14
Early Tuesday morning, Bethany wiped her feet on the mat before stepping into the guest flat’s bright living room. It was hard to believe this was the same dreary space, filled with old junk, that it was a few months ago. Rose had transformed it and she’d done it on a shoestring budget. Now it was a cheerful space with buttery yellow painted walls, white woodwork, a large window that let in bright light. The window overlooked Rose’s flower garden near the barn. The transformation was amazing. The guest flat was much cooler, too, than the house above it. “Geena?”
“In here!” Geena was in the bedroom, packing up. “You’re just in time to give me a hand. I thought I’d move my things up to the house so I can clean the guest flat when we get back later today.”
“You don’t have to clean anything,” Bethany said. “You’re our guest. Mim and I have it down to a routine.” She plumped a pillow. “Besides, if the heat wave doesn’t break, I’m sure those folks will cancel.”
“Supposed to rain tomorrow.” Geena looked around the room and grabbed her purse. “Well? Ready to go meet your mother?”
Bethany took a deep breath. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
An hour or so later, they were driving into Hagensburg. “At the next street make a right onto the bridge,” droned the GPS in Geena’s car.
“Almost there,” Geena said.
This might be a huge mistake, Bethany realized. Over the years she had learned to live with her mother’s abandonment. Why did it need to change now?
Bethany felt her stomach lurch. Coming here had been a bad idea. A really bad idea. And she found herself simply wishing she could talk to . . . not to Geena, not to Rose, but to Jimmy Fisher.
Where had that idea come from? Why would she feel a longing for the counsel of Jimmy Fisher, of all people? What might he say to a complicated situation like this, anyway? What could he possibly know?
A ridiculous notion! But she could almost hear his voice: You’ve gone this far, Bethany. Don’t lose courage now. You need to get your answers if you’re ever going to get through this gray stretch in your life.
The car stopped in front of an old but cared-for house with wooden ramps leading up to the front door. Bethany took in a deep breath. This was it. This was where her mother was. An eerie sense of something lost moved through her chest, cold and hollow.
Geena turned off the ignition. “Let’s go get your answers.”
They pressed a doorbell button and waited until someone came to the door. An older woman, skin like chocolate and hair like a salt-and-pepper Brillo pad, looked Bethany up and down as if she recognized her.
“We’re here to see Mary Schrock,” Geena said at last. “She might go by the name of Mary Miller.”
The woman was still eyeing Bethany. “Didn’t expect you folks till the end of July.”
Bethany was confused. “I’ve never been here before.”
Now the woman looked confused. “Who are you?”
“I’m Mary’s daughter. I’d like to meet her.”
The woman rolled her eyes and sighed. “Oh Lawd—jez like that boy that come ’round here awhile back.”
“My brother, Tobe.”
“Child, whatever you’re looking for, you ain’t gonna find it in your mama.”
Shootfire! Everywhere Bethany went, she hit the same brick wall. Everybody thought they knew what was best for her. “I’d like to decide that for myself.”
Geena put a calming hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, this is Bethany Schrock. She’d just like the chance to meet her mother. That’s all. Seems like a daughter should be able to meet her mother.”
The woman fixed her gaze at Geena, as if she just noticed her. “And who are you?”
“I’m the Reverend Spencer. A friend of the family’s.”
Something changed instantly in the woman as soon as she learned Geena was a minister. It was like a free pass. She opened the door wide. “Mary’s in her room.”
Bethany and Geena followed behind the woman. They went through a room where a few elderly women sat on the couch, watching television. Only one noticed Geena and Bethany and stared at them.
“Mind if I ask,” Geena said, “what kind of home is this?”
The woman stopped and turned toward Geena. “It’s a home for ladies with mental health issues.”
“What kind of mental health issues?”
“Bipolar, manic depressive, clinical depression, psychotic, schizophrenia, paranoia—”
“So my mother runs this home?”
The woman looked at Bethany as if she had a loose bolt. “Say what?”
“I thought you were taking us to her office.”
The woman’s face softened in understanding. “Oh, baby. No, no, no, no, no. She ain’t running the place. She’s a patient. She’s been here for a long, long time. Longer than I’ve been here.”
Everything went upside down. A funny tingling feeling traveled through Bethany, starting with her toes. By the time it reached her head, she felt she might faint. The room started to spin and she dipped lower, as if her knees might give way, but Geena grasped her around the shoulders.
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
Bethany nodded. She had to be strong. She just had to. She took a deep breath. In, out.
Geena turned to the woman, still holding Bethany’s shoulders. “Why is Mary here?”
The woman’s back went up. “ ’Cuz it’s better than an institution. We try to make it homelike. Most of the staffers have been here for years and years. They know all these patients. They treat them like family.”
“I meant . . . what’s the diagnosis?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Geena held her gaze.
“It’s them stupid HIPAA laws.” The woman pressed her lips together. “I could lose my job.”
“Please,” Bethany whispered.
The woman looked at Geena. “You really a preacher? You ain’t wearing a collar. You don’t look much like a holy roller.”
“I can assure you . . . I am an ordained minister.”
The woman hesitated, wavering. She turned to Bethany. “Your mother is a chronic schizophrenic.”
“What is that?” Bethany asked, confused. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Her brain is sick, baby.”
“It’s a mental disorder that makes it hard for the patient to tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t,” Geena said.
“I don’t understand,” Bethany said, her voice gravelly and dry. “How does someone get schiz . . . schizo . . .”
“Schizophrenia,” Geena finished.
“Was my mother born that way? Had she always been sick?”
The caregiver glanced up and down the hall, then lowered her voice. “From what I heard about your mama, it started with acute schizophrenia when she was in her late teens, then it went on to chronic schizophrenia. She’s on some heavy antipsychotic meds. They help her with her hallucinations, long as she stays on it—and she can be tricky that way—but even on her best days, she can’t take care of herself and she can’t live on her own.” She started walking down the hall again and stopped in front of a door. “Baby, you look awful pale. Why do you want to do this?”
Bethany followed behind her. “I need to.”
“You sure you’re up for this?”
Bethany closed her eyes. Was she? She heard Jimmy’s voice: You’ve come this far. And you’re stronger than you think. “Yes.”
The woman opened the door. “Mary, honey, you got some company.”
Bethany hesitated before she stepped toward the open door. It was a small room with a single bed, a nightstand, and a chair in the corner next to the window. Curled up in the chair was a small woman, staring out the window, her long dark hair pulled back severely into a ponytail.
As Bethany crossed the room and stood beside the chair, she could feel her heart pounding. There was a salty, bitter taste in her mouth that she recognized as fear. Her gaze searched the woman’s face, then went slowly over the rest of her. She was small boned and fine featured and her skin was so pale that Bethany could see the blue veins on the insides of her wrists. Eyes shaped like Tobe’s—half moons with those thick lashes that Bethany had always envied—but these eyes seemed flat and empty.
Bethany groped for a thought, something she could say. How did a person introduce herself to the woman who gave her life? “My name is Bethany. Bethany Schrock.” She enunciated each word slowly and carefully.
The woman—this was her mother!—blinked her eyes rapidly, but looked at Bethany without recognition.
She tried to clear the gritty feeling out of her throat. “Do you remember me? I’m your girl. I’m Bethany. Your daughter.” She reached out to touch her arm, but the woman flinched. “Tobe is my brother. Dean Schrock was my father. Your husband.”
The woman clutched and unclutched her hands. The lines at the corners of her mouth pulled deeper.
Bethany crouched down so she was face-to-face with the woman. “I came because I wanted to see you.” She tried to sound calm but couldn’t quite keep the quiver out of her voice. “I’ve missed you. My whole life, I’ve missed you. I’ve never stopped missing you.”
“No,” her mother whimpered. She drew her legs up tight against her chest and started to rock back and forth, her arms tightly around her knees, her eyes squeezed shut.
Bethany noticed her hands. She held her hand up next to the woman’s. “Look. Look how similar our hands are. Even the nails. Tobe always teases me that my hands are small. They’re just like yours.”
The woman responded by balling her hands into a fist and ducking her chin to her chest. “He said not to give it to anyone.”
“Give what?” Bethany asked. “Who said such a thing to you?”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Her whole body was so rigid it shook.
The caregiver stepped in and put a hand on Bethany’s shoulder. “She’s getting agitated. Maybe you need to come back another time, baby. This isn’t a good day for her. Don’t feel bad. Even before you came, I knew it wasn’t a good day for her.”
Bethany reached out a hand toward the woman’s shoulder, then dropped it so it hung limply at her side. Slowly, she rose and walked toward Geena, waiting by the door, then turned back for a final look. The woman was sucking in great gasps of air, breathing, breathing, breathing frantically, as if she dared not stop even for an instant.
This was her mother. This was her mother!
Tobe was right. She should have left it alone. Once you know something, you can’t unknow it.
Bethany turned and stumbled toward the door, fumbling for the tissue she put in her dress pocket. She squeezed her eyes shut against the burn of tears, but they came anyway.
The caregiver told them to wait for her in the hallway while she tended to Mary. “Any doubt if she’s actually your mother?” Geena asked. “There could be a mistake.”
Bethany shook her head, splattering tears. “No doubt.” Those eyes, that hair, even the shape of her fingernails. There was no mistaking the family resemblance. She dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, then lifted her head slowly and glanced upward. “All my life, I assumed my mother was living a grand life somewhere, happy to be rid of us, never giving us another thought. I never ever imagined her life to be . . . to be like . . . that.”
The caregiver came out of the room and walked them to the front entrance.
“Can you tell me anything more?” Bethany asked. “How long has my mother been here?”
“Don’t know. I started here about six years ago. All I know is that she’s been here a long, long time, and her bills are paid for every month, right on time. That’s all I know.”
Geena tilted her head. “When we first arrived, you said something about not expecting anyone until the last day of the month. What did you mean by that?”
“That’s when the ladies come to visit her. Three or four of them, like clockwork. They pretty her hair and fuss over her. The last day of every month, rain or shine, unless it’s a Sunday. Then they come on Monday.”
“What made you think Bethany was part of that group?”
The caregiver looked Bethany up and down. “Well, because she’s dressed the same—with them little bonnets.”
The caregiver nodded. “They sit and quilt with Mary. It’s her best day. She’s always real calm after they visit.”
Bethany leaned forward. “Did you say they quilt?”
“Yes. They’re a quilting group, they say. Call themselves the Sisters’ Bee.”