Tethered

by Amy MacKinnon

  “Clara,” said Tom, “this is my buddy Art.”

  I was thrilled. Tom was ready to introduce me to his circle of friends. He wanted them to know me, to finally know of me. The junior prom was in a few months and I’d already made preparations should Tom ask me. For weeks I’d hoarded scraps of material in home-ec class. The girls there preferred the pastel fabrics, leaving me long swaths of gray and black. I could make do. My grandmother was the greatest obstacle. I knew better than to introduce the subject of dating in her house. She liked to remind me that my mother’s harlot ways were what had driven her to an early grave, and if I wasn’t careful, I would follow the same wayward path.

  “God punished the whore for her sins,” my grandmother would say, gesturing to the mantel where she haphazardly taped torn magazine pages with Hollywood divorcées, newspaper clippings of serial killers, and my mother’s black-and-white senior portrait with me concealed beneath a girdle. Above us all, reaching for the ceiling, hung a crucifix. Her hand was clammy when it grabbed mine, cold and desperate, her eyes beseeching. “Stay true, Clara. Suffer for Him. He’ll provide you everlasting life if you reject sin!”

  I’d remain quiet—it was usually safer that way—and she would pull me down to my knees. “Let’s pray for forgiveness.”

  But I didn’t want forgiveness, I wanted Tom. I was prepared to be like my mother, the whore-child, and climb out of my bedroom window to be with him for one perfect night. Welts and bruises would heal, I reasoned, and death was inevitable.

  So when Tom stood before me with his friend Art, the flush of adventure seized me. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Art said, deep acne scars twisting as he smiled.

  My heart skipped.

  “Hey, Clara,” said Tom, “I got some good news. I got a B on my English quarterly, so I’m back on the team.”

  Forgetting myself, I threw my arms around him, right in the middle of the library. “That’s great!”

  “Yeah, so I won’t need to come here anymore. But see, my buddy”—Tom took a step back from me and put his arm around Art—“he could use some extra help. Coach said he won’t be able to play unless he gets a C average. I was thinking maybe you could help him, the way you been helping me.”

  Tom and Art exchanged a look. There was a malevolence to Tom’s expression, and in that moment, I realized I’d been overlooking it for weeks. It was too late now. When I looked to Art, his eyes were dim and his mouth hung slack.

  “I told him how good you are with science and English,” Tom said. Had I really not noticed that smirk before? “And other stuff.”

  My breath came then in short, quick bursts, leaving my lungs just as swiftly.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Come on, Clara,” said Tom. “Give a guy a break. Do it for the team.”

  I took a step back, and then another. Tom’s nostrils flared and I wondered if he could smell me, smell my regret. I don’t know how I found myself back at my table, but I sat there, taking a book from the pile, as if seeking out the shoulder of a constant friend. But Tom wouldn’t leave. He swaggered over, placed both hands down on my desk, and then pulled the book away.

  “I wonder what your grandma would think if she knew her grandbaby was a whore. What would happen then?”

  I looked at him. I could find no trace of the boy I’d spent weeks and months longing for, the one into whose ear I’d whispered my secrets. Instead, I saw the same face his opponents on the field must have seen, an adversary who thought nothing of crippling anyone who got in his way.

  The tears nearly choked me. “I can’t.”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Tom said. “It would kill your grandma.”

  He grabbed my chemistry notebook and threw it to Art. “Here you go. Just give her your English homework, she’ll do it. When she’s done”—Tom looked at me then, smiling as tears scorched my face—“take her over to the biography section. She likes it there.”

  Tom left, and in that moment I almost prayed. I almost prayed Art would feel some sense of compassion, a sense of dignity, but he simply took his English folder from his backpack and handed the worksheet to me. I stalled, giving superficial answers to the questions the way I had with Tom’s homework. Let the clock run out, I begged my grandmother’s silent god. But Art wasn’t patient the way Tom had been in the beginning. After only ten minutes he stood before me, an erection visible through his cotton chinos.

  “Hey,” he said, grabbing my hand. I tried and failed to pull free as he glowered over me. “Don’t make me tell Tom.”

  And so I followed him, dragged by the wrist. He watched Miss Talbot stroll down the contemporary-fiction aisle and then he yanked me into European history. Within seconds he slammed me against the rear shelf. I could feel the corners of the books digging into the small of my back. A quick turn of his wrist and his pants were down. He fumbled with my skirt, gathering the wool and pushing it aside, pushing himself into me. I stopped him when he bent to kiss me.

  “No,” I said, pressing against his shoulders, my face covered with tears and snot.

  He stopped moving a second, two, his face clouded and dull. Then he shrugged. “Fine by me.”

  Art was only the first of Tom’s friends who would seek me out in the library. Tom was right: I didn’t have a choice. As Art burst inside of me, I heard a sound, a squeak. I looked past him and saw Miss Talbot. She stood at the end of the aisle, her book cart brimming. Her mouth hung open, her gaze fluttering up and down my and Art’s joined bodies, and then her eyes met mine. Art was unaware, his back to her, consumed only with his pleasure. We stood like that, my friend Miss Talbot and I, our eyes locked. And then she pushed her cart to the next aisle and I heard her knees pop once again as she bent to return a book to its shelf.

  I’ve thought of that moment a lot lately. I imagine the shock Miss Talbot must have felt. I imagine she must have seen a little girl, her face expressionless but her eyes pleading.

  I imagine she saw a girl much like Trecie.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I wish Linus were here. He and Alma are attending the opening performance of Black Nativity, as they do the first week of every December. Lifts their holiday spirits, they say. He bought the tickets weeks ago, to the matinee performance rather than an evening show, an acknowledgment of their age and aversion to driving late at night. Though the play didn’t start until three thirty, they set out early to sightsee along Boston Common.

  “Christmas in Boston is a withered man’s shadow of his former self,” Alma says once the holiday lights start to appear. This time of year she likes to tell me how, when she was a child, she and her three sisters would set out early from their South End apartment to spend hours in the Jordan Marsh department store touring the Enchanted Village.

  “Reminded me of It’s a Small World, only for Christmas,” Alma says. Now she’s forced to accept whatever paltry Christmas substitute is available in the city. One of the disadvantages of living above the funeral home is she can’t string colorful lights or hang festive evergreen boughs this time of year.

  Here in the mourning room, there is no recognition of the holiday. There is only Mrs. Molina whispering as she kneels over the body of her twelve-year-old daughter. Her shadow, cast by low-lit sconces and the five-pronged candelabras on either end of the casket, undulates against the far wall. Whether it wavers from an unsteady flame or the woman’s mute sobs, I can’t tell.

  If Linus were here, he would know where to stand, know the words to soothe her. He would probably kneel with her, though lately his knees have made it difficult for him to regain his footing easily. Still, he’d swallow the pain.

  I don’t know why he asked me here instead of canceling his plans. Always the families of the bereaved are invited to come the night before the wake to say a private farewell. It’s been his role to host them, to guide them through the strain. Perhaps this too is an acknowledgment of his age. Maybe he thinks he’s grooming me to take over the
business. Though I dread the conversation, I need to tell him I prefer my standing, here in the shadows. I could never fill his shoes.

  I try not to look at Mrs. Molina, her body a waterfall tumbling over her daughter’s. Instead I scan the flower arrangements, identifying as many blossoms as I can.

  Like many children stricken with cancer, Angel Molina was known to the community. Over the years, I’ve seen the flyers down at Tedeschi’s corner store advertising a bone-marrow drive. Or the story last year in the Brockton Enterprise when a local car dealership donated a van with a wheelchair lift. She was beloved. Now that she’s dead, her status is reflected in the numerous bouquets and funeral wreaths that overflow the room. There are the mandatory calla lilies in faux brass vases; a red, white, and blue carnation wreath mounted on a stand from her grandfather’s VFW; and pink amaryllis (proud) sent by Mrs. Brown’s class, where Angel was a student. I like the pots and pots of wholly white arrangements: roses, aster, and, as at every child’s funeral, white daisies. There is an especially healthy one near the head of the casket with blossoms the size of my fist. I wonder if Mrs. Molina would mind if I took a stem to seed my own garden. I look at her, and as if sensing my attention, she turns.

  “Clara, did you do this?” She straightens herself as she speaks, pushing up on the kneeler to stand, and then stops to caress her daughter’s cheek. I returned Angel’s complexion to its original olive tone and styled the glossy black wig, a girlish bob, so that it curled in to highlight the graceful lines of her neck.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She glances back at her daughter, her voice trembling. “Everyone’s been so generous, I don’t know how to repay them. And now this.” She gestures to the casket, her arm casting an enormous shadow against the far wall.

  “Linus never charges for the children. Not anyone.”

  Mrs. Molina nods, both hands clutching the strap of a worn tan purse that dangles before her. She’s petite with dark stockings and comfortable shoes. She wears her dress like an afterthought. Her only adornment are the intricate plaits spun in dizzying loops atop her head, streaked black and gray. I notice for the first time that though her face is plain and her body settled into the thickness of middle age, she is beautiful. It’s the kind of beauty exuded through pores, through lustrous eyes, through inner peace. “She looks lovely, Clara. Thank you.”

  I don’t know what would be a proper response, so instead I say nothing.

  “I always wondered what Angel would have looked like if it hadn’t been for the chemo and steroids,” Mrs. Molina says, turning to her daughter again. “Of course, she was always beautiful to me.”

  I listen for Linus’s step, the sound of his car pulling into the parking lot, but I’m alone. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Molina.”

  “No, not a loss.” She hurries toward me, shaking her head and grabbing my hand in hers. I can feel the skin along my wrist begin to itch. If I look, I’ll see hives blossoming there.

  “Angel was a gift.” Mrs. Molina’s eyes are glossy, her words strong and assured. “She brought such joy to my life, a purpose after her daddy died. Her favorite thing in the world was to go for walks at World’s End. You know the park, in Hingham? We’d bring a picnic lunch and our binoculars, and watch as red-tailed hawks flushed the sparrows. But that was before.” She pauses and looks back at Angel, her face softening. “I like to think she’s flying with them now, above them even. Her daddy by her side.

  “You know, some people go their whole lives without love, but my little girl gave me enough in twelve years to fill me up for a lifetime.” She reaches for my hand and squeezes. Her fingers graze my inner wrist, an exquisite tease along the hives. I want nothing more than to rake her nails along my arm. “No, I have not suffered a loss. I choose to believe my time with Angel was a gift.”

  She smiles at me, nudging and sweet. It would be too cruel of me to share my own thoughts; silence is the better choice. Rubbing the tender part of my wrist against the woolen sleeve of my suit jacket, I let my gaze fall to her belly. I can’t help but imagine Angel lying there within Mrs. Molina’s womb. Before life, they were tethered by an umbilical cord; after, by hope.

  “Do you have children, Clara?”

  “Me?” I shake my head and pull my hand from hers.

  “None at all?” Mrs. Molina asks, sadness overcoming her features.

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll pray for you,” says Mrs. Molina, gathering her coat from a nearby folding chair and shrugging it on. “I’ve got my Angel. Something as insignificant as death won’t ever separate us. I pray you get the same.”

  She moves swiftly to the exit, the door pounding closed behind her. For a moment I stand in place, wondering what’s expected of me, if there exists an appropriate reply to Mrs. Molina’s pity, but she’s already gone.

  There’s no use in considering it further. Tomorrow will be a long day with a steady stream of mourners. It’s time to extinguish the candles. I first blow out the ones at the foot of the coffin and then walk over to the candelabra at the head. Before I do, I look at Angel. Her mother’s features overwhelm her face. I wonder if she appears to be smiling because Mrs. Molina’s words still ring in my head or if her expression was always so. Somehow I can’t remember. I feel alongside her thigh for the pink camellias (perfect loveliness). I imagine the flowers there over the next few days, staying vital through the wake and funeral, and then buried with the girl, their remains eventually blending together, back to the earth.

  Looking at Angel’s face, touching her hand, I wonder what my mother would have said had she lived and I died that rainy night. If she would have claimed her love for me was eternal, that I was her heart and soul and breath.

  “Clara?”

  I nearly shriek and stumble backward, attempting to regain my composure. I look at Angel, her expression fixed, but then I see Trecie emerge from behind an arrangement of asphodels (eternal sorrow) located on a console behind the casket.

  “What are you doing here?” I take several more steps back.

  “Are you sad?” Her hair appears windblown and knotted, and her delicate legs are bare beneath her skirt in spite of this New England night. Her eyes are so deep and dark, I feel as though I could plunge into them and never touch bottom. All I can do is shake my head.

  “How did she die?” Trecie moves around the casket to stand before Angel. Looking down, she reaches out a hand, her fingertips perilously close to skimming the dead girl’s arm.

  Mike’s words come back to me, counseling me to remain calm, to gather as much information from Trecie as possible without frightening her away.

  “She had leukemia. She was sick for a long time.”

  “Oh,” says Trecie, her hand now resting on the girl’s. “I saw her momma crying.”

  “Losing a loved one can be difficult,” I say, wondering how I can draw her out of this room. But Trecie is mesmerized by Angel.

  “Her momma loves her a lot.” Trecie turns to sit on the kneeler, facing me. She slumps over, resting her chin in her hands. “My mom would cry if she came to my funeral. She’d feel real bad. And my sister would cry too.”

  My heart lurches in my chest. I feel in my pocket for Mike’s card—I’ve carried it with me since that day at my cottage; I should call him now. “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Adalia.”

  “And your mother’s? What’s her name?” I take a step toward her. Trecie doesn’t answer, just looks at me with those bottomless eyes, and I can’t help but see her on that video. “You said your mother has a boyfriend, right?”

  She nods.

  “What’s his name? You told me before, but I forget.” My head hurts as I flip through the possibilities: Vincent? Vito? Rick? I sense she’s pulling away and don’t want to waste time going over questions she’s already answered. This must end tonight. I can’t let her go home. Not to that. I’ll call Mike and he will come take care of all of this.

  Trecie stands and looks at Angel bef
ore asking me, “What’s your mother’s name?”

  Mike said she might try this; deflection, he called it. Try to engage her in conversation, he said. He must have felt so hopeless giving me these instructions.

  “Mary.”

  “What is she like?” Trecie is stroking Angel’s hands, fingering the rosary beads wrapped in them.

  “I don’t remember really. She died when I was seven.”

  “Do you think she would have been sad if you died?”

  I can’t help but wonder if she eavesdropped on my thoughts. My imagination gets the better of me and I feel a scraping sensation the length of my body as if she’s raking my insides. I reach for my hair. “I expect most mothers would.”

  Trecie walks away from the casket and heads for the sitting room. As she turns, the back of her head is before me. Patches of scalp glow like orbs caught in this light. If only there were a salve for this sort of thing. I quickly extinguish the candles and follow her. She’s standing in the middle of the room, waiting for me.

  “I saw that man again,” she says.

  “What man?” I don’t really want to know anything about the man on the videotape. I rub Mike’s card, wondering if I could excuse myself. He’s the expert, he would know what to ask, how to ask. He could bear her answers. I need to believe she would talk to him.

  “I saw that man go into your house. Are you sure he’s not your boyfriend?”

  That man, Mike. “No, just a friend.”

  Trecie eyes me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “No one at all?” she asks. I can’t answer, her pity is too much to bear. “I don’t either.”

  We fall silent, though I know I should direct the conversation back to her, somehow back to the trauma of her life, away from mine. I begin to pick at the hives on my wrist, then rub them against my hip, awaiting inspiration.

  “She got a lot of flowers,” Trecie says, peeking back into the mourning room. “More than that big man.”

  “Mr. MacDonnell? Yes.” I remember back to the flowers she plucked from the arrangement the last time she was here—or rather, the last time I was aware she was here—how she tied a stem around a fistful of hair. Mike said to do anything to gain her trust and keep her around until he could get here. “So you like flowers?”