Safe Keeping. Barbara Taylor Sissel

it might be easier if it were treated with clinical dispassion. Not that she felt as if she were seriously ill. It was only that she didn’t feel herself. In addition to the frequent headaches, she wasn’t sleeping, her appetite was low and, last week, she’d fainted. She kept telling herself it was stress. She wanted it to be.

      Lissa’s mother resumed her perch on the stool. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

      “I wanted to check on you, you know, because of—”

      “I’ve been rereading Dad’s old letters,” Lissa’s mother interrupted. She half lifted a cardboard box from her lap. “Did I ever show you this one?” She handed Lissa a sheet of onionskin paper, sepia tinged at the edges and covered in her dad’s cramped writing.

      “‘My Dearest Em,’” her mother read, “‘my dearest one, my love, how will I tell you this news, the awful thing that has happened. I’m not the same, not your sweetest—not your sweetest honey—’” She caught her lip, took a breath. “‘I’m not sure I’m even a man anymore.’”

      “Mom...” Lissa’s murmur was half in sorrow, half in protest.

      She hadn’t read her dad’s letters home from Vietnam, but she knew how he’d been injured there. Her mother had told her and Tucker the story, how in the aftermath of battle, he’d rescued a four-year-old North Vietnamese boy, an enemy’s son, and run with him from a burning house, but before he could make it back to the location where his company was bivouacked, sniper fire had caught him in the meaty part of his calf below his left knee. Still, he’d kept running with the child; he’d brought the boy to safety against all odds, and sixty-one days later, they’d amputated the gangrenous, blasted remains of his lower leg. He’d nearly died from the infection.

      Lissa was still in awe of the story. She couldn’t imagine the selfless act of courage it had taken. She remembered socking a kid once in third grade who called her dad a cripple. She’d been sent home that day for fighting, but she hadn’t been punished. Her mother only said the boy was probably frightened at the idea of her father having only one leg. It hadn’t made sense to Lissa. Her dad wasn’t different from any other dad with two legs. In fact, he was stronger than any man she knew. She never thought of him as handicapped. Most of her life, she’d scarcely been aware of it.

      She gave her father’s letter back to her mother. “Daddy doesn’t look good, Mom. I’m worried about him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so shaky.”

      “That missing girl—she’s—”

      “But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, you know?”

      Her mother hugged her elbows. “They don’t make linen closets with so much room in them anymore, do they? I played house in here when I was little, did I ever tell you?”

      “Sure, Momma.” Lissa went along. “We played house in here, too, remember? You and me and Tucker.”

      “It’s just the right size. Your grandma let me have a little table. And dishes. Such pretty dishes. I loved being in here—I still do. The way the old floor creaks and how the sunlight comes through the door, and the smell—it’s a comfort to me.” She drew in a breath, eyes closed. “Some people think it’s musty, but to me it smells safe. It smells the way love would smell, if love had a smell.”

      Lissa knelt beside her. “Tucker will be home soon, Momma, or he’ll call. He always does.” The assurance sounded no better now than when she’d offered it to her dad.

      Her mother touched Lissa’s cheek, lifted her fingers, trailing them across Lissa’s brow. “You and your brother are so different,” she said. “Tucker’s blond, like me, like the Winters, but you favor your father with all that wonderful dark hair. You’re strong, too, like he is.”

      They shared a silence.

      “I want to help him, you know? But when he hits these dark places, when he retreats and goes into himself, I— It’s hard to know what to do.”

      Lissa tucked a wayward strand of her mother’s hair behind her ear. It added to her worry, seeing her parents so undone, so not themselves. Abruptly, she held out a hand to her mother. “Come with me to Pecan Grove. It will do you good to get out of the house.”

      “Oh, that would be lovely, but you’ve got work to do out there, and I’m fine. Dad and I both are. Don’t worry about us.” Her mother stood up making shooing motions, then suddenly she cupped Lissa’s face in both hands. “Do you know how much I love you?” Her eyes were swimming with tears.

      Lissa nodded; her own throat knotted.

      “Sometimes, I think we get so focused on Tucker, we forget about you. Forget to tell you how special you are. Please say you know how much we love you.”

      Lissa slid her palms over her mother’s hands. “Of course I do, Momma.”

      She gathered herself and gave Lissa’s cheeks a final pat. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I just need to hear from your brother. Once he’s home, and he and your dad have mended their fences, we can get back to normal.”

      “What’s normal?” Lissa asked, and she was glad when her mother smiled.

      * * *

      She stopped outside her dad’s office door on her way down the front hall. “Daddy?” she called softly, but he didn’t answer her, and she didn’t call out again. Passing the dining room on her way out of the house, her path was diverted when she caught sight of the collection of family photos arrayed across the top of her mother’s baby grand piano. Some were casual shots that her dad had taken back when she and Tucker were little. Others were formal studio shots. She picked one up, a five-by-seven framed in wood. It was of the four of them sitting on a sofa. Her mother was holding Tucker on her lap, and Lissa was leaning against her daddy’s good leg, smiling, gap-toothed. Tucker was in shorts and had a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid on one chubby knee.

      Setting the studio portrait down, she picked up another, a shot her father had taken that her mother had framed in silver. It was from Easter Sunday. Lissa remembered the year was 1981. Tucker turned three that year, and she turned seven. They were outside on the front porch, dressed in their church finery. Lissa’s outfit, a ruffle-hemmed sheath made of pink dotted swiss, with pink patent-leather Mary Janes and a purse to match, had been a favorite. Her mother had corralled her glossy, straight, dark hair into a French braid that hung midway down her back and ended in a tied puff of pink chiffon. Lissa wore it in a French braid to this day, to keep it out of her face, especially when she was working or painting. Growing up, Tucker called the braid her donkey tail to annoy her. He’d grabbed it and held it to his chin, letting the end dangle, making a long beard of it, teasing her. She’d wanted to clobber him.

      She touched the tip of her finger to the image of his face, then put the photo back. Looking at it left her feeling some nostalgic mix of happy and sad. She guessed it was because life had never been as simple again after that year.

      * * *

      She was almost to the interstate when her cell phone rang.

      “Where are you?” Evan asked when she answered.

      “Why? What’s wrong?” She knew what he would say. Still, her heart paused when Evan said, “Tucker was here, at the office, and not fifteen minutes after he left, the police showed up, looking for him.”

      She put on her signal, turned right into a gas station and parked. “Do you know where he went?” she asked, and she almost couldn’t hear her own voice over the hammer of her pulse.

      “He didn’t say. He wanted to see you, and I said you were at your folks’, but I don’t think he’ll go there.”

      “No.” Lissa pressed her fingertips above her right eye where the pain had settled into an ache dulled by the medication her mother had given her.

      “He’s driving some girl’s car, an old Volkswagen. He says his Tahoe broke down on the freeway last night, and she helped him out.