Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [9]
“We can just have a bowl of cereal or something. I’m really not hungry,” I lied.
“Don’t be silly, Roz,” she said. “A bowl of cereal is hardly enough for supper.”
The hand went up to her face again and touched her cheek. She wiped her fingers on her skirt quickly, as though she were smoothing a wrinkle or brushing away a bug. I wondered how many tears had been caught in the fabric of her clothes over the years.
“Mom,” I said, “you know, I can take care of Valerie. I mean, while you’re at work. I don’t have to go to school. It’s more important that I help you with Val.”
Mom laughed lightly at that. “Nice try, Roz, but you’re going to school. We’ll both be in trouble with the law if you don’t.”
“But, Mom – ”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find someone to take care of her.”
“But who, Mom? We don’t know anyone around here yet.”
“Maybe I’ll put an ad in the paper. I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I’ve got three weeks to worry about that. Right now I’ve got other things to think about.”
Yeah, and I knew what she was thinking. Or at least I imagined I did. If she were still married to Dr. Frank Sanderson, everything would be different. Everything would be good. Valerie and I wouldn’t be here, because she would never have married Alan Anthony, but that would be all right. She and Frank Sanderson and Wally would be together as a family, and they would be happy.
I thought about that a lot. And I figured if I thought about it, Mom probably did too. Maybe she even thought about it more than I did.
We turned down McDowell Street, and I saw our house, the two-story white clapboard with the black shutters sitting squarely in the middle of the block. It was already becoming familiar, and I was thinking of it as home. With four large rooms downstairs and four bedrooms upstairs, we had far more space than we’d had in our track house in the suburbs of Minneapolis. I forgot about Frank Sanderson as I found myself enjoying the walk to our new home.
When we stepped up to the porch, Wally met us at the door looking sheepish. He pursed his lips and nodded toward the kitchen, from which the unmistakable aroma of fried chicken reached us. Stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts, he explained, “She showed up again, so I let her in.”
We knew who he was talking about, though we hadn’t seen her in five days and hadn’t expected to see her again.
Mom, carrying Valerie, frowned and blinked a couple of times before heading down the hall. I followed close behind, wanting to see what was about to happen.
Tillie, wearing Mom’s apron, was at the stove pounding away at a large pot of potatoes with the wooden-handled masher. On another burner a skillet sizzled with the browned and crispy pieces of chicken that Mom had forgotten to thaw. Tillie must have been there for a while.
Her face was wet with perspiration, and her gray bun was frayed, wispy strands of hair flying every which way each time she hammered the potatoes. When she finally noticed we were there, she smiled at us, and her blue eyes sparkled behind her glasses. She stopped pounding, pushed a strand of matted hair off her forehead with the back of her hand, and said, “There you are. Come on in and wash your hands. Supper’s almost ready.”
I looked at Mom and she looked at me, and that was how Tillie Monroe came to live with us that summer of 1967.
chapter
4
Mills River, Illinois, was a small town stuck in time. The streets and cross streets of well-kept houses and downtown storefronts refused to budge beyond 1950. While the rest of the country had rolled headlong into the turmoil of the sixties – fiery race riots, violent war protests, the nightmare of psychedelic drug use – Mills River remained a stronghold of postwar civility and quiet prosperity.
Somehow Gramps had landed in just the right place after Grandma died, and eventually Mom followed. Gramps had needed a new life of sorts; Mom needed simply to be free to live. A life of constant fear, she said, was as close as you could get to being dead while