Promises to Keep Read online

  “Why, yes – ”

  “I heard you call him by that name yesterday.” She seemed then to finally realize I was in the room. By then I had dished up a bowl of oatmeal for Valerie and another one for myself. I’d taken the seat at the table on the other side of her, opposite Mom. Wally was eating his cereal standing up, leaning against the counter. In my peripheral vision I saw Tillie’s round face turn to me, and I suddenly felt myself caught in the crosshairs of some great machine gun. “And what’s your name, little girl?” she asked.

  The spoon in my hand came to a dead stop two inches from my open mouth. A distinct dislike for this intruder snaked its way up from the soles of my feet and into every nook and cranny of my body. I resented being called a little girl. Valerie at two was a little girl. I was eleven. Already I was shedding my little girl appearance and was proud of that fact. Every night and every morning I brushed my long wheat-colored hair until it shone, and whenever Mom was out of the house, I snuck into her bathroom to experiment with her makeup. Back in Minnesota Eddie Arrington had told me I was pretty, and I’d dared to dream that maybe someday he and I would end up dating, but our move to Mills River had put a swift end to any thoughts of Eddie.

  As my oatmeal-laden spoon descended in retreat toward the bowl and my eyes rolled left toward Tillie, the old woman was already attacking me with a barrage of questions. “Well?” she asked. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

  “Tell her your name, honey,” Mom urged impatiently.

  “My name,” I said slowly, “is Roz.”

  “Ross?” she sputtered. “That was my husband’s name. Ross Monroe. What kind of name is that for a little girl?”

  Wally choked on some oatmeal, trying not to laugh, and that made me even angrier. Speaking even more slowly, as though to someone stupid, I said, “It’s not Ross. It’s Rozzzz.” I drew out the z for so long I sounded like a bumblebee in flight. When I stopped buzzing, I added, “With a z. It’s short for Rosalind.”

  She looked at me a moment, her blue eyes staring out from behind those gray horn-rimmed glasses. She seemed to be deep in thought. Then she asked, “You spell Rosalind with a z?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “With an s.”

  “Then why do you spell Roz with a z?”

  An unmistakable sensation of heat moved up my neck and fanned out across my cheeks. In my mind I was picturing Tillie Monroe with oatmeal splashed across her floral print dress, and Mom must have somehow seen the image projected on my face, because she stood abruptly and said, “Can I pour you some more coffee, Mrs. Monroe?”

  Mom’s question managed to pull the old woman’s attention away from me and on to more pressing issues. “Yes, please,” she said, lifting her cup to Mom. “And a bowl of oatmeal too, if you don’t mind. Heavy on the brown sugar, with a dab of butter and cream.”

  Mom, with a barely concealed lift of her brows, moved away from the table to fill Tillie’s order. Tillie sat back in her chair and let off a sigh of satisfaction. She opened the napkin at her place and laid it across her lap, then looked around the room and asked, “So where’s the mister?”

  Mom lurched stiffly at the question, as though she’d been slapped across the shoulder blades with a broom handle. Before she could answer, Wally spoke up. “There is no mister. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Now, Wally – ” Mom started.

  Tillie interrupted with a wave of her hand. “Say no more,” she said. “The boy’s right. Whatever happened between you and the former man of the house is not my business.”

  The room became quiet. Valerie had finished her oatmeal and was getting fidgety, so I took her out of the high chair and settled her in my lap. She leaned her head against my shoulder and stuck her thumb into her mouth. We were trying to break her of the habit, but I figured if it kept her quiet, she could go ahead and suck her thumb for now.

  Mom came back to the table with the bowl of oatmeal and the second cup of coffee. Tillie nodded. She looked around the room again, taking in each of us one at a time. “Well, if anyone has to live in my house, it might as well be nice folks like you.”

  Wally crossed his arms. “It’s not your house anymore.”

  “Wally – ”

  “Well, it isn’t, Mom. She can’t come barging in here like she owns the place, ordering you around and – ”

  “Wally, please – ”

  Tillie lifted a hand again, the conversational traffic cop. “Young man, I know how you feel – ”

  “No you don’t – ”

  “You think I’m some demented old lady who can’t accept the fact that her home has been sold.”

  “Well, yeah – ”

  “Sold right out from under her by her own sons – ”

  “Now, Mrs. Monroe,” Mom broke in, “we had no idea. I mean, the house was vacant. It was on the market.”

  “Of course it was. But against my wishes. I wanted to die in this house, and obviously, I’m not dead yet.”

  “Nevertheless, Mrs. Monroe, the house has been sold. To me. I am the legal owner now.”

  “But, you see, there’s only this one more thing I have to do. Only one. And it won’t be long now. I can promise you that.”

  Tillie Monroe and Mom stared at each other for what seemed a long time. Tillie’s gaze was one of determined pleading; Mom’s, complete bewilderment. Finally Mom asked, “How can you say such a thing?”

  “I have one foot over there already, and this is my jumping-off spot. I want to go straight from here to heaven.”

  Mom opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, the doorbell rang.

  “That would be Johnny,” Tillie announced. She turned slightly in her chair and hollered over her shoulder, “Come on in, Johnny. We’re having breakfast. You might as well join us for a cup of coffee.”

  The same exasperated little man who came for his mother the day before now let himself into the house and hurried down the hall. Amid a hail of oaths, he entered the kitchen, begged Mom’s pardon for the intrusion and the swearing, and proceeded to berate his mother for once again escaping the confines of St. Claire’s Home for the Aged. For the first time I understood the saying “spitting mad,” as I watched tiny drops of spittle fly from his mouth and rain down like missiles over Tillie’s head.

  “Now, Johnny, calm yourself,” Tillie demanded. “You’re ruining my breakfast.”

  Mom stood. “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Monroe?”

  Flustered, Mr. Monroe shook his head. “I’m already late for work. Mother, come on. We’re going now.”

  Tillie’s eyebrows hung low over her eyes. “But I haven’t finished my oatmeal, and I’m hungry.”

  “Why don’t you let her finish,” Mom suggested, “while I pour you a cup of coffee?”

  The man loosened his tie and took a deep breath. He looked at his mother and back at Mom. “Oh, all right.” Holding out a hand, he added, “I’m John Monroe, by the way. I’m very glad to meet you.”

  Mom shook his hand. “Janis Anthony. Please, have a seat.”

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the seat Mom had just vacated. “I’m really very sorry about all this. Very sorry.”

  “Can it, Johnny,” Tillie muttered as she shoveled oatmeal into her mouth. Temporarily depositing the cereal into one cheek, she said, “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I’m just taking care of business. I’m sure Mrs. Anthony can understand that.”

  “Well, I – ” Mom started, but John Monroe interrupted.

  “Mother, you can finish your oatmeal, but this is the last time you’re setting foot in this house.”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “But that’s just it, Mother. You don’t have anything to say about it.”

  “And that’s what’s always been the matter with you, Johnny. You’re not like your father at all. You’ve always had to have the last word.”

  “Now, you know I only want what’s best for you.”

&nb
sp; “Hogwash, Johnny. You wanted to get your share of the money out of this house, and you know it.”

  “Mother, I – ”

  “Cream and sugar, Mr. Monroe?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Anthony.”

  “All I ever wanted was just to be allowed to finish up here.” Tillie Monroe had both her hands clenched into fists on the tabletop. The one hand clutched her spoon like a flag on a rampart. “This is where my heart is, Johnny. And there’s so little time left. It’s really not too much to ask, is it?”

  I was surprised to see tears in her eyes. Mom turned toward the sink, and Wally looked down at his feet. A sense of awkwardness hung in the air, as though a scene were being played out that we weren’t supposed to be watching. To my chagrin Valerie chose that moment to pull her thumb out of her mouth and laugh.

  Tillie looked at her and smiled. She laid a solid old hand on Valerie’s head and stroked her hair. “That’s right, honey,” she said. “No use crying when you can just as well laugh.”

  With that, she finished the last few bites of her oatmeal and left the house without another word.

  chapter

  3

  Grandpa Lehman and his wife, Marie, lived four blocks away in an old Victorian house with a mansard roof and flower boxes beneath the first-floor windows. It was not the house he’d shared with his first wife, Luella, my grandmother. Grams died when I was six, and not long after that Gramps was offered a job in Chicago, which took him away from our native Minnesota. He wanted to go. With Luella gone, he said he needed the chance to make a fresh start. He decided Chicago was too corrupt to live in, though, so he settled in Mills River, a small town on the train line, about a half hour outside of the city in DuPage County. Though alone, he bought a house in Mills River big enough to hold three generations; he was somewhat claustrophobic and always liked to have a lot of room to live in.

  He wasn’t alone for long, though. After less than a year in Mills River, he met Marie and married again. She moved into the house and brought along her maid, her cook, and her part-time gardener, which meant that Gramps never again had to wander around that big old house by himself. Mom said that’s how it was with men; they didn’t like to be alone. As for women, she added, they often prayed to be alone, but finding solitude was sometimes a whole lot harder than finding a mate.

  Grandpa was a chemical engineer, though I’ve never been sure what he actually did for a living. When I was a child, I thought he painted shoes. That idea was born on a winter day in Minnesota when Gramps and I were snuggled together on a couch in his home, studying the illustrated cover of a magazine. The picture was a cartoonish depiction of a huge machine with robotic arms and all sorts of cogs and wheels and rubber belts. As complicated as it was in its mechanism, it apparently had only one purpose – to paint shoes. I stared at the ladies’ high-heeled pump, newly splashed with red, rolling off the final assembly belt, and pointing to it, I said to Gramps, “Is that what you do at work?”

  Gramps smiled and had a funny little twinkle in his eye when he said, “Well, yes, something like that.”

  Of course he knew a five-year-old wouldn’t understand his job as a chemical engineer, so he gave the easy answer. But even years later I still imagined the morning train carrying Gramps into Chicago, where he worked with the big machine that painted shoes.

  Marie owned a women’s clothing store on Grand Avenue, the main shopping street that cut through the center of Mills River. She’d grown up in a working-class family and, with no chance for college, had started out as a buyer at the store straight out of high school. But Marie O’Connell was a hard worker and a shrewd businesswoman, and on top of that she had a gift for naming winning horses, placing her bets with her uncle, the bookie, in Chicago. Mom told me in confidence that it wasn’t the best way to make your fortune, but Marie was lucky and seemed to have done very well. At any rate, she’d eventually managed to buy out the original owners of the store, which officially became Marie’s Apparel in 1949.

  When Mom was making final plans to move away from Minnesota, Marie offered her a position at the store, replacing one of the clerks who left to get married. Mom, she said, would work the counter in Accessories, where she’d oversee the selling of hats, gloves, ladies’ handkerchiefs, and handbags.

  Mom was less than enthusiastic at the thought of working retail, but she was willing, since she couldn’t expect Gramps to support us once we were settled in Mills River. If she had to work somewhere, it might as well be with Marie.

  That first Saturday afternoon after we’d settled into our new house, Mom and I and Valerie walked over to Grandpa’s so Mom could talk with Marie about getting started at the store. Gramps had given Mom a car, a ten-year-old Chevy with a hundred thousand miles on it, but Mom said every penny counted now, and we would walk to as many places as we could to save on gas. She pulled Valerie in our red Radio Flyer wagon, something that Gramps had thought to give us when he furnished our house before we came down. We had escaped Minnesota with little more than the clothes on our backs, but at least we knew Gramps had made a home for us on the other end.

  We were hot and sticky when we reached Grandpa’s house on Savoy Street, and I was glad to step inside the air-conditioned rooms. Gramps swept me up in his arms, lifting my feet right off the floor, and locked me in a hug that nearly knocked the wind out of me.

  “How’s my girl?” he said when he set me back down.

  “I’m good, Gramps!” I replied happily.

  He kissed Mom’s cheek and picked Valerie up and blew a raspberry on her neck to make her giggle. Gramps was a fun-loving guy, a practical jokester, a storyteller, a man who loved to laugh and who could outlaugh anyone hands down, even when he was amused by his own jokes. Mom always said he missed his calling, that he should have been a stand-up comedian, but Gramps only laughed at that, saying show business was no business for anyone with more than a lick of sense and seven mouths to feed.

  Gramps no longer had seven mouths to feed; all his children were grown and scattered across the country. Except, that is, for his daughter Janis, whom he had lately rescued and reeled back into the fold – or at least close to it. Once Gramps had learned that Mom wanted to leave Daddy, he and Mom hatched a plan, and here we were, only four blocks away in a house that Gramps had helped Mom buy.

  I’m not so sure Marie was as happy to have us around as Gramps was. She got along with Mom all right, but she mostly ignored us kids, as though we were as interesting as toadstools that sprang up in her path overnight. She had no children of her own and didn’t seem to like kids and in fact had never been married before Gramps. She was nearly twenty years his junior but was still, as far as I could see, pretty far gone into spinsterhood when she and Gramps exchanged vows. I wasn’t sure why Gramps had married her, or she him, for that matter. They seemed mismatched somehow. Certainly Marie wasn’t like my grandmother, who was warm and loving and always doting on us grandkids as though we were the greatest thing in the world.

  But I had already learned to stop wondering why anyone married anyone else. Grown-ups made a lot of decisions I didn’t understand, and I half believed that most people were rendered senseless by the age of twenty-one.

  “Where’s Wally?” Marie asked as she came down the hall to greet us. She gave Mom a stiff hug, didn’t bother to look down at Valerie and me.

  “He’s out looking for part-time work,” Mom explained.

  “That’s my boy,” Gramps said. “A true Lehman, willing to work hard.”

  “But he’s not a Lehman,” I protested. “He’s a Sanderson.” The moment I said it, I was sorry. Mom always looked sad when anyone mentioned the name of her first husband, Wally’s dad.

  Gramps took my hand. “Let’s move into the dining room, Rozzy. Betty’s made one of her famous pound cakes. Extra good with a little chocolate sauce!”

  Betty was their cook, and when she came into the dining room pushing a little cart with the pound cake on it, I understood for the first time that Gr
amps and Marie were more than comfortable. I think I understood too, to some extent, that that didn’t necessarily mean Mom’s life was going to be easy. She had to make her own way, just as Gramps and Marie had done. While they could have easily invited us to live in this huge house with them, that had never been part of the plan. Mom was to have her own house, her own job, her own life apart from theirs.

  The grown-ups drank coffee that Betty poured from a silver coffeepot, the long black stream flowing from the narrow spout into dainty china cups. Valerie and I drank tall cold glasses of milk to wash down the pound cake drizzled with chocolate sauce. Valerie sat in the chair next to me, on top of a pillow on top of a phone book because the house wasn’t equipped for children.

  “Well, Janis,” Marie said, “it’s been almost a month since Tricia left to get married, so we’ll be glad to finally have someone permanent in Accessories again.” She stirred her coffee slowly, having added cream and two lumps of sugar that she’d dropped into the cup with silver tongs. She lifted her eyes to Mom momentarily and offered a brief smile.

  Mom settled her cup in the saucer and dabbed at her mouth with a linen napkin. “Thank you again for saving the position for me, Marie,” Mom said. “I really appreciate all the help the two of you have given me.”

  Gramps reached out and patted Mom’s hand. Marie said, “Of course, dear. Anything for family, right?”

  “Everything’s going to be just fine,” Gramps said reassuringly. He nodded and popped a generous piece of pound cake into his mouth.

  “Now, you say you haven’t worked retail before?” Marie asked.

  Mom shook her head. “I was in secretarial work – years ago, before I was married. But I’m sure it won’t be a problem. . . . I’ll catch on quickly.”

  “I’m sure, dear.” Marie lifted a hand to her hair and patted an imaginary loose strand. Every inch of her enormous beehive was in perfect alignment. Her hair fascinated me. Now and in the years to come, I was to spend hours in her presence studying the sculpture created out of her tresses; one, for something to do when I was with her, and two, because I couldn’t imagine the amount of time it took to cut, comb, curl, tease, and spray it all into place. To me, it was a work of art. But that was Marie – perfect hair, perfect makeup, perfect nails, perfect clothes. She really was quite beautiful, and maybe that was why Gramps married her.