When had my mother found her? Why had she kept it a secret?
I took the picture to my bedroom, locked the door, and sat down in a wing chair to study it. The funny thing was that in a vague way I felt connected to this little girl. I almost knew her. We could have been friends. But I guessed from her unkempt hair and overdone ruffle that she came from a poor class of people. Migrant workers, maybe, or tenants in a trailer camp. No doubt she had grown up on wheels, stayed footloose and unreliable and remained on wheels, and had long ago left these parts. It should have been my life. It was my life, and she was living it while I was living hers, married to her true husband, caring for her true children, burdened by her true mother.
I slid the photo into my pocket. (I never considered destroying it.) And from then on I slid it into every pocket, and slept with it under my pillow at night. She was with me permanently. Often now as I moved around the house with bedpans and rubbing alcohol I was dreaming of her sleazy, joyful world. I imagined we would meet someday and trade stories of the ways we'd spent each other's life.
My mother began to ramble in her thoughts. I believe she just allowed herself to ramble, as a sort of holiday. Wouldn't anyone, in her position? When she had to, she could be as lucid as ever. But in her presence most people faltered, the children fell dumb, and even Saul found reasons to leave. It was just me and Mama-back to the old days. Mama sat nodding at the wall, I sewed emblems on Selinda's Girl Scout uniform. Little green stitches fastening down my mother's foggy memories. I thought about the household tasks-the mending, cooking, story-reading, temperature-taking, birthday cakes, dentist's and pediatrician's appointments-necessary for the rearing of a child. All those things my mother had managed, middle-aged though she had been, crippled with high blood pressure and varicose veins, so clumsy and self-conscious that the simplest trip for new school shoes was something to dread for days beforehand. I had never put it all together before. It seemed that the other girl's photo had released me in some way, let me step back to a reasonable distance and finally take an unhampered view of my mother.
"He had never even kissed a girl," she said. "I had to be the one to kiss him. He was so relieved."
"Really, Mama?"
"I suppose you think we made a lot of mistakes with you."
"Oh, no."
"We didn't give you a very happy childhood."
"Nonsense, Mama, I had a happy childhood." In fact, maybe I did. Who knows?
"And his breath smelled of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. I have always considered Juicy Fruit a very trashy flavor."
"Me too," I said.
"My brother hardly ever comes to see me any more."
"He died, Mama.
Remember?"
"Of course I remember. What do you take me for?"
"Aunt Aster sent you a card, though." She tossed, as if throwing off some annoyance.
"If you like, I'll read it to you," I said.
She said, "How long am I going to be ruled by physical things? When do I get to be rid of this body?"
"I don't know, Mama."
"Bring me my cigarettes," she said.
(She didn't smoke.) I laid aside my sewing and slipped out of the room.
Sometimes I just had to. I went swiftly down the stairs, keeping my mind very blank and cold. But in the living room I found rumpled magazines, cast-off shoes, Linus's doll chairs needling the floor, Amos sprawled on the couch with a newspaper. I stopped and pressed a hand to my forehead. Amos looked up. He said, "Shall I go sit with her a while?"
"No, that's all right," I said.
"Aren't you tired?"
"No." He studied me. I never really knew you before," he said finally.
I had a feeling that he didn't know me now, either.
For I was numb, and observed my life as calmly as a woman made of ice, but Amos thought I was strong and brave. He told me so. A thousand times-peering into Mama's darkened room, bringing me coffee, sending me out for a walk in a world that was, surprisingly, going through summer-he would pause and say, "I don't know how you manage this."
"There isn't any managing to be done," I told him.
"I used to think you were only beautiful," he said now.
"Only what?"
"I didn't understand you. Now I see everyone grabbing for pieces of you, and still you're never diminished. Clutching on your skirts and they don't even slow you down. And you're the one who told her the truth; I heard you. Said the word out loud. Cancer. You sail through this house like a. moon, you're strong enough for all of them." I should have argued. (I should have laughed.) But all I said was, "No…" and paused. Then Amos laid aside his paper, and unfolded himself from the couch and took hold of my shoulders and kissed me. He was so slow and deliberate, I could have stopped him any time; but I didn't. His mouth was softer than Saul's. His hands were warmer. He lacked Saul's gaunt, driven intenseness, and made me see that everything was simpler than I'd realized.
My life grew to be all dreams; there was no reality whatsoever. Mama fell into stupors and could not be roused. The children looked like faded little sketches of themselves. My customers drifted in and out again, oddly attired in feather boas, top hats, military medals. Saul didn't talk any more and often when I woke in the night I'd find him sitting on the edge of the bed, unnaturally still, watching me.
Amos met me in vacant rooms, in the steamy attic, in the bend of an unused stairway. We could be discovered at any time and so we held back, for now; but without even moving he could reel me in to him. It was the end of summer and his skin had a polished, brassy glow. His face had grown sleek and well-fed looking.
When he lifted me up in his arms I felt I had left all my troubles on the floor beneath me like gigantic concrete shoes.
I loved him for not being Saul, I suppose. Or for being a younger, happier Saul. He carried no freight of past wrongs and debts; that was why I loved him.
"When this is over with your mother, I'll take you away," he said. "I understand that you can't leave now." Actually, he didn't understand. I would have left. I wanted to get out, throw all the old complexities off, make a clean start. But I was trying to stay faithful to his picture of me and so I only nodded.
"We'll go walking down the street together in a town we've never been to," he said. "People will ask me, "Where'd you get her? How'd you find her? 'She's been sleeping,' TO tell them. 'She's been waiting. My brother was keeping her for me.'" We looked at each other. We were not cruel people, either one of us.
We weren't unkind. So why did we take such joy in this? My wickedness made me feel buoyant, winged. Gliding past a mirror, I was accompanied by someone beautifuclass="underline" her hair filled with lights, eyes deep with plots, gypsyish dress a splash of color in the dusk. When Amos and I met in public, our hands touched, clung, slid off each other and parted, while we ourselves went our separate ways blank-faced and gloating like thieves.
I photographed Miss Feather swathed in a black velvet opera cape, holding a silver pistol that was actually a table lighter. "This will be for my great-niece LaRue, who never comes to visit," she said. "Make up several prints, if you will."
"All right," I said.
"For my other great-nieces, too. Who also never come to visit." I'll have them by tomorrow," I said.
It was night. I was tired. Mama had dropped off and I was trying to catch up on my work. But I could hardly see to focus the camera; everything was haloed.
"I believe I'll go to bed," I told Miss Feather.