What I Saw and How I Lied Read Free

nine to thirteen, but usually I spent whole afternoons at the Crottys'. Mostly I remember Gladys plopped in the gold armchair, listening to
Amanda of Honeymoon Hill
on the radio and watching the clock like a factory foreman ready to dock Mom's pay. I knew she considered minding me as her patriotic duty, right up there with hoeing our Victory Garden. Tomatoes and her son's stepdaughter — we both broke her back.
    Grandma Glad was always saying things to Mom like, "My, what a bright dress, Beverly" or "Maybe you need to go up a size on that sweater." I could guess Mom's reaction by how hard she stubbed her cigarettes out in the ashtrays. If you came into the room and saw them ground into little stumps, you knew that Mom and Grandma Glad had just had a chat.
     
    Mom smashed the boiled potatoes in the pot, twisting her wrist, her bracelet jingling. Joe had brought it back from the war, and it had real rubies in it. Everything was cheap over in Europe now, he said. You could pick up stuff for practically nothing. The poor folks over there were glad to sell it. You Were doing them a favor.
    She paused every once in a while, and I poured in a little milk from the bottle. We'd been making mashed potatoes together since I was four. It had been just the two of us back then, sleeping in the same bed in the little apartment over the candy store. Then Joe had walked in, with his hat on the back of his head and his eyes on Mom, and changed everything.
    I stuck a spoon in the pot and took a bite. It was dark out now and steam had clouded the kitchen window. I heard Joe's car, and I ran to the window and made a circle with my fist to clear it. I saw him get out of the car, and for a minute I saw a stranger, his hat pulled over his eyes, his shoulders slumped in a way I didn't know.
    That happened sometimes. He was away for so long, and even now, if he turned a certain way, or if I saw him on the street, it was like he was just another man in a suit. I let out a breath, and the window fogged up again.
    I hurried out into the hallway, hoping Grandma Glad hadn't heard the car door. If she had, she'd be the first one at the door to greet him. But I saw the armchair pulled up next to the radio, and her wide back hunching forward to listen.
    The door opened, and he walked in. I hadn't turned on the light, so he didn't see me at first. I saw his face, and he didn't know I was looking.
    It was the war. You couldn't ask him about it. You didn't want to remind him. What every wife and daughter could give was a happy home. That was our job.
    That's what the magazines said. I clipped articles for Mom and left them on her chair. Recipes and new fashions, all the things a wife could do to make herself more attractive to her husband. Mom had quit her job at Lord and Taylor the day after he came back. "Either that or get fired," she'd said. She had to make way for the veterans who needed jobs. Now she learned recipes and made Sunday suppers, rubbed Jergen's lotion on her elbows, and had time to be a wife.
    "Son of a bitch," he said.
    I almost stepped back into the warm steam of the kitchen. This wasn't the Joe I knew. He was a muscular man who made walking look like dancing. He had a special greeting for everyone on the block. He made up nicknames that stuck. He could flip a cigarette butt into the gutter, hail a friend, and toss a chocolate bar to a kid from the neighborhood without breaking his stride. I'd seen him do it.
    So I switched on the light to make the magazine picture. The daughter welcoming the dad home, both of them so happy in the picture you could practically smell the pot roast.
    I held out my hands. He punched his hat back into shape and then held it by the brim. He closed one eye, like he was aiming, and then spun the hat down the hallway toward me. I snatched it out of the air.
    "The Dodgers need you, kiddo," he said. I hugged him and felt his whiskers, smelled cigarettes and the special sweet scent that came off his skin.
    As I hung up