Man With A Mission

“What’s half of five?” Rachel asked, her expression also brightening somewhat.

“Two-fifty,” Jackie replied. “Two dollars and two quarters.”

Rachel handed over the money. “I’m sorry.”

Erica snatched it from her. “Just leave my stuff alone.”

“And?” Jackie encouraged.

“And I won’t let Frankie Morton steal your candy.”

Jackie’s hope wavered. “And?” she repeated.

Erica looked at her perplexed, then asked uncertainly, “Thank you?”

“Yes!” Success at last. How often did a mother get to repair an argument and provide a lesson in math and morals all at the same time? “I’m proud of both of you. You fulfilled your responsibilities,” she praised, hugging Rachel, “and you…” Erica tried to evade her embrace, but Jackie caught her and wrapped her in a fierce hug. “You were generous in victory and didn’t gloat.”

As Erica hugged back, the baby gave a strong kick.

Erica straightened away from her, brown eyes wide with awe. “It kicked us!” she said, putting a hand with purple fingernails to the spot.

“Probably just wanted in on the hug.”

Rachel ran over to touch also, the three of them standing motionless and silent, waiting for another sign of life. It came with another strong kick. They looked up to share a smile.

Without warning, Erica’s smile evaporated and she said with a sigh, “Pretty soon there’ll be someone else to mess with my stuff.”

Jackie refused to let Erica’s change of mood dissolve her thrill of success over the pillowcase incident. She made a salad while microwaving spaghetti sauce from the freezer and boiling noodles, and chatted happily over dinner about nothing in particular.

While Rachel related a long and complicated story involving the lizard in the terrarium in her classroom and its shed tail, which someone had put in Mrs. Ferguson’s purse, Erica caught Jackie’s eye and smiled hesitantly.

Jackie smiled back, sure that before she knew it, Erica would be a teenager and they’d be at loggerheads all the time.

Or she could get lucky. Some mothers did. Evelyn, Jackie’s secretary, had three daughters in their early teens, and they seemed to love not only each other, but their mother as well. With her own lively and interesting but contentious girls, Jackie envied Evelyn her family’s closeness.

But Jackie was never lucky. She was blessed in many ways, but never lucky. Her victories were all hard-won.

Erica helped Jackie clear the table while Rachel took her bath.

“Are you gonna yell about the note?” Erica lined up three cups next to a stack of plates while Jackie sorted silverware into the dishwasher’s basket. She went back to the table without waiting for an answer.

“Difficulty concentrating isn’t exactly delinquent or disruptive behavior,” Jackie replied, dropping the last spoon in. She didn’t look up but felt Erica’s glance of surprise. “But it’s not very good for grades. Are you thinking about Daddy? It takes a long time to get over the death of someone you love.”

Mrs. Powell’s note had admitted as much but expressed concern that Erica’s inability to concentrate seemed to be worsening rather than improving.

Erica put the butter and the fresh Parmesan in the refrigerator and went back to the table to collect their placemats and take them to the back porch to shake them out.

She returned and set them on the table. “I used to at first, but I don’t much anymore.” She came back and stood beside Jackie, leaning an elbow on the counter. “I mean, he kind of liked us, I guess, but he didn’t really seem to miss us when he was gone, then it seemed like he was always anxious to be gone again after he came home. That’s kind of weird for a dad, isn’t it?”

“He loved you girls very much.” Jackie kept working, afraid that if she stopped and made the discussion too important, Erica would withdraw. “Grandpa Bourgeois never showed Daddy much affection when he was little. The only time he spent with him was to show him around the mill and to teach him how the company worked. Some people have to be shown how to give love, and no one ever did that for him.”

“You did,” Erica said. “He didn’t notice though, did he?”

Jackie was astonished by that perception. “No, I don’t think he did.” Now she couldn’t help but stop, realizing this was important. “But when I came along, your father was an adult. Sometimes adults don’t learn as well as children.”

“Is that why he was with that lady in Boston when he had the heart attack?”

Erica asked the question so directly that she must have known the truth of her father’s death for some time.

Jackie felt shocked, breathless.

“I heard Mrs. Powell and the principal talking about it when I brought in the permission slip so Glory could start picking us up from school.”

“You mean…after I became mayor? You’ve known for that long?”

Erica nodded. “I think everybody knows. A lot of people look at us like something bad’s happened. Not just Daddy dying, but something that isn’t fair. Like they look at you when you’re in a wheelchair. Like they don’t want to hurt your feelings and they’re pretending they don’t notice, but you know they’re really glad they’re not you.”

“You should have told me,” Jackie said, touching Erica’s arm, waiting for withdrawal and relieved when it didn’t come.

“You couldn’t fix it,” she said sensibly. “He was gone. But why do you think he did it?”

Jackie struggled for the right answers. “I think,” she began carefully, “that when someone doesn’t love you when you’re little, your heart is always empty and looking for love, and sometimes doesn’t even recognize it when it gets it. So it keeps looking.”

Erica shook her head. “Didn’t that hurt you?”

“Well…” Jackie felt curiously embarrassed, as though Erica was judging why she’d stayed in a loveless marriage all those years. “It did hurt me, but maybe not as much as you’d think. Because I understood how he was. And being married to him gave me you and Rachel, and the two of you are absolutely everything to me.”

Erica frowned. “And the baby.”

The baby. Erica seemed to be ambivalent about the baby, excited over the feel of a kick one moment, then unhappy about its eventual arrival the next.

“What is it you don’t like about the baby coming?” Jackie asked directly.

Erica looked guilty.

“You can tell me,” Jackie encouraged. “Are you afraid the baby is more important to me than you are?”

Erica shifted her weight, looking down at the floor. “No,” she said. It had a convincing sound.

“That it’ll get more attention than you?”

“No.”

“That it’ll change everything?”

Erica heaved a ragged sigh then looked up, her eyes pooled with tears, her lips trembling. “Mom, what if you die?”

“What?” Jackie couldn’t help the surprised outburst.