Glitter and Glue (21 page)

Then tonight, my last night, John tells me the kids want to show me a video of their mum, and I almost have to brace myself while waves of relief and gratitude and fear roll through me.

John cues up the tape and announces that the video is ready. The kids race over to the TV area. Ev shares a seat with Milly, and I take Martin on my lap, pulling him close, wanting to memorize him. John stands next to the VCR, emceeing. We look like a family.

“Okay, the camerawork isn’t excellent. But here we go,” John says, pushing Play.

A title card comes up:
EASTWOOD CHURCH PRESENTS
THE FIDDLER ON THE ROOF
.

The video was shot from a tripod in the main aisle, and the sound is fuzzy. “John was the lead,” Evan says earnestly. “Mum was in the chorus.” The staging is simple, a rural backdrop, lots of straw, a low roof, a man with a fiddle.

John was an actor? John sang?

“They didn’t know each other!” Milly says, eyes forward, tracking the image.

John fixes on the screen while he talks, I think to me. “We met in rehearsals. This was closing night. It ran for two weekends.”

The opening number kicks in, “Tradition.” Despite his old-man makeup, John looks much younger—hardy and sure—as he and the female lead go back and forth about their duties. He must make a living and study the Torah; she must keep a kosher home and raise the children.

As the chorus steps forward to sing the refrain, Martin hops off my lap. “That’s her,” he says, pointing to one of many women in burlap head scarves.

“That’s not her! That’s her!” Milly calls out.

“You’re wrong!
That’s
Mummy!”

They don’t know. Fault the layman camerawork or the generic costumes or too much time passed, but they can’t identify their mother. They can’t pick her out.

“No, that’s Mummy right there!”

“No,” Evan and John say at the same time, silencing the piercing squabble. They look at each other, and Evan recedes. This part of her story isn’t his to tell, and he seems to know that.

“No, this is Mum, right here—see?” John says, approaching the TV, tapping the screen. “She’s right here.” The joy of reunion lifts his voice, as if she’s really right here, as if he’s really touching her.

“I see her! I see her! There she is!” they cry with relief.

So it wasn’t in an airport, over a cuppa, in his Qantas blues. He was not pressed and trimmed. He was singing. She fell in love with a man who sang, who danced, who played the doting father, who carried the show.

Before bed, Martin comes to give me a hug. I love him. He tells me he’s sleeping with Daddy tonight.

“Before you go, run and snag me some envelopes from the drawer in the kitchen?” I ask.

“For what?” he asks.

“You’ll see.”

When Martin brings back two envelopes, Milly is behind him. I stamp and address them to Kelly Corrigan, c/o the American Express office in Brisbane, and Kelly Corrigan, c/o the American Express office in Christ Church, New Zealand. “Now all you have to do is put something in the envelopes.”

“Like what?” Martin says.

“Like a letter, duh,” Milly answers.

“Or drawings or poems or whatever.” I tell Martin I want to know everything. We agree to write
every single day
, even though I’m sure he’ll forget me in a weekend; I’ve never seen him worry over people who aren’t here. He’s present tense, standing in his underwear, holding any hand that’s free.

“Tell me about school, about your buddies, all your dinosaurs, trips you take, art you make—”

“Cakes we bakes!”

“Yes, and all visits to lakes. And put in your school photo when you get it.”

“I will do that.” Martin takes an envelope out of my hand and I hold out the other for Milly. Finally, she takes it.

“All right, guys,” John calls from down the hall, “come on, let’s get in bed. Kelly needs to get organized!” The kids scurry to his room, and I slip outside to find Evan before he leaves for work.

I cough when I get to the driveway, and he leans his head out of the garage. “Hey.”

“Hey. I wanted to say goodbye before tomorrow, when everyone’s around.”

“Yeah. Me, too. But wait. Hold on.” He disappears and is back in a minute. “I got you something—” He hands me a paperback copy of
My Ántonia
. “So you can see how it ends.”

“Oh God, how did you know? I can’t believe you,” I say, taking the book.

We stand close. I want to thank him for keeping me company and teaching me how to play chess and not give up on crosswords, and tell him that my mom would like him so much, but as soon as I start talking, I realize I’m not ready to leave and that I kind of love this person I’m looking at and I’m sure I’ll never know anyone else like him because he’s cautious and timid
and I’m blunt and impatient and we wouldn’t make sense in any context other than this one.

I say, “I started to write you a note last night, to make sure I said what I wanted to say, but it sounded stupid. But the thing is, what I really want you to know is that I admire you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I mean, not when we first met.” He smiles. “When we first met, I thought you were a total soap-opera junkie bum who camped out in a garage.” He laughs. “But then it was so obvious that you’re not. People need you. You’re … 
important
. You’re probably the most important person I’ve ever met.”

“Yeah, right,” he sidesteps the compliment.

“No, really. You’re the only person I know who’s actually doing anything worthwhile: staying here, working nights so you can be around for Pop and the kids. All my college friends have these bogus desk jobs, and look at me, I’m basically planning my existence around a dive trip.”

“That’ll be one for the books.”

This was one for the books, I think.
You
are one for the books.

“Kelly, we’ll be out in the car,” John calls from the kitchen. It’s over. This morning, I leave.

“Be right there.” I tuck my toothbrush into my backpack and peek around Pop’s door, worried he might not be awake this early.

“Righto!” He looks up from his recliner.

“So, we’re heading out,” I say, stepping close to him. He takes my hand and nods, smiling. “Thanks a lot for, I don’t know, for everything—doing my laundry and eating my bad curry and helping me dye my clothes—”

“Okay, Kelly dear,” he says, his eyes shining. “You be safe. Take good care to always be safe.”

“I will, I promise. And I’ll send you postcards.”

“That’s nice. That’ll be very nice.”

“Okay, well—”

“I’ll pray for you,” he promises.

I lean in and kiss him on the cheek, knowing that I’ll never see him again and knowing that, if anything, I should be praying for him.

During the car ride, when I’d planned to ensure that Martin understood I was not going to a hospital, all I can do is look out the window and take long quiet breaths to keep myself from
crying. Thankfully, the kids can’t see me from the back, and anyway they’re busy campaigning for an ice cream stop on the way home, which John thinks they might be able to squeeze in if they get through their errands without any complaining. We drive through St. Leonards to the Pacific Highway. Passing the harbor, I take a last look at the opera house and Circular Quay. By the time we hit the expressway, the morning sun has taken over the sky. I keep wanting to say something, something meaningful that suits the occasion, like how I’ve realized that things
do
happen in a house. But I never shared my theory with the Tanners, so there’s no sense telling them I was wrong, things definitely happen in a house—big, hard, beautiful things. And besides, they already knew that.

John hits the blinker. We’re here, the international terminal. Everyone unbuckles. John sets my backpack on the curb. He looks nice, almost rested. “Well, Kelly, thank you.”

“Oh, I’m so grateful—thank you for having me.”

“Of course. And we can’t forget this,” he says, handing me my last eighty dollars.

“Right, thanks. I’ll put it to good use.” We hug for the first and last time.

“You’ll be right,” he says, like a professor who reveals at the end of a tense semester that he always knew I’d pass.

I lean over and pick up Martin. “I put the T. Rex you loaned me on the kitchen table this morning.”

“You could take him.”

“He’s happy with you. So, you’re all set to write me, right, mister?”

“Write, right, right!”

“Good. I’ll be watching the mail.” I hug him and hug him again. “You are the best boy, the very best boy.”

“You are a silly,” he says as I smother him.

I pick up Milly. “You’re a big girl, lady.” I hold out my sequined elephant hat that she said she liked. “So, I thought you could take care of my fancy cap?”

“It’s not my size.”

“Maybe you could grow into it?”

“But I have my own hat that Daddy got me from Singapore.” She doesn’t need my wampum. She has the real thing.

“Right.” I hug her as long as she’ll let me, for my sake, not hers. In the scope of their story, which has so many characters and chapters already, I’m a bit part:
Unnamed girl, American
. I didn’t change them or fix them or nudge them gently from one stage of grief to another. That work is theirs to do, and they are doing it.

“Can we take a photo?” I ask, handing John my camera.

“Good idea,” he says. Martin crawls back up my side so I have a kid in each arm. “Smile …” After the picture, I put them down, feeling like I might buckle with emotion.

“Tell Tracy Tuttle to be a good girl,” Martin says.

“I will.”

John holds up my pack so I can step in. “All right,” he says, untwisting one of my straps, “You have everything? Passport? Ticket?”

“Yup. Thanks.”

“Do you have the ceramic cookie I made you in art?” Milly asks, suddenly.

“Of course I do.” I pat my backpack. “Wrapped up in a T-shirt so it won’t break.”

“Good. Mr. Graham said it was the best sculpture I’ve ever done.”

“And I get to keep it,” I marvel.

“Of course you do! I made it special for you,” she says.

“I love it.” I swallow hard.

“Keely, are you going to cry?” Martin says in a consoling, grown-up tone.

“No, now you’re the silly.”

“Don’t be sad,” he says, ignoring my deflection. “You have Tracy Tuttle to be with you.”

“You’re right, I do.” I squeeze him one last time and pat Milly’s shoulder. “Make your dad stop for ice cream.”

“We will!”

John smiles at me. I head toward the giant sliding doors, looking back across the median strip through watery eyes. The kids are happy, waving and leaning into their father. They have a great day ahead. Dropping me off was no big deal. Their perception of painful goodbyes has been recalibrated.

But even if by Christmas Evan has to help them remember the name of their first nanny (
It starts with a K …
), I’ll always be able to see their faces coming up through the pool’s surface, or wrapped in a bath towel, or asleep on the arm of the gold velvet chair in front of the television, and hear the sound of Martin saying
Crustinsashus
, or Milly saying
revolting
, or both of them saying
Keely
, and remember where I was when I opened my first Mother’s Day card and learned the one thing I do not have in common with an emu and absorbed the complete lyrics of
Beauty and the Beast
. I’ll know it was the Tanner kids who pointed me back toward my own mother, hungry to understand her in a way that I clearly didn’t yet. They put her voice in my head. They changed her from a prosaic given to something not everyone has, but of course none of this matters to them. They’ve got errands to run, and then, maybe, sundaes.

Inside the terminal, Tracy is waiting for me.

“Aw, Kel,” she says when she sees my wet cheeks.

“Oh God, those kids,” I say as we hug. “Breaks my heart.”

“They’ll be okay.”

“I know. I know.” I wipe my face and press my fingertips into my tear ducts to stop myself from bawling. “That was so much more intense than I expected.”

“The goodbye?”

“The whole thing.”

During the flight, a stewardess named Bronwyn comes to our seats and asks if we are “the Americans, Kelly and Tracy?” We tell her we are, and she says, “Well, then, why don’t you follow me?”

As she takes us to the cockpit, she explains that she’s a friend of John’s and he asked that we be brought up to see the Great Barrier Reef from the air. It’s huge, so much bigger than I imagined, giant swooshes of electric blue and green, like an abstract painting or that sand art that people sell in desert towns. Tracy mentions sharks—a Kiwi was recently bitten in shallow waters—but I ignore her worry to ask Bronwyn if John has ever brought Martin and Milly up here.

“For sure.”

“Boy, I’d have paid a lot of money to see their reactions.”

“You sound like a mother,” Tracy teases, and the three of us smile at the absurdity.

Bronwyn says only one of us can stay up here for the landing, which is fine by Tracy, who is ready to go back to the cabin. Safety first.

After I strap into the jump seat, the captain asks who I like in our presidential election, and once we get a conversation going, he slams our policy in Iraq and asks what the riots in L.A. were
all about. I’m tempted to roll over. I don’t understand much about either topic and I know not everyone loves us. We’re too unionized and make bad soap operas and love a liability waiver and generate our fair share of pollution, intellectual and otherwise. But it’s my home, and not just because I grew up pledging my allegiance and taking tests on the Electoral College and Pearl Harbor. It’s in me, running through me like my mother’s blood.