Tilda's Promise Page 3

  Laura looked up. She had never heard Tilda use the F-word, and the shock registered on her daughter’s face.

  But Tilda acknowledged Laura’s response with a laugh.

  “Something you should know about your mother, Laura. I swear now. A lot. To myself, mostly. I think it’s a passing thing. I’m sure I’ll get over it.”

  They both wiped their eyes.

  “So I’m with you, Mom. We’re both entitled to a year,” she said, crumbling her tissue. “You, to get through the five stages, and me—shneim asar chodesh. I promise I won’t bug you anymore. And then when we reach Dad’s Yahrzeit—the time of one year—we’ll talk. Is it a deal, then?” Laura asked, reaching across the table.

  Tilda grabbed her daughter’s hand. “It’s a deal, I promise.” Laura’s brown eyes brightened. Harold’s eyes. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. . . . Praise the mutilated world. If only she could.

  Chapter Two

  “I GOT A GIRL . . .”

  On a Friday morning in September, Tilda sat at the kitchen table intently reading the orange juice container in front of her. After several attempts to reach the 800 number listed on the carton, she gave up in her quest to discover why, if the juice was not from concentrate and it was “100 percent fresh squeezed,” it didn’t taste anything like fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Oh fuck it,” she said and hung up.

  Looking out the bay window, she saw the first harbinger of fall, a yellow maple leaf softly gliding to the ground. The goldenrods at the property line were glowing vividly in the morning sun of a bright, clear day. Weeds, really, she thought, but she had always lived in harmony with the wild plants and flowers at the edge of their expansive lot at the beginning of a conservation area, one of the main attractions when they first saw the house all those years ago. In late summer the goldenrods paired beautifully with the purple asters that nuzzled in next to them. Her own beds, though, the ones she always tended so carefully, were languishing, some with roses, others circling trees with astilbes, cornflowers, and black-eyed Susans.

  She could barely look at her vegetables these days, planted on the far end of the patio. One day in the midst of her mourning, she had rushed to Tom Pride’s Nursery, had loaded up on her usual seedlings, and had planted them in a fury only to neglect them for the remainder of the season, Laura and Mark occasionally watering the patch on their visits.

  How lucky she had been. No deer or voles had ever gobbled up her luscious vegetables and herbs. Despite her neglect, the tomatoes were still coming in plump and juicy, even as the vines began to wither, but the herbs had dried up, including the basil. Basil was her favorite. Her father nurtured thick clumps of it outside their kitchen door when she was a child. She loved the cool feel of its slightly curled and rounded deep green leaves. Pinching a few from their stems and crushing them with her fingers, she was transported by the immediate and overpowering scent, both sweet and pungent. “It’s good in the tomato sauce, and it’s like toothpaste, for your breath, when you want to be kissed,” her father used to tell her. This was delivered with a playful nod and smile, quickly followed with, “But not you or your sister. You’re too young.” For him, they would always be too young. Nevertheless, she never left home without first chewing a few sprigs—from her first parties, where there was sure to be a game of spin the bottle, to her first dates, when there was bound to be a good-night kiss at the door.

  Now she pushed the juice container aside and sprinkled granola on her yogurt. The house was quiet except for the sound of her own chewing. The silence was bringing on the dark mood, the name she had given her feelings these days. Was this darkness the same as Churchill’s black dog? She didn’t think so because that would mean she was depressed, and she didn’t think that missing Harold so much she could hardly breathe at times was depression. It was grief, and that was different. The dark mood was the overpowering sense of absence: absence of Harold, of comfort, of happiness, of any sense of joy. Surely there was no joy; maybe there never would be again.

  Ever since the immediate shock of Harold’s death had passed, she’d experienced life as though enveloped in a thick gray cloud where everything was the same, dull and uninteresting. When Tilda and Harold had breakfast together there had been little conversation—Tilda usually sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the New York Times spread out in front of her while Harold sat in the screened-in porch off the kitchen listening to NPR—but she could be happy. She even felt joy, seeing him there, chin lifted, staring into space, as though he could see the news in front of him.

  She sat in the kitchen this morning as she did most mornings, with her coffee and granola, but today the paper was on the driveway where the carrier had thrown it. She didn’t have the energy to get dressed and walk the few steps out the door to get it. Her neighbor next door, Amanda, often tiptoed barefoot out her own front door to retrieve the paper in nothing but a skimpy, short robe.

  When Harold happened to notice, which he often did, he’d comment, “There she is again, sans panties,” causing Tilda to laugh. Tilda was never jealous, even though Amanda was at least twenty-five years younger and a real looker, as Harold would say. But Harold and Tilda had grown old together, and they knew each other’s boundaries. Harold did not stray. He might look, but he didn’t stray. “Go on,” Tilda told him one morning as he watched Amanda bend down. “Go help her get the paper, so she can keep her clothes from falling off. And if you get anywhere with her, I’ll be the first to congratulate you, you old coot.”

  “At my age, I’d rather have the paper,” Harold said in return, a variation on the punch line of a familiar joke he often told: “A man is met at the door by a beautiful woman who asks if he would like super sex. The man replies, ‘At my age, lady, I’d rather have the soup.’”

  Her world without Harold was a foreign place, where the distraction of grief mingled with the burdens of ordinary life. Tilda thought about the storm windows that would have to be put up soon, something Harold did reluctantly every fall, trying to make it to Halloween before having to close up his porch. There were a lot of things yet to be done—accounts to be closed, taxes to be sorted out, an office full of files and closets full of a lifetime of accumulation to be confronted. But she didn’t have the energy for all that yet.

  Just then the phone rang.

  “Mom, you got a minute?”

  Tilda recognized Laura’s anxious voice under her casual words.

  “What’s the matter? Is everything okay?”

  Laura paused and took a deep breath. “It’s Tilly. She’s all right. I don’t want to worry you, but . . .” And then she paused again.

  “Just tell me. You said she’s all right. So just tell me.”

  “She’s cut herself . . . well, not cuts exactly.”

  “How? Is it serious?”

  She heard her daughter draw a breath, “No, not really, but she did it on purpose.”

  “Well, was it cuts or scratch marks?”

  “It didn’t look deep.”

  It took a moment for the words to register. Tilda knew about cutting. She had a student once, a girl named Zelda, a creative and talented writer who cut herself. In those days, troubled or unhappy students often turned to Tilda for guidance or for attention, sometimes both. Her friend Bev once said it was because she made them read Catcher in the Rye—and then stood her ground when some parents objected. “Your students think you’re a kindred spirit,” Bev had said.

  “What happened? Tell me how you found out. Did she tell you?” Tilda’s thoughts were racing. It took many more rounds of questioning her distraught daughter before she finally learned that (a) Tilly was at home, not at school, where her actions would have triggered a series of events including possible expulsion; (b) she used a safety pin and barely drew blood, so it appeared to be superficial; and (c) she’d willingly told her parents. With these key points in mind, Tilda was able to calm her daughter down.

  “I’m not tryin
g to minimize this, dear, honestly. It’s just that a lot of kids who do this do it for a long time and hide it from their parents—and sometimes the cuts are deep and need stitches. The fact that she talked to you, that’s very significant.”

  “Do you think so? We’re so worried. She told us she did it, but she hasn’t said why. She doesn’t want to go into it. We don’t know what to do, but we’re looking into counseling. That’s the obvious first step.”

  Tilda didn’t want to rule out the possibility, but she was also afraid that what appeared to be a minor version of a more serious act might escalate unnecessarily. She had seen it happen during her teaching days. When cases of self-harming were revealed, the school had no choice but to act, no matter how superficial the injury. Such incidents were cries for help. At worst, the student might pose a danger to others, putting the school at risk. Students who injured themselves at school could be barred from returning, their parents having to find alternative schools that would take them. Once labeled as “troubled,” students were invariably consumed by the “system.” Tilda could not accept any scenario in which her granddaughter became a troubled kid.

  “Maybe not just yet. Maybe now the best thing is to keep talking and keep an eye on her.”

  Tilda knew that wouldn’t be hard for Laura, the hovercraft. She wondered if Tilly was acting out under the pressure of too much attention at home, giving her mother something to really worry about instead of the usual grades, friends, appropriate hair, clothes, behavior, and all the rest.

  “Would you like me to talk to her?” asked Tilda. “She talks to me sometimes about things.” It was true. Tilda took pride in her relationship with her granddaughter, the fact that Tilly called her or sent her text messages, asked for her opinion. Then, of course, there were days and weeks when Tilly went dark, no word, when talking to her at all was difficult. Tilda always chalked it up to typical adolescent behavior.

  “She does talk to you about things, doesn’t she,” said Laura. “Maybe that would be a good idea. She wants to go shopping for dance stuff tomorrow. Maybe you could take her.”

  “That would be great. I’m here all day. Ask if she would like that and let me know.”

  After they hung up, Tilda remembered that Tilly had just made the dance team. She found it hard to reconcile the cheerful dancer with the sullen self-cutter she was contemplating now. She hoped Tilly would say yes and that she would be able to take her to the mall for whatever she needed to help restore her to her cheerful self.

  Tilda opened the sliding doors and walked over to one of the shelves on the porch where Harold kept the radio he’d had for years. They had a new one in the living room, a fancy digital affair that Mark had set up for them so they could listen to a radio without static, and Harold had been sure to tell Mark that he was a good IT guy, for a financial planner. But Harold remained partial to the Panasonic he’d had since the ’70s, the one Tilda said looked like a small boom box. She turned the power switch to on and sat in Harold’s rattan wingback with the deep floral cushions and put her feet up on the ottoman. The room was a little chilly but still comfortable enough for a respite from her morning’s conversation with Laura.

  She listened to the morning news, an interview with a young woman who was explaining a bill that was expected to become law about sexual consent on college campuses. The young woman made a lot of sense, as far as Tilda could tell, not being all that familiar with the story. Instead of “no means no,” the new bill was about affirmative consent, or “yes means yes.” The woman quoted wording from the bill explaining that lack of protest or resistance didn’t constitute consent.

  Tilda was reminded of her own days on campus when girls would invariably come back to the dorms with horror stories of having to physically fight their way out of being raped. Even screaming no didn’t mean no back then, she thought.

  But here was this reporter talking about a bill about to become law that would put the woman in charge. Yes, I like that. You can do that. No, not that, the other thing, more of that. If Tilda understood it correctly, that’s what a young woman could expect; it would be the law.

  Her thoughts turned to Tilly. There was so much ahead of her. At fourteen, she was on that cusp where childhood felt close, and yet she was looking forward to the woman she’d become. Tilda knew it was daunting. She could barely remember her own feelings at that age, when boys were both appealing and frightening. And there was so much more. Today girls were told they could be anything—an electrical engineer or a well-educated mom in yoga pants with a doublewide baby stroller. It was called choice, the real accomplishment of the women’s liberation movement, or so the story went. There was nothing wrong with choice, but Tilda knew it wasn’t that easy and never would be.

  The next morning, promptly at ten, Tilda heard the doorbell ring.

  “Coming,” she called, rising from her chair in the kitchen where she had been reading the paper. She ran her fingers through her hair on the way to the door, hoping to tame errant strands. She was always careful about her appearance in front of her granddaughter, not wanting to look too frumpy or too old. When Tilly was no more than five, she had announced to her grandmother that she loved her even though she had wrinkles.

  “Tilly Willy, come in,” she said, opening the door, grabbing her granddaughter and waving at Mark, who was in the car waiting to be sure it was okay to take off.

  “It’s okay, Mark,” Tilda called. “I’ve got her.”

  “Jeez,” said Tilly, pulling away. “I’m not a package from the UPS guy.”

  “Oh, come here, you. Don’t be such a sourpuss.” Tilda pulled her granddaughter to her and gave her a big hug. Folding her into her arms, she took in Tilly’s shower-gel scent of vanilla and orange, like a Creamsicle. Tilda felt the dark mood that constantly dogged her beginning to lift. This wasn’t joy, but it was as close as she could come.

  Tilly let her grandmother hold her for a second, even hugging back a little, but then she pulled away. In the living room, she plopped down on her grandmother’s white downy sofa with a defiant thud. She began to pull her phone and earbuds out of the little bag she had slung across one shoulder and over her body. Tilda gave her a look as if to say, Do you have to? Tilly put them back and closed the bag.

  Tilda stood above her, taking a moment to admire her granddaughter. All arms and legs and lithe, she had a dancer’s body. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, accentuating her hazel, almost green eyes. Now an inch or two taller than Tilda, Tilly had inherited her height from her father, but she had her grandmother’s eyes and hair.

  “And another thing. I’m not Tilly anymore,” she said, crossing her arms over her blue plaid shirt.

  “What do you mean, you’re not Tilly anymore?” Tilda was laughing, but she was also gearing up to be a little hurt. She liked that Tilly was named after her. There had been some confusion after her birth. When considering names, Laura wasn’t sure it was customary in the Jewish faith to name a child after a living relative, but Harold, plugging for his wife’s name, reminded her that his family was Sephardic and that to the Sephardic Jews, it was an honor to name a child after a relative, living or dead. Laura herself had been named after her paternal grandmother’s family name, Lara, and after that Laura embraced the idea.

  “No offense, Grandma, but Tilly is a terrible name for a kid my age. Too many words rhyme with Tilly: silly or chilly or pilly or killy . . .”

  “Killy isn’t even a word,” said Tilda, settling into the upholstered chair across from her.

  “And you call me Tilly Willy. See what I mean? It’s a dumb name. I want to be called Harper.”

  “Harper? No one in our family is named Harper.”

  Tilly sat up and turned to Tilda. “See, that’s it, right there. Why does a name have to come from someone else in the family? I just like Harper.” She settled back down into the sofa, pulling the nearest throw pillow close to her chest and crossing her arms over it.

  Tilda smiled and said, “Ok
ay. I see, I guess, but can I tell you a little bit about how you got your name? You don’t have to change your mind, but you might find it interesting, to know the history.”

  Storytelling was Harold’s domain, not Tilda’s, and, more to the point, her family was adamant about keeping a tightly pulled curtain over their history. No window into the past for them. “We’re Americans now,” her parents repeated. “Nothing good comes from rehashing the past.” In fact, it was painful trying to drag information from her mother or her father, as though some bond with the dead would be broken if they said too much.

  “I’m Tilly because you’re Matilde, and I was named after you.”

  Tilda couldn’t help but notice how glumly her granddaughter and namesake recounted this truth.

  “Well, yes, but there’s more to it.” Tilda waited to see if there might be a reaction, but Tilly only looked at her with eyebrows slightly raised, as if to dare her grandmother to say something she might find remotely redeeming about her ill-gotten name.

  “Have you ever heard the song ‘Waltzing Matilda’?”

  Tilly frowned, pulled her lips to one side, and shrugged.

  “Well, my mother loved that song, so my mother named me Matilde, even though no one in our family had that name.”

  “That’s it? That’s the story, Grandma?” Tilly threw the pillow aside. “Okay, let’s go to the mall.”

  Tilda ignored her. “My mother loved the song because her mother loved it. It was popular with the soldiers during the First World War, ‘the war to end all wars,’ only of course it wasn’t.”

  Tilda looked at her granddaughter to see if she still had her attention. Tilly may have been thinking about chicken wings and ranch dressing, her favorite at the food court, but she seemed to be listening, so Tilda went on.

  “Grandpa was Portuguese, but my family’s Italian, so my name—and yours—the one on your birth certificate—is spelled M-a-t-i-l-d-e. That’s the Italian variant of the name. The name in the song is spelled with an a at the end, like in Saint Matilda, which is Germanic. I should probably be Tilde, but I’ve always been Tilda, and you’re Tilly.” Tilda smiled at her granddaughter, hoping she would be amused by this plunge into etymology.