On Turpentine Lane(30)

Three. Babies. I’d done it. Unknowingly I’d forged a path that led us back to my starting point. I said, “Three babies?” And even more disingenuously, “So you weren’t her only child?”

“Well, I kind of was. She was pregnant, but the babies didn’t make it. I don’t remember that much, and I didn’t know anything about the birds and the bees. I was only six or seven. Later, much later, I asked what happened. Like, hadn’t she gone to the hospital and had a baby?”

“Did she tell you?”

“She told me it was the Rh factor. A blood thing. She was Rh negative, and the babies triggered some fatal allergic reaction. They’ve figured it out since. I lived because I was the first baby. After that . . . well, look it up. It’s about antibodies. Now it’s fixable—they give the mother a shot or two, and it’s all fine.”

What does one say except “I’m so sorry. That must’ve been a terrible thing—to grow up under the shadow of that.” And then, as if I weren’t trading in make-believe: “If posing for photos gave your parents some solace or enjoyment . . . who is anyone to judge?”

“PTSD,” she stated. “You know what that is?”

I said I did, yes.

“Plus my father’s sudden death, and then the stepfathers. One day they’re there, and the next day they’re gone. Believe me, it’s all taken its toll . . . Do you have a shredder? Because I don’t want these photos. I don’t even want them thrown out, lying around the dump.”

I said, “I have a shredder at work. So sure . . .” But without conviction, as I considered telling the truth about the photos—that “disconcerting” did not apply to her mother posing naked. Would she want a photographic record of the true subjects, her departed siblings?

Then I heard “How’s Mrs. Strenger? Still next door? She used to babysit me before she had her own kids.”

I said, “Mrs. Strenger? Is she on my driveway side?”

“Yes, that’s her. She had this amazing red-gold hair. They were newlyweds when they moved in and he worshipped her. Even as a kid, I could see that. She was a knockout, but he was nothing to look at. It’s funny, isn’t it—the way that can happen? They had two boys, who are probably in their fifties now. I babysat for them. I forget their names, but neither one got the mother’s hair color. I wonder if they’re on Facebook?”

What does one say besides “Thank you for calling back. I’ll take care of everything.”

Was there a name for this detached conversational hopscotching? Next time I saw Everton’s school psychologist in the lunchroom, I’d ask.





21





Team Turpentine


“RH FACTOR?” MY MOTHER REPEATED. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re not a doctor!”

“No, I meant I should’ve thought of that because my blood is Rh negative! They gave me a shot during the pregnancies and then another after I gave birth. It’s no big deal now, but in the old days . . . well, never mind. You were never in danger. The good news, in its own horrible way, is that we know for sure that your house wasn’t a crime scene.”

Knocking against each other in my increasingly inefficient brain were these thoughts: A. Why hadn’t this occurred to her earlier? And B. If it weren’t for medical science, I’d be dead, too.

“Of course,” she added. “It still doesn’t answer the question why someone took pictures of those poor babies.”

I said, “I’m at work, Ma. I can’t really think straight now.”

“Maybe the pictures were done professionally. By which I mean by the police. Because you call the police when someone dies in your home and they send the medical examiner. Or maybe it was the undertaker, for cosmetic reasons, like how the babies looked closest to being alive.”

“Still, who puts pictures like that in an album?”

“Oops. Your father’s calling. Talk soon!”

I hung up and just sat there staring at the campus map with which I had replaced the map of the continental U.S.

“Not that I was eavesdropping,” I heard Nick say, “but the photos? Maybe the parents were so crazed with grief that they couldn’t let the babies go, and they happened to own a Polaroid camera. Must’ve been one of the first models. What year did you say this was?”

I said, “It was 1956. Thank you for that. Really. That’s going to be my take-away. Please remind me never to mention those poor children again.”

My mother texted me within minutes. Dad’s going to paint 2 cherubs floating in the sky.

Why? I texted back.

To honor the babies! On spec.

I told Nick of this new artistic venture and, after a few swigs of now-cold coffee, that my mother had Rh-negative blood, the thing that killed the babies; well, the antibodies did, which meant I could have been a goner but for medical science, the cure, the medicine, the shots—good thing I wasn’t born twenty-five years earlier . . . just like babies number one and two.

After a respectful pause, Nick asked, “And would this be the topic you’re no longer dwelling on to the detriment of thank-you notes?”

I looked down at my morning’s output. The one note I’d begun had gotten as far as Dear Dr. Tseng, Everyone here at Everton Country Day . . .