By the time my author was dead, Mother was some faint legend in our family, whispered about by Anne-Marie before she, too, passed; my father, quiet as his ledger when Mother’s name was spoken, turned even more serious than usual. I was grown with children of my own, but was still “that poor girl” with two brothers and a banker father, now a wealthy man who mourned without understanding. The squirrel wife had abandoned him; the cheerful mother had shut the door.

I was only waist high when it happened, but some things you don’t forget, no matter who translates the tale. When the door slammed, it echoed for years. My mother’s voice settled on the furniture:  “a real marriage,” “the greatest miracle”—all selfishness and betrayal to a six-year-old. In my dreams, we still played hide-and-seek, her dark eyes peering out from a closet or from behind a curtain. “Emmy," she’d call, “Emily Nora, Emmy, can you see me?” I see her better now, my three little ones at my knee, my husband locked up in his office, working late into the night for Father.

After she left, we were allowed no sweets, especially not macaroons.  Not ever.  “They destroy teeth; they rot away your insides,” Father said, but we knew it was something else, something more. Some days at the park, Anne-Marie would sneak us pastries—an apple or peach turnover—but always Father hunted for crumbs, the slightest speck evidence of our immorality. Finally, we gave up and stuck to fruit, the sugar inherent and less detectable. Now, I hire no nursemaids. Without my husband knowing, I give my own children one sweet treat a day.

I still have the toy doll and cradle from that last Christmas Mother was there.  Father said that it was another example of her being a spendthrift; that all her gifts would be broken before the spring. Perhaps that’s what birthed my extra care. For years, I cuddled my poor dolly throughout the day, asked Anne-Marie for an embroidered handkerchief for a miniature quilt. Even if she were bought for only a few coins, didn’t my Susie-Sue deserve a good mother? She smiled at me always, never closed her blue glass eyes.  Witnessed everything.

When Anne-Marie tried to throw away Bob’s broken horse and trumpet, I rescued it from the trash heap, glued together the splintered pieces, and tucked them under my frilly slips in the back corner of a drawer.  Somehow I even confiscated Ivar’s worn holiday clothes. I snatched up the flimsy wooden sword that he had broken in a fit over Mother’s departure. They also went in the drawer.  Each night I prayed the same blessings Pastor Hansen murmured on Sundays. It made the water from the spring holy.  The horse, trumpet, clothes, sword—all were sprinkled with wet faith.

Hidden in her gifts were the last of the fairy Christmases, the tree’s tinsel and candles shimmering with love’s magic. Even when Father made more money, then “lots and lots” as Mother had once hoped, what could replace her simple glow of excitement? And Father’s decorations, his idea of “play,” well all was one more notation to be checked off the list of expenditures, everything too costly, even hugs and kisses “excessive,” moderation always next to godliness. (Or maybe it is my imagination that is excessive.  She did love us, didn’t she?)

Father’s practicality included editing our words, mine most of all because I was a girl. I learned to stitch my syllables carefully into sentences, choosing the most appropriate topics. Even with “Auntie” Christine, I kept my lips tight, my sentiments acceptable. Though she seemed to know what it was to love, in Father’s eyes her choice of partners was “beneath her,” a disgust that I never fully understood but which, I knew, was somehow linked to Mother, some awful failing of morals on both their parts.

And, of course, we were never allowed to utter her husband’s name, that Krogstad; the word itself brought an explosion of rage from Father and a swift hit from the belt for us. Sometimes I imagined “that unscrupulous” man, as Father called him, sneaking at night into our parlor, taking a hammer and smashing our few shiny toys, the ones he couldn’t afford to buy his own children. I imagined him haggard with wild hair howling at  every destruction (But how, then, could Auntie love him so? How could his children have gathered on his lap and giggled at his jokes the way she told?).

And I had other questions. Who, really, was this Dr. Rank? I imagined him, dare I say, as a great and mysterious lover, bringing, with his large black cape, a dangerous joy into the household. But I was told he was a grand friend of Father and Mother’s, that he died soon after Mother left, and that Auntie had never cared for him. Indeed, he seemed the opposite of her work-hard-and-accomplish-much philosophy.  Anne-Marie said he was “proper” and “distinguished,” a “constant companion to Mr. Helmer,” but once a neighbor’s maid told me he was “disgustin, always talkin bout death and takin no pity on the poor.”

I tried not to push.  The dead were dead.  The gone were gone. Some days it was hard to remember. Hadn’t I heard my mother and him play the piano together, laughing? Couldn’t I hear them still? Whenever I asked Auntie about the mysterious doctor, she scowled, said nothing. Eventually, I stopped asking, preferring to hear tales of Mother and her at school.

I know what you’re thinking: after all that happened, would my father even let us talk to her? Although she was no longer allowed in the house, many days in the park we saw Auntie Christine with her cluster of stepchildren.  They were all not much older than I, a bit ragged it’s true, but gleaming with happiness, bouncing after butterflies and capturing ants. Eventually, even the youngest was an avid tree climber and waved to me from the highest limb, blowing kisses that could soar the length of the park. We were not allowed to climb trees or act so undignified, though Anne-Marie let us race with the “cousins,” zig-zagging among the wide maple trunks.

Still, I loved those kisses, loved Auntie Christine’s embraces and her fond, sad tales of my mother. She would shake her head, sigh, smile that winsome way. In her stories, Mother seemed so much younger than she, a mere girl, as if she, too, could join in the butterfly chasing.  I imagined her in the highest of limbs, wildly blowing her kisses. Sometimes I knew she was chasing me, was reaching out her arm to tag my shoulder.  But always when I looked it was only Bob or Ivar, hot and panting.

They, of course, are both grown now with boys of their own, who look like them and their grandfather, my Father. I’m told I resemble my mother, but I don’t see it. I laugh in front of the mirror and look for that same shine I saw in her eyes. Where is it? Remembering her ways, I jump up and down and giggle for the glass. Is she there in my voice? And then I hear my husband or children calling.

They’re calling now, and so I must go.  This account is much shorter than my author’s and only my sparse recollections, it’s true, but, then, as everyone knows, I am a woman and have nothing to say.

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