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  The Quiz Kids were on the radio around then, too, but my mother said they didn’t interest her. “Show biz,” she said to my father, who himself had been on a local kids show in Des Moines. He had won seventy-five silver dollars. One time, after they’d had a fight, my father snuck into my room and told me angrily: “She tried out for the Quiz Kids, and didn’t get on. Sour grapes.”

  Still, Mama thought she had what it took, or could have had with the right attention. She blamed her parents, her mother in particular. “I was musical, I was mathematical,” she said to Grandma Sarah one Thanksgiving. “I taught myself to read when I was four—you could’ve taught me even earlier.”

  Grandma just told her how bad it was to push children, and with eight kids, who had time, anyhow? Who knew which ones would be intelligent and which ones would be my Uncle Mark? Child prodigies were unhappy, she told Mama, they never got to play, they almost never did anything great when they were older. They got depressed; they committed suicide.

  My mother didn’t believe that. She was sure she would’ve been great in her twenties, thirties, forever, if she had just been encouraged to greatness early on. She wouldn’t have gotten depressed—she was unfailingly, antagonistically pleasant. She was unlucky enough to be the only cheery member of her immediate family, and the only one without a sense of humor. She suffered around my father and me. If she was cheerful, we became angered by her cheerfulness and made gloomy jokes; if she tried to joke in return, we’d look at each other and roll our eyes. She was neat and organized; on vacations, my father and I wouldn’t get out of our pajamas for days.

  She divorced my father when I was eight. She couldn’t divorce me. After the split, she taught French at a Catholic girls’ school. She tried to teach me, too. It was impossible. She would’ve liked me better if I had been smart, but I wasn’t.

  “You were a lazy baby, Ruthie,” she told me. How do you answer to that? She gave up on me, and dreamed of her own childhood, which had been happy. Her father was a quiet man who had loved everybody and died at forty-five, before we had a chance to meet. I never knew how to refer to him. Grandpa? Your father? Grandma Sarah’s husband? She told me once that he would have asked me to call him Sidney, but calling a relative, an old man, a dead man, by his first name seemed impossible.

  I was eleven when Mama found Mercedes Kane at the grocery-store lunch counter and brought her home. It was an astounding thing to do.

  Saturday morning, I sat on the sofa in our apartment watching “Abbott and Costello Theater” on Channel 13. I watched it every week, had all the routines memorized.

  Mama walked in, leading a strange woman by the hand.

  “Ruthie, this is my friend Mercedes. She’s going to stay with us awhile.”

  The name sounded familiar, but this woman—a friend? That had to be a lie. My mother’s friends were as neat as she was and had names like Rita, Harriet, and Frances. This woman was small and puffy; she had long gray hair that was combed straight back and looked tangled. Her dress was a plain faded print; her feet were done up in men’s slippers over several pairs of socks. And she was smoking: none of my mother’s friends smoked.

  My mother put her hand on the woman’s shoulder and leaned down. “Would you like to take a bath, Mercedes?”

  Mercedes shrugged my mother away. “Do I have to?”

  I laughed, because she sounded just like me.

  “Wouldn’t you like to?”

  “You’re the hostess.”

  Mama led Mercedes down the hall to the linen closet. I knew she was taking one of the towels out, plumping it proudly. My mother bought expensive new towels every few months; it was a luxury she approved of.

  I heard the bathroom door close, and Mama came back.

  “Do you know who that is? Mercedes Kane! We have her poetry. This is her. I found her at Dahl’s.”

  “The smart little girl?”

  “That’s her. She was sitting at the counter, eating a hamburger and smoking, and she was reading one of her own books—The Rose in the Garden, that’s the one we have. I was having a cup of coffee, and I saw it, so I started to talk to her. I didn’t know it was her, and she didn’t say anything. She said her name was Mercedes, but she wouldn’t tell me her last name. I asked her, you know, if she was the little girl I read about in the paper. ‘Who?’ she said. I said: math genius, language genius, girl who went to the University of Chicago when she was eleven? She said no. ‘I used to write a little poetry,’ she said.”

  “Maybe it’s just somebody pretending to be her.”

  “No, I know it’s her. I’m sure of it. So I invited her to stay here awhile.”

  “Doesn’t she live somewhere?”

  “She says she’s got a room, but she won’t say where.” Mama sat down on the edge of our old chaise longue. “I can’t believe it. Right here, Ruthie, Mercedes Kane. Now, don’t mention what you know about her. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s just my friend, okay?”

  “This is weird.”

  “It’s okay, it’s fine.”

  I’d never seen my mother so excited. She fussed around the living room, scratching her forehead, rubbing her chin. I think she was trying to look smart. Every now and then she stopped in the middle of the room, put her hands on her hips, and smiled. After a few minutes, she flipped off the TV.

  “Hey,” I said, although I had stopped watching it a few minutes before.

  “Honestly, Ruthie. You’d think you didn’t know how to read or write or walk around. There you are, every day, with your mouth open. Your brain will waste away.”

  “I’m not here every day. I don’t watch that much.”

  “Any is too much.”

  “Mama.”

  “Don’t whine.”

  Mercedes came creeping in from the hall, wrapped in my mother’s toweling robe. She was still smoking; it was like she didn’t stop for a minute, not even for a bath. Even though her hair was wet, it didn’t look clean. But her cheeks were bright pink—healthy pink—underneath all that tangle.

  “You look much happier, Mercedes,” my mother said. “Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

  “A cup of black coffee, please.” She bowed oddly from the waist. The bath had washed away her rudeness.

  “Well, it was a fast bath, anyhow,” said Mama. “Was it a good bath?”

  “Yes, thank you. Nice big bathtub.”

  “That’s true. Old-fashioned. They don’t make them that deep anymore. Mercedes,” my mother said. “You have just the prettiest coloring. A healthy glow, I’d call it.”

  “Yes, that’s one thing.” Mercedes squinted at the smoke at the end of her cigarette. “I can’t ruin my health, no matter how hard I try.”

  That evening, when I walked into the kitchen, my mother was speaking French. Mercedes peered into her coffee cup, smiling and nodding. I could tell Mama was asking a question, but Mercedes didn’t respond, and finally my mother rolled out one set of words several times, adding “Mercedes” in her fancy accent. Finally, in exasperation, in her regular voice, she said, “Mercedes.”

  “Hmmm?”

  My mother repeated her French question.

  “Are you talking to me?”

  “I have been, for the past five minutes.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t paying attention. I thought you were talking on the phone.”

  “But I’ve been right here in front of you, honey. I’m all excited to really talk French with somebody, it’s been so long.”

  Mercedes shrugged one shoulder and tilted her head. “I don’t know any French.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you do,” Mama said. “I mean, I remember reading—”

  “That was someone else, I’m sure. All I know is English, and I’m not too handy with that.”

  “But I remember,” said Mama. “The papers all those years ago. You spoke eight languages. You even made a language up.”

  “No.” Mercedes frowned. “Somebody else.”

  “It wasn’t,” Mama insisted. �
��It was you, Mercedes. I remember.”

  “There were a lot of little girls in the news.”

  “I wouldn’t forget. I wanted to be like you.”

  “Maybe one of the Dionne quints.”

  That made Mama laugh. “I wanted to be a quintuplet, too, but I figure I can’t blame my parents for that. But you, you were a mathematician—”

  “No. I can’t even add. I’ve barely got a brain.”

  “But you wrote those poems, right? You admit that.”

  Mercedes rested her tongue on her lip, as if she were wondering whether an admission would taste good. “No,” she said finally. “I’d like to be able to say I did . . .”

  Mama leaned against the table, sighed, and watched Mercedes with one eye half closed, the other one open as far as it would go. I recognized the look: it said, How-stupid-do-you-think-I-am-I-know-you-did-it. I got it when I broke something and blamed the air, and I got spanked. But Mama just shook her head now and said, “Let me take you out to dinner tonight. You and me and Ruthie. Anywhere you like. How about the Hotel Fort Des Moines? You can borrow one of my dresses if you want.”

  “How about Noah’s for pizza?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Mercedes, I want to take you someplace nice, someplace we’ll enjoy ourselves.”

  “I’ll enjoy pizza,” Mercedes said firmly.

  “But—”

  “I wouldn’t like the Fort Des Moines. I hate the downtown.”

  “Pizza sounds good,” I said from my spot near the door.

  They turned and looked at me, surprised.

  “There you go,” said Mercedes.

  “Pizza,” said my mother. “Okay.”

  So we went to Noah’s, where Mercedes drank cup of coffee after cup of coffee, Mama keeping pace with glasses of red wine. At the end of the meal, Mama stood up, held her purse to her belly with a fist, and asked Mercedes if she wouldn’t mind driving.

  “No problem,” said Mercedes. She drove very carefully. In the garage at home, she got out and gave the hood of the car a pat.

  “Never drove a standard before,” she said. “Just a matter of coordination, isn’t it?”

  Mama went to bed right away. I sat in my room at my desk, drawing cartoons to amuse myself. I had an old Fred Astaire record on the player. It had been an inheritance from my father’s parents, the only thing I had wanted from their house. I felt soothed every time I listened to it.

  Mercedes came to the door and knocked on the frame. “Who’s this singing?”

  “Fred Astaire.”

  She looked serious for a minute. Then she said, “Oh,” smiling. “You’re too young to know who he is.”

  “I got it from my grandparents. It’s my favorite.”

  “I’m old enough to know, and even I don’t.”

  “I watch his movies on TV all the time. You seen them?”

  “No. TV’s a habit you have to get into. Never did.” She scratched her elbow with the palm of her hand. “Ruthie, do you have a radio I can borrow? I like listening to the talk shows.”

  “All I have is a clock radio. Mom’s got a portable.”

  “She’s asleep. I don’t want to bother her.”

  “Take the clock radio. Tomorrow’s Sunday. I don’t need it.”

  “Thanks.” Mercedes took the radio off the nightstand and followed the cord to the wall. “Your mother’s an interesting lady. Very bright.”

  “Guess so,” I said, turning back to my cartoons.

  “She knows what to think. Things don’t just pop into her head, you know?” She paused. “What’re you working on? Homework?”

  “Nope. Nothing.”

  “Oh.” She held the radio as if she were trying to figure it out. “Well, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  Mercedes slept on the sofa in the living room that night, and the night after that, and then Mama borrowed a rollaway from the neighbors. I got used to Mercedes pretty quickly, but Mama was transformed. I watched her buzz around the living room, emptying ashtrays, discovering candy wrappers stuffed under chair cushions, removing ink stains from upholstery, never complaining. She plainly loved Mercedes, and that surprised me, because my mother wasn’t impetuous about anything, least of all love: until I was eighteen, she hugged me only if one of us was going on a trip, and then it was all business. I knew she loved me, of course, but it was a careful affection: regimented, proper. Looking back, I realize she had started loving Mercedes the first time she read The Rose in the Garden. It’s not even surprising that she brought Mercedes home: Mama had been looking for her for thirty years.

  My mother started cooking complicated breakfasts: waffles, bacon, even tiny steaks. Mercedes was an amazing eater. She ate every dish separately: first eggs, scraping the plate clean, then bacon, and finally potatoes. She drank coffee constantly, and I think she ate caffeine pills in between. She barely slept. I heard the talk-show hosts chatting from the living room all night, and sometimes, Mercedes talked back. “Are you crazy?” she asked. “You must be nuts!” Sometimes at breakfast she told us about the loonies that phoned in: the woman who knew her parakeet understood algebra but just couldn’t flap his wings well enough to communicate solutions, the man who was sure that God proved himself in ball-game scores. “O America,” she said one morning, piercing the yolk of her fried egg with a fork.

  After breakfast, Mama went to work, I went to school, and Mercedes went someplace, she wouldn’t say where. Mama thought maybe she had a job, but I pictured her at the library, reading magazines or encyclopedias or comic books.

  The Thursday after Mercedes arrived, Mama decided she was going to give us haircuts. She spread newspapers on the kitchen floor and got out her scissors and combs.

  “Mercedes first,” she said. She had sent Mercedes to wash her hair, and it was still tangled, of course, when she sat down in the kitchen. Mama went at it with a comb. I was at the kitchen table, writing a report on the Boston Tea Party. It was due the next day, and I hadn’t even gone to the library.

  “You have such beautiful hair,” Mama told Mercedes. “All you have to do is take care of it.”

  “It’s a bother.”

  “Just take care of it. Ruthie wouldn’t take care of hers, and I had to cut it all off. Be careful, or I’ll do it to you.”

  Mercedes twisted around at the waist. “Don’t.” She wrapped her fist around her wet hair.

  “I was just kidding. Don’t take everything so seriously.”

  Mercedes turned back carefully. “Just a trim. Just enough to keep it growing.”

  “You want me to set it, too? I could do it up in little pin curls. My sisters and I used to do each other’s hair.”

  I found that hard to believe. When I saw my mother talk to my aunts, they whispered fiercely about my grandmother. They never smiled.

  “Okay . . . curls?” Mercedes sounded dubious.

  “A few curls.”

  Mercedes set her head back and closed her eyes.

  “We used to have the cutest hairdos when we were little,” said my mother. “You know what we set our hair with? Kotex! The kind that attaches to a belt? We thought it was funny, but really, it was just perfect. Sterile, just the right size, and with little handles to tie.”

  I always thought my mother told these stories to embarrass me. Now Mercedes frowned, her cheeks getting even pinker. She kept her eyes closed.

  “You should see my prom picture,” Mama said. “All curls, dyed red. My father’s in it—he got dolled up in a suit, because he knew my mother would want a picture of the two of us together.” My mother sighed. “I look at that picture, and at the picture of me and Pop at my wedding, and I think: God. There’s the right sort of man. There’s the man I should’ve gone home with—not my date, certainly not my husband. My father was kind and smart and a good dancer. Your father”—she shook the comb at me accusingly,—“can’t dance a step.”

  “Don’t blame me. Not everybody’s father is perfect.”

  “Be polite�
�”

  “Mine wasn’t, either.” Mercedes opened one eye, turned it toward me, and closed it again. Then she lit a cigarette without even looking.

  “But he wasn’t a bad man, right? He encouraged you.” Mama started to cut a tangle free.

  “He encouraged me.”

  “My father was gallant. That’s the word for him, just gallant. He always knew when to tell us we looked pretty. He owned a woman’s clothing store, and he brought us home dresses. He always knew which one would flatter and fit which daughter. He had a genius for people. But he was serious, too. He was a good reader.”

  “My father was serious,” said Mercedes.

  “Well, he’d have to be. He was a professor, right?”

  Mercedes paused the way she always did when she thought she was going to be fooled into something. “Yes,” she said finally. “He taught geography. To this day, I can’t locate Italy on the map.”

  “Anyone can find Italy,” I said. “Even I know Italy.”

  “Not me,” said Mercedes.

  Mama started snipping at the ends of the hair. “But he encouraged you, you said. He gave you compliments.”

  “Not really. He didn’t insult me. I barely saw him; I dealt with my mother. She gave me all my education. My father was an academic. He was too far away from reality to be ambitious. My mother wanted to be famous.”

  Mama bit her lip and looked at the back of Mercedes’s head, trying not to look too interested, not knowing what to do to keep Mercedes talking.

  She didn’t have to do anything; Mercedes went on by herself. “He never paid much attention to me. I thought he didn’t care about girls at all. My mother once said to me, thank God she found my father, who didn’t notice the fact that she wasn’t feminine. But once . . . I was sitting with him in his den, typing a paper. I loved typing, still do: if you work hard enough at it, you can be perfect, no mistakes—very satisfying. My father was sitting in his easy chair, reading a book. For some reason I mentioned my cousin Edith in St. Louis. My father looked up; whatever he was about to say was important enough to make him put down his book. ‘Now, there’s a pretty girl,’ he said. ‘Stunning, I’d say. Just beautiful. Always has been.’ And there I was, just looking at my father. Slack-jawed. Cheated. All those years, pretending it didn’t matter. How could he do that to my mother and me? He changed the rules right then, he just changed the rules.”