"Because I’m sick," she answered softly. I walked toward her. "I could get you an aspirin," I offered. She shook her head. "I have a lump," she explained as she took my hand and ran it across her breast over her pink satin slip. I felt something hard. "I have to be operated on," she added more gently, "and I won’t be able to come back." "Gram, don’t go away," I said, crying as I hugged her, "I’ll be good. And if you’re sick, I’ll take care of you."

She kissed me and held me tight, but when I looked at her again I knew that nothing I could say or do would make it different. "Now," she said firmly, tears glistening in her blue eyes, "remember that I love you and I’ll miss you as much as you miss me." I nodded and sniffed until she held a handkerchief to my nose and ordered, "Blow." Then she added, "Don’t forget: Never go out of your way to hurt anyone, but trust yourself and try to do what makes you happy." After one more tight squeeze, she winked and said, "Go play."

I watched from the doorway as Gram slowly got into bed and lay down, her back toward me. For the first time, I noticed the graying roots through her auburn hair and how bent her back was. When she turned her head to look over her shoulder at me, I saw dark circles under her eyes. She looked pale and tired as she waved me away. Impulsively, I ran to the bed and kissed her cheek. It was very soft.

They didn’t tell me right away, and they never let me see her. I never saw them in black; it was all very secret. For days my mother was closed in a room, and as I paced up and down the long hall outside I could hear her crying. When I put my ear to the large oak door, I heard her say, "They let her bleed to death." A friend of Gram’s cried, "No, no, she died in shock." Then my mother sobbed, "But, my God, she was only fifty-two!" All that day, as people entered or left the room, I tried to see my mother through the crack in the door, but someone always pushed me away. Finally I walked outside, opened the front gate and looked down the street toward the bus stop. I could almost see Gram, running as usual, tall with the sun bouncing off her short curly hair, eyes sparkling with laughter, as she raced to me mumbling something about having to go to the bathroom. But when I blinked, she had disappeared.

On one leg, I hopped over the cracks on the cement walk until I reached the front stoop. I sat staring at the large green bush covered with enormous blue and white pompons. Gram loved those flowers. "But," I thought, "she didn’t love me enough to stay." Then I remembered the Easter Sunday, just weeks before, when I was all dressed up waiting outside for my mom and dad to get ready for church. It had rained and the sun had painted a beautiful rainbow over a large puddle. When I tried to sneak up and grab a color, I slipped and landed flat in the mud. "Sloppy! Clumsy!" my mother had shouted as she scooped me out of the water. Then Gram had appeared and I ran to bury my face in her clean flowered skirt. She never flinched as she lifted me and felt my muddy hands around her neck. My eyes were still shut tight, my face hidden in her shoulder, when I heard her say softly to Mother, "Mud washes off much more easily than insults."

Now, suddenly, I hated her for dying and leaving me; and I hated my mother and father for letting it happen, for not making her stay. She had gone and I didn’t know where. In a fury, I got up, ran over to the pompon bush and started to tear the flowers off, one by one. My next big separation came fifteen years after Gram died. And it was then that my unconscious, not knowing death from divorce, spun me headlong into nursing.

" . . . and they lived happily ever after," ended all the fairy tales my father had read me as bedtime stories. So for years, each Saturday as I washed the blinds, scrubbed the bathrooms, dusted and vacuumed, I waited impatiently for the time when I would be spirited away by some wonderful prince who would save me from housework, protect me from danger and take care of me forever. Finally, when I was sixteen, at my first dance, it happened. The casting was perfect. Shawn was tall, with finely chiseled features, blue-black hair and catlike crystal-green eyes which made him look more pretty than handsome. He was wearing a Navy dress uniform, and by the time he asked me to dance it was already too late. I was prepared to be transported to the castle immediately.

I had memorized all of Aesop, all of Grimms . . . and in not one of them did the prince, after he married, have a drinking problem; in not one did he disappear periodically, leaving the frightened princess with two screaming children she couldn’t support. Even after years with Shawn, I had such an elaborate denial system—in other words, I still believed so strongly in the happily-ever-after ending—that I hung on and kept trying to spin straw into gold.

"One last chance?" Shawn asked. And so we gathered up the last five years and packed everything into the back of his white station wagon—away from New York, away from the rat race, away from all the pressures that Shawn hated, to a place he believed was Shangri-la. Ohio . . . Back to nature, back to grass, back to where Shawn grew up.

Four-year-old Niki crawled all over me for ten hours; we had to stop the car six times so that she could pee and get something to drink. The baby, Spinner, wiggled and cried while my arms ached from holding him. Finally, when my nerves were as tight as guitar strings, Shawn pulled up in front of an old cedar house fixed on the side of a hill, in the center of a patch of barren brown land.

"Home," Shawn said proudly. Stricken, I couldn’t believe we were seeing the same thing. Shawn got out of the car and picked up Niki, throwing her over his shoulder playfully. Then he walked around to open my door. I was so stiff I felt as though my hinges had rusted. I could hardly unbend my legs. Spinner started to whimper, and I shoved his thumb into his mouth, hoping Shawn wouldn’t see.

We walked through the dry wilted weeds covering the path. The weatherbeaten front door creaked noisily as soon as Shawn touched the handle. "There are no locks on the door," he told me apologetically, "but I can do that in no time." Inside, from where I stood, I could see a huge old room with wooden floors and peeling lavender walls. As we walked through, our footsteps echoed. Even Niki was quiet, eyes wide.

"The ceilings are high," I said, groping for something uncritical to say. Shawn just looked at me; then he put Niki down and she began to stomp loudly through the living room into the dingy, barnlike dining room . . . beige walls, also peeling. "Oh, Shawn," I wailed, "it’s scary. It’s so big and empty . . . and ugly." There were several holes in the walls with lumps of plaster underneath: dribbled oatmeal on an old man’s chin.

I followed Shawn into the grimy kitchen. "I hate it," I said softly, and Shawn turned, dark brows knit disapprovingly over his eyes, and took Spinner out of my arms. He walked away, rocking the baby gently. All the white enamel counters sloped downward and were badly pitted and chipped. Thick green slime covered the bottom of the sink, except for where the dripping faucet had carved a rusty exclamation mark.

On the verge of tears, I asked, "Do we have to live here?" Shawn just motioned me to follow him up the stairs. On the second floor were three more enormous rooms, all with dusty gashes in the old wooden floors and scaling, flaking paint hanging off the walls. "I didn’t see all this when I looked at the place," Shawn said, shaking his head and running his hand around the inside of one of the larger jagged holes in the wall. "The furniture must have covered most of it." Suddenly he looked so overwhelmed, I knew I’d have to cheer him up or he’d start drinking again. "It will probably look fine with some new paint or wallpaper," I said, moving closer to him and leaning my head on his shoulder. "We can pick up some furniture at the Salvation Army," he said, sounding a little more hopeful, "and maybe some curtains, cheap."

Later, when the car had been unloaded, Shawn and I sat together on the bottom step of the stairs. "It’s a few days before I have to start working at the phone company," Shawn said softly. "By then I can do most of the cleaning up." I nodded. I was exhausted at the thought of setting up another new home. We had done it so many times before. Shawn unpacked some sandwiches and handed me one. We sat chewing soundlessly. "Wish I had a beer," he said casually, but I almost choked. He caught my look, and, exasperated, shouted, "Teri, you promised you wouldn’t get hysterical about this. I told you I wouldn’t drink anymore. I was just wishing out loud."

"I know," I said softly, trying to keep the panic level in my voice down. "It’s just that if you leave me and the kids here . . . I don’t know anybody or anything." Shawn jumped up from the step, green eyes glaring, like a cat’s, and growled, "You have no faith in me." For the next three weeks, Shawn and I painted, cleaned and wallpapered. He seemed happy and I was getting used to the place. But the night of his first paycheck was disaster. He was defeated again: though the pressure in Shangri-la was less, so was the pay. "It’ll be okay," I said, leaning over in bed to hug him that night. He hadn’t wanted to make love to me since we moved, so when he pulled me close and kissed me hard I tried to remember to do everything he liked in bed so that he would make love to me more often. Later, I lay awake a long time with a lump in my throat, wondering why I still felt so lonely.

The following morning, Shawn left for the Laundromat to wash Spinner’s diapers and never came back. That night I jumped out of bed a thousand times. Every time I heard a car door slam, I jumped up. Every time I heard someone talk outside, I jumped up. When the door blew open, I leaped out of bed ready to forgive Shawn anything he had done, as long as he’d not abandon me and the kids again. But it was only the wind. By morning I was exhausted and scared to death. "Where’s Daddy?" Niki asked, rubbing her sleepy eyes. She started to crawl into bed with me, but I bolted up. "Gone again," I answered with an insensitivity I wouldn’t dare use on anybody but my own kids.

"Who’s going to feed me breakfast, then?" she asked. I had to cook Niki’s oatmeal with water because I was trying to save the remaining milk for Spinner. "Mommy, this stuff is lumpy and gooey," she complained, stretching the gluey cereal in as long a string as she could before it broke away from the dish. Ugh! I thought, but I was too depressed even to yell at her. After several minutes, Niki put her spoon down and sat with her head in her hand, imitating my pose. Then she reached over and touched my arm. Frowning, she asked, "What are we going to do, Mommy?" 

The next night I sat for hours on the tattered blue velvet couch we had bought from the Salvation Army, trying to decide. How the hell could he do this to me again? I fumed. What am I supposed to do here, with no money, two kids, no car and no food? I didn’t even have a phone. I had no profession, no training, and I wasn’t emotionally prepared to live alone. I was haunting myself with questions, when my eyes started to burn. Within minutes I started to sneeze madly. I watched numbly, unbelieving, as the large black iron grate in the middle of the living room spewed forth soot and smoke like a wounded locomotive. In seconds I couldn’t see my hand in front of me. That damn coal furnace, I cursed, as pictures flashed through my mind of me running from room to room trying to decide which of my children to save first.

I circled the black grate as though it was a snake pit, listening to the clanking and banging from the cellar below. When the smoke kept coming, I knew I’d have to go down. I was wide awake, my heart beating like a primitive bongo. "Please, Shawn, come back," I pleaded in an angry whisper, and then because I was desperate, willing to try anything, I knelt on the floor and prayed. But right in the middle of my big bargain with God there was a huge thunderclap from the furnace that scared the hell out of me. Jumping up, I remembered one of my father’s famous little chestnuts: "Pray to God, but row for shore."

I took a deep breath and started to walk carefully down the narrow wobbly staircase. The smell of cold dank air hit me, and cobwebs crawled over my face as I tried to find the light switch. There was none. The creak of my feet as they hit one step after another was like something out of Alfred Hitchcock. At the bottom of the stairs a cold wind hit me, and I wrapped my sweater closer around me. The cellar door had blown open. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that snow covered everything. Niki’s stuffed animals, piled in the corner of the basement, had an eerie glow; Shawn’s bicycle had been transformed into a crouching Abominable Snowman.

I can only stay scared for so long before I get mad, and now I was furious. I stamped through the water from the melting snow and groped my way along the wet, mold-covered wall until I found the light socket. The string gone, I had to stand on my toes and screw in the bulb. Serves him right if I get electrocuted, I thought as I felt the water up around my ankles. As the light went on, huge red rings clouded my view of the immense black furnace. The Iron Monster. Gingerly I reached down and tugged at his jaw. With a grinding screech, the gargantuan mouth opened wide. I couldn’t figure out what had made all that noise: only a few red embers remained of the fire inside.

"Crap!" I said aloud, and started to search the cellar until I found a shovel. I lifted it with both hands and moved toward the darkened coalbin. Snow covered that too. Suddenly, as I watched, several pieces of coal seemed to jump from the top of the pile. I stopped short when I heard what sounded like scratching against a blackboard, more jumping coal, the sound of scurrying. And while I just knew the next thing I would see would be a mummified human hand stretching up from the debris, I wasn’t prepared for the squeak that came from the large gray animal that ran over my feet, darting frantically, trying to escape my shovel.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" I screamed, "I hate rats!" That made me feel better. Hollering always made me feel less alone. But I was very shaky after that. The only thing that kept me down in the cellar was knowing that my parents would kill me if my kids froze to death. Because I was more afraid not to do it than to do it, I spent the next six hours fighting that lousy furnace. The shovel was leaden, and with more than three pieces of coal on it I could hardly lift it. Several times when the coal was wet, the fire went out. Several times when the fire went out, I cried. Eventually, I had to burn some of my books and one of the wooden kitchen chairs to restart it. Finally, back upstairs, exhausted, I checked the kids and found them both sleeping peacefully. So I threw myself down on the couch again and tried to figure out what I was going to do the next day. I was practically out of food, and almost all of Spinner’s diapers were in the back of Shawn’s car.

My mind started to drift when a sudden movement caught my eye. A lady in an old-fashioned long woolen dress was pacing up and down in front of me. She seemed to be searching for something along the baseboard of the wall opposite me. Bent over, really looking. She wore a very dusty rust-colored cape; her hair was piled on top of her head, wisps falling around her smudged, dirt-streaked face. I sat straight up, thinking that I had fallen asleep and was dreaming, but when I poked myself in the eyes I found they were wide open. I blinked several times to make sure, then pinched myself hard. She was still there. As I stared more closely, I could see that in her hand she carried a lamp — a long-ago lamp. The flickering light cast shadows on my wall, and for a minute the outline of someone’s arm reached toward the lady. I shook my head hard to clear it, and then called in a soft voice, "Excuse me, ma’am?" She never looked toward me; she never answered. She just kept pacing, checking out my baseboard.

What puzzled me more than who she was, what she was looking for or how she had gotten into my house was that I wasn’t the least bit frightened. Me, who was scared to death of everything. I rubbed my eyes again. I really was awake! Fascinated, I watched for a while longer. Finally, when I couldn’t keep my eyes open another minute, I pulled the red-and-blue afghan up over my shoulders and lay down again. The furnace was heating the house nicely and there was no more noise from downstairs. I fell asleep instantly, a peaceful, dreamless sleep, and woke in the morning more rested than I had been in ages.

It was a sunny day, so bright as the powdery snow fell that Niki and I had to squint to see. Everything white and clean enough to be a winter postcard. Niki sang "Jingle Bells" and I stopped several times to grab some new snow to sprinkle into Spinner’s mouth just to see him make a funny face. I felt almost happy as we walked to the corner phone booth. It was the first time we had been out in days. While Niki sat in the snow holding the baby, I called home collect and asked my father to come pick us up. "Are you sure you know what you’re doing, baby?" he asked, concerned. "Yes," I told him firmly. "I’m going to be a nurse.".....