left.
—
Our children: Winifred and Warren—the two who were left from the three.
Winnie came to me once saying she hated her name. Winnie Winscott. Why not Minnie Mascot?
I apologized for the cuteness. It seemed all right when she was small. But now?
“Well, call yourself by your full name—Winifred Winscott.”
“No.”
“Is it the alliteration?”
“Of course it is. Didn’t you know I would grow up to be an adult?”
“Yes, Winifred, I did. But when you were born, I had Frank’s parents standing over me and Grandma Winifred, of course, who wanted you named after her, just as she had been named after her grandmother.”
“But Winscott wasn’t her last name until she married. You should have refused.”
“Change your name,” I said.
“You should have insisted.”
“They were a formidable group,” I told her. “Blame your father. They were his relatives.”
“I didn’t know you were so spineless.”
“I have a spine. I didn’t mind the name. Winifred Eugena Winscott. Is it my name also to which you object?”
“No, it’s hidden between the two Ws,” she said. “I hardly know it’s there. You could have been more original.”
“Warren doesn’t complain about his name,” I reminded her.
“Because Warren Winscott isn’t as ruffled as Winnie Winscott.”
“I get your point. When you have a daughter, you can name her something removed from family ties. When you marry, you can take your husband’s name.”
“It would entice me to marry,” she said.
“I hope his name is Willets.”
—
There were times after Daniel died when I went through my blue mood. When I passed that place, which was most of the time, I felt things I didn’t feel otherwise. It was like that shed in the distance that only appeared when the morning sun passed over the hill.
One of the reasons I dreaded the children’s return was that they would leave again, taking Daniel with them also. Now I waited for another visit, suiting up to feel the loss of Daniel again. Why couldn’t I just appreciate the two children I had left?
The weather was often unpredictable, and we had waited in airports for hours for their arrival, sometimes making the long drive back home in rain or snow after canceled flights. Now Warren and Winnie rented a car. We began having our Christmas in July. The children would arrive with presents, unwrapped because of airline regulations.
I stayed in my work shed until I heard their car in the drive. I also stayed in the shed when they left.
—
I had been the mother of three children, still was. The death of a child didn’t remove him from being a child.
One morning, I woke with a dream that a bat had flown to the side of my head. I pulled it off and put it on the ground. I saw that it was wounded. In my dream, I actually saw the open, bleeding wounds that are drug addiction. The undercurrent of whispered names that unthreaded the structure of a family.
What had I done wrong? Nothing. Nothing. It was Daniel’s fault. He was responsible for his own addiction. There were days when I was tired of children. After I fed them, after we played, after they napped, what was there still to do? Prepare dinner. By then they were restless and fighting. I bathed them, read to them, got them in bed. When I heard their feet on the stairs, I yelled at them to get back in bed. Sometimes I was in tears, as they were. If Frank was at a meeting, or visiting one of the members of the church, or traveling to a conference somewhere, the weight of the whole house was on my shoulders. I sat in the large, overstuffed chair in Frank’s study, too tired to do anything I wanted to do. Upstairs, Winnie and Warren eventually went to sleep, but Daniel must have sat in the darkness before an enormous emptiness that he later filled with drugs. Already, another day with the children was on its way, then another, and another. It was not my fault. I did what I could do. I did more than I could do. I was bored with the routine of housework, but I kept at it. Often, I only wanted my own work, which would have to wait for years and years, or at least until the children were in school, when I could have time in my work shed with my ziggurats, unless Frank insisted I take the women’s Bible study or some other function at the church as the minister’s wife.
—
Daniel never left, and therefore never returned for a visit as Winnie and Warren did. If Daniel returned, it was for an assault. Often, I thought I heard Daniel’s car pass in the night. Often, I thought he slept in his car at the end of the drive. Often, I dreaded him entering the house.
—
Edwin, his daughter, Helen, and her friend, Jake, came for dinner one evening as we had planned. Helen and Winnie had been friends, though Helen was a year older and in a different class in high school. We went to the same church, and they were in the youth group together. Warren was two years younger than Winnie. The children talked of their careers, the demands of city living, of the war, politics, the economy, and other turbulent events in the world. Edwin, Frank, and I listened, amused that we had taken a backseat. They were now the parents, and we were the children. Once in a while, they stopped to ask our opinion—just to be polite, to include others, as they had been taught. Or Frank would interrupt with some information they would consider irrelevant, just to irritate them—just to see how they could recover from his statement and continue their conversation. I glared at him once. Jake had lost his job and was looking again after a short period of dejection. Winnie was worried about her job. Helen and Jake seemed comfortable with their standing at work, “though no one really knows security anymore,” Winnie said. We lived in a tenuous world at best.
That was something Grandma Winifred could have said, though I didn’t tell Winnie.
The men began another conversation. Edwin was listening to Frank’s latest insight into translation. Jake was listening to Warren. Helen and Winnie were talking also, but listening at the same time to the boys and trying to pull them into their own conversation. I was listening to the children’s conversation and noticing a cycle, a circling up or down from a previous comment. They were making ziggurats, though they wouldn’t want that information either. When had I grown so limited in what I could say? But they were unaware of how often they circled up or down from the same place. Maybe they were aware of it also. Helen seemed to pull them away for a moment, but ultimately was unsuccessful. There was something in their pattern of speech that assured them of their place. Even Jake was aware that he was beginning a new beginning. Looking for another job that would take him in a new direction. He had to follow trends. He had to adjust. Be pliable. No, that wasn’t the word. Able to adapt. There, that was the word. His depression was on the mend. Dejection, he corrected Helen.
Helen was in retail at Millworth’s, a high-end department store. She invited Winnie to the city. She could stay in her apartment. They could see plays and visit museums. Winnie decided she would like that. Their acquaintance could be renewed. If old
