The First Time (31 page)

“Lust.” “Of course not.” “Nothing,” came Kim’s immediate replies. But over the course of the last six weeks, Rosemary had subtly forced Kim to rethink her answers. Maybe she
was
relieved at having been discovered. Maybe being discovered was exactly what she’d had in mind when she invited Teddy over. And if she wasn’t angry at her mother, then why did everything her mother said and did these days annoy her so much? As to what she would be giving up if she could somehow manage to forgive her father, well, Kim could sum that up in one word—power.

“So, how come we’re going to Grandma Viv’s?” Kim asked, a deliberate challenge in her voice. “I thought you didn’t like to go there.”

“It’s been a long time,” Mattie admitted.

“So why now? What’s the special occasion?” Kim saw her mother’s shoulders stiffen, noted the pinched look that filled her father’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They were going to tell her grandmother about Mattie’s condition, she realized in that instant. They were going to tell her grandmother that her daughter was dying. “I don’t feel well,” Kim cried suddenly. “Stop the car. I think I’m going to be sick.”

Immediately, her father pulled the car to the side of the road. Kim pushed the door open, jumped out of the car, crouched in the middle of the sidewalk, a series
of dry heaves racking her thin frame. She felt her mother squat beside her, her arms draping protectively across her shoulders. “Take deep breaths, sweetie,” her mother was coaxing, smoothing Kim’s hair away from her face. “Take deep breaths.” Was this how her mother was going to feel? Kim wondered, fighting for air. Was this what it felt like to choke to death?

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. It happened the other day at school as she was walking toward the cafeteria. This awful shortness of breath, the air literally freezing in her mouth, as if a large chunk of ice had wedged itself at the back of her throat. She’d run into the nearest washroom and locked herself inside one of the empty cubicles, circling the tiny space in front of the toilet like a caged tiger at the zoo, flapping her hands in front of her face, fighting to get air into her lungs. She was dying, she understood in that moment. She’d inherited her mother’s awful disease.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Standard run-of-the-mill anxiety.

At least according to Rosemary Colicos. “Which doesn’t mean these attacks aren’t scary and awful,” the therapist told her. “Just not fatal.”

“What about the fact my foot keeps falling asleep?” Kim demanded during today’s session.

“It might be a good idea to get out of those heavy boots from time to time,” Rosemary suggested, motioning toward Kim’s tight knee-high black leather boots. “You sit all day in boots like those, your feet are bound to fall asleep occasionally. You’re not dying, Kim,” she assured her. “You’re going to be all right.”

Was she? If so, what was she doing on her hands and knees heaving bile into the middle of an icy sidewalk in the middle of Chicago in the middle of a wintry Friday afternoon?

After what seemed like an eternity, the gagging reflex stopped, and Kim felt her chest expand with air. She wiped the tears away from her eyes, lay her head on her mother’s shoulder, felt the cold sun surprisingly warm against her cheek.

And then her father’s shadow was looming over them, blocking out the sun. “Are you okay?” he was asking.

Kim nodded, slowly climbing to her feet, then turning to help her mother. But Jake was already beside Mattie, one hand under her arm, the other around her waist, and Mattie was leaning her full weight against him. She didn’t need Kim’s help.

“Are you all right, sweetie?” Mattie asked as they climbed back into the car.

“Fine,” Kim said. “It must have been that hot dog I wolfed down at lunch.”

“I thought you didn’t eat red meat,” her father said.

And then no one said another thing until the car pulled to a stop in front of her grandmother’s house.

“Go ahead, pick one.” Her mother was motioning excitedly toward the litter of eight new puppies crawling all over each other inside the large cardboard box on Grandma Viv’s kitchen floor. Mattie had this huge loopy grin across her face, and there were tears in her eyes, the kind of tears you got when you were doing something you knew was going to make someone
really happy. Even her father’s face had that dumb smile plastered across it. And Kim could feel the same stupid expression tugging at her own lips. Her grandmother, smiling discreetly beside the old avocado-colored stove at the far end of the small green-and-white kitchen, with at least six other dogs circling her thick ankles, was the only person in the room who still looked like a human being, and not like some goofy sort of alien.

“Is this a joke?” Kim asked warily, afraid to approach the wriggling cardboard box.

“Which one do you want?” her mother asked.

“I can’t believe this. You’re letting me have a puppy?”

“Happy birthday, Kimmy,” her father said.

“Happy birthday,” her mother echoed.

“It’s not my birthday till next week.” Kim backed away from the box. Was there some reason they were celebrating her birthday a week early? Was there some new problem with her mother?

“It’s all right, Kim,” her mother told her, once again invading the deepest recesses of her daughter’s mind without her permission. “We just wanted it to be a surprise. We were afraid if we waited until next week—”

“I don’t know which one to choose,” Kim squealed, throwing herself toward the box before her mother had a chance to finish her explanation and lifting one small white bundle after another into her hands. “They’re all so cute. Aren’t they the cutest things you ever saw in your life?” She held one puppy out at arm’s length, watched his little legs dangle between her fingers, small button eyes the color of rich dark chocolate. Teddy’s
eyes, Kim thought, returning the puppy to the box, selecting another whose eyes were still half closed.

“What kind of dogs are they?” Mattie asked. Kim noticed that Mattie carefully avoided direct eye contact with her mother.

“Peekapoos,” Grandma Viv announced, straightening already proud shoulders and patting her short, graying brown hair. “Half poodle, half Pekingese. Smarter than both those breeds combined.”

“I want this one,” Kim said, kissing the top of the puppy’s white coat over and over again. The puppy lifted its tiny head and licked the underside of Kim’s mouth.

“Don’t let him lick your lips,” Mattie cautioned.

Kim ignored her mother, continued to let the tiny puppy lick her mouth, felt his tongue, eager and wet, ferret its way between her lips.

“Kim …,” her father said.

“For heaven’s sake, you two, it’s all right. Their mouths are cleaner than ours.” Grandma Viv dismissed their concerns with an impatient wave of her hand. “What are you going to call him, Kimmy?”

“I don’t know. What’s a good name?” Kim’s eyes darted back and forth between her grandmother, her father, and her mother, afraid to stop too long on anyone. So they were finally letting her have a dog. Why? Her mother had always hated dogs. She’d even gone so far as pretending she was allergic to them the summer Kim brought home a stray from the pound, insisting they give the dog to Grandma Viv. Kim had gone every week to visit him, but it wasn’t the same as having a dog in your own home, one who followed you around from room to room and curled up against your feet in
bed. Why the sudden change of heart? Why now, when the last thing her mother needed was a small untrained puppy underfoot?

It was official, Kim understood in that moment, fighting back a sudden shortness of breath. Her mother was dying.

“What do you think would be a good name, Mom?” Kim pushed the words around the blockage at the back of her throat.

“He’s your baby,” Mattie said. “You choose.”

“It’s a big decision.”

“Yes, it is,” her mother agreed.

“How about George?”

“George?” Mattie and Jake asked in unison.

“I love it,” said Grandma Viv. “George is the perfect name for him.”

“George and Martha,” Kim said, smiling at her mother. “They go together.”

“I never understood why your mother hated the name Martha so much,” Grandma Viv grumbled. “I always thought it was such a lovely name. You don’t see Martha Stewart calling herself Mattie, do you? Who wants some tea?” she asked in the same breath.

“Tea sounds great,” Jake said.

“Tea would be nice,” Mattie agreed.

Kim watched her mother watching
her
mother out of the corner of her eye, trying to see Grandma Viv the way her mother did. They didn’t look a lot alike. Her grandmother was shorter and stockier than her mother, and her short dark brown hair was curly and increasingly riddled with gray. Her features were coarser than her only child’s, her nose broader and
flatter, her jaw squarer, her eyes green as opposed to blue. Mattie had always insisted she looked exactly like her father, although there were no pictures of him anywhere to verify her claim. Unlike her mother, her grandmother never wore makeup, although her cheeks glowed bright red whenever she was angry or upset, blotches that rarely stained Mattie’s perfect complexion. Still, Kim could see traces of her grandmother in the proud pull of her mother’s shoulders, in the way both women held their heads, in the way each relied on her hands to express thoughts too difficult to stand on their own.

“What happened between you and Grandma Viv?” Kim used to ask.

“Nothing happened,” her mother would reply.

“Then how come you never visit her? Why doesn’t she ever come to our house for dinner?”

“It’s a long story, Kim. There are no easy answers. Why don’t you ask your grandmother?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“She said to ask you.”

Her mother had a strange look in her eyes, Kim thought now, as if she’d stumbled into the wrong house and wasn’t sure how to extricate herself politely, which was probably exactly the way she was feeling. How long had it been since she’d been inside Grandma Viv’s house anyway? How old had she been when she walked out the front door for the last time? Probably not much older than her father had been when he left home, Kim decided. It was
strange, she thought, kissing the top of her new puppy’s soft head. Her parents were more alike than she’d realized.

“Did you see the article about Jake in
Chicago
magazine?” Mattie asked her mother, in an obvious attempt to rekindle the conversation.

“No, I didn’t.” Grandma Viv walked to the sink, began pouring cold water into a kettle. “Did you bring a copy with you?”

“As a matter of fact, I have one in my purse.” Mattie reached for her brown leather bag on the kitchen table.

“Tell me you didn’t,” Jake demurred.

Was he actually blushing? Kim rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

“I did.” Mattie giggled proudly, opening her handbag, pulling out the magazine, about to hand it to her mother when it shot out of her hands and flew across the room, sending the dogs around her mother’s feet running for cover, loudly barking their consternation.

“Well, you don’t have to throw it at me,” Grandma Viv said testily. “That’s okay, babies,” she said to the assorted canines slowly creeping back into the room.

Kim saw that her mother’s face had turned ashen, and that her eyes were frozen wide with horror.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

“Are you all right?” Jake asked.

“Of course she’s all right.” Grandma Viv reached down to pick the magazine off the floor. “She was always a bit clumsy. Nice picture of you, Jake. The cover, no less.”

“Apparently the article’s very complimentary,” Kim
said, watching the color return to her mother’s face, purposely using her mother’s word, the same word her father claimed to have used earlier. All in the family, she thought, fighting the urge to gag, taking several deep breaths.

“Are you all right, sweetie?” her mother asked.

She doesn’t miss a thing, Kim thought, watching as her grandmother lowered the kettle to the stove and extricated a large white birthday cake from a box on the kitchen counter, all in one fluid motion.

“Why does everyone keep asking if everyone is all right?” Grandma Viv asked, depositing the cake in the middle of the kitchen table. “I noticed no one has asked me how I’m feeling.”

“Aren’t you feeling okay, Grandma Viv?”

“I’m fine, dear. Thanks for asking. So, who wants a rose?”

“I do,” Kim and her mother said in unison.

They all sat down at the round Formica table, the tiny puppy sleeping in Kim’s lap, Grandma Viv lifting a restless black terrier to hers, trying to get him to settle down.

“Do you think you could get the dog away from the cake?” Mattie asked her mother, although it was clearly more demand than request.

“He’s nowhere near the cake.” Small red blotches appeared magically on Grandma Viv’s cheeks as she lowered the dog to the floor and jumped to her feet. “I seem to have forgotten the candles.” Her grandmother began noisily opening and closing the kitchen drawers. “I know I have some around here somewhere.”

“It’s all right, Grandma Viv. I don’t need candles.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you need candles. What’s a birthday cake without candles?”

“Kimmy,” her father said, “can you put George down while we eat?”

“George is staying on my lap,” Kim snapped. “And don’t call me Kimmy.”

“Found them,” her grandmother proclaimed triumphantly, returning to the table and arranging the candles on the cake in four neat little rows. “Sixteen candles,” she said, smiling at her only grandchild as she deposited an extra candle in the middle of a soft pink rose. “And one for good luck.”

M
om, can I talk to you a minute?”

“Of course, Martha.”

Mattie inhaled a deep breath of air, letting it out slowly, trying to force a smile onto her lips. She’s called you Martha all her life, Mattie reminded herself. It’s too late to expect her to change now.

Her mother stared at Mattie expectantly from her seat at the kitchen table, two small dogs currently in her lap, five larger ones at her feet. Beside her, Jake sat reading the
Chicago Sun-Times
, occasionally glancing over at Mattie, smiling his support. Kim sat cross-legged on the floor beside the cardboard box of tiny puppies, cradling George in her arms, rocking him back and forth like a newborn baby. The only grandchild I’ll ever see, Mattie thought wistfully, stepping into the doorway between the kitchen and the L-shaped
living-dining area. “In the living room, if you don’t mind.” Mattie watched the puzzled look that settled on her mother’s face as she lowered the dogs in her lap to the floor and rose to her feet.