Wire Mesh Mothers

11

“You all right? Mistie?” Kate asked again, and then reached one hand back over the seat to make sure the girl was there and hadn’t somehow seeped out through the door crack or melted into the cushion. The lump was there, squirming mildly under the quilt. Kate nodded to herself and said, “Okay, then.”

The windshield was struck with a plop of sleet. Then another.

“Oh, now isn’t this just dandy?”

Another. She turned on the windshield wipers. On the radio, the Monkees’ “Auntie Grizelda” was playing. A little too frantic for the moment at hand. She switched it off.

The McDolen house was four and three-tenths miles from the school, off Route 58 and up a long, spruce and dogwood-lined drive which Kate’s husband had paved when they’d moved in nearly four years ago. The house was an elegant brick structure, built by Donald’s grandfather Owen Bennett McDolen in the late 1920’s. While everyone else in the area was scrambling to survive the Great Depression, raising extra vegetables in their gardens to can and pickle and stash in pantries in case things never got any better, God forbid, or moving in with other family members in the county when upkeep on their small farms was too much to maintain financially, and making corn moonshine to sell on the side for cash money when cash money had become a thing of legend, the McDolen family went on with life as usual in their brown brick manor house. They hired black jazz musicians — all the daring rage at the time for rich white folks — to travel from Richmond to Pippins to entertain at birthdays and other festive gatherings. They kept a firm hand and close eye on the bottom thirty to make sure the train-hopping hobos didn’t set up their tents on McDolen property. They bided their time on money they’d hid in wall safes and under mattresses and in foreign banks.

Kate had never been especially crazy about the house. The bricks were in eternal need of replacement as Owen had thought old bricks from England would be the most elegant when construction had begun. Elegant perhaps, but hardly hearty. They’d been made with too much sand, and time had eroded many of them, requiring constant, vigilant replacements. The interior echoed regardless of the area carpets and there was no air conditioning in the summer because it would “ruin the ambiance.” The basement smelled of old biscuits and there was a subterranean maid’s room, now full of old books and magazines that continually bred nests of field mice and centipedes.

Kate and Donald had lived several places since they’d married — Charlottesville, Richmond, and Alexandria as Donald completed his education as a lawyer, passed the bar, and joined a firm for a short stint with big-city legalities. But Donald had always wanted to come back to the place of his childhood. He was the only son. It fell to him, he said, to keep the home place in the family. And so to Pippins they had moved, hi-ho-the-dairy-oh, to Pippins they had moved. Donnie, who had been born in Richmond, was a little apprehensive at the idea of living in the country; he made Kate promise he wouldn’t have to wear overalls to school.

Donald set up his practice in the nearby town of Emporia, and was kept as busy as he cared to be. His clients were most often businesses who wanted to buy up farm land on which to build their respective industries. Donald McDolen knew the land and the people and the mind-sets. Because of Donald McDolen, there was a new Wal-Mart between Emporia and Pippins, and a Little Debbie factory north of Capron.

Kate’s car circled up the driveway past the spruce and dogwoods, skidded slightly on a patch of sleet, and stopped at the front porch. Kate turned off the engine, then pulled the blanket off Mistie. The girl’s face was slick with snot. Kate’s stomach clenched but then she shook the disgust away.

“I have to stop here for just a minute,” she said. “A quick pop in, pop out, then we’re gone. Do you have to use the bathroom? This is the best place if you have to go. We have a nice bathroom. Lilac soap.”

The little girl rubbed her nose.

“Do you, Mistie?”

The little girl shook her head.

“Are you sure?”

The girl stared at Kate. Kate blew a puff of air through her teeth.

“Well, you should come with me in the house, though, I guess,” said Kate. “Do you want to come in with me for a minute? It’s warm inside the house.”

Mistie shook her head.

Kate clenched her fists then let them out. Sure, fine. It would be easier to go in and out without having to coax the girl along the way. Easier, faster. And no possible Mistie fingerprints left at the scene.

Good Lord, what am I doing? The right thing, that’s what.

“All right then, but stay in the car. We’re going on a really fun trip. A long trip but a really fun one. But if you get out of the car you can’t go. You’ll miss the fun. Understand?”

Mistie scratched her nose and rolled her lips in between her teeth. Kate took that for a yes. “I’ll be right back.”

The heavy oak front door opened at the turn of Kate’s key. She swung into the foyer, dripping sleet, and dropped the key ring into her coat pocket. It was then she realized how hot her hands were. She had been driving without gloves, but her hands were pulsing with a quick and urgent heat. She rubbed them vigorously.

“What am I doing?” she chuckled aloud. She touched her lips. They, too, were hot. “What the hell indeed.”

On the foyer table beneath the beveled-edged mirror was a lush, scarlet poinsettia with a white satin bow, purchased last Saturday at the Let’s Be Buds Flower Shop in Emporia. Just above the plant on the wall in a tidy cluster were three small watercolors of dogwoods blooming by a Blue Ridge stream. Kate collected watercolors done by Virginia artists. It was one of the few things she did, it seemed, of which Donald still approved.

Kate pulled a small pad of “Mc” embossed notepaper from the drawer in the small table. She removed a black pen and uncapped it.

“Donald,” she wrote. “Don’t wait dinner for me. I had a bit of a problem at school today. No biggie. I’m off for a drive. Won’t be long. Don’t wait up.”

She drew heavy lines through the note then stuffed it into her coat pocket.

On the next sheet she wrote, “Donald, I had a bit of a blow-out at school. Some minor student trouble. Nothing for you to worry about. But I’m going to take a couple personal days off and go see some sights. I should have waited for you to get home before I left but when was the last time you cared about where I was or what I was doing, anyway?”

She tore up the note.

Kate peered out the door-side window. The little girl was still in place. The quilt in the back seat was moving slightly.

Donald would be home around seven. His work took him away from the house early and sent him home late. Six days a week. Sundays he golfed with friends if the weather was nice and played poker with the friends if not. Her son, Donald Junior, was still in Philadelphia at Ricketts-Heyden School until Christmas break next Thursday. He’d been a boarder there for his last three school years. He needed Ricketts-Heyden. She and Donald needed him to be at Ricketts-Hayden.

Back at the hall table, Kate scribbled, “Donald, I’ll be gone awhile. You know I’ve needed time alone since the incident in July. Now’s the time. Food in fridge. Kate.”

That was the answer. That would keep Donald from looking for her for a while. He’d leave it alone. He hated any mention of the incident in July.

Lord, help me.

She propped the note against the poinsettia, aware that she was leaving her own fingerprints on the pen and foyer table, and then letting out a short burst of laughter at that preposterous concern. She backed up to the front door to make sure it was clearly visible to someone coming home. It was.

She crossed her arms, then, and looked around herself. The mahogany, carpeted stairway. The arched entrance to the grand living room. The wide hallway lined with various paintings and portraits. The crystal chandelier over the foyer, the one Donnie had thought magical as a child; he would chase the colorful sparks it threw to the floor as if chasing leprechauns. The smell of cigar smoke and last night’s baked ham and the furniture wax Belinda used throughout the house when she came to clean once a week.

She remembered.

Donnie sitting on the third step from the bottom, arms crossed, staring at the front door as Donald loaded the trunk and cases. At fifteen, he was already his father’s height, 6’1”. There was a hint of stubble around his chin, but Kate had not said a thing. It was not the day for that.

“I would be happy to come along,” Kate offered. She was standing by the foyer table, watching between her son on the steps and the front door. “You know I would.”

“Don’t come,” said Donnie simply. He did not look at her. His green eyes were shadowed in thick, black brows; his father’s brows. His mouth was set in the line Donald often wore when determined, or distracted, or angry.

“All right.” Kate took a long breath. “As soon as you have it, call with your mailing address. I’ll send you lots of mail. When I was a girl and went to camp, my father sent mail nearly every day. Mail really helped me get over my case of homesickness.”

“I’m not going to camp.”

“I know.”

“I won’t be homesick.”

“No, you probably won’t. But if you are, this is something my father told me when I went to camp. Find someone who feels worse than you and do something nice for him. Then you’ll feel better. Okay?”

“I’m not going to camp.”

Kate sighed. Donnie wasn’t going to camp. He was leaving for boarding school in Philadelphia. He would enroll as a sophomore. He would be allowed to come home to visit on only three occasions — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. No weekend excursions allowed. Ricketts-Heyden was not for rich little boys preparing for Harvard or Yale. It was a school for rich little boys who’d been to their families or in trouble with the law. Rich little boys like Donald Peter McDolen, Jr., who had discovered girls in eighth grade, drugs in ninth.

At first Donnie had used the old McDolen stable for his trysts; Kate had found cast-off condoms, empty cartons of Kools, several stubby roaches, and Donnie’s lost Algebra book when she’d ventured into the stable to collect some old leather harnesses she’d planned on using to decorate the family room in old-country motif.

She confronted Donald with the evidence when he’d come home that evening. But Donald had only laughed and said at least Donnie was practicing safe sex. And the drugs? Kate had asked. What about the drugs? Donald said it was only pot, for heaven’s sake, they’d tried pot in college.

“He’s not in college,” said Kate.

Donnie continued his antics in spite of Kate’s warnings and threats. He moved his activities from the stable to the house. Not only did he entertain high school girls in his bedroom, but he began his own pot distribution center. When arrested during the second semester of ninth grade with some stash on him at the school, Donald the father was forced to become Donald the lawyer. A private plea was arranged; if Donnie was given the help he needed, the charges would be dropped. Donnie would remain an upstanding citizen and the McDolen name would be untarnished.

Donald found Ricketts-Heyden with a couple phone calls. Donnie was enrolled within the week, to begin in July.

“I’ll miss you,” Kate said to her son on the stairs.

“Yeah, I’m sure, but you’ll get over it.”

Donald opened the front door and called, “Hurry up, the car’s running. Kiss your mother good-bye and let’s get going.”

Donnie had not kissed his mother good-bye. He hadn’t even looked at her as he’d stood from the stairs, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and walked out through the door.

The weeks that followed were quicksand; thick, sluggish days where she couldn’t even read a magazine article or a page from a novel without losing concentration. Her gaze slid off the print as if caught on slick ice. She found herself zoning in and out of focus when Donald talked to her. Where she found sleep was the best comfort of all.

At her yearly pap exam in Emporia in August she began to cry and couldn’t stop. The nurse practitioner asked Kate if she was depressed. Depressed? She’d thought. No, I’m just so tired.

So unbelievably tired.

She was sent home with a prescription for Zolof. She was too distracted to take it. Donald said, “You have to do something, Kate. I can’t stand to see you hanging around all day in your pajamas. When did you last shower?”

“Why do you care?” she’d asked him over dinner. “You don’t see me often enough to know what the hell I do or don’t do.”

The following day, Stuart Gordonson called to tell her there was a fourth grade opening starting in September at Pippins Elementary School and she would be the perfect candidate for the position.

Ah, but Donald was quick and to the point.

She remembered.

With a new surge of conviction, Kate yanked opened the front hall closet, grabbed a handful of spare scarves, a knit hat, and two of the seven assorted umbrellas, then raced out through the sleet to the waiting car.