“Mother, you’re running out of excuses. Now that Daddy’s off fishing, you’ll have plenty of time to give it a try.”
My forty-five-year-old firstborn is every bit as stubborn now as she was as a toddler when, arms folded defiantly, she would stomp her foot and tell me “no.” She wore me down then, and nothing seems to have changed because I’m actually considering doing what she asks.
“My life isn’t that exciting.”
“Nonsense. Your history is interesting to us. We really don’t know that much about what you were like as a girl or about your early married years. It’ll be a legacy for your grandchildren.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Jenny fixes me with her brown eyes, so like mine. “At the beginning, of course.”
How can I tell her it isn’t the beginning I’m worried about. That part I can handle. But the rest? How honest can I be? Particularly in light of recent events. Our daughters will expect portraits of the parents they think they know.
Jenny reaches into her tote bag. “Here.” She thrusts a thick journal into my hands, then pulls out a package of my favorite ballpoint pens and plops it on the table. “Now you have no excuse. What have you got to hide? Just pick up a pen and jump in.”
What have you got to hide? My thoughts leap to Mark Taylor. Oh, my darling girl, life isn’t always as it appears. Dreams become distorted, we do things we never thought we would, and in the twinkling of an eye everything changes.
Jenny arches an eyebrow and waits for my answer.
I sigh. “You’re not letting me wiggle out of this, are you?”
Her mouth twitches in a mischievous smile. “I of the iron will? Of course, not.” She sobers. “Please, Mom.”
Picking up the journal, I thumb through the blank pages, wondering how I can possibly fill them. Wondering how to keep the truth from shattering my daughters’ illusions.
“What if you learn some things you’d rather not know?”
“Ooh…” My daughter shivers with delight. “Family skeletons? I can’t wait.”
“Don’t be too sure.”
“Do it for us, please, Mom?”
In my head I fast-forward a film of memories, the laughter and tears of a lifetime welling within me. I nod. “I’ll try.”
After Jenny leaves, I move to the window with its view of the mountains, now in early autumn adorned with skirts of golden aspen. So many years. So many subjects I’d sooner avoid. But I cannot write a fairy tale, especially not now, when the happily-ever-after is in doubt. Sitting in the armchair that has been my refuge for years, I pick up a pen and open the journal. Where to start?
Glancing around the room, my focus settles first on the man-size sofa and recliner, then on the stone fireplace and finally on the floor-to-ceiling bookcase. As if drawn by a magnet, my eyes light on the small figurine peering at me from the fourth shelf. The Buddha-shaped body is both grotesque and comical, but it is the impish, all-knowing smile that pierces my heart. The billiken.
Now I know how to begin.
Springbranch, Louisiana
1945
THE PEALING CHURCH BELLS and deafening staccato of firecrackers mark the event forever in my memory. My scholarly father scooped me into his arms and danced me up and down the sidewalk among throngs of neighbors spilling from their houses. “The Japanese have surrendered,” he shouted. “Praise the Lord, the war is over!” Then cradling me close, he whispered for my ear alone. “Remember this day always, Isabel. Freedom has prevailed.”
I didn’t know what prevailed meant, but I understood something momentous had happened.
I can still picture the tear-stained face of Mrs. Ledoux, whose son was on a ship somewhere in the Pacific, and hear the pop of the champagne cork from Old Man Culpepper’s front porch. Small boys beat tattoos on improvised drums and grown men waved flags semaphore-style over their heads.
I was six and had no memory of a time before rationing, savings stamps and victory gardens. When the family gathered around the radio listening to news from the front, even though I couldn’t grasp much, I knew “our boys” were heroes. But the freedom my daddy talked about was a puzzling concept. Looking back, I realize how far from harm’s way we were in the small, backwater town in north central Louisiana.
That night Grandmama Phillips, my mother’s mother, led me into her upstairs bedroom. After Grandpapa died, she came to live with us and brought an astonishing array of antique furniture, including a china closet, a Victrola, two rockers and a canopy bed. Her room was an exotic sanctuary for me, smelling of Evening in Paris cologne, peppermint drops and patchouli incense.
Sleepy after the V-J Day celebration, I crawled onto my grandmother’s lap and nestled against her bosom. “Ma petite Isabel, this is a joyous end to long, troubling years. I have something special to give you to remember this day. A token to remind you how every once in a while, things turn out exactly as they should.”
Reaching into the pocket of her flowered smock, she brought forth the odd-looking figurine that I’d seen sitting in the china cabinet among her collection of delicate teacups and saucers. Smiling beatifically, as if giving me a gift of great worth, Grandmama placed the grayish statuette in my small, cupped hands. The contours of the Buddha-esque body felt cool and soothing, and I giggled when I gazed at the face, bearing an elfin grin as if he and I shared a delicious secret. “What is it, Grandmama?”
“A billiken. My father brought this to me in 1909 after a trip to Missouri.” She ran a finger over the billiken’s head. “He’s an extraordinary little god.” Then, taking him from me, she upended him. On the bottom was a circular brass plaque with an inscription around the circumference. “Can you read this, Bel?”
I screwed up my face and studied the words. She took over for me. “‘The god of things as they ought to be.’” She chuckled. “No wonder he’s smiling, ma chère. Today is one of those rare times when things are, indeed, exactly as they ought to be.”
I fell asleep clutching the billiken, secure in the knowledge that I was safe, the world was at peace and things truly were as God intended.
LET ME TELL YOU more about my family. I was an only child, doted upon by the three adults in the home. Sometimes I wonder if their attention to me wasn’t, in part, a means of buffering themselves from one another.
Daddy was a short, chubby man who wore thick glasses and taught English literature at the local college. In a household of females, his study was his haven, and he retreated there most evenings to prepare lessons or grade papers. My mother deferred to him, but with ill-concealed martyrdom, as if she were silently screaming, “I made my bed, and now I will lie in it.”
Grandmama, ever the romantic, amused herself by listening to radio soap operas. When I stayed home from school sick, she would bring me into her bedroom where we would snuggle under her comforter, breathless for the latest adventures of Helen Trent or “Our Gal Sunday.” My grandmother admired swashbuckling rogues of the Rhett Butler mold. Occasionally she would mutter things like, “Your daddy just needs to stand his ground with Renie” or, referring to one of the soap opera idols, “Now, there’s a man for you—he’s out in the world doing something.” Young as I was, I knew what had been left unsaid. “Unlike your father.”
In retrospect, I see she was preparing me for my own Clark Gable, spinning romantic notions of the day my personal knight in shining armor would appear.
I loved Grandmama dearly, but I wished she saw in Daddy what I did—a courtly and gentle man who made me his intellectual companion and in whose eyes I could do no wrong. And what of his interior life? Did he regret marrying my mother, or, in his own way, did he care for her? Had he ever harbored other—different—aspirations?