“My maternal meddling. When you were in high school, I intercepted a note Layce left on your car confessing her feelings for you,” said Roslyn, and 4B could sense her mother’s shame. Nora started to say something, but her mother stopped her. “I didn’t read the whole thing. I just didn’t know what it was at first. It was Boating Days Weekend. All of you kids went to a dance at the Marina and then you all slept over at the Club House as the adults celebrated with an all-night bonfire. Your father and I were part of the host committee, so we had to stay to supervise the collection of all of the members and the kids the next morning. We were the last to leave, except you, who decided to go out on the water before going home. I noticed the note on the windshield of your car as I was walking by. I thought it was a flyer and pulled it off. When I got to my car I read the first lines, which explained she had feelings for you as more than a friend. Your father and I had always suspected something between you girls. You were always as thick as thieves. You thought the sun and moon rose and fell because of her. We didn’t know if anything ever really happened between you, and when I asked you, you said no. I was relieved. Your father and I were going to let it take its course, whatever it was, but I was terrified she was confusing you. So when she came by the house a day or so after I found the note…”
“You thought I was gay? You suspected we were… that I…” 4B tried to find the words. She wasn’t sure why she was having this response. Like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been doing. It was true her parents thought of her as heterosexual, at least she assumed that, what with her engagement to Kev. And, other than the poem, which didn’t have a date, none of the journals had indicated she thought of herself as anything other than straight back then, even if what she felt for Nora definitely challenged that. Since she’d been back, she’d deliberately not thought too hard on the subject, and it was easy not to dwell on it when so many other topics were competing for her attention—missing Nora; what to do about Kev; the residency; being a doctor or what she felt was someone else’s career; finding her memory. But now that she thought about it, why wasn’t there any mention in her journals? They spoke of her relationships with boys—first kisses, the first time she had sex with Kev. She hadn’t gone into detail about the events—not like she did with other things—but she mentioned them. Now, talking with her mother, she was nervous, anxious, even.
“I know. Not my proudest moment. I’ve always been a big supporter of gay rights. But when it came down to the possibility that my own daughter might be gay, I had a hard time with it. When you and Kev started to date, it all became a moot point. I’m not proud of my reaction…”
“When you warned her off, what did you do?”
“She came by the house a few days after I intercepted the note and I handed it back to her. I asked her not to ruin your life. That was all. I didn’t yell or cause a scene. But she didn’t come by the house much afterwards, and when she did, she avoided me like the plague. Her reaction caused a rift with you two for a little while, but you both got over it. When you get your memory back, you’ll remember you and I have already talked about this. Actually, yelled about it, would be more accurate. You weren’t happy with me at all back then, and in hindsight, I don’t blame you at all. I’m ashamed of my reaction. It was based out of fear and ignorance, and I know if you had turned out to be a lesbian, we would have worked through it. It’s easy now to say I’m grateful you aren’t—I know that being gay can sometimes be hard, and a mother can’t be faulted for wanting her daughter to be protected from the pain that heartless people can inflict in the name of their religion or out of plain ignorance—but if things were different, I would be your biggest supporter. Hindsight is a powerful tool. If I could go back, I would have handled all of it differently and I would have been more supportive of Layce, too. She deserved more from me and I failed her.”
4B didn’t know what to say. Thankfully, her mother didn’t seem to require a response. But, as her mother had spoken, nameless anxiety had tightened in her chest. And the feeling that was present so often when she learned something about her past, welled up inside of her. She acknowledged that she still hadn’t told her mother about her and Nora. She just assumed it was because of her engagement to Kev. But maybe it had more to do with her worry about her mother’s long ago reaction. Maybe it was both. She wanted to say something now, but uncertainty made her hold onto the information for a little bit longer.
The discussion turned to other things, and after a while, her mother went into her office and 4B poured herself another cup of coffee, and took the boxes up to her room. She went through the rest of the contents, and among the artifacts of a life she felt no connection to, she found a diamond ring, most likely, the ring Kev had mentioned to her the night of the fundraiser. She wondered why she wasn’t wearing it.
Finally, she stacked the journals next to her on the bed and began to read. Her forgotten coffee grew cold, and a call from her mother downstairs about lunch went unanswered, so Miriam appeared and placed her lunch on her nightstand, where it too went untouched. The chronicles of her adult life were more sporadically entered, and far less angst ridden, but more interesting than her adolescent ramblings. As she got to know her emerging adult, some of the questions that had plagued her started to get answered.
She had gone to Harvard University to study premed, along with Layce, who studied architecture, and Kev, who had started the year before in law. While there, she had nearly aced the MCAT, and when she graduated from Harvard, since she had her pick of medical schools, she chose Johns Hopkins. Baltimore just happened to be where Layce went for her graduate studies in engineering. It wasn’t clear whether one followed the other, or whether it had been a coincidence that they both ended up in Baltimore, but either way, Elizabeth had been ecstatic about being down there with Layce. She’d considered following Kev to Stanford, but she’d listed the pros and cons of either place, and Baltimore had won out. Though she never said it in her journals—her style of journaling had become terser—underneath it all, it was clear she had just wanted to be closer to Layce. She had taken Kev’s devotion for granted, while she had always felt the need to reassure herself about Layce’s friendship, as if it were a tenuous thing. There had been no mention at all about the incident her mother had told her about.
The journal spoke of an ideal period where the two women were always together, braving the arduous life of graduate school. During the summer between first and second year, they went on a school-sponsored mission to Guatemala, where they provided vaccines and helped build homes in remote villages. For a while, everything was perfect.
Then Layce met Andy. Andy was short for Andrea. And the dynamic of their friendship shifted. They still went on their summer trips to South America, but their closeness seemed to drift, and at about the same time, the journal entries started to get further apart. The last entry in the most recent journal had been from the summer before Elizabeth’s last year in med school. Layce had already graduated and had moved to Los Angeles with Andrea, and Elizabeth was immersed in her studies, anxious about her final year of medical school, and uncertain about what she wanted to do when she finished. She had been grateful for a heavy course load, and full of guilt over not attending Layce‘s wedding. It had been a choice between going on what had become an annual trip to Guatemala or attending the wedding in L.A. And although Elizabeth expressed a sincere hope that her best friend would find a lasting happiness with her new wife, she had chosen Guatemala, with a thin justification that she didn’t want to leave the organization short two of its regular members. She’d sent a thoughtful present instead.
The last entry read, 4B closed the journal, placed it on her nightstand, and curled up in a ball. A deep depression settled over her, and though it was early afternoon and she fought the urge, all she wanted to do was slip into a forgetful sleep. More than anything, though, she wanted Nora. They hadn’t spoken that day, and Nora missed her terribly. She picked up her phone to call her,
but was frustrated when her phone wouldn’t turn on. She remembered she hadn’t plugged it in the night before. With a disgruntled sigh, she got up, plugged it into the charger, and lay back down on the bed, waiting the few minutes it would take for it to get enough juice to make the call.
4B woke late the next morning dressed in the clothes she had been wearing the day before. She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she remembered her mother coming in to check on her, murmuring something about a golf tournament and a dinner afterward, pulling the covers over her, turning out the light. Remnants of her dreams floated in her mind. Visions of a falling baby, but this time it began with her almost being swept away by a raging river as she tried desperately to hold onto the mother and the infant. Her stomach felt the lurch from the dream she’d had so often, at the moment when the baby began to fall from the mother’s arms into the river below. She closed her eyes and tried to forget, but more and more details of it filled her mind.
A storm raged so hard, it penetrated the canopy of a dense tropical rainforest. Drops, heavy and fat battered her. She was soaked through, and her clothes clung to her, water streamed from the bill of her well-worn Orioles cap. The ground was muddy, sucking at her sandaled feet as rivulets of water ran over them, and she grabbed at plants to keep her footing as she slipped down a gentle slope. She shouted a warning to a woman holding a baby, begging her not to cross the stream, which was swollen several times its normal size from the rain that grew stronger as it continued to fall. The woman couldn’t hear, or didn’t listen; two of her children were already across and they were calling to her, their voices drowned out by the deluge around them, but the fear on their faces was plain to see.
Elizabeth finally caught up to the woman, who was about to try to ford the stream using a cable stretching across the water. The cable already dipped below the surface in the middle, when normally, it hung a foot or more above the water. The raft that was normally there to traverse the stream via the cable was nowhere to be seen. Elizabeth tried to stop her, but the woman waved Elizabeth off and waded into the torrent up to her knees, one hand on the cable and one arm clutching the wrap tightly swaddling the baby to her body. Horror filled Elizabeth when the woman slipped, and she sprang forward, grabbing the back of the woman’s tee shirt with one hand, the cable with her other. The rushing stream nearly swept her off her feet, but she held on to the cable and tried to keep her feet under her as she held on to the woman.
The stream, now a raging river, continued to rise in the pouring rain. The woman’s struggles twisted the shirt in her fist, but still she held on, her feet struggling to keep purchase on the rocks beneath them. The children across the river ran up the embankment, fleeing the rising water. She lost sight of them as she focused her attention on clinging to both the cable and the woman. Then, the cable she clung to was under water and she had to let go, or go down with it. A broken branch made the decision for her when it side swept her, knocking her off her feet. She let go of the cable, but kept her grip on the woman’s shirt. She was a strong swimmer. She positioned herself feet first down the river with the woman between her legs, keeping her and the baby afloat in the raging water, debris sweeping past them.
The woman fought against her, struggling to keep her infant above the water. They were swept toward a footing of a washed away bridge, a miniscule island in the middle of the racing current. Elizabeth’s feet hit the concrete piling and a wave of water arced over them as the rushing water battered them. The strength of the current kept them pressed to the piling, and Elizabeth grabbed onto one of the metal bars that acted as steps up the side of the concrete. She pulled the woman and baby toward the steps and helped the woman climb up, and then pulled herself up with rubbery arms and leaden legs. The rain had stopped, but the water continued to rise, and her wet clothes tried to suck her down, but she made it up and collapsed on the small, rough platform above the water.
The woman yelled at her, tearing at her clothes as she pointed at the water below them. Elizabeth was too tired to respond and the noise made it difficult to hear. Then the woman was pointing skyward, and Elizabeth had enough strength to open her eyes. A helicopter, unexpected, appeared above them. Impossible in the rain. Un milagro. A miracle.
The woman crossed herself. Elizabeth did too, even though she wasn’t religious. A rope was lowered. It blew in the wind, but Elizabeth, with a surge of adrenaline, was able to catch it, and somehow, with arms that felt like jelly, she fixed the harness attached to it around her and the woman, and they were pulled up just as the water overtook the concrete island. The helicopter was buffeted in the wind and the rope began to swing. The woman lost hold of her baby and it rolled in slow motion out of the material in which it was wrapped. Elizabeth reached for it and caught it, pulling it back. At first she thought it was only the fabric and her heart froze, but she had a hold of the baby too, and she pulled it to her. The woman flailed trying to take the baby from her, and the harness loosened, but did not come off. Elizabeth nearly dropped the baby again, but still managed to hook her arm under the woman’s armpit, and held on to both of them for dear life, even as she tried to keep the harness from loosening more. She held her breath and gritted her teeth, willing the harness to hold. They were finally pulled into the helicopter.
Elizabeth collapsed on the floor and someone had to pull her legs in for her, because she had no more strength to swing her legs up the last few inches. Someone else unhooked the harness. She rolled over in time to see the woman grab the wailing baby from the arms of one of the men who had pulled them to safety. The woman began to cry. The man in fatigues who had pulled them in started to cry. Elizabeth realized she was crying, too. She had cried in the dream and she cried right there, lying in yesterday’s clothes, soft from sleep, surprised her wet hair wasn’t clinging to her face or her sodden clothes weren’t chaffing her puckered skin.
It wasn’t a dream. Elizabeth knew that now. It was a memory. Heavy, unstopping rains had plagued the mission during her last trip to Guatemala. It was supposed to be the dry season, but El Nino had brought the heavy rains that hadn’t stopped. Instead of falling each afternoon for a couple of hours and stopping, they’d persisted, day and night, until the ground could hold no more and the rivers and reservoirs were full. Instead of building houses, she and her team had fortified existing shacks and dug diversion ditches to guide the never-ending water away from structures and livestock.
In addition to vaccinations, she’d treated colds and lacerations. She’d worked day and night to help the locals. Then the dam upstream started to fail. Water levels in the normally placid stream next to the village rose. She’d saved the woman and her baby, while floods had claimed the lives of many of the villagers she’d gone down to help. The woman had been reunited with her other children, and the infant and her small family had survived in real life, but in her dreams, the baby always fell.
When the rain eventually stopped. Elizabeth was grateful for the nearly around-the-clock work details she was given, along with every able-bodied person in the nearby villages—except when the cleanup entailed digging out bodies. But, even that was better than not working. It was muddy and difficult, but the work kept her from remembering. However, when exhaustion claimed her, the dream started, the baby began to roll out of the sodden fabric, and in her dream, she didn’t catch it. The baby always fell. Exhausted from lack of sleep and anxious, Elizabeth was forced to leave her trip early. She made excuses, but she hadn’t told anyone the real reason why she left—that the dreams of a baby falling from her arms were haunting her even when the work of finding real bodies did not. She didn’t even really know why herself.
Now, safe and dry in her childhood room, 4B ran to the bathroom and threw up. When her last heave subsided, she collapsed where she was, curled up on the tile floor and cried. She wept as she hadn’t wept in years, until her sides ached and her throat felt raw. And still she cried some more.
Hours later, 4B awoke on the bathroom floor. The house was dark and
silent. Her eyes felt sandy, her mouth was dry, and she had a sinus headache. She pushed herself up and sat wearily, cross-legged on the nubby bathroom throw rug that smelled of rubber from the anti-skid underneath. She pulled herself up using the counter and drank water from her hands at the sink. Her hair was a mess, her face was blotchy, and finally, she knew, at least in part, who she was.
She wandered over to her bed, noting it was dark outside and an entire day had slid by. Still, she sat down on the edge of the mattress, wanting to lie back down, exhausted. The journals were stacked on the bedside table, and she picked them up one by one. Small pieces of her past started to link together. She stopped with the journal with the missing pages, the only one with a removable leather cover, and she peeled the leather away as if she had done it before. Hidden between the leather and the book, as she knew they would be, were the missing pages, along with a folded piece of white paper with the name Eliza printed neatly on one side. Layce was the only one who had ever called her Eliza. 4B put the folded square to the side and began to read the loose journal pages.
Something happened tonight. Something big. I kissed Layce. Yes. I wrote it out loud!!!!! I kissed her. And she kissed me back. I didn’t mean to. It just happened, but I’m glad it did. I think it settles some things. But before I get into that, I just need to say it was fantastic!!! Better than fantastic! It was incredible! Actually, there are no words for how it was. It felt like I stepped out of my own body and was floating. No one ever told me a kiss could feel like that. It never has with Kev or Josh. They just try to stick their tongue down your throat. It’s enough to make you gag! But Layce kissed me so softly, and she put her arms around me, and I thought I would melt away. I was the first person she has ever kissed. I know this for a fact, because we talk about those things. I always thought it strange that she made it to her senior year without ever kissing a guy—even Josh, since everyone has kissed Josh. I wish I had waited, too. I’m sure she never expected she would kiss me. She didn’t kiss like someone who never has, though. God. None of this makes sense. I don’t know what I feel. Good and a little scared. What does it mean? My mother will NOT approve. I know she’s supposed to be gay friendly, being a Dem. Senator, but I’ve heard her talking to dad. I know they wonder about Layce. Just because she’s athletic and doesn’t want a boyfriend. I almost laughed when I heard my mom tell my dad she’s too pretty to be gay. She would die if she knew I started it. Besides, what about Kev? Even his parents expect us to get married and have 2.5 children. Just pop out the perfect family. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. Especially now that I know what it feels like to kiss Layce. There was more, too. I almost don’t want to write it down. I don’t want it to sound cheap or dirty, but there was touching. I know it’s not real sex, but it sort of is. We had to be quiet because the rest of the team was sleeping right next to us. I’m positive no one knew what we were doing. No one looked at us weird the next morning at least. Even if they did, I wouldn’t care. Not now, when I know Layce feels the same way I do. At least I think she does. You don’t kiss someone like THAT and not feel the same way. Anyway, we kissed and touched each other all night and it felt so nice to sleep right next to her. I want to ask her to spend the night, but I wonder if she’ll think all I’m after is more of what happened…and I am…kind of…but not like a guy would be. I really care about her and it’s natural to want that kind of closeness, right? Ugh! God, I could scream!!!
Chasing Mercury Page 32