Little Bird of Heaven

When I came downstairs, my mother had returned to the dining room where she’d been seated at the drop-leaf cherrywood table which was a “family heirloom” always covered by a tablecloth. The dining room was a room rarely used, and then mostly on holidays. For privacy Mom had brought the kitchen phone into this room, on an extension. These were days before portable phones and cell phones and you were bound to a socket outlet and an extension cord. It was startling to see on the dining room table so many manila folders: financial statements, insurance policies, receipts and income tax forms, scattered official-looking letters, papers.

“Mom? What’s all these things?”

“Sit down, Krista. Never mind these things.”

“But—”

“Wipe your mouth, Krista, for heaven’s sake! It looks like you’ve been lapping milk. I said, sit down.”

I hated the dining room chairs, that were so special. Hard cushions and wicker backs that weren’t comfortable, nothing like the worn vinyl kitchen chairs. Our family meals were always in the kitchen and the dining room was used only for special occasions, occasions of forced festivity arranged by my mother and her family to celebrate birthdays, holidays. There was an inflexible schedule by which Christmas eve, Christmas day, Thanksgiving, and Easter were rotated among my mother and her relatives.

Daddy had used to tease Mom about the tablecloth: What’s the point of cherrywood if no one can see it?—and Mom had said what if someone left a glass ring, a stain or a burn on the table, this was a risk she couldn’t take.

Since Daddy had gone to live with his brother Earl, Mom had become busy as we’d never seen her before. Always she was bustling about the house, up and down stairs; always she was on the phone. Bauer relatives came to see her every day, in the dining room with doors slid shut. There were several women friends who smiled grimly at me and looked as if they’d like to hug me against their droopy bosoms except I ducked away.

A hawk-faced man in a suit and necktie Mom introduced to Ben and me as “my accountant.” Another man in a suit and tie—“Mr. Nagel, my lawyer.”

Lawyer. I didn’t want to think what this might mean.

Estranged. Separated. Divorced…

“Krista? I want you to listen carefully—”

With an awkward sort of tenderness my mother took hold of my chill squirmy hands. She was speaking in a quiet voice which was unsettling to me, a wrong-sounding voice, a forced voice, a voice in which something pleading quivered, though less than an hour ago I’d heard her on the phone speaking sharply, punctuating her words with bursts of what sounded like laughter. I wanted to shut my ears against her, thinking with childish stubbornness Daddy will come back and change all this. Anything that is being done, Daddy will change back to what it should be. Both Ben and I had noticed that our mother’s eyes had a weird glassy sheen for lately she’d been taking prescription medications to help her sleep and to settle her nerves. Not wanting to see Mom’s eyes I stared at our hands, locked so strangely together. As if we were in some dangerous place, on a rocky height for instance, it was our instinct to clutch at each other, in fear. And yet the fear I felt was for my mother. For those glassy red-rimmed eyes and for the smeared-lipstick mouth that might tell me something very ugly I would not wish to hear.

Here was a surprising thing: my mother had removed her rings.

The “white gold” engagement ring with the single square-cut small diamond, and the matching wedding band she said she didn’t think she could force off her finger any longer, she’d gained so much weight. These were gone, I had never seen my mother’s fingers without rings before.

Something was trying to make me remember it: a smile tugged at my lips.

A long-ago Daddy-game when I’d been a little girl. Daddy had hidden my hands inside his big-Daddy hands pretending they were lost, he couldn’t find them.

Where are Puss’s little paws? Who’s seen Puss’s paws? Anybody seen two lost paws?

“Why are you smiling, Krista? Is something funny?”

Quickly I told my mother no. Nothing was funny.

“I’m glad that someone thinks something is funny. Yes, that’s good to know.”

When my mother was angry she pretended to be hurt. If you didn’t apologize immediately, and repeat your apology several times, my mother would become angry.

I told her no nothing was funny. I wasn’t smiling. But I was sorry that I was smiling, if I was smiling.

My mother drew a deep breath. My mother squeezed my chill squirmy hands as if to keep me from running away.

“Well, Krista! You know that your father has been staying with your uncle Earl. And maybe you know that your father has been ‘cooperating’ with the Sparta police detectives who are investigating”—my mother’s brave voice began to falter, I couldn’t raise my eyes to her face—“the death of—that woman—the one who was hurt—Mrs. Kruller—you know who she is. Who she was. The one who was—killed.” My mother paused, and drew another deep breath. A vein pulsed in her throat like a frantic little blue worm. “They—the police—haven’t caught him yet—the one who hurt her—Mrs. Kruller—but they will. But, Krista, I wanted to tell you—and Ben—that your father has been—he has ‘cooperated’ with the police—he has told the police—first, he told me—that he had been a—a ‘close friend’ of that woman’s. And he had visited her where she was living…sometimes.” Now my mother was speaking in rapid little bursts and pauses, like one who is running, whose breath comes in pants; like one whose heartbeat has become erratic. She was squeezing my hands to make me wince. “He—your father—had told police at first that he hadn’t visited her—not for a long time—and that they weren’t friends—they had not been friends for a long time—a few years ago yes, but not recently—this is what he’d told the police—and he had told me—but that was wrong of him because it wasn’t true—and it was wrong of him because the police would find out—because he should have known the police would find out—the police are questioning everyone who knew that woman and her family and everyone who worked with her or lived by her or any of the Krullers—any of that family—they are questioning them all, and so it was a mistake for your father to lie to them. Your father lied to the police, Krista, and your father lied to me. He was afraid, he said. He wanted to protect his family, he said. But the mistake was he has made some people think—he has made the police think—that he might have had something to do with…”

My mother paused, breathing rapidly. The little blue vein fluttered in her throat. Something oily glistened at her hairline. She was wearing her shapeless black stretch-band jersey slacks, a shirt with a twisted collar and a cardigan sweater buttoned crookedly to her neck. Her hair looked matted on one side as if she’d been sleeping on that side of her head and had not checked her reflection in the mirror.

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