Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [17]
“Yes, I guess so.” Tillie sighed. “But I wonder what he might have achieved had the birthmark not faded.”
“Well, I – Oh look!” Mrs. Kinshaw said. “There’s the Irelands. Aren’t they adorable? Yoo-hoo, Rod and Marian!”
I sat up wondering what these adorable people looked like. I pictured leprechauns, the magical wee folk who sprang from Irish folklore. But the family I saw walking along in front of our house was a regular American family, a mother, a father, and a little red-haired girl about Valerie’s age. The father was carrying the child on his shoulders, her little hands clasped firmly in his.
“Look who’s back,” Mrs. Kinshaw hollered. “Tillie has moved back in. We’re all neighbors again!”
“Really?” the woman said. “But I thought – ”
I moaned again, curled up into a ball on the swing, and pulled the blanket back over my head. I put my hands over my ears to block the chatter of voices, the questions, the exclamations, the laughter. I even started humming to myself. I was so tired of hearing Tillie say she’d come back to die in her own home and no one was going to stop her. If I heard her say that one more time, I was certain I’d kill her myself and let her be done with it.
After a few moments the porch quieted, and I peeked out from beneath the blanket. “Are they gone?” I asked.
“Lovely family, the Irelands.”
I sat up and shrugged.
“That’s exactly how it should be,” Tillie went on.
“How what should be?”
“Families. Did you see the way Mr. Ireland loved on that little girl, how proud he was of her?”
“I was under the blanket, Tillie. I couldn’t see anything.”
“Yes, and that was really rather rude, Rosalind.”
“Well, I never said I wanted to come out here. I don’t feel good.”
“Do you need another gargle?”
“No. I just need . . .”
“What, Roz?”
I thought of the little girl perched high on her father’s shoulders and clenched my teeth. “You know, Tillie, I used to ride on my daddy’s shoulders just like that.”
“Did you now?”
“Yes, I did. And we used to go for walks, all up and down the streets of our neighborhood, sometimes all the way around Lake Calhoun and back home again. We’d take a bag of bread and feed the ducks and the fish and the geese.”
“It sounds very nice.”
“It was very nice. I don’t care what you think. Daddy was a good man.”
“I never said he wasn’t.”
“Yes you did. That’s what you told the mailman.”
“That’s not what I told the mailman. I told him not to deliver any letters your father might send to your mother.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“No it isn’t.”
I peered out over the lilac bush and toward the street. “Daddy was a hardworking man,” I said.
“I don’t doubt that.” Tillie shifted her weight in the chair, settling a now slumbering Valerie in a more comfortable position on her lap.
“He worked construction, you know. He was a foreman. That’s the boss.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Most days when he came home, he’d reach into his shirt pocket and pull out a Sugar Daddy for me, my favorite candy. He’d say, ‘Here, Little Rose.’ That’s what he called me, his Little Rose. He’d say, ‘Here, Little Rose, some sugar from your daddy, who loves you.”
I pressed my lips together and looked at Tillie through narrowed eyes, daring her to deny my words, daring her to call me a liar. My daddy was every bit as good as Mr. Leprechaun from down the street, and I wouldn’t have Tillie thinking otherwise. I wouldn’t have her pitying me or my family. I watched as Tillie nodded slowly. She was stroking Valerie’s cheek.
Finally she said, “It sounds like you have some good memories of your father.”
“I do,” I said. “I have plenty of good memories.”
“Well then, you be sure to put those memories in a safe place and don’t lose them. The time will come when you’ll be glad you have something left of the man.”
I didn’t know what she meant and wasn’t sure I wanted to know. All I wanted was to be as safe and as satisfied as the little redheaded girl appeared to be, up there on her daddy’s shoulders.
“Lay yourself down now and take a nap,” Tillie said quietly, “just like Valerie here.