The Resurrection of Tess Blessing

by Lesley Kagen

  Tess went to Will for advice, but he rarely has much to add to a conversation. When had that changed? Or had it? Because there was a constant stream of chatter going on in her head, she’d found his tight-lipped stoicism both sexy and calming when they’d met, but what starts out as a virtue in a marriage can often take a turn for the worse, can’t it. His contributions to the discussions of their daughter’s disorder were to offer either a sad look, a scratch of his head, or a suggestion that Tess handle it.

  Lord knows, she tried. Resorted to everything a mother with a daughter in imminent danger would. Reason, bribery, begging, threats, magazine articles, talk shows, throwing out the bathroom scale, taking away privileges, and fear-inducing doctor visits. When nothing seemed to do a bit of good, she finally told Haddie, “If you don’t want to talk to Dad or me, you have to talk to someone who can help us figure this out.” Therapy with Dr. Drake had helped her slow her skid over some of the most treacherous patches. “I’ll find a shrink.”

  “I don’t need your help,” her daughter said with a snarl. “I can find someone myself.”

  Tess was only partially relieved that the burden of figuring out what was going on with her daughter would no longer fall entirely on her shoulders. Since she’d consulted a multitude of practitioners over the years—one suggested that meditating on blue crystals would cure her panics, and another, an elderly Scottish gentleman she called McShrink, insisted that lying naked on his tartan couch would be a wonderful metaphor for baring her soul—she was well-aware of the pitfalls. Sorting through the feelings of a vulnerable person is akin to locating the right wire to snip when defusing a bomb, and if Haddie chose the wrong therapist, she could be picking shrapnel out of her already-wounded psyche for years.

  Tess needed to make sure that her daughter was in good hands. The only way to do that was by getting up close and personal with the woman Haddie had found in the Yellow Pages, so she insisted on accompanying her girl and her hostility to the third therapy session at psychologist Frieda Klein’s office on Milwaukee’s Lower East Side. Tess was familiar with this part of town. Her first apartment above the bike shop was right around the corner. She’d been ambushed by her inaugural anxiety attack just down the block. The university where she’d consulted with Dr. Ganges was a half mile north. The area had been gentrified some over the years, but when she parked the Volvo in front of a busy tattoo parlor next to a natural food restaurant, the aroma of pot and patchouli still lingered in the air.

  Seated below a University of Oshkosh counseling degree that hung on the wall next to a half-dozen pictures of cats and a tie-dye quilt, Tess got things rolling during the therapy session in the smallish office on the ground floor of the converted Victorian house.

  “Haddie and I use to be so close,” she told Frieda Klein.

  The Birkenstock-wearing counselor gave her one of those cloying therapeutic smiles and replied, “Hmmm…maybe a little too close?”

  Tess had no idea that there was such a thing as too much love, because there isn’t, and she was ticked as hell that the counselor had told Haddie there was. It was too late to stop the barely bridled rage racing up her neck on its way to her mouth, so she did what she’d been taught to do by Dr. Drake if she found herself in this kind of situation. She ran out of the office before she could shout something raw and ugly two inches from Frieda’s face.

  On the drive back home, Tess carefully suggested that they seek the advice of another clinician with more traditional training. “Someone with a little less ommm and a lot more—”

  “Frieda predicted you’d say that,” Haddie trumpeted.

  “Oh, yeah? What’d she do? Throw the I Ching?”

  When the flashback fades, Tess finds herself in Olsen’s floral department sitting legs akimbo at the base of one of the elaborate displays. Because she doesn’t experience the passage of time the way most folks do—the past and present flow more like a watercolor and less like a sharp-edged oil—she’s unsure exactly how long she’s been breathing in the smell of the greenery. It can’t have been too long because…is that Haddie shouting out of the cell phone, “Mom? Mom?”

  “I’m here, honey.” She rubs the cell phone across her chest. “Sorry, bad reception. Anything else you want me to pick up besides the frozen yogurt, the absolutely no-fat kind,” she says. “How about…,” hot fudge sundaes used to be her favorite, “some low-cal whipped cream and—?”

  “How about another mother?” Haddie hisses out before their connection goes dead.

  All too aware of what is expected, newly diagnosed and further disheartened Tess knows she shouldn’t be sitting on the floor in Olsen’s Market. She’s gotta get a grip before one of the Ruby Falls ladies notices her.

  When she moved into the Blessing family homestead shortly before she and Will had gotten married, neighborhood women had asked her to join them for tennis and PTA meetings, but because of her unpredictable condition—she could panic at any time and lose control of not only her mind, but her sphincter muscle. She would literally become scared shitless—she had to keep the gals at arm’s length. The women misinterpreted Tess’s fear as snobbery, her being part of one of the oldest families in town and all. Will had always been okay with her lack of social graces, even found it chest-beating charming that she’s so dependent on him, but lately the newly elected President of the Chamber of Commerce has been stressing the importance of getting along with the townspeople. “Maybe you could at least try to be a little more outgoing?” he’d recently requested.

  The way his vivacious sweetheart Connie Lushman is? Louise suggests.

  “Tess?”

  Someone had noticed her sitting amongst the flower containers and potted philodendron that she’d tried to use as camouflage. Stan Olsen. She peeks out of the leaves at the man whose tummy is swollen past the top of his black Dockers pants looming above her. The owner of the market is on Will’s bowling team—The High Rollers, which was so similar to The High Life that it never failed to bring back the day her father drowned.

  “What’s up?” Stan asks winded. “You okay?”

  Tess gives him her standard, “Oh, sure. I’m great,” because she discovered early on that while their hearts might be in the right place, folks really rather not know how she’s actually doing. She can’t tell Stan that she’s unbecoming whatever it was she’d become fifteen minutes ago. If she exposes her private parts like that, he’ll rush off in the other direction and might even call Will to report that she’s acting “unusual” in his store. Again. “Just felt a little faint. I skipped breakfast. Sorry for causing a gawkers’ block.”

  Gossip mongering is an honorable hobby in a town as small as Ruby Falls, so nosy shoppers are slowing down their carts, or pretending to peruse the nearby gift-card carousel.

  The proprietor, who prides himself on his outstanding customer service, asks Mrs. Blessing loudly enough to impress the flock of gathering ladies, “Should I grab you something out of the deli? Cole slaw? Roast beef? They’re on special today.”

  She says as she gets to her feet, “No, thanks. Really. I’m good,” but Stan doesn’t seem to be buying that. So she tries to signal him that the conversation is over by staring down at the rest of the list that she’d written on the piece of paper she tore off the hospital gown:

  TO-DO LIST

  Buy broccoli.

  Make sure Haddie gets the help she needs from a better therapist.

  Set up a vocational counseling appointment for Henry.

  Convince Will to love me again.

  Get Birdie to talk to me.

  Bury Louise once and for all.

  Have a religious epiphany so #8 is going to be okay with me.

  Die.

  Tess steals a glance at Stan. He hasn’t budged. Sure that she only turned him down because he hadn’t offered her the right food group, he nudges his tortoise-shell glasses back to the bridge of his nose with his middle finger, which is something she’d seen him do when the other High Rollers were putting p
ressure on him to make a crucial spare. “How about something sweet instead?” he says. “The bakery made cream-filled coffee cake this morning. I know it’s your favorite.” He reddens, like he took her love of the pastry personally. “My treat.”

  “Thank you, Stan, that sounds wonderful, but please, don’t bother,” she says. “I’m feeling much better now and oh, goodness, look at the time! My family is probably worried sick about me!”

  Fat chance.

  Down on Her Knees

  As usual, Will has gone all out. Sunday dinner is a Waldorf salad, rosemary roasted chicken, broccoli in a cheese sauce, and mashed potatoes without one lump.

  As Tess and her family pass the heaping bowls back and forth in the chandeliered dining room that she’d decorated in pale greens and peaches, she’s considering how Will’s self-esteem is drawn from the same font as his father’s, and his father’s before him, as far back to the days when one of the Blessing men was anointed “Cookie” on a wagon train that broke down on the Missouri Trail.

  Feeding folks is not only the way her husband makes a living, it’s how he demonstrates his love and devotion to his family. After Haddie got dumped the day before prom, he told her, “Awww…let me fix you a grilled cheese with tomato sammy.” And when Henry came home after a soccer game red-faced over a botched goal, Will wordlessly whipped together a pepperoni pizza. And down at the diner? Buttons just about pop off his vest when he swings by his customers’ tables to soak up their compliments. “Hey, those pigs in a blanket were fantastic! And the mock chicken legs! You outdid yourself tonight!”

  Tess breathes in the smell of the pink carnations—the perfect funeral flower—that her husband had set in the center of the dining room table, and imagines her impending ceremony. It would be lavish, of course. Will is a Blessing, after all, a descendant of a founding family known for their big-hearted generosity. The extravagant coffin he’d select would be lowered into the ground after a well-attended Mass. Afterwards, when the mourners return from the cemetery to gather at the house, someone he has known all his life will wish him yet again their sincerest condolences. He’ll thank them with his gap-toothed smile and one of his business-as-usual trademark winks, point over their shoulder toward the dining room at the heirloom silver bowls overflowing with Gramma Blessing’s potato salad and trays stacked with cold cuts and Depression glass plates piled high with cakes and homemade pies and lemon squares. Have you had a chance to check out the tuna-noodle casserole? the widower would ask one of the mourners. It’s outta this world.

  Unlike Will, Tess’s eroded sense of worth is stoked by her family, and only her family. Occasionally she misses the buzz she got from working the clubs in Chicago and riffing with the other comedians backstage, but she cut back on appearances after Haddie was born, and gave up the gigs completely after Henry’s arrival. She doesn’t for a moment regret making that decision. And no matter how strained things are between them now, she knows that they love her too. If she dies from this cancer, which she’s positive she will, her babies, her always audience, will miss her. They’ll feel abandoned. The same way she and her sister had after their daddy had slid into his watery grave.

  She wonders as she cuts into her perfectly cooked chicken breast if Haddie and Henry will haunt Ruby Falls’ Evergreen Cemetery the same way she and Birdie had haunted Holy Cross in Milwaukee on those humid mid-August afternoons after their father had drowned.

  After Tess had mostly convinced her fragile little sister that—“Daddy’s not in Boca Raton. He didn’t swim there or anyplace else. He’s dead, Bird, you gotta face the music”—she hunkered down to conquer the remaining item on her To-Do List—number three. She needed to find their father’s pretend grave so Birdie could say goodbye to him once and for all. She didn’t anticipate it would take too much longer because it had become a whole lot easier to sneak into the cemetery after their mother got a nine-to-five job at a local hat shop—Turner’s Toppers—once they’d run out of money. And now that she wasn’t flying solo anymore since Birdie was accompanying her on the search, she felt their odds were even better.

  She had just finished pointing out to her sister that their daddy’s bones wouldn’t be in the grave when they finally visited it, but something else would be. “A lot of people die and it takes a little while for St. Peter to sort out the good from the bad things they did before he can open the Pearly Gates or send them to Hell, so his soul will still be down there waiting its turn,” Tess said. “We should start right around here today.” She took a few steps toward a part of the massive cemetery that she hadn’t scouted out yet. “S’awright?”

  When she didn’t hear her sister laugh the way she usually would at her Señor Wences impression, she turned around to see why not. Birdie was standing still and looking back at the black iron cemetery fence they’d just come over. Her lips were moving and she was smiling her head off like she was talking to her sister, only she wasn’t.

  Afraid she might’ve gone as blind as Helen Keller, Tess trotted back, held up three fingers, and said, “Count ’em.” Birdie did, so her eyes were working fine, so what the…? Terrified that their mother was just itching to send her unusual sister to the county insane asylum, Tess pinched Birdie’s ear, just a little, to let her know that she wasn’t goofing around. “No talking to yourself. That’s not allowed.”

  Birdie swatted her hand away and giggled. “I’m not talkin’ to myself, silly. I’m talkin’ to Bee.”

  “Talkin’ out loud to bees is also not allowed. Same goes for flowers, rocks, houses, cemetery fences, and…and just about anything else but dogs, people, and God is not a good idea. I’m warning you, Bird.” She got her by the shoulders and squeezed. She hated to scare her sister, but a girl had to do what a girl had to do. “If you keep this up, they’re gonna throw you in the snake pit.”

  Birdie shook herself free and said a little too uppity for Tess’s taste, “For your information, I’m not talking to bees. I’m talking to…,” she spun around, “her.” She pointed at absolutely nothing. “Her real name is Betsy Elizabeth, but she said I can call her Bee. She’s my new friend.”

  Tess thought—Oh, boy, and was unsure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Probably bad. Seemed like everything was since their daddy died. She briefly wondered if Birdie had been hitting the bottle. Like that guy in that movie they saw who had a very tall, imaginary rabbit named Harvey for a best friend. She did ask to stop by Lonnigan’s a lot. Had Birdie been sneaking up to the bar without her?

  Tess took a step closer to get a whiff of her breath. It smelled like cherry Pez and nothing like Daddy’s after a long shift at the bar, so that was good, but knowing that didn’t solve the problem. Birdie was still talking to somebody who wasn’t there.

  Tess asked her in a very ho-hum way, like this sort of thing happens every day, “So…you and your friend are the Bird and the Bee?”

  Her sister nodded and smiled.

  Tess couldn’t help it, she laughed. The Bird and the Bee? That hit her funny bone. She said, “That’s rich,” and was sure that their daddy would’ve told her the same thing. “Does she talk back to you?”

  “A course!”

  Tess didn’t want to hurt her delicate feelings, so she didn’t point out that it was weird to have an “imaginary friend.” She told her, “I think it’s neat that you’ve got ah…a new pal, but we gotta keep Bee a sister secret, okay?” The girls had many. “Don’t tell anybody. And you have to be really careful not to talk to her in front of Louise.” She took Birdie’s hands in hers, thought about how Daddy sometimes called her sister his “Little Dream Boat,” and made sure to look her straight into her light-blue eyes so she didn’t drift off. “If she finds out she might….” She couldn’t tell her that their mother would sign her up for a padded room. “She won’t let you play with Bee anymore.”

  “I know, Tessie,” Birdie said in her teeniest voice. “Bee told me that already.”

  Shortly after getting the “imaginary friend” situat
ion straightened out the best she could, Tess had another surprise in store. She spotted their daddy’s pretend grave two down from the Gilgood mausoleum! She wanted to shout, “Holy shit!” and pull Birdie in that direction, but before she had the chance to, Louise, who wasn’t supposed to be home from the hat shop for hours, called for them off the back porch and the girls went into panic mode.

  It wasn’t until later that night that they got the opportunity to sneak out of the house and climb the cemetery fence again. Tess could hardly contain herself as she led her sister beneath stormy skies toward the pretend grave she’d seen earlier that day. When they were greeted by a swarm of fireflies that, according to Birdie, Bee had summoned to light their way, they dropped to their knees in awe.

  Edward Alfred Finley

  Rest in Peace

  Born September 2, 1931 – Died August 1, 1959

  Tess is brought back to the here and now by B.B. King singing When My Heart Beats Like a Hammer. She and Will are R&B enthusiasts with an impressive record collection they enjoy listening to on the retro hi-fi they’d found at a garage sale.

  With his silver hair and gray eyes, her husband looks fetching sitting across from her at the dining room table in a pin-striped, powder-blue shirt that she doesn’t remember buying him. He’s slicing up a cherry pie with a perfect crust and talking about Norm “Stingy” Harris who is so famous around Ruby Falls for his cheapness that he’s become part of the town’s folklore. Will drops a scoop of vanilla-bean ice cream on the plate next to the pie, passes it to Henry, and says, “I heard from one of the ushers at Mass this morning that Stingy dropped a Dairy Queen coupon in the collection plate.”