by Cathy Lamb
“What I’ve noted,” Toran said later, “is that no man has ever truly taken the place of her first love.”
That’s because no one has ever taken your place, Toran.
“She has lovers, husbands . . .” I shrugged my shoulders, up and down. Then up and down again. One more time. Stop, Charlotte, I told myself.
“Yes, a number of them.”
“She’s discerning.”
“She is. They all sound like honorable chaps to me. Strong. Honest. They protect their woman. Madly in love with her.”
“Every time.”
“I think of the poor men who have fallen in love with her who she leaves in the end.”
“They’ll live. Sometimes she’s there for a lifetime.”
“Said so lightly.” He placed a hand mockingly on his heart. “Men get hurt, too. We just head to the pub, have a few beers, and try to forget about it.”
“Does beer cure heartache?”
“No, it doesn’t. Puts it off a bit. How did you create her?”
“She’s my alter ego. She’s who I would like to be.”
“What? Why?” His eyes widened. “I like you better than McKenzie Rae.”
“You do?” I fiddled with the top button on my blouse. Buttoned to the neck. I shrugged my shoulders again. Up. Down. Up. Please stop, I told myself. Please.
“Yes. You’re different than any other woman I’ve ever met. Always thinking. You see everything. You understand. You’re funny.”
“I have to come here more often to get my ego boosted up.”
“There are a few things I don’t like about McKenzie Rae.”
I bristled. Couldn’t help it. “Like what?”
“She doesn’t talk about physics or biology, water, the United Nations, farming, weather, international law, that type of thing, as we do.”
I relaxed. My shoulders stopped shrugging. I was pleased. I loved McKenzie Rae, but it was relieving and complimentary that he saw the distinction between her and me. “She’s busy. She’s time traveling, solving problems, saving others.”
“But she needs to be more like you, Charlotte.”
I sniffled and teared up, and I busied myself with my glasses again. “Thank you, Toran.” He was probably the only man on the planet who would think that. The only one.
“You’re welcome, Queen Charlotte.” He picked up my hand and kissed it.
I wanted to launch myself at him, ripping buttons off my shirt as I flew through the air.
He turned my hand so our palms were together. “Magic powers shield us now,” we both said, laughing.
I could not help but think: I will give up Dan The Vibrator for you any second, of any day, Toran.
I talked that night, because Toran listened.
He had more questions. How do you write your books . . . How do you get your ideas . . . How many times do you edit your books . . . What’s the best part about being a writer . . . Is there anything you don’t like about being a writer?
The sun went down. The candles melted. The bowls were pushed aside. Toran brought Caleb’s Kilt coconut chocolate sticks to the table, and we kept talking. I had never, except for my parents, had anyone so interested in me, my brain, what I thought.
“If you were going to time travel, Charlotte, where would you go?”
That started another discussion, as I asked him the same question.
At one point we stopped and stared at each other. I wanted to leap on him and yank open his shirt, buttons flying everywhere. Nervous, I hummed a few notes of a Scottish song about love and heartbreak my father had sung to me at bedtime. I abruptly stopped humming, so embarrassed. But then, joking with me, Toran hummed the next few notes.
Then we hummed the song together.
He held up his hand, palm facing me.
I put my palm against his, then we twisted them and laced fingers. “Clan TorBridgePherLotte powers, activate! Speed ahead and fight bravely,” we chanted. We tapped fingertips three times, then pulled them apart, as if they were held together magnetically.
“Victory!” we both shouted, then bounced our closed fists together.
We are a strange twosome.
That night in bed, flannel nightgown on, I said to myself, I have to get back home. I have to wrestle with my writer’s block and kill it.
But when I returned to the island I would be alone.
All alone.
By myself.
Solo.
Lonely.
Except for four cats who ride in a specially made stroller.
I did miss Teddy J, Daffodil, Dr. Jekyll, despite the concerning mood disorder, and Princess Marie.
I thought of Toran. The cats could always come here....
I dressed in my denim skirt and a T-shirt that said EINSTEIN RULES and drove into the village a few days later for groceries.
St. Ambrose is small and charming, nestled on the ocean. The sky feels closer, as if it were lowered to bring us a clearer shade of blue. This is atmospherically impossible, but it’s how it feels to me. The wind smells like the sea and highland dreams. The moon is brighter, only a few yards away, surely, and if you could jump high enough off the top of the cathedral you could catch it with your hands. It’s a village that makes a science nerd like me almost poetic.
The six-hundred-year-old university sprawls all over the village, the ancient buildings practically speaking with all the voices who have studied there before.
I am sure I would have attended this university had I stayed here.
Bridget and I grew up watching the students covering themselves in shaving cream one day in October every year. We watched them in suits and fancy dresses traipse through town on their way to parties. We saw how the girls dressed, always in high style. Bridget would tell me, “One day I’m going to dress like them, Charlotte, you watch me!”
We would have my mother drive us to the ocean every year in May so we could giggle as the students jumped into the frigid North Sea and came out laughing and shaking. We would see them carrying books and bags, looking serious, as they headed to class.
Bridget and I would go to college at St. Ambrose and be roommates and we would buy tea and biscuits together every day.
How we plan our lives and how our lives turn out . . .
I heard the blaring notes of bagpipes and I stopped, unprepared for getting slugged in the chest with such raw emotions. I sat on a bench, the ruins of the cathedral behind me, and listened.
I could smell the sea, a dash of salt, a hint of mint tea. Croissants, coffee, and Indian food, maybe Gitanjali’s spices, wafted by. The bells of a church rang out, the waves crashed.
This used to be my village, the village of my ancestors.
It hadn’t been mine for twenty years, but I had never forgotten it.
It had followed me to my own island, in the middle of another ocean, where I watched the whales play and my flowers bloom, but St. Ambrose, the history and mystery, the kilts and the legends, my mother and father, my grandma and granddad, had stayed inside my heart.
As had Toran and Bridget.
I was back again.
I breathed in deeply. I was glad to be here.
The next morning I took a shower, then put on my light brown skirt with the ruffle, a blue T-shirt with a whale and SAVE THE WHALES written across it, and my pink fuzzy socks. I couldn’t believe I was calling a bedroom in Toran’s home “my bedroom.”
I had an image of me crooking my finger at Toran and whipping off my whale T-shirt. I would swing my bra around over my head, wiggle my chest, then toss it at him over my back. I would throw up a jaunty heel, then pose seductively in bed while he eagerly followed me in. I would keep my pink fuzzy socks on for warmth.
Yum.
I pulled out the brown box where Bridget had saved my letters—and hers, the ones she wrote and didn’t send.
She had filled her letters as a teenager, the ones she sent to me, with tales of fun and adventures with the girls at St. Cecilia’s. She wrote a
bout Pherson and Toran. As we got older, we talked about gardening and the farm, the village and the people we both knew, Toran and Pherson, music and science, and the miniature drawings she sent me.
We would plant the same flowers, the same trees. We would read the same books and tell each other what we thought of them. Some were classics, others romances, and everything in between.
We talked about everything. Boys, when we were young; my husband, who became my ex-husband; my work as a researcher then writer; her work as an assistant to an executive; her travels.
I read two of my letters to her.
July 3, 1987
Bridget,
I did love your miniature drawing of the Garden of Eden. Very clever. Thank you for making Eve plump and for dressing her in a rock T-shirt and red heels. I do so hate those skinny models. Feed them a carrot, I say, before they pass out. I appreciated Adam, too. His top hat and jungle pants were particularly fetching.
You should be selling your drawings. I am telling you that for the hundredth time.
How did your date go that you mentioned? Ready to pop him up on your white horse and steal him away to the castle you own like a true feminist? Take charge, be the woman, slay the dragon on your own because who needs a man’s help, etc.?
I’ve planted a full border of begonias, and I’ve had Charles come and build an arbor for an Oregon grape I bought. I put a table and two chairs under the arbor. Should be a nice reading corner when it’s done. I will probably hang a picture of an anatomically correct skeleton out there next to a photo of the galaxy.
What did you decide to do with the east plot of land? You mentioned a patio and fountain with a circular surround. When did you get back from Paris?
Love,
Charlotte
February 1, 1988
Bridget,
Thank you for your recent advice on how I can get a date. No, wearing a sign that says, “Haven’t had a date in years. Call if you’re interested,” during the Whale Island Annual Parade is not an option. Nor is taking out a personal ad. What would I say? Strange woman with a multitude of cats needs a date? If you don’t understand quantum physics, or if you believe the earth was created in seven days, don’t bother applying?
Your third suggestion that I go to Seattle and ask a man out is equally mind-boggling.
I have beaten two of my chess pen pals in our matches recently. That is the excitement in my life.
But do tell, though, how is your love life? And how did your trip to London go?
Love,
Charlotte
I picked up a bunch of her “real” letters. The Diary Letters, as I now thought of them. With shaking hands I read through a few more.
I was horrified down to the marrow of my bones. I actually hurt for Bridget, my chest tight. I tried to keep control, but I couldn’t. It was like walking through the darkness with her, the darkness filled with evil and violence.
Poor Bridget.
She had lied. She had written two sets of letters, ones she sent to me to keep up the façade of her life and the ones she kept.
Though it hurt me, like a pen piercing me in the chest, to know that she lied to me, that things were not as they seemed, that my reality of my relationship with her was utterly wrong, her lies to me were completely irrelevant. My feelings were nothing against the background of Bridget’s suffering, the harm that had been done to my friend, the crimes committed.
I put my head between my knees, my hands over my head, and cried harder than I had cried since my dad died.
I cried for Bridget.
Bridget, where are you? Please come home.
“It was my father’s fanaticism that set Bridget up for what later happened.”
Toran and I sat on the sand, the day sunny, the ocean waves blue-gray silk, the sky dabbled with white, squishy clouds.
“He was obsessed with Catholicism. He thought more of his obsession than he did of his family. Church for us every day, twice on Sunday, as you know. Kneeling and praying for hours on end, sometimes on sand or gravel if he didn’t feel we were holy enough. He believed in self-punishment. There was constant memorization of the Bible. He was intimidating and angry. I think he loved us but had no way to show it. I have no mixed emotions about the man, and when he died I grieved only for what could have been, what should have been. I didn’t grieve for him.”
“He hit you then?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“You and Bridget didn’t talk about that, but I wondered.”
“We were humiliated, and my mother told us not to tell. She was humiliated, too. He hit us whenever he thought we were not being ‘devout, Christ-filled Catholics,’ that’s what he told us. He would quote the Bible before he hit us, and afterward. We thought we were bad—he told us we were. What kid wants to tell anyone they’re so bad that their parent hits them?”
“When your father would hit you, what did your mother do?”
“Nothing. She was totally and completely cowed and controlled by my father. She was scared. She had no education, no money, and she was Catholic, too. Didn’t believe in divorce.”
“How do you feel about her, that she didn’t protect you and Bridget?” I pushed my brown corduroy skirt between my knees. I was wearing my white sweatshirt with a squirrel on it and a straw hat.
“I could forgive her for not stepping in to help me, as a young man, but I have a hard time forgiving her for not stepping in to protect Bridget.”
“I have a hard time forgiving her for not protecting either of you.”
“My emotions toward my mother are more,” he tipped his hand back and forth. “Undefined. I loved her, because she loved us and we knew it, but she drank too much to block out her life. By drinking too much, she wasn’t there for us, and because she wasn’t sober, or was hung over, she couldn’t find a solution, which would have been taking us to her family in Dublin. She couldn’t think straight.”
“And by not thinking straight, she didn’t protect you from your father, a harsh and creepy virus.” I sat straighter, realizing my mistake. “I apologize. I’m being way too blunt and harsh.”
“Never apologize to me, Char, for being honest. I loved my mum, but no parent who is drinking heavily is being a true parent to their children. She saw us hit. She saw us kneeling for hours, reciting the Bible in tears, standing in a corner being castigated by a fanatic.
“My father did the same to her, only I often think she had it worse. No telling what that man demanded she do in the bedroom. I would wake up to him yelling scripture at her. She was scared. I felt sorry for her, I still do. But she should have intervened when Bridget went through what she did. She should have saved Bridget, and she did not. That’s hard to get past.”
Off in the distance, a blue-gray wave crashed, then smoothed out. Another wave followed it and crashed, too. By the time the crashing waves met the shore, they were calm.
“I look back now and I know there was something wrong with him. He had an addictive, twisted personality. He was a slave to Catholicism, would even whip himself at night sometimes. He sometimes wore a barbed chain around his thigh, which caused him to bleed. He wanted me to wear one, but I refused. He wore two crosses on his chest, which he kissed religiously.
“When he met Angus Cruickshank, when he arrived from Belfast, those two would rant and rave about the Bible, yell, pray. It was scary, that’s what it was. But he was honored to be friends with a priest, awed. Talked about Father Cruickshank all the time. They performed an exorcism on Bridget once, when I was away at school, when you were in Seattle.”
“That would be like participating in your own horror movie.”
“She was terrified. She told me later what happened.” He gritted his teeth. “Poor Bridget actually believed there were evil spirits inside of her.
“My father’s family was Catholic and from Ireland, but they came here to Scotland about two hundred years ago. I think my father always felt that he was not accepted, so he became more extrem
e. His father had a temper, and I know he hit my father as a boy, much worse than what we got. My father had a slight dent on the right side of his head from a head injury. Perhaps all those things turned him away from a rational, reasonable life.”
“I remember you doing most of the work on the farm.”
“What I remember is how often you and Pherson, and your father, came and helped me. Your father came only when he knew my father wasn’t here. My mother never said a word. Your father—” He stopped. I knew he was trying to rein in his emotions. “He was the one who taught me how to be a man. He taught me about farming. I remembered everything. I’d write it down. But our farm didn’t do well for long years, and we were poor.
“Being poor, at any time of life, is very difficult. You feel like you’re less than other people. That other people are better than you. Everything’s a struggle, a worry. You’re thinking of survival so much, you can’t get much past that.”
“Toran, I’m sorry. I never felt better than you.” Not a day did I think that. “I don’t think anyone did. You were the most popular kid in school.”
“I know you didn’t. I don’t know about being most popular. I was trying to survive my home life. When I was older, thirteen, fourteen, and could handle more of the farm work, that helped. I was able to hide some of the money from my father, and I bought food, and things my mother and Bridget needed. I hated the way my father treated his own family. He was supposed to be the man of the home. He was supposed to protect us, to provide a life, a living. He was supposed to lead, to be kind to my mother, and to Bridget and me. He was supposed to be involved in our lives, to make things easier, not harder. He did none of that.”
“I used to think of him as Le Monster.”
“He was a monster. I’m glad he’s gone. I’m glad he’s been gone a long time, too. He did enough damage. When I am a father, if I am fortunate enough to be a father one day, I will treat my children with respect and love. Above all, love. And I will never lay a hand on them in anger.”