Dear Parrot,
I love you so much and I miss you. Today I saw a beautiful yellow butterfly and I wished I could show it to you. I am so sorry.
Be a good girl.
Love, Mommy
Grace’s hands were shaking violently now and the paper rattled. Her head filled with a rushing sound like fire moving through trees.
Grace began pulling everything from the box. There were twenty, twenty-five, letters. She shuffled through them frantically. Most were addressed to her: Parrot Tillman; Grace Tillman c/o Warren Tillman; Parrot Tillman c/o Jane Tillman. As if the right name would make the difference. The postmarks told their own story. There were ten letters that had been mailed every other day for the first three weeks after Annie left, all from Portland. Then they began to space out, every three days, then once a week. The last date she found was seven months after Annie disappeared. What happened? Why had she stopped writing?
Beneath the envelopes, she found several framed photographs, some with the glass cracked. Here was a young man in a Cooper High letterman’s jacket, grinning as he leaned against the side of a pickup, his arm around a skinny blond girl. Grace recognized her father. The girl was so tiny he could have carried her in one hand. She was looking up at him with such vulnerability. She adored—no—she worshiped him. Grace recognized that look. The girl was her mother.
In another snapshot a much more somber Warren sat with a beer in his hand; behind him two women, arms around each other, made faces at the camera. Jane and Annie.
Throughout her childhood, Grace had complained that there were no pictures of her mother in the house. It had been Sherrie who’d shown her the few she’d seen.
“Daddy, Mommy was pretty. Sherrie has a school book with her picture.”
“What are you talking about, Parrot? What school book?”
“The one with everyone’s picture. She showed me your picture too. When you were in high school.”
Warren slammed his fist on the table and stomped out of the house. Grace hadn’t gotten it. Not then.
She tipped the box over and a few more photos fell onto to the floor. From the bottom of the box a large book slid partway out—a Cooper High School Yearbook, The Clarion 1968 in gilded letters on its cover. Grace pulled the book out, threw the empty box into the corner of the room and sat back on her heels. She lifted her head and raised the back of her hand to her cheek. She closed her eyes, but she could not hold back the tears.
She reached out and picked up an envelope that was addressed to her father; it was postmarked, June 1979, just before Grace’s sixth birthday. Like the first, it had been ripped open; it contained two sheets of paper.
She unfolded the first sheet. The handwriting was her mother’s with its characteristic adolescent flair, but this message was not intended for her.
Warren,
Your sister promised she’d bring my Parrot to me and I trusted her. I’m a fool and I don’t even have a word for what you are.
Where am I supposed to get the money for a lawyer?
If you ever hurt my daughter I will know and I will kill you. Believe me.
If you have any decency left, at least let Parrot read my letters.
A
A cold chill ran through Grace’s body. What was this? If you hurt my daughter I will know and I will kill you. Were those the words of a monster or of a desperate mother? Or both? Believe me.
Numbly, she unfolded the second piece of paper and read it.
My sweet Parrot,
I think about you all the time. I wish you were here with me.
I’m going to find those beautiful birds, baby.
Love,
Mommy
Was her father afraid of her mother? Or was her mother afraid of her father? Was this an idle threat, or the words of a crazed woman? Could she have meant it?
Outside the trees were still. Grace stared into the stillness trying to slow her breathing. The memory that had seemed so foreign to her just an hour ago as she stood at her father’s grave now emerged in full detail like a photograph developing in a chemical bath.
The summer before Grace started high school she’d been full of questions. She bugged her father.
“What was it like, Dad, when you first went to Cooper? It’s so big... did you get lost? How did you find your locker?” And on and on. At first Warren just shrugged his shoulders and said, “You’ll be fine.”
But Grace wanted more. “Tell me about how you met Momma. Were you in a class together? Did she help you with homework?” Those last questions changed everything. It was like she’d jabbed her father with a hot poker.
“SHUT UP!” Warren jumped to his feet and screamed in Grace’s face. He brought his hand back, his right hand. Big and red. The hand came toward her with such force that she was knocked from her chair. She froze on the floor, numb. Her father turned away and walked out the front door and didn’t return for two days.
Neither of them ever said a word about what had happened. When Jane asked about the bruise on her face, Grace told her she’d run into a door.
The letter fell from Grace’s hand. Her stomach lurched. She made an instinctive calculation, raced across the hall to the bathroom and slammed the door behind her just as her abdomen convulsed and she retched. Her body quivered as she spat bile from her mouth; then she slumped to the floor and leaned against the thin wall, her forehead on her raised knees. If you hurt my daughter I will know and I will kill you.
“Are you OK, hon?” Sherrie’s voice startled Grace.
She reached over and pushed the button on the doorknob, locking it. Then she stood, washed her hands and splashed cold water on her eyes.
“Fine,” she said as she opened the bathroom door and walked back across the hall. She needed to take all this to the cabin where she could be alone and think. Retrieving the box from the corner of the room, she laid the yearbook carefully at the bottom, next the framed photos, which she stacked gingerly, followed by the letters and the empty envelopes, the stray photographs.
Swallowing the bile that continued to rise in her throat, Grace looked around the room for anything she might have missed.
A photo stared up at Grace from the floor: Annie standing in the kitchen of the café, her hands covered in flour, her body wrapped in a green apron. Grace stooped to pick up the picture and she felt a chill go through her body. It was like looking at a picture of herself with blond hair. For years people had been telling her how much she looked like her mother. At least that was the truth. She placed the stray photo on the top of the box and overlapped the cardboard flap, picked it up, and walked out of the room.
Sherrie stood by the stove. “You OK, kiddo?”
“Not exactly.” Grace couldn’t bring herself to tell one more lie. “I’ve got what I came for.”
She opened the front door and without saying anything more, she left.
Chapter 19
Grace carried the box down Main Street past the post office, the café, the tavern. She kept her eyes straight ahead, armored more fiercely than she’d ever been in the city. At the curve in the road she stopped. Someone sat on the steps of her cabin, his head turned away from her. His boots weren’t logger gear, his jacket not one she knew; something about the hunch of his shoulders was familiar though. Curiosity was no match for her need to be alone with the evidence she held. Resentment gathered around her as she walked to her door. She opened her mouth to scream an obscenity at this loiterer when he turned to face her.
“Charlie.”
“I need to talk to you.” They both said simultaneously. Charlie opened his mouth to begin his confession, but Grace put her hand up to stop him.
“Come in.”
Grace knew that once Charlie caught a glimpse of the interior he’d do what everyone did when they first saw the place. And he did. He stepped through the doorway, his jaw dropped, he tilted his head back and he spun around. Predictable.
“Wow. This is incredible... Did you...?”
She cut him off. “Yes, yes. I painted it. Sit down over there.” Grace set the box on the floor and plopped down onto the couch.
Charlie had trouble pulling his eyes away from the ceiling, as if he expected something to fly out of it.
“Charlie, come and sit,” Grace repeated. She looked at him with an evaluative eye, remembering what Jane had said about them not being blood relations. “Now that I know the truth, or at least part of it, I realize you may be the one person in town who can fill me in on what I don’t know.” She held out her right hand. “Glad to meet you, Charlie Roberge, I’m Grace Tillman, otherwise known as Parrot.”
“Yeah. I finally figured that out.”
“Well, I had no idea you existed until a few days ago. But if you hadn’t showed up, I probably would never have found out that my mother is alive.” She gave him a soft smile. “So, thanks, I guess.”
Charlie’s eyebrows rose and he squinted. “Wait. You do know Annie’s alive? I thought… I mean, up until a week ago I had no idea you didn’t know she was alive. I mean…”
“Don’t strain yourself, Charlie. It’s flat crazy.” Grace shook her head and chuckled in spite of herself. It was flat crazy. “It took a trip to Seattle and practically pinning my aunt to the wall to get the truth out of her, but I did it. That was all just three days ago.” She could hardly believe this, but it was true; only three days before she’d been an orphan. Now she had a living mother. “Up until then I really did believe my mother was dead.”
“Whew. That’s a hell of a thing.” Charlie looked around the cabin as he pulled his Marlboros out of his pocket and held it out to her. “You OK with this?”
“Not really. It’s not good for the paint.” She gestured at the walls. Her art was real—maybe it came from her imagination, but she could trust every brush stroke—and she wasn’t going to let it get covered with smoke.
“No, no, of course not.” He stuck the pack back in his pocket. “Just as well.” He nodded. “Henry kind of filled me in. I’m just beginning to understand. But there’s more to the story than I think you realize. I’ve been trying to find you to tell you what I know.”
She nodded and held her hands out as if to say, here I am.
“Right.” Charlie took another look around and swallowed hard. “My father is a son of a bitch, you should know that from the get-go.”
Grace grinned. “Oh, I have no doubt about that. My father could barely say his name without spitting.” She shook her head, “but then, my father wasn’t... Hell. I don’t know what my father was.”
“Well, I don’t know much about your dad or why your mom would get involved with my father in the first place, but he knocked her up. You knew that, right?”
Grace nodded again.
“OK. Well, she lost that kid,” Charlie paused and looked down at his hands. “Nathan never talked about it much, but when I was sixteen I went to spend the summer with him. Annie was still there, physically anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Grace had wondered about this child. Thoughts of having a sibling, even a half one, somewhere out in the world had swirled beneath the surface of the shock and the chaos of emotions she’d lived with for the last several days.
Charlie interlocked his fingers, the tendons on the backs of his hands and his forearms looked like the roots along the trails. The thought flashed across Grace’s mind: this man is praying.
“She was like a zombie, Grace. She hardly spoke. She moved around the house like a ghost. It was so weird.”
Those words seemed to break something open in him. He jumped up and began walking around the room and words poured out of him. “I couldn’t handle being in that house. I’d wanted to be with my dad for so long, but once I was there and saw all that... I just took off, and Dad came after me. He told me later that he was afraid to leave her alone, like she might kill herself or something. She’d been like that since she lost the baby.” He stopped, took a deep breath and looked over at Grace, who stared back, speechless.
“Then she disappeared.” Charlie’s face flushed, and he slumped down into the rocking chair across from Grace. “I never got a straight story from my father. He said she was sick and went into a hospital. But I never saw her again.” He put his head in his hands. “After a while I just stopped bringing up her name.”
“Oh, my god.” Grace said. Whiplash again. She was getting familiar with the sensation. One minute Charlie knew where her mother was, the next she had disappeared. Once again numbness encased her. “Do you think she’s still alive?”
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know.” He gave her a weak smile and shrugged his shoulders. “I know this sounds awful, but I was a pretty self-centered kid then and I just didn’t care. My dad didn’t have any time for me and I blamed Annie for that. I didn’t really care what had happened to her.”
“But your father’s still alive, isn’t he?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“So, he’d know where she is, if she’s alive, right?”
Charlie shrugged again. “I haven’t seen him, or her, in over ten years. He calls me once in a while to steer me into some scam or another. Like this one. I try to avoid him, but when I got desperate…” He rubbed his hands over his face. “When I got desperate, I’m his son, and I took the bait he offered.”
“Could you pick up the phone right now and call him and ask him where my mother is?”
“Yeah. If you want me to, I could.”
Grace looked around at her walls. This had all been in memory of the mother she’d believed dead. Her whole life had pivoted around that belief. As awful as that had been, maybe the reality was actually worse than death. She tried to imagine it. Annie had abandoned her, left her with a man she thought could harm her, and ran off. Did losing Nathan’s baby make her crazy or had she already been crazy? Again, she thought of what Pat had said. What kind of woman left her child?
“Yes. I want you to. Now.” Grace stood and walked over to the telephone, picked up the receiver and held it out to him. When he took it, she thrust her hands deep inside the pockets of her jeans and walked stiffly to the window that faced the mill. The cage of her ribs was shrinking, squeezing her heart. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against the window.
“Dad?” Charlie spoke into the receiver.
Grace gasped, her eyes popped open. No. She wasn’t ready. Not on the phone.
Charlie had his back to her. She wanted to run to him, to yank the phone from his hand, slam it down. But time had stopped and her feet refused to move.
“I need some information fast. Call me at Walt’s.” He put the receiver down and turned back to Grace. “All my life—same deal. He’s never there when I need him.”
She put her hand on her chest and exhaled. “I’ve never fainted in my life and that’s as close as I want to get.” She stumbled to the kitchen sink, turned on the cold water and splashed it over her face. As she brought her head up, she looked out the window.
The mill. What was going on there? Pat and Charlie were both trying to tell her something wasn’t right. But damn. One more thing. She shook the water from her hands and looked over at Charlie.
“I… look, I don’t want to know, OK? I just can’t take anything else right now.”
“You don’t want me to talk to my dad?” Charlie looked honestly puzzled.
“No, no. I mean whatever’s happening, whatever you guys are up to at the mill.” She tipped her head back and pointed out the window with her chin. “Just keep me in the dark a little longer.” The she grinned. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”
She stepped over to the sofa. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”
Charlie watched her open the cardboard box she’d laid down when they first came into the cabin. The photo of Annie in her green apron stared up at them. He picked it up.
“Wow. I’d forgotten how pretty she was.”
“Is.”
“Right. Is,” said Charlie looking from the photograph
to Grace.
“She was behind all this.” Grace said, waving her hand to encompass the world she’d overlaid on the raw logs of the cabin. “She had a thing about the jungle.”
Grace handed him the letters. Slowly he unfolded and read each one in silence while she sat staring at the photos. The fierce energy that had driven her all day was beginning to fade. She looked at his face as he read, and felt a bone-aching desire to turn all her pain, all her sadness and confusion over to this man. This kind man who was, after all, a sort of brother to her, wasn’t he?
“Do you think she was crazy enough to kill someone, like she threatens in that letter?”
“Not the lady I saw. She was more like someone who’d been beaten down. Not angry, more kinda dead herself.” Charlie gently folded the last of the single-page letters and slid it back into its torn envelope. Then he turned to Grace and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m going back to Walt’s. If Nathan doesn’t call soon, I’ll call him again. It’s getting late. Try to get some sleep. Call me in the morning.”
Grace nodded slowly. She stood and walked him to the door. “Thanks.”
After Charlie left, Grace stacked the letters and tucked them back in the box. She folded over the flaps of the lid and put it on the floor where it she didn’t have to see it. Then she made herself a sandwich. She would pretend life was normal. She would eat and then she would sleep. I hope, she thought, I really hope I can trust this man.
***
Grace woke on the couch, still dressed in the clothes she’d worn since leaving the house so long ago to hike up to the protesters’ camp. The sun was bright. How long had she slept? She stretched and slowly reviewed the events of the previous evening. A loud banging on her door made her jump. Was it Charlie? Had he talked to Nathan already?
She was up and at the door before she had time to consider what news he might be bringing. But it wasn’t Charlie; it was Mary Bigley who filled the open doorway, her gray curls sticking out in wild tangles, her shirt buttoned unevenly.
What We Take For Truth Page 21