The Color of Ordinary Time (8 page)

Ivy disengaged from the conversation by leaning back in her chair and taking several long sips of coffee.

“She’s been a good wife to me. I’ve tried to be a good husband to her.”

Ivy did not answer him, or look at him. When it became clear that she was done with the conversation Linus turned to me, and continued on with what he had to say as if she had not just ignored him. He often used this tactic when we were younger to get through to Ivy. Speaking to her; looking at someone else. Looking at me.

“You must not think I saved her. She saved me too. Maybe even more than I ever saved her. She gave me the family I’d always wanted, the sort of home I’d always wanted. No matter what you think at first glance it’s not false. We’d known each other, well, all her life. We both knew what we were getting. It is love. Me for her, her for me. We do love each other.”

I nodded, and tried to look empathetic but Linus and I knew it did no good. Ivy had already cast the villain of the piece. Not the bolting boyfriend. Not the bitter maiden aunt. Not the lonely old bachelor. Oh, no. Her own mother, and no one else.

After Linus went back to his work, Ivy and I needed to find neutral ground. We tried the craft co-op first. I did buy the green sweater; Ivy had been right, it suited me. But the co-op was too close to home. Porter could have spotted us, or Mrs. Clack, or a dozen other people. I couldn’t relax, and neither could Ivy. Neither of us was in the mood for small talk. So in the end we headed to the nearest mall. What could be more neutral than a mall?

We combed through the bookstores, and all the sales racks, buying nothing while speaking of nothing deep. Hours passed, and we saw no one we knew. Which was for the best. Then Ivy’s stomach growled, and she checked her cell phone.

“It’s after two. We should eat,” she said.

“The food court... or do you want to get out of here?”

“The food court is fine.”

A few minutes later, seated at a small round table under a huge potted palm tree, Ivy took a bite of her pizza, and glanced over at my Chinese food. “Why does your food always look better than mine, but not until after we start eating?”

“Don’t know, but you shouldn’t be too upset. We’re merely steps away from egg rolls if you want some.”

She nodded, and we ate quietly for a few minutes. “Talk to me about something that’s not my mother.”

I looked around the mostly-empty food court. “Well, I haven’t called my grandmother or uncle yet. I’ve decided that I want to pick up a cell phone today to use with them, so that when it rings I know it’s one of them, and not my father. I think that will help me get over the fear of calling them.”

“Because if you don’t use the same phone line, he won’t know you’ve called them?“

“Modern Superstition Number Twenty-Six.”

Ivy chuckled a little.

“I don’t want any long term contracts, or texting or anything. Just a phone. Do they have that?”

“Sure. You want simple prepaid. We’ll go down to the kiosk after lunch and find you want you need.”

“Thanks.”

“So you’re going to call them tonight?”

“That’s the idea. I feel really bad. I met them Sunday, and it’s already Wednesday. I’m afraid if I don’t do something soon, I’ll chicken out.”

“What are they like?”

“I don’t really know. I mean, I didn’t meet them for very long. They seemed nice. It wasn’t exactly the best circumstances of all time.”

“Sure,” said Ivy.

“My father wants me to have nothing to do with them. Called them liars. Said my mother hated them.”

“Well, she may have.”

“Or she may have given them up for her marriage. Or a she may have been isolated from them by my father. Or, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. How would I ever know what the truth is?”

“Boy, I know that feeling.”

“Yes, welcome to the wide world of family dysfunction,” I said.

She smiled a little. “What am I going to do?”

“I thought you didn’t want to talk about Dory.”

“I don’t and I do.”

“I think it’s important to ask yourself what you can realistically do. I mean, what are your options?”

“Meaning what?”

“You can’t make her talk to you. She either will or she won’t. You can’t change the past. You can’t make things different. You have to step away from what you would like to happen, and figure out what can happen.”

“Like?”

“Well, like how are you going to handle Dylan Morris? Are you going to get to know him better, and try and at least be friendly with him, or are you going to ask him to never bring this up again?”

“I haven’t even thought about it yet. Seems like Mom would want me to never speak to him again.”

“Of course you could ask her what she’d like you to do. But in the end you are an adult, and you have to decide that. No blaming that decision on Dory, or you’ll always resent her.”

“It is her fault,” Ivy snapped.

“The situation is her fault. And Dylan Morris’ fault, and your father’s fault. But going forward the choices you make are yours and yours alone. They have to be. You have to own that yourself, or you will never get clear of this.”

She started to lean back, and pull away from the conversation, just like she had with Linus earlier in the day. I laid my hand heavily on her arm. “No. You listen to me. Take my father, for instance. College, leaving his congregation, becoming Lutheran — those were my choices. Where I am right now? Those are the consequences. It’s all mine. I could have done it differently, but I didn’t. I chose this. The separation. The love-hate relationship. Those are my choices. Just like not marrying Porter is my choice, and calling my Uncle and Grandmother is my choice, and there will be consequences for those choices too. But I’ll live with them, because they are my choices.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that. He forced you into that. You didn’t have any choices.”

“No. I had choices. I could have stayed. I could have been his good little girl forever. I didn’t have to go to Kentucky. I could still marry Porter, and never speak to my mother’s family again. Just because they aren’t the choices you wanted, or choices you wanted to make, doesn’t mean they aren’t your choices. Reality burns. But you have to deal with it if you ever hope to have any of this be better.”

I let go of her arm, but she didn’t recede back into her chair and her resentment. “So your advice is face reality, and don’t blame others for your choices.”

“Pretty much,” I said.

“You suck at this,” she said.

“I know.”

“What other techniques have you perfected?”

“Sometimes when things get really bad, I look at myself in the nearest mirror for a few minuets and chant ‘cope, cope, cope’.”

“You do not,” she said, cracking a small smile.

“Well, I haven’t yet, but it isn’t totally out of the question.”

“Do you think we’ll ever get to a point where we can talk about this?”

“You and your mother?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I think eventually you’ll both get to a place where it doesn’t matter so much. Eventually other things in your relationship are going to be more important to both of you than what has or has not been said about Dylan Morris.”

“It would come a heck of a lot faster if she’d just talk to me about it.”

*

After we ate Ivy and headed down to the lower level. On the way down the escalators, Ivy happened across a guy she had dated briefly in college. They stopped to catch up in front of a record shop so I excused myself and continued on to the cellphone kiosk.

The clerk, a bored-looking college student, pointed me to the prepaid section and answered a couple of coverage questions I had. I did some quick math and ended up with a small grey flip phone. Nothing fancy. Just as I was paying the clerk I felt someone step up behind me.

“So she’s finally joining the rest of us in the modern age of communication,” said John.

“It was time. One of these days the hatchback is going to leave me stranded and I won’t be able to find a pay phone,” I said.

“I’ll have one of those too,” said John to the clerk.

“Really?” I asked.

“Sure. I’m positive you found the best deal of the lot. You always do. It’s about time I had one that Mom and Dad aren’t paying for,” he said.

“You’re up to something,” I said to him as the clerk fished around for the right box under the counter.

“Just taking an interview Dad doesn’t want me to. Seems wrong to take it on their phone now, doesn’t it?”

“Depends. Why don’t they want you to take the interview?”

“It would mean a move, and I think they’d like to see me live with them for a year or two to save my money.”

“That could get frustrating fast.”

“I agree.”

“On the other hand, it may make real financial sense.”

“If I didn’t have other plans I would probably agree with you.”

Before I could question him further, Ivy showed up with that look on her face.

“I have a dinner date tonight.”

*

That night, after a dinner including Dory, but not Ivy, I slipped out of the house and across the Brandt’s back yard. Behind the house their backyard turned into meadow, and past that a wooded glen with a drainage ditch running through it. Ivy and I played there often as children, catching crawdads and floating leaf boats.

The sun was not yet down, but the eastern sky had already turned to indigo and stars, while above me the sky was azure, and in the west a sliver of burning orange still peeked over the horizon. Almost twilight.

I flipped open the little grey cell phone I had brought with me, and pressed send on the only number I had programed into the phone. A number written in green ink on a crumpled yellow sticky from Kentucky.

After three rings a familiar voice answered. “Hello.”

“Father Felix, I mean Uncle...” I paused unsure what his first name was. Surely he’d told me.

“Rupert. Keziah, is that you?”

“It is. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“No, of course not. It’s good to hear from you. Mother wasn’t sure if she’d scared you off for good. I’m afraid she’s been calling your phone several times a day,” he said apologetically.

“It’s fine. I mean, I’m on vacation, so I didn’t know. It will be fine. I didn’t mean to make you wait so long to hear from me. It has been complicated.”

“It always is. I told her you would call in your own time.”

“I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me about my mother.”

“I’ll do my best. Where would you like me to start?”

“What was she like? How did she meet my father? Were they in love? What happened? I don’t know anything about before.”

“Before?”

“Before, me. Before Charity. Before the Unbridled Holiness.”

“Ah. You’ll want to speak with your grandmother about some of that. I loved Pam, but I don’t know anymore how well I knew her. Not as well as I thought at the time. I was five years older than her. When I left for college, she wasn’t even in high school.”

“Maybe if you could just give me a rough outline. I don’t even know if you have other siblings.”

He was quiet for a few moments, and then drew a large breath. “No, no others. Just Pam and I. Our father, Robert, died when I was in seventh grade. Heart attack. He’d been an accountant. Well respected. Thrifty. Upstanding. He left us pretty well cared for, but Mom went back to work as a nurse anyway. I think she needed the company.”

“So Pam, my mother, would have been about seven at the time?”

“That’s right. She was a sweet little girl. Always wanting to be perfect. Not just really good, but perfect. The kind of kid who cried if she got an answer wrong on a test, or forgot to do a chore. She did all the normal things growing up. Liked to read, had friends, and plenty of dates later on. Mom could tell you more. I’d like to, but I was busy with my own things most of the time.”

“Sure. And my father?”

“Pam went away to college in Texas, and for a while everything seemed normal. She talked about getting a nursing degree, or a teaching degree, or a counseling degree, or maybe joining an order, I mean, normal “trying to find myself” types of stuff. Then, the summer after her sophomore year, she took a job in Dallas, and didn’t come home at all for vacation. Mom and I wrote it off to a need for more independence. But she gradually contacted us less and less. Finally, Mom got a call just before Christmas break of her Junior year. Pam was bringing someone home. Someone male. That Christmas was the first time Mom and I met Walton.”

“And...?”

“He wasn’t what we had been expecting. Mom had figured he was a clean cut football playing future engineer type. I had figured future math professor. Walton was a middle manager with an oil company, a full twelve years older than her. They didn’t even stay for the full break. Walton had to get back to work. They were with us for a glorified weekend.

After they left, Mom comforted herself with the fact that he was at least Catholic —”

“Wait! Dad was Catholic?”

“Sure. They met at a church singles group. From what I understand.”

I was so overloaded by that piece of information, that I missed his next words. “What?”

“I said, they were married in March, and she dropped out of college to take care of him.”

For several seconds there just didn’t seem to be more to ask. What I had just been told was fundamentally against everything I had ever believed about my parents’ past. Granted, what I knew was cobbled together from my father’s rambling sermons, and dark hints about his life before the Unbridled Holiness. But of course I couldn’t stop questioning now. There was too much more I needed to know.

“And Josh?” I asked.

“It’s hard to say.”

“What?”

“Well, I had my own life. I was overseas for the first part of their marriage. What I was told made it sound like Pam was happy and things were fine. Then about four years in, Josh was born. They sent me pictures. Everything looked good. He looked like he was healthy, Pam looked overjoyed. When Josh was about two, there was another baby on the way. She lost it. Her letters sounded devastated, but she wrote that Walton was not as upset, that Josh was all Walton seemed to need.

Mom and I have compared notes pretty carefully about this time. Mom thinks that’s when the wheels started coming off the marriage. By the time you were conceived, Josh was showing signs of not being as healthy as they thought. Heart problems, I think. Again, Mom would know more. Then several things happened almost all at once. Your father lost his job, Pam got pregnant, and they moved to Dallas to stay with Walton’s family briefly. The arrangement with his family didn’t last long. Maybe two months. They moved again to Oklahoma. I think he had a job there. That’s about the time we stopped hearing anything from them, except for an occasional letter from Pam.”

“Well, they must have been busy.”

“Maybe. Mom became convinced that Walton was keeping her letters from Pam, and that only some of Pam’s letters were getting through to us. We never had any proof, you understand. But Mom would insist that she knew her daughter would never just stop communicating, that somehow Walton was behind it.

“Anyway, we heard that Josh died — after his funeral — in a very brief, very terse call from Walton. He told us at the time that he would have called sooner, but the stress of losing Josh had caused Pam to miscarry again.”