Only Child(68)

“Good day,” Mommy said back in a quiet voice, and then she came in the dining room. She was moving in slow motion when she sat down on her chair. Her face was white like Daddy’s face was earlier.

“Is Daddy OK, Mommy?” I asked, and I could feel the hurting in my stomach get worse.

Mommy didn’t answer me, but she looked at Mimi and said to her, “She left a note for him. It was her, Mom. It was Nancy, the woman that he…,” and she stopped in the middle of her sentence and started laughing and that was a surprise. She started out laughing a little bit, and then her laughing got louder and louder and I didn’t know what was funny. In the middle of her laughing, Mommy said, “I’m such an idiot!”





[ 39 ]


    Special Surprise


THE NIGHT OF THANKSGIVING I went to Aunt Mary’s house for a sleepover. Daddy didn’t come back home before we left. Aunt Mary moved from their house in New Jersey to an apartment after Uncle Chip died. It was close to our house, and I went there before a couple times. The apartment was small with only a tiny kitchen that was right when you walked in, and a counter with three barstools like ours and no other table. Just a living room and Aunt Mary’s bedroom and one other bedroom, but that was full of boxes and there was no bed in it. Everything smelled funny.

“Oh, gross, what stinks?” Andy said when we went there for a visit.

Aunt Mary said in a jokey voice, “I take it you are not a connoisseur of curry then, Andy? They love that stuff downstairs. Curry for breakfast, curry for lunch, and curry for dinner. Anyway, you get used to it.” I could still smell the curry smell when we walked in this time, but it didn’t bother me that much.

“How about we watch a movie and make popcorn…Oh wait, I don’t know if I have popcorn,” Aunt Mary said, and she started looking in her cabinets in the tiny kitchen. “Yeah, sorry, bud, no popcorn. But I have pretzels. You like those, right?”

I didn’t say anything because I had a big lump in my throat and I thought that if I talked I was probably going to start crying. I missed Mommy and Daddy.

I walked through the apartment and looked around. Aunt Mary had a lot of things everywhere that her and Uncle Chip brought home from when they did trips all over the world—funny-looking masks and paintings and cups and vases and stuff like that. In their old house, Uncle Chip always showed these to me and told me stories about where they were from and why they were special.

On a table next to the couch were a lot of different picture frames with pictures of Aunt Mary and Uncle Chip on their trips, and also from our family and Aunt Mary’s. One picture frame that had all kinds of different sunglasses painted on the sides had the same picture in it that Aunt Mary showed me in our photo album when her and Grandma were taking out pictures from them—the one of all of us on the cruise ship with the sombreros on. In the back behind some other picture frames I spotted a picture of Mommy and Daddy. I reached over to pick it up, and I had to be careful so I didn’t knock over the other ones in front.

I saw this picture a lot of times before. We have it in a frame also in Mommy and Daddy’s room. It’s from their wedding, and they’re both in a pool—with their wedding clothes on. Mommy looks beautiful. Her white dress is floating in the water all around her, and Daddy has his head to the side close to Mommy’s face, like he’s about to give her a kiss.

All of a sudden Aunt Mary put her hand on my shoulder and I jumped a little because I didn’t hear her come up behind me.

“I love this picture of them,” Aunt Mary said, and she took the frame from me and looked at the picture from closer up and laughed. “I still can’t believe they really jumped in. That beautiful dress!”

“They jumped in because of Grandpa, right?” I asked.

“Well, it was a really long day for them and all of us because—you know, Grandpa got sick earlier that day,” Aunt Mary said.

“Yeah, he got his heart attack,” I said.

“Yes. It was just…everyone was very emotional, and it was really hot, and we spent most of the day at the hospital….By the time we knew Grandpa was going to be OK and your mom and dad decided to have the wedding after all…boy, we really had to scramble to get ready,” Aunt Mary said. “I looked a serious hot mess, I can tell you that much. But your mom somehow managed to look breathtaking. Don’t ask me how she pulled that one off.”

“Did you jump in the pool, too?” I asked.

“I did! Almost all of the guests did. It was an amazing ending to an amazing wedding. It is still the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever been to. Maybe because of all the drama earlier in the day. But they were also such a gorgeous couple, your parents, so in love,” Aunt Mary said. She smiled at me, and then she put the picture frame back.

“And did you see that one here?” Aunt Mary asked. She picked up a picture frame from way in the back and it was of Mommy and Daddy again, and they were lying down together in a hospital bed with a baby in between them. They both were kissing the baby’s head at the same time.

“Is that me or Andy?” I asked.

“That is you. Can’t you tell from all that hair?” Aunt Mary laughed. “That’s why I always call you monkey, because you were hairy like a little monkey when you were born.”

“Where was Andy?” I asked.