what, I don’t know. Everything had been ready for at least an hour. And it wasn’t as though he were serving a sit-down lunch. He planned to have coffee and dessert in the living room. The newly beefed up living room. He’d added a recliner that now sat, shiny and fake-leathery, across the room from the old couch and easy chair. And there was a new coffee table as well. Actually, not really new. He’d found it at a yard sale off Highway 12.
“This place is packed,” he’d said once everything was where he wanted it. And he was right. It was so full up that the television blocked the door to the front porch and had to be pushed out of the way when not in use. The question was: why was he fussing so when he didn’t even want to meet this Regina Waterston? All I could think was that he wanted her to know that he’d been doing just fine without her.
“If her flight got in, as you said, at around eleven, she should be here any time now,” I called to him from the screen door, where I was watching for her car.
Dishtowel in hand, he came in from the kitchen and began explaining that she wouldn’t be here till one at the earliest, being that she had to pick up a rental car.
As it turned out, a moment later a grey sedan slowly drove up, lingered at the end of Freddie’s drive, then crawled on up the hill past Robinson’s, where it turned around, heading back. By the time its tires were crackling on the gravel Freddie’d spread in the drive just the day before, Freddie was twisting the dishtowel and rocking on his heels. I, too, was feeling a little excited. In fact, if spines actually tingled, that’s what mine was doing. And kept doing even as the drama took its sweet time unfolding.
First, the car door. Slow to open. Then the visitor. Slow to emerge. It seemed she was having some trouble connecting with her purse. Problem apparently resolved, she finally tottered out, only to struggle with the car door, which didn’t catch the first time she tried to slam it, swinging back and nearly knocking her over. A second try, a little unsteady but with follow-through that did the job, left her teetering. It didn’t take much to see that something wasn’t right.
“Alcohol?” I whispered to Freddie.
“Sure looks like it,” he said, crossing his arms and sighing while pangs of guilt pricked my earlier pride about helping to unite a son and mother, the mother now turning into a dud.
Well, there was nothing to do at this point. Except say a silent thank you that Freddie didn’t take after her as far as drinking.
He apparently didn’t take after her in another way as well. That is to say, despite improvement on that score, he’d never be a fashion plate, whereas this woman bumbling around by her car was a classy dresser. Aware of how she looked too, fussing with her hat and straightening and brushing off her suit. A really nice suit: short jacket, gold buttons, patch pockets. Probably Chanel. And the hat was a pill box like Jackie Kennedy wore everywhere. Even her haircut was stylish. A chic bob like you’d see in magazines. And topping off the whole enchilada, a flashy gold choker and matching earrings. This was fashion.
But with some drawbacks. One being what looked to be one of those bellies you’d expect on someone with a drinking problem. The other — nothing to do with the belly, but all the same distracting — her ankles and feet were more like blimps than limbs.
By the time she got to the screen door I could tell that Freddie was in no shape to do the honors, so I took charge, pulling the door open and telling her to come in. I felt like offering a hand as she shuffled over the threshold but held back. It just seemed too buddy-buddy, and with someone I wasn’t sure I even wanted to touch.
Inside, I introduced myself as Freddie’s friend and shook a hand that felt like rubber. “And this—” I could almost hear the trumpet fanfare as I said it. “—is Freddie.” I had to assume she knew who he was. I couldn’t call him her son.
“Oh my,” she said, lifting her arms ever so slightly, as though with minor prodding she’d have wrapped him in a solid embrace. A muscle in her cheek briefly tightened. “And may I shake yours?” she added in little more than a whisper. He obliged. An attempt at a smile.
“We’ve been excited about this,” I told her, even though my pleasure was now tinged with doubt. “When Freddie said you’d called, I thought I’d keel over. I mean . . . it’s like a . . . what can I say?” And then, reluctant meeter-greeter that I was, I did my best — all the while sniffing for booze — asking about the flight, traffic on Highway 12, if she’d had trouble finding the house, and ending with, “May I take your purse?”
“If it’s alright with you—” She was a little breathless. “—I’ll just set it on the coffee table.
I guess I looked surprised. I mean, a visitor wanting to keep a purse close by told me she lacked trust. But when she explained that there was something in the purse she didn’t want to forget, something she wanted to pass on to Freddie, I felt better. And even better when Freddie finally pointed to the recliner and told her to “please sit down.” Up till then I’d worried he’d never loosen up, leaving this stranger and me in a never-ending exchange of small talk.
Her move to the recliner was painful to watch: stiff gait on stovepipe legs and then a sort of slide into the chair before straining to set her purse on the coffee table and take off her hat.
After that came more of the dreaded small talk. Despite a little breathlessness on her part, I couldn’t detect any anxiety over sitting across from two staring strangers, nor any slurring of words due to overindulgence. And though when I first saw her getting out of her car I’d seen little resemblance between her and her son, now, close up, I saw that the nose was identical. Straight and sharp. And she had that same hairline — a good one with no gaps — and the same nearly black hair that I’d once thought hinted at Indian blood. The eyes, though, were nothing like the gorgeous ones I think I’d loved since that first day. Yet . . . if her lids weren’t so puffy . . .
I suddenly realized I’d been gawking and was about to go on with the idle chatter when Freddie, in a voice I hadn’t heard since the Academy Awards night we met — a shade high and a bit trembly — came out of his shell. “I’ve made coffee, and I thought we could have strawberry sundaes,” he said. “We grow fresh strawberries, you know.”
Grow fresh strawberries? As opposed to what? Stale ones? It struck me that my normally calm friend was more ill at ease than I’d even suspected. Well, all that really mattered was that he was trying, even though his effort fell a little flat. The woman who’d brought him into the world, who he was doing his best to at least make comfortable, if not love, opted for coffee only, and half a cup at that. She was on a special diet, she said. Limited liquids. Ice cream, even strawberries would be overreach.
“I admire your discipline,” I told her. To which she replied, “Thank you, but I have no alternative. I have to follow the rules or suffer the consequences. And even if I follow the rules I suffer. Look at these hands.”
They were so swollen it struck me that a pin would pop them.
“That’s why I’ve got to make this a one-day trip. I can barely manage two days without dialysis. Kidney problems, you know.”
Hearing that, I thought I saw where this was going and looked at Freddie, who was already looking at me. But not for long. He sprang up, slammed hands to hips, and glared at her. “Look.” A worse tremor than before. A tremor of barely controlled rage. “I’ve never known you. Never before have you tried to get in touch. You mean nothing to me. And now you’re hinting that you need a vital part of my body?”
There was fear, surprise on her face, and she swallowed like a chunk of something was lodged in her throat. “Please,” she said finally. “I would’ve tried to come sooner or later, no matter. Like you see, I’m not healthy. But that’s none of your affair, as you’ve made clear. I’m not asking for a kidney. I’m asking simply for what you’re giving — time with you. I’ve waited for this day ever since you were taken.” She patted her chest, took a breath. “I’ve always wanted to explain some things. Not that you’ll forgive what I did. Just that you’ll know what happened. Otherwise the book will close and you’ll never know.”
“Let the book close.” Freddie was practically shouting now, and flung out an arm. A sort of cutting swipe. “I really mean it. I’m not interested. My birth parents were strangers to me and I don’t care to hear about them. Ever. Lillian Bohr was my mother. She was all I ever needed, wanted. I didn’t want to meet you and I don’t want anything to do with this ‘book’ you speak of.”
“I do, though.” I barked it. His words had gotten to me. “And since you asked me here, Freddie, and I came with the hope we’d learn a thing or two about this family whose blood flows through your veins, I’d at least like that to come out of this little meeting. If you object, we can part ways right now.” I looked away, shaking my head, hating what I’d just said. In a milder tone, to take a little of the sting out, I added, “Plain and simple, you’re being . . . immature. Loyalty can go just so far. Why you think that learning about your background means you’re disowning the mother who raised you and you loved . . . it doesn’t make sense. It’s nothing like that.”
I didn’t know if he was even hearing me. He just stood there staring down at his loafers.
Even so, I put everything into it. “You think your mom felt animosity toward—” I held back, then took the leap. “—Regina? From what you’ve told me, she was just grateful Regina let her take you home.” I took a breath, reached over for his hand, squeezed it, and in a quiet voice added, “Or am I wrong?”
He pulled the hand away and sat down, eyes back to the floor.
“And then there’s this—” I couldn’t stop myself. I’d thought about the argument for meeting his birth mother long and hard, ever since he’d agreed to the get-together. I guess I’d been trying to assure myself that nudging him to call her back hadn’t been a dumb move. “—There are things people need to know about their bloodline. What they might inherit, what their kids might inherit. Right in this room you’ve got two examples. Kidney and hearing problems. I don’t know for sure about the kidneys, but I can tell you for sure that hearing troubles run in my family.”
Regina nodded. “My grandfather succumbed to kidney failure.”
Freddie, meanwhile, rubbed his right eye as he gazed toward the open window looking out on the porch, where a big fly slapped against the screen. As for me, I simply watched him, wondering how this level-headed fellow could be so unforgiving of a pathetic relative who according to his story was no more than a child when she gave birth and yet so forgiving of the woman who’d raised him, who’d leveled with him only when she was dying. In essence, all those years before she’d come clean, she’d been lying. At the same time I didn’t see how he’d ever change his mind about “loyalty.” He was old school, all dedication and inner strength. To be fair, it was part of what I liked about him. And now I was forcing his hand: make the choice that pleases me or else. As if I had the right.
“I know as much as I want to know,” he said, calmer but stubborn to the end. “I was brought up by a fine lady who loved me as much as any birth mother. And now you’re telling me that because she’s gone I’m supposed to start over with someone else.”
I wagged my head. “Uh-uh. No one’s asking that. We know how you feel.”
While this bickering was going on I saw from the corner of my eye that Regina was picking up her hat and moving to the edge of the recliner. So I turned in her direction. “I hope you’re not thinking of—”
But she obviously was. Trying to get up now, arms wrenching, pulpy legs pushing, body hanging back, hat slipping from her hand to the floor as she puffed in that refined but short-winded way I was getting used to, “I’m so sorry. I seem to have brought dissension. I shouldn’t have come. I should have known that I couldn’t just walk in and expect a jolly welcome.”
“But — ” I was thinking fast. “— but what about . . . didn’t you say you had something you wanted to pass on to Freddie?”
“Oh, that.” A meek smile. “He wouldn’t want it.”
“Could we just see it?”
“I don’t want to intrude any more than I have already.”
“But coming all this way. And—” I turned to Freddie. “—you wouldn’t mind, would you?”
He shook his head.
“You’re sure?” she said, facing him.
He nodded, and she plopped back down, looking a little anxious. At the same time a little eager. Maybe relieved, too. Those swollen legs had to hurt.
While she reached for her purse she cleared her throat. And then the grind, the grim struggle, began. Swollen fingers fighting zipper tab. Finally getting a grip. Losing it. Trying again. Success this time. Then unzipping, rummaging, pulling out sunglasses, comb, billfold, and setting them on the coffee table before going back in. Finally, a breathy “Ah” and a crumpled tissue in her hand.
“Obviously, you’ll refuse this even though it seems only right that you have it,” she said, going on to explain that it belonged to the fellow who more than anything wanted to take Freddie home. It—” Clumsy fingers pulling the tissue open. “—is Kurt’s graduation ring.”
The ring was heavy gold and shimmered in light from the ugly brass floor lamp Freddie’d moved to that side of the room sometime during the week before.
“I know he’d have wanted you to have it,” she said, taking it from the wad of Kleenex and holding it out to Freddie who, making no move to get up, said stiffly, “And Kurt is—?”
“Oh, sorry What was I thinking? You’re new to all of it.” A tense smile. “Of course he was your father. A remarkable young man who I know would’ve turned into a fine adult. You would’ve been proud.”
“Past tense?” Still no move on his part to take the ring.
“He was killed in a motorcycle accident right after he graduated from high school. It was a freak occurrence. He was crossing the street on his way to work at the theater when a cyclist ran a stop sign. Kurt was thrown into a light post.”
She set the ring back in the tissue on her lap. “At the time Kurt was killed he and I were trying to figure out how to get our baby back. Being under age and all, we were at enormous disadvantage, since my parents wouldn’t give their consent for anything.” She paused, then summed up: “After Kurt died there was no hope.”
And with that bit of out-and-out gloom, we sank into tongue-tied silence. Freddie nibbling a finger, Regina gazing from me to him and back again as though seeking reaction, and me thinking how tough this had to be for her — plodding on, forcing a story on a grudging listener who wouldn’t even accept a gift that was nothing less than a true sacrifice.
I wracked my brain for words that suited the grim tone of “there was no hope.” Finally, I just said, “How did Kurt’s family handle the accident?”
“His mother was devastated,” Regina answered. “I tried to think of something meaningful to do for her, but I didn’t know her well and even my visits were excruciating. In the end I decided that the only thing I had that would mean anything was this ring.”
Voice ragged now; Regina seemed to be running out of air. At the same time, I was struggling to hear, studying her lips like they held secret code. And in the end, coming away with the reason Regina still had the ring: Kurt’s mother had refused it, saying it would be inappropriate; that Kurt had bought it with his own hard-earned cash and given it as a sort of pledge to the girl he loved. For someone else to have it would have been just wrong.
“And Kurt’s mother was right,” Freddie said. “The ring belongs with you. It’s nice of you to think of me—”
“But he’d have wanted it. And I—”
“I get it,” he said. “You want the same, obviously.”
“What I want is for you to have some physical connection with your father. But then, if you—”
“Just so I understand—” Freddie was heating up again. “— what you’re asking me to do is all at once start adoring this no-good who got his girlfriend pregnant, felt bad about it, and then died?”
While I was stewing in a mix of shock and rage, barely able to control myself, Regina remained surprisingly calm. “A bare bones way of looking at things. Essentially true, except for ‘no-good’,” she explained. “He was bright, principled despite our lapse, even athletic. A superstar in high school. And so loyal. As I said, he wanted to marry me and keep you.” She looked down at the ring, buffing it a little as she caught her breath. “He was such an individual. He had no unease about just being Kurt Brandt. There was no shame about where he lived, what he wore, why there was no car in the family and he walked everywhere.”
“Reminds me—” I stopped myself. “He sounds wonderful. At such a young age to want to take on a family. Amazing. At the same time I can understand how your parents felt. Back in those days, even now—”
She cut me off. “And to be realistic, how could two teenagers have provided for a baby? Yet—” A gut-wrenching sob. “—God, how we wanted that baby.” Swollen, watery eyes burning into Freddie’s. “How we wanted you.”
But he wasn’t bending. “I’ve always thought that when you want something enough you can make it happen.”
“But don’t you see? There was no possibility. And my father—” Leaving the ring in her lap, she used the tissue to wipe her eyes. “– with his position in the community . . . Kurt and I didn’t have a prayer. Father wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Your father—” Freddie looked mildly interested.
“He was the pastor at the local Baptist church as well as chairman of the school board.” Her speech was fractured by raspy breaths. “You can imagine how well it went over with him . . . and my mother, for that matter . . . to have their one and only child . . . good student, Queen of the Valentine’s Dance, student council secretary, light of their lives . . . turn up pregnant. . . ” A long, winded pause. “. . . and by the good-for-nothing captain of the football team — at least that’s what my parents thought — who lived in a trailer park south of town.”
By now, she was breathing like she’d just run a foot race, and I asked if I could get her something. Maybe a glass of water.
“No, thanks,” she choked. “Water’s . . . the last thing I need. I’ve just got—” Gasping, patting her chest again. “—to slow down.”
“We have all the time in the world,” I told her.
“The problem is, I haven’t.” Then, as though grasping the grave undertone of her words, adding in choked afterthought, “I mean . . . I’ve got to get back . . . to Seattle for dialysis tomorrow.”
“We understand,” I said, looking at Freddie, who I wasn’t sure did.
And as she concentrated on breathing, drawing in and blowing out through her mouth windy blasts that went on and on, I pretended to work on my cuticles.
After a while, she was back to normal, or what seemed to be normal for her. At least she wasn’t panting and heaving. At the same time, she wasn’t sitting back and looking okay with things. To the contrary. She was packing ring, comb, sunglasses, and the rest into her purse on the coffee table.
Even before she said anything, I knew what she had in mind. “Please don’t think of leaving,” I told her. “You really just got here. And I thought . . . well, I thought there’d be more.”
“I hate to disappoint you,” she replied, “But I think it’s time.”
Of all the turns the day had taken, to me this had to be the most baffling. Just when it seemed she’d been making progress with Freddie — hadn’t he shown real interest in her dad in the last few minutes? — she was bowing out. All I could think was that Freddie had hurt her more than she’d shown. She apparently was pretty good at hiding feelings or, at least, bearing insults. But only to a point. And with that point passed, had decided to leave.
So now it was back to the struggle. The hassle of getting things in her purse again. At least, with the purse still open, there was no battle with the zipper at this stage. Even if there had been, though, I wouldn’t have offered help. There was no possibility I was about to make her leave-taking easy. She was letting me down. I’d done my best to get her here, I’d made it clear I supported her, and now she was backing out.
“I guess we’ve hurt your feelings,” I said, hoping the defeat in my voice expressed enough disappointment to make her think twice.
“Oh no, you’ve both been very polite and all.” (Who was she trying to fool?) “It’s just that I’ve got the feeling that you’re simply indulging this unhealthy crone with nowhere but here to come with her sad tale. I’m wasting your time.”
“And, if you leave now, your own as well. Besides, you’ve got me hooked.” A surprise crack from Freddie, who was almost sounding friendly. What was it that had hooked him, or was it just that he’d finally recovered his humanity and was realizing what this woman had gone through.
Regina stared at him, questioning, then looked at me.
I nodded, motioned her to sit back. Which, when she did, sent an actual flush of relief through me. Even so, I went on as though there’d been no nearly ruinous setback. “You know,” I said, “what I’d really like to hear is if Freddie has any other living relatives.”
She, too, carried on like normal. “In fact, there is one. The only one I know of. It’s my father.” She was speaking more slowly now, breathing less fitfully. “I haven’t seen him since way back after Kurt died in the accident, but what I hear from a friend in Anaconda is that he’s still there. In a nursing home now.”
“You’ve never visited?” Freddie bounced his knee like he always did when he was either excited or uneasy. The recent crisis must’ve shaken him too. Which was good. Now maybe there’d be no more tantrums.
“No. Never visited.” Regina shrugged as though she felt perfectly fine admitting it. “I knew back when I left for Seattle that I never wanted to see my father again.” A flash to her puffy brown eyes and a stretch of earnest breathing before going on. “I know what you’re thinking: I discard relatives like they’re rotten apples. And in that case you’re right. But he was so cruel. . . . And so prideful. He and Mother could have given their consent to marry, maybe even helped Kurt and me until I’d graduated. . .They knew how we felt. If people judged, so be it. We’d make it through. We’d made a mistake, but we’d make it through. . . . We didn’t care what people thought.”
She cleared her throat, took a timeout.
“Yet, my parents cared. Father called me evil, wicked, a sinner. And he said that harboring sinners was as bad as taking part in the sin. So the only way to handle the situation would be to ship me off to a home for unwed mothers.” A sad smile. “My own mother didn’t say a word. She just stood around looking grieved.”
“Kids at school must’ve been suspicious when you dropped from sight. Didn’t everyone wonder where you’d gone?” It seemed to me that by that point the halls would be buzzing.
“I suppose. Of course I don’t know. The plan was to say I’d gone to stay with a lonely grandmother who wasn’t expected to survive much longer and who lived in England who knows where. I don’t even think my parents knew where she lived.”
I shifted, uncrossed my legs, adjusted the hearing aid microphone in my shirt pocket so it aimed straight at her and, while at it, turned the volume up. “You said England?”
“I did.”
“Now that’s a whale of a story.” I turned the volume back down. “And the locals actually believed you flew over there to stay with a sick grandma? I mean, the whole thing’s suspicious enough without crossing the ocean. If someone told me that, I’d tell them I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“Who can say if it was believed or not. I didn’t stay around long enough to find out, because by then Kurt was dead and my father had refused to officiate at his funeral and I’d made up my mind that enough was enough.” A pause as she took the needed time. “That was when I decided I needed a fresh start and withdrew from the bank savings from my drug store job and purchased bus fare to Seattle.”
“At seventeen?” Freddie scratched his head. A scripted sort of response.
“I was nearly eighteen by then.” She’d been gazing toward her purse and looked at Freddie now. “That’s why I’m sympathetic with the way you feel. When someone who should at least try to do the right thing behaves heartlessly and his or her actions hurt you terribly, it’s hard to forgive.”
As I listened to her perfect speech — lack of slang, impeccable diction — I couldn’t get out of my mind the image of a schoolteacher. Maybe the way she talked had to do with that grandma in England. Or it could’ve been the preacher father. Whatever, she was telling her story and her son was listening, actually sitting forward now, elbows on knees. “Your mother, then — I guess she’s dead.”
“She died a few years ago from dementia. I attribute it to never thinking for herself.” A hint of smile.
Freddie, however, was serious as ever: “So . . . back to Seattle. You got a job there?”
“I did. And I got my high school diploma a few years later when the company I worked for held back on a promotion till I got the degree. And then, strangely enough, I went on to night school to finish with a bachelor of arts in English.”
“Hey,” I said, “my major.”
“At least for me, working at a power company, it was a good choice. I started as a secretary and, after some decent education, moved right up the ladder to director of employee benefits.”
“So you left Butte for Seattle and . . .” Freddie seemed to be trying to get the chronology straight.
“No, Butte was where the midwife had her establishment, if you could call it that. The home for unwed mothers was there too. But I grew up in Anaconda and that’s where I went — for a brief period — after your birth. Back home.”
“Anaconda . . . Montana?”
“Right.”
“Did you keep in touch with my father’s family?”
“No. And I felt badly about it. Kurt’s mother was a sickly woman and didn’t last long after the accident, dying a year later. That was what I heard from that same friend who lived there. I guess his mother was heartbroken, and then being all alone there in the trailer — ”
“No husband?”
“I don’t know why she was alone. Kurt and I never talked about that.”
“Whew,” he breathed, and then just sat there staring at the wall behind her while the train that ran alongside Freddie’s property approached the intersection and whistled its warning. When it was quiet again, he sat back and folded his arms. “So all this time since, you’ve been living in Seattle, climbing the ladder at the power company. What else? Married? More kids?”
“I never married. I had no . . . other children. I worked hard, brooded a lot. The power company was good for a while, a good long while, and got me on my feet, so to speak. I was employed there for twelve years. Then I moved.”
“Out of Seattle?”
“Right.”
“Back to Anaconda?”
“Heavens no.”
Then came a long silence and a clearing of her throat before beginning a story so beyond belief it took some discipline to keep from checking Freddie’s reaction.
It all began, she said, some years after she’d gotten those degrees, when she came around to the decision that if this was all there was going to be, she had to make some changes. A great house and knockout clothes and jewelry, even the successful men who pursued her, weren’t enough. She needed, really needed, something else, and she knew without doubt what it was.
It was that son she’d never forgotten, who every day in one way or another, sneaked into her thoughts, whether through a kid playing catch with a friend in the park or a boy leaving the library with a load of books. These singled-out boys always had dusky features, because they were the ones who could’ve been her son. With Kurt’s dusky good looks — her father had called him swarthy — and her family’s tendency toward lots of very dark hair, these were the ones who fit the mold of “her boy.”
Her boy. There was no scrubbing him from her mind. He was an unreal reality that had been haunting her for twelve years. She didn’t know anything about him — if his eyes were as dark as his father’s, if he had the same skinny legs, if he was a good student, if he played sports, if he’d been told about this other mother. All she knew was, her boy was out there and she wanted more than anything to see him, to watch him. If only . . .
But why “if only,” as though impossible? That just wasn’t true. All it would take was backbone. And she’d never lacked that. If she made up her mind, she could make it happen.
Which, strange as it sounded, she finally did, quitting her job and with the name Lillian Bohr stamped in her brain from that night she’d heard Freddie’s mom give it to the midwife and with the forwarding address Lillian’s landlord had “after much cajoling and crying” handed over those many years before, she headed on out. Not, though, without the assurance that she’d find “Freddie” (the landlord had let slip his name). During all those years in Seattle she’d kept in touch, so to speak, calling long distance information on really bad days, like Freddie’s birthday and special holidays, to make sure the address stayed the same and the “avenue” — Regina’s word — was still open. Just to be extra sure, right before she’d sold her house on the West Coast, she’d actually called the number, asked for Freddie, and when Lillian set the phone down and yelled for him, hung up.
When she got to Long Lake, she had no trouble finding their house at the corner of County Road 6 and Highway 12. Nor did she have trouble finding the house she’d rent for the next five years. It was just up the road. Next to Robinson’s.
At this point in Regina’s story Freddie’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. I thought he might lose control. “What?” he whooped. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You lived up the hill from us for five years?”
“Right.” She was calm as ever. “In that little gray stucco with the screen porch and lilacs in front. I’d never spent much, so I had decent savings, and the sale of my home had been profitable, so I was pretty well set, as they say. I owned company stock as well.”
“You didn’t get a job?”
“I did get a job. After a month or so, realizing that life was incredibly sterile just sitting up there in that dark little house waiting for you to emerge, I got in my car and went looking.”
“Where’d you work? I never saw you.”
An obvious effort to remember. Head back, combing the ceiling. Finally, “Tonka Bay Marina.”
“No wonder.” Despite his ho-hum response, Freddie was still looking like he’d been hit in the head with one of those flying fish I’d read about.
“Anyway, from up there on the hill I . . . I don’t know what you’d call it . . . I guess I stalked you. I even purchased a camera and binoculars and kept them by the front door. I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to know what was happening with you. It was the next best thing to having you with me.”
Freddie blinked. It was as though he’d recovered from the head blow and was seeing her, really seeing her, for the first time. “You mean you actually . . . you went to these lengths—”
“Disgusting, isn’t it?”
But if what I saw on Freddie’s face was disgust, I was a poor reader of expression.
“We never crossed paths. I was careful about that. I didn’t want to interfere.” She coughed, tried to clear her throat, went on in a froggy voice. “But from my porch I could see your yard and even the produce stand, where I’d watch you help Lillian organize things. By then I was convinced there was no man in your lives.”
“Logical presumption,” he said, bouncing his leg.
“I watched that red three-legged dog follow you everywhere too. Swinging his tail like a big smile.” She wagged her head, remembering. “I even sat in the audience at graduation, way, way near the back, and listened to your speech about how we’re responsible for making the world a better place, how every act counts, how even small efforts make a difference.” Her voice was strained, whispery, and she stopped to take a few deep breaths. At least as deep as she was able. “And I was so proud. I know, I had no part in the rearing of this wonderful child who would be going on to Yale, but I was proud even so, and grateful to the fine lady who’d done a job of raising him that was beyond anything a teenage valentine’s queen and star quarterback could have managed.”
By the time she finished, she was wincing. Even I could hear a long, gurgly catch from somewhere inside. “Too much,” she panted. “Too much to tell.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” A worried look on Freddie’s face as he suddenly got up.
“Nothing but be patient,” she wheezed.
When a few minutes later she announced with a faint, tired smile that she was ready to go on, Freddie, back on the couch, wasn’t about to bite. “Nope, not right now. Right now it’s time for a real break.”
He got up, picked up her hat, lying forgotten on the floor, and set it on the coffee table. “It’s been a long day for you and will only get longer, and all my questions haven’t helped.” He held out a hand. “Could I offer you a bed for a nap?”
“Oh, could you!” She took his hand and let him help her up, and I followed as they made their way past the kitchen table to his mother’s room, where he pulled back the top sheet, drawing it and the quilt down to the foot of the bed. “There’s a grocery down the road where we could probably get anything you want to eat,” he told her as she sat down on the bed and began reaching for her feet and the low-heeled pumps they were stuffed into. I was about to step in and help when Freddie dropped to his knees and gently pried the shoes off.
“Anything else that you need?” he asked when he’d finished.
“Actually,” she said, looking sheepish. “Could you spare a second pillow? I breathe better when my head is high.”
“Funny you should ask,” he answered before walking over, opening the trunk in the corner, and proudly pulling out a lumpy pillow in a yellowed case. After helping to slip it under her head, he drew the sheet and quilt up to her chest.
As he pulled the window shade, she closed her eyes.
Photography Credit: Jason Rice
Susan Swanson is 83 years old and has only recently received publishing credits. She was named one of six Shortlist Winner Nominees in the Adelaide Literary Award 2019 Best Short Story Contest and acceptance by Adelaide Books for a novel scheduled for March 2021. She holds a bachelor’s degree with a major in English and minor in journalism from the University of Minnesota and has studied with Marilynne Robinson at the Iowa Writers Workshop Summer Session.
