Read The First Few Chapters
Copyright © 2024 Andrea Landy
All rights reserved
First Edition
PAGE PUBLISHING
Conneaut Lake, PA
First originally published by Page Publishing 2024
This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, occurrences and places are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locations, events or business organizations is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 979-8-88793-668-0 (pbk)
ISBN 979-8-88793-680-2 (digital)
Printed in the United States of America
For Stevie
Acknowledgments
Page 1
My sister and I had very special talks, but as we grew up, we grew apart a little, and Marisa didn’t live long enough for us to really share important memories. I think my mother thought the rest of us were all liars anyway, even though I believed somewhere, she had to know the truth.
My first memory was when I was two years old. I was in Marisa’s green bedroom upstairs, watching my mother lift Marisa’s tiny legs as she lay on her back on the bed while my mother spanked the shit out of her little butt. My mother had this awful snarl on her face. The year was 1965.
I don’t remember my parents wanting to move out of the Buchner home behind Boochie’s Fish Store so that they could build a new home in Crescent Hills. Knowing Dad the way I did, that seemed impossible and more like something my mother would have wanted.
My father was the third-generation proprietor of Boochie’s Fish Store, and he lived in the house directly behind it his entire life. His parents lived there, his grandparents lived there, and although I don’t remember, it would have been my mother Lavinia who would have wanted to break the cycle, pack up, and move out of South Wellton. I suppose I could see how other people could want to do the same, just not Rudy Buchner.
What I do remember were the fights, the arguments, and as I recall, it was mainly my mother’s squawking that rocked the house. Dad wasn’t a yeller. He just shrugged his shoulders, waved his hands, and tried his best to ignore her. That wasn’t easy because she could get really loud. One time he put cotton balls in his ears, and that really pissed her off. But for reasons unknown, I felt this need to cling to my mother at times. She was my mother after all.
Page 2
One summer morning that I remember particularly well was when my parents were still married. It was unusually hot, and the sun was high in the sky. The four of us prowled around this big parking lot in our blue Plymouth station wagon with the wooden side panels. My mother fidgeted and squirmed in the front seat and kept muttering to herself. I heard a couple of words and phrases like “embarrassed” and “sell this thing” while my father, with the windows down, his shoulder-length black hair flipping around his ears in wisps, sang to the music on the radio.
“I’m having lunch with Penelope,” she declared as she snapped her head back to look at Marisa and me in the back seat. “Are you listening to me, Marisa?”
I answered yes for the both of us. Marisa was busy giggling at my father’s singing as she waved her arms out the window.
My mother swatted Marisa on the thigh. “If you continue to stick your arms out the window, young lady, another car is going to come along and rip them right off your body.”
“Will she die, Mom?” I asked, horrified at the thought.
My mother shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
My father pulled up beside the Wellton Savings Bank, which was a tiny outparcel at the far end of the parking lot where my mother was supposed to meet her friend. I could feel the heat of the engine and the smell of the exhaust as my mother, forgetting to say goodbye and give my father a kiss, hurriedly grabbed her white patent leather pocketbook and escaped from the car as if it were about to explode. Her thick auburn hair remained perfect as her large white faux pearls bounced over her chest and her white polka-dot sundress swayed softly just above her knees.
“You look beautiful, Mom,” I said to her as she disappeared into the bank. I climbed over the back seat and peered out the back window. Once my father turned the corner, both the bank and my mother were gone. I was sad and worried. She had forgotten to say goodbye to us; she never touched my arm or leg, never turned around once. She was running away from us, and I wondered if she would ever come back.
“Rudy, can we get a cat?” Marisa bounced up and down in her seat.
page 3
My father let out a quick robust laugh. “Cat? You want a cat? I’m not really a fan of cats. It’s not that I don’t like them. I don’t know much about them.” He paused for a second. “Now, wait a minute, there’s that one cat that hangs around the store. That’s bad enough. A cat that hangs around a fish store.”
“Don’t say you don’t know about cats. You know everything about stuff,” Marisa said.
My father put his hand on his chest and tossed his head back. He was all puffed up and proud of himself. The two of them continued to discuss cats, singing, and hair, all of which I found boring. I continued to sit in the way back, which was what I called the long beige carpeted area of our station wagon.
“Want me to roll down the big window for you back there?” my father called back to me, ignoring my mother’s rules.
I shook my head as I pressed my nose up against the side window.
“All right. We’re gonna be home soon anyway.”
We turned onto the Boulevard or what I always called the pretty road when I was little. The brilliant green and endless mediums wove through the concrete in perfect little strips hidden under maple trees one after the other. At night, the Boulevard would sparkle with ordinary streetlights until you drove around the old firehouse and the Roman Catholic church my grandmother always admired. There you could see the vintage gas lamps in forest green, fire flickering within.
It was so hot in the way back, even though I could feel a little bit of a breeze coming from Marisa’s open window. It was the same window that she continued to hang out of, challenging other drivers and pedestrians alike to “go ahead take my arms off!”
I remained isolated in the back, face pressed up to the window, wondering who Penelope was and why my mother had to have lunch with her. We had lots of things to eat for lunch at home. That’s exactly where we were going and what we were planning to do, go home to eat lunch. My mother, who was always so beautiful to me, looked like a princess back at the bank with her white handbag and matching shoes, her long shimmering strand of make-believe pearls; she looked like she was about to board an airplane. Her white dress with the red polka dots was my favorite.
Page 4
The way it swung and lay so quietly, you couldn’t even tell she was wearing a slip and a girdle underneath. I knew she was because I spied on her that morning and watched as she slowly pasted her undergarments to her smooth pale body. Had she known I was on the other side of that door, she would have yelled and slapped me. My mother got angry at things like that. Why did she have to get so dressed up to eat lunch?
Unlike my father’s fine jet-black mane that fell untamed, every strand of hair on my mother’s head was perfectly planned. It was an organized lush of a deep redwood. That day she swooped it back on both sides behind each ear and fastened a handful with a shiny white barrette. Her red hair was just a little darker than the red polka dots.
As I sat in the hot car, the front windows still all rolled down, I wished that I could spend more time with my mother in her polka-dot dress and that she didn’t want to run to Penelope. I never remembered her running to Marisa, Dad, or me like that, and I was sure neither Dad nor Marisa had any recollections either. I could ask, but no, never mind.
“Hey, Alice, are you still out here?” Marisa was hanging off the car door. “Come on inside. Rudy’s got us some of that homemade bread with the rest of the leftover borscht.” She fidgeted with the door handle. “And gumballs.”
As soon as I heard gum, my head snapped around. “He doesn’t have gumballs for us.” I shook my head and sneered, missing my mother again and suddenly noticing the overcast sky.
“He does!” she insisted. “If you come right now, I’ll show you. I promise you. Rudy’s giving us gumballs with lunch. He said he got them at the bank the other day.”
“Mom isn’t going to like that,” I said darkly.
She put her foot up into the car as she swayed back and forth. “Mom’s not here, is she? She’s gone to have lunch with her friend, so we can do anything we want, and Rudy’s not going to tell. It was his idea anyway.”
As my sister chattered about wanting a cat, I used the opportunity to cram myself all the way back at the end of the car. I lay sideways like a log, attempting to roll toward the front, with each roll saying, “I don’t want any borscht, I want—”
page 5
“You’re never going to make it over that seat,” she said, shaking her head and curling her lips in disgust.
“Gumballs.” I plopped over the back of the seat and landed belly down. “Yes, I just did!” I rolled over on my back and started to get up.
“You’re a dummy. Come on.” Marisa galloped up the stone walkway and then up the steps to the Victorian-style house behind Boochie’s Fish Store. Victorian-style was what my mother called our house. She said it wasn’t really a Victorian house; it was a Victorian-style house. I wasn’t sure what the difference was.
Boochie’s Fish Store is where Dad’s employee and best friend Frank and sister Aunt Nancy were, as my dad would say, “holding down the fort.” My mother referred to my father’s younger sister and my aunt Nancy as crazy. Aunt Nancy had paranoid schizophrenia for as long as I can remember, and that would be my whole life. As long as she stayed on her medication, she was okay—well, pretty much okay. I didn’t think it was very nice of my mother to call Aunt Nancy names behind her back, but I didn’t dare tell my mother that. I just pretended not to listen, and I always hoped that Aunt Nancy didn’t hear her because it would probably really hurt her.
When I turned around from the car, I noticed that Aunt Nancy didn’t look like she was “holding down the fort” like she was supposed to, but I think Dad was used to that. She was standing in the shade on the side of the building smoking what was probably her two hundredth cigarette. She looked very thin. Aunt Nancy’s weight went up and down and up and down. She seemed to always talk about it. She stood up against the gray concrete wall, one knee up, wearing a white T-shirt with blue jeans and some sort of white towel wrapped around her head. Normally, she wore the regular hairnet that looked like a white shower cap. I had no idea what she was doing with that towel.
Noticing that I was watching her, she smiled and waved.
I waved back. “Hi, Aunt Nancy.” I probably said it too quietly for her to hear, and then I made my way up to the house.
Marisa liked my aunt Nancy a lot. The two of them played the piano together, picked flowers, drew pictures, and pressed those wax paper maple leaf things.
Page 6
Marisa liked to do all that arts and crafts stuff, and Aunt Nancy liked to tag along with her. A lot of the time Aunt Nancy would forget Marisa’s name and end up calling her Elizabeth or Melissa. I loved Aunt Nancy, but she could be very annoying because she would squeeze my fat cheeks and kiss me really hard. At least she could remember my name. Who wouldn’t remember the name Alice? I thought that Alice was one of the most ordinary names on earth. Marisa’s name was lovely and beautiful and unique, just like her.
Dad set our little wooden table in the kitchen. Marisa was already sitting at one end, waiting for my father to bring her borscht and bread. She reminded me of a beautiful petite princess, all magnificent and regal as she slowly caressed her long, thick, shiny, auburn ponytail. And she sort of reminded me of Mom.
“Dad, is it true?” I asked. “Did you really get us gumballs for lunch?”
He had a dish towel tossed over his left shoulder, and in his right hand, he held a ladle as he slumped over the countertop, stirring a big stainless steel pot of borscht. “See for yourself.” He nodded toward the table.
My father had evenly divided ten gumballs between us, but Marisa took it upon herself to take all the pink and red ones, leaving me all the yellow and green.
“Now, you girls might want to wait until you’re finished with your lunch. You can’t eat borscht and chew gum at the same time,” he joked.
I looked across my bowl at my sister. “You took all the red and pink ones.”
“Marisa?” My father was at the sink, his back to us. Then he walked out of the kitchen on his way upstairs. “I divided those colors evenly between the two of you. Alice likes the red ones too, you know.”
She shook her head as if I had inconvenienced her. “Alice, why do you have to be such a baby? Come on.”
The room went dark. I didn’t really care about gumballs or what color they were. I was wondering what was so special about this Penelope person that made my mother want to dress up and run away?
page 7
Suddenly, an eerie feeling crept over me. It was still hot out, but the sun was gone as the clouds moved in and swallowed up the sky. “Where’s Mom?”
Marisa was shoveling beets into her mouth. “What?” There was sour cream on her lips. “You know where she is. We dropped her off at the bank, you know, to meet her friend.”
“Penelope.”
“Yeah.” Another mouthful.
“I want Mom to come back.”
“She’s coming back.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Later.”
“I don’t want to wait until later. I want her back now. I want my mother back now!” I yelled and slapped my palm down into my borscht, causing some of the thick pink liquid to spill onto the table. Then I dropped a yellow gumball into my bowl.
“What’s wrong with you, Alice? Mom’s coming back, and you know she’s coming back. She lives here, stupid! Why all of a sudden do you miss her so much? Why did you just—is it because of the red and pink gumballs? Isn’t that kind of dumb? God.”
I was sobbing quietly as my father, having just changed into a T-shirt and boxer shorts, walked toward me. I looked up at his chest area, too afraid to meet his eyes. I thought I was in trouble for making a mess or that Marisa would make it sound worse than it really was. Had my mother seen my behavior, she would have slapped me so hard on the side of my head, my ears would have been ringing for the rest of the afternoon.
Page 8
“Okay,” he said quietly as he wiped down the leg of the wooden table with a green sponge, “let’s take the yellow gumball out of the borscht.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her, Rudy. One minute she’s fine, the next minute she goes ape. Now she’s worried that Mom’s never coming back.”
“You’re a thief,” I said.
“Ladies, come on. That’s enough. You’re sisters, you’re supposed to love each other, share and be kind.”
Neither one of us said anything to that. My reason was because I had the B-word on the launching pad and ready to go, and I knew that would really disappoint Dad. But Marisa had no control over herself, and I watched her. She just gave me a smug look and returned the red and pink gumballs she stole from me.
“Ew. They have borscht all over them. I don’t want them anymore. You can have them,” I said.
“Good. Thanks.” She took the rest of her bread and gumballs and headed for the kitchen door. “I’m going outside to see if I can find Shelly.”
“Who’s Shelly?” my father asked, tossing the sponge in the sink from across the room. “Two points.”
“He’s that stray cat we were talking about today that comes around sometimes. He’s gray and he likes shellfish, so I named him Shelly.” She was excited as she looked around for the cat.
“You better not be feeding him!”
“I’m not!” she insisted, her face up in the screen door.
“Watch he doesn’t bite you.”
page 9
“He’s not gonna bite me. He won’t even let me get close to him.” She was gone.
I sat still at the table as my father turned to me. “Do you want some more soup?” I shook my head. “Well, wipe your nose. You got snot running down your face.”
I blew my nose into a clean napkin my father put in front of me. He looked tired.
“Dad.”
“Hmm?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Aw, don’t be.”
“How come Mom always has to go places?” Why was this so hard for everyone to understand? I was ten years old, and I could understand that mothers were not supposed to get all dolled up and run off to meet a friend that nobody seemed to know while leaving their families at home. “Like today, she was wearing a beautiful dress, the kind she only puts on when we go over to Bunic and Bunica’s for the holidays, and she hates doing that and going over there. But today she was all happy to go and see Penelope in her dress. It must be Penelope.”
My father chuckled. I didn’t know what was funny. “Oh, you’re a smart one, Alice.” He pulled up a wooden chair from the side of the table and sat. It was too small for him. “I don’t know where you got it from, but it sure as hell wasn’t from me.”
“You’re smart, Dad,” I objected.
He raised a finger. “I can put on a good show when I need to.” Then he got up and started puttering around the kitchen. My father didn’t like to sit in one place for very long unless he was exhausted and had a book in his hands. He shrugged his shoulders. “She just wants to spend a little time with her friends. you know, get away from us every once in a while.”
“Get away from us?” I knew it.
“Okay, get away from me.” He threw his hands out in front of him as if he was trying to stop something from running him over.
“Why does Mom want to get away from you? You’re married!”
Page 10
He let out this loud laugh and shook his head. He walked over to the sink, stood there for several seconds, and started tinkering with something while his back was toward me. He was annoying me.
“She’s always going out places, Dad. Why can’t she invite her friends like Penelope over here? Does she hate us or something? Do you love Mom, Dad?”
“Of course I love her.”
“Then why doesn’t she want to be with us or with you?”
“I…I don’t know, Alice.” He turned to me and threw his hands up again. “Sometimes adults—women—like to go out to lunch with their friends. You wait until you get older, you’re gonna want to go out to lunch with the ladies too.”
“You don’t go out to lunch.”
“I don’t eat lunch. And I’m not a lady.”
I giggled. “Everybody in the world eats lunch, Dad.”
“I gotta tell you, Alice, if I had known that I was going to have a kid who was going to stump me and ask me all these hard questions, I would have sold you a long time ago.”
“Sell me?” I asked. “Where? At the store?”
He raised his eyebrows and did a little dance with his head. “The store sounds good. I could have sold you to the sideshow at the state fair.”
“The sideshow?”
It must have been the way I said sideshow because suddenly, my father was laughing hard, not the way he had been laughing earlier when we were talking about Mom. This was real laughter, when something was really funny, when there was something to actually laugh about. In the backyard, I could hear Marisa talking sweetly to Shelly the cat.
For that moment, I remember everything was perfect.
Except Mom was gone.
page 11
At dinnertime, my mother had still not arrived home. When I asked my father again where she was, he said that she had called earlier and announced that she would be spending the rest of the afternoon with Penelope and that Penelope would be driving her home later.
The house was beginning to cool down a little. Dad opened the windows in the kitchen, the library, and the living room, and a slight breeze crossed through the downstairs, giving us some relief. The sun disappeared again except for a small silver shimmer that made its way through the grayish clouds. Off in the distance were slight streaks of pink shown over someone else’s part of Wellton. I couldn’t see the moon, but the early signs of evening had a clarity about them. I wondered if my mother would be home before the clock struck the late hours.
Dad brought us back fish sticks, homemade sauce, and “World Famous” fries from the store. As soon as I saw the amount of fries Dad had in the bag—or chips as he referred to them in a really bad English accent—I knew for sure that Mom would not be joining us for dinner. Dad prepared us two whole packages of frozen baby peas and then squashed them up like mashed potatoes, explaining that “this is how the Brits do it—more or less.” Marisa smothered her food with ketchup, tartar sauce, and malt vinegar while Dad and I discussed sixteenth century England. Marisa thought Dad and I were boring. We probably were to most people.
My father always liked to talk about different places, about the world’s cultures and religions. He loved to read. When he wasn’t at the store or driving my mother around to meet strange people for lunch dates, he would spend hours pacing the library with a book in his hands. Sometimes we would just sit on the sofa and read together.
page 12
It could be a book about anything. My father claimed that the world was so full of things to learn that we could spend the rest of our lives reading and learning, and we wouldn’t have even begun to make a dent in the knowledge that was available to us. He knew everything he needed to know about running a fish store, but he always said that just picking one thing to learn and to master was a bore. He even said once there were more things to learn about running a fish store. He said we never really knew everything even if we were masters. “Expand your mind,” he would say. “Your brain needs to be active, so keep it active.” My mother always told him that he was full of shit, but he didn’t care. He would just laugh, shake his head, and keep reading everything he found interesting. I would be his partner.
It was dark when my mother came home, and I may have been asleep for some time. My bedroom window, which faced the front of the house, was open, and a soft breeze must have sent me off. I had been fighting sleep just so I could see my mother in her dress before I climbed into bed. Gone were the regular sounds of the evening: familiar honking on the South Wellton strip, which was the south side Boulevard but nowhere near as nice, the occasional screeching whoosh of an airbrake as Frank stood on the loading dock, smoking a cigarette and chatting away with a truck driver, a distant bounce of a basketball. Now, the house was crowded with the booming sounds of impatience, anger, and fury, all of which came from my mother.
I couldn’t actually hear what they were arguing about, but tonight, it sounded as if my mother was a burglar lost in the dark, a burglar who was clumsy and very mad. My sister wasn’t a chicken clutching her stuffed whatever under the covers, however. She would always brazenly stand at the top of the staircase in her pajamas, listening like a bad spy, eager to report back to me. The bright yellow overhead light in the hallway flicked on, and as I gingerly allowed one eye to creep over the sheets, I saw a slither of Marisa’s face in the cracked bedroom door.
“Mom’s home.”