You Can Say You Knew Me When (45 page)

I tossed the ring from one palm to the other. It weighed less than expected. I suppose they hadn’t had the money for something more expensive, more solid. On the inside was an inscription, a single word:
Always.

Deirdre said, “I think you should have it.”

I blanched. “What am I supposed to do with it? Find a wife?”

“Right, like I’ve come all the way out here to tell you to go straight.” The look on her face told me I was being rude, ungrateful, that this was meant to be a gift. She tried again in earnest. “You might want to exchange rings with a guy one day. I read in the paper they’re doing these civil ceremonies in Vermont now.”

“I could never give a guy this ring,” I said. “It’s a symbol of something I don’t understand.”

“They loved each other. You understand that.”

I let it drop to the table. It bounced—three rapid, hard sounds without reverberation. She stared at it, at me, at it, at me.

“Why don’t you save it for AJ?” I asked, hoping to appease her, and when that was met with further silence, I returned to the album.

The last pages were from their early years of marriage. Square-format snapshots in faded colors, framed by yellowed edges. Beaches and parks and mountains. The two of them dressed up for a night out with Angelo and Katie. Shirley was a fast learner, an American girl with a Marlo Thomas flip, Capri pants and canvas sneakers. Teddy kept his military haircut all through the sixties. There was a shot of them moving into our house in Greenlawn, a truck backed up to a path bordered by the same purple azaleas that bloomed there every spring. Another of the tree at the foot of the driveway, the one that fell into the street onto the Angry White Lady. And one of Shirley showing off the new living room wallpaper, a ghastly web of metallic blue curlicues. “Remember that?” Deirdre asked. “It was awful.”

“I’d kill for it now. A San Francisco apartment in those hideous sixties patterns would be flawless.”

“You can’t wallpaper a rental,” she said, perhaps innocently, though I took it as a dig.

“Some of us didn’t inherit enough to buy a house.”

“Please tell me we’re not going to fight about money,” she said.

I breathed deep and relaxed my shoulders. A flash of Dean Foster ranting about gold jewelry. In forty years I did not want to be griping about my inheritance.

You wouldn’t know from these pictures that Teddy and Shirley’s generation was about to explode, that in San Francisco the hippies were already wearing flowers in their hair. But what use did a girl from a German village have for an American revolution? The album ends in 1966, the year before I was born, when Teddy
got what he wanted
, a son. Though not the son he wanted.

I’d seen nothing like this photo album among Teddy’s San Francisco artifacts, no pictures of him with Ray, with Don, with Chick and Mary. Those few images of Danny had been buried, not displayed. Teddy had sketched and poeticized his Frisco days, but a couple years later, in the light of Greenlawn and Shirley and the routine he would lock himself into, he put away his notebooks and loaded up the camera.
This is what we show the world,
was the message.
The permanent record.
I scrutinized the photos for some trace of the identity he’d claimed and abandoned in San Francisco, some glimpse of remorse or disconnection.

“What’s that look on your face?” Deirdre asked.

“With everything I know about him now, all this…”—I swept my hand across the evidence—“…feels like a betrayal.”

“What are you talking about? This was the happiest time of his life!”

“But he had been on track to have another life, in San Francisco. If he wasn’t so freaked out by what was inside of him, he could have been artistic and unconventional. Instead of playing house with his perfect wife.”

“That wasn’t
playing house.
That was our family.” She slammed shut the album, pulling it away from me as if I might do it harm.

“I can’t help it, Dee. I’m still so angry with him.”

“Apparently you’re angry with
her,
too.”

We began to argue, another version of the argument we always had, the one about how neither of us understood the other. It ended with her pushing away from the table, the album hugged to her chest, her footfalls trailing the carpet to my bedroom—which was her bedroom for the week, her door to slam.

I stood up and went to the counter, where I kept my cigarettes. But they were not waiting for me.

Apparently I am. Angry with my mother.

My mother, with her love for my father, who did not love me. My mother, with her English so perfect she might have been schooled in Britain. With her blonde hair so perfect. Blonde beehive, blonde shag, blonde ’fro, blonde perm.
Don’t take my picture, I haven’t set my hair.
With her eye shadow to match her dress. With her apron at the stove. With her gold cross on a chain around her neck; with her prayers to the Father who did not listen. With her hand on his shoulder as he’s about to blow. With her eyes on me,
Don’t push him.
With her arms around me, saying,
I’ll talk to him.
With invisible blonde hair on her upper lip. With a razor for me,
You’re becoming a man
. With her smell of tea rose (I dab some on in the bathroom). With tears in her eyes (I forgot Mother’s Day). With tears in her eyes (I’d yelled,
He can go to hell
). With tears in her eyes (I’d saved Deirdre from a bully). With cotton soaked in alcohol she cleans the scratch on my face. With hand twisting in mine we dance to the radio. With a hand white with flour,
Can you turn down that noise?
With face stricken in worry,
Were you smoking tobacco?
With perfect English slipping,
Vat if your father found out?
With arms wrapped around him, with checkbook balanced for him, with meals waiting at six, with excuses for him at the ready. With stoked fireplace, with sewing machine buzzing, with fondue bubbling. With chest pain,
It’s nothing,
with not answering the phone all day,
Something’s wrong
. With blonde hair matted on hospital pillow, with surgery in an hour, with last words,
Go wait with your sister.
Without good-bye.

She says,
He had a hard day at work. Don’t let it bother you
. She says,
He’s just mad. Don’t let it bother you
. She says,
He only wants the best for you
.
Let me talk to him for you
. Did you talk to him, Mom? What did he say? But that’s not what I meant. Should I talk to him now? Later? Never? But I don’t understand. But he doesn’t understand. What do you mean, it’s nothing? It never gets better. What do you mean, I know he loves me? He never shows it. What do you mean, your heart hurts?

What do you mean, her heart stopped?

He says,
I expect dinner at six
. He says,
There’s nothing to talk about
. He says,
Don’t be mad at God, be mad at the hospital
. He says,
I can’t be there. I’m meeting the lawyers
. He says,
It’s not an excuse for your grades to suffer. I expect to see an improvement. I expect the student-loan paperwork filled out by tomorrow.
He says,
Jesus Christ, what were you thinking?
He says,
Jesus Christ, are you wearing her perfume?
He says,
I don’t want Eric in this house again. I don’t care what you feel. It’s sordid. I know where it leads. It’s sordid. If your mother was here to see this, my God.
He says,
Alcohol is poison
. He says,
I ever catch you doing drugs, so help me
. He says,
Most people who think they’re artists just want to goof off
.
What makes you think you know better? What makes you think I don’t know what you’re up to?
He says,
When I make mistakes, I learn from them. Responsibility breeds respect. You show me one, I’ll show you the other
. He says,
You show me another woman as good as your mother
. He says,
She’s turning over in her grave.

Yes, apparently I am. Angry at them both. This anger like an album of photos, frozen in time. Frozen before I had figured anything out. Orphaned in a house of ice.

Apparently I have been walking through the Mission looking for cigarettes. As if storming out of my apartment could remake the past. As if this cigarette between my lips could soothe the pain. The burn of tar in my throat does not; pulverizing the half I don’t smoke does not; giving the rest of the pack to a homeless guy does not. Sitting on a bench avoiding Deirdre does not soothe the pain.

Nine thousand dollars in the bank will not purge grief from my body.

A box of keepsakes from the attic will not purge the grief.

Danny Ficchino’s secrets will not.

Teddy himself in the flesh, age twenty, a cigarette in his mouth and booze on his breath, traveling with me to Mexico, not asking,
What’s wrong with you
, when I reach out my hand—Teddy himself might purge the grief.

I am orphaned. Deirdre and I together, orphans. Orphans who cannot change the past but can grieve it. Must grieve it.

When I got back to my apartment Deirdre was still locked away. The wedding ring sat on the kitchen table. I picked it up. It was too big for my ring finger. I slid it on my thumb instead.

I tapped on the bedroom door, waiting to be asked in. This must be what a parent feels with a teenage child: It’s my domain, but I need your permission to enter this corner I’ve ceded to you. She was propped up in bed, reading what I immediately recognized as Teddy’s writing.
In the Woods.
“I glanced at these pages before I mailed them,” she said. “But I didn’t notice how much he sounds like you.”

“Colleen said it’s his obnoxious attitude.” I sat next to her on the bed. “That seems to be something everyone can agree on.”

“Not obnoxious.” Her eyes squinted into the window light behind me. “Opinionated. Saying things to get a rise out of people.”

I nodded, ready to get a rise out of her. “I found Danny Ficchino.”

She said, “I was wondering when you’d mention it.”

This caught me off guard. “Did you talk to Tommy?”

“He called, right before I came here. He didn’t paint a very pretty picture.”

“We have Dad to thank for that.”

Her eyes narrowed, as if in doubt. I began to fill her in on what I’d learned—Danny and Teddy’s sex, Teddy outing Danny to the family, Danny’s arrest and ostracism—and little by little her hardened expression went slack. When I was through, she asked, “Did you believe him?”

Did I? It hadn’t occurred to me not to, though he might have said anything, for any reason. His tongue might have been just another bleeding wound, spurting. But no, no. That wasn’t fair. He’d come around to trusting me. He’d been waiting his whole life to tell someone this story. Someone in the family.

“I do believe him. Though I was a little afraid of him. He was drunk and bitter. Very isolated.”

“I worry about you, Jamie. That you’ll become like that. Cut off.” I started to protest, but she charged ahead. “Tommy told me about you in LA. He thought I should know. It freaked me out to hear how broke you were, and that you’d been drinking a lot. And something about running out on a restaurant bill—.”

“Did he tell you what he was doing in LA?” I spat out defensively.

“He was there on business.”

I came close to ratting out Tommy’s fling with Colleen—if Deirdre wanted to sit in judgment I could give her plenty to judge—but a vision of Tommy with his hands clasped around Danny’s, Tommy the Ambassador of Reconciliation, stopped me.

She said, “To be honest, I was afraid what I’d find when I got here.”

“Is that why—?” I was going to ask,
Is that why you planned this trip so quickly?
but then another suspicion took shape, this one more damning. “That’s why you left AJ at home, isn’t it? Because you didn’t want him around me.” She averted her eyes. “That’s fucked up, Deirdre.”

“For all I knew, the place would be a mess, you’d be drunk, or evicted—.”

I jumped to my feet angrily, talking over her. “So you’re here to save me?”

“—and then I get here, and there’s this half-naked teenager who you’re going to Mexico with.”

“You may not understand my life, but I’ve always made it work.”

“Not lately,” she insisted.

“No, not lately. Lately, I’ve been unhappy. I’ve been sad. I’m just starting to understand that. But you’ve been unhappy, too.”

“I’m not unhappy!” Her voice cracked. We both heard it.

“You ever think you might have something to learn from me?” I shouted. “Or that AJ might like it here, might need a change from the routine you and Andy lock him into, trying to keep him from harm at all costs? Ever think you don’t have all the answers?”

“I know that,” she yelled back. Walking through her adult life, Deidre held the reins on the very air around her, but in this moment she appeared vulnerable and unguarded. She looked, for a change, like my baby sister.

“When Danny Ficchino was in trouble,” I said, stepping closer, “everyone turned away. Aunt Katie still denies what happened. She acts superior about her family while she’s cutting off those of us who don’t fit the bill.”

“I’m not Aunt Katie.” Her voice fell, hushed. “I’ve always made an effort.”

“Not when it came to Dad. You took his side.”

“I didn’t take his side, Jamie. I just took care of him.” She held out her hand. I followed her curled fingers back to the bed and sat down, facing her. “I tried, Jamie. I did. I’m sorry I failed. But at a certain point, I understood that I couldn’t make him love you. Not the way you wanted.”