What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [76]
“We can open them together,” I said, and started unwrapping my gift, then stopped, listening to see if I could hear Sharla doing the same. She was; I could hear the rustling sounds.
“Thanks, Mom,” Sharla said quietly. “It’s pretty.”
I finished opening my gift. It was a painting of a mother sitting in a rocker holding a baby. The room was furnished ordinarily: a crib, a night table with a softly glowing lamp, a yellow, fringed rug. But where the walls should have been were thin, white clouds against a black night sky, pinpoints of stars were everywhere.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Do you like it?”
My throat ached. I nodded, then croaked, “Yes.” I was so sorry we hadn’t gone up to her apartment. It was Christmas Eve; she was all alone. Nor had we gotten her a present—every time our father offered to take us to get her something, we’d told him we were going to do it ourselves.
“I’ll bring you your present tomorrow night,” I said. Something would be open. Or I’d make something.
“I’ll bring mine, too,” Sharla said. I heard some reluctant sorrow in her voice as well.
Our mother said nothing for a while, breathed into the phone. Then, “Well, you know, I won’t be home tomorrow night. Remember how you were going to have breakfast with me and then go right home? So I … well, I have train tickets for a trip to New York City early tomorrow afternoon. I’m going to stay in a hotel and see all the sights! I’ll bring you back something. What would you like?”
“Who are you going with?” Sharla asked.
But we knew. And in that instant—and I felt it happen to both of us at the same time, as though Sharla and I shared a heart and a brain and a soul—at that instant, we let go of something.
“Jasmine and I are going together,” my mother said. “But if you girls would like to have breakfast with me—”
“Have fun,” Sharla said, and hung up.
“Merry Christmas,” I said, and it seemed so odd to be saying that over the phone, to my mother.
“Ginny?” she said, and I hung up.
I went into the living room, saw Sharla sitting with a canvas in her lap. Her painting was of a bird wearing high heels, pearls, and an apron, sitting chained to a tree with tiny pot holders for leaves. The sun in the sky was blue.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked. I wondered if he’d heard any of the conversation.
“In the basement. He’s finishing building something. I think it’s a bookcase for us, a fancy one.”
“Did you peek?”
She smiled.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
“It’s beautiful.”
I looked at the painting in her lap. “That’s nice, too,” I tried; but my voice betrayed me.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sharla said. And then, looking up at me, “Jasmine and Mom are girlfriends, you know.”
“I know.”
“No. I mean, lesbos. Lesbians.”
I stepped back.
“They are,” Sharla said.
“No, they are not.”
She snorted. “I knew I couldn’t tell you.”
My mind felt crowded with images that wanted in. Somewhere inside, I pulled a curtain. Not yet. Not yet.
I put the painting behind my dresser; Sharla put hers in her closet. We celebrated Christmas with my father and Georgia, who, at the end of January, became his fiancée.
In February, my mother moved back to Santa Fe. We did not see her on the day she left, nor in the weeks before. Our visits to her had fizzled and died. No one fought hard enough to keep them alive. Sharla had told our father about her suspicions regarding Jasmine and our mother. “What did he say?” I asked, and Sharla said, “Nothing. He must have known.”
We got letters, but not with the frequency we had at first. And once when she called, when I came into the kitchen to have my time alone with her, I simply let the phone rest on the counter. I stared at it while I made a braid in my hair, then unbraided it. I picked some dirt from beneath my fingernails, counted slowly to twenty-five. Then I hung the phone up. She did not call back.
Time passed. Time passed. My father was happy. Georgia was easy, sunny. I grew to love her in a way that was not compensatory. It amazed me, how easily that happened.
Sharla and I did not write to our mother; we