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I hadn’t meant to sleep so long. When I rolled over, the afternoon sun had baked my face into a clammy sweat. It took a few minutes to orient myself as images—like frames in a movie reel—of the accident, Jeremy in the hospital, and the letter notifying us of our eviction besieged my mind in a cacophonous roar. I forced myself to sit up, the bedcovers tangled around me. I threw them onto the floor, unwrapping myself from the sheet that had pulled loose from the mattress.
I had left the phone number for the hospital on my nightstand next to the clock—which strangely to me displayed 4:14. I listened and heard quiet, the afternoon stupor having fallen over bird and beast. No doubt my barnyard critters were snoozing under the trees in the warmth of the day. I berated myself for not setting an alarm. How could I have slept that many hours?
I picked up the phone receiver and punched in the number. After connecting to the switchboard, I learned Jeremy had been moved out of ICU and was in a private room. The operator asked if I wanted to ring his room, but I requested to speak to the doctor, or to a nurse on his floor, so I could find out his status. I put the speakerphone on while she had me wait, and I changed out of my sweaty clothes into clean ones. A nurse came on the line and told me Jeremy was stable and resting, and that I could come over anytime to see him.
I doubted I’d be back home soon, so threw a couple of flakes of hay out into the pasture and filled the dogs’ bowls with food. I startled Buster and Angel when I opened the door on my way out. They lifted sleepy heads long enough to assess I was leaving and that a walk would not be in their upcoming agenda. A couple of tail thumps later they were back asleep.
I drove much slower this time to the hospital. I kept thinking I needed to call someone, other people, and tell them what happened. I did leave a message with one of the employees at the feed store, instructing Daniel to cover things for a few days. But whenever serious things had cropped up in the past, my first impulse was to reach my mother, and then my brothers. We had always kept a tight network of communication, and now I was set adrift, directionless. I realized that apart from Anne I didn’t have any other close friends I confided in and leaned on. My family for all these years had been that strong tower, my rock and my refuge for any emergency. Without that support, I was like a chair wobbling on three legs.
I turned on the radio and heard Genesis singing “Invisible Touch.” Wanting to drown out my inner dialogue, which consisted of nine parts guilt to one part self-deprecation, I turned up the volume. The lyrics screamed out at me with a personal message. “She seems to have an invisible touch . . . she reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart . . .” I thought of the recent meltdown at Chernobyl, and how a radioactive core could overheat and explode. The images on TV had been shocking—an entire building gone, devastation for miles around. But the worst part of it was the radioactive particles that carried on the air, contaminating and killing over a stretch of miles and, inevitably, years. The explosion may have taken only moments, but the repercussions were exponential. I remember the announcer saying the fallout was four hundred times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and that light radioactive rain fell as far away as Ireland.
The chorus of the song blared at me, stabbing my gut with its pertinent observation: “She seems to have an invisible touch . . . She takes control and slowly tears you apart . . .”
I pushed away the macabre image of people’s skin melting off their bodies, then wondered just how far and wide the fallout from my mother’s actions would carry. Would my brothers ever speak to me again? Would I be allowed to see my nieces and nephew, watch them grow up? Like nuclear contamination, I envisioned the soil of our lives poisoned so thoroughly that the idea something healthy could someday grow again seemed fatuous. The far-flung effects of her rage were only beginning to manifest—of that I was sure. Would there be any safe haven for us? I didn’t allow myself to think that Jeremy would walk away from me—not now, not at this crisis—but I made myself face that possibility. I prayed it wouldn’t happen. We needed to cling to each other for safety and support. Or else we’d fall.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks as I parked and headed into the hospital. Out of habit, I made for the stairwell, having learned Jeremy was now on the second floor. I checked the room numbers as I headed down the hallway, reminiscent of my recent jaunt down a different hospital corridor only weeks ago—visiting Raff at Hillcrest. The two experiences overlapped and merged in my mind as I added the image of my mother traversing a similar hospital hallway twenty-five years ago to sit by my father’s bedside.
Had she done that—kept vigil over him as he took his last breaths? Would he have wanted her there? Would she have cried, seeing him wasted and emaciated, her handsome husband ravaged by cancer? I couldn’t answer those questions, not anymore. I wondered if Ed Hutchinson had visited my father in the hospital, which got me wondering about Julie’s insistent phone message. At some point I had to call her, although her urgencies surely paled in comparison to mine. But I couldn’t help wondering what else she had to say, what startling revelation she would present to me.
Jeremy was propped up in his bed with fewer accoutrements attached to his various body parts than before. A blush of color had returned to his face, and that set my heart at ease. His eyes were closed. Sunlight shone through the cracks in the blinds and spilled onto the floor like proverbial rays of hope. I studied a plastic tube that came out from under the sheet and fed into a machine.
“They cut a hole in my side and crammed that thing into my lung.”
Jeremy’s voice startled me with its lucidity. I turned and he grimaced.
“Are you in a lot of pain? Can I do something to help?”
He shifted slightly and gritted his teeth. “You don’t want to know how much I hurt.” He patted the bed next to his leg. “Sit.”
I carefully positioned myself next to him and put my hand on his. I hesitated to touch any part of his body, unsure where all the injuries were. I clamped down on the ache starting in my heart, for as much as Jeremy’s face displayed remorse over what he’d done, guilt berated me in spades. I had driven him to this—by letting disaster strike our lives. I needed Jeremy to know I would unequivocally stand by him. I would do anything for him, move anywhere, make the appropriate sacrifices. If it meant leaving the state and all my animals behind, so be it.
I had rehearsed my speech of dedication in the car, but seeing him in such straits caused all my words to flee. I wanted nothing more than to bury my face in his chest and wrap my arms around him, but I knew it would be quite some time before I could touch him again with such abandon—physically or emotionally.
“Lisa . . .” Jeremy’s strained voice shook me from my reverie. I didn’t realize I had started crying again. “Everything will be okay . . . we’ll help each other.”
A fluttery sigh escaped my chest. I needed to hear those words. The fear that Jeremy would send me away had hung over my head like a sword of doom. I exhaled in relief, but that only amped up my crying. Jeremy’s fingers glided across my cheeks, wiping tears away. When I looked at him, tears welled up in his eyes too.
“Oh, hon, I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you . . . for so many things . . . but I love you so much, and I need you. You know that, don’t you?” His words, whispers like caressing fingers, like curling smoke, enwrapped me in that quiet room.
I nodded. Jeremy stared at the ceiling. “When I first woke and realized I was in the hospital . . . that I was hurt, it hit me. All the arguing, the fights. She was trying to break us apart . . . divide and conquer. I could see it so clearly, how we fell for her ploy. But nothing will make me stop loving you, Lis. And I know we will get through this. Maybe this is a good thing, a way to start over . . .”
I rested my hand on his cheek. “Look, I don’t care about anything—the house, my animals, the truck. I just want you to get well and get back on your feet. Let’s just get that far for now, okay? We don’t need to tackle anything else.”
I turned at the sound of footsteps. A nurse came in, with a brusque manner and efficiency written all over her face. “Time for your breathing tests.”
Jeremy grunted and his mood darkened. “They need to see if my lung has inflated to capacity. You should probably go. If they have to readjust that tube again, you don’t want to hear me scream. Last time, they had to peel me off the ceiling.”
“Oh,” I said, looking up. “So that’s why there are claw marks up there.”
A chuckle escaped his lips, followed by a frown. “Ouch, don’t make jokes. It hurts to laugh.”
“Okay.” I gave his hand a squeeze and stood. Another two nurses came in, maneuvering around me. I could tell from their expressions that it was time for me to leave. Relief coursed through my veins. Jeremy was in good hands; he’d recover and be out in a week or so. There wasn’t much I could do for him until they released him to go home. Then we could talk and develop a game plan.
I gave him a kiss on his cheek, and he stroked my hair. His eyes were full of love and reassurance. Despite the weightiness of all we were going through, his gaze buoyed me like a cork floating over turbulent waves. It felt as if that treacherous storm had begun to pass through and the winds were abating. Maybe not, and maybe a bigger storm was coming. But I had hope, and knowing that Jeremy was determined to hold on to me, we could survive. We might get spit out and shipwrecked on some foreign shore, but we would land intact and together.
My mother underestimated the power of love, I thought, as I walked out to my car. I realized, in a burst of clarity, that was her fatal error. Of all her weapons of manipulation and deceit, she couldn’t fathom what it would take to destroy something as simple and pure as love, because it was the one “enemy” she didn’t understand. You can’t fight something you don’t understand.
For the first time in my life, I felt pity for the woman who had raised me. I saw her lashing out at everyone around her because they all had something she couldn’t grasp, couldn’t take by force. She just didn’t get it. Yet, why was she this way? She wasn’t the parent who had spent years in foster homes, tossed around like trash, her self-esteem crushed. Was her incapacity to love a genetic flaw? She’d had two stable parents who raised her and sent her to college. My mother never spoke much about her parents, but her words were never unkind. She told us they had died in a car accident when I was ten years old. I grunted. Maybe they weren’t dead at all—except in my mother’s imagination. I pictured them sequestered and neglected in some smelly, depressing nursing home, wondering why their daughter never visited them.
As I stood on the sidewalk outside the hospital, the cool evening air wafting through my hair, my mind locked on to that day I found my mother crying. Why did my mind gravitate to that moment in time? Something urgent tugged at me. I had witnessed anguish in that solitary instance of her vulnerability, as she had spouted how I had ruined her life, chased away all the men in her life, destroyed her chances for love. No wonder she wanted to ruin mine. Fair’s fair, right?
Another memory came unbidden. I was at Heidi’s house. Her mother taught me guitar—folk songs and pop tunes. I was in my Joni Mitchell phase, yearning to play like her, and Bess gave me weekly lessons. Heidi was a year younger than I, and she had an older brother who was in high school—a moody, creepy guy who, I now guessed, must have been on drugs whenever I saw him. I couldn’t recall his name, but I remembered his glassy red-eyed stare and the way he looked at me—
I sucked in a breath, and a rush of recollection stormed my thoughts. I grasped at the bench nearby and lowered down to sit. How had I forgotten this episode during eighth grade? Fear tingled every nerve, as if I were awakening after a long slumber.
I saw Heidi taking me aside. Where? Her bedroom, the kitchen? Her face was distraught; she looked terrified, but needed to tell me something. I listened in horror to the things pouring out of her mouth, filthy things her brother had been doing to her in the bathroom. How he’d lock the door and take off her clothes, zip down his pants.
I held my breath as her words replayed in my mind, along with all the scary pictures that formed as she detailed one torture after another, doled out by a sex-craved maniacal brother who used her brutally for his pleasure.
At fourteen, I’d had plenty of ideas about sex. But her confession blasted apart my safe and alluring concepts of intimacy. I had no idea a man could do such things to a girl, would dare force such things upon her. I cringed as I replayed those images in my mind. Heidi had been too afraid to tell her mother, so in the middle of my guitar lesson, unable to barricade the agonizing images, I blurted out to Bess the things Heidi had confided in me. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember if I told her mother on my own initiative or if Heidi had asked me to intercede. But Bess’s face went pale as I spoke—that much I recall—and yet, she calmly told me she’d look into the matter, and then continued on with our lesson.
How in the world had she sat there, listening to the disgusting details I poured out to her? Did she doubt me? Had Heidi often lied to her mother, or showed a tendency to exaggerate? Maybe she was mad at her brother, and decided this was a way to get revenge—making up all that stuff. At the time, I didn’t consider she could have been lying; her fear and distress seemed so real. But as I sat on that bench in front of the hospital, I wondered, having recently learned the hard lesson that truth was often a matter of interpretation.
It was shortly after that guitar lesson that I had pushed open my mother’s bedroom door and found Elliott Blass naked by the window—exposed to me—and caught my mother’s distressed face, not unlike Heidi’s had been at the telling of her story. No wonder my reaction had been amplified and caustic.
My jaw dropped, remembering. Pieces joined together, missing pieces I had long misplaced. One memory triggered another, and another, and I found myself confronting my mother in the kitchen later that morning, long after Elliott had dressed in a rush and hurried out.
My mother, preparing sandwiches for lunch. Me, standing there, confusing emotions railing at me, images tumbling, so frightful, I needed to exorcize them from my brain. All the minute features of that kitchen—the orange-and-brown-square design of the linoleum floor, the varnished scalloped-edged pine cabinets, the pale-yellow tile countertops—they came to me in vivid color and immediacy.
My mouth opened and I spoke. Words tumbled out, accusing words that stabbed out of fear and misunderstanding. It hadn’t been my intent to ruin my mother’s chances at love. My sentences were barraged by those terrible pictures of sex, of that dark side of intimacy I had been exposed to at Heidi’s house. I heard Heidi’s brother threaten me in a growling voice, the following week at my guitar lesson, while waiting for my mom to pick me up. He had me pinned against the side of the house, out of sight of the driveway, angry eyes piercing mine, out of earshot from anyone who could help me. “You’re asking for it. And you’re going to get it. You’ll pay for what you did.” I squeezed my eyes shut, willing him to leave me alone, but knowing he would never stop hunting me. Not until he did to me what he did to his sister.
A car honked in the hospital parking lot, and I jumped involuntarily to my feet. My entire body shook as if someone had grabbed me with both hands and dangled me over a precipice. I drew quick shallow breaths and sweat poured down my forehead. What in the world was happening to me?
I stumbled to my car, unlocked it, and nearly threw myself into the front seat. I locked the door and sat there, unmoving. My mother had wondered why I suddenly wanted to quit my guitar lessons. I gave her some lame excuse, but she didn’t press the issue. I never saw Heidi’s brother again, although for months, I expected him to sneak into my bedroom at night, or waylay me on the way to or from school. I took to carrying Raff’s Swiss army knife, which I pilfered from his drawer. At night, I kept the knife under my pillow for nearly a year.
I suddenly realized what I had said to my mother in the kitchen that morning, what later led her to cry out her heart—that one and only time I ever saw her cry.
Whether out of confused fear, a jealous attempt to win back my mother’s attention, or a primal need to protect my mother from impending danger I thought she was ignorant of, I spilled out a false story of how Elliott Blass had confronted me in the bathroom, naked, aroused.
I sat in my car and shook my head so hard that it hurt. I wanted to shake out the images so they would melt in the air, never to haunt me. But the shaking did nothing to stop the memory of my fabricated confession of encountering Elliott in that confined space and his doing unmentionable sexual things to me. Pictures formed: His hand turning the lock on the doorknob, arms grabbing at my shirt and ripping it open, hot breath traveling across my neck while a rough hand reached down my pants. Images I kept locked away, categorized as authentic, but when put under the microscope of distance and time, proved false upon scrutiny.
I didn’t remember how my mother reacted to my outburst because, as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I turned and ran from the room. Was I ashamed—or terrified my mother would know I had lied, and punish me? What on earth had I done?
I tried to imagine the resultant conversation my mother must have had with her fiancé, a man my mother had yearned to marry. Did she confront him with my accusation, or did she silently break up with him, making some weak excuse? I thought back to my mother’s tears and her blaming me for ruining her chances at love. My heart fluttered as I realized that her anger toward me didn’t have anything to do with her thinking I had lied to her. She surely believed me; my emotions had been too genuine to dismiss.
Having heard my claim of abuse at the hands of her boyfriend, my mother never once made any attempt to comfort me. No words of concern or empathy. Instead of a victim, I was the perpetrator. If I hadn’t told her, she wouldn’t have had to break up with him. It was all my fault—for speaking up and spoiling everything. My confession had ruined her plans.
I hunched over the steering wheel and cried in great shudders. As horrible as my mother had been, wishing she could have married Elliott in blissful ignorance, my pain stemmed from something altogether different—and, to me, much more reprehensible.
I had lied and consequently ruined my mother’s life. I had manipulated her for my own end, to suit my own purposes, however perplexing and naive. I was no different than she. I was my mother’s child. A manipulative liar.
And that realization ripped my heart to shreds.