17
Cam had come home early, had gotten the boys up and had gone out with them when Jane finished reading and writing the letter, but she didn’t feel done yet. She wasn’t sated at all. She missed Hazel. She felt lost without her. She needed to feel like it would all end up okay. So she pulled Susie’s book back toward her and turned the page, seeking the comfort of Susie’s story. The familiarity of another mother’s story.
Letter 6
When everything changed for our family
Susie
Dear Eve,
I think I would have gone on with the illusion of our family forever. And for a long time, I thought I could. It was your father who brought it out into the open. It was the thing that changed all of our lives forever.
I used to love to watch through the window as you descended the steps of the bus coming home from kindergarten. Your tiny hands clutched around the railing. Your tiny body twisting around as you brought one tiny wobbling leg and then the next tiny wobbling leg from one step to the next. The final dismount from the steps brought you so much joy, and me so much fear. It was a big step for a little girl, but you made it every time. Your tiny lips would press into a tiny smile and you would readjust your bright pink backpack, too large for your tiny body, and begin the run down the driveway toward the door. Your wispy brown hair in two pigtails pointing in different directions after a day of playing. Your backpack bouncing wildly up and down behind you.
Just before you would reach the door, I would swing it wide open and crouch down with open, loving arms, waiting for you to fall into them. And then you did. And I melted every time your little arms flung around me and squeezed tight around my chest. Every time your little head nuzzled into my chest.
I pressed kiss after kiss after kiss into your big round cheeks and you giggled and giggled. The kind of giggles that came straight from the belly.
I curled my fingers around your shoulders and held you out in front of me. I wanted to soak you in at the end of the day. Make sure you were the same girl that left the house in the morning. Make sure you were happy.
I looked straight into your eyes, your swirling emerald eyes, and asked, “How was your day? What did you do? What did you learn?”
You smiled a big toothless smile and would recount the day. Who you played with at recess. What the other girls brought for lunch. What the teacher was wearing.
And I nodded along as you told me, letting the words flow all the way through me. But more important than any of the details was your face as you told the stories of your day. How your eyes lit up and your lips turned up and your cheeks stayed rosy.
You wiggled your backpack off your back and pulled the zipper open.
One day when you got home from school you told us that your homework was to make a family tree. I could tell you were excited.
You pulled out a piece of paper with a big tree drawn in crayon. The brown of the trunk and green of the leaves were so charmingly scribbled a bit outside the lines. You placed the paper delicately down on the floor. You sat down next to the paper and began to explain how this project would go.
You counted as you pointed to the empty spaces in the leaves of the tree that we were meant to fill in with pictures of your family. I remembered that you paused for an extra while on the spot where your picture was supposed to go. You looked up at me to make sure I was listening to the directions. I felt proud of how clear and confident you were. I knew I had a girl that would get what she wanted, what she needed, from her world. At a slight detection that I wasn’t paying attention, you placed your palm on my cheek and directed the angle of my head down toward your drawing. You pointed at the two blank spaces connected to yours and reminded me that this was where Mommy’s and Daddy’s photos were meant to go.
And then you continued describing where Grandma and Grandpa were meant to go at the four spaces at the top of the tree. You stood up and put your hands on my waist, apparently now finished with your explanation.
You asked if I understood the plans and I assured you that I did. I didn’t want you to settle for anything less. And then I suggested that you find Dad to see if he had any good photos. Sometimes, I wonder if things would have been different if I hadn’t told you to ask him.
Your eyes stretched big and wide and you yelled from your place in the foyer out for your father. Your voice was so much bigger than your body. You picked up the paper and ran toward the living room excitedly.
I picked up your backpack and followed slowly and measuredly behind you. When you reached the entranceway to the living room, I leaned my body against the doorway and observed the scene. Your father always made sure to get home early to see you after school, and you had already jumped up into his lap and perched up on his thighs with your family tree paper in hand.
I watched as you rested the paper onto the couch cushion next to your father and repeated the same explanation, pointing and all. Your father nodded along, just as I had, and then hoisted you up. He could hold you in one arm so effortlessly.
Your father set you down in front of the cabinet in the corner of the living room. I still remember where I came across that piece: an antiques fair in northern Maine. I remembered falling in love with the smooth walnut wood stain and the hallmark angled legs of a midcentury modern piece. I imagined it sitting underneath a single shallow vase of succulents in the second home of one of my clients or lined with black-and-white pictures of family and friends in another’s single-story home with broad ceilings and open rooms. I had made the mistake of bringing it home before placing it elsewhere, and after putting it under my favorite Matisse print, I couldn’t manage to let go of it. So here it was in our living room, living among us.
Your father pulled a shoebox full of photos out from the dresser. I had always found it charming that your father still printed photos. That he still enjoyed the ritual of picking up a roll of prints from the shop, even though this was a long-outdated pastime. He had to drive almost ten miles to the only place in the area that still printed them, but he insisted. And he always got great joy from lifting the flap of the white envelope they came in, and flipping through the photos. I did, too. There were stacks and stacks of shoeboxes of photos in that cabinet. Stacks and stacks of memories and catalogs of time spent together.
Your father lifted the lid from the shoebox labeled Christmas and you both began sifting through them. I moved from my spot in the doorway to meet you in the pile of our family memories. Memories of trips to the beach or the lake. Memories of eating ice cream or spaghetti. Memories in the cold of winter and the brightness of spring.
Your father sifted through the photos slowly and methodically, looking at each one carefully, but you tried to hurry him along, determined to find photos that would be the right size and shape to fit on the tree.
You were particular about which photos you wanted. They were either too big or too small or the subject wasn’t turned quite in the right direction. You and your father went through the pile and tossed one after another photo to the side.