Jennifer Mills Kerr

Frederick gazed beyond his daughter’s face toward the waiter.

“It was my opening night, Dad,” Laura was saying. “You were the only one who wasn’t there.  And I was the lead.”

Finally, the waiter made eye contact.  He tapped his empty martini glass. “I’m sure you were marvelous.”

She grunted. “No wonder Mom doesn’t love you.”

Was that an exit line? Her mother had been so good at parting shots, insults timed perfectly with departures.  But no.  His daughter was a different kind of actress; she’d sit this out just as she always did.

Never mind.  After two martinis, the restaurant shimmered silver-white, candlelight dancing on the oversized mirrors, the piano tinkling distantly, sweetly, casting him back to his mother’s piano, a time when he’d played Chopin, played for hours held within the music’s silky white dream.

Laura was watching him.

“I’m sorry I missed it,” he said, hoping she’d look away. Their waiter approached with his martini.  “I’m preparing for a case.”

“That’s what you always say.”

He lifted the martini to his lips and savored its liquid heat.

She glared at his drink.  Twenty-four, she wore a silk blouse, lipstick, diamonds, but flat-chested and freckled, Laura struck him as a false note.  She always had.

“Why don’t you get a drink?  A glass of wine maybe–”

“I called your office this morning.  Did you get the message?”

“Can’t we just relax?” Another burning sip, and he listened to the far-off music, a Chopin. “Listen to it,” he murmured, “one of his nocturnes… isn’t it beautiful?”

“What are you talking about?”

He snapped awake, startled and annoyed. “Never mind.  You wouldn’t understand, being more Beethoven in nature.” Like her mother: grandiose, dramatic, and deaf. He smiled.  “So… how are things with Peter?”

“‘Peter’? God, Dad.  His name’s Philip.” Her face flushed.  “And we’ve only been together seven years.”

“Sorry! Philip. Of course it’s Philip.”  He exploded with laughter. Other diners shot glances, but God help him, he couldn’t stop himself.  Desperately, he waved his hands–sorry, sorry–rocking back and forth in his seat.  Laura had turned pale. But he’d order her a drink, and she’d forgive him as she always did.

“You’re pathetic,” she said.

She’d spoken so softly, so gently, that he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “I’m sorry?”

Eyes sparkling with pity, she shook her head–just as his mother had done, arthritic hands curled in her lap, watching him play. He wasn’t talented and never would be.  No matter how much he loved the music, his love meant nothing; it was useless.  “Laura?”

She lay her folded napkin on the table and stood to go.

“Laura?”

She crossed the restaurant, fading from view, disappearing from sight. He stared after her for a long time.

When I was four, my father gave me a crystal rabbit. Translucent yet cloudy, the figure symbolized mystery to me, though at such a young age, I could not begin to give the rabbit a story. Instead, I gave words to my father’s gift, words that described how I felt:  Hope. Pretty.  Dream. 

“Will you name the rabbit?” my father asked.

I clutched the figurine, warm in my palm. “I don’t want to name it.”  Naming a mystery was impossible, but I couldn’t have articulated such feelings then. Still, my father nodded, as if he understood.

I was a romantic child, one who sat outside for stretches of time, enraptured by birdsong, breezes, the fragrance of grass.  When I was six years old, my mother appeared in my bedroom one morning, face haggard and strange. Your father has left.  He’s not coming back.  She disappeared, and I fell back asleep. When I woke, light pressed against the windows, and I imagined it a dream.

Entering the kitchen, I discovered my mother at the table, a glass of amber-colored liquid in front of her. Her face was the color of ash, and I knew it wasn’t a dream, that my father had left.  He left because of you, she said.

I ran outside, certain the fresh air and light would cast her ugliness away. He left because of you. Eventually, I lay on the grass, gazing at clouds, imagining my father within one. He’d always been a hazy figure, drifting upon the edges of my life.  Although he felt like a benevolent presence, he was not clear in my mind now, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t picture him. That was why he had given me the crystal rabbit, I decided, so I could hold him close, even though he was a mystery, someone who floated out of my life like a cloud.

My mother lost her romantic nature the day my father left.  But I was different, for in his absence, my dreams only intensified.  I imagined him climbing Mt. Everest, fighting battles in Europe, sailing around the world.  I imagined his returning to our house like an Odysseus and claiming me once again.  My stories were my redemption; I needed them because for many years, I believed my mother. He left because of you.

Thirty years later, I know that my father went to Upstate New York when he left our home, that he lived quietly and alone, and that he died a few years later. I was eleven years old then, living inside a world of hope, pretty, dream, a world I still live inside today.

My daughter’s name is Olivia.  Almost three, she is learning words she hears every day, but also those that come from the story books I read to her at night.  Princess.  Wolf.  Magic.  She touches the book’s pages with tiny fingers, and I know my mother’s words cannot be true. 

Today, Madeline Sharpton told everyone at school that I had herpes. She’s a mean girl, practically six feet tall, and that tall-ness gives her a weird authority in the world of middle school. All the other students believed her–including my so-called friends. I’m only thirteen, but it must be the worst day in my life forever.

My mother has always said, No matter what, keep a smile on your face. But she’s in politics so lives on a different planet. Still, I tried it her way, smiling at every kid who snickered in my direction, but smiling tasted like Nyquil (disgusting!) and I had to stop. My mother’s smile-crazy because her picture’s taken all the time, and if she’s not looking happy in a photo, the press calls her hostile or bitter or worse. So she smiles.

After school, I locked myself in my bedroom. People were mean for no reason, it wasn’t fair, and there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to call up Madeline and scream at her. I wanted to punch a pillow until my hand hurt.  Even binge watching Riverdale didn’t improve my mood. It was bad.

Eventually, my brother Mark yelled: Time for dinner, idiot! and when I didn’t show up in the kitchen, Dad knocked at my door. “Honey?” I peeked out, and when I saw him, burst into tears.

We sat on my bed and I told him everything.

He handed me another tissue. “Since Mom was re-elected last week, some people are upset, and that upset trickles down to their kids. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. I’d learned the words trickle-down and backlash by the time I was six, when Mom first entered office. “Why does she do it?”

“A lot of reasons, I think.” He sighed. Dad had been bullied over the years too, called this and that for marrying a such-and-such–not only by people in the press, but at work. Why were people bullies? Would they ever stop? Questions had been spinning in my head all day, but I didn’t say them aloud. Dad seemed tired and I was hungry.

At the table, he told my mother what happened. She went real still.  Couldn’t even smile and pretend it didn’t matter.

“Are you all right, Lauren?” she asked. 

I nodded though I wasn’t. “I’m not smiling through it, Mom. I can’t.”

“Then you hang in there the best way you know how. Alright?” 

“Why don’t you just punch that girl in the face?” Mark had practically swallowed his hamburger whole already. “That’s what I always did.”

We knew about Mark’s strategy dealing with bullies, one that (I had to admit) was successful. As my parents lectured him and he swallowed his second hamburger, I actually considered punching Madeline in the face. Then I realized she was too tall. 

The following day, I decided that since yesterday had been the worst day in my life forever it meant this one had to be better. Then Madeline spotted me outside the student center before the morning bell. “Hey Lauren!  How’s your condition?”  Laughter from the nearby students. Tee-hee.

“Better than yours. Which is LYING.”

Not great, but the best I could do. 

First period, math. I kept my head down and did my work. Since focusing on pre-algebra was a new phenomenon, I got a screaming headache within minutes. The other girls stared and whispered as I crossed the classroom. Some giggled, and my heart beat hard in my chest, but I made it to the bathroom pass by the door. I made it down the hallway too. Then, in the bathroom, standing at a sink, so tall she had to dip her head to see herself in the mirror, was you-know-who. Her hair was wet and she’d been crying. As soon as she saw me, she ran into a stall. 

“What are you doing?” I said, before I realized she was my life-long enemy.  Then I saw, on the sink, a gob of chewing gum with hair stuck inside. Gum Abuse. Happened way too often. Though Madeline must have been sitting down because otherwise how could anyone reach? “Are you all right?”

“Go away!”

I sighed. “Don’t you get tired of being mean?”

“I told you to go away!”

“Do you want me to get you a scissors?”

“You ask too many questions, Lauren.”

I probably did. Mom went around smiling. Mark punched people in the face. Dad sighed and got tired. I asked questions. We all had to do something. 

I walked into the stall next to hers, stood on the toilet, and peered down at her hunched body. She looked pathetic and alone and would probably hide in there all day. “You shouldn’t have said that about me. I never did anything to you. My mom never did anything to you.” I waited, but she didn’t look up. “There. Those weren’t questions.”

With that, I left her. The rest of the day, the other kids whispered and laughed about how Madeline had burst into tears in front of the class, how her mom had to pick her up from school. I didn’t tell anyone that I’d seen her so small and sad in the bathroom, though I could have. It just wasn’t my way. 

Once I had my hair down to my waist, a gap between my teeth. I believed in the power of music, that it could change the world. My name is Charlotte by the way. My father used to say that I was too big for my britches. Who uses the word “britches” these days? Though Dad said that a long time ago–we’re talking the 70s. I’m an old(er) lady now, and Dad’s long gone. 

Once I wrote a book, a stream-of-consciousness tome inspired by (you guessed it) Joyce’s Ulysses. I was eighteen and believed that if I didn’t understand something that meant it was deep. But I had passion. I would blast Jefferson Airplane and scribble my thoughts into spiral notebooks, feeling alive, poetic, and somehow important. I needed that then. Maybe I still do.

Once I had a student who called me Miss Dynamite. At the time, I taught music at what Dad called the “dipshit boarding school in the woods.”  He wasn’t far off.  The school’s name was The Ramaswami Temple, run by (you guessed it) an Indian guru who spent most days meditating. Rich hippie kids learned about drumming, macrame, and astral plane travel. After a year, I got disgusted. That’s when I chopped off my hair, put braces on my teeth. I never went back to that particular Charlotte, but I did okay. Taught at a Waldorf elementary.  Another “dipshit school” as far as Dad was concerned though he smiled when he said it.

Yesterday, my son Paul asked how old I was when my mother died. Hadn’t I ever told him? He shook his head. “I was three,” I said. “She died of lung cancer.”  I searched for something else to say but nothing came. That hardly ever happens to me. But my mother’s an empty pocket–no cash or keys or even a lipstick inside. Only grit and darkness. I wonder if Dad felt the same.

Paul returned to work, and The Cleaning Frenzy began. I wiped down the counters,  scrubbed the sink, mopped the floor. Still, I couldn’t shake that feeling of grit and darkness. My father always said, “Best to face things square on, Charlotte.”  So I grabbed paper and a pen, and before I could call myself crazy, started.   

Dear Mom,

All this time, I’ve been talking to you in my head. A daughter needs to tell her mother things. Even though you weren’t alive, I collected a laundry list of stuff to tell you. Here are a few:

• I had nightmares after you died. 
• I wanted to be a softball pitcher in high school, didn’t make the team. 
• I got Chicken Pox when I was seven, missed the school trip to the Grand Canyon.
• I wrote a poem about you once–or how I imagined you. It described a child sitting on her mother’s lap while her mother reads The Cat in the Hat. Each time her mother turned the page, the child catches the scent of cigarette smoke from her mother’s fingertips. (Did that ever happen?)
• I’ve got a son, Paul. A good man, 33 years old, married, two kids, white picket fence.
• I get bored easily, and I’m bored by this list.

Not sure why, but I feel the need to thank you. I’m not one to put off a feeling. I’ve been angry at you all these years. For dying. Think that’s over now.  Love, Charlotte

I waited, searching again. No tears came. Then I called my son. Paul’s in insurance so anticipates catastrophe much of the time. On the plus side, he always answers the phone. 

I didn’t bother with hello.  “Your grandmother’s name was Charlene. She grew up in Montana. Loved horses.”  There was silence on the other end for a full ten seconds.  “You there?”

“I’m here.” 

“Your grandpa used to say I looked like her.  My freckles in particular.  Though I felt bad, you know. Reminding him.” 

“Maybe he wanted to be reminded.”

The tears came then.  Why is it they arrive when you’re with someone else? When you’re not ready?