The Silver Star Read Free Page A

Mark
Parker “Kram Rekrap.” She loved anagrams, where you rearranged the letters of words to make different words, turning “deliver” into “reviled” and
“funeral” into “real fun.” And she loved spoonerisms, like when you mean to say “dear old queen” but instead say “queer old dean,” or when “bad
money” comes out as “mad bunny” and “smart feller” turns into “fart smeller.” She was also a killer Scrabble player.
    Liz’s school let out only an hour after mine, but that afternoon it felt like forever. When she finally arrived at the bungalow, I didn’t even let her set her books down before I
started pouring out every detail of Mom’s blowup.
    “I just don’t understand why she would make up all this Mark Parker stuff,” I said.
    Liz sighed. “Mom’s always been a bit of a fibber,” she said. Mom was all the time telling us things that Liz suspected weren’t true, like how she used to go foxhunting
with Jackie Kennedy in Virginia when they were both girls, or how she’d been the dancing banana in a cereal commercial. Mom had a red velvet jacket and liked to tell the story of how, when
June Carter Cash had heard her play in a Nashville bar, she joined Mom onstage and they sang a duet together that brought the crowd to its feet. June Carter Cash had been wearing the red velvet
jacket, and right there onstage she gave it to Mom.
    “It didn’t happen,” Liz said. “I saw Mom buy that jacket at a church tag sale. She didn’t know I was watching, and I never said anything.” Liz looked out the
window. “Mark Parker is just another dancing banana.”
    “I really blew it, didn’t I?”
    “Don’t beat yourself up, Bean.”
    “I should have kept my big mouth shut. But I never really said anything, either.”
    “She knew you knew,” Liz said, “and she couldn’t handle it.”
    “Mom wasn’t just making up a little story about some guy she met,” I said. “There were the phone calls. And those liner notes.”
    “I know,” Liz said. “It’s kind of scary. I think she’s gone through about all of her money, and it’s giving her some sort of a nervous breakdown.”
    Liz said we should clean up the place so that when Mom came back, we could pretend the whole Mark Parker mess had never happened. We put the books back on the shelves, stacked the sheet music,
and slid the records into their jackets. I came across the liner notes where Mark Parker had supposedly written to Mom: “I wrote this about you before I met you.” It was flat-out
creepy.

 
CHAPTER THREE
    We expected Mom to come back that night or the next day, but by the weekend, we still hadn’t heard from her. Whenever I
started to fret, Liz told me not to worry, Mom always came back. Then we got the letter.
    Liz read it first, then handed it to me and went to sit in the butterfly chair at the picture window.
    My Darling Liz and Sweet Bean,
    It’s 3 a.m. and I’m writing from a hotel in San Diego. I know I have not been at the top of my game recently, and to finish my songs—and be the mother I want to
     be—I need to make some time and space for myself. I need to find the magic again. I also pray for balance.
    You both should know that nothing in the world is more important to me than my girls and that we will be together again soon and life will be better than ever!
    The $200 I’m sending will keep you in chicken potpies until I get back. Chins up and don’t forget to floss!
    Love,
    Mom
    I joined Liz at the window and she squeezed my hand.
    “Is she coming back?” I asked.
    “Of course,” Liz said.
    “But when? She didn’t say when.”
    “I don’t think she knows.”
    Two hundred dollars buys you a lot of chicken potpies. We got them at Spinelli’s grocery, over on Balsam Street, an air-conditioned place with a wood floor and a big
freezer in the back where the pies were stored. Mr. Spinelli, a dark-eyed man with hairy forearms who was always flirting with Mom, sometimes put them