up and down until I’d established a soothing rhythm. I curtained my eyes with my shoulder-length hair, blotting out reality so that I could almost believe that I was safe inside a yellow submarine, below the surface, alone, and so far down I couldn’t hear any voices at all.
Although I didn’t understand why my parents fought so much, deep down I understood that something significant was shifting inside our house. Dad had stopped using his words, and Mom had started using too many. I tried to make sense of it by gleaning bits of information I overheard whenever my godmother, Betty, dropped by while Dad was at work. Mom and Betty would sit on the couch and talk about all sorts of things while Betty would play with my hair. Matthew would go down for his nap, and I’d sit on the carpet between their legs where Betty could reach down and absentmindedly wind long strands of my brown hair around her fingers. She’d twist my locks into knotted snakes and then let it unfurl, over and over, while she and Mom worked out their problems. She’d coil my hair tight, then release. Twist, tug, release. Twist, tug, release. It felt like getting a deep itch scratched, a tingling scalp massage that could go on as long as it took them to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes.
They talked the afternoons away, and I stayed so quiet that they forgot about me and got to discussing things I probably shouldn’t have heard. Mostly I learned that men are disappointing. That they promise the moon, but then don’t bring home enough money for groceries. I overheard Mom say that Dad might lose his job because his boss was doing something called “downsizing.”
“Layoffs?” Betty asked. Twist, tug, twist, tug.
“Apparently,” Mom said. “They’re letting all the junior engineers go.”
“Shit on a shingle.”
“You said it.”
“What will you do?” Twist, tug.
“Hell if I know.”
Betty tugged on my hair once more and let it uncoil from her index finger. I stayed statue quiet, ear hustling. They were silent for a few minutes, and Betty switched to scratching my scalp, sending pollywogs of ecstasy squiggling down my neck. Mom got up and fetched two more Tab sodas from the fridge and cracked them open, handing one to Betty. Mom plunked back down onto the sofa and put her feet up on the sagging ottoman. She sighed so hard it sounded like she was deflating.
“Honestly, Betty, I don’t think marriage is all it’s cracked up to be. I’m thirty and feel like ninety.”
Betty shifted her heavy legs, unsticking them from the Naugahyde and stretching them out lengthwise. She attempted a forward bend, but couldn’t reach her hands much past her knees. She grunted with effort and sat back up. She pushed aside the curtains and looked out the window.
“You think being single is all rainbows and unicorns?”
Mom blew a wedge of smoke out one side of her mouth and dropped her stub into an empty pink soda can where it hissed out. “At the rate this is going,” Mom said, “I’d be happy to change places.”
Betty turned back and looked directly at Mom, to make sure she had her full attention. “Sometimes it’s lonely.”
“It’s better to be lonely alone than lonely married.”
Betty cocked an eyebrow at Mom as if to say she wanted proof. Mom launched into Exhibit A—the time she was returning from a walk with me in the buggy, and Dad hollered down to her from the upstairs window to come quick. Terrified something was wrong with Matthew, she left me in the buggy on the sidewalk and streaked into the house and up the stairs, only to find the crisis was a diaper that needed changing.
Mom’s voice turned indignant. “Isn’t child rearing supposed to be fifty-fifty?”
Betty let out a low commiserating whistle. I wanted to ask if Mom ever went back outside for me in the buggy, but knew it wasn’t the time to remind them I was listening.t
“Betty, listen to me. Don’t marry anyone without first asking one crucial question.”
Betty’s fingers froze in my hair temporarily, waiting for the secret to marital bliss.
“Ask if he’s willing to change diapers. Depending on his answer, he’ll treat you as his equal, or his employee.”
I lifted my head like a cat to prod Betty’s fingertips and remind her of her job. Her fingers automatically hooked a strand of my hair and began winding it into a knot. I knew that I was not to repeat anything that was said on the couch. It made me feel a little squirmy to eavesdrop on them, but I liked the head scratching too much to pull myself away.
I must have fallen asleep under the bouncy horse, because I didn’t remember how I got into bed when Mom pushed open my bedroom door with such force it slammed into the wall, jarring me awake. She yanked open dresser drawers, and tossed fistfuls of my clothing into a white suitcase with satiny orange lining. I sat up and tried to adjust my focus, but she was moving so fast she stayed blurry.
“Five minutes,” she said, standing still for a second. “I’m going to get your brother. Be dressed by the time I get back.”
Mom whizzed out of my room. It was dark outside. My body felt like concrete, and I didn’t want to go out into the cold. Mom had done this before. She’d shake us awake in the middle of the night, hurry us into snow pants and hats and mittens, and run down the stairs screaming that she was going to run away. Dad would let her scurry around the house packing until she tired herself out, then he’d eventually get her to sit next to him on the couch to talk. He had a low soothing voice, and she was like a too-loud TV. From the top of the stairs, I’d listen until there was no more yelling and I heard her sniffling, the signal that the argument had passed and it was time for everybody to go back to sleep.
I decided to wait Mom out this time. When she reappeared in my door frame with Matthew on her hip, I was still sitting like a question mark in bed.
“Where are we going?”
“Not now, Meredith. I’m in no mood.”
Balancing my brother in one arm, she tugged off my pajamas and wrestled me into daytime clothes. Mom was scooting me toward the door when I turned back.
“Can I bring Morris?”
Morris was a stuffed pink cat with a skirt that my parents had bought at a drugstore on the way home from the navy hospital nursery after I was born. I had named him Morris after the cat in the TV commercial, and he was my most prized possession. I had grown so dependent on him, especially lately, that I couldn’t fall asleep if he wasn’t tucked under my arm. Mom nodded her permission, and I dug around my sheets, grabbing him just seconds before Mom led me out of the room by my wrist.
As Mom was helping me into my coat in the hallway, Dad passed by, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He opened the front door and walked out into the chilly air. I ran to the living room window and watched as he started up the Volvo under the light of the porch. His breath came in silver puffs as he scraped frost from the windshield. I watched him lift the suitcase into the trunk and get into the driver’s seat while Mom strapped Matthew in the car seat and then came back inside for me. I clutched Morris closer to my chest, and rubbed my chin back and forth against the soft fleece of his pink ears.
“Where are we going?” I asked again, softer this time. Mom zipped up my puffy jacket and put her hands on my shoulders.
“California. To visit Granny and Grandpa.”
Her voice warbled, but she forced a smile and I brightened just a bit. Last summer Granny and Grandpa came for a visit, and because they were guests there was no fighting in our house for a whole week. Grandpa and Dad took me to the beach and taught me how to bodysurf, letting the waves lift and slingshot me into the hissing foam until I glided to a stop on my belly in the sand. Grandpa put me on his shoulders and dug quahogs out of the mud with his toes, teaching me how to spot spurts of water where the clams were siphoning. We brought home a whole bucket and shucked them in the kitchen for dinner. Maybe there’d be quahogs in California.
Inside