“That’s good,” she said. “People who stay sad too long, especially people like me, in middle age, grow old too fast. Sadness makes you wither like a grape never picked. But you’re safe if you use the jar. After you drop the penny in, you don’t have to think about it anymore, and if you do, you get another penny quickly. The jar will keep your sad thoughts so you don’t have to keep them.”
That sounded like a fairy tale, but she looked so serious that I had to believe she believed it was true. I had once asked Mama if adults believed in fairy tales and she had said, “The only fairy tale I know is my marriage. No,” she had added.
Now I glanced at the door, wondering if my father had found my coloring book and her note by now. I heard nothing, no footsteps, no knock.
“Think about only something happy,” she sang. She continued to work and then paused. “Later, in between happy things, if you want, we can squeeze in something sad. But always remember we have to drop in another penny as soon as we do,” she added, smiling.
She looked at me, hoping I would smile, too, at her fairy tale, but I didn’t. And why would I want to think about anything sad, anyway, unless she meant thinking about my daddy still not here?
“I suppose it’s time you knew my name since I know yours. I’m Maisie. My father used to call me Maisie-Daisy. And do you know why?”
I shook my head. Another question for me to ask? Around her, I could grow quickly if what she had said about children asking questions was true.
“That’s my real surname, only it’s spelled a little differently. Daisy is spelled D-A-Z-Y. It’s almost Lazy, but I always worked hard just so it could never be. Then one day, because I couldn’t stand being kidded about it, you know what I did?”
I shook my head. Another question?
“I changed the spelling of my first name to Mazy, M-A-Z-Y. Isn’t that smart? I made fun of myself so no one cared to do it anymore. Mazy Dazy. I have a friend who works in the government and helped me change my name legally and very quickly, too. I have the papers in a locked drawer upstairs in the closet in my room.
“Everyone thought my father was too old and far gone, but he understood why I had changed the spelling, and he laughed when I brought him the document to show him what I had done. He was in a home for the elderly by then. When you’re ninety and you can still laugh, you’re lucky. But you don’t have to think about that for a long, long time. And neither do I. Right? Thinking about getting old can make you old.”
Why doesn’t she talk about her mother, too? I wondered, but didn’t ask because I thought she would ask more questions about mine, and I didn’t want to think about her right now, especially without my father. I was afraid I might start crying, and I didn’t want to cry in front of someone I barely knew.
Instead, I just nodded and looked at the door again. She turned to it, too, and then turned back to me.
“If your father doesn’t come today, maybe he’ll come tomorrow, but you shouldn’t worry. Your room is ready for you to use as long as you need to use it. I certainly wouldn’t take you back to the train station, would I? Now, back to our pizza,” she said, as if we were making it together.
My room? What room?
I watched her work, remembering how Mama would concentrate so hard on what she was preparing for breakfast, lunch, or dinner that she didn’t hear either my father or me talk to her. She’d turn and look at us with a puzzled expression and say, “What? Did you say something, Derick?”
“A month ago,” he would reply, and she would smirk, bite down on her lower lip, and turn back to what she was doing. Daddy would look at me and shake his head.
Eventually, I had realized Daddy wanted me to help him with Mama. More often than not, when I spoke to her, she would listen. If I asked a question, she would answer, so I would, at his request, ask a question he had just asked. He wouldn’t request it in so many words. He would give me a certain look of expectation, sometimes turning up his palms, and I would pick up on what he had said and repeat it.
Recently, he had told me I was more like a translator at the United Nations.
“Why is that, Daddy?” I had asked.
“Because it’s a place where many people speak in foreign languages and need translators, people who change their words to English or from English to their languages.”
“Mama speaks English,” I had said.
“I guess I don’t speak English,” he had muttered. “Lucky you do.” He had said everything loudly enough for Mama to hear, even though she had closed her ears.
I know Mama wasn’t always like she was right before the fire. Daddy had often remarked about that, too, stressing that Mama had become different and that my original mother wasn’t “the woman she is today.” I wasn’t sure why, but I knew that something Daddy had done had upset her and changed her smiles to frowns and her frowns to tears. They rarely yelled at each other, but I remembered hearing them arguing. It was all muffled in the walls between my bedroom and theirs. In the morning, I would think it had been some dream. But that was when the silences grew deeper. They both grew sadder, and Daddy started to sleep in our guest bedroom.
Not long afterward, whenever Daddy sat by my bed to put me to sleep because Mama already was asleep in hers, he would describe Mama the way a mother or father would tell their child a bedtime story. He would talk about her as if she was already no longer with us.
“Once upon a time, your mother was quite beautiful. That was the way she was when I first fell in love with her. She was always very shy, but I thought that made her even more beautiful. She had that smile that would melt a block of ice. And she wanted to do everything she could with me back then, too. She’d go anywhere with me. Right before and after we were married, I felt ten feet taller when she was at my side. I’d worry I’d bump my head going through a door.”
“You did not,” I had said, and he’d laughed. “Tell me more, Daddy,” I’d said. “I’m not tired enough yet.”
He’d sit there, remembering, his face brightening as he recalled one thing after another, especially describing how Mama would take great care of herself and spend lots of time fixing her hair and doing her makeup. He’d describe how she would shop for pretty clothes and shoes. And then he would stop, and the light in his eyes would dim. He would stand up, and, looking down at me, he would sigh and end with, “Well, that was then; now it’s now.”
Was that something that was true for everyone? I wondered. Daddy would have a now’s now, too? Would I? Did everyone change into a different person? I had asked Mama about it recently, and instead of acting like she hadn’t heard me, she had turned and said, “When someone you trusted disappoints you, something inside you dies, and you change. My best advice for you is, don’t trust anyone, and you won’t change.”
I was thinking so hard about that and Daddy’s bedtime stories that I didn’t hear the Umbrella Lady ask, “Do you want to see where you could sleep if your father doesn’t come until tomorrow? We have to wait a little while for the pizza.”
She took some steps toward me and was standing by the table.
“What?” I asked. It was funny, because I could remember her question even though I didn’t hear it. It was still in my ears. I was acting just like Mama.