THE PHONE WOULDN’T stop ringing, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up. I know that’s mean, especially since Barry damn near killed me. Even though he is in jail, my family still panics every time they can’t get ahold of me for a few minutes. I didn’t have the energy to move.
I couldn’t cry anymore.
I just sat and remembered.
I asked myself for the four hundredth time why Bernie would get a little girl involved in all of it. Why Bernie, a religious woman, a woman who went to church every Sunday and poured soup in the bowls of the less fortunate thought it would be acceptable to put a child in the middle of such chaos. Such sickness.
Even back then there must have been some hint of what was to follow. For me. For the rest of my life.
Didn’t she give me any thought at all? Was I just a prop to make her world a bit safer?
How did my mother not know?
How did my mother allow it to happen?
Why didn’t anybody step in?
I tried to remember any other O’Flynns being there. In Bernie’s house. All those times.
I could remember being dropped off.
I could remember being picked up.
I could remember Bernie coming to my parents’ house to pick me up and my mother dressing me in my Sunday best for my “Bernie visit.”
Maybe that’s why I don’t really care about clothes. When I looked my best, weirdness happened.
Maybe that’s why I’m such a clean freak. Erase every bit of chaos.
Maybe when you boil it all down, all the things that make you you are things that happened to you in your childhood, and you blocked them out.
I struggled to my feet and walked into the kitchen, put on the kettle, and sat in a chair, waiting for it to boil. When it did, and made the noise I usually found comforting, it scared me back to the present time.
I made my tea, shortcut style, where I dunked the tea bag repeatedly instead of letting it steep naturally. A minor sin. Suddenly it really didn’t matter to me how many O’Flynn traditions and rituals I followed.
I sat at the table and drank my tea in stunned silence.
The knocking on the door got my attention. I ran for it. Didn’t bother looking out the peephole.
Teagan flew in the door before it was open all the way.
“Dingleberry, I swear to God, someone better be dead. How come you didn’t answer the flippin’ phone?” Then she looked at me. “What? What happened?”
I allowed myself to fold to the floor. I didn’t cry. Not really. Mostly I just slowly shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I need some time. I need to figure this out.”
“I thought you said on the phone that you had figured it out. All you said was that you knew. Knew what? Know what? Cara, you can’t do this to a person. You need to use your words.”
When she saw she couldn’t use all our regular catch phrases to get me talking, she sat down on the floor and got serious and quiet.
“Cara, are you alright?”
“Not really.”
“What happened? What did you remember?”
“You know what, Teagan? I already told you I am not going to talk about it. I am so freaking sick and tired of doing everything that everybody else wants and not ever what I want. I’m not going to talk about it, so just go home.”
“Cara, you’re scaring me. Is it what I think it is?”
“I really don’t give a crap if I’m scaring you, Teagan. I told you, I’m not going to talk about it. And, no, it isn’t what you think it is. If you don’t know what it is, then you sure as hell aren’t going to guess, and I’m not going to play guessing games with you anyway. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make you feel better, but for once, just once, I’m more concerned about what’s going to make me feel better, and I’m not going to talk about this to an O’Flynn, because there’s a really good chance I’m never going to talk to an O’Flynn again. Go home, Teagan. I dealt with all of this alone the first time; I can deal with it alone this time.”
“Cara, I know you’re upset about something, but please just tell me what it is.”
I stood up. Felt strong for the first time since I opened the trunk and almost passed out. Opening that stupid trunk by myself was either the biggest mistake of my life or the smartest move I’ve ever made. It seemed like when there was an O’Flynn around, there was something between me and all that the trunk signified, but when I was alone and opened it, that’s when the ghosts came rushing out.
Wait, is that right?
Had I opened the trunk alone before?
My brain wasn’t working.
“Teagan, go home.”
“Dammit, Cara, I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”
“Fine.” I grabbed my purse and ran out the door, and before she could stop me, I was in my car and gone. She was smart enough not to follow and turn this into a quasi-car chase.
When I was sure she wasn’t following, I relaxed a little but stayed to the backstreets. Even in my current state I was aware enough not to want to drive on roads with lots of other cars. I wasn’t playing driver bumper pool, hitting things on either side of the road, but I wasn’t exactly a safe driver either.
I pulled over and texted A.J. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth.
Roland called. They got the bad guys. More details later. Teagan is driving me insane. Turning off my phone. See you tonight. ILY
I turned off my phone, took several long breaths, felt light-headed again, and decided I’d get something to eat and that would fix everything. Well, not everything, but maybe the light-headed thing.
In the past, what I would have wanted was a cup of tea with my mother so that she could tell me what was going on and how to deal with it. She wasn’t home, and even if she were, I wasn’t sure she could fix this.
How could she not know what they were doing to me?
How could she just keep bringing me back to Bernie’s if she knew?
Was she so busy with all the other kids that she just didn’t have time to think about what was going on with me?
She told me all my life that what happens to you before the age of eighteen is your parents’ responsibility. What happens from eighteen to twenty-one is a transition period, and the responsibility is equally divided between parent and child. What happens after twenty-one is all on us, the individuals.
So, what happened to me as a kid is her fault. If not her fault, it’s certainly her responsibility. That’s what she always said. She can’t back away from it now.
I pulled back out onto the street and tried to decide where to go. I didn’t want to run into anyone I knew, and although I could have gone out and run around all day long and never seen a soul I recognized, when I am having a bad day or my hair looks like it is inhabited by a small enclave of psychotic elephant shrews, I run into at least one guy I dated and was confused when he never called again or that girl from high school who always looked perfect. Karen. And she was so freakin’ nice that you couldn’t even hate her.
I drove around thinking about several of the girls from school, wondering whatever happened to them. Had an ongoing conversation with myself. Out loud. People probably thought I was talking on Bluetooth if they looked in my car, but my phone was turned off, and the ear thingy was in the middle console.
There’s something to be said for technology. It can make you crazy, but when you get there, it can help to disguise your craziness.
There was a time when people walking around talking to themselves was a really bad sign. Now it is assumed they are talking to someone else and they’re just rude.
I kept talking to myself anyway.
It kept my mind busy so that I didn’t think about the whole thing with Bernie and run my car — accidently of course — into a tree.
I thought about Jeanie. I used to walk to school with her in kindergarten. My mom would cross us at the big street, and then we would walk the rest of the way by ourselves.
They’d probably put you in jail for that now.
I checked on Google once; it said it was a twelve-minute walk, but I know it took us at least a half an hour.
Jeanie always had to stop in front of the Lewis’s house and smell the big white flowers when they were in bloom, and when they weren’t, she had to stop in front of the Jones’s and pet their yappy dog. I hated that dog. It nipped at my ankles, and it jumped on my yellow dress and left a mark.
By first grade, the older kids would walk about two hundred feet in front of us, and we’d all walk in a group, with Richard walking in the gutter, always. We’d try to keep up and never would, and my mom would give me the eye when I got home.
That brought to mind when Mrs. Barnerker, our PE teacher, made us tumble in fourth grade. My tumbling skills topped out at somersaults. Never did get the hang of a cartwheel. That was the year we played crack-the-whip in the courtyard and I got thrown into the brick wall and had about a million stitches in my head and Mrs. Barnerker made me tumble even though I had a doctor’s note that said I didn’t have to.
For some reason, every injustice I’d ever suffered was bubbling to the top, and I couldn’t help it; I felt sorry for myself.
I hate that. Some people think it shows weakness to cry. I think it shows weakness to feel sorry for yourself.
Why?
Think about it.
I live in this country. I’ve never had to walk war-torn streets or spend hours looking for water just to survive. I’ve never had to face real oppression or even fake oppression. I live in a country where our ninety-nine percent lives like the one percent of lots of the world. If not exactly, close enough. I know there are people who are hungry and need help, but our worst have it a lot better than other countries’ worst, and I’ve always had it a lot better than our worst. I have no reason to feel sorry for myself. I’m healthy. All the kids in the family are healthy. Barry didn’t actually kill me; he just tried. No reason to complain at all.
Right?
While I was having this internal mental breakdown that vacillated between a pep talk and a pity party, I drove, which I know is totally stupid, but I did it anyway.
When I stopped, I was in front of Bernie’s little house.
Her storybook house.
The one that looked like Hansel and Gretel once lived there.
Why did I never see it before? If Hansel and Gretel lived there, doesn’t that make Bernie the witch?
That’s not fair.
What Bernie did wasn’t the same as eating little kids for breakfast. She was completely messed up, but she wasn’t evil. Not intentionally, anyway.
I parked across the street, under a huge, old gnarled tree, which seemed appropriate for my mood.
It was like an out-of-body experience on steroids.
I could see myself as a little girl.
Daddy was dropping me off. He was driving the gold station wagon. He loved that car. Was so proud of it. He paid cash. When he got home with it he took us all for a ride. He even honked the horn so that the neighbors would see.
In my mind’s eye, I was wearing my favorite dress. It was like a white t-shirt with black trim around the neck and short sleeves with a black and white skirt, kind of like a kid’s pencil skirt, attached with suspenders. It had splashes of bright colors all over it, like someone stood back and shot me with bright paint through a straw.
I know that’s how you can get the effect, because Seamus did it to me once, but that’s a whole different story.
I had on my white ankle socks and black shoes and a big pink flower on my headband.
I was stylin’. Even in hand-me-downs that were a little outdated and didn’t quite fit. I thought I was beautiful. My mom had pulled all my hair up to the side, and it was curled, and it looked thick, which rarely happened, even as a kid.
Daddy didn’t even get out of the car. He pulled in the driveway; I got out; he drove off. That seems strange to me now, but at the time, I never gave it a thought. There’s nothing villainous about dropping your kid off to a treasured and trusted friend of the family without going inside.
I’ve had family drop their kids off to me, and they didn’t come inside.
Not everything is part of an evil plan.
There’s that word again. Evil.
I really need to stop framing this that way. I needed to take a step back and look at it logically. Make sure my memories were real.
Of course the person who would have to confirm or deny my memories is dead, and all she left me to figure it out is a stupid trunk with a bunch of stuff in it that makes me go bat-crap crazy, but that shouldn’t worry me. Right?
I am proud to say that when Teagan slammed her hand on the window of my car — and scared me so bad that I actually thought I’d blanked out for a second, stunned into a time-warp hiccup — I didn’t put my car in gear and simply run her over. I thought about it. Just a nanosecond-flash kind of thought about it, but that nanosecond flash did make me feel a little bit better.
“Dingleberry, what the hell? I called and called. You need to stop this. You need to calm down and talk to me.”
I thought about rolling down my window so that I could talk to her without shouting, but knowing Teagan, she would reach in and grab something, like my head, and not let go until I agreed to go somewhere and talk to her or let her in the car so that she could talk to me, and truthfully I would have rather yelled my lungs out than deal with Teagan right then.
“Don’t even think about it, Cara. Do not drive off. At this point I’d call somebody and have you Baker-Acted.”
“I’m not the one they would put on a psychiatric hold, Teagan. I’m allowed to not talk to you. I have that right. I don’t have to do every single flipping thing the way a good little O’Flynn would do it. You know that?”
“Now you really are scaring me. Cara, please, tell me what’s going on.”
“Teagan, can’t you once, just this once, let it go? Let me deal with all of this the way I need to deal with it.”
“Cara, you shouldn’t have to deal with it alone. Whatever it is. I’ll help you.”
“Not this time.”
“Then promise me that you’ll talk to someone. A.J. or that counselor.”
“Teagan, I promise that when I am ready to talk to someone, I will talk to someone, and I will do it in my own time and in my own way, and if you don’t go away, I’m going to do something stupid, so just go away.”
“Cara, you basically didn’t promise anything, but that’s okay.”
“Gee, I’m glad I have your permission.”
“I hope you know how much you are loved.”
“Go home, Teagan.”
“You know what, Cara? You might want to take a step back from all this and think about your reaction. You said you weren’t molested.”
“I didn’t say anything. That’s the point. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I asked you if it was what I thought it was, and you know damn well that’s what I thought it was, and you said that it wasn’t. So I assumed that what you said was that you weren’t molested. You were molested?”
“Right. Bernie saved me a bunch of stuff, a trunk full of stuff, from people that molested me. Are you insane?”
“So if you weren’t molested, and I don’t remember you being physically damaged when we were kids, no unexplained broken bones or burns or anything like that, if it isn’t anything like that, how bad can it be?”
Before I could say anything or punch her, she continued, “And no matter how bad it was, it wasn’t me who did it to you, so why are you shutting me out? You’re saying things and acting like it’s the fault of the O’Flynns that Bernie did something bad to you, or with you, or whatever, but even if that’s the case, that Bernie did something to you and it’s not some kind of created lost memory, that’s still Bernie; that isn’t us, so why push us away? Especially at a time when you need the most help.”
“Maybe it’s because you just told me you don’t believe me, jerk.”
“What?”
“Some kind of created memory? Isn’t that basically a lie? Go home, Teagan. You aren’t helping. And for the record, I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t have to run to the O’Flynns. I’m a big girl, and I can do whatever the hell I want.”
“Then act like it.”
“What?”
“You’re running around acting like a spoiled little kid, Cara. I’m sorry something bad happened to you a long time ago, but running around like a lunatic and accusing me of crap and not just sitting down and talking it out, that’s acting like the very kind of people you always say you hate.”
“Fine, I hate myself. Add me to the list. Go away, Teagan.”
“Fine, I’m gone, but remember something important, Cara. You can create as much drama around that stupid trunk as you want. You can accuse us or Bernie or anybody else of anything you want, but when all the dust settles, before you opened that stupid thing, you were happy, you loved everything O’Flynn, and you thought you had a really good life. If you are willing to throw that all away over something that happened a long time ago, something we can’t change, something that you didn’t even remember until today, then you aren’t as smart as I’ve always given you credit for. If something terrible happened to you, Cara, face it, deal with it, and move on. Don’t let a few bad memories, no matter how bad, overwrite a lifetime of good memories.”
When I didn’t say anything, she walked away.
I can’t believe she left. I’m sitting on the side of the freaking street, having a nervous breakdown, and my favorite sister shows up to knock some sense into me, and then she just leaves. I’m all whacked-out. What’s her excuse? How could she just walk away like that? I stared into space. Who knows how long that lasted? I’m not really tracking time all that well at this point.
She knocked on the window and about scared me to death.
“And don’t think that I’m just going to go away, ‘cause I’m not. You can get as mad and as mean as you want, but I’m not going anywhere.” She stood there and watched me through the driver’s-side window. “Okay, well, I might go away so you don’t run over me, but I’m not going to stay gone.”
I couldn’t help it. I rolled down the window. “Teagan, I appreciate you wanting to help me, I really do, more than you know, but right now, I can’t do this. I need to think. To remember. To wrap my brain around all of this. I need to get it straight in my own brain. Then maybe I can share it with the rest of the world.”
“Okay, but remember, I’m not the rest of the world. I’m your favorite sister.”
“I never forget that. Even if I want to run over you with my car.”
“See, I knew that’s what you were thinking. You had that twitch you get when you’re about to do something evil, like when you set my alarm clock to crazy loud and then hid it in the saucepan to make it even louder and everyone was yelling at me to turn it off and I couldn’t find it.”
“That wasn’t evil; that was payback. For when you took all my sunflower seeds out of the bag, licked off the salt, and then put them back.”
“I like salt.”
“I know. I’m fine, Teagan. Go home.”
“Promise to be careful. Promise to drive safe and all that stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Turn your phone back on. I promise I won’t call.”
“Okay.”
“And call A.J. I might have alarmed him when I called a couple of times.”
“Great. I warned him you were being crazy. Actually that you were driving me crazy.”
“Crazy seems to be the word of the day, but I told him that I wasn’t being crazy, you were upset, and I was trying to find you.”
“I’ll let him know I’m fine.”
“You aren’t, but I hope you will be soon.”
“Go home, Teagan.”
“Okay.”
I texted A.J.: I’m fine — but I need to talk to you. I need your help figuring out what to do about some stuff that I just remembered from my past. Can you pick up dinner and be with me tonight?
The tears started again. I hate asking for help.
It just got worse when his response was virtually immediate. I’ll stop at the BBQ place. Get your usual. Be home at 5:30. Unless you need me sooner. We’ll figure it out. I love you.
Now I have a moral dilemma. A big one. My parents are coming home from Ireland — of course I’m supposed to be part of that celebration — I wasn’t there to clean or paint or anything else with the rest of the family, and I’m not even sure how Teagan explained that to everybody because I didn’t even bother to talk to any of them about it. I just didn’t show up.
A.J. has been so good about all this. I’m so lucky to have him. He’s been one hundred percent supportive, totally nonjudgmental, and he’s on my side. That’s not the right way to phrase it. There really aren’t any sides. He’s just gone out of his way to make sure I know he is with me. Completely.
Back to the dilemma.
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about the whole Bernie thing, or if there’s anything I can do after all this time, or if there is anything that I even should do, but my parents are coming home to a different world than they left, and I think maybe I am a different person.
I’m not the only one.
Sinead is pregnant.
Maeve is in love with another woman, which when I stop and think about it, Teagan and Sinead were right; this is gonna cause some problems, even for O’Flynns — or, at the very least, Seamus.
My parents were finally coming back from the trip they’d waited a lifetime for, and they were going to be all glowing and everything. A second honeymoon in the land they loved, and they were coming come back to a mess of kids that were, well, a mess.
Do I really want to add to that?
Then again, why does my stuff always have to be the last thing considered? Why is everybody else’s stuff more important than mine?
Programming. Isn’t that exactly what Bernie did? Make all their stuff more important than mine? Did they even think about what they were doing to a little girl?
I’ve thought about it. Actually, I’ve thought about little else. Thank God that Adeline was on the road again, because I hadn’t exactly been giving work much attention. I’d been going through the motions, but it wasn’t like I’d been on top of much.
Back to my dilemma. Do I talk to my parents about my problem? When? Do I show up at the family party? What are my brothers and sisters going to say about my recent absences? I’m usually the one who leads the charge for this kind of stuff, and I didn’t even call. And why in the name of everything O’Flynn did I feel guilty about not calling? Am I not allowed to have problems? Am I not allowed to have some time for my own personal nervous breakdown?
If I don’t go, are they ever going to be able to forgive me? This is a big deal for Sinead and Maeve. Not that they’re going to make announcements as soon as my mom and dad walk in the room, but they’ll remember this for the rest of their lives, and I don’t want to be the jerk who blew everything out of the water.
And you know how my mom is. She’ll know as soon as she walks in the room. At least about Sinead. Which begs the question, why doesn’t she know about Maeve?
Sinead having a baby is a much bigger deal than my stuff with Bernie, right?
I should just wait.
When Mom and Daddy have been home for a little while and everything has calmed down, that’s the time to sit down and talk to my mother and find out what she knew and when she knew it and why the hell she didn’t save me from it.
On the other hand, and there’s always another hand, why don’t I get to put my needs and myself first, this one time? Why do I always worry about everyone else before I worry about myself? Would I be like that if Bernie hadn’t trained me that way?
Maybe all the things I do every day come down to what happened with Bernie and my twisted little reactions to it.
Okay, I’m annoying even myself.
It was a long time ago.
It was locked away in the back of my brain forever.
Maybe that’s where it belonged.
Never to be spoken of.
Never to be shared.
Bring it to my grave.
Oh, hell no. That is not going to happen. It isn’t a matter of if; it is a matter of when. I needed to talk to my mother about all this.
I’ll go to the party.
I’ll be a good little O’Flynn and be supportive of everybody, and tomorrow I’ll go over and sit down and talk to my mom and dad and find out why they thought it was okay to allow Bernie to use me the way she did.
I took a deep breath. Texted A.J. and let him know that I had decided to go to my parents’ house to celebrate. I’ll even go to the airport and meet them there like we’d all originally planned.
I won’t say anything tonight.
Tomorrow, the trunk.
Period.
My family is insane. Yeah, I said it.
We all showed up at the airport at virtually the same time. We all parked in about the same place. We got onto the same elevator and all entered the terminal at the same time. All wearing green shirts and jeans. We looked like a very odd and somewhat unorganized family reunion.
We sat in the waiting area like good little O’Flynns, and every time the tram pulled up and people de-trammed — is that what you call it? — they call it deplaning when you get off the plane — we all got excited but sat back down when my parents didn’t appear.
Just about the time we all started checking our phones to see if the flight had been delayed, Jordan noticed Mom and Dad. They looked tired, and Mom looked a bit thinner, but they were smiling from ear to ear.
We all took our turn getting hugs. When it was mine, my mother whispered in my ear, “I’ll hope that you didn’t do anything rash. I’ll not be wanting a party on the first day back. I can assure you of that.”
“It’s just us. You can welcome back the rest of the world next week.”
“That will be lovely. Are you alright, love? You don’t feel as if you are.”
“I’m fine. Been busy. I’m just tired.”
“Well, not that I believe you, but we will leave that to discuss another time.” She gave me an extra squeeze, which almost made me cry, but I held it to watery eyes.
“Oh, love, what is it?”
“I’ve missed you.”
“Well, I’m home now, am I not? We will set it right, Cara.”
She knew. I’m not sure she knew what she knew, but she knew that something needed to be set right.
How does she always know?
And if she always knows, why didn’t she know then? Or did she?
Back at the house, with ice cream and cookies set out and the kettle on to boil, my parents fussed and praised the changes the family had made to the house.
It did look great.
And I’d had no part in it.
Which nobody mentioned.
Which meant that either Teagan threatened their lives or I’m more disposable than I thought.
Even I recognized how stupid and whiney and immature I was being. No need to point it out. Everybody has their moments.
When Mom mentioned that Seamus’s wife was beginning to show, her head tilted a little to the right, and she went from looking straight into Valerie’s eyes to staring at Sinead.
Uh-oh.
She knows.
How does she do that?
Sinead just leaned into her boyfriend Howard and smiled.
Nobody said a word. Or breathed. Or started laughing hysterically, which was the real danger.
Mom assured us that we would all hear about their adventures at the next family dinner, which would be on Sunday at five; a command performance, we would all be there.
Daddy said that they planned to go back to Ireland every other year. All they had to do was win the lottery.
Liam went into a little detail about all the success Morgan and A.J. were having with their project. A.J. seemed a little embarrassed. Morgan was a tad mortified. So Liam ramped it up. It was great.
At one point, I was almost positive that Jessie and Teagan were going to make their big announcement, but they didn’t. I guess they really are going to do the whole thing where Jessie asks for her hand. I love that. I don’t care how old-fashioned and out-of-date I am. I don’t care that I sound like a middle-aged housewife. Besides, Jessie has been making some plans for a little covert romance, and I really hope he can pull it off. Teagan is not easily surprised.
On my way out the door, when I gave Mom a hug and welcomed her home, I whispered, “I need to talk to you about Bernie and the trunk and everything. Can I come over in the morning?”
“Talk now, love.”
“It isn’t a short conversation or a pleasant one. I think the morning would be better. How about ten o’clock so that you can sleep in a little? Jet lag and everything.”
“Don’t be silly, love. Come to me whenever you are awake and ready. We will have breakfast. I see that you kids filled the fridge while you were busy with the lot of it.”
I didn’t have the stomach to tell her that I’d had no part in the house cleaning or painting. Suddenly, the fact that I didn’t made me depressed and sick at heart. I know that it isn’t about me being part of it; it is about my parents coming home to a great surprise. But still, I’m an O’Flynn, and O’Flynns do stuff like this; they don’t sit on their butts and feel sorry for themselves when they aren’t even perfectly clear on why they should be feeling sorry for themselves in the first place.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Mom. Thanks.”
It was a very quiet ride home. A.J. was being even more patient than usual, which I didn’t even know was possible, and I’m patient to the point of pathology.
When we got home I went in and took a long bath. A.J. brought me a cup of tea while I was in the tub. He tries really hard, but nobody can make me a cup of tea that is actually drinkable. I thought about pouring it out, to save his feelings, but I decided that I’m not going to do things like that anymore. It’s not healthy. It isn’t going to kill A.J. to know that I didn’t drink a cup of tea.
I need to get over all this people-pleasing stuff.
Now that I know where it came from, I can do that.