Long Way Home(21)

“No one is kicking you out,” Pop said. “You done a good job taking care of me, Peggy Ann, cooking for me and things all these years. But Donna wants to take over now that she’s not working until all hours of the night. We’re thinking about making it legal—her and me.”

It was what Donna had long wanted. I would hear them fighting about it sometimes when they’d been drinking too much. “It’s just a piece of paper,” Pop would say. “What do we need that for?” Donna had been married once before and divorced. She wanted the security that a husband would provide. Pop’s garage and our apartment would be hers once they married. I longed to ask if she was going to continue sleeping until noon every day, and if she even knew how to cook, but it would be wrong to spew my hurt feelings all over her. This had been Pop’s decision, too.

I struggled to pull myself together. As calmly as I could, I asked, “Move on to what? Where am I supposed to go?”

“Like your pop said, you could do anything you wanted,” Donna replied. “You’re a pretty girl and you did real good in school, as I recall. I never did finish, you know.” In all the years Donna had lived with us, she’d never once told me I was pretty or encouraged me in school. I had the bitter thought that she was only being nice to me now because she wanted to get rid of me.

“You’re right,” I said, standing. “Why don’t you start showing Donna around the office and the garage, Pop. I can answer her questions when I get back. I need to run across the street and tend to one of the horses and I’m already late.” It wasn’t true. I was running away to hide my tears from them. I was unwanted. I didn’t belong here. I felt like the “dog girl” all over again. I hurried into the barn where a new horse named Pedro was being boarded, and busied myself by giving his coat a good brushing. My tears fell as my thoughts swirled like dirty dishwater down a drain. Since when had Pop ever cared about my education or my future? The only people who had taken an interest in me had been Jimmy and his parents—not Pop and certainly not Donna. I wouldn’t have gone to high school at all if it hadn’t been for Jimmy.

I had just finished the eighth grade in the summer of 1939, and Jimmy was getting ready to start college at Cornell. We were working here in the barn together and talking about all kinds of things when he asked, “Are you excited about starting at the regional high school this fall, Peggety?” I shook my head. “You aren’t? Why not?”

I was embarrassed to say why, but he coaxed the truth out of me. He was an expert at digging deep and getting me to share my feelings. I told him how I didn’t have the right clothes to wear and how I would feel out-of-place in such a big school. “And besides,” I added, “Pop doesn’t see any reason for me to go. He never went past the eighth grade, and he owns his own garage.”

Jimmy showed up at my apartment a few days later with his girlfriend, Tina, and her best friend, Cathy. They sat me down on the rickety chair in our backyard, then Cathy wrapped a towel around my neck and gave me a real beauty-parlor haircut. She’d been studying how to do it in the high school’s vocational program. Tina gave me some movie-star magazines to look at while Cathy was cutting, just like in a real beauty parlor. Jimmy disappeared into the garage, where Pop was replacing an alternator, leaving us to our “girlie stuff,” as he called it. When Cathy was finished, Tina squealed and oohed and aahed over me and made me feel pretty. Then Jimmy came back, and he carried on like he didn’t recognize me, saying, “Who is this pretty young lady? I don’t believe we’ve ever met.” I barely recognized myself when I looked in the mirror.

“I’m going to be working in Flo’s Salon on Main Street,” Cathy told me before she left. “You come on in whenever you need a trim.” Tina said I could keep the magazines. Later, I found three grocery sacks on my bed, filled with used clothes that the girls must have outgrown. Jimmy never said a thing about the clothes, but I knew he was behind it. And when Pop told me that he’d changed his mind about me going to high school, I knew who had talked him into it.

I returned to my present dilemma when Pedro nudged me with his muzzle as if trying to soothe my hurt feelings. I was being cut adrift, asked to give up my job and leave my home, and I had no idea where to turn or what to do. If I took another factory job somewhere, I might make new friends and recover the sense of belonging that I’d lost when the war ended. But who was I kidding? A few million soldiers had just returned home from the war and every available job would go to one of them. I heard someone enter the barn and oh, how I wished it could have been Jimmy, coming to rescue me again. But it was Mr. Barnett.

“I was just coming to look in on Pedro,” he said. “I thought you’d gone home.”

The word home touched a nerve, and I maneuvered to Pedro’s other side to hide my tears. I didn’t want to bother the Barnetts with my problems or ask for their advice about my future. They had enough heartache dealing with their son’s future right now. They didn’t need me to unload my problems on their shoulders, too. “I don’t mind checking up on Pedro,” I said. “He’s a great horse.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re still here. I forgot to mention it earlier, but Dr. Morgan’s office called. He wants to talk to us again before we visit Jim on Sunday. Would you be able to come with us to our appointment tomorrow? You were a great comfort to Martha and me the last time.”