Time Zones
By Cameron Spencer
“Mother, what are these?” The middle-aged woman stood up and addressed the old lady sitting in a straight-back chair in the middle of a sea of boxes. Julie shoved the cardboard box closer to her mother’s chair and pushed a stray strand of her brown hair back behind her ear and stood up. Her back ached. How many more boxes could there be?
Julie had returned from Golden, Colorado, to her childhood home outside Philadelphia to pack her mother up and take her back West to live with her and Bob, Julie’s husband.
“Well, Julie, what does it say?” Betty Chamberlain asked. There was an indignant tone to the older woman’s voice as she eyed the box and then looked up from her chair at her daughter, who held a boxcutter.
“Well, it says ‘Postcards.’ But it can’t be postcards—this box weighs a ton!”
“Paper’s heavy.” The old woman shifted in her seat. “You have the boxcutter; open it and see.”
“Honestly, this is hopeless,” Julie Chamberlain Roberson began. She dug the blade into the heavy tape binding the flaps and then tore up one to peer inside. “Yep, looks like postcards.” She lifted the remaining flaps and sank onto her haunches. “Thousands of postcards.” She held out a stack. “How old are these, Mother? Why in the world have you saved them?” Julie began rifling through the top group, which were tied together with a worn strand of pink yarn. “Some of these are ancient!”
Indeed, several were in black and white. There were scenes of Niagara Falls, Coney Island, Cape Cod, and Martha’s Vineyard. But the signs in the photographs and the occasional human figure bespoke a much earlier time: a time when women wore hats and gloves and men sported Homburgs and neckties on Sunday afternoon excursions.
Julie untied one bundle and flipped over the first card. “Who is Martha Jeanne?” she asked. “I’ve never heard of her—wait, this postcard isn’t even to you! It’s to Grandma!” Julie sighed and sank onto the floor. She looked at her watch. It was after 4:00 and there was still another room full of boxes to go. At this rate it would take all week to sort through her mother’s belongings. Resettling a woman of nearly ninety years to the other side of the country would be difficult. Just going through her mother’s things and discussing what was to be saved had been more challenging than Julie had anticipated.
She felt a pearl of perspiration slip past her ear and slide toward her chin. It must be eighty degrees in the living room where they sat. A cylindrical floor fan whirred in the center of the room. Julie remembered sitting on it as a child and delighting in the coolness of the air blowing against the back of her knees.
“Mother,” she asked for the thirtieth time in as many years, “why have you never bought an air conditioner? This is ridiculous. You could have a window unit in every room in this damn house; at least then it would be livable.”
“Well, I’ve been living in this house for a good many years—and so did you, little lady—so I guess it’s livable. Anyway, I don’t mind the heat. People lived for centuries without air conditioners—it’s just what a person gets used to. Or allows herself to be spoiled by.” Pursing her lips, the old woman bent and retrieved a stack from the carton and pretended to examine the pictures.
Julie thought about how much more comfortable her mother would be in Colorado: dry heat is so much easier to bear than the humidity of the Northeast.
“Mother, I said, ‘Who is Martha Jeanne?’ You never answered me.” Julie was beginning to feel as if she were talking to one of her sons when he was thirteen.
“Well, she was a great friend of your grandmother’s. She was my favorite. We called her Aunt Martha Jeanne. In those days children referred to close family friends as aunts or uncles, even though they were not family relations. Just as I raised you children to do. Or,” she added in reflection, “others might have referred to her as ‘Miss Martha Jeanne,’ you know, but we called her Aunt. Anyway, she was so funny!” The old woman smacked her boney knee with one wrinkled hand. “She would do anything, try anything—wasn’t a thing she was shy about taking on. She went hunting and fishing, camping—you name it. And she went to Europe three times by herself. That was pretty daring back then. Wouldn’t think anything of it now, I guess.” She replaced the stack in the box.
“Why are you saving them?”
“They’re my memories.”
“But they’re not even yours!”
“Yes, they are, in a way.”
“Mother, you haven’t even looked at them for, what, sixty years?”
“But I’ve known they were here.”
“Well, they won’t be now. We can’t cart this junk across the country just so you’ll know they’re there! Honestly.” Julie stood up and walked into the kitchen, her jaw clenched. Five more days of this unpacking, sorting, arguing, and repacking. Would there be enough time to finish it all? What would life be like when her mother joined her and Bob back in Golden?
“I’m going to have some iced tea, Mom,” she asked as she strode to the kitchen. “Want some?”
“Oh, yes, thank you, dear. That would be lovely.” Her mother spoke in the round vowels and slightly nasal tone that revealed her Main Line upbringing. Over the years the area outside Philadelphia had changed; Nouveaux riche, as they were called, had altered the landscape and made harsh the vocal tone of the residents. But Betty Chamberlain had never lost her accent, nor had she ever wanted to.
Julie peeked around the corner into the living room to see her mother fumbling with a very old carton whose sides were bent and crumbly. Her hands struggled with the tape, and Julie noticed that her mother’s knuckles stuck out against the skinny length of her fingers, looking large and almost swollen. They reminded Julie of little dead twigs with tiny burls. She felt a rush of regret for expressing her impatience. She’s so old. Who knows how much time she has left? Mrs. Chamberlain reached across the carton to the boxcutter that lay on the floor.
“Wait, Mother. I’ll be right there.” Julie hurried in and placed the glass of tea on top of a packing box next to her mother.
“I want to see what’s in here,” Mrs. Chamberlain said, as Julie grabbed the boxcutter.
“It says--”
“I know what it says, Julie; I want to see it.” Now she sounded crotchety.
The old lady reached in and withdrew a large folded lump of what looked to be black wool. Gently, she unfolded it.
“Daddy’s uniform!” Julie recognized it from photographs of her father during World War II.
“Yes.” The old woman’s hands ran across the front top half of the uniform. “He was so handsome.” Her veiny fingers lingered, caressing a button.
“I know,” Julie said softly.
“You know, fifteen years after the war ended he could still get into his uniform. Not many men could say that.”
Julie took a great gulp of her tea to wash down the lump in her throat. “He always was in great shape,” she managed to say.
“He was disciplined, Julie. Of course,” she added in a note of concession, “we didn’t have all those fast food places or convenience meals. We ate food.”
Julie winced inwardly, thinking of Bob and her forays to Arby’s for a roast beef sandwich and of their customary Sunday mornings spent reading The New York Times and eating Egg McMuffins in bed. What would she do with mother then?
Betty Chamberlain sat back and appeared to be speaking to someone across the room. “You know, everyone said he looked like Van Johnson.” How many times had Julie heard this? “He was even mistaken for him once.” Betty took a sip of her tea. “You know whom I mean by Van Johnson, don’t you? He always wore red socks. He was quite the leading man back then.”
“Van Johnson was gay, Mom.”
“Oh, I know that, honey. But we didn’t know it then. And people didn’t speak of such things. Besides, a girl could dream, couldn’t she?” She continued, “Your brother was only two when your daddy left for the war, and I used to show him your father’s picture—he was wearing his whites—and say, ‘This is your daddy,’ so that your brother would not forget him. In those days the men didn’t come back until the war was over, you see.”
Julie nodded, knowing what was coming.
“Well,” and the older woman began laughing, “I would get on a bus and take your brother into Center City to go shopping, and if the fleet was in, there would be sailors everywhere. Your brother would point at one or another and say, ‘Is he my daddy? Is he my daddy?’” Betty threw back her head and smiled in memory. “And, of course, all the young men were so nice; they would come over and speak to me, and then they would bend down, shake your brother’s hand, and say, ‘Sorry, sonny, I’m not your daddy, but he sure is lucky to have a nice little boy like you.’”
The phone rang. Julie ran to the kitchen to answer it, circumventing boxes and groups of odds and ends marked “Yard Sale” on the floor. Betty remained gazing at the uniform on her lap. “Hello?”
It was Bob, calling from Colorado to say that he was about to leave for an early dinner meeting.
“How’s it going?” his voice was soft and sympathetic.
“Well, . . .”
“I’ll call you again when I get in tonight,” he assured her.
“No, don’t. Remember there is a two-hour difference—and about seventy years—between where you are and where she lives. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Julie hung up and looked at her watch. She should be starting dinner. “Mother, are you getting hungry?” she asked as she returned to the living room.
But Betty was filing a smaller box into another larger carton marked “Colorado” on the side; these were the items meant to go West.
“Mom, you can’t hold on to everything,” she began, softly.
“I know. But there’s comfort in holding on as long as I can.” She sank back gently into her chair and sighed. “No, dear, I’m not hungry. I’m tired and I want to go to bed.” Then she chuckled. “Remember that old song, Julie? Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I want to go to bed,” Betty sang in a faint reedy voice. “I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went right to my head. Your grandfather used to sing that to us kids.” She smiled and closed her eyes, musing. “I’m sorry you never knew my father. He was a lot of fun. Sweet. And he would have loved you!” Then she opened her eyes and leaned forward, gripped the arms of her chair, and struggled to rise. She started, a little unsteadily, for the stairs, and Julie hurried to help her mother up to her room. Living on one floor in Colorado would be so much better, Julie thought.
“You have to eat, Mom,” she began, gently grasping her mother’s elbow. “And it’s hours before bedtime. Why don’t I bring something up to you later, after you’ve rested a bit.”
When Julie returned to the living room, she surveyed what little progress they had made. What had been in that little box she’d seen her mother stow away? Julie retrieved it from the box bound West and opened it. Inside was group of pale green envelopes tied together with a worn strand of pink yarn. Julie looked at the postmarks. Ocean City, New Jersey, 1967. She peered at the handwriting and felt a jolt of recognition. These were her letters to her mother from her first job at the shore after high school. She started to open it when her eye fell on another stack, and then another, all bound together with different color ribbons. The handwriting had changed over the years, but they were all letters from Julie to her mother—from her first homesick days on the Jersey shore to college in Wisconsin, then California, then Colorado and graduate school. One group was tied up in black yarn, all postmarked Chicago. Oh, that brief, awful time when she’d been married to Ted. Julie could barely remember writing them.
She picked up the first group of green ones and, intending to read them, walked out to the kitchen to get the half empty bottle of Chardonnay from the refrigerator. A cool glass of wine would do her good while she wandered down memory lane. Then she stepped out into the garden.
The air had grown somewhat cooler, but it was still humid. “Sticky,” her mother would say. The moon was full and silvered the trees and bushes, illuminating the hydrangeas and roses with a ghostly light. The garden itself was well tended and had not changed much over the years. The birdbath still stood in the center, surrounded by white and purple impatiens. The garden swing, rusty now, where Julie and her mother used to enjoy a bowl of strawberry ice cream on August afternoons, still sat near the fence dividing their yard from their neighbor’s on the right. Those times seemed so long ago and, yet, not really that long ago after all.
Leaving all these familiar things would be difficult for her mother, of course. But change was good—and necessary. Hadn’t Julie herself come to acknowledge that life was a journey of adjustments? And endings?
Far in the back of the yard at the foot of the shadowy oak tree was a raised flat area that appeared to be an herb garden. Carefully stepping in the semidarkness, Julie walked over to take a look. It was her childhood sandbox. She stood, looking about her in the moist moonlight, and found herself weeping.
THE END
Author Bio: Cameron Spencer lives on an island off of Savannah, GA. Her poetry and short stories have appeared online and in the Savannah Authors Anthology.