Falling in Love (36 page)

They both stared at me for a minute. Then Darcy hugged me. “You have to do what’s best for you.” She glanced at my computer monitor adorned with the aphorisms including Paula saying that I was a “champion” and Darcy saying that I was a “winner.” I was embarrassed but Darcy laughed. “Don’t ever forget who, and what, you are. Okay?”

“I’ll try.”

Darcy embraced me again. “Listen, Sherry. As long as you’re hanging out with this guy, you’re never going to need a job, but if you ever need a friend, you know my number.”

“Thank you,” I said, truly grateful.

All day, I felt relaxed, sure that I had made the right decision and that, finally, my life would become calm for a while. Of course, once again, I was wrong.

That night when I pressed the blinking light on my answering machine, I heard, “Sherry, it’s Aunt Dottie. Your Uncle Ernie had a heart attack. He died last night. The funeral is Friday. I don’t expect you to come. I just wanted you to know.”

I had sometimes wondered how I would feel when I learned that Ernie had died. Happy that, if there really was a hell, he was being fried. Or angry that I was robbed of the chance to confront him. But as I listened to the message again, I only felt numb. Then suddenly, I began hyperventilating, feeling like I was going to suffocate.

When I finally got my breath back, I rushed over to see Elaine, who met me at the door. “Ernie’s dead,” I said.

“I guess I’m sorry to hear that,” she replied as she sat down on her sofa.

I paced before her. “Now, I’ll never know why he did it.”

“But you can still forgive him, Sherry.”

“Right,” I shot back. “A real strong chance of that.” I stopped and turned to her. “Don’t you think my mother should know?” I took my mother’s phone number from my pocket where it perpetually lived. I handed it to Elaine.

She held it for awhile and then with a shaky hand she returned it to me. “So call her.”

“I tried,” I insisted. “I’ve called so many times, I was afraid she’d change her number. And I’ve never said a word.”

Elaine shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Why? What is the big secret? I want to know.”

She shook her head again. “You don’t want to know.”

I suddenly started screaming. “You still don’t get it, do you? I have to know! Goddamn it, tell me!”

Elaine sat silent for a few moments. In a monotone, she began, “Your mother and I were always discreet but Rosebud is a small town. Everyone suspected, including your dad, only he didn’t believe it. But Ernie always hated that he had me first and then I went gay on him. The day you were born, he saw your mother and I kissing in celebration and he went crazy.” Her voice weakened. “He told your dad about watching us making love on the riverbank. The day we brought you home, your dad pointed a shotgun at us and told us to deny it or he’d kill us both. I denied it. Your mother wouldn’t. He stormed out.”

She paused a moment and stared at the parquet floor. “He went skeet shooting. The coroner said that the gun was pointed at his face when it accidentally discharged.” Elaine looked up at me. “Your father was the best shot in the county. He only hit what he aimed at.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “People blamed us for his death. They threatened to kill us. It was horrible. We had to leave town.” Elaine broke down, sobbing hard.

I put my arm around her but she was somewhere else. After a while, I just left her alone. Once again, it was Ernie. Everything bad in my life always seemed to come back to Ernie. Now I had even more reason to do what I had always wanted to do but never did, and now never could, kill that bastard.

But as I walked home, I realized what I else had to do.

The house looked the same. The white picket fence looked recently painted. A few more blooming flowers along the fence. I had always marveled how at how such a lovely-looking house could contain such horrors. But I knew that whatever demons still remained in there for me, I would have to face them before I could move forward with my life. Every time I had left that house, even just to go to school, I had run from it. For once in my life, in slow measured steps, I wanted to walk away.

On the porch was a pie with a golden crust. Beside it was a luscious-looking chocolate cake. I didn’t pick up either, afraid that Aunt Dottie would think I had brought them, or more likely that I was falsely trying to take credit for bringing them.

I knocked on the door and Aunt Dottie quickly answered it. She looked the same as I had always remembered her: wearing a prim dress, her graying hair in a bun, her face in a frown.

She looked surprised. “Sherry? What are you doing here?” She glanced around for my suitcase, worried that I would use Ernie’s death as an excuse to move back in with her. She looked relieved that I had no baggage.

Without a hug or a word, she turned and walked back into the house. The living room was like a time trap, looking exactly the same as it always had. Not one picture or bric-a-brac had changed.

She spoke softly. “I just made a cup of tea. Do you want one?”

“No.”

She was waiting for me to ask for something: money, to beg to come home, something. I realized that we had never had a real conversation, just an assortment of platitudes or angry accusations.

Dottie tried small talk. “Mildred Fairfield swears she saw you on the TV. Said you were helping that horrible murder mother. I told you’d never help her and even if you wanted to, you weren’t capable of doing it.” I knew that any answer would be the wrong answer. “We are in a prayer group every Thursday, asking God to give her the electric chair.” Again I said nothing. She looked perturbed. “I didn’t really expect you, especially after that crazy call of yours. Making amends. You? Amends?” She looked down. “But I suppose it will be good to have some family at the funeral.”

“I’m not going.”

Aunt Dottie shot me a surprised look. “What? You came all this way and now you’ve already decided not to go to the funeral? I wonder when God will ever give you some sense.”

“I was hoping my mother might come.”

Aunt Dottie shook her head in dismay. “Sherry! You know I haven’t had her number for years. You just never think!”

“I have it.”

“You?”

I pulled the crumbled slip from my pocket, handing it to her.

She looked nervous as she held it. I knew that the last thing she wanted to do was to call my mother. Aunt Dottie hated her but she couldn’t admit it because in her mind, my mother hadn’t pawn me off on her but rather it had been God’s will. But she had never stopped feeling rage at my mother, and at me.

Aunt Dottie bit her lower lip and fiddled with her hair. “I suppose she should know.” She walked over and dialed the phone. A young voice answered. “Is Bibby there?” The voice sounded confused and Aunt Dottie said, “No, don’t hang up. I mean Barbara. Is Barbara there?”

She tightly gripped the phone and then I dimly heard the voice I had been waiting all my life to hear. “Bib? It’s Dot. Yes. Years.” Aunt Dottie cleared her throat. “Ernie died on Sunday.” She coughed softly and then said, “Of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to come.” Aunt Dottie fidgeted and then said, “I didn’t. Sherry had your number.” She looked over to me and asked, “Do you want to talk to her?”

What a question!

I took a deep breath, walked over and hesitantly took the phone.

“Hello, ah, Mom,” I said.

“Ah, Hi,” she replied, sounding very nervous. “I’m sorry about Ernie.

“Right,” I said softly. I didn’t want to talk about Ernie.

She coughed. “How did you get my number? You must have worked pretty hard.”

“I guess.”

“But this is a bad time for me,” she said, sounding even more nervous. “If you give me your number, maybe I’ll call you sometime.”

“That’s what you said the last time.”

“What?”

“I called you when I was ten. You said you’d call me back.”

“I don’t remember that,” she replied.

“I can’t give you my number unless you’ll call. I couldn’t take that.”

Her voice quivered. “I’ll try. But I’m really busy.”

“Sure, you are,” I replied caustically. “I’ve lived my whole life without you. I guess I can keep going on alone, too.”

Her voice cracked as she said quickly, “Okay. Nice talking to you. Bye.”

Then the line went dead. “Bye,” I said softly and set down the phone.

I shuddered with rage. A lifetime of waiting for my big call to her and it was a wrong number. “How could she?” I seethed. Tears burst out of me. But I wasn’t crying. I was exploding with rage. “What did I ever do to her? Damn her.”

“Sherry!” Aunt Dottie disapproved of swearing. “Don’t be so foolish. Did you really think she was going to jump on a plane and come to give you a kiss and a hug?”

“How about just some acknowledgment that I am alive?” I shot back. “Goddamn her.”

“Stop blaspheming in my house!”

I wiped off my cheeks and turned on her. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about her and Elaine? And Ernie and Elaine, and my father?

Aunt Dottie looked stunned. “I have no idea what you are you are talking about.” She grabbed her hat. “I have to be at the funeral parlor.”

I stepped in her way and demanded, “Tell me this. Did Grandma ever molest you or them?

She slapped me hard on the face. “How dare you!”

Pain shot across my face but I didn’t care. “Did she?” I demanded again.

“Of course not!” Her face was crimson. “Your grandmother was a God-fearing woman. The only touching she did down there was with her strap, and I’m sure we deserved it every time.”

“She beat you?”

Aunt Dottie looked uneasy, then she softly admitted, “Well, mostly Ernie. Poor boy. Sometimes he had welts so bad, he’d take baths in Epsom salts to soothe them. I think he used to touch himself in there.”

I couldn’t believe she had just said that! “How do you know?”

She looked slightly dazed. “Once, Mother caught him. She whipped him so hard with that strap that he was unconscious and almost drowned. Bibby found him. She saved him.” Aunt Dottie was shaking. She rushed around me. “I have to go.”

For the first time in my life, I heard her slam the door.

I thought about walking one last time around the house, maybe go into the bathroom and see what I felt. It was unnecessary. I had gotten what I had come for.

I glanced around the living room a final time, noticing once again how every picture, every piece of furniture, was perfectly in place with none sporting the slightest speck of dust. Then I went out the door and softly closed it behind me. I passed the pie and the cake still on the porch. Then, for the last time in my life, in measured steps, I slowly walked away from that house.

Elaine was concocting her syrupy coffee before group. “I talked to my mother,” I informed her.

“Okay,” she said softly. She’d probably known all along how it would turn out.

“I had a hundred questions and didn’t ask one. She acted like I was a bill collector.”

“You are.”

“All that angst. All that energy. For nothing.”

Tears welled up. I fought them back and won. I hadn’t cried since talking to my mother. She would never know either way but I just didn’t want to give her any satisfaction.

Elaine turned and hugged me. She didn’t ask if my mother had asked about her. Elaine knew that she hadn’t.

All night, instead of sleeping, I felt my anger against my mother roiling inside of me. I knew that hating her would be more self-destructive so by morning, I had made a momentous decision. I would put my mother out of my life forever. She wasn’t really in it anyway. So I was really just ending my fantasy that my mother was, or ever would be, a part of my life.

As the dawn crept between the window shades, I began my house cleaning, my life cleaning. I grabbed the low-cut dresses still hanging in my closet and stuffed them into a large garbage bag, then tossed in an old half carton of cigarettes. While heading out the door, I grabbed my mother’s copy of
A Child’s Garden of Verses
from the bookshelf. In the stairwell, I jammed the overflowing bag down the garbage chute. I clutched the poetry book. Taking out the picture of my mother and Elaine on the riverbank, I stared at it. I thought there should be some kind of a ceremony, or something. I wondered how I should feel about throwing away the only two things that had connected me to my mother. I just felt sad that I would never see her, never talk to her, never ask her a lifetime of questions still locked inside me.
Move on, Sherry. End the fantasies, about some Prince Charming, about your mother, about yourself.

I dropped both the book and the picture down the chute. With no hope of ever seeing my mother, I felt more alone then ever and felt sad that group and Dede may turn out to be the only family I would ever have.

That Friday night at the coffee shop, I admitted as much to Elaine. “The one thing that I’ve wanted more anything else in my life is my own family, a husband and children that I could love and who could love me. I want to be the best mother I possibly can but what if I never am one, or if I’m the worst? How will I ever know?”