Myrna and me were having a sisterly squabble about Papa’s impending birthday while he was having his nap. It was a squabble because we disagreed on every single issue.
Papa had said anyone he knew who would want to come to his birthday was either dead or dying or didn’t know the difference but Myrna thought we could ask the people Papa had coffee with every morning down at the Sunnyside Café. I said I didn’t think they were the type who would enjoy a birthday celebration such as we were capable of planning.
Papa had said he didn’t want anyone making a fuss over him, had never wanted such a thing and certainly did not ever again.
Now Myrna said, “nonsense” about this and stated there were many times we had fussed over him and he had been pleased.
I said all the times we had pleased him were wiped away the time we surprised him with a weekend trip to Niagara Falls where he more than once had expressed a wish to visit. He thought we were driving him downtown for his regular haircut and once we told him where we were really going he had a fit and Myrna would not stop the car and let him out. He had stonily refused to take any interest in the Falls; was icy if not downright rude to the other guests at the bed and breakfast; complained about – well, everything!
Another major issue was this: when Papa was to turn ninety he started subtracting rather than adding years to his age. This year he would regress to age 85. Myrna thought this was just fine and what did it matter. I thought it was ridiculous; I am the one who now has to deal with this in conversation and in print: it is surprising how often one has to reveal how old one is.
We were in the kitchen during all this badgering. Papa was snoozing on the lounger in the garden under the chestnut tree. He’d had a good lunch and ought to sleep for an hour or so. Whatever his age he has always enjoyed his naps.
Myrna was sorting through the odds and ends drawer; she thinks better when her hands are busy doing something she considers useful. Me, I’m perfectly content to just sit.
“This whole thing is peskying me,” I told her.
“Pesky is an adjective, not a verb,” she replied, (she dislikes my creative use of language no matter that it serves me well in my work), holding up an object from the drawer and turning to wave it in my direction with that raise of eyebrows that asks a question without words.
I shrugged back a “no idea” reply and added, “You ask me that every time you sort that drawer. It’s been there as long as I can remember.”
Neither of us suggested we ask Papa. Papa is not aware we even have odds and ends drawers.
The thought of him got me back on topic. “We have to do something for his birthday.”
“We’re making too much out of this,” Myrna said, tossing the mystery item onto the table in front of me and I started to fiddle with it. “We need something else to think about.”
“No live-outs pending, I guess,” I said. She frequently (according to me), or occasionally (according to her) leaves me to cope with Papa while she breezes out on house-sits, care-giving, pet-minding, gardening, hanky-panky (possibly!) etc.
“Nothing definite,” she replied, “nothing we can put our minds to.”
We both gave a shudder. We’d had involvement in a bit of a murder awhile back and this had quelled our adventuresome spirits; it had been gruesome and dramatic.
Over the years our little put our minds to antics (which is what Papa calls them when he admits to them) have (mostly) been diverse and interesting and satisfying – but not the last one.
“We need a diversion,” we both said at exactly the same time and chills raced across my shoulders and up my spine.
Myrna and me did not look at each other; I knew she had felt the chills too. At times this sisterly connectedness - or whatever - is a large part of our
put our minds to and we were in avoidance and denial mode of anything to do with it at the moment.
Myrna went back to her drawer sorting and I was tracing lines on the table cloth with the wires of the whatchamacallit. Myrna had tried beating eggs with it at one point in the past; I’d tried a sort of rake- harvesting of blueberries at the pick-your-own place with it; neither had worked.
The sound of the front door opening and then closing froze our actions. Then Myrna and I both turned to look out the window toward the back garden where Papa was napping – I had to lean back to do so – and we could see him still on the lounger. It would have been unusual for him to awaken after such a short nap and most unusual – unheard of! – for him to walk all around the house and come in by the front door.
Since he had done neither - and since we could now hear someone tapping as if in high heeled shoes across the oak and mahogany floor of the living room - Myrna and me stared at each other.
The tapping stopped. By this time I had risen from my chair and Myrna and me moved closer to each other and to the door that led into the living room.
The tapping footsteps started again.
The swing door was pushed open into the kitchen and a small, elderly woman walked through, moving nimbly out of the way to let the door swing closed behind her. She stood still and stared at us. We were staring back.
Her arms had been by her sides but now she crossed them in front of her and clasped her hands, palm to palm.
Even before I saw this gesture, even before I heard her speak, I knew who she was. But still – when she opened her mouth and said, “Hello girls, I am your mother.” – I fainted.
Next I knew Myrna had hauled me up off the floor – or maybe she caught me as I fell – and was propping me up on the day bed by the kitchen sunroom windows.
“….not often at all.” I heard Myrna saying and our – mother – commenting, “I thought she would have grown out of it.”
Since the last time we’d seen her was when I was eleven and Myrna ten it didn’t seem likely that I was going to “grow out of it”.
Our – mother – started to wander around the kitchen looking here and there, at this and that. I don’t know if much had changed in forty years.
She stopped when she caught sight of the whatchamacallit on the table and asked, “What’s that doing in the kitchen?”
“What is it?’ Myrna asked; she was pinching my ear lobes, something she’d found useful on one of her outings when someone collapsed for some reason.
“It was my aunt’s; for cleaning a hair brush,” our mother said and Myrna and I each made a “yeuww” expression remembering what we had used it for.
By now I was alert and pulled away from Myrna’s ear therapy.
My sister and I both opened our mouths at the same time and asked, “Why did you …..” but Myrna’s sentence ended with “… leave?” and mine with “… come back?”
Our mother looked at me first and said, “I felt it was time.”
And to Myrna she answered, “Your father killed me.”
Both Myrna and our mother glanced at me but I knew I was not going to faint.
Our mother, however, did sit down suddenly on one of the chairs at the table – the one she had sat in so long ago – the one no one had sat in since, at least not on a regular basis.
We both looked at her … waiting.
“He thought he killed me,” she explained. “So I had to leave. I couldn’t stay.”
I got that premonition shiver again; Myrna didn’t seem to - but she followed my turning my head toward the back door and watched as Papa opened the screen door and walked in.
He saw me on the day bed with Myrna beside me and frowned; he didn’t like it when I fainted.
Then he caught sight of – our mother – seated at the table and his expression changed but he barely faltered a step in his walk across the kitchen and as he passed her he said, “Well, Hilda, it took you long enough to come home.”
Then he went out the door into the hall and walked along it.
“He had sauerkraut for lunch,” Myrna said into the silence. “You may not remember this but –“
And our mother interrupted with “He needs the bathroom; sauerkraut always made him pee more.
“That’s why he seemed so calm and collected,” I offered, “I mean, when he saw you – I don’t think he was – calm and collected, I mean.” I almost had to stop the flow of words by covering my mouth with my hands.
He wasn’t – calm. Papa came back after the shortest possible bathroom time – I couldn’t help checking to see if he had remembered to zip up: he had – and he said to me, “No wonder you fainted,” as he sat down in his chair at the table.
Myrna got up and went and sat in hers.
Everyone looked at me. I moved to mine.
“What’s that doing on the table? Papa asked, pointing to the object which we now knew the use for.
Myrna picked it up and was about to reach and put it back in the odds and ends drawer but Mother frowned and Myrna got up and put it in the basket by the back stairs where things went that needed to go elsewhere. She sat down again.
Papa looked at Mother. “Why did you leave?”
She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.
“I know you weren’t happy,” Papa said. “I know you were much younger then. I didn’t know what to do.”
“But – what you did …. “ she said and licked her lips and I could see where bright red lipstick had been wiped away, leaving traces in the lines around her mouth and suddenly knew that was why she had stopped on her trek from front door to kitchen when she arrived.
Papa looked puzzled and then bent his head at her and looked even more a question and she answered, “ You grabbed me and hit my head against the wall; twice. Maybe more. When I came to you had wrapped me in the old quilt the dog used to lie on. Wrapped me like a shroud. And I saw the wheelbarrow by the back door with traces of dirt in it. And the trough for the peas looked deeper. A lot deeper.”
It all came out like a recording, much re-played.
They were staring at each other. Then Papa dropped his head and looked down at the table. “I don’t remember that,” he finally said. “I don’t remember.”
The three of us watched as he slowly stood up, walked out the screen door and went back to the lounger in the garden. We watched him lie down and close his eyes.
We sat still and silent and thoughtful. I noticed that Mother had crossed her arms and was clasping her hands, palm to palm, in her lap.
Then she too stood up. “I need to lie down”, she said. “My luggage is in the car but I don’t need it right away.”
She tapped her way across the kitchen, out the door, across the living room, up the front stairs, along the second floor hall – Myrna and I were watching with our ears – and turned into the master bedroom.
That’s when Myrna got up, put all the contents of the junk drawer back into it. And I made tea.
Before she sat down again she said, “Car” with both a question and an exclamation mark in her voice.
In her soft soled shoes she went quietly out of the kitchen, across the living room, to the front of the house.
“In the driveway. A big blue one. Nice”, she said on her return.
She settled back at the table and picked up her cup.
“I know,” I then said, although Myrna hadn’t spoken aloud. We were, without question, full tilt in
putting our minds to work mode.
“I thought she’d fainted,” Myrna answered my comment.
“So you wrapped her in the quilt.” I confirmed.
She nodded.
“Why?” I wanted to know.
“Because she was lying on the floor. I thought she might get cold. While I went to get help.”
“Get help?” I asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t. I couldn't. And when I came back, she was gone.”
“Gone?”
“Well, gone from the kitchen. She’d gotten up and was – I don’t know – not on the floor, somewhere else in the house. The quilt was all folded up again back there …” she gestured where the old dog used to sleep on the back stairs landing.
“And you never told me about this?”
“I couldn’t. You – “ Myrna narrowed her eyes and I shared her remembering. “You weren’t here. And when you came back I forgot to tell you. I guess it didn’t seem important. And – she – never said anything.”
“Where was I?” I asked but I already knew what she was going to say.
“You were out with Papa.. That’s why I put the quilt over her. I knew you had gone out for the day with Papa and I went next door to see if anyone was home there and could help but no one was.”
“If Papa wasn’t here that day,” I said slowly, “he could not have tried to kill Momma.”
Our hands reached across the table and held together. We had not referred to our mother as Momma since she left.
In that awful way that can happen when you feel like crying or screaming or crawling into a hole and never having to do anything again – I laughed.
Myrna did not look shocked. She understood. But she let go of my hands to wipe fingers across her eyes.
“Maybe it never happened,” I suggested.
“But it did. I found – Momma – on the floor.”
“No – I meant maybe she fainted or tripped and hit her head and when she came to she found herself all wrapped up in the quilt. Why on earth did you wrap her up like a mummy?”
“I didn’t,” Myrna said. “I just covered her. But maybe …. “
Now she was ‘seeing’ it as I was ‘seeing’ it.
“…. maybe - maybe she - ….”
“… wanted ….” I supplied the word she meant but was reluctant to use.
“ … yes, okay – wanted it to be as if Papa had struck her – you and I know he would never do such a thing – he couldn’t – he’s so ….”
“… gentle?” I interjected.
“ - squeamish is more like it, “ Myrna said seriously and honestly.
“And maybe Momma wanted to leave but she could only let herself do so if she convinced herself that – what did she say to us - that she ‘had to leave. I couldn’t stay.’? She didn’t imagine the quilt.”
Myrna leaned back in her chair, gave a huge stretch and rolled her head on her shoulders like she does when she gets overly bothered. Then she blew out her cheeks, exhaled noisily and said, “This is one heck of a diversion!”
“What?” I asked.
“Our saying we needed a diversion. To stop us fussing over Papa’s birthday.”
“For goodness sakes!” I almost shouted.
Now Myrna did look shocked and then contrite and we were both quiet.
“So, what do we do now?” I finally asked.
“About telling them?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t seem to make a difference if we don’t or if we do – except in degree of upset, of dealing with what she thinks happened and what - likely – really happened. It’s not going to change the past.”
“Except – well it will – I mean how we see the present knowing what happened or didn’t happen in the past. Knowing you covered her. Not Papa. Papa wasn’t even here. Knowing – “ I paused but Myrna was feeling what I was saying. “Knowing it was me who left the wheelbarrow by the back door and the pea patch was dug deeper because I took a few buckets of soil from it to Miss Pettigew. I’m responsible for her leaving too! It was my fault too!”
We’d never talked about ‘whose fault’ it was before. We’d just had nightmares. It was old baggage. Myrna cut to the new element of which she had just learned.
“Why did you take dirt to Miss Pettigew?”
“She paid me for it. So much a bucket. For her tomatoes. She said our compost must be superior to hers because Momma made such good chutney.”
Myrna looked more amused than angry. “No wonder you had more spending money than me even though our allowances were the same. You could have said. I tell you everything.”
No she doesn’t. Now or then. Sisters always have secrets from each other. Don’t we?
Another silence.
Myrna opened her mouth but just then her phone rang. She unhooked it professionally from her waistband, said hello, listened for a few seconds, then pressed something on the phone and put it on the table between us so I could now hear a voice saying,
…..”and then we got to talking about the incidence and importance of notes left by suicides, and about holographic wills. You remember?”
I was nodding. Myrna said “Yes.”
“Well, your sister had some interesting ideas about ingesting such – um – material and I wondered if we could get together and talk about it some more.”
“Has something like this happened?” Myrna asked as if the caller was seated at the table with us, which, I guess, in a way, she was.
“Noooo, not exactly. But that’s what I want to talk about. Your sister has quite the – um, imagination.”
“She’s a writer,” Myrna said dryly.
I dug pad and pen – professionally – from a pocket on my person and wrote down the information of time and place for further discussion.
Myrna disconnected the phone and clipped it neatly back on where her belt would be if she were wearing a belt.
Suddenly we could hear tapping above us … from the master bedroom along the hall, down the stairs ….
“Perhaps Momma will help with whatever the situation is with wills and notes,” one of us said.
“”Of course she will,” said the other.
We smiled at each other and waited for Momma to tap her way back to us.
But when she got to the bottom of the stairs the tapping did not continue toward the kitchen but went across the living room. We heard the front door open and close.
Myrna and me exchanged a brief, startled look.
I had no idea my sister and I could move that fast as we swung through the kitchen door and across the living room.
Our mother was opening the trunk of the big blue car and turned as we erupted from the front door.
“Oh, girls, I was just getting my purse but maybe now you’re here you could help me bring in the luggage as well.” She didn’t seem to notice we were breathless.
“Of course.”
“And then, Momma, we have something to tell you.”
“If it’s about your father’s birthday next week – “she began, but then stopped. She knew from our voices – and the look on our faces – that it wasn’t about that.
She simply nodded and reached for her purse.
Myrna and I reached for the suitcases. From the amount of luggage, she was home for good.
(Myrna and ‘me’ made their first appearance in AHMM June 1998 in For Shame’s Sake. )