The next day, with cold, sore fingers, Saffee wraps fine sandpaper around the end of a screwdriver and absentmindedly rubs along the contours of her great-grandfather’s carved masterpiece. Outside it has begun to rain.
“I’m sorry, Mother.” The words Saffee spoke in the hospital reverberate in her head. Joann’s eyelids had fluttered for an instant. Her small dark eyes pierced Saffee’s with an accusing look that seemed to say she took Saffee’s apology to be an admission of guilt—guilt of conspiring against her, of being the perpetrator of her miserable years. Saffee is still stunned. Does Joann believe that her own daughter was the villain?
In spite of two layers of clothing under her sweatshirt, Saffee shivers. Her intent had been to express that she was sorry her mother has suffered, sorry that her life has been haunted and crazed. The apology also meant, “I’m sorry I didn’t come home to see you during the college years. Surely I could have done something to ease your pain. Surely I could have helped you, my own mother. I’m sorry I did not. I’m sorry!” But she hadn’t said that. Jumbled emotion, and her mother’s unexpected glare, stifled the words.
Perhaps Saffee’s neglect did contribute to Joann’s pain. If so, she was the villain. If so . . . Now she whispers, “Oh, Mother, forgive me.”
Saffee looks back into her childhood. She had been sullen and pouty. “Owly” had been her mother’s word. But are these signs of villainy?
Her eye catches Jenny Rose’s “rainbow heart” taped to the garage wall. Had Saffee ever scribbled such a gift for Joann? Once, when she spilled similar self-condemnation to Jack, he said, “Saffee, it was never your job to fix your mother, only to love her.”
Well, she hadn’t done a good job of that either. Hiding away at college wasn’t loving. Rarely writing a letter, never calling on the phone wasn’t loving. Perhaps she should have persisted in nagging her father to seek help for his sick wife. Why had she stopped? Saffee’s thoughts jump to the day Joann demanded Saffee to assess if there was something wrong with her. No, Mother, you’re just fine! The words choke her, as if she is swallowing sand. What could she have said?
Saffee is learning to interact better with others, but any opportunity to establish a satisfying relationship with her mother was lost long ago. In the chilly garage, she listens to a steady drizzle patter into the gutters. She drops the screwdriver to the floor and cries.
Late Indian summer suddenly becomes wintry. From the kitchen window, Saffee watches the first snowfall begin to blanket the grass. The warmer asphalt driveway is still bare, but it too will be white by the time she and Jack come home from work tonight. Then they will enlist Bill’s help to disassemble a table that now displays a split personality—three legs still suffer variously colored layers of paint, while the rest of the table breathes free. They will prop its pieces against a garage wall for a few months and, for the first time, drive the VW inside. She has done her best to finish the project before winter. Come spring, she will.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHRISTMAS
In early December, Jack tells Saffee there is an office Christmas party planned for the sixteenth.
She momentarily squints her eyes, wrinkles her nose, and then asks calmly, “What in the world should I wear?”
He looks at her blankly.
The next Saturday Saffee takes the bus downtown. At Peck and Peck, she finds an emerald green silk suit. It fits like a glove.
Back home, she models the new outfit for Jack and receives his unreserved approval. She reads a tag attached to the label. It says, “Love me for my imperfections.” She guesses it refers to the slubby silk fabric. She wonders why it doesn’t say, “Love me in spite of my imperfections.”
Saffee muses over the notion. Sometimes she still wonders what her husband sees in her. “Jack,” she says, reaching for a hanger, “do you love me for my imperfections, or in spite of them?”
Jack admires her reflection in the closet door mirror. “You’re testing my powers of self-analysis,” he says. “I’ll say I love you just as you are. Not perfect, of course. Perfection would be boring.”
She considers the thought. Her former life had been boring, but such a far cry from perfect. She hangs the suit in the closet. “Well, Mr. Andrews, I think you’re perfect and not at all boring,” she teases, remembering how this morning he’d left shaving cream slopped on the bathroom counter and toothpaste spattered on the mirror. Other than that, what could she fault?
At the party, holiday merriment has a life of its own and makes few demands on her. The executives’ wives are older than she and seem to have known each other for years. Saffee’s modest efforts to join in are only somewhat successful. She exchanges pleasantries with Leonard and Betsy Johnson, who again praise that never-to-be-forgotten meal of stuffed ribs. Smiling, but self-conscious, she stays fairly close to Jack most of the evening, listening as he banters with coworkers.