"We're too alike, you and I. How can I ever hide anything? Your father was supposed to take us out to dinner, to celebrate your success, but he called just a half hour ago to tell me he was called to a very important meeting and wouldn't be home until ten tonight. Grandmother Beverly made one of her famous bland meat loafs."
My heart raced, chased my own rage,. "Let's go out for pizza," I suggested.
"Really?"
"Yes, Mommy.I'll change into something more pizza-ish and well just go ourselves," I said, my voice laced with defiance. She laughed.
"Yes, why not? Grandmother Beverly doesn't mind eating alone. She's alone when she's eating with us anyway," Mommy said.
We laughed and I went to change. Mommy informed Grandmother Beverly of our intentions.
"She didn't say a word," Mommy told me when we got into my car and I started for my favorite pizza hangout. "She barely nodded."
"She uses silence like a sword," I said.
"I can't help feeling sorry for her sometimes. Cinnamon. She has no real friends, no one from her past life with Grandpa Carlson who cares to stay in touch with her, just a bunch of busy-bodies looking for juicy gossip. She puts so much emphasis on taking care of Daddy and competing with me that she doesn't have time to nurture relationships. But the truth is your father seems oblivious to the both of us these days," she added sadly.
Should I tell her what I knew, what I had seen? Was she ready, strong enough? What if it set her back, wounded her so deeply she had to return to the clinic? How could I live with myself? How could I ever look at Daddy, much less live with him afterward? It was hard enough doing it now.
I swallowed the story back and stuffed it tightly in the dark drawer under my heart.
Mommy loved the pizza place. She said it reminded her so much of her own childhood and teenage years. She talked incessantly, almost with a nervous energy that made me suspicious, but she did tell me stories about her youth that I had never heard, stories about boyfriends and girlfriends and her own fantasies.
"I didn't want to be an actress. I wante
d to be a singer. I had an old aunt. Grandma Gussie's sister Ethel who told me that you could train your voice or turn it into a good singing voice if you found a place where you could get a good echo. I found one about a half-mile from our house, a little canyon. and I used to go there and practice the scales. I think I frightened off not only the birds and squirrels, but the insects. I did go out for chorus. but I was never chosen to do anything more than sing along.
"Fantasies die slow, quiet deaths. They're like cherry blossoms breaking away and sailing down slowly, still holding onto their color and their softness and beauty, but ending up on the ground to be blown about by cold winds.
"Don't let that happen to your dream. Cinnamon," she warned. "This is more than a fantasy. You've got something, a Gift, and don't let anyone or anything stop you. Promise me. Promise me you won't let anyone discourage you." she begged.
I promised and then I showed her the paper Miss Hamilton had given me,
"Then this is real, an opportunity!" she cried. She was happier for me than I was for myself. I think. I hated myself for even harboring a hesitation. "I'll take care of this in the morning."
"Miss Hamilton offered to go with us if we'd like her to," I said.
Mammy seemed to lose some of her excitement and glow. I shouldn't have told her. I thought.
"Of course, if you'd like her to go with us, she can."
"It's not that important. Mommy. I think she's just so excited for me. She's an orphan, you know."
"Oh?"
We both ate some pizza and I told her as much as I knew about Miss Hamilton.
"No," Mommy decided after she heard the details. "she should go with us. She is the one really responsible for all this. Why shouldn't we make her part of it? Besides, if I treat her like I believed those nasty rumors. I would be as guilty as someone spreading them."
I nodded.
Then we went back to giggling, eating our pizza, listening to the music and acting like a couple of teenage sisters. It turned out to be the best time we had together since she had come back from the clinic.
When we got back to the house. I went to do my homework and study for a math test. Mommy returned to her reading. Daddy didn't come home at ten. It was nearly eleven-thirty when I heard his footsteps on the stairway. He went by my room quickly and quietly. I heard their bedroom door close and then the silence of sadness closed in around me, driving me to the sanctity of sleep.
The next day Mommy had all sorts of information for me when I returned from school. Madame Senetsky's administrative assistant told Mammy to have me prepare a speech from The Taming of the Shrew. We had a collection of Shakespearean plays and Mommy had already found the pages.
"We're going Saturday," she told me. "Ten A.M."