Promises to Keep Read online

  “Oh dear, don’t tell me I’ve landed on the obituary page again. You remember how your father nearly died that time he opened the paper and there was my picture among the deceased. My picture, no less.”

  “No, Mother, no. It’s not that. It’s this.” He pointed to a block of print surrounded by a black border on the bottom of the front page. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Tillie lifted the pot of water to the stove and turned on the burner. She glanced at the paper in her son’s hand and nodded briefly. “Oh yes, that’s my advertisement. Winston said he’d run it for me sometime this week. I had no idea he’d run it on the front page! Now, isn’t that something?”

  “You’ve run an ad in the paper telling everyone you’ve come back home?”

  Tillie nodded. “Smart, huh? It was Roz’s idea, actually. That way I don’t have to keep repeating myself; you know, explaining why I’m here and not at St. Claire’s. Now the whole town knows in one fell swoop.”

  Johnny Monroe turned his wide and by now nearly maniacal eyes toward me. My breath caught in my throat, and I felt the color drain from my face as I took a step backward. I started to shake my head, to deny any part in this strange affair, but by the time I opened my mouth to speak, Johnny Monroe had already turned back to his mother.

  “And you’ve invited the whole town to your welcome home party?”

  “What?” Tillie was breaking up vermicelli noodles to be dropped into the water once it boiled. “What welcome home party?”

  “It says here you’re having a welcome home party, potluck, everyone invited. And it says it’s today, Friday, September first, at six o’clock.”

  “Merciful heavens!” Tillie whirled around and grabbed the paper from Johnny’s hand. She glanced up at the clock, then back down at the paper. “I never said anything to Winston about a welcome home party. Six o’clock? That’s an hour from now!”

  “So you’re not throwing a party?”

  “No. Well, yes, I guess I am. That Winston Newberry! What came over him, putting in something like that?”

  “Mother!” The word exploded from Johnny Monroe’s lips. Spittle flew everywhere. “Don’t you know? He always said he’d get you back.”

  Tillie looked up from the paper. “Get me back? For what?”

  “For the birthmark, Mother. The birthmark you showed the whole town.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Johnny. I didn’t show the whole town.”

  “Well, practically the whole town. Everyone and anyone who came through the church nursery saw the Eiffel Tower in red pigment on Winston Newberry’s backside, thanks to you. Not only that, they kept on talking about it for years to come. He always said he’d get you back for that. This is only the latest – ”

  “Nonsense,” Tillie said again. “I never heard him say any such thing.”

  “Listen, Mother, I went to school with him. I should know. How do you think you’ve ended up in the obits so many times?”

  “Well, if that doesn’t beat all.” Tillie put a finger to her chin and frowned in thought. “We’d best get moving, then.”

  “And just what do you plan to do?”

  “Have the party, of course. Don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open, Johnny. Go home and bring back all the folding tables and chairs you have. We’re going to need them. Roz, once the water boils, throw the noodles in and keep an eye on the pot while I vacuum the house.” She took her apron off and threw it on the counter. She moved to the front hall and hollered up the stairs, “Wally! Wal-ly!”

  “What?”

  “Come down here, will you? I’m sending you out for party supplies.”

  “For what?”

  “Party supplies.”

  Wally’s footsteps came thumping down the stairs. “Who’s having a party?”

  “We are.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “What the – ”

  “Now, Wally, I’ve asked you not to use that kind of language in my house.”

  “But what – ”

  “Here’s the car keys – ”

  “I can take the car?”

  “You’ll have to. I’ll make a list of what we need. You can pick it up at Jewel, and then on your way home stop by Marie’s and pick up your mother. I’m going to need her help.”

  Esther Kinshaw from next door was the first one to arrive with a hamburger and hominy casserole in hand. She was followed by our neighbors on the other side, our neighbors across the street, neighbors we had met only in passing, neighbors we had never met at all, Fred the butcher, Hazel the cashier, Leonard the postman, and Winston Newberry, the editor and instigator of the whole affair. While everyone else came with a contribution of food for the potluck, Editor Newberry came with a camera slung around his neck and a tape recorder in hand. He was determined to get a story for the Sunday edition, he said, “and I’m going to handle this one myself.”

  “Is it true?” Tillie asked him when he first showed up.

  “Is what true?” Winston Newberry said, one eyebrow raised.

  “Is it true you did this because of the birthmark?”

  The eyebrow dropped as Winston Newberry sniffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mrs. Monroe.” He snapped her picture, leaving her blinking wildly from the flash before moving on to the punch in the dining room.

  I saw our car inching its way through the gauntlet of vehicles parked in front of the house. Wally turned into the drive, stopping midway to the detached garage in the backyard. Mom climbed out of the passenger side. Wally rolled on and parked while Mom stood in the middle of the driveway, looking dumbfounded, her feet refusing to carry her to the porch. I ran out to meet her.

  “Roz, what’s going on here?”

  She didn’t look happy. I tried to sound cheerful. “We’re having a party.”

  “We are?”

  “Well, Tillie is. Did you see the paper today?”

  Mom shook her head dully.

  “Oh, um, well there was an ad in the paper, right on the front page,” I said.

  “An ad about what?”

  “Tillie’s welcome home party.”

  “Her welcome home party?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She didn’t tell me she was having a party.”

  “She didn’t know she was having it.”

  “She didn’t? Then what – ”

  “She just found out an hour ago. Did Wally pick up the party supplies?”

  “I don’t know. I guess so. Roz, just who did she invite to this party?”

  “The whole town.”

  “The whole town?”

  “But don’t worry, Mom. She doesn’t think everyone’s going to come.”

  At that moment Mom looked ready to collapse. I grabbed her hand and started pulling her toward the house. “It’s going to be fun, Mom. You’ll see.”

  Mom started forward, but her feet were reluctant to follow. Together we stumbled across the front yard and into the house, full now of warm bodies, loud chatter, and the aroma of dozens of homemade dishes. John Monroe had left and come back with folding tables that were scattered throughout the rooms downstairs. Women were busy arranging casseroles, salads, breads, and desserts on the tables, children scrambled underfoot, and two men were hanging a banner above the living room fireplace that read, “Welcome Home, Tillie!”

  Mom faltered at the sight of the banner, but I pulled her down the hall to the kitchen, where Tillie was directing traffic. The kitchen was full of ladies heating dishes in the oven and stirring pitchers of lemonade and iced tea. Wally burst in through the kitchen door carrying two grocery bags and yelling, “Here’s your paper goods and junk, Tillie.”

  “Just in time,” she said. “We can’t eat all this food without paper plates. Help me get everything unpacked, will you? Oh, Janis, you’re home! Can you lend us a hand?”

  Mom’s eyes widened, and I felt sure I was going to lose her this time, but she mustered her strength and said, “Tillie,
what on earth do you think you’re doing?”

  “Right now I’m just trying to feed the crowd.”

  “But . . . how could you – ”

  Tillie raised a hand. “You’ve got to believe me when I say I didn’t plan this. Apparently I’m paying for past indiscretions. But I don’t know, it’s kind of nice, isn’t it? All these people turning out to welcome me home.”

  “But, Tillie, I – ”

  It was at that moment that a fiddler and a banjo player marched down the hall and out the kitchen door, a snake of men, women, and children trailing them like a conga line. Out in the yard the two musicians met up with a bass player who was keeping time by pounding the grass with his foot. Spontaneous dancing broke out as the three men slid into some sort of hillbilly tune. Mom stepped to the window and stared, eyes wide, jaw unhinged.

  By the time she turned around, Tillie had wandered off into the crowd. Mom looked from me to Wally to Valerie, who was watching the antics in the kitchen from her high chair. Squeezing her hands together and taking a deep breath, Mom said, “We will try to make the best of this.”

  Wally shook his head. “I told you it was a mistake to let her live here. We should have taken her right back to the old folks home.”

  Mom shut her eyes, slowly opened them. I thought for a moment she might agree, but she forced a smile and said, “Tillie’s been a big help, and I need her. I’m sure this” – she swept the crowded room with her eyes – “won’t happen again.”

  “Sure, Mom,” Wally said, “just like you thought she’d never come back after that first time she showed up on the porch.”

  A woman none of us recognized handed Mom an apron and said, “As long as you’re here, honey, you might as well make yourself useful.”

  Mom looked at the apron, shrugged, and put it on. “Wally and Roz, you two make yourselves useful too.”

  “Doing what?” Wally said.

  “I don’t know. Pass out some hors d’oeuvres or something. Roz, you take care of Valerie. And – Oh, Dad!”

  I was surprised to see Grandpa striding down the hall. I ran to him and threw my arms around his waist. He kissed the top of my head, and together we walked the rest of the way to the kitchen. “Janis, honey,” he said, “why didn’t you tell me you were having a party? I’d have helped you out.”

  “Well, I didn’t know. I – ”

  “You didn’t know you were throwing a party?”

  “No, I . . . well, never mind, Dad. Where’s Marie?”

  “She’s still at the store. I was driving by and noticed all the cars parked on your street, so I thought I’d stop – ”

  “Yes. We seem to have attracted the whole town.”

  “Wow, honey, you’ve even hired a three-piece band. I didn’t know you could throw a party like this. What’s the occasion?”

  “Gramps,” I said, looking up at him, “did you see the paper today?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t read it yet. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Actually, Gramps,” Wally said, “it’s a party for Tillie.”

  “Tillie?”

  “You know, the nutcase who lives with us.”

  “Wally!”

  “Look, Mom, I just call them like I see them.”

  Gramps shook his head. “Wally, I’ve spoken with you before about disrespecting your elders.”

  “Yeah, well.” Wally shrugged and smirked. “I’ve got to find some hors d’oeuvres to hand out to our guests.”

  He moved away, and Mom and Grandpa let him go. “Listen, Dad,” Mom said, “as long as you’re here, grab a plate and enjoy the food. I’d better get busy. I think it’s going to be a long night.”

  Mom was right. It was a long night, with the party going on past midnight, our property invaded by a parade of mostly unfamiliar faces coming and going, eating and drinking, dancing and laughing and chattering. Tillie flitted about from guest to guest, the life of the party, queen for a day, the one being honored and cheered and welcomed back to the home that was no longer legally hers. Johnny Monroe stayed close by her side, toasting her again and again with a lift of a plastic cup filled with orange raspberry punch, explaining that yes, yes, the nursing home had been a temporary arrangement, only temporary, since who, after all, could separate Tillie Monroe from the house she had helped build with her own two hands?

  I too moved around from room to room, eating, watching, listening, pulling Valerie along with me until she grew tired and began to whine. I eventually took her upstairs and put her to bed, then moved back down to the kitchen, where I found Mom in the middle of an assembly line of men washing dishes at the sink. One man handed dirty casserole dishes and pie tins and silverware to Mom, which she washed and handed off to two men on the other side of her who were drying the dishes and placing them in careful piles on the kitchen table.

  Never having seen my mother surrounded by men, I watched in bewilderment. I wondered whether Mom was all right or whether I should fetch Grandpa so he could toss these strangers out on their ears.

  “Mom?” I said.

  She turned from the sink and beamed at me. “Yes, Roz?”

  “Should I get Gramps?”

  She looked puzzled. “Whatever for? Is there a problem?”

  Apparently not. I felt myself frown.

  As Mom turned back to the sink, she said something to the men, who erupted in laughter. I suddenly remembered Tillie’s prediction: “Someday your mother will marry again. She’s young and pretty, and I can’t imagine her living the rest of her life alone.”

  I took a step backward, and then another, inching slowly away from this scene playing out at the kitchen sink. These men must have found Mom attractive, like she was a lady or something and not a mother, my mother. They might think they could date her, maybe even marry her.

  I felt the urge to find Wally. “Mom?”

  She turned to me again, looking a little less happy and a little more annoyed. “Yes, Roz?”

  “Where’s Wally?”

  She surveyed the kitchen with her eyes, as though he was supposed to be there somewhere.

  One of the men answered for her. “Last I saw, he was headed out back with the Delaney twins.”

  “The Delaney twins?” I echoed.

  “Don’t you know them?” The man looked at me from behind dark horn-rimmed glasses. His sleeves were rolled up, and he was swiping at a bread tin with one of our dish towels.

  I shook my head. I was having trouble breathing.

  “Luke and Lenny Delaney,” he explained. “They live up the street.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, the three of them were carrying some trash out back.”

  “Okay.” I turned and ran out the kitchen door and across the dark lawn toward the trash cans by the garage. A couple hours earlier the musicians had moved to the front yard to take advantage of the light of the streetlamps, leaving the backyard littered but empty of partiers.

  I found Wally and the Delaney twins sitting on upturned cinder–blocks between the garage and the neighbor’s fence. They all three had small, tightly rolled cigarettes held to their lips. When they realized someone was among them in the dark, there was a shifting, a nervous dropping of hands, an uneasy silence.

  Then, “Oh, it’s you, Roz. What do you want?”

  “What are you doing, Wally?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, what’s that funny smell?”

  “Funny smell?”

  “Yeah.” I sniffed deeply. “Like . . . I don’t know. Don’t you smell it?”

  The twins snickered. Wally said, “Maybe someone’s burning leaves.”

  “Are you smoking?”

  “What if I am?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Wally said, “What’d you come out here for?”

  “Listen, Wally, some men are helping Mom wash the dishes.”

  Silence. Then the Delaney boys exploded into laughter.

  “So?” Wally lifte
d the cigarette to his lips. I saw the end burn red as he inhaled.

  Then it hit me. “You’re smoking pot or something, aren’t you?”

  Wally exhaled, his head bobbing. “Maybe.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  More laughter from the twins. They were working on their own cigarettes again.

  “Who says I can’t?” Wally’s voice was flat. I felt as though I weren’t talking with my brother at all, but with someone I didn’t know.

  “I’m telling Mom,” I threatened.

  “No you’re not.”

  “Says who?” I took a step backwards.

  “Says Hamilton.”

  “Who’s Hamilton?”

  Wally tightened his lips around what I now understood to be a joint while he rummaged around in his shorts pocket. He pulled out a bill and waved it at me.

  I didn’t take it. “That’s a bribe.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m not taking it.”

  “You might want to reconsider. It’s ten dollars.”

  “Where’d you get that kind of money?”

  Wally shrugged. “I’m working, aren’t I?”

  The Delaney boys laughed again. I didn’t know what they found so hilarious. One said, “You’re going to give the kid ten dollars just to shut her up? You’re crazy, Sanderson. Just tell her how it is.”

  Wally didn’t say anything but went on holding the bill in my direction. Finally he muttered, “Go on. Buy yourself something pretty.” The joint moved up and down as he spoke.

  I stepped forward slowly and took the money.

  “What a waste,” the other Delaney boy said. “You know what you can get for ten bucks on the street?”

  “Shut up, Delaney,” Wally said. “It’s my money, and I’ll do what I want with it.”

  I looked at Wally, then at the twins. My stomach turned at the sickly sweet smell hanging over them. I looked back at Wally, hoping somehow to connect with him, but he was gazing up at the night sky like he was looking for a star to fly away to. Had he succeeded in flying off, he wouldn’t have been any more lost to me than he was now. A stranger had taken over my brother’s body; the Wally I knew had been pushed out, sent into exile, expelled from the world I’d always known before tonight.