by Eva Pohler
Ellen lifted her chin. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll get to that part. Let me tell you this the way I need to tell you this. Okay?”
Ellen apologized.
“So, I took food over to the Gold House three times a day. Right after lunch, when Millie usually napped, I went over with books and read to Amy. That’s how I taught her to read. Then every Sunday, I took her to my house so she could have her bath—always upstairs so we didn’t disturb Millie.”
Ellen knew he really meant, so Millie didn’t find out what I was up to.
They sat in silence for a moment as the waitress topped off their mugs.
“After about three years of this sneaking around, I got tired of the lies. If I didn’t clean the dishes right away, Millie noticed an extra dirty dish. Or she would search for our supper leftovers for a midnight snack and be surprised to find none. It didn’t bother me at first, but over time, it took away some of the joy of it all. But then something happened that made it impossible for me to ever tell my wife. Something I’ve dreaded ever since.”
Ellen felt the blood leave her face. Nausea crept up from her stomach to her throat.
Tears ran down Bud’s cheeks. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Has it really been two hours?”
She looked up at a clock on the wall across the diner. It was a quarter to six.
Bud stood from his chair. “I need to get home to give my mother-in-law her next dose of medicine. And I need to get supper on the stove.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ellen said softly. “You can’t stop now.”
“Meet me here tomorrow at the same time?” His eyes beseeched hers. “Please?”
“I’ll be here,” she said, but she wasn’t so sure he would.
Chapter Eighteen: Revelations
Paul was not at home when Ellen arrived that evening. Wondering where he was, she took her phone from her purse to call him. It was dead.
Great. She and Paul had gotten rid of their landline a few years ago, which meant she couldn’t call him without plugging her cell phone in to a charger. It had been his idea to let the landline go. She hadn’t liked it, preferring the old-fashioned phone to her cell. She could never remember to charge it. Only lately had she gotten better at it, but that didn’t mean she didn’t occasionally let it die.
She plugged it in and gave it a few minutes to get a charge while she went to the bathroom and changed clothes. She supposed there was plenty of leftover barbecue, so she didn’t need to cook. Maybe Paul had gone to the store to pick something up to go with it. When she finally returned to her phone, she found eight missed calls—seven from Paul and one from her brother, Jody. Adrenaline pumped through her body at the realization that something must have happened. She tried Paul’s number but got no answer. Before dialing her brother, she decided to listen to her voicemail.
The first one was from her brother:
Hi, Ellen. It’s Jody. I hope you’re doing well. Anyway, I’m calling because Mom didn’t answer the phone this afternoon. We talk every Sunday at the same time, and this is the first time in years that she didn’t pick up. (This surprised Ellen. She didn’t know that about Jody and her mother.) I’ve tried every hour for four hours and still nothing. Would you mind going over there and checking on her?
The next message was from Paul:
Your brother called. He’s trying to get ahold of your mother. Call me as soon as you can.
Then another from Paul:
I’m with your mother in the hospital at Brook Army Medical Center. They think she may have had a stroke. Please head over here when you get this message.
Ellen stuffed her phone back into her purse and rushed to her room to change again. As fast as she could, she raced to her car, and, as she headed to the hospital, she tried to call Paul over the speaker phone.
Still no answer.
A terrible thought ran through her mind, that perhaps she and Tanya now belonged to the motherless club. Even though Ellen had never been close to her mother, it was still a strange and frightening feeling to imagine herself without one. It made her loneliness more profound, as if she was a small vessel at sea without an anchor. Her mother had been a kind of anchor, even if she’d been little else. Her mother’s existence had made Ellen feel grounded. Ellen had a past and a sense of home and of roots when she thought of her mother. The thought of Ima being gone made Ellen feel like she was untethered.
She listened to the rest of her messages—updates from Paul about her mother’s condition. The most recent one said that she’d been moved from the ICU into room 231B. Ellen felt a wave of relief. She tried to call Paul again but got no answer.
***
The following morning, Ellen cancelled her classes from the hospital and called Sue and Tanya and told them about her mother’s stroke. The doctors expected a full recovery but it might take several days, and they wanted to keep her mother at least until the end of the week.
Paul was still asleep when Ellen arrived home around 9:00 a.m. The buzz-saw sound of his snoring alerted her before she reached the bedroom door. Although she wanted to change clothes, she decided not to disturb him. She stripped down and fell into her son’s old bed. It occurred to her that she still called it her son’s old bed, even though she’d been sleeping in it for five years. Wasn’t it about time she admitted to herself that this was her bed?
She’d hoped to fall asleep, but she had too many thoughts raging through her mind. The ghost girl wasn’t a ghost. Her name was Amy. Amy’s mother might be alive at the state hospital—if that Cynthia was indeed Amy’s Cynthia. Bud’s bizarre relationship with Amy had yet to be revealed. And Ellen’s mother had nearly died.
Tears formed in Ellen’s eyes. Her mother had nearly died. She hadn’t died. But almost. Shouldn’t Ellen take advantage of this second chance to right things with Ima Frost? Where to begin?
At some point, Ellen must have fallen asleep, because it was just after two o’clock when she next opened her eyes. She had missed her opportunity to go see Cynthia, for there wasn’t enough time to drive to the state hospital now and get to Earl Abel’s by three-thirty to meet Bud.
She went to shower and discovered that Paul was already gone. He must have decided to go into work. She’d thanked him again and again at the hospital for helping her mother, but he’d been so exhausted, that he’d left not long after she’d arrived.
Ships passing. That’s what they’d become.
As she drove toward the diner, Ellen had the panicky feeling that Bud wouldn’t be there, making her decision to skip the state hospital visit an unnecessary sacrifice. He’d been so shaky and pale and sweaty the previous afternoon that he’d likely be unable to muster up the courage to endure the whole ordeal a second time. If she didn’t find him at the diner, she would go to his house and force the confession out of him. He had dragged her too far into his story to quit it now.
She entered the diner and held her breath as she scoured the room. Within seconds, she saw him already seated at a table in the back. She had worried for nothing. Of course he was here. He needed to tell his story as much as she needed to hear it.
“They were kept in the attic,” Bud said before she had even sat down. Then he added, “I’m sorry. You want a cup of coffee?”
He waved to a waitress as she asked, “Who were kept in the attic?”
He glanced around the diner before lowering his voice. “The children.”
The waitress approached their table. She wasn’t the same pretty waitress from the previous evening. She was an old bag of bones with the wrinkled skin of a lifetime smoker. “Can I get you something?” she asked Ellen.
“Coffee, please.”
“Would you like pie with that?”
“No thanks.”
Once the waitress had left again, Bud said, “Millie told you what the doctor did to his patients, right? She told you about organ stimulation?” He whispered those last two words.
Ellen nodded.
“As you can imagine,
this sometimes resulted in pregnancy. Those babies were kept in the attic. It was a nursery.”
“All those awful instruments weren’t up there when it was a nursery, right?”
Bud shrugged. “I only know what I’ve been able to piece together from what Barbara told my mother-in-law and from what I got out of Amy. Amy lived her whole life—from the time she was born to the time her mother disappeared—in the attic.”
“She never went to school?”
Bud shook his head as he folded a white paper napkin into a tiny square. The he unfolded it and began again. “The children never left the attic.”
“But there isn’t a bathroom up there.”
“A nurse took care of them. They used bed pans and old chamber pots.”
Ellen shuddered. “How could Barbara allow that to happen? Why didn’t she report the doctor?”
“I don’t know. I guess she believed in what the doctor was doing.”
The waitress brought Ellen her coffee. “Here you go, dear. Let me know if I can get you anything else.”
“Thank you,” Ellen said.
Once the waitress had left again, Bud said, “And that isn’t all the nurse did.”
Ellen took a sip of her coffee, overwhelmed with dread. She closed her eyes and opened them. “What else?”
“She was ordered by the doctor to practice preventive measures.” Bud clenched his jaw.
“What preventive measures?”
He whispered, “Force feeding, massage therapy, straight-jacket therapy, and organ stimulation.”
Ellen gasped. “The nurse…?”
Bud nodded. “Not Barbara. Another nurse. She eventually quit, but she confessed everything to Barbara before she left.”
“Oh my God.”
“Dr. Piers trained his son to use the same methods,” Bud continued. “I guess Johnny was brainwashed. That’s the only way I can see it.”
“So Johnny…” Ellen couldn’t complete the sentence.
“From the time Amy was born, Johnny treated her.”
Tears flooded Ellen’s eyes. How could any doctor believe this was good for people?
“Amy was molested until Johnny died,” Bud said.
“So that’s why you said she was better off after…”
“Exactly. At least no one was abusing her.”
Until you came along, Ellen thought. Wasn’t that Bud’s big confession? Hadn’t he taken over where Johnny had left off? Why else wouldn’t he tell Millie?
Ellen’s phone rang. It was Paul.
“I’m sorry. I need to answer this,” she said.
Bud nodded his understanding.
Paul told Ellen he had gone to check on her mother and that she’d taken a turn for the worse. Ellen needed to come to the hospital right away.
“I’ve got to go,” she told Bud. “It’s my mother. She’s in the hospital. Something’s wrong.”
“I’m so sorry. I hope everything’s okay.”
Ellen fished through her wallet and laid a five on the table.
“Keep it. I’ll get the coffee.”
She left the five. “Can I call you? Maybe we can meet later tonight or tomorrow?”
“I can’t tonight. Let’s shoot for tomorrow at this same time—unless something happens…”
Ellen found a pen from her purse. “I don’t have your phone number. If you give it to me, I can text you.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
Ellen jotted her number down on a napkin. “Call me tomorrow before you head over here, just in case.” Then, as she pushed in her chair beneath the table, she asked, “Where’s Amy now?”
“She’s still missing—since Halloween.”
When Ellen reached the nurse’s station at the Brook Army Medical Center Hospital, Paul was already there waiting for her.
“The doctor was just here,” he said. “Come with me for minute. There’s a waiting room down the hall.”
As they took their seats, Ellen said, “I don’t understand why this is happening. The doctor said Mom would make a full recovery.”
“When I brought her in yesterday, she was unconscious. The doctor needed permission to give her tPA—the stroke medication. I couldn’t get ahold of you, so we called Jody, and he said to give it to her.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. Right? You would have said the same thing.”
“Probably. Yes.”
“The doctor told me that this afternoon, your mom asked to sign a Do Not Resuscitate Order. Apparently, she wasn’t happy with the decision to give her treatment.”
“But she could have been permanently disabled.”
“I know.”
“It’s one thing to not want to live. I get that. But a stroke could have left her more miserable than she already was.”
“I totally agree. But she signed the form. The doctor noticed some tremoring in her hand and ordered another test. They found an aneurysm in her brain. The medicine had caused it to rupture.”
“Oh, no!”
“Jody is grabbing the first flight available.”
Ellen’s lungs emptied of air and she couldn’t speak. She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
Paul put an arm around her, and she collapsed against him.
“She doesn’t have much time,” Paul said as he held her close. “You might want to go and see her while you still have the chance.”
“Mom?” Ellen opened the door to her mother’s hospital room and stepped inside.
Ima Frost looked dead.
Ellen lost her footing and fell to her knees.
Her mother opened her eyes. “What are you doing down there on the floor?”
Tears burst from Ellen’s eyes. It took a minute to pull herself together. When she could, she climbed to her feet and said, “How do you feel?”
“Dizzy.”
Ellen pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down beside her mother. “Can I get you anything?”
“Jody. Is he…?”
“On his way.”
“He might not make it in time.”
Ellen bit her lip. “Let’s hope for the best.”
Her mother rolled her eyes and sighed. “Hope. What’s that ever gotten me?”
Ellen wiped her eyes. Her poor, miserable mother.
“Don’t cry, Ellen,” her mother said after a few minutes. “I don’t like to see you so upset.”
Ellen looked up from her clenched hands to her mother’s face. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m the one who should apologize.”
“Oh, Mom, you don’t have anything to apologize for.” The tears streamed down Ellen’s cheeks.
“Everything is my fault,” Ima said. “All of it. Your father wanted to be doctor. Did you know that?”
Ellen nodded. He’d talked about it his whole life—his dream deferred.
“He was gonna go away to college,” Ima said. “I didn’t want to lose him. I was afraid to lose him. So a few months before we graduated high school, I…I, I tricked him into marrying me. I seduced him and got pregnant with you.”
“It takes two to tango, Mom.”
“I told myself that for the longest time, but I can own it now. That was on me.”
Ellen didn’t know what to say. She took her mother’s frail hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“Your father did the honorable thing and married me. Went into the service to support us. He returned from basic to his brand new baby girl. And you were the apple of his eye. For years, you were. Did you know that?”
Ellen hadn’t known that. More tears flooded her eyes, and she sniffed.
“Those were the happiest days of my life,” Ima said.
Ellen used her blouse to wipe her tears. They were out of control.
“When you started school, your father got restless. You see, he never really loved me the way I loved him. So I did the same thing. I got pregnant with Jody. And that worked for a
while, too.”
Her mother’s eyes opened real wide and she cried out, “Ahhhh!”
“Mom? Mom! What is it?”
“My head hurts. The nurse gave me something for pain, but God does it hurt.”
“Do you want me to call her?”
Her mom shook her head. “I want to be awake and looking at your sweet face when I go.”
Uncontrollable sobs shook Ellen all over her body.
“Please don’t cry,” her mother said again.
Ellen fought the tears, tried to gain control. “I’m sorry.”
“Jody. Please tell him that my final thoughts were of the two of you, and how much I’ve always loved you. I was a terrible mother, but I did love you.”
“You weren’t a terrible mother,” Ellen lied.
“I was a scared, desperate, insecure woman who only thought of herself. Self-awareness is a good thing. At least I finally stopped lying to myself.”
“I love you, Mom,” Ellen said. “I love you so much.”
It was her mother’s turn to cry. “That makes me so happy to hear.”
Chapter Nineteen: Who Are You?
When Jody finally arrived, it was too late. Their mother was gone.
He stayed with Ellen for two days. The first day, he went with her to say goodbye to Ima’s body. They’d decided to have her cremated without a service, since she had no friends and so few family members. Jody wanted the ashes, and Ellen agreed to let him take them. It seemed only fair. Ellen had gotten their mother’s final moments; he should have something, too.
Both nights, they stayed up talking in the front room long after Paul had gone to sleep. Being with her brother made Ellen happy. She realized how much she missed him.
Jody had the blonder, wispier hair of their father and the dark brown eyes of their mother. When he smiled, his sweet face presented the onlooker with a pair of deep dimples that came from their grandmother. Those dimples made Ellen’s heart sing.