TAKING IT
She liked liver, Mama did. And she liked to speak her mind. Mealtime lectures were a staple of my childhood. The importance of iron in one’s diet was a favorite topic, followed closely by the disastrous long-term effects of slouching and the pitfalls of feminism. I learned a lot from my mother. How to maintain eye contact, for instance, while secreting un-chewed chunks of liver into my pockets. I was generous, as a child, about taking the dog out for his evening stroll. Old Boomer was always happy to go with me on those walks, knowing what treats were in store.
Once, when I was fourteen, I overheard my parents discussing my future prospects. They were sitting together on the screened porch off our kitchen.
I had come downstairs from my bedroom, to steal an extra piece of my brother’s birthday cake.
“Well, she’s good with animals, anyway,” Mama said.
That comment came back to me, years later, when I left college, pregnant. The father of my child was willing to go fifty-fifty on an abortion, but wasn’t ready to co-parent, so I left school and moved back in with my folks. While I waited for my daughter to be born, I took up dog walking.
That’s how I met Frank. He and his brother had a dog-walking business in our neighborhood and, apparently, I was encroaching on their turf. The first thing Frank ever said to me was, “It would be too bad if one of your dogs got hurt.”
I laughed.
Then he offered me a cigarette.
I pointed to my belly. “I’m not just fat.”
“I’m not just a dog-walker,” he said.
He meant he was an artist. Starving, of course. But I fell in love with him anyway, and when Alice was born, Frank fell in love with her and asked me to marry him, which I did, and that worked for a while.
Then I moved back in with my parents. And returned to school. Turns out, I’m not just good with animals; I have a way with numbers, too. I manage the books for a moving company now and I have my own dog, a rescue named Peaches. Home, these days, is a rented apartment with popcorn ceilings and poor light, but it’s clean and a short walk to my parent’s house. Alice is in kindergarten and up until six months ago she spent weekday afternoons with my mother.
The last time I went to pick her up, I could hear the two of them arguing as I came through the door. I caught Mama saying, “Because your face could stay that way and then you wouldn’t be a pretty little girl anymore.”
When I entered the kitchen, Alice turned toward me, fuming. “Gram says don’t do nose stretches.”
Alice was into horses then and wanted to be an Arabian when she grew up. Flaring her nostrils was part of the training.
“You can do nose stretches after dinner,” I said, “if you eat all your salad. Horses eat grass, Al, so you gotta practice.”
“Don’t encourage her,” my mother said.
“Kids need encouragement, Mama.”
“Kids need protein,” she said. “Give the girl some liver.”
That night, just after eleven, my father called. I was in the middle of brushing my teeth and didn’t answer at first, but when he called again I picked up. He told me he’d found Mama tipped over on the sofa.
“I thought she’d fallen asleep watching TV,” he said.
I couldn’t speak; my mouth was full of toothpaste foam.
I didn’t know that my grandmother had also died of a stroke until my uncle mentioned it while we were eating chips and guacamole in my parents’ living room, after Mama’s funeral. He said it like it was an interesting coincidence and I smiled in an effort not to feel doomed.
Later, Frank showed up. Everyone else, including my brother, had left and my dad was upstairs, sleeping off the day. I was moving through the house with a trash bag, throwing out paper plates and napkins. Alice was collecting the plastic forks and spoons because her teacher had just taught the class about recycling.
When I answered the door, Frank looked surprised, like I was the one who’d shown up unannounced. We hadn’t seen each other in three years.
“I thought you might need this,” he said, and offered me a paper bag.
Inside was a pint of Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream, which used to be my favorite flavor. Frank crouched down to Alice’s height and held out his arms, but she didn’t know him and ran out of the room.
Now, with Mama gone, I have to pay for after school care, which means I’m just barely covering expenses. Dad says we can move back in with him, but I was hoping that we were moving in another direction.
Alice doesn’t ask about her grandmother anymore and she’s adopted new grown-up goals. Instead of a horse, she wants to be a reporter. One of the kindergarten dads is a journalist and visited the class on Career Day. Since then, Alice has been all fired up about “telling facts.”
At dinner tonight, she launched into a detailed description of a fight that had broken out on the playground during recess. I maintained eye contact as I considered whether I should call the bald guy who was the only person that answered the online dating profile I posted a week ago.
Whenever there was a lull in Alice’s reporting, I said, “Mmmmhmm.”
I jumped when she banged her spoon on the table. “Mom, you’re not even listening. This is the best part!”
I thought, Oh, please don’t let this be the best part.
But I said, “Okay, let me have it.”
Peaches, who was sleeping under the table, let out a whimper and I rubbed her soft, loose belly with my socked foot.