Free Becoming the Butlers by Penny Jackson Page A

knees and beg forgiveness. What I hadn’t counted on was my mother looking so very pregnant.
    The café waiter in his poor English had made it clear to me that unless I ordered a meal I would have to leave. I was about to throw some change on the table when I noticed a woman in green crossing the street. This wasn’t any ordinary green but my mother’s favorite: a dark pine she called “New Hampshire Green.” My father labeled it “Girl Scout Green” and tried to get my mother to try purple, blue, orange, bright floral prints, and snappy plaids. No luck: my mother would only wear this color, and had to be persuaded in Reno to buy a pale ivory dress for her quickie wedding.
    I stood up and walked quickly to the railing. My mother wore a business suit, dark stockings, and even heels. She hadn’t been so dressed up for her own mother’s funeral. A shiny green raincoat was unbuttoned to reveal her swelling waist. If my father looked like a movie actor, my mother resembled one of those sprites you see on the labels of White Rock soda. My father even called her Peter Pan because she seemed ready at any moment to soar off into the sky.
    But now my mother was huge, and waddled more than walked. People let her pass, and women gave her knowing smiles. She would stop every few yards, and pat her stomach, as if signaling to the baby that everything was all right. Her face was sunburned too, and fleshier. She looked a lot like George. I wondered if all people who were deeply in love eventually came to resemble each other. I wasn’t worried she would see me. Her eyes were focused on her swollen belly, and I was nervous she might walk into a car.
    Yet her pregnancy wasn’t the only thing that shocked me. My mother had cut her hair, and it was now as short as a boy’s. She had been famous for long auburn hair that rippled past her shoulders like a glorious sunset. My father loved her hair, and loved to brush it for her. My mother would lean all the way down, the tips of her hair grazing the floor, and my father would count aloud after each stroke. When he reached fifty, he’d run his fingers through the silky shining strands like a prospector searching for gold. Cutting her hair seemed to me like a declaration of independence; a severance of her ties to the past. She was a new woman now, expecting a new man’s baby.
    Perhaps I could have accepted everything if my mother had only looked anxious, even a little unsure. But my mother positively glowed. She looked up into the waning sun as if challenging it to match her own warmth. She did not squint. I knew the color of her eyes when she was happy: a tawny yellowish-green which would glow as warmly as burnished copper.
    There was nothing I could say or do. At one point she walked so close to the café railing that I could have reached out and touched her arm. She wouldn’t have felt my hand. My father and I had become invisible. We couldn’t even be ghosts because she no longer had a past. The cool dusky air carried a whiff of her jasmine perfume, and I breathed deeply, determined to keep my only souvenir.
    George and I had exchanged oaths of silence. My mother would never learn about my visit, and James would never know that his wife was pregnant. Let him go home thinking he was a failure. My father could blame bad timing, bad luck, and still hope that one day she would be back. Mrs. Vasquez would continue going to Mass and lighting candles for her errant husband. I wasn’t being deceitful; only trying to protect everyone from the truth.
    I suddenly felt so exhausted that I dropped my head onto the table. The waiter rushed over, calling out in Spanish, and brought me a glass of water. I was so tired of looking for my mother and looking after my father. Someone should take care of me for a change.
    James wasn’t in his bedroom, and I instinctively knew to look for him in the Ritz bar. The room was more crowded at this hour, and at first I couldn’t find my father. Then I saw