Promises to Keep Read online

  Tillie laid the biscuits on a baking sheet and slid them into the oven.

  “Tillie?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “You think Mom will really get married again someday?”

  Shutting the oven door, Tillie turned to me and said, “Don’t tell me you don’t want your mother’s happiness either. You’re not like Wally, I hope.”

  “No, I . . .” I stopped, thought a moment, said quietly, “I do want Mom to be happy. That’s the thing.”

  “Listen, Roz, a pretty young lady like your mother is going to get married again someday. I’d bet my bottom dollar on it. But like I said to Wally, going out on one date with Tom Barrows doesn’t mean your mom is going to marry the man. Maybe she just wanted to get out of the house. Or maybe it was a movie she really wanted to see but she didn’t want to spend the money on it herself. Who knows?” She smiled and shrugged. “There’s no use trying to cross any bridges before you reach them.”

  I wasn’t trying to cross any bridges. I just didn’t want Mom walking down the aisle with Tom Barrows or any other man that wasn’t Daddy. I wanted nothing to get in the way of the dream that had lately been taking shape in my mind, that of Daddy drinking the magic potion and becoming the good Dr. Jekyll permanently so he could come home again. He would come home, and we would all be a family like we were before – the way we were on the good days, when he acted like he loved us and we were happy.

  I didn’t realize until the night Tom Barrows showed up to run interference that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was Daddy.

  chapter

  11

  On Saturday morning I awoke to the aroma of bacon frying on the stove. Throwing on my bathrobe, vaguely aware I wasn’t feeling well, I moved groggily downstairs to see whether Mom or Tillie was in the kitchen.

  It was Mom, her apron tied around her waist over her long flannel nightgown. Valerie was in her high chair drinking orange juice. I stood in the hall for a moment studying Mom, looking for telltale signs of love and possible impending matrimony, but she looked the same as always – a little tired, pretty in spite of her rumpled hair, intent on the task at hand.

  “Mom?”

  Startled, she turned abruptly. “Oh, Roz! Good morning, honey. How’s my sweetheart?”

  How was I? Taking stock, I realized I was gritting my teeth against a sore throat and trying not to swallow. I didn’t want to be sick. “I’m good,” I said. “How was your . . . um, how was the movie?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It was kind of ho-hum, really. Nothing you would have enjoyed.”

  “So you didn’t have a good time?” I asked hopefully.

  “Oh no. I didn’t say that. It was all very nice, really.”

  That being the case, I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to know anything about this Tom Barrows fellow. Maybe if we didn’t say his name, he’d go away.

  “Are you working today?”

  “Not today. It’s my Saturday off.”

  “Where’s Tillie?”

  “She was in the shower when I came down. Listen, honey, while I’m making the scrambled eggs, would you mind pouring Valerie a bowl of Cheerios?”

  I pulled Valerie’s plastic bowl from the cupboard, poured cereal and milk into it, then set it on the tray in front of her. I picked up her little spoon from the tray and put it in her pudgy fist. “There you go, scooter pie,” I said.

  Mom stopped beating the eggs and looked at me over her shoulder.

  I bit my lower lip sheepishly. “Sorry, Mom,” I said. “It just came out.” Scooter pie was what Daddy had always called Valerie. Now that nickname brought Daddy into the house in a rush of bad memories.

  Mom sighed heavily and shut her eyes a moment, as though waiting for the images to pass. When she drew in her next breath, she opened her eyes and tried to smile at me. Then she went back to beating the eggs – this time with a little more force, so that some of the goop splashed over the sides of the bowl and made yellow puddles on the counter.

  I turned to Valerie and made a funny face. “Rozzy funny,” she said with a laugh. I kissed her forehead and poured myself a cup of milk to drink. The cold felt good against my throat.

  “Mom, can I go down to the drugstore today to get an ice cream cone?” I asked. “I’ll use my own allowance money.”

  “I suppose that’ll be all right. But I’d like to see you get some of your homework done first.”

  The morning dragged by as I worked and reworked long division problems. At my desk in my room, I could hear Mom and Wally downstairs arguing about Mom’s date the night before.

  “I’m just saying you could have asked me first,” Wally said.

  “What did you expect me to do, Wally? Tell him I have to ask my son’s permission to have dinner with him?”

  “When we left Minnesota, you said it was just going to be the four of us from now on – ”

  “Well, I didn’t mean I’d never – ”

  “And now, to start off, we’ve got some crazy old lady living with us – ”

  Tillie called from somewhere else in the house, “That’s a fine way to talk about the person who’s opened her home to you, young man.”

  “We own the house, Tillie, not you – ”

  “That’s paperwork, Wally. All paperwork.”

  “Yeah, and money. Plenty of that.”

  “What’s money compared to – ”

  “Yeah, I know, I know. Sweat equity. Stuff it, Tillie, I’m tired of hearing – ”

  Mom interrupted. “Wally, I won’t have you talking to Tillie like that. You know we’d be in deep trouble without her.”

  “Well, if she came here to die, why doesn’t she just go ahead and do it. What’s she waiting for?”

  “Wally!”

  Tillie again. “I can’t go until the Lord calls my name, and so far I don’t hear Him calling.”

  “Wally, you apologize to Tillie this minute,” Mom said.

  “Nothing doing. I’m going to work. I’m already late.”

  The front door slammed. The house was quiet. I lifted my head and looked out the window, watching Wally pound down the sidewalk toward town.

  “I’m sorry, Tillie,” Mom said. “Honestly, sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to do with that boy.”

  “Not to worry, Janis. If he thinks life will be better when I’m gone, he’s just whistling Dixie. Just wait till it really happens. We’ll see who’s sorry then.”

  Mara was on the bench sipping a fountain drink by the time I got there. She squinted up at me against the sun. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming,” she said.

  “My mom made me eat some lunch before I came.”

  “You want some ice cream?”

  I shook my head, sat down on the bench. “Naw. I don’t think so.”

  “You sick or something?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel so good.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  I shrugged. “Just a sore throat.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have come.”

  “I wanted to.”

  She looked at me a moment, put her lips to the straw. Her cheeks caved in as she sipped. “Well, I’m glad you came. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Anything. That’s what friends do, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “So.” She took another long sip while she looked out over the street. “How come you moved here all the way from Minnesota?”

  I rolled my eyes toward the sky as I thought about how to answer. I thought for so long my new friend grew impatient. “Never mind,” she said. “Forget I asked, if you don’t want to tell me.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, I let it out quickly with the words, “Listen, Mara, I’ll tell you why, but you have to swear never to tell anyone else.”

  Mara frowned, cocked her head at me. “All right. I swear.”

  For a moment our gazes met. Som
ething told me I could trust the person behind those big brown eyes. I shifted my focus to the street and said quietly, “My parents split up. My grandpa lives here, so he helped us move down. Mom wanted to get away from Daddy.”

  Mara nodded as she went on sipping her drink. Finally she said, “What’s so bad about it that you have to keep it a secret? Lots of kids’ parents get divorced.”

  I shrugged, made a small taut line of my mouth.

  Mara said, “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  I nodded.

  “I bet your daddy was a drunk.”

  Wide-eyed, I heard myself whisper, “How did you know?”

  “Why else would a woman want to get away from a man?”

  We didn’t say anything for a long while. I listened as Mara slurped up the last drops of her soda. Then she said, “Did he ever beat her?”

  I froze, every muscle in my body stiff as ice. How to answer? How to tell someone I hardly knew that my daddy had hit my mother more times than I could remember? It was a part of him that I wanted to forget, a part of him that I wanted to seal up behind a brick wall, so it couldn’t escape and I wouldn’t have to see it anymore. I swallowed the truth and shook my head. “No,” I lied. “He never hit my mom.”

  “You were lucky then,” she said. “Lots of men, once they get real drunk, they end up taking it out on their wife and kids.”

  “Yeah, well, not my daddy. He was always pretty good to us. He’d do a lot of fun stuff with me – you know, take me places, buy me things, stuff like that.”

  “Uh-huh.” She sounded like she didn’t quite believe me. “So your mama just got tired of the drinking.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He couldn’t quit?”

  I had to think a minute. “I don’t think he ever tried.”

  “Not even when your mama left him? Sometimes a man will straighten up once his woman works up the courage to leave.”

  I shrugged. “If he’s trying to quit, I don’t know about it. We haven’t been gone all that long, but we don’t hear anything from Daddy.”

  “He doesn’t have visiting rights?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you’ll never see him again.”

  I wanted to tell Mara that I thought I had seen him, that I’d spotted someone in Mills River who wore a fishing hat just like his and maybe it was him, though I couldn’t be sure. I said, “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll see him someday.”

  “Yeah,” Mara said. “Maybe.”

  “Well, you’re lucky. Your mom and dad are still together.”

  Mara’s eyes grew small at that, and she lifted her hand to the locket that hung around her neck. She didn’t say anything.

  “You got any brothers and sisters?” I asked.

  “A whole slew of them,” Mara said. She fingered the locket for a moment before tucking it under her shirt. “They’re all a lot older than me. My mom and dad, they’re grandparents already. They were grandparents before I was born.”

  I nodded. “I thought you might be a whoopsie.”

  “A whoopsie?” she echoed. “What’s that?”

  “That’s what Daddy called a kid whose parents weren’t trying to have any kids, but one came along anyway.”

  “A whoopsie,” Mara said again, sounding out the word. “Yeah, your daddy’s right. That’s what I am.”

  “But that’s nothing bad, you know.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “My mom says whoopsies must be destined for something special, because they come along even though nobody wants them. I mean, of course their parents want them after they’re born, but . . . you know what I mean.”

  Mara nodded doubtfully. “I know I wasn’t supposed to be here, but I’m here anyway. I hope your mom’s right. I want to do something special.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I want to be a college professor for one thing, and on top of that I want to be a writer, a great writer,” she said. Her eyes took on a faraway look as she added quietly, “Like my daddy.”

  “Like your daddy?” I asked.

  She snapped back to the present and turned to me warily. “Promise you won’t – ”

  “Roz!”

  Mara and I turned as one in the direction of the voice. Tillie was lumbering down the sidewalk, pulling the empty wagon behind her.

  I lifted a hand, none too eagerly. “Hi, Tillie.”

  “Who’s that?” Mara asked.

  “Tillie. She lives with us and helps my mom with the housework and stuff.”

  “Like she’s your maid or something?”

  “Kind of. But don’t tell her that. She thinks she owns our house.”

  “What?”

  Tillie drew up alongside the bench and stopped. “Your mom said you were here getting ice cream. I’m on my way to Jewel to pick up some groceries. Do you want to come along?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  She looked at Mara and back at me. Smiling, she asked, “Who’s your friend?”

  “Mara Nightingale,” I said. “I know her from school.”

  “Nightingale,” Tillie repeated. “Why, I know your folks. Willie and Hester, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Mara nodded.

  “Oh yes. Fine people, those two. We were on Mayor Hamilton’s race relations committee some years back. We managed to get the roads paved for the Negro folks over in Crestmont. Got streetlights put in too. Folks in Mills River, well . . . I like to think we’re ahead of our time.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Another nod.

  “Though I predict the day’s going to come when we won’t see segregated neighborhoods the way we do now. Someday, whites and blacks will be neighbors, living side by side. Won’t that be something?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’ll be something.”

  “Is your mother still doing alterations down at Goodwin’s?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s still there.”

  Tillie gave a satisfied nod. “She’s one of the best seamstresses around. She did both my daughters-in-law’s wedding gowns, you know.”

  “No, ma’am, I didn’t know.”

  “You take after her? You like to sew?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m no good with a needle.”

  “She’s going to be a writer,” I broke in. “She writes poetry and stuff. And, Mara, you don’t have to say ma’am to Tillie. She’s just Tillie.”

  Tillie didn’t hear what I said to Mara because she was leaning over me, studying my face as though it were something indecipherable. “Merciful heavens, Roz!” she cried at last. “Your cheeks are all flushed. You not feeling well?”

  By now I felt too lousy to try to hide it. I shook my head at Tillie and shrugged.

  She laid a hand on my forehead. “You’re burning with fever, child. I’ve got to get you home and into bed. Come on.” She waved toward the wagon. “Hop in and I’ll pull you.”

  “That’s all right, Tillie,” I said. “I can walk.”

  “Over my dead body. No child of mine is going to walk six blocks with a fever.”

  “But, Tillie – ”

  “In, young lady!”

  I looked at Mara and made a face of feigned disgust. Secretly, I was glad to have Tillie pull me home.

  “Soon as we get home, I’m calling Dr. Sawyer,” Tillie said as I picked myself up off the bench. “He took care of all my boys. I know I’m perfectly capable of nursing you back to health on my own, but let’s call the doctor this time around, just to be on the safe side.”

  I settled in the wagon and, drawing my knees up to one cheekbone, made a pillow of my kneecaps.

  “Hope I see you in school on Monday, Roz.”

  I lifted a hand toward Mara. I felt myself sinking fast.

  “You give my regards to your folks, all right, Mara?” Tillie said amiably.

  “Yes, ma’am, I will.”

  “Say, is your father still at Tinkerman’s Garage?”

  Mara didn’t respond for a moment. Her eyes
darted from me to Tillie and back again. Finally, very quietly, she said, “Yes, ma’am, he is.”

  “That’s good to know. Mrs. Anthony’s car could use some work and I need a good mechanic. I’ll call Tinkerman’s on Monday, see if Mr. Tinkerman can get Willie to look under the hood.”

  Mara lifted her chin in a small nod even as her eyes rolled toward me. Something unspoken passed between us, something sad and hurtful. When the wagon started up with a jerk, she looked away.

  Our first real conversation as friends, and already she had lied to me about her daddy.

  chapter

  12

  Dr. Sawyer gave me a shot of penicillin and ordered three days of bed rest. Tillie played nursemaid, making chicken soup, bringing me aspirin, tracking my temperature. I read and worked on schoolwork and slept.

  On Monday afternoon I awoke from a nap to find Tillie propped up on pillows on the other bed in my room, another pillow beneath the heels of her stocking feet, the newspaper spread open across her lap. But she wasn’t reading. She was staring off into space with that glazed-over look in her eyes that I’d seen before. She could sit motionless like that for long stretches of time, gazing out the window or down at the floor, her eyes dull and more or less sightless, as though someone had pulled down the shades. Mom decided when Tillie got like that, she was napping with her eyes open. Wally complained that she’d gone catatonic on us. Once he said it loud enough for her to hear, and she snapped out of it long enough to say, “Keep it up and I’ll show you catatonic, young man.”

  I pushed myself up on one elbow and asked quietly, “Tillie?”

  No answer.

  A little louder this time. “Tillie?”

  She turned to me then, and it was almost as though I could see her coming back from far away. Once she was there, she said, “Yes, Roz?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Oh.” She smiled a small wistful smile. “Just remembering.”

  “Remembering what?”

  Instead of answering my question, she said, “Do you realize how much of our lives we forget?”

  She waited for an answer, but I didn’t have one. I simply frowned and shook my head.

  “Just think of it,” she went on. “Every day has one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes. Did you know that?”