THE MORNING AFTER THE FUNERAL Rose woke early. Her heart felt ready to receive the morning light and obliterate the darkness of the night before. How incredible that one letter from someone she’d never even met could make such a marked change in her life. With the sun on her cheeks, she felt the dawning of hope.
She slipped into a long black skirt and a gray sweater, worn and comfortable from years of use, then walked through the hall, descended the great wide staircase and made her way into the kitchen. She moved as a dancer would through a well-rehearsed routine, surefooted, smooth and moving to an inner music. She pulled out her largest ceramic bowls, bins of oat flakes, raisins, nuts and small jars of cinnamon and other spices from the pantry. There was nothing like a bowl of her own special, healthy granola to give the day a good start.
Mixing the ingredients, she thought how Jilly had looked shell-shocked when she went to bed the night before. And Birdie was definitely off-kilter, snapping at Hannah and Dennis. As though in retaliation, Hannah had seconds, even thirds, of the cakes at the funeral. Well, at least while they were here, she would see that they all ate good food.
She added extra cinnamon for Hannah, then stirred the cereal and poured it into big stoneware baking dishes. After fifteen minutes the whole kitchen smelled of cinnamon baking in the oven. Her eyes looked up toward the ceiling as she heard the thump of feet walking across the floor. She smiled, thinking today was fresh and new.
She couldn’t wait for her sisters to come for breakfast.
Birdie awoke sick. She felt the world spinning as soon as she sat up and her stomach seemed to leap to her throat. Her groan brought a stir from Dennis beside her.
“Wha—” He blinked heavily, raising his head, half-awake. “Are you okay?”
“No. Ugh. I must have eaten something bad. Oh, God, what’s that smell? What’s Rose baking down there? I think I’m going to be sick….” She put her palm on her forehead and waited several minutes till the pumping in her stomach subsided.
“How’re you doing?” Dennis asked, his eyes closed.
“I’m a little better,” she replied. “I could use a cracker or something dry. How about you? Are you sick?” She didn’t know why misery loved company, but there it was.
Dennis mopped his face and sat up on his elbows. After a minute he replied, “Nope.”
“I hope it’s not the flu. I don’t have time to be sick.”
“You never do. Where are you going? The funeral’s over. Come back to bed and rest.”
Birdie was already rising, slipping into her chenille robe. “I won’t give in to it. I’ll just dress and have some weak tea and toast and then we’ll see how I feel. Besides, Rose is downstairs already, probably cooking up a five-course meal. She always knocks herself out.”
“That’s Rose. Always doing for others.”
“She needs a rest or she’ll crack.”
“So will you. Stay with me, Birdie, come back to bed….”
She ignored his hand that reached out for her. “I’ll bring you coffee….” Slipping her feet into slippers, she hurried out the door. Even after the spats of yesterday and with her stomach spinning this morning, she felt a tangible pull to hurry downstairs to the kitchen.
She wanted to be with her sisters.
Jilly woke up groggy. She’d lain in a stuperous state for hours, watching the light of dawn change on the blue wallpaper. The memories had left her feeling vulnerable, as though she’d just given birth all over again, except this time she was coming home and everyone knew she had delivered a baby. When she walked downstairs this morning, she realized with both horror and relief, everything would be different.
The secret was out.
After all these years, what did honesty feel like? she wondered, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Did Birdie and Rose have any idea how much she needed them right now? She felt the stirrings of the devotion she felt for her sisters as a child, when they were playmates and Birdie and Rose were her very best friends. It had been so long since she allowed herself this connection and she felt wary. She had changed over the years. And so, she knew, had they. But they were sisters. Bound by blood and history.
She sniffed, catching the scent of cinnamon and coffee in the air. Hunger for food, for coffee, for life, growled within her. Rising from the bed, she wrapped herself in her lavender silk robe, pulled her wild hair back with an elastic and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Despite the lack of sleep, she felt lighter, younger, and not the least bit tired. She followed the sound of clanking dishes and soft chatter down the stairs. She was a bit nervous about facing them, but pushed open the door and walked into the room.
She couldn’t wait to see her sisters.
She found them in the kitchen, laying the table. Birdie and Rose each had hold of an end of a lovely robin’s-egg-blue tablecloth and were spreading it out over the long wood table. The mood was chummy and they were chatting without a trace of the tension that had permeated the air the day before. Jilly stood at the door, hesitant.
Birdie spied her first. Her face revealed caution, followed by a searching glance. Then, seeing the openness of Jilly’s expression, her face broke into a warm smile without restraint.
“I don’t believe it. Look who’s up.”
Rose hurried to fetch coffee. “Good morning!”
Jilly felt a tremendous relief that no one was going to dive into angst while the sun was still rising. She also felt a bit sheepish and looked at her coffee, the table, anywhere but her sisters’ eyes. “Yes, I’m up,” she replied with bluster. “Me and the birds. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.”
And Jilly did join right in, fetching tableware from the cupboards. Rose went to bring out the freshly baked granola while Birdie set large earthenware bowls. They readily fell into the old, comforting habits of childhood. Then, while they ate, Birdie brought them up to speed on the estate.
“Mr. Collins wants us to inform him of what to do with the house and estate by Thursday. Let’s just table those decisions for the day to give us a little more time to think. Agreed?”
The others nodded their heads, relieved.
“The big job now is to divvy up the household between us. The furniture, paintings, and all the china, crystal and silver. The house is jam-packed with stuff. Mother was a first-class pack rat. But before we do that, we have to catalog what’s here. I shiver to think of the attic and basement.”
“The attic is full of treasures,” said Rose, quick to rise to the defense. “I don’t want to throw any of it out.”
“Rose, we all know Mother isn’t the only one who’s a pack rat,” Birdie said teasingly.
“Let’s just agree not to throw anything away unless we all agree.”
“It will take forever that way.”
“Then I’ll do it myself.”
“Hold on,” Jilly said, holding up her palm. “Let’s start with the top and work our way down. We can make decisions as we go. All together.”
A short while later, Jilly stood in the dusty, dimly lit third floor with her mouth agape. It was worse than she could possibly have imagined. The place was imploding. The roof showed signs of sagging and waterstains on boxes, walls and floors revealed numerous leaks. The windowpanes were rotting, the glass was cracked in places and the whole place, smelled of dust, mold and mouse droppings.
This had once been their playground. These rooms were the glorious dominion of the Upper Kingdom where the royal Season sisters ruled. To see the untidy shambles coated with gloom and spiderwebs cast a harsh reality over what was once the realm of the imagination.
The third floor of the large Victorian house had originally been designed as the maids’ quarters. There were two cramped bedrooms with pitched ceilings, another slightly larger room that was once presumably a sitting room, and a single, small bathroom with an ancient, yellow-stained tub and sink fit for midgets. The girls had loved these rooms when they were younger because they were somehow separate from the domain of their parents. Undecorated, unspoken for—theirs for the taking. And they took them, claiming rooms and creating make-believe villages. Until their mother chased them out, furious that they’d foraged through all her storage boxes searching for choice items they could use for their pretend “houses.”
“It looks like a rabbit’s warren,” said Birdie, coming up from behind, her arms filled with supplies.
Jilly couldn’t deny it. Narrow paths between boxes stacked from floor to ceiling were the only way one could maneuver through the low-ceilinged rooms. What was most daunting, however, was that it wasn’t an organized mess. Everything appeared to have been tossed up there willy-nilly. It was a great, giant kitchen drawer full of junk.
“We’ll never live long enough to get through it all,” said Jilly, aghast. “It’s like the deep Congo in here. They’ll find our bodies someday, after a long, arduous search. We’ll be in some stage of decay, our bones reaching into the boxes.”
“I say we should just get one of those enormous Dumpsters, open up the windows and pump ship.” Birdie’s face was set.
“Don’t you dare!” Rose called out, rushing up the stairs.
“Look at this mess!” Birdie opened a plastic bag filled with nothing but wire hangers. “This is what I’m talking about. What in God’s name were you saving hundreds of wire hangers for? And old magazines? There must be hundreds of Good Housekeeping.” She picked one up, leafed through it, then tossed it into the bag with a flip of the wrist. “Just what we need, another recipe for Velveeta.”
“I meant to take them for recycling,” said Rose.
Birdie rolled up her sleeves, a woman on a mission. “Yeah, well, I’ll recycle them, all right.” She pushed her way through the path to the other rooms. “It’s not so bad here,” she called out from a bedroom. “I think the worst of it is right by the door. Let’s start back here where there’s room to move.”
“That’s Rose’s castle,” Jilly called out.
“What?” Birdie poked her head around the corner.
“Rose’s castle, remember? And that room over there was yours. Mine was the big room, of course. The Castle of Splendor, I recall.”
Rose’s face became dreamy. Jilly could feel the memories flutter back by watching the expressions on her face.
“See what I mean?” Rose said with heart, seeking an ally. “There are so many memories up here. I don’t want Birdie to toss them all out as garbage. She has a one-track mind.”
Jilly wanted to tell her that the garbage dump might be the appropriate place for them, but refrained. “Don’t look so worried, Rose,” she said reassuringly. “We don’t need to make any big decisions today. Birdie’s right, though. We’ll keep what we can, but be prepared to dump stuff like hangers and magazines. I don’t intend to spend weeks at this chore. We’ve got to clear it out and we simply can’t keep everything.”
They donned aprons, opened plastic garbage bags, set aside twine and scissors and set to work. They chatted companionably while they opened dozens of boxes, groaning when they found old bank records starting from twenty years back, two leather-bound sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, old books falling from their covers, framed pictures of the dime-store variety, dusty, plastic Christmas poinsettias and wreaths, and countless odd dishes, platters and bowls, none of them making a single matched set. In another room there was an old pram, miscellaneous tools none of them wanted, rusty silver toasters and other old appliances with frayed cords and missing parts, bags of rolled wire, and their old skis and ice skates.
Hours later, exhaustion got the best of their enthusiasm.
“Where is that Dumpster?” Birdie groaned.
“Look at me,” Jilly complained, staring down at herself. “In filthy jeans and a sweatshirt. Me! And my manicure…ruined.”
“I’ve never seen such a collection of worthless junk in all my life,” grumbled Birdie.
Rose’s head jerked up.
“No, Rose!” Jilly exclaimed, holding up her hand against Rose’s protest and taking sides with Birdie. “Don’t even say it. We don’t want to hear it. It’s all junk!”
In the larger room, however, they found more personal items. Treasures, Rose called them. There were large boxes in which their artwork, papers and report cards from kindergarten onward were packed away. In others, old family photographs had been carelessly tossed, many of them dating back generations, their sepia-toned edges curling. They found boxes filled with their old baby clothes, and more with toddler dresses with frills and pinafores. They howled when they found Jilly’s clarinet, Birdie’s flute and Rose’s ballet slippers.
They sipped iced tea and shared quips, comments and memories. As the afternoon sun waned, however, Jilly felt her old restlessness overtake her. History mingled with the dust and grime to thicken the atmosphere. The rooms were feeling too close and she was desperate for some fresh air. Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed Rose and Birdie sitting shoulder to shoulder, browsing through photo after photo with expressions of nostalgic pleasure on their faces. Fidgety, she rose to her feet, eager to be done and out of there.
“Okay, that’s enough for me,” she burst out when Birdie and Rose giggled over another photograph. “I’m exhausted, dirty, and I want a glass of wine and a hot bath. Let’s just toss this junk and finish up.”
“Rose was right,” Birdie said with a lazy smile. “There are treasures in here. Look at this one,” she said with a light laugh. She lifted a photograph of the three of them in their Easter dresses. “Your hair is in a flip with one of those little bows pinned in front. And Rose, you’ve lost your front teeth!”
Resting her chin on Birdie’s shoulder, Rose chuckled and said, “Look who’s talking. You’re scowling again! In every picture!”
“What a motley crew we were,” Birdie replied, but her voice was filled with affection. “I’d like Hannah to see these. They’re her heritage.”
“Fine,” Jilly snapped. “Then keep them. All of them. Toss them in the box and take them home. But can we just keep moving on? This is taking forever.”
“Jilly, don’t you want any pictures?” Rose asked.
“No. You keep them.”
“Or your old school papers at least?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t want anything. There’s no value in any of it.”
Birdie’s brows shot up.
“How can you say that?” Rose asked with unflagging patience. “These are records of our past.”
Jilly took a deep breath and brought her fingertips to her temples. All these old family photographs, compounded by the memories of the previous night, had brought so much of her past whirling back to mind. And none of those incidents were included in this collection of their mother’s selected memories.
“They’re not the records of our past, that’s the point. Look at the two of you, hovering over those photographs, laughing, as if there was something wonderful to remember. Treasures, you call them. It’s all in your heads. There are no happy memories buried in that dust, only dear darling Mother’s orchestrated memories.”
“Oh, Jilly…” Birdie muttered with a wave of her hand, dismissing her.
“Don’t do that,” she snapped. Jilly was exhausted and Birdie had pushed the wrong emotional button. “Don’t dismiss me. I’m the eldest, not you. I was there. And all I see when I look at those photographs are smiling faces because Dad told us to say cheese when he clicked the camera. It’s all a facade. Mom loved to pretend downstairs every bit as much as we did up here. It was a game. A real and dangerous game of self-preservation and desperation. I covered for her drinking every day, pretending everything was normal. We all did, Dad included, and it makes me so goddamn angry to see all those photographs of the perfect American family. Here comes Judge Season and the four little Seasons!”
“Jilly, stop it!” said Rose.
“You dug up all the dirty little secrets yesterday, Rose. You can’t go back now. Let’s be honest. Where are the pictures that show what it was really like?”
Her sisters looked back at her, anxious and hesitant.
“Come on, don’t shrink back now.” She pointed to the box of photographs. “I’ll bet you won’t find a single snapshot in there of Mom toting a gin bottle around the house, or one of us sitting in front of the TV stuffing peanut butter sandwiches in our mouth after school because she didn’t bother to pack us a lunch. Or one of Dad escaping out the back door to go to the office. Or of me sneaking out the bedroom window, or of Birdie swimming her heart out to win another prize for them, or of Rose knocking herself out around the house trying to please them. Aren’t you angry?”
When they didn’t respond she cried out, “Well, I am! I’m so damn angry, even after all these years. The hurt is still so fresh. What kind of a mother was she? She neglected her duties. She wasn’t present, Birdie. She abandoned us. She—”
Jilly stopped abruptly, her own words sinking in with bruising intensity. Not present…abandoned…God help me, she thought as her face drained of color. I’m just like my mother. Looking at Birdie and Rose, she saw in their eyes that they understood she was thinking of her own child.
“I can’t go into this,” she said in a choked voice. “I just can’t.”
Rose’s face crumpled. “It wasn’t all like that and you know it.”
“How do you know? Rose, look at the pictures!” Jilly went to grab a handful of photos from the box. She held them out to her. “You were so little. In this one you look about four years old, and in this one, what—two? Do you know why you think these photographs are your heritage? Because you don’t remember what really happened. These pictures are your memories! And you know what? They’re not real!”
Rose looked up, her hazel eyes full of hurt and reproach.
Jilly dropped the photographs into the box and walked to the corner of the room to lean against a tall box. “I’m sorry,” she said, more calmly than she felt. What she felt was that the ceiling was falling down on her. “I didn’t want to dredge all this muck back up. I’ve deliberately avoided thinking about any of this stuff for years, and believe me, it’s the last thing I’d intended to get into when I came home. But you forced open Pandora’s box, Rose. With Merry’s letter. Now all the demons are released and I can’t keep them from pouring out. I don’t mean to hurt you, or you, Birdie. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But it’s obviously not settled in my mind, because it still hurts me.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, either,” Rose said, her eyes filling.
Birdie opened her mouth, but shut it again. Her face looked older, tired. In the resulting thick silence, she picked up a handful of photographs and idly flipped through them. Then, intrigued, she grabbed another handful, and more quickly sorted through these. “Wait a minute,” she said with a ring in her voice. Rising to her knees she began digging into the box. She scanned a dozen photographs, then went to the clothes boxes and sorted through them while her sisters watched. “I think there’s a pattern here.”
Jilly and Rose didn’t reply, lost in their own thoughts.
“Yes, there’s no question about it,” Birdie continued. “Take a look, Rose. Jilly’s right. All the photographs are of us when we were very young. All these things that Mom collected were from the early years back when Merry was still a baby.”
“So what?” Jilly raked her hair from her face. She was dying for a cigarette.
“Jilly, don’t you see?” Birdie straightened to face her. “Mom wasn’t drinking then.”
Jilly took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips. She didn’t want to go where Birdie was leading.
“Look,” Birdie urged, and held some photographs out. “These pictures…they were happy times.”
Jilly didn’t take them. “You’re saying that she stopped saving and collecting all this stuff after she started drinking.”
“Right.” Birdie paused, letting the photos in her hand slip back into the box. “And she started drinking after Merry’s accident.”
There was a moment’s pause as the words sunk in.
“I don’t remember when exactly she started drinking,” said Rose. “I just remember there was a happy period of time when I was little, then there’s this blank when I don’t remember hardly anything, and then I remember being older and her being drunk a lot. But it makes sense that she’d start drinking after Merry’s accident.”
“Makes sense that it’s a blank period in your memory, too.”
“That’s so sad. Poor Mom. That explains it.”
Jilly turned to look at Rose carefully. There was something in the way she moved, or maybe it was the dim light, but with her tiny frame and pale strawberry-blond hair, she looked so much like their mother just then. “Rose, we don’t need to make excuses for her. Mom was an alcoholic.”
“No she wasn’t.”
“Oh, no, here we go….”
“Jilly,” said Birdie, her voice demanding, halting Jilly from walking off.
Jilly stopped and turned her head. Her face was impassive.
“I really don’t want to go into another of one of our ‘mom was an alcoholic’ debates. We all know she drank like a fish and if some of you can’t bear to give it a name—” she looked at Rose “—well, we each have to deal with it in our own way.”
“Can we just drop it?” asked Birdie with urgency. “That’s not the point, anyway. What I’m trying to show you is that you’re wrong about us. We had a wonderful childhood. The best. Mom was there, fully present for us every day while we were young. You and I were the lucky ones, Jilly. We were in junior high when it happened. Rose was only six. I’m old enough to remember, and while I’m not denying it was hell when Mom started drinking, when I think of my childhood, I think of the early days. Come on, Jilly, when we came up here you remembered the make-believe we use to play here. You can’t deny those weren’t some of the best days of our lives.”
“And you’re wrong, Jilly. I do remember,” Rose declared, her eyes flashing. “Like they happened yesterday. I remember all the games.”
“Like this one?” Birdie held out a photograph for them to see. In it, smiling, tanned Jilly, Birdie and Rose were shoulder-deep in the pool, all wearing dime-store tiaras and bright red lipstick. They were posing dramatically, clinging to the metal ladder, their legs held out like fins. Above them on the terrace stood two-year-old Merry, also wearing a tiara in her soft red ringlets. She was arching on tiptoe, her chubby fingers grasping either side of the pool’s ladder and smiling with red lips as bright as the summer sun overhead.
Jilly stared at the photograph. “Mermaids,” she murmured, immediately sucked in.
“That was my favorite game,” said Rose with a bittersweet smile, reaching up to take the picture. She studied the photograph as though imprinting it into her brain.
“It was everyone’s favorite,” replied Birdie.
“Merry sure was cute,” Jilly said, lowering herself to her haunches to look over Rose’s shoulder. She gave a short laugh. “A real show-stealer. When was this taken?” she asked, but in her heart, she knew.
“She’s got to be two years old,” Birdie replied. “So it would be the summer of the accident.”
Before the accident. The thought floated in the air. Jilly rose to stand and walked to the window, wrapping her arms tight around her. The glass was grimy and cracked, fitting for this view of the outline of the swimming pool. In her mind she saw a macabre collage: floating white limbs, streaming red hair, wavy blue water. In her ears she heard birdcalls that changed to a high, young girl’s voice calling her name. Jilly! Jilly! Help!
“Look at her eyes,” Birdie said with a thick voice. “You can just tell she’s excited to be playing with us.”
“Her greatest thrill was being one of the Four Seasons,” Rose said. “She always referred to us as that. I think it made her feel connected to us.” She shrugged her shoulders. “You heard her say it on the video.”
“Do you think Mom packed away the tiaras?” Jilly turned from the window to face them again. “That I’d like to have.” Her eyes rolled upward and she spread out her arms and said with a slight, dramatic bow, “A final tribute to my youth.”
“Most likely she buried them when she had the pool filled in with dirt,” said Birdie.
Jilly felt a quick stab in her gut at the image of the big truck dumping load after load of soil into the pit of the pool, burying the memory of the accident. After a few breaths the pain subsided. Rubbing her stomach, she joined them again on the floor. She reached for the photograph of the mermaids with a sigh of resignation and looked at it again.
“This was the end, you know,” she said after a while.
“The end of what?”
“The end of our childhood. The last game.” She looked at Birdie, then at Rose, her eyes narrowed under one raised brow. They didn’t reply but she could tell that they understood her meaning.
“I never think of it,” Rose said in a soft voice.
After a short silence Birdie said, “Me, neither, but maybe we should. Maybe we should talk about it. Don’t you think it’s time?”
“No,” Jilly replied curtly. “There’s nothing to be gained. The past is past. Let it lie.”
“But it isn’t past,” Rose argued. “That’s the problem.”
“A minute ago you told us that we were afraid to look at the way things really were, and now you’re telling us to let the past lie. So which is it?” asked Birdie.
Jilly shook her head and raised her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know and I don’t care! I mean, shit! How much guilt do you expect me to deal with in one weekend?” She dropped her hands in a machete-like sweep. “I’m out of here.” She tossed the photograph at Rose, swooped to her feet and almost ran out of the small room.
“Jilly!” Rose scrambled to her feet. “Wait! It’s not just your guilt,” she called after her. “Do you think you’re the only one who feels responsible for what happened to Merry?” She stood at the top of the stairs, calling after Jilly who was pounding down them. “This happened to all of us. Look at the photograph. We were all in the pool. All four of us!”
Jilly didn’t slow down, disappearing around the corner. Rose turned to Birdie, her face pinched, and asked plaintively, “Why does she always do that?”
“Do what?” Birdie felt weary and coated with grime and memories.
“Run away.”
Birdie shrugged sadly, then lugged herself up from the floor. “Let’s go find her.”
They looked in Jilly’s room, but she wasn’t there. Nor was she in the living room, the dining room or the kitchen. But Hannah, who was snacking on leftover cake, told them she saw her aunt Jilly head for the basement.
“Of course,” Birdie said as they made their way there. “She went to the Lower Kingdom.”
“My God, I haven’t heard that expression in forever.”
When they were children, they’d created worlds of the attic and the basement. With a child’s simple clarity, they saw the world divided into two classes: the rich and the poor. So they’d created the Upper Kingdom in the attic where the royalty reigned in light and splendor. And in the basement, the Lower Kingdom, where the poor and desolate survived.
“I always liked the Lower Kingdom better,” Rose said.
“Me, too. It was much more fun starving and begging for food than being royalty. Remember the chamois rag I used for my shawl?”
“Remember it? I coveted that chamois. And it wasn’t yours,” she said, her eyes teasing. “It was Jilly’s.” Before they opened the door to the basement, Rose paused to ask, “Do you think we should bother her? She’s been hit with a lot. Maybe she needs time alone.”
“It’s time to hit her with a lot,” Birdie said with a look of fierce determination on her face that Rose was accustomed to. “You’re right that Jilly always runs away. But as long as she does, she’ll never deal with the issues and they’ll just continue to haunt her. Why do you think she’s been married three times? It’s not unusual for women who’ve given up a child to have rocky relationships. We can’t solve her problems, but we can at least try to force her to ask the questions. She needs help, professional help. She went through that whole experience without a single word of counseling. That’s what haunts me. And God only knows what she went through as a young girl alone in France.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I’d have been that strong.”
“But let’s be gentle,” Rose cautioned.
“You forget, I love her, too.”
“Of course I haven’t forgotten.” Then, turning to open the door, she added, “But you can be pretty forceful, Birdie. I just don’t want to see Jilly hit with a Mack truck.”
Chastened, Birdie said, “I’ll be good.”
They found Jilly leaning against one of the steel poles in the basement, an unlit cigarette in her mouth. The cavernous, damp basement was depressingly dim. A Ping-Pong table was covered with boxes, and old tools and appliances lined the cement walls. They approached slowly, Rose tugging at her hair, Birdie tucking her hands in the rear pockets of her jeans.
Jilly saw them coming and slid down the pole in defeat.
“Mom, what are you guys doing down there?” Hannah called down from the top of the basement stairs.
“Just talking,” Birdie called back.
Hannah took a few steps down the stairs.
“Go on back up,” Birdie called. It was an order. “We’re talking privately.”
Jilly saw the tips of Hannah’s clunky black shoes and frayed jeans on the stair stop hesitatingly. The shoes turned around and she heard a heavy, angry pound as Hannah stomped away, slamming the basement door behind her.
“She could have come down,” Jilly said gently.
“No. We need to talk without kids around.”
Jilly felt hounded and looked longingly at the stairs. “I’m about talked out.”
“I know, but we didn’t like the way that ended upstairs,” Rose said, stepping closer, then plopping down on the floor beside Jilly.
“No big deal.” Jilly’s face was closed.
Birdie came to join them on the floor.
It seemed there was nowhere for Jilly to hide. They were determined to have this out and her butt was getting cold on the hard, damp cement. She fingered her cigarette.
“Go ahead and light up,” Rose said with a flip of her palm. “I only said ‘no smoking’ when Merry was alive because of her lungs and all. It doesn’t matter now.”
“Are you sure?” Jilly asked, but she was already pulling out her matches.
“They’ll kill you someday,” Birdie warned.
“Yeah, so?” She lit up and inhaled deeply, feeling better the moment she felt the burn of smoke snake down her throat. She exhaled lustily, not missing the disgusted expressions on their faces. She could not begin to explain to them why it didn’t matter to her in the least what happened to her lungs, her body, her life. She was old and washed up, anyway, filled with a darkness that was more insidious than any cancer could ever be.
“Well,” Jilly said, looking around. “Since we’re here in the Lower Kingdom, I believe it’s time for suffering and angst.”
“Why does it all seem so sad now?” Rose asked. “Playing here was so happy. I lost myself in the game. The little villages we made seemed so real, I never wanted to leave. I remember I used to cry when Mom called us upstairs.”
“Maybe it feels sad because we know those days are over,” Birdie replied. “Do you know what I remember the most? The confidence. And the optimism. I really believed I could do anything I wanted.” She took from her pocket the photograph of the four of them as mermaids by the pool. She looked at it for a while then said, “What happened to us? We were so full of dreams and imagination. We’re not the same girls we were then.”
Jilly laughed and shook her head. “I’m definitely not.”
“We are the same people,” Rose said. “We’ve just lost the girls somewhere deep inside of us. We’re remembering things none of us have even thought of in thirty years. This is exactly what I wanted to happen while we were all together. Jilly, Birdie, don’t you see? This is what Merry wanted, too. For us to remember. To bring us back to our childhood. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that she never left hers and she was so happy. I think that’s what this search for Spring is really all about.”
Jilly stretched out her long legs, crossing them at the ankle. Birdie’s face sagged at the jowls. Rose neatly sat on her knees, attentive, rather like a Japanese geisha.
“We should do it,” Rose said.
“Do what?” Jilly asked, looking up sharply.
“Find Spring.”
“Oh, come on…” Jilly moved to snuff out her cigarette with jabbing strokes.
“We’ve gone over this,” said Birdie wearily.
Rose took the photograph of the mermaids from Birdie and held it out to them. “It was her last request.”
“No.” Jilly’s voice was cold.
“Rose, let it go.”
“We owe her.”
Jilly and Birdie both silenced.
“We owe it to her to do this one thing,” Rose continued, stronger now. “Each of us, for our own reason. Merry never blamed us for what happened, never did anything but love us all her life and she never, ever asked anything of us before.”
Jilly suddenly felt a little breathless. Her heart was beating like a rabbit’s.
“You didn’t know Merry like I did,” Rose continued in a gentler voice. “That’s too bad, really. I don’t mean that as a criticism, but as a point of fact. Jilly, you left at eighteen and really never came back. You only knew her as some perpetual little girl that you loved from a distance. Birdie, you managed the finances and fielded the medical questions, but you never came just to chat with her, to get to know who Merry was as a person. You saw her as a responsibility. Maybe you both were afraid to find out who she was. You only saw her as the woman she never became.
“I know everyone talks about how much I’ve given up to take care of her, but it wasn’t like that. Not at all. She was gentle and sweet and a real hoot sometimes. Did you know she was a natural in the garden? She could make anything grow. And she loved to put out food for the birds and listed over two dozen different species she’d spotted right here in the yard. Merry was so curious about so many things. Most of all, she loved with all her heart. Merry would just sit and listen to me talk about anything, no matter how I went on and on. She’d know when I was sad and be cheery for me. And she loved to play games, all kinds of games. Oh, I can go on and on. There’s so much I can tell you about her…. I’d like to tell you. When you know her better, maybe you’ll understand her request.”
“Maybe you’re right, Rose. Maybe I do need to do this,” Birdie said quietly. “I’ve been unhappy for a long time and I don’t even know why. When I think about all the dreams I had growing up, how excited I was to wake up every morning…I miss that girl, you know? I want to be her again. I need to find her again. And I think maybe you were right, too, Jilly.” She took the photograph and looked at it again. Four young girls were beaming with joy and confidence. “Maybe this was the end of our childhood. But maybe by doing this for Merry, we can rediscover it.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut in a pained expression. “God knows, I’ve got to try something.”
“I need to do it because it was Merry’s last request,” explained Rose.
“I can’t,” Jilly whispered, feeling cornered.
Birdie opened her eyes. “You don’t have to. No one wants you to be unhappy. We’ll find Spring and deliver the time capsule.”
“No.” Her fear made her voice firm. “I don’t want you or anyone else searching for this child. Is that clear? Spring isn’t some idealistic concept. She’s not even a baby anymore. Spring, or whatever her name is, is a real person. An adult with a life of her own. We can’t just go track her down and barge into her life. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Have you thought of that?”
“We won’t force it. We could just gather some information and make a decision later. We don’t even have to meet her.”
“It could take years to track her down.”
“Then we’ll search for years.”
“I haven’t the first clue where to begin,” Jilly said, hunted. “I don’t remember any names.”
“That’s the easy part,” Birdie countered. “Those are just details, Jilly. The hard part is saying yes.”
“Please say yes, Jilly,” pleaded Rose. “We’ll search together. The three of us. We’ll be there for you, won’t we, Birdie?”
“Every step of the way.”
If she’d known what they were going to do, she never would have come back.
And yet, in her heart came the whispering that that wasn’t totally true. She’d always harbored in the most secret pocket of her mind the hope that someday she’d see her daughter again. Not meet her, that would be expecting too much. But just to see her child again, grown up. Yes, she was curious. Beyond that she wouldn’t even dream.
She opened her mouth, “yes” poised on her lips, then shook her head and climbed to her feet. “No. Please don’t ask me. I can’t do it. It’s over.”
Late that evening, Jilly sat on her bed, knees to her chest, a blanket wrapped around her, looking out the window at the yard. The room was dark. The moon, round and bright, cast its spell on the garden below. Bits of leftover snow looked like islands in the sea of dark mud and grass. Beyond lay the rectangle of sidewalk that surrounded the filled-in pool. When she heard the soft knock on her door, she rested her chin on her knees and called out, “It’s open.”
She heard the door squeak and Rose’s voice, soft and tentative. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She didn’t turn her head. She heard Rose’s footfall across the floor, then felt her weight on the mattress as she sat on the bed and moved closer.
“You didn’t come down for dinner. I was worried about you.”
“I wasn’t very hungry.”
They sat together for a while, not speaking, just staring out into the yard. Eventually, when the mood was right, Rose spoke.
“I’m sorry, Jilly. We shouldn’t have pushed you that way. We didn’t mean to upset you. We’ll do whatever you decide. You matter more than anything else to us.”
Jilly rested her forehead on her knees and fought back the tears, undone by kindness. She felt Rose’s hand on her knee, a silent comfort that abolished the enormous loneliness she’d been feeling. “I’m not blaming anyone,” Jilly began. “Except maybe myself. You don’t know what you’re asking me to do. How could you? Maybe if we’d talked about it years ago, when I came home from Marian House, everything would’ve been different. There wouldn’t have been all those secrets and maybe I wouldn’t have gone away.” She shrugged. “But that’s not the way it was. You have no idea how hurt I was. I felt that everyone wanted me out of their lives.”
“No, Jilly! We didn’t want you to go. We didn’t know what was going on.”
“I know, I know. I knew it then, but it didn’t stop the hurt.” Jilly turned her head to look out at the garden in the moonlight. “You know what I was doing when you knocked on the door? I was looking out there remembering what it was like when I was about thirteen.” She rested her chin back on her knees. “One of my favorite things in the summer was to lie up here in front of the window and just feel the breeze against my skin and watch the bats swoop down to skim the water in the pool. It was so peaceful. Used to make me sleepy. Birdie was right. Those were great days. Whenever I think of them I feel a longing that aches right here.” She pointed to her chest. “I was so…” She searched for the word. “Content. That’s the last time I can remember feeling that way. After that summer I went a little wild, you know?” She turned to face her sister. Rose was listening without speaking. Jilly liked that about her. She knew when to be quiet.
“Maybe not a little. A lot wild.” She turned away again. “I ruined it, you know? I ruined it for everyone.”
“That’s a lot of blame to take on your own shoulders.”
“Yep.”
“You just told me that you don’t blame us. Jilly, you have to stop blaming yourself. It was a long time ago. You were so young. Let it go.”
“How can I when you want me to go on this search and dig it all up again? I’ve been thinking and thinking about it and I don’t think I should find her. I’ll only mess up her life like I’ve messed up my own. Besides, she’s lucky I gave her up. I’m not the mother type. I’m not responsible. I’m not dependable. I’m not—”
“Stop beating yourself up! Yes, you put your child up for adoption but you did it for all the right reasons. You say yourself you didn’t have the support you needed. What choice did you have? You were a child making an adult’s decision. You did the best that you could. But now you deserve to forgive yourself.”
“Maybe she hasn’t forgiven me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t think there’s anything to forgive.”
To Jilly’s surprise, her eyes filled with tears that overflowed and trickled down her cheeks. Alone with Rose, in the dark, she allowed them to fall unchecked. Her sister sat beside her, silent. “I’m afraid, Rose,” she confessed. “When I think of having to contact this child—this woman—I feel a huge, gaping gulf of fear that I just can’t get past. I’m terrified of going back there.”
“If you don’t go back and clean up the issues you left unresolved, you’ll be stuck dealing with the past forever.”
Jilly took a shuddering breath. “What should I do, Rose?”
Rose took her hand and offered a reassuring smile. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to come home.” The words slipped out without thought.
“Oh, Jilly.” Rose leaned forward then and put her arms around her.
Jilly hadn’t realized how much she needed to feel that just now. She felt safe. She wanted to feel again the blissful, innocent peace of that sweet summer when she was content with the world and who she was in it. To feel that way again would be worth all it took, and it was going to take a lot.
Jilly saw that gulf of fear and denial spread out before her and knew she had to go through her past to get over it. She grabbed Rose’s hand, closed her eyes, took a breath and, feeling like she was jumping off the cliff, exhaled her answer.
“Yes.”