Barbara Callahan - My Mother's Keeper

We didn’t say anything until we sat in a booth and ordered milkshakes.

“Mary Anne is a big, fat tattletale,” I blurted out. “I’ll never be friends with her again.”

“That would be very sad,” she said. “She cares for you very much.”

“Well, I don’t care for her,” I said and started to cry.

She leaned over the table and handed me a handkerchief and patted my shoulder until I could look at her without blurry eyes. I always thought that Mary Anne’s mother looked like the nice mom in the Dick and Jane reader.

“I didn’t mean to make Mary Anne part of my sin,” I said.

She told me that overhearing Bill was no sin, that just because I heard it in a confessional didn’t make it a sin. She said that something was a sin if a person listened on purpose and wanted to do something evil with it, like get money from the sinner. Even though I knew she was trying to give me a kind of absolution, I didn’t feel better. She wasn’t a priest.

She sipped her milkshake for a few seconds before saying what her family really wanted her to say. “What you overheard was a crime. I checked with Mary Anne’s dad, who is a lawyer, and he said you are not obligated to report it to the police, but it might help you feel better if you do.”

So now three of them knew. I had broken the seal of confession in triplicate. I felt really angry and rudely kept sipping my shake until it reached the slurping level.

Finally I said, “That’s what you and Mary Anne’s dad want me to do, isn’t it?”

“We want what will make you feel better and possibly clear things up.”

“But if I don’t, will you and your husband go to the police?”

“Neither Ed nor I will break your confidence. It’s up to you to do it.”

“But I don’t want to go to the police. Bill Gordon is my mother’s boyfriend.”

She reached over and patted my hand. “I think your mother would want to know.”

I shook my head and slurped as loud as I could before saying. “I can’t do that. I don’t want my mother to know what I know. She loves Bill and she might stop loving me if I tell on him.”

“Your mother could never stop loving you.”

I bit my lip. “Oh yes, parents can stop loving you. My father stopped loving me even before I was born.”

Mary Anne’s mom cleared her throat and paused before she said, “Suppose your mother marries Bill Gordon. Do you want her to live with someone you think is a murderer?”

As soon as she said that, I remembered Grandmother’s words: “He probably killed his wife, too. She was young and died five years ago from a fall down the stairs.”

I stood up. “I have to go now. My grandmother will be worried about me.”

Mary Anne’s mother said, “This conversation might have been too much for you. I’ll walk you home.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“And Catherine, there’s something else. Sometimes people confess to something that they didn’t really do, something that wasn’t a sin.”

I thanked her for the milkshake and stood up. Instead of saying goodbye, I said, “Nobody sobs that loud for something they didn’t do.”

When I left the shop I remembered the day our class went to the high school to hear a debate and learned the word “rebuttal.” I had one ready for Mary Anne’s mom. As soon as she came outside I said, “My mother won’t be living with a murderer. He has stopped calling her.”

“That’s good,” she said, looking a little disappointed that I had rebutted the point that she thought would convince me to go to the police.

At home, Grandmother greeted me with a smile and pointed to the kitchen. I knew I was in for cookies and milk and a recitation of the events and people at the funeral. Grandmother was always at her best after a trip to the cemetery and I had to be bribed into being her audience. Mother wouldn’t listen. I sighed and bit into a cookie. I tried to crunch loud so I didn’t have to hear, but I couldn’t help hearing about the pallbearer who tripped, the aunt who hadn’t visited the family in ten years but sobbed hysterically, “Timmy, my Timmy,” and the eight-year-old son who wouldn’t throw the carnation into the grave when he was supposed to but kept chewing on the stem. I had taken three cookies’ worth of the stories when I said I had to do homework.

“I’m not finished yet.” Grandmother smiled and refilled my glass. From her beaming face, I knew she was leading up to something big.

She waited dramatically as she recapped the milk bottle.

“Bill Gordon was arrested at the cemetery for murdering his cousin, or maybe it was for his wife or maybe for both. Police Chief Kearns put him in the squad car.”

For once something Grandmother said made me relax. All the tension left my body. I went as limp as my old Raggedy Ann doll and could have just flopped off the chair. For the first time since I left that confessional box, I felt free of worry and dread. As I learned in the class trip to the debate, the argument for me going to the police about Bill was now moot and Mother would find out, but not from me. I couldn’t help smiling.

“I can see that you’re just as pleased as I am,” said Grandmother. “Now I hope your mother stops moping over that low-down killer.”

In an instant, I felt guilty for being happy. Mother, my poor mother, I’d forgotten how this news would hurt her. Even though Bill had stopped calling, she still seemed to have hope they’d get back together. This news would push her back into the person who faced every day as if it was a long homework assignment that had to be turned in before bed. I dreaded seeing her listening to Grandmother’s news.

I didn’t have to wait long. She walked right into the kitchen just in time to hear the words “low-down killer.”

“I know who you’re talking about so gleefully,” she said. “Bill Gordon, that good man. Evelyn, one of my customers, told me about seeing him at the funeral getting into the police car. She’s not quick to judge someone like you are.”

“But, but he got arrested,” Grandmother stammered.

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“I saw him get into the police car.”

“Was he handcuffed?”

“I don’t know, but he walked right beside the police chief.”

“Did he sit in the back of the car?”

“No.”

“Did it ever occur to you that Bill is a friend of the chief, that they bowl together every Tuesday night, and that the chief knew his cousin Tim and came to pay his respects?”

“No, but what other reason could there be that the chief would put him in the police car?”

“The chief did not put him in the car. He got in himself. Did it ever occur to you,” Mother repeated, “that Bill might have needed a ride home, since he came in the limousine with Tim’s family?”

Grandmother didn’t answer. She went to the cupboard and pulled out pots and pans, banging them on the counter.

“I can’t keep talking about this nonsense,” she muttered. “Somebody around here has to get the dinner.”

“Forget dinner,” Mother said. “Catherine and I are going out to eat.”

Grandmother looked shocked. Going out to eat was strictly for three celebrations each year, our birthdays.

“Not worried about money, are you? Expect that low-life to come crawling back to you and pay for all kinds of things?”

Mother handed me my coat and grinned. “Just us girls tonight, right?”

“Right,” I answered and got into the car.

“We’ll go to Alfredo’s and you can have lasagne.”

I nodded.

“You’re awfully quiet, Catherine. Please don’t let that scene with Grandmother bother you.”

I tried to smile, because I didn’t want to spoil her treat, but Raggedy Ann had left my body. All the dread I caught in the confessional box came back. Bill Gordon wasn’t arrested. He got into the car with his friend. Now it was up to me to keep Mother away from a murderer.