Kiss Mommy Goodbye (30 page)

Donna nodded wordlessly. So even a stray park pickup was turning her down,

“You divorced?” he asked, hopping into his pants.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well—” He pulled his T-shirt down over his head. “Maybe the two of you will get back together one of these
days.” Obviously no one else would be crazy enough—

“Maybe,” Donna said, her voice starting to sound comfortably strange again. “Maybe it wasn’t really as bad as I thought it was.” She looked slowly around the room. “Was it really that bad?” she asked herself. At least she’d have her children back again. When she looked back toward the dresser, the youth was gone. She fell asleep wondering if, in fact, there had been anyone there at all.

She woke up abruptly twenty minutes later and walked into the bathroom. She opened the medicine cabinet, removed her Lady Schick razor, threw out the old blade and replaced it with a new one. Then she soaped her underarms and shaved away any traces of the “new woman.” She nicked her skin in a few places, ignored the cuts, and moved on to her legs. She lifted one leg into the sink, ran a wet washcloth down it and then applied the soap. Then she steadied the razor and started to take gentle strokes down her legs.

The first cut was an accident; she had simply borne down too hard—the blade was new, there was no need to press. The second cut was careless. The third was deliberate. As were the fourth, fifth and sixth. She changed legs and repeated the process, watching as the small cuts released long rivers of blood which flowed into one another, tracing imaginary map lines across her legs, twisting and turning and stinging against the soap and water. Oddly enough, she thought, the pain felt good. Victor wouldn’t approve, of course, and he would be right. As he was usually right. About everything. If only she could find him and tell him. Maybe he would take her back. Think about it, Donna, she told herself, walking out of the bathroom and getting back
into her blue shorts and top. It wasn’t really as bad as you made it out to be. Be truthful with yourself now, she said. Was it really that bad?

“My God, what happened to your legs?”

Donna looked from the face of the startled hairdresser to her own legs. “I cut them shaving.”

“What did you shave with, an ax?” the woman asked.

“When can you take me?”

The young woman with the purple streaks across the front of her hair looked around the busy shop. “I don’t know, Mrs. Cressy,” she said. “It’s New Year’s Eve. We’ve been booked solid for weeks.”

“Please—”

“All right, look, come back in an hour. I’ll see if I can fit you in.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“What is it exactly you want done?”

Donna looked hard at the woman whose shop she had frequented so often in the year following Sharon’s birth. The woman’s hair was short, very geometrical in shape and a sort of brassy red in color, with large purple streaks running across the front. “I kind of like yours,” Donna said.

She wasn’t sure what she was doing here except that she had an hour to kill before Lorraine could take her. But why here? She hadn’t been here since the funeral, never feeling that the cemetery, the actual tombstone, brought her any closer to her mother. Why did she choose to come here now?

Donna walked between the rows of white tombs, the fresh flowers—no artificial flowers, please, the sign said—
spilling over the tops of the actual graves. So peaceful here. She remembered a joke from her childhood—look, there’s a new cemetery; people are just dying to get in there! She walked quickly through the rows of graves until she found the row and the headstone she was looking for.

SHARON EDMUNDS

1910–1963

Beloved Wife of Alan

Beloved Mother of Donna and Joan

“A gentle soul; a kind spirit”

Donna stood for several very long seconds in front of the tombstone. Slowly, her fingers worked themselves in and out of the lettering, as if she were reading in Braille. She traced each word several times over and then ran her hand across the rest of the smooth alabaster surface. I don’t know what to say, she thought. I don’t know how to talk to you. Then she let her knees give way, slowly falling to the ground beside the earth, sitting beside her mother’s grave, looking blankly at the headstone. I don’t know what to say to you, she repeated to herself, knowing that if there was any possible way, her mother would hear her, even without the spoken word. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me who I am. What have I done to my life? What have I thrown away? She stared deep into the carved lettering. Was my life with Victor really so bad? Please help me, Mother, I need some answers. I need you to tell me what to do!

There were no voices, no strange flutterings, no mysterious signs that spoke of supernatural forces. Nothing.
Only stillness. Donna’s eyes drifted across the symmetrical rows. Nothing disturbed them. No ghosts rose from them. No slender, translucent figures in white flowing robes. Nothing. Suddenly, she heard Mel’s voice. “If there are ghosts anywhere in this room, Donna, they’re standing in your shoes.”

She pushed thoughts of Mel out of her head, as she did each time such thoughts intruded. This time, they stubbornly pushed themselves back in.

“Are you ready to leave?” Mel.

“I’ve been ready all evening.” Donna.

“So I noticed. About the only thing you didn’t do was dangle the car keys in my direction.”

Go away, Mel.

“You’re telling me you don’t want me around anymore?”

“I’m telling you that I love Donna Cressy. But I can’t live with who she’s letting herself become.” Donna leaned her body against her mother’s headstone. Mel’s voice was right behind her.

“You were married to Victor for six years, Donna. I figure that’s enough for both of us.”

Donna’s mind began racing like a film gone amuck, backward and at more than triple its normal speed through six years of life with Victor. Words. More words. Endless series of words. Corrections. Suggestions. Orders. Half-truths. Just enough truths. Enough truth to snare the fish. Turn her from an adult to a child. Send her sprawling through the looking glass. Make her small again.

A poem by Margaret Atwood suddenly raced before her eyes and froze. More words.

The right words. She thought suddenly of Victor’s mother, saw the waste of almost a decade. His ex-wife. Three years on the couch because of that creep, the woman had said. Still angry after all these years. And herself? The melody of Paul Simon’s song wafted past her ears. Still crazy? What was she letting Victor do?

Donna stared at her mother’s name. “Yes,” she said aloud, the last images of her life with Victor sticking on the reel and scratching to a sudden halt. “It was that bad.”

She stood up. A vision of Mel was beside her. “Are you saying your behavior tonight was my fault?” Donna. The night she had slapped him and walked out on their life together.

“I’m saying it was
my
fault. You can’t be responsible for my actions.” Mel. Can’t you understand what I’m trying to say?

She understood. Why were the simplest truths always the hardest to understand?

Victor was no longer responsible for her life. She would get no answers from anyone else.
Could
get no answers from anyone else. Only from inside herself. She was the only one responsible for her life, for whatever she chose to do with it. For the stranger in her motel room, for the cuts on her legs, for what she, herself—no one else—was letting happen.

Donna gazed around the cemetery. “There’s just a lot of dead people here,” she said aloud, feeling her mother quickly agree.

There are no answers, she thought, looking over the rows of death. There’s only life.

The point is learning to live with it.

Mel was working late so that he could take off the holiday the next day.

Donna felt her heart racing as she climbed the stairs up to his office. Like a kid, she thought, aware of the increased palpitations, recognizing that there was a good chance that he might not want her back, that too much time had elapsed, that she had put him through too much. She stopped midway up the steps, feeling a shortage of air, taking several deep breaths. If he didn’t want her back, what then? More endless walks to nowhere? More strangers in children’s playgrounds? More blood in her bathroom sink? No, she said silently, resuming her climb. She had punished herself enough. No more blisters. No more blood. She’d already paid.

“Be with you in a minute,” he called from inside his inner office when she had entered the waiting room. The receptionist was gone. “I’m just finishing off something for the lab. I’ll be right there.”

Donna stood in the middle of the room and waited. I will survive, she said to herself. If you send me away, I will still survive. You are not responsible for me. I am the only one who can do that particular job.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize I had any more appointments—” He stopped the minute he saw her. Donna saw the tears
immediately come to his eyes, felt her own tears forming.

Her voice was clear and very much her own. “Please let me say everything I came here to say before you say anything.” He nodded silently. “I’ve been a real jerk and whatever else you can think of to call me,” she began. “I’ve wasted the last nine months of my life trying to force that damned rock over the top of the hill when we all know it can’t be done. It just rolls back over me and anyone else who happens to be standing around me.” He said nothing, knowing there was more she wanted to say.

“I’ve had quite a day today,” she continued. “I picked up some kid in the park, I nearly amputated my legs. I almost dyed my hair purple.” She stopped. “I went to see my mother.” She stopped again. “I’ve been thinking about that book all the way over here. The book about Sisyphus. And I think that that’s the way I have to be. That the only way I’m going to survive what Victor has done is if I recognize and accept the fact that there’s just no hope I’ll ever get my kids back again. The more I hope, the more I despair. I have no more room for despair.”

They were both openly crying now. “I don’t know how you still feel about me. I do know that I love you, that I want very much to be with you, to be your wife and a mother to Annie. I also know that I will not fall to pieces if you say it’s too late.” She laughed through her tears. “I’ll be as upset as hell,” she said, “but I won’t fall apart. I promise you.” She paused. “That’s all I have to say. It’s your turn.”

He smiled sadly. There was a long silence before he spoke. “Purple hair?”

She shrugged. “Does that mean you love me?”

“It means I love you right out of my mind.”

In the next instant, the space between them disappeared and there was no more need for words.

D
onna sat over a large stack of receipts and unpaid bills, trying to arrange them into alphabetical order. Whoever the last girl had been, she’d certainly made a fine mess of everything. No wonder they had asked Kelly Girl to replace her.

The phone chimed some barely recognizable tune. Why couldn’t they have a phone that rang like everybody else’s? She picked it up. “Household Finance,” she said clearly. “His line is busy. Could you hold for a minute? Fine, I’ll connect you as soon as I can.” She pressed the appropriate buttons and went back to the stack of receipts and unpaid bills. Another set of chimes. This time the door. A tall, well-dressed, deeply tanned gentleman of about forty-five approached her.

“Mr. Wendall?”

“Just a minute, please,” She pressed the appropriate button. She was always pressing appropriate buttons. “Your name, please?”

“Mr. Ketchum.”

“Mr. Wendall, there’s a Mr. Ketchum to see you. Yes. Fine. I will. Have a seat, sir. He’ll be right with you.” She released the button.

The phone began to chime. Someone else walked through the door and approached her. More buttons. More chimes. My God, no wonder the last girl had left things in such a mess—she never had a chance to get to them. In the two hours since she’d started to work, she had barely managed to separate the As from the Bs. Not a promising beginning.

She now had three people holding, two sitting on chairs waiting, and a desk full of neglected receipts and unpaid bills. The phone sounded again. “Household Finance,” she said pleasantly, breaking into a wide grin at the sound of a familiar voice. “It’s a madhouse here. It’s almost lunch and I haven’t accomplished a thing. How are you? Oh, just a minute, Mel, someone else just came in.” She attended to business. “Now there are three people waiting to see Mr. Wendall. I don’t know what he’s doing back there. Yeah, I’m enjoying it. It’s kind of fun. Different from the bank.”

In the last three weeks since she had joined Kelly Girl, Donna had worked for one Savings and Loan, one accountant and one bank. For this week and possibly the next, she was to serve as receptionist-bookkeeper for the West Palm office of Household Finance. As a Kelly Girl, the jobs she was assigned were mostly nondescript, short on responsibility and initiative, heavy on clerical duties. Still, they got her back in the work field, kept her active and yet gave her time to think about the type of job she might want to pursue in the future. Her friend Susan had told her she had some new ideas for her. They’d talk it over at the party on Saturday night.

“Okay, thanks for calling, honey. Oh, you remember that I’m meeting Annie at Saks later and then we’re having a bite to eat afterward. No, you are not invited. Annie said this is just girl-talk. I’m a nervous wreck. Yeah, I will. Okay, hon. See you later. Bye-bye.”

She hung up the phone in time for it to ring again. By noontime, she had four people on hold, six more waiting to see Mr. Wendall, who had just informed her by intercom that he was going out for lunch, and a desk full of unsorted receipts and unpaid bills. She also had a whale of a headache. What did Annie want to talk about? she wondered.

Everything had been proceeding very well so far. Since her return to Seabreeze Drive, they had reestablished the trust and regard Donna had managed only a few months ago to shatter. For the first few days, they had stalked each other like leery cats, but soon they had abandoned the cumbersome claws and territorial gestures for the more familiar hugs and laughter, glad to have each other back. Annie seemed genuinely delighted that Donna and Mel were planning to marry, and was thrilled when Donna suggested she accompany her to Saks to pick out a dress for their upcoming engagement party. Then she had thrown out the little bomb about wanting to talk to Donna privately, without Mel around. Was this the old I’ll give-you-a-million-dollars-to-get-out-of-town-and-leave-my-pa-alone routine? Before she had time to think of a possible response, the phone chimed again and two more people walked in the front door.