The Light of Luna Park by Addison Armstrong

Author:Addison Armstrong [Armstrong, Addison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Stella Wright, January 1951

I need an action plan. Something to do, somewhere to go. I can’t sort out this mess sitting still in this stuffy office, but it’s hard to think of answers when I hardly know what questions to ask. I need more information about my mom, need to explore the world she inhabited before I came along. I think again of my parents’ marriage certificate and march outside to find a pay phone.

“Operator?”

“Number, please.”

I recite the number of Ann Leslie, my mother’s closest friend. Well, her closest friend as far as I know. I’m beginning to wonder how well I truly knew my mom. Maybe she had a secret stash of friends hidden away somewhere.

“Mrs. Leslie.” I nearly cry at the sound of her voice. Her Midwest drawl is a relic from my childhood, a near extension of my mother herself. “It’s Stella. Stella Wright.”

“Stella!” Mrs. Leslie sounds as overcome as I. “Oh, Stella. How are you, darling?”

“I’m managing. And yourself?”

“The same, dear. The same.”

I pause a beat. “I’m calling because I actually have a question for you. About my mom.”

The woman laughs gently. “Let’s see if I can answer it.”

“Do you know if she was ever a nurse? It would have been before I was born.”

“A nurse? Althea? Oh, no, dear. Absolutely not. She hated blood, don’t you know? Couldn’t volunteer at the hospitals with us because of it. Remember when the rest of us went in and helped at Bellevue in the early forties during the war?”

“Of course,” I murmur, though I don’t. Presumably because Mom didn’t go along.

“We invited her every week, but she always went pale and told some story about needles and blood. She couldn’t stand the sight of it. Surely you knew that?”

“Yes, yes. How could I have forgotten? Thank you for reminding me.”

Though Mrs. Leslie cycles through all the required niceties, she must be able to tell I’m distracted. When the telephone interrupts us to say we are running out of time and to put in more coins, she lets me go. “Take care, dear. You go ahead and call if you need anything.” After her merciful farewell, I set down the receiver with a hard click. All these new discoveries have been strange and hard to decipher, but this single conversation threatens to be my unraveling. My mother, afraid of blood? Far from it! My mom always took charge in the case of an injury. She was the one to deftly wrap my arm when I fell from the curb into the road as a child, unfazed by the angle of the bone in my shoulder. She was the one to pull out my splinters, quiet and dogged in her determination.

And when I cut myself making vegetable lasagna at age fifteen, my mother slept in my room so she could change the bandages soaked through with deep red blood. She sang to me so I wouldn’t cry looking at the gash, but she didn’t need to sing to keep herself calm.

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