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celebration. Refreshments, balloons, little mementos to give out, special discounts on the new cars and used cars, stuff like that. I'm going to have the local television network there and a radio station
broadcasting from my site. I'd like you to come down and be one of my hostesses." he told me. "Maybe you could wear that beauty contest swimsuit and do that hula-hula dance you did. You'll be on television.I'll pay you a hundred dollars a day that weekend." he added. Mommy raised her eyebrows and looked at me.
"I don't feel much like parading around in a bathing suit and dancing, Mr. Kruegar."
"Oh, I know that. Not now, but next month. Give it some thought. okay? I'd like to do what I can to help you people. I'll miss him. Great guy, great salesman. Broke a record in March, you know. I gave him that thousand dollar bonus for it."
He turned to Mammy, but she shook her head and I realized Daddy had never told her. I wondered why. I think Mr. Krutzar realized it, too, because he suddenly looked embarrassed and made his excuses to leave.
Some of my school friends came to visit and a few of the women Mammy had gotten to know and be friendly with brought baskets of fruit and flowers, some coming with their husbands, but most coming alone. Everyone wanted to know what we were going to do now, but few came right out and actually asked. I think they were afraid she might ask them for help.
Mommy was still considering going to work at the insurance company. We were in very bad financial condition, even with the two months' salary from Mr. Kruegar, because Daddy's income really came from commissions. We had little in a savings account and all our regular expenses loomed above and around us like big old trees threatening to crush us. In the evenings Mommy would sift through her possessions, considering what she could sell to raise some money. I felt so terrible about it. I offered to quit school and get a job myself, Of course, she wouldn't hear of it.
"You're so close to graduation, Rose. Don't be stupid."
"Well, how are we going to manage, Mammy?" I asked. "Bills are raining down around us like hail."
"We'll get by, somehow," she said. "Other people who suffer similar tragedies do, don't they?" she asked. It sounded too much like another of Daddy's promises floating in a bubble. I didn't reply, so her warning continued.
At first she didn't tell me about her desperate pleas to her father, how she had belittled herself, and had accepted his nasty descriptions of her and of Daddy just to see if she could get him to advance her some money. In the end he relented and sent a check for a thousand dollars, calling it charity and saying since he would give this much to the Salvation Army, he would give this much to us. But he left it pretty clear that Mammy shouldn't ask him for another nickel. He told her he thought struggling, suffering, would be the best way for her to understand fully what a mess she had made with her life by not listening to him. It was very important for him to be right than generous and loving. When she finally broke down and told me all of it, she was shattered.
"I used to love him." she moaned as if that had been something of an accomplishment.
"Doesn't everyone love their fathers?" I asked.
"No," she said with her lips twisting and writhing with her pain. "There are some fathers you just can't love, for they don't want your love. They see showing emotion as weakness. I can't even remember him kissing me, whether it was good night, good-bye or on my birthday."
I decided Daddy had been correct about people like that: just cut them away as you would cut away so much swamp grass and keep your boat surging forward.
After the funeral and the period of
bereavement. I returned to school. The night before I told Mommy that I had decided I was going to pretend Daddy wasn't gone. He was just on some sales trip. I was doing what he always did when he was faced with unpleasant events and problems. I decided, I was ignoring death.