“Did you get unpacked?” Charley asked. “I can help if you haven’t.”
“Everything except these three boxes—I told John to leave them alone. I shouldn’t be the only one here who gets her own room this summer,” Megan said. “I can double up, too.”
For the time being Krista was keeping her belongings in the master suite but taking the third bedroom for sleeping, keeping the drawers and closet free for Hope. When Hope and the girls arrived, Krista was okay sharing the big bed with Charley.
“Maybe. We’ll see. Depends on how you feel,” Charley said. “I just don’t want you to have any trouble sleeping, that’s all. And you should have a room of your own that John can share on weekends.”
“I’ve been sleeping like the dead lately,” Megan said. Then she winked at Krista, whose mouth hung open.
“It takes a little getting used to,” Charley told Krista.
“I have a surprise you’re going to love,” Megan said. “In one of these boxes...let’s see...” She read the contents as described in black, heavy marker on the outside of the boxes. Dishes, pans, linens, clothes, shoes... “Ah! Here!” She began to tear open the box.
“Shoes?” Krista questioned. “I’d heard you women on the outside were very big on shoes, but...”
“Not this time,” Megan said. “We don’t need many shoes at the lake. This was just a ruse in case Mother stopped by.”
Charley turned her attention to them now—the idea of getting something over on her mother held instant appeal.
“I stole these,” she said, lifting several large photo albums out of the box to expose a cache of loose pictures in the bottom of the box. There were also a couple of large padded envelopes full of old snapshots. “When Grandma went to the nursing home and Mother was getting ready to have an estate sale and get rid of the Grand Avenue mansion, I went over to Grandma’s in the dark of night, with a flashlight and my key to the back door, and poked around in an old box of photos. John came with me. That was before I got sick. We had a blast.”
“Why didn’t you just ask for them?” Krista wanted to know.
“Well, I asked for and got a couple of the big albums...the formal ones... Remember how we used to pore over them when we were little? Our mommies’ proms, parties, coming-outs, weddings? And the years and years of formal sittings after we started being born? I’m surprised they held together for all the little hands pulling at them. So, she said I could have these, but to tell the truth, I didn’t trust Mother with the rest of the pictures. She’s so damn angry about the past, I figured she’d either hide or destroy them. Like all the lake pictures, there are hundreds of them, and we’re all ages. There are a lot of faces in here I don’t know. We’ll have to sort through them, identify them, maybe make some new albums.”
“Look at this,” Krista was saying, leafing through piles of loose pictures. “Our mothers in puberty...out on the dock...”
“Oh, my God, the Berkey-Hempstead cousins in braces!” Charley said, howling with laughter.
“Oh, Jesus, is this what I think it is? This was taken moments after Beverly was born, in Grandma Berkey’s bed, here at the lake!”
“Let’s see. Oh, boy, you’re right, look at them grin! Mother and Jo, like they planned it. Mother said Jo had miscalculated, as usual. You know,” Charley said, putting the photo down and looking upward as if for an answer of some kind, “for years that event was told as a funny story, but after the summer of ’89, it became another example of Josephine’s incompetence.”
“Of course my mother says she could have made it to the hospital, but Louise was bossy as usual and insisted they stay at the lake.”
They looked at each other and laughed. Then they dug around to find another picture to tell another story.
“I knew they’d come in handy,” Megan said softly, watching Charley and Krista plow through them, laugh, groan, gasp, light up in recognition. Meg pulled out the largest of the albums, leather bound and gold embossed. She sat on the sofa with it on her lap. Small as she was, she resembled a child reading an oversize book.
On every holiday from the time Josephine and Louise were born, they were dressed up and seated for a formal picture. The photographer would come out to the house. Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving—in the study by the fireplace, in the living room on the satin sofa, in the rose garden behind the house. There was also a wedding book for each daughter and then, as would naturally follow, formal pictures of the extended family. Louise and Carl, Charley, Megan and Bunny. Josephine and Roy, Hope, Krista and Beverly. Presiding over them, year after year, the judge and Grandma.
The portraits, all eight-by-ten color behind vinyl sheets, pulled them out of their lives and put them into this fairyland that could be viewed forever. You couldn’t tell, when looking at the portraits, that Roy was frequently drunk and out of work. Nor could you see that it was Lou, in the other family group, who was given to violent rages against her mostly silent husband, more often verbal than physical but in many ways more destructive.
Charley remembered. She was quite young when she heard, You think you can treat me like that and get away with it? You’ll see when I’m not here anymore and it won’t just be me, but me and the babies. I’ll take them with me. Check in the basement when you come home next time and see if we’re not all hanging there, dead!
Her mother, mouth twisted in rage, railed at her silent and stoic father. She might’ve been young but she was old enough to have carried that screaming threat straight into adulthood. There were a few times when, as a budding teen, she came home to an empty house and for a split second wondered if her mother and sisters were dead in the basement.
But no. No. That had not happened, only threatened.
Megan flipped the page of the album to Christmas 1985. They were coordinated in black and red velvet; the men wore dark suits and red ties, the little girls wore red jumpers and black Mary Janes; the women wore black velvet and pearls. In ’86, they wore ensembles of red and white. In ’87, they were decked in black and silver with touches of red and green here and there, on the men’s ties, in bows in the little girls’ hair. In ’88, it was red and green—the Roy Hempsteads in red and the Carl Hempsteads in green. The judge and Grandma reigned over them in black formal attire.
Their last Christmas together as a whole family.
Whatever it was that had held them together, whether it was the controlling hand of the judge or the denial of the dysfunction and brutality, whether it was the need to give an external impression, whatever it was, you had to give it some credit because they sure looked damn good. They didn’t look like screamers or drinkers or bed wetters or nightmare victims or insomniacs or nervous wrecks. It sure didn’t look like pending amnesia or attempted suicide or homicide.
“Did everyone know our homelife was crazy?” Charley asked Krista.
“Your homelife?” she asked with a laugh. “Did your father have to get blitzed to go to the judge and Grandma’s?”
“My dad didn’t drink much, that I recall,” Charley said.
“See, that’s what would be worth untangling,” Krista said. “We remember everything differently. We came from different families. We weren’t the same at all. Just because our mothers wanted us to think we were a set didn’t make it so.”
Megan began to remember what things were like when they were children. She could see it almost as if she was back in her mother’s kitchen and she was approximately thirteen years old. But she was seeing it with a new perspective.
She was pouring two glasses of Kool-Aid, probably for herself and Krista, watching and listening to her mother and aunt discuss the meal, their husbands, kids, parents, their conversation speckled with laughter. Hope and Charley were upstairs in Charley’s bedroom listening to music and reading magazines and talking about boys. Bev and Bunny were in the rec room down in the basement playing Barbies. There was the distant sound of some sporting event on the television; Carl and Roy occasionally erupted in cheers or groans of misery.
“Don’t slice the eggs yet, they’ll get dry,” Lou commanded.
“I could devil them up?” Jo asked. She would always ask how Lou would have her do things.
“I think we’ll do the eggs last. Here, let’s make the patties and relishes.”
“You betcha.”
“Do those pretty radishes like you do,” Lou said.
“You betcha. Should we put the girls at the picnic table?”
“Let’s keep ’em in. It’s a little cold yet. We’ll put them downstairs.”
“Want to warm the buns in the oven again?”
“Oh, yeah, I loved that before, didn’t you? Toast them a little.”
“Aw, shit! He coulda had that! Jo! Bring me and Carl a beer!” Roy shouted from the living room.
“Don’t bother taking one to Carl,” Lou said. “He doesn’t need another one.”
“Roy doesn’t need one, either, but you think anyone could tell him that?” Jo said with heavy sarcasm.
“How many is that he’s had so far?”
“A hundred or so,” she said. Then she popped the cap off a cold beer, took a swig and passed it to Lou. “I’d rather have one than count his. Share?” she said with a grin.
Lou laughed. “Why not? They’re both a little easier to take when we’ve had our beer.”
“After Roy’s had his, there isn’t anything to take, if you know what I mean.”
“Carl doesn’t need as much as Roy, if you know what I mean.”
Meg remembered there was always lots of laughter. Helpless laughter. Secret laughter. We. Our. Them. Us.
There were many weekend days like that, most of them spent at Lou and Carl’s because Roy and Jo were always moving from one little low-rent house to another. When there wasn’t a command performance with the judge and Grandma, Lou and Jo brought the husbands and kids together so they could be together.