The Lighthouse. Mary SchramskiЧитать онлайн книгу.
She walks over to the booth that is wedged in the bay window and sits across from me. “Since I’ve moved back home, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought of you. Just the other night I was thinking about how we used truth serum to tell all our secrets. Remember that?”
“How could I forget?” I laugh. She was sixteen-and-a-half. I was thirteen. Friday nights were truth-serum nights if Sandra didn’t have a date. We’d pour Coke in a juice glass, add five teaspoons of sugar, drink it down in one gulp. And then we’d laugh our butts off, probably from the sugar high.
She’d tell me secrets about the kids she went to school with, the boy she might be dating.
“Remember what you told your mother one time about Tommy Bradford?”
I shake my head, try to remember, then suddenly the memory comes pouring in. I told my mother Sandra let her boyfriend touch her breasts.
“Will you ever forgive me?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “My mother wouldn’t let me date him again.”
“Whatever happened to him?”
“Tommy’s selling shoes at the Del Amo Shopping Center. Been married and divorced three times, has four kids, and last I heard, but this is from a not reputable source—read, Tiffany Brown—he was living at the Torrance YMCA.”
“Maybe I did you a favor.”
“Oh, yeah, thanks. My mother put me on restriction for a month. You know how long a month is to a sixteen-year-old?”
My mother was tucking me in bed. I was a late developer and she was explaining that soon I’d need a training bra. I whispered that Sandra’s boyfriend touched her titties. Her blue eyes widened, but she didn’t say a word.
“Okay, speaking of dating, are you? I promise I won’t tell Jake any of the details.” Sandra grins.
“No. I don’t date, I work. And Dad doesn’t seem to care what I do. We had a small blowout on the front porch a little while ago.” This slips out, and I shake my head.
“About what?”
“I’m not sure how it started, but it got around to how he wanted me to go to college years ago. I got angry.”
“Oh, that’s just him.” She waves her hand toward our house. “He was always that way.”
“True, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Did you end on an okay note?”
“He walked into the house, and I walked over here. Do you mind if we talk about something else?” I don’t want to think about my father’s sad face, or the anger I couldn’t hold back.
“Of course not. So you aren’t dating anyone?”
“I haven’t had a date in probably a year. I’m too busy. How about you?”
“How are you defining a date?” She grins.
“Drinks, maybe dinner,” I say.
“Not a date, not a meeting, not even an intimate handshake. Who’s in this town to date?”
We both laugh and, for a moment, I feel like years ago, when we’d sit in the kitchen and talk for hours.
“That reminds me. Guess who I saw at the café?”
“What is this, twenty questions? Who’d you see?”
“Adam Williams.”
Sandra stares at me. “Who the hell is Adam Williams?”
I laugh again, feel good. “I went to school with him. So did you. Don’t you remember? He was the guy who used to walk around the school with a calculator doing square roots.”
“Brown hair, tall, average looking, pimples?”
“Yeah the brown hair, but no pimples.”
“They all looked like that.”
“He always gave teachers crap about what they didn’t know. Really smart.”
“Yeah, and?”
“I walked over to the café this morning, and he was there. He’s an engineer. Still different, very nice, though.”
“And why did you walk over to the Lard Yard early this morning?”
“Oh, I needed fresh air, some exercise.”
“Don’t we all.” She looks out the window.
I close my eyes for a moment, to get centered, tell myself to quit thinking about missing my mother. Then I look at Sandra.
“Is your dad okay otherwise? I don’t see him much.”
“He seems lonely. He hasn’t changed a thing in the house, except it’s a mess and he’s walking at night, which I think is weird.”
“Hey, walking is good for the heart,” Sandra says. “You know when my dad died, my mother got a little…” She stops. “Oh, hell, let’s not talk about this stuff. It’s too depressing.”
“Okay.”
“Just remember, it takes a long time to get over a death. Jake’s probably still dealing with a lot.”
“Probably,” I say, knowing this is true. “I just thought I’d come home and we’d connect because Mom is gone. You know, there wouldn’t be friction.”
“Maybe you need to give it more time.”
“We’ve had forty-some years. And I didn’t realize how coming back was going to affect me. I miss my mother a lot.”
“I miss her, too. Remember how she used to put on her makeup just so?” Sandra brings her hands to her face, strokes the sides.
And for a moment, I fall into a memory. My mother sitting at her vanity, looking back and smiling at me.
“It took me two years to feel okay after my father passed away, and I wasn’t as close to him as you were to your mother. Hospice says it takes time.”
“Are you still working there?”
She nods. “I’ll be there forever. I guess it’s my way of making the world a little better. They don’t pay me enough, but I stay. And the office is up on Western, close to Mama.”
“How’s she doing?” I ask.
“She’s hanging in there. The nursing home is nice, well, as nice as it can be. But every day when I go into her room, I feel guilty. But I remind myself I have to work.”
“It wouldn’t be safe for her to be alone.” I try to reassure her, but I’m not sure how. What does it feel like to be responsible for your parent?
Sandra nods, smiles a little. “You know, when I made the final decision to put her in the nursing home, I found her five blocks away, standing in the middle of the street, and she didn’t know where she was.” She sighs, rubs her eyes.
I think about Josephine, how I loved her. She was always so concerned, warm.
“What?” Sandra asks.
“I was just thinking about your mom.”
“Yeah, I do that a lot.” Sandra gets up and looks out the window to the backyard. “I see your dad once in a while, working around the house. He seems okay. Sad, distracted, but I guess that’s to be expected. I mean, anyone who knew your parents knew how crazy he was about your mother. And to have it happen so fast, not be able to say goodbye…” She stops, turns back to me. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay.” I take a deep breath. “I’m doing okay. You know years ago, did you think we’d be sitting here talking about this?”
“No.”