Scrapbook of Secrets (3 page)

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Authors: Mollie Cox Bryan

BOOK: Scrapbook of Secrets
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She walked toward the sink of dishes and began rinsing them to place in the dishwasher. Sippy cups half filled with spoiled milk, juice, and God only knows what else. She held her breath as she poured the mystery liquid down the sink. She rinsed the sink and squirted it with cleaner, allowing herself to breathe.
Ben ran across the floor behind her. “Mommy, can I have a snack and some juice?”
She glanced at the clock—was it only ten in the morning?
“Yes, sure. It’s snack time. You want a cereal bar or yogurt?” she asked. “Go and sit at the table.”
Her other son came into the room and sat at the table, too.
They decided on cereal bars and juice. Annie quickly grabbed the bars and took off the wrapping paper.
“Mommy, what’s a tornado?” Sam asked.
“I want a blueberry cereal bar,” Ben said.
“We only have strawberry,” Annie replied.
“Mommy, what’s a tornado?”
“No. No. No! I want blueberry!”
“We only have strawberry. A tornado is—”
“Strawberry is good,” Sam said.
Ben shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and began gobbling his cereal bar.
“Mommy, can we get a dog?” Sam asked.
“No, a cat,” Ben said.
“Neither one,” Annie said. “We will someday, when you get a little older. But right now, it’s all I can do to take care of you two.”
And that was the truth, she thought, turning back to her sink. Had she wiped it down? She couldn’t remember. So she squirted it again, grabbed a paper towel, and wiped it down, wondering how long her spotless sink would last. She began to wipe the counters off, when she heard a cup fall over. Of course, it was Sam’s non-sippy cup. Grape juice went everywhere.
“Mo-om!”
She ran to the table with the roll of paper towels—which, somehow, never managed to make it to the paper towel holder.
If she only knew how many diapers, paper towels, bread, and toilet paper they would have gone through as a family, Annie would have bought stock in those companies before she had children.
Then there was the juice—sticky, nasty stuff. She used to love juice, but now the sight of it sometimes wanted to make her heave. It was the same thing with macaroni and cheese, which her boys would eat every night, if she let them. And sometimes she did. She planned her meals around the stuff, she was ashamed to admit. But it was better that they ate something than nothing at all. She theorized that they would grow out of it eventually.
Annie actually had nightmares about getting stuck to the floor because the juice hadn’t been cleaned up. After being stuck—and in the dream, nobody was there to help—she would begin to sink through her hardwood floor, as if it were quicksand.
Her other nightmarish dream was about packing and moving. She would be given a deadline by which she’d need to have everything packed and ready to go. She’d be packing and packing, and would think she was finished; then she would turn around and find more packing to do. She would wake up from the dreams, exhausted.
Her inner life was one that she had not paid much attention to while living in Bethesda. Her brain was filled with writing and production deadlines, lunch dates, poetry readings, shopping dates. But now, she found her dreams to be fascinating and rich. And sometimes the thought pattern that she was focused on during a specific day became her only source of sanity. For a while, her thought patterns acted as a mantra—to stay focused in the moment. If she tried to stay focused on what she was doing,
I’m changing a diaper, I’m changing a diaper,
she would not get as frustrated as say, when she was changing a diaper and allowing herself to think about all of the other things she needed or wanted to do.
Sometimes her dreams led her to writing. And that had never happened before. For a while, she dreamed about an old lover. Filled with such sweetness—and sometimes passion—that she didn’t want to wake up. It was easy to figure out why she dreamed of Wes—that was a time in her life that she was completely unencumbered. Now her life seemed so thick with responsibility that if she let it, it would drag her down. Sometimes when she thought of her life now, she felt like a big, fat whale moving through the ocean.
For a while, it bothered her that she was dreaming of Wes. Should she see a psychiatrist? Talk to Rabbi Joe? Was everything okay between her and Mike? Was her psyche trying to tell her something? But then the dreams stopped. So she kept them to herself. In truth, she kept most of her inner life to herself.
Mike was too exhausted most of the time to share any of the details of dreams, thoughts, or prayers with him. She was lucky they communicated enough to try to keep their schedules in sync. She never imagined how difficult communication would get once children arrived on the scene.
Annie’s memories of their time together before the children helped her to cling to the hope they would get there again someday. They had met at a book fair—and their conversations were often about literature, politics, and philosophy. Mike’s mind was a beacon that lit a fire in her. She always found that something he said sparked the desire in her to learn more. Do more. Be more.
Of course, his body sparked other ideas in her. She could hardly contain herself on her first date. “Never sleep with a man on your first date,” she heard from all of her women friends. It was more difficult for her with Mike because she knew she would marry him. It just felt so right that she thought,
What the heck? Maybe I’ll jump his bones the first date.
But it was not even an issue. Nor was it on the second date. Nor when she expressed her frustration.
“I think we should wait. I’m not in any hurry. There is so much more to us than the physical thing,” Mike said.
Annie smiled and fell even more in love.
She often thought about the meaning of that in her life. And she thanked the universe that it was true—there was and is so much more than sex between them. Otherwise, they would be in real trouble, now that they had children. Sometimes it was months until they could get together. But when they did, it was always right.
 
 
She glanced at her box of gathered photos and looked forward to more organizing and placing the pictures of her boys on scrapbook pages, which she could share with them someday. One neat and orderly facet to her life was appealing to her. God knows the rest was just a mess. No longer was she living in her own world; she now lived in the realm of two messy, active, all-encompassing, energy-sapping little boys. And she embraced that—most of the time.
Just then, Annie’s phone rang. It was Sheila, again, canceling the crop that she’d called earlier to confirm. Vera Matthews’s mother was being operated on that evening. They would be in touch with her soon about rescheduling.
She turned the teakettle on and sat down in front of her computer. Maybe she could catch a little news before the boys woke up from their naps. She clicked on the local newspaper’s website and gasped.
Chapter 3
Vera sank into the hospital room chair; Sheila was in the other. Both listened intently as Beatrice explained to a police officer what had happened. The knife was still in her neck and she was lucid. The nurses were going to prepare her for surgery in about an hour.
Beatrice sipped water from a straw as the nurse held up a cup for her. She swallowed hard.
“I remember it being cold, and, oh, the eggs at the store, most of them were broken,” she said. “I thought it was odd. And then I noticed how crowded it was getting.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mother, what does this have to do with—”
“Was it unusually crowded?” the officer asked her.
“I think so,” Beatrice said, ignoring her daughter. “In fact, Mrs. Hawthorn pushed up against me.”
She remembered Betty’s deep, manly voice. “Oh, sorry, Bea,” Betty Hawthorn had said. “It’s so crowded in here. I feel like I’m tripping over myself. I guess it’s the funeral.”
“What funeral?” Beatrice had asked, almost embarrassed not be in on the latest funeral news. She was often the first person to know. After all, she lived wedged between the only funeral home in town and the largest church in town—First Baptist.
“You haven’t heard the news? It’s all over the place. That young woman? That Maggie Rae Dasher? They found her dead in the middle of the night. It’s awful, just awful,” Betty had said as she drifted away.
Well, now,
Beatrice had thought,
why don’t I know that name? And surely they wouldn’t be having her funeral today if she was just found. Betty must be confused.
Just then, she had felt someone else brush up against her, harder, and turned to see who it was. Was that someone’s elbow in her neck? She looked around and hadn’t seen a thing.
Well, for heaven’s sake.
“Do you think that could be when you were stabbed?” the officer interrupted Beatrice’s recounting.
“It’s hard to say, really. I still can’t get over not really feeling it.”
“I need to make a call to the store to get a look at their security tapes. I’ll be back to talk more,” he said, and left the room.
The women sat quietly together.
 
 
Beatrice thought about being in Wrigley’s that day and tried to remember every little thing that could help the officer.
She remembered feeling tired and glad to be only four blocks from the Wrigley’s. She’d rather be at home—such as it was. No longer the grandest house in town, her Victorian pink-and-blue home used to be a beacon to the townsfolk. It’s where she raised her daughter, where she held PTO, church, and town meetings, and where her husband had practiced medicine for thirty years. It was once the largest place in town. Now, just a few blocks outside of what used to be Cumberland Creek proper, sat mansions on tiny lawns. It was absurd.
She remembered the cashier’s hands were adorned with rings on every finger and her nails were painted bright, fiery red. “Thank ya, hon,” she said, not even looking at Beatrice, who was still wearing her hat, scarf, and coat, never bothering to take it off. Eh, well, she was used to being ignored, and she didn’t even really care to be acknowledged by the brassy young woman. She looked at the woman behind her—she looked vaguely familiar. Beatrice managed a quick smile—just in case she knew her.
The cashier was involved in a heated discussion with the bagger about suicide. “It’s a sin,” she said. “That’s what my daddy always said.”
“Well, who cares what your daddy said,” said the bagger, whom Beatrice did not recognize. More and more people were moving into Cumberland Creek, and she had no idea who they were—or who their people were.
“My daddy was a preacher,” Beatrice overheard the cashier say as Beatrice grabbed her bags and walked off.
Yeah, your daddy was a preacher, all right
, Beatrice thought.
He was also a prick.
She pushed her still mostly red hair up farther into her black knit hat and thought about the old reverend; he was always cheating on his wife with the youngest woman he could find, and she was always forgiving him some Sunday at church. There would be a spectacle. The parishioners knew they were in for a show when Michael started his sermon with “I stand before you a sinner. I am only a man.”
As if half the population didn’t know what was going on already. Poor Sarah would stand up, awash in tears and humiliation, and forgive him in front of everyone. Beatrice always wondered if they went home and made passionate love after the emotional spectacle—not that she even wanted to think about that.
Beatrice held on to her bags and coughed a little as she made her way to the door. Poor Sarah. Always so worn-out from her children and from trying to be a good preacher’s wife. In his final days, he left her, anyway. Beatrice grinned. It was probably the younger woman who killed him. He couldn’t keep up with her.
She had always felt sorry for Sarah; though now the widow seemed happy alone. Her children and grandchildren were always around. Her house was always full.
As Beatrice walked out of the grocery store, she turned left and walked toward her house. These walks were a part of her sanity and helped her keep in decent shape. But they were getting harder to take, especially in the dead of winter. She was glad for the spring, even if it was a cooler than usual one. She looked across the street to the school—under construction—a group of tiny children, faces peeking out of their coats, hats, and scarves, were being led across the street by a group of adults. One child pointed at Beatrice and said something she couldn’t quite understand.
“Hmm,” Beatrice said. “I wonder if that child saw the knife.”
“What child, Mama?”
“I decided she wasn’t pointing at me, but maybe she was. On my way home, she kept pointing at me, but she was across the street and I couldn’t hear her.”
“Where was that?”
“Right past Dolly’s, across from the school.”
Dolly’s Beauty Shop, on its last legs, but still the same women’s faces were looking at her through the windows and smiling as she waved. None of them, it seemed, looked hard enough at her to see the knife jabbed into her neck. Women were loyal to Dolly and her beauticians, but last month she announced that she just could not compete with the Hair Cuttery and the new mall beauty shop. She’d be closing in a few weeks. The thought of it made Beatrice’s eyes sting with tears.
Old fool, I am an old fool.
The weight of her bags seemed to be getting heavier. She looked across the street at the church and saw plenty of cars in the parking lot, people going in and out. A good many cars in the neighborhood. Something was definitely going on, but it wasn’t a funeral. At least not yet. She stopped in front of her iron gate and looked farther down the road at the sign out front of the Greys’ funeral home. No names appeared on the announcement board. She wondered if Betty Hawthorn had been mistaken. She slipped her hand through one of the bag handles and reached up for her newspaper.
“Mother!” said her daughter, opening the door. “Where’ve you been?”
“What are you doing here?” Beatrice answered Vera.
“I came to check on you,” she said.
“Well, Lord, Vera, I just talked to you this morning. I told you I’m fine.”
Beatrice could not stand the way Vera preened over her at times, the way she tried to treat her like a child.
How does she think I got to be this old, by being stupid and frail?
Vera grabbed her bags. “Mom, you don’t need to walk to the store, especially on cold days. Such a cold spring. I’d be happy to pick a few things up for you on my way home.”
Beatrice ignored her, taking off her coat and her hat.
“Mama, what’s that you have stuck on your hat?”
Vera pulled her hat off. “Nothing.” She looked incredulously at her daughter, whose brows were knitted.
“Turn around. Let me see what’s going on back here.”
Bea smiled. It might have been worth it—just to see the look of horror on Vera’s face.
 
 
“Well,” said the officer as he walked back in her room, with heavy steps, the jangling of keys, and the sound of leather squeaking—was it his gun in the holsters against his regulation belt? Or could it be his new, shiny shoes? “The Wrigley’s security cameras were on this morning. I am going to head over there and check out the tapes. We’ll get your man, Mrs. Matthews.”

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