Probably confidential information about the congregation, in which case I should either shred it or maybe pass it on to Pastor Steve. Where would Thomas have put the key? It wasn’t in any of the other desk drawers.
My eyes search the office. The rectangles where the pictures used to hang, unfaded by sun and darker than the rest of the wall. The bookshelf holding an array of heavy books and Bibles in different editions. King James. New Life. Living. His well-worn personal Bible, the one he studied and preached out of, still sits on top of the desk, something I’m keeping for Abigail.
How many times has he read passages at me out of this book, exhorting me to be a more malleable wife, a better Christian? Now I open it, seeking something other than wisdom, and am rewarded by the discovery of a small key tucked inside a pocket built into the protective leather cover. Sure enough, the key unlocks the drawer, and I slide it open.
Hanging file folders contain neatly arranged white envelopes. What is this? Was he planning a mailing campaign? Surely he would have enlisted the church secretary for something like that.
The folder at the front is labeled 2019. The one at the back, 1988, the year we were married. I choose an envelope from the 1988 file, surprised to see it’s unopened and addressed to me. The handwriting is my mother’s. I sit for a long time with that envelope in my hands before looking at the others. Two more from my mother. One from the high school from which I graduated. This one has been opened, and I draw out the yellowing paper and read:
Dear Elizabeth,
I hope this finds you well.
I was disappointed to hear that you didn’t follow through with college. You are a bright and talented girl, and I thought you might need to know that it’s never too late. Contact me if I can help you in any way.
Sincerely,
Mona Lutz
Guidance Counselor
Tears sting my eyes. I blink them back and tear open one of the letters from my mother.
Liz—I’ve not heard back from you, so I assume that you are not wanting contact with me. Your father has moved out and I’ve had plenty of time to think. We didn’t do right by you. I’d like your forgiveness, if you can find it in your heart. I’ve tried to call, and Thomas always says he’s given you the message, but you never call back. I won’t bother you again—you know where to find me.
Mom
I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t anything. I am as frozen as a fly in amber.
Val appears across the desk. “Honey, what is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
My mouth opens but no words come out.
“Breathe,” she says, coming around behind me and placing both hands on my shoulders. “Take a breath.”
I do. My lungs fill, and the world turns into sharp angles and disbelief.
“Don’t tell me you’ve found a pornography drawer.” She says it lightly, trying to make me laugh, but nothing is funny anymore.
I hand her the letter, let her read.
Her brow furrows in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“There are more of them. All locked away. Mom and I never talked after my marriage. I thought she just washed her hands of me. But she didn’t.” There is a splinter lodged in the vicinity of my heart. “I don’t understand. Why would he do this?”
I think of the bag, packed and hidden at the back of the closet. If I’d known I could have gone to my mother, would I have had the courage to leave?
“You can find her,” Val says. “We’ll track her down.”
I shake my head, the back of my hand pressed against my lips. “She died, Val. We didn’t even go to the funeral.”
Val kneels and rifles through the files, stops short. “Oh my God, that bastard.”
I don’t even cringe at her language; I’m feeling like there aren’t words enough to curse him. “What?”
“Are you sure you want to see?”
“No. I’m pretty sure I don’t.” But I reach for the envelopes in her hand. How much worse can it be?
As it turns out, a lot. Because these letters aren’t about me, they concern Abigail.
Three official envelopes, all from universities. The University of Washington. Yale. Duke. Each has been carefully slit open. I draw out a heavy sheet of creamy paper from the one that says “Yale.”
Dear Miss Lightsey,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the premed program . . .
The words dance on the page. There’s a buzzing in my ears.
I can see it all now, as if it’s playing on a giant screen.
Abigail, so intelligent and driven, full of an ambition that she knows will never be sanctioned, applying to universities in secret. I remember her walking into the house after school, asking, “Any mail for me?”
Thomas, who always brought in the post, shaking his head. “Sorry, honey. Were you expecting something?”
“Nothing, Daddy. It’s just fun to get mail.” But the disappointment on her face was palpable. I’d thought at the time maybe there was a boy. I hadn’t even dreamed she was applying to universities.
I bury my face in my hands, rocked by yet another memory.
The three of us sit around the dinner table. Instead of saying grace, Thomas sets an open envelope on the table in front of our daughter. “Would you like to explain this?”
“Me? You opened my letter!” Abigail challenges, stiff with defiance. “Explain that!”
“Watch your tone,” Thomas reproves her. “I don’t like that you applied behind our backs. Why didn’t you say that you wanted to go to nursing school?”
I huddle into myself, furious and powerless at the same time. Abigail should have been a boy. Not because I want a son, but because then she could use her brains, be anything she wants to be.
“I don’t like this deception, Abigail,” Thomas goes on. “It’s not like you.”
She lifts her chin, ready to do battle. Her father has never quite tamed her. “I thought you might not let me go. And I am going to college. Once I turn eighteen, you can’t stop me.”
“I have no objection to you being a nurse,” he says calmly. “For a few years, at least, until you meet the right man and get married.”
“For real? I can go?”
He nods, and she runs to his chair and hugs him.
It was a compromise on his part. Even then I’d been surprised at his capitulation; now I understand. Better a woman should serve as a nurse than rise to the powerful position of doctor.
“How does a pastor lie to his daughter?” Val asks.
“For the good of her immortal soul,” I whisper.
I can’t begin to explain it to her, how Abigail’s even applying must have felt like a sneaky betrayal to Thomas. How he would have felt as justified in this action as if he were intercepting packets of cocaine.
“Surely you don’t believe that shit! I mean, what’s so bad about being a doctor? They help people.”
“A woman’s place is in the home.” My voice sounds flat, robotic, reciting the old programming. “They can be nurses, teachers, until they get married. And no, I don’t believe it, but he did.”
“How do you explain him hiding your mother’s letters?”
“She was an unbeliever.”
“I’m an unbeliever! I can’t believe you are defending him!”
I look up at Val, the kindest and most giving human being I know. She is always there for me. She has turned my insane reaction to fantastic sex into a yard sale to help me cleanse my life and start over. She always makes me feel accepted, human, worthwhile.
“He was a good man, Val. He thought he was doing right.” Sitting here at his desk where he wrote so many sermons, where he helped so many people, it seems like sacrilege to say anything different.
“Don’t take this wrong, Liz, but your husband was a controlling jerk. This is abuse.”
My head aches. I rub my temples as the inevitable dilemma raises its ugly head. “Now what? Do I tell Abigail? She idolizes
him.”
“Oh, honey. I don’t know.” Val’s arms go around me, and I turn and rest my cheek against the softness of her breasts. Firm footsteps sound in the hallway, and Bernie’s voice booms, “What exactly am I walking in on? Can I get in on the action?”
“You don’t always have to be an asshole,” Tara’s voice chimes in cheerfully. “Cleaning out the death house is hard work. It always starts with the bed.”
“It does?” I ask.
“When the spouse dies? You bet. Same with divorce. Too many memories, too much energy soaking into that mattress. This is why I only ever buy new. So, you want some help with this room? Is this desk going?”
“Yes, the desk is going. Just as soon as I finish emptying the drawers.”
“Cool. We’ll go sell things for you while you do that. Oh, and that church lady is out there acting like she owns everything. That okay with you?”
“More or less.” What does Earlene matter, what does anything matter? My entire life has been a lie.
Val kneels beside the chair, swivels it so we are face-to-face.
“Look. My ex was a lying, sneaking, cheating pile of shit. Men like that want to keep you in the dark. To separate you from everybody, keep you barefoot and pregnant.”
“Good thing Abigail was a one-off.” I try to laugh but it turns into a sob. “He was supposed to be a man of God, Val. I can’t—” And I stop there, frozen. I really can’t. It’s like my brain has flipped some kind of off switch and refuses to process. All fuses blown. The electrical circuit of emotions and thoughts has gone blank.
I can see Val’s hands on my arms, but I can’t feel them. “You can wallow later,” she says. “I’ll help you. We’ll get ridiculously drunk tonight and cry over a terrible movie. But you have to finish this now. It’s your declaration of independence.”
I blink at her, knowing her words make some sort of sense, but with no emotion to connect to, they are just sounds.
“When you can’t be you, be somebody else,” Val says, shaking me. Her face swims in and out of focus. “What would Lacey do?”
Lacey. If there ever were a giant “yes,” this is it. As immobilized as I feel right now, despite all of my blindness and my failures and mistakes over the years, I can say yes now. Yes to shedding the past. Yes to freeing myself and Abigail, one small step at a time.
“Pretend this is a play and you’re the lead,” Val says. “You can do this.”
Pretending to be Lacey allows me to move. Where my legs refuse to bear weight, Lacey gets me to my feet. Where my hands don’t know what to do, Lacey’s are competent and capable. I remove all of the letters and stuff them into the drawers of my nightstand. Later I will read every single one, but today I am deliberately and irrevocably altering my life.
There is one more thing that I need to do.
I walk into Abigail’s room, so neat and perfectly put together you’d think the bed was never slept in, that nobody even lives here. And I lift down the Eve picture from her wall. After a moment of hesitation, I deposit it in the big outdoor trash can. I will not be responsible for some other child living with that burden of guilt.
Eve looks relieved, I think, to be free of a duty she never wanted in the first place.
Chapter Eighteen
May 12, 2019
Dear Me,
Abigail did not take well to my yard sale. Of course she didn’t. Even for me, looking at the almost-empty house is a graphic and brutal reminder that Thomas is dead. But I want things to change. Abigail does not. When she first walked through the door, she thought we’d been robbed and I had to stop her from calling 911. And when I explained? Well. I knew she’d be sad. I figured she’d get angry. Her reaction went way beyond anything I anticipated. On the good-news front (?), I seem to have broken through her emotional containment field and given her an opportunity to express herself. But the picture she painted of me and my behavior was devastating. The words “violation” and “betrayal” are still reverberating.
I guess I shouldn’t have done it. Truth is, I wasn’t thinking at all. Just reacting. I felt hurt, violated, betrayed, and I turned around and did the same thing to my daughter. Only I didn’t mean to hurt her, that’s the thing. I’ve managed to tear the veneer off the surface of our relationship and discovered a seething, festering pit. I don’t know that this can ever be healed.
Confession time now. As emotionally blown to bits as I am by all of my discoveries and the blowup with Abigail, there is a dark streak in me that is amused. Abigail came home to control me, to do everything in her power to keep me and the house from changing. And then I pull a stunt like this! I guess neither one of us knew I had it in me.
I still don’t know what to do about those letters. Do I tell her that her father locked up her dreams in that desk drawer? Because what I’ve done to the house is nothing in comparison to the weight of that disclosure. Part of me says I should burn those acceptance letters and take the secret to the grave. But what if they mean freedom for her? She’s still so young. She could still be a doctor.
And to add fuel to my emotional drama, I haven’t heard a word from Lance. No matter how many times I tell myself I don’t care, the truth is that I do. How will I ever face him at rehearsal?
I am completely out of courage and lacking backbone this morning. If I could, I might gladly retreat to the safety of my righteous widow persona. But I’ve blown that bridge to bits and there’s nothing to do but move forward. Next step? Find a house. I am moving, with or without my daughter.
It’s been a long night. I’m too old for sleeping on the floor, as it turns out. What with aching muscles, my uneasy conscience, and a storm of conflicting emotions, I’ve been awake more than I’ve been asleep. Moses approves, though. He shared my dislike of the bed for reasons of his own, but he has spent the last two nights curled up by my feet.
Abigail’s voice in the doorway sends him streaking for the closet, the only hiding place left in my room. I’d like to join him. Abigail avoided me all day yesterday, radiating her outrage through the empty house without saying a single word. Obviously we need to talk, but I am not ready. I need a mug of coffee, a shower, and about three nights of uninterrupted sleep before I’m up for another confrontation.
But I’m trapped. All I can do is lie here staring up at my daughter, who I can already tell has not magically forgiven me during the night.
“When I was a kid, I wanted a cat.” Her words are an accusation. I’m not awake enough to play the martyr, so I respond with the truth.
“When you were a kid, I also wanted a cat. Your father said no.”
“Right,” she says. “Blame the person who can’t defend himself. You need to get up or we’ll be late for church.”
I should appease her. How hard would it be to go to church? But the misplaced blame rankles, and the thought of facing a congregation that I know has been gossiping about me feels like mission impossible.
“You’re going to be late for church,” I tell her. “I’m going to be absent in a perfectly timely fashion.”
“Mother—”
“Abigail.” I try to find my mom voice, but it doesn’t work when I’m essentially sleeping in a blanket fort and I sound more like a rebellious child. Still, I aim for dignity, sitting up cross-legged to bring myself a little bit closer to eye level.
“You have to go to church. It’s expected.”
I hold her gaze, feeling the steel enter my spine. “Expected by who?” I ask. And then: “Or ‘whom’? It’s probably ‘whom,’ although you wouldn’t ever say ‘whom expects it’—”
“Mom! Dad would want you to go. And you know the whole congregation is watching you. Us.”
“Then they need to find something better to watch.”
“You’re an example—”
“I’m done being an example! I’m not going to church today. End of story. In fact, I’m going house hunting.”
“You can’t sell this house! Didn’t you hear anything I said to you?”
“I heard everything,” I say, gently now. “And I’m sorry I hurt you. I should have done things differently. Bought the new house before packing up this one. But I am not staying here.”
“What about me?” Her hurt is buried under about fifty tons of rage.
“You’re all grown up, honey. You can come with me if you want, or you can find an apartment. You have a job.”
Abigail takes a breath, softens her voice. “Is this a grief thing? Are you mad at Daddy for dying? Because that’s one of the stages. People even get mad at God. It’s normal. You should go talk to a counselor, and you should totally come to church.”
She’s right about two things. I am angry with Thomas, and I am having a serious crisis of faith.
Where she’s wrong is that it’s connected to my grief over her father’s death. It’s all about what I have come to understand about our life together.
Thomas was the church for me. He stood in for God, sort of like a small-town middle-class Protestant American pope. So his belief, his treatment of me, knocked God right out of heaven the first week we were married. For years, I’ve pretended to adhere to his beliefs, which I guess makes me a hypocrite. I’m done pretending. I’m feeling my way toward a different sort of God, and the last place I’m going to find Him is in Thomas’s church.
I lie down and pull the blanket up over my head. A moment of silence, and then I hear Abigail stomp away. She doesn’t exactly storm through the house, but I have no idea how she manages to rattle silverware so loudly when there is hardly any silverware left to rattle. Cupboards close with emphasis. I shelter in place, not sleeping, just avoiding confrontation, until the front door slams shut at a quarter to nine.
Just enough time for her to get to Sunday school.
I’ve declared my intentions to move, and now I need to follow through, even though my excitement about driving by some houses is decidedly dimmed by what’s going on with Abigail. I’d love some company on this adventure, but Val is working today, and while I’m friendly with Bernie and Tara, we’re certainly not on the sort of terms where I would call them on a Sunday morning.
A Borrowed Life Page 15