reading

If life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate.
If life is bitter, say thank you and grow.

Chapter One

I don’t even know June’s favorite color or what kind of books she liked to read or how she spent her time during the long empty days of retirement. June changed the diversity of her tastes like a chameleon, liking whatever food sat in front of her at the moment, or movie we selected to see, or blouse I wore. Whether we went to Outback or Applebee’s, or sat on my back patio enjoying the fresh air, every meal we ate together turned out to be her most favorite. The colorful bouquet of lilies and roses I agonized over choosing for her birthday were always the most beautiful she’d ever seen and a Christmas gift of new stationery and postage stamps turned out to be exactly what she’d wished for.

But when life didn’t agree with how June wanted it to be, she acted more like a mule, stubborn, impossible to reason with. Like the summer three of my father’s grandchildren were being married, and no amount of convincing could get her to agree to attend even one of the weddings. My stepmother refused to go without my father, who by this time had been dead for ten years.

Or the time she didn’t speak to my husband, Richard for several months after he commented on the price she paid to have some old, ugly wallpaper removed from the kitchen in her condo that had been on the walls when she moved in. He worked as an interior designer, knew the fair price of the job and probably could have called in a favor to have it taken down for free. When Richard told her she overpaid, she dug in her heels.

June always knew she was right and no one was going to tell her differently. She would never ask Richard or me for help of any kind, not with her finances, home repairs or ride to a good friend’s funeral. She made her own arrangements. We gladly offered our assistance no matter what the problem because to us, June was family. To her we were something different. I’m not sure what separated us but I found through the many years I knew her that our relationship was like the brass ring on the carousel, coming closer, and floating farther away and always just slightly out of reach.

I don’t even know the real color of her hair. After a certain age, all women keep that a secret but I knew June since I was eleven years old and I’m now sixty. Surely we spent time together before coloring the gray started. I began to color my own hair at forty, and when June moved across the street from us, she made her appointment for the same hairdresser I used, on the same day and time as me, every six weeks on a Saturday. I picked her up and together we went to the hairdresser. Our joke was we were getting all dolled up in order to pick up some cute guys at the grocery store where we headed for our weekly shopping trip right after our hair had been colored, cut and teased into perfection.

“June, I found an old picture of you. Your hair was blonde.” I said. I didn’t add ‘while cleaning out your apartment’ to the end of the sentence fearing it would trigger a temper tantrum. June wasn’t happy since I turned her world upside down by moving her out of her familiar home to an unfamiliar assisted living unit.

She cocked her head to the left side trying to process my words.

“I never remember you as a blonde,” I repeated.

“Oh, I think there was a blonde period at some point,” she answered.

“You wore a beige knit suit. Who made those suits you sold like crazy back in the sixties?” I asked. “Butte Knits?”

June dreamed big for a woman of her day. As the first in her family to go off to college, she earned a teaching degree from Penn State and returned home to do what she was trained to do, teach. Small town life quickly lost its luster and somehow she managed to land a job at Kaufmann’s, a department store in Pittsburgh. She moved to the big city to live with her aunt and uncle because a young woman of the times had only two choices. Live with family or rent a room at the YMCA. June started her career in ladies ready-to-wear and immediately found her calling.

“Kimberly Knits,” she said.

“Ah. And you were holding Mia. I remember Mia in Seattle,” I said.

Mia, June’s miniature poodle, about fifteen pounds and black as night, came along when June married Dad.

“Molly,” she corrected me.

Molly, a toy poodle, came after Mia. Again June chose a black dog, but Molly was much smaller than Mia. Molly weighed less than ten pounds but carried enough personality for a hundred. Her sister, Maggie, a gray version of Molly, who never turned away food of any kind and would snatch it from Molly’s dish if given the opportunity, also came in a package deal. Maggie waddled like a duck while Molly ran circles around her.

Both dogs were kissers, licking my brother, Steve, and me during our summer visits to see Dad and June until we were covered with sticky dog slobber. The dogs made us giggle so we didn’t really mind. It was more affection than we were shown by anyone else in our lives, none of who were great kissers or huggers, not even by dog standards.

“No, Mia. Don’t you remember Mia?” I asked.

“No. Shana?”

A June who didn’t remember her precious dogs was still hard for me to grasp. Her fading memory placed both of us on a rocky road searching for a new home where she could be watched over and cared for. It turned out to be a place neither of us wanted to be.

Dad and June bought Shana after Maggie and Molly got to old to live a comfortable life, from a person they referred to as a prominent standard poodle breeder after they moved to Tampa. Not that any of us cared where the dog came from as long as it gave us the hugs and slobbers we craved. June made sure her family and friends understood Shana came from a good pedigree.

It was June’s way of letting the world know that she didn’t let just anyone or anything into her home, only the best. That same mindset applied to her furniture, paintings on the walls and of course her clothing, showing off every chance she got. I learned over the years, in her mind she never made a mistake, even if I thought she had.

She picked out another black puppy from the litter and chose her name, however, Shana belonged to Dad. He drove her to the grocery store, allowing her to sit on the white leather seat of his Cadillac, took her for long walks and taught his dog with the fancy French haircut every stupid dog trick imaginable.

It’s that vision of her beloved Paul with their very last pet that’s the only image she’s able to conjure up. The lineage of her favorite dogs is now tucked deep into the recesses of her mind. The thought of the two of them together is the only memory she can bring forward in this stage of her life.

“You were young in the picture. You had blonde hair. Remember?”

“No.”

Dementia also acts as a chameleon, changing and adapting to the current situation. Answers to seemingly complex questions roll off June’s tongue as if she was young and vibrant and knew everything that happened in the world today. If I asked who was the President, she’d most likely answer Obama, which was correct but if I asked her what she had for breakfast she could only tell me about her hot cup of coffee and nothing else, because she loved coffee and never started her day without it. I fell into the trap believing we were having an ordinary conversation as we’d done for years. Then she forgot her first and most precious dog.

June adored those dogs with every ounce of love in her heart. They were her children. She spoiled them rotten and cried for days when they became old and sick and had to be put to sleep. In my mind, it’s a toss up whether the dogs or my father came first in her life.

When it was a dog’s time to go, she made sure they no longer suffered. She gave them a peaceful ending to a rich and full life, a finale June longed to have for herself. I, too, wished for peace as June walked down the path to the end of her life, but I would struggle to help her find it.

“Goodnight June.” I kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I love you,” she answered.

“Love you too.”

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” - Thornton Wilder

Chapter Two

My fingers fished for the envelope in the bottom of my overstuffed purse containing all the necessities of traveling. Hand sanitizer, antacids and cough drops were in the way of the one thing I needed at the moment. The key to June’s apartment.

The yellowed, once white envelope with June’s distinctive handwriting scribble of “Linda” in faded blue ink on the outside, which had been tucked away in my file cabinet for the past seven years, eluded my grasp this morning. Yesterday the key slid easily into the lock when I first arrived at June’s condo. Today, the elusive piece of metal knew what awaited it and so did I. I dreaded the task of sorting, packing and cleaning all that lay ahead of me. Not being able to find the key only made my nerves bristle and my knees weak. After emptying half of the contents of my handbag onto the walkway floor, I finally unearthed the crinkled paper and pulled it out of the jumbled pile.

The deadbolt tightly gripped its place in the doorframe the way June had wanted it to for her protection from a threatening outside world. My shaking hands struggled to open the lock. Turning the key required Herculean strength and my attempts left deep, red creases on my thumb and fingers. I switched to my left hand, and it too lacked the muscle necessary to turn the key even a millimeter. With two-handed pressure, the lock finally released itself and I nudged the front door open with my shoulder. I’d look for some WD40 once I got inside.

The stench rushed up my nose knocking me back out onto the building’s catwalk. A disgusting taste of stale smoke coated my mouth and a deep, restless cough rose in my throat and refused to stop. Here I stood, trying to believe June only smoked on the patio. She told me that story so many times I can still hear her voice in my head saying it. It’s the first of many cover-ups I would discover over the next few weeks.

“I keep track of how many cigarettes I smoke each day.” She pointed at a slip of paper she kept next to her seat on the sofa with dates followed by tick marks, the same number each day.

“Why do you keep track?” I asked.

“So I don’t smoke too many and run out before I can get to the store.” The logic made perfect sense for a woman in her nineties who never learned to drive a car and relied on other people to take her where she needed to go.

I retrieved a cough drop from my purse but it did little to douse the tickle in my throat. The stale odor of cigarettes locked up inside for two weeks during the Florida summer made itself at home inside of my sinus cavity and started my already aching temples pounding. The brief airing I attempted the day before had done little. The walls and draperies refused to relinquish all that belonged to June. They didn’t want her to leave either. Someone new would paint the brown smoke tinged walls white again, throw the faded drapes in the trash and replace the carpet with stylish wood floors. Just like June, the old and worn furnishings would be forced into leaving their comfortable home.

My brief stop yesterday at the condo had been just that, brief. I didn’t allow myself enough to time to be fully enveloped in the enormous task in front of me. I gave myself a week to get the apartment ready for sale. The added pressure I put on myself to raise the money for her care didn’t allow me to be leisurely. Besides, I wanted to be at home, writing a funny story, taking a bike ride around the neighborhood or reading a captivating new book for the next meeting of my book club. The cavalry wasn’t about to appear over the ridge. I was alone.

I poked around in the closet, choosing a few more items of clothing for June to wear. My sister, Susan, came from Ohio two weeks ago to pack June’s suitcase for the move while I navigated June’s doctor appointments, phone installation and furniture delivery from afar. I had my own busy agenda at home already arranged so Susan and I made a swap. She had the unpleasant task of extracting June from her apartment and depositing her at the Hawthorne Assisted Living before quickly returning to Ohio. I took the clean up duty.

Susan, however, left behind June’s favorite white cardigan sweater. Yesterday she carried on how she needed it to throw over her shoulders to ward off the constant chill. I pulled it off the hanger along with a pair of black pants with pockets to stuff with the tissues June always carried with her, and an elastic waist to hold them up on her shrinking waistline. Susan packed every color of these once stylish old lady garments except the black. The color black was June’s wardrobe staple and she didn’t understand why they weren’t hanging in her new closet.

I walked down the hallway into the living room and expected to see June sitting in her corner of the sofa, the place she always sat, the cushion now faded and showing an impression of June’s skinny backside after many years of constant use. The other cushions were plump and full, a reflection into a solitary life.

I dumped my bag on the dining room table, something that never would be allowed if June still lived here. She kept it set with napkins and silverware, ready to serve a meal at any time. The table would become my workspace until my job here ended. The sooner I started the sooner I could get back home, kiss my husband, play with Ginger, my precious little sweet pea of a dog, and sleep in my own bed. Dreaming of those three simple things would make the 150 mile drive back home bearable, even bordering on pleasant no matter how much traffic I encountered on the road. At first glance those cozy comforts appeared to be a long way off.

Mostly however, I wished for the buzzing of the world around me to stop, for people who thought they knew better to abstain from forcing their views on how to care for an elderly woman on me. I prayed every hour on the hour, day and night, for all of this heartache to go away.

I looked around at June’s life left behind. All her little knick knacks sat as they had for years, sprinkled across the coffee table, on the dining room buffet, and in full view on the antique candlestick table in the corner. A ten inch tall wooden carved French poodle, a dainty crystal slipper too small to even be Cinderella’s and a long stemmed porcelain Cybis tulip the color of a ripe nectarine, all things I admired and came to love over the years, greeted me the same way they had for more than fifty years.

“Hi, Shana,” I reached down to stroke the stationary poodle on its topknot.

A pack of pink Virginia Slims with a matchbook tucked under the cellophane wrapper remained on the end table next to her favorite spot on the sofa. Even her handwritten tally sheet and miniature yellow bridge pencil used to track her daily cigarette usage remained exactly as she left it, neatly aligned with the edge of the table.

I’m the chosen one to clean out the apartment and sell it to free up money for June’s care. Susan, and her husband, Greg, and took on the task of getting a highly agitated and stubborn old woman out of here and into a new, fresh, clean apartment at the assisted living home. I can only imagine what that week was like for them. With my emotions on a dizzying rollercoaster ride, I’m exhausted just standing here and I wish I had a shoulder, anyone’s shoulder to lean on. I’m not sure which one of us pulled the short straw in this lottery of life.

My other sister, Martha declined to help me at all with June. When asked, she announced she would support any decision I made, but would not be able to assist.

“You should just leave her alone,” Martha told me. “Let her be.”

Speechless, I couldn’t find any words. Obviously Martha wasn’t the step child getting phone calls at all hours of the day and night from people who were afraid she’d burn the condo down with her cigarettes and matches, who didn’t want to be responsible if something happened to her, or who insisted she owed them money.

When given a choice, it’s human nature to choose the path of least resistance, the easy way out. It takes courage to jump head first into the unknown. Courage is sadly lacking among my siblings it seems. I’m not putting myself on any pedestal, however, I wasn’t given any choice. June assigned her power of attorney to me years ago, I was joint owner on her bank accounts, and the neighbors had my phone number. Therefore the easy way out was not an option for me.

I’m grateful for Susan’s help during that week but standing in the middle of this mess, I’m annoyed by what she didn’t do for June. Susan didn’t know what June liked and disliked, what made her happy or sad. She left behind her favorite clothes. I’m the one who spent time with her, saw what she wore most often and the groceries she bought. I’m the only one who could do this job the way June wanted it done but I worried I didn’t have the mental fortitude to accomplish it by myself. I knew many small details about her yet I felt I didn’t know anything about how she lived her life.

“I told my kids, if anything happens to me, not to call my sisters. The two of you would have me moved out and the house sold in a blink of an eye,” Martha rattled on.

“Then let’s hope they have the smarts to find someone to take care of you when the time comes.” I replied. “And I hope you aren’t screaming at them a hundred times a day to leave you alone and go away.”

Out of my frustration with my sister, came a rare twinkling of brilliance.

“June as you knew her is gone,” Martha reminded me.

“I know. But when I talk to her on the phone, I want to believe she still knows who I am.”

I needed Martha to tell me those very words at that very moment. I would, however, struggle to remember them. June didn’t want to walk down this different path, and I didn’t want to go with her. Change is the only certainty in life, and it’s hard to accept especially when the end of the journey is going to be death.

I never bothered to ask my brother for help, nor did Susan, who lived nearby him in Ohio, saying it would be useless to ask. He’d never outgrown the emotionally unresponsive state we’d been raised in. I know in my heart he appreciates the unpleasant tasks his sisters have taken on for our stepmother, but it’s not in him to participate. I’m OK with that.

Even though June never vocalized her feelings, she wanted only me to take care of her. Although my siblings maintained a relationship with her over the years, calling at the holidays, sending photos of their families and occasionally making a visit to see her, it was me she spent the most time with. I lived nearby until only recently and took her out to eat on every birthday, learned how to fix her vodka just the way she liked it, and years ago drove her back and forth to the hospital to see her beloved Paul when he was sick. June thought I had the experience to make decisions the way she wanted them.

In the middle of June’s once neat and orderly life, I stood playing God. She wasn’t dead, only walking down a road that could be short or long, only time would tell. Years ago, without telling me, she assigned me the job of dividing up her memories and sending them off into the great unknown. The recipients however, may never hear the charming and romantic tales of my father bringing home a complete set of Waterford wine glasses as a surprise for his wife’s birthday or the three miniature Lenox swans trimmed in gold he had wrapped in separate boxes to give to her for Valentine’s Day, the day of love.

Maybe they would take one look and say “What the hell is this?” before tossing it in the trash or hauling it off to the Goodwill. What June wanted was what I was going to do my best to give her. The warmth of my tears trickled down my cheeks and I quickly rubbed them away. Wasting time crying would not get this smelly apartment cleaned out any faster and move June and me onto the next phase of our lives.

“Everything is going to be alright. Maybe not today but eventually.” - Anonymous

Chapter Three

On a gloomy and gray Sunday afternoon in May, my brother, Steve and I settled in to watch television in the basement of our large suburban home in Cleveland. In 1967 we had only three channels to choose from and if we manipulated the rabbit ears just right, we might be able to get the roller derby on UHF. Otherwise we were stuck watching Bishop Sheen. Mom dragged us to church that morning so we didn’t feel we needed any more saving. Today we lucked out. The Three Stooges came on.

These were also the days before TV remote controls. Since I was only eleven and Steve, thirteen, he ordered me to change the stations while he stretched out on the sofa and barked out the instructions. The door at the top of the stairs creaked open. My mother’s heavy foot landed on the steps.

“Quick!” Steve whispered. “Change the channel. Hurry.”

You see, we weren’t allowed to watch the Three Stooges. My mother declared them too violent and off limits. I was young and fast and we rarely got caught. If we did, it would result in no television for the rest of the day. Boring! So we avoided punishment at all costs. Tarzan and Jane were swinging through the jungle by the time Mom reached the bottom step.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “Turn off the TV.”

I obeyed, cutting off Tarzan’s jungle cry midstream.

She sat down in a chair facing us and took in a deep breath. At that moment, clouds covered the tiny bit of sunshine available that day, changing the light coming through the large windows in the walkout basement from dull to dark.

Mom let out her breath. “Your father has married again. I was hoping I could get him back but I can’t.”

My mother stared at us, I think, looking for some kind of reaction. Neither my brother nor I were the reactive types. From our point of view, nothing about our lives had changed since our parent’s divorce. We still lived in our large sprawling home, went to the same school, played with the same friends and my father wasn’t home. That was no different from when my parents were married.

Dad worked as a merchandise manager for the May Company, a department store chain in Cleveland. He traveled a lot, and worked late on Mondays and Thursdays. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we never saw him unless my mother dressed us up, packed us in the car and drove us to the Rapid Transit for a trip downtown to his office. We got paraded around and all the ladies who worked for him would ooh and ahh over us. In fact June probably led the charge in order to impress my father on at least some of those occasions. We had no idea who she was or any recollection of meeting her. My mother was most likely clueless about June too, but smart enough to know this was the only way her children would spend any time with their father. The meaning of the term Black Friday had been drilled into our tiny child brains from a very early age. It’s what kept us clothed, fed and housed in a very nice manner.

Dad changed jobs a lot too. In my eleven years of life I lived in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Minneapolis and now Cleveland. When we arrived here in January 1961, I was enrolled in Mrs. Deming’s first grade class. They had only made it to the letter “M” in the alphabet, but knew how to count by 5. In my old school, I had completed the entire alphabet but hadn’t made it much past two plus two in the math department. Steve had to get some tutoring he was so far behind his third grade class in math.

As a little girl, I was very shy so being thrust into a new school frightened me. I never made friends easily and here the other kids made fun of me when they found out I couldn’t add. At an early age I learned not to get myself too attached to anything especially people, fearing they’d tease me. With a moving truck waiting around the corner, I knew any friends I did make would soon be yanked away from me with no hope of ever returning. That my parents were no more as a couple was not as earth shattering to us as children as I’m sure it was to Mom.

“Her name is June. They met at the store,” she said. “Your father has started a new job in Seattle and June will be moving there soon. I’m hoping you can get to meet her before she leaves.”

At that moment Mom’s life had already changed dramatically. She had to sell a house, find a new one for us to live in and look for a job. She never worked outside the home but she had four children to take care of with probably only some court decided child support to rely on.

Our lives hadn’t changed yet, at least not that we took the time to worry about. As children, we weren’t aware of the full impact of my parents’ divorce and the addition of a new stepmother into our fractured family circle. We had no idea of what kind of real change was yet to come into our lives. Changing the channel on the television was about as far into the future as we could see.

Neither Steve nor I responded. We only did what was normal for us. Nothing. Mom got up from her chair and trudged back up the stairs. Once we heard the basement door close, we turned the Three Stooges back on just as Moe tweaked Curly’s nose.

“It is only those who never do anything, who never make mistakes.” - A. Favre

Chapter Four

Rummaging through the pile of notes on the dining room table, I pulled out a list I received from the lawyer. When I called him for some advice after the incident, what I got was this inventory June painstakingly wrote on a yellow legal pad several years ago and added to her will. He mailed the amendment to me along with a bill for his time. I added lawyers to the succession of people wanting money from me. He can get in line behind the rest who now think I’m an easy target to get to June’s money.

Only a month ago did June finally agreed to allow me to become joint owner on her bank accounts.

“Just in case,” I told her.

She wouldn’t go to the bank with me to sign the papers, so I went alone. I showed the bank employee the power of attorney document and asked to be added to her checking account. He typed on his keyboard then stared at his screen for a few minutes before announcing June was an old woman and I needed to be added to all of her accounts. I didn’t argue even though I didn’t really think it was necessary at the time. She had one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the bank and now it was my job to make that last, however long that might be.

Slowly unfolding it, I read the lawyer’s paper for the first time.

Stephen

Wedgewood china pieces, Lenox swans and small vase

Susan

Toby and Hummel mugs and figurines

Martha

Diamond engagement ring with white gold band

Linda

Miscellaneous Wright family papers, pictures, albums.

I stopped reading. The paper fell from my hands while my thoughts ran like thoroughbreds in the Kentucky Derby being feverishly whipped by their jockeys to go faster and faster. Except with each stride the finish line moved further and further out of sight. I’m the one sitting in this hot, stinky apartment in charge of disposing of an old woman’s possessions and all the pretty trinkets I adored being surrounded with every time I came to visit, are now the property of someone else. Maybe I didn’t say often enough how much I’d grown to admire her things. Maybe she never listened. Maybe she had a bigger plan for me.

“Why does Susan get the Hummels?” I said out loud. “She’ll never think to dust them off once she puts them on a shelf. And Martha doesn’t wear any jewelry. What’s she going to do with June’s diamond ring?”

I’m the one who knew all the stories of how she came to own most of these things. June loved to tell them. Every time she did, I said,

“My father went to the store and actually picked out the Lenox swans for you?”

June smiled, “He did. And he had them gift wrapped each in a separate box.”

For many years, the mother and her cygnets were perfectly positioned to appear to be swimming across a shimmering pond on the glass topped coffee table. The thought of my brother adoring the flock of elegant, gold trimmed porcelain birds became more than my cluttered mind could fathom.

What woman wouldn’t want to be given diamonds, regardless of whom they came from? The jewelry I often admired because it was handsome and tasteful, not because I wanted to wear it, too old lady-ish for me, would now be worn on someone else’s hands. I wouldn’t get the chance to reset any of it into a piece that would remind me of June and our good times together. Even worse, the rings and bracelets would be tucked away never to see the light of day, and most likely sold at the pawnshop for pennies on the dollar. The gifts Dad had chosen for his wife were being tossed out into the universe, never to be seen or heard from again. I would never see, hold or admire any of these precious keepsakes ever again.

None of these were feelings I was used to having. I never had a temper, preferring instead to keep my emotions inside, like I was trained to do as a child. I wanted to think I let go of at least some of what I had tucked away when June and I had our frequent gossip sessions with my glass of white wine and hers of vodka and a splash of water. The secrets about my life I divulged to her meant nothing. Maybe I let her order too many of the half price happy hour drinks and once drunk and she forgot everything I said minutes after I said it. I think she wanted to tell me something she never got around to saying.

During those meals we never talked about how much our lives intertwined, what we meant to each other. We never spoke of the keepsakes adorning our homes silently admired before each home cooked meal served at well-used dining room tables over the years. Trashy gossip about neighbors and coworkers fueled our conversations. Friendship, love and family never entered in. If we had spoken of these things, I might not be so surprised at this moment at the loss of her material possessions, things I thought I held dear.

The bigger point however, June still lived. Assisted living care was expensive and I took a big leap when I selected her new home. I’d be spending down what was left of her money at a lightening fast clip just to pay the monthly rent. I wanted to be certain she’d be well taken care, and that comes at a steep price. Would I have to move her again when she ran out of funds and went on Medicaid? It all depended on how long she would live. The mere thought made me break out in a sweat. The palm of my hands became clammy, leaving their damp, sticky imprint on the infamous list.

My own mother dwindled down her meager savings and after a year or so in a nursing home she was forced onto Medicaid. That left her a prepaid funeral plan and approximately three thousand dollars to her name. Kidney failure, osteoporosis and dementia made her helpless, spending the last five years of her life in a New York City skilled care facility before she succumbed to blood poisoning one week after her eightieth birthday.

Mom had more health issues, less money and was much younger than June when she faced long term nursing care. She also went kicking and screaming to a place she didn’t want to be. Martha and her husband, Tom navigated Medicaid with the nursing home via long distance from Michigan. Every couple of months, I joined Martha in New York City to check on Mom but after awhile she didn’t know who we were when we came to visit.

Mom had a boyfriend, also named Paul, like my father, who worked as a doorman at a fancy apartment building in the city. He was much younger, more like the age of her children, and didn’t want to know us. We knew he came to see her regularly because the nurses rolled their eyes when we asked about him. As long as he kept Mom entertained, we didn’t have to. She’d rather have been with Paul than any of her children even before she stopped recognizing our faces. None of us had a close or loving relationship with her, or she with us. If this Paul made her happy, that was the best thing we could ask for.

“I know!” I said aloud after a flash of brilliance lit up my brain. “I won’t tell anyone about the list and I’ll sell it all on EBay.” A plausible idea since the lawyer knew how to contact only me in June’s case.

I used to be familiar with the markings for Hummels and Royal Doulton Toby mugs when I sold them while working in Gimbels Pittsburgh china and gifts department, my first job out of college. Long ago, however, I filed that mundane information away. Millenials didn’t bother drinking their wine out of fancy cut crystal glasses or polish sterling silver flatware so the market for these things would probably be pretty small. The energy needed to do an extensive Internet search on the value of June’s collectibles drained me at the moment. So how much money could all this stuff generate? Probably not enough to cover the fee for a box of Depends for more than a couple of months.

A salty tear landed on my lip. Reading the list again, I prayed the water in my eyes had clouded the words on the page. I wanted desperately for it to say something else. Something that wouldn’t bring tears to my eyes and put a lump in my throat.

I read it again. The words on the page hadn’t changed. This time my tears splattered with a plop on the damp sheet of paper. I wanted badly to give up the idea of trying to hold on to what didn’t belong to me and move on to my next task.

“We don’t meet people by accident. They are meant to cross our path for a reason.”

Chapter Five

Soon after that day in the basement when my mother announced my father had remarried, our large house in the suburbs went up for sale. With Susan and Martha off at college and determined to keep my brother and me in the same school district, Mom rented a spacious apartment in a brand new complex on busy Chagrin Boulevard about three miles away. Downstairs it had a living room, dining room and kitchen, and upstairs three bedrooms and a bath. The dining room had a large picture window overlooking the parking lot.

That first summer Steve and I figured out how to keep tabs on the coming and goings of everyone important who lived in the new neighborhood which turned out to be an exciting change from our usual traipsing through the woods and wading in the creek behind the old house. If there was news to be spread, we knew it first. From the rich divorcee who lived across the hall with her poufy hair and bright orange lipstick with a parade of boyfriends through her door, to the slick, leather clad greaser kids who picked a fight with anyone who looked at them cross-eyed. Steve and I could have written the neighborhood gossip column.

In order to break the news gently to us once more, this time Mom sat us down on the sofa in the living room. Without a basement, the Three Stooges were a thing of the past. The one and only television resided in the living room. We had no escape.

“I believe you children need to get to know June. I’ve invited her over for dinner on Saturday night.” Her voice quivered but she remained firm with her words.

We stared blankly at her, our usual response to Mom’s announcements.

“I’m picking her up at the Rapid Transit at 5:30 and bringing her back here for dinner,” Mom told us.

Susan and Martha, both home from college for the summer, already knew about the dinner party. It was a familiar pattern in our household, the separation of the two college girls and the two younger innocents. My sisters knew everything before I did. Steve didn’t care; being the only boy he was oblivious to the politics of the women in the family. Even at eleven years old, I knew I didn’t want to be left behind. I hated being the last to know everything.

Although I was only two years younger than Steve, I was eight years younger than Susan, the oldest. It’s a big gap when you’re in elementary school and your older sisters are in high school and headed to college. They had boyfriends. I still hated boys. They watched soap operas while I watched cartoons of Rocky and Bullwinkle. My sisters wore garter belts with nylon hose and hung their bras to dry in the bathroom. I wore white lacy anklets with black patent leather Mary Janes.

It wasn’t until I was in college myself that Mom announced to me one day that I was an accident. With two girls and a boy already, the family was complete until I appeared. An oops, she called it. Mom, in her misguided effort to show love to her children, only distanced me more. Long before this announcement I’d been searching for the parental love and sibling connections that eluded me. This helped to explain why I felt left behind in the family dynamics.

Mom gave us all strict instructions before she left, set the table, brush your teeth and put on a clean shirt. She and June would be back in a half an hour. My mother had never been much of a housekeeper. Straightening up the tiny living room and vacuuming the little bit of carpet took all of what little energy she had left. Inviting June had been her idea after all, and I’m sure the drive to the Rapid Transit was the longest ride of her life.

To this day I wondered why June agreed to come. I never figured out why Mom wanted to put herself in that position. She cared about us in a way that she didn’t want her children to be afraid or feel uncomfortable around June. I understand that. Why my mother was the one to introduce us to our new stepmother and not my father is a mystery. June told me once, Dad didn’t want her to come to dinner that night but she thought it was the right thing to do.

Steve and I took our usual places at the window. We waited. And watched.

Our white Ford sedan came around the corner and pulled into our assigned parking spot right underneath our lookout.

“They’re here,” I shouted.

A small, petite woman opened the door on the passenger side closest to us and stepped out of the car. Her hair had been rolled, set and teased in a beauty parlor fashion. She wore a dark blue sheath dress with a string of white pearls. Clutching a small leather bag and wearing matching sling back pumps, her heels clicked on the sidewalk. She looked like she stepped right out of Vogue Magazine. Our own mother never dressed so stylishly.

Mom looked fat and dowdy by comparison. My mother didn’t just look fat she was fat, as round as she was tall. As kids, her obesity was a constant source of embarrassment for us. All my friends had skinny moms. Seeing the discarded wife and the new wife side by side made my father’s choice all the more clear to me. As much as I wanted to believe love isn’t shallow and belongs in the heart, outward appearances are what first catches a person’s eye. Mom appeared old and worn out next to the fashionable and slender, June.

Susan turned down music blaring from the small gray plastic radio we kept on the bookshelf, left on all day long as a way to squelch the silence that allowed our thoughts to dwell in how suddenly the boundaries of our lives had shrunk. The music of the sixties allowed my college aged sisters to dream of finding love and escaping our broken family. For me, blowing off some steam dancing the twist or the swim or the mashed potato helped me to forget I could no longer ride my bike down the big hill on Kersdale Road or scour the woods behind our house looking for wildflowers. My world had gotten significantly smaller.

June stood in the doorway, while my mother did the introductions, oldest to youngest.

“This is Susan and Martha. And Steve and Linda.”

I lowered my chin to my chest, not sure if I wanted to make eye contact with her.

“It’s nice to meet all of you. I’m glad Sallie invited me tonight,” June said.

I don’t remember what we talked about or what we had for dinner that night. I do know the conversation never waned. It was still light out when Mom drove June back to the Rapid Transit, so she didn’t stay long and drag out what was most likely an exhausting night for her and my mother both.

When I married Richard at age thirty-one and he was forty-four, I became a stepmother to a twenty year old, Pam. I never mothered her, she had one of her own and she was an adult. I only offered advice as best as I could and when it was asked for. One of the first lessons of marriage I learned was to never come between a father and his daughter. The daughter always wins. Never having been the jealous type, to this day I have a very friendly relationship with Joan, Richard’s first wife. I didn’t know it at the time, but I absorbed the nuances of stepmotherhood and the proper treatment of ex-wives around the dinner table that night.

“Can you believe she came to meet us?” I asked my sisters after they left.

Even in my pre-teen mind, I understood my father didn’t like my mother any more and June was the other woman that had seduced him into marriage. Dinner had been pleasant enough but I still wasn’t sure what to think about her. She wasn’t what I would call pretty. She had a wide nose with big nostrils, thin lips covered in thick red lipstick and poufy golden hair. Mom wasn’t pretty either, and she never learned how to style her own hair or apply makeup tastefully to enhance what little she had. It must have been a thin figure versus a chubby one, makeup versus none and teased hair versus no hairdo that attracted my father. I couldn’t see any other differences between them.

“No. I can’t,” Susan answered with the usual firm tone in her voice.

“What are we supposed to call her?” I asked.

Stepmother sounded so cruel and Cinderella-ish. June didn’t seem mean or demanding to me, but what was she? Was she my parent? No, I had two of those and neither had stopped their parenting ways as limited and inconsistent as it was. Was she my friend? No, Georgia was my friend at school. I couldn’t conceive of the notion that anyone over the age of twelve would be my friend.

“I don’t know. She never said,” Susan answered. “Let’s just try ‘June’ and if she doesn’t like it, too bad.”

My parents had taught us to respect adults. I didn’t call any of my friends’ parents by their first names, only Mr. Mitchell or Mrs. Adams. Calling my stepmother June went against everything I ever learned. If my older sister said to call her by her first name, then that’s what I would do but I feared it would get me into trouble. So there June remained, in some kind of childhood limbo, not mother, not friend, not wicked step mother. And there she would stay, at least for the time being.