by David Bell
I pulled out my phone and checked the white pages for ‘Elizabeth Yarbrough’ in Reston Point, Ohio. No listing, so I tried a Google search for ‘Elizabeth Yarbrough.’ A lot of stuff came up, but nothing of use. High-school girls on MySpace and Facebook. An obituary for a ninety-three-year-old woman in Kansas. I tried ‘Elizabeth Yarbrough Reston Point.’ Again, nothing promising. As a last resort, I entered Mom’s name and Elizabeth’s name. Still nothing.
I looked up another phone number, this one right in Dover. She was easy to find, and I dialled. When she answered, I said, ‘Hello? Mrs Porter?’
‘Yes?’
‘This is Elizabeth Hampton. Leslie’s daughter.’
‘I know who you are,’ she said. Her voice sounded a little haughty, as though my clarification had insulted her intelligence. Maybe so, but I was just trying to be clear.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, but –’
‘It’s no bother,’ she said, her voice brightening. ‘I wanted to tell you I was thinking of starting a little memorial fund at the library in your mom’s honor. She loved the library so much.’
‘That would be very nice.’ I held my tongue and didn’t mention that Mom’s obituary instructed any memorials to be made to the local chapter of a Down’s syndrome support group. I needed Mrs Porter on my side. ‘I was wondering if my mom ever mentioned someone named Elizabeth Yarbrough to you.’
‘Is this a friend of hers?’ Mrs Porter asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe you’d know.’
‘Did you find her name in your mom’s things?’
Who’s asking the questions here, you or me? I wanted to ask. ‘Something like that,’ I said instead.
‘What’s the name again?’ she asked.
‘Elizabeth Yarbrough.’
A long pause. ‘Hmm. That doesn’t ring a bell with me,’ she said.
‘Well, thanks. And thanks for the memorial for Mom.’
‘I did think of something else after your mom’s funeral,’ Mrs Porter said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Remember I told you I hadn’t seen your mom in about a month? She liked to come in once or twice a week with your brother.’
‘I remember,’ I said. ‘You said she came in alone and was in a hurry to get to an appointment.’
‘Right. Well, I remember something else we talked about that day. I remembered it last night as I was dozing off.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You know your mom liked to educate herself. She read every book she could get her hands on about Down’s syndrome. And when she’d read all of ours, she requested them from other libraries around the state. She read every new book that came out on the subject.’
‘She was thorough,’ I said.
‘Well, that last time she came in she asked for a book on a different subject. Not Down’s syndrome. I can’t remember the name of it, but I thought it was an odd thing for her to be looking for.’
Something tingled at the base of my skull. ‘What was the book about?’ I asked.
‘Something to do with childhood trauma,’ Mrs Porter said. ‘I know … it was something like helping an adult deal with childhood trauma. Does that mean anything to you?’
I sat forward on the couch. The phone shook in my hand. I answered Mrs Porter with complete honesty.
‘I have no idea why she’d want that at all.’
26
I sat on the couch holding the phone in my lap. Helping an adult deal with childhood trauma? Who could the book be for? Ronnie had Down’s syndrome, but he hadn’t suffered trauma. Not that I knew of. Those five words seemed to be the qualifier I needed to add to everything I said or thought about my mother since her death. Not that I knew of. Had Ronnie been abused or subjected to something awful that I didn’t know about? A kid with Down’s syndrome – or any disability – was ripe for being preyed on. My grip on the phone tightened just thinking about it.
Could it have been something else? Had Mom been abused or traumatized? Her generation didn’t talk about those things as much. Could she have just started to come to grips with it before she died?
The possibility of those things twisted inside me like a rusty knife. If someone had hurt one of them … if someone had taken advantage of or abused a member of my family … I just couldn’t imagine. My chest felt compacted, as if someone had placed me in a vice and squeezed, pressing the organs together, crushing bone against flesh until I had no air.
I sat there with my head down, squeezing the phone between my hands, until the pressure in my chest eased. I took deep breaths that sounded close to sobs. They broke the stillness of the house like shattering glass.
What do I do with this knowledge? I asked myself.
I tried to tame my emotions. I tried to let the logical part of my brain have its say.
Just because she wanted the book didn’t mean it was about her. Or Ronnie. Maybe she was just curious. Maybe she had heard about it on TV. The logic didn’t help much. I knew Mom. She didn’t pursue knowledge just for the sake of knowledge. She pursued knowledge in order to apply it. She used what she learned.
I looked at the phone. Paul. Would he know? And if he did, why had he kept it a secret from me?
I dialled his number. Again I heard his voice mail greeting. I didn’t leave a message. The truth was, I just didn’t know what to do.
I went out to the kitchen. In a drawer next to the telephone, Mom kept stacks of mail. Mostly, it was stuff she hadn’t gone through yet. Credit card offers, coupons, magazines, occasionally a bill she hadn’t paid. Things cycled through that drawer pretty quickly thanks to Mom’s thoroughness, but if something had arrived in the house in the days before she died, there was a chance she hadn’t tended to it yet.
I grabbed a handful of the mail. I flipped through it, my eyes not really registering the things as I did so. I was still thinking about my conversation with Mrs Porter and that book she mentioned. It was eating away at me, a slow scratching at the base of my skull. I was so distracted I almost missed the bank statement the first time I passed by it. Some part of my subconscious must have registered the name of the bank because after I’d paged through a few more letters, it clicked. I stopped, flipped back, and found the bank statement. I dropped the other mail without thinking.
I slid my finger under the flap, tearing the envelope as I moved along. Mom would have chastised me for not using a letter opener and making a neat, narrow slit in the envelope. But I was rushing, so much so that my hands shook. I pulled the statement out of the envelope and flipped the folded paper open.
I scanned the numbers quickly. Mom maintained a decent minimum balance – at least decent in the eyes of a poor graduate student – of about two thousand dollars at all times. Her cheques and debit card payments didn’t look unusual. Small to moderate amounts that I imagined went for food, utilities, Ronnie’s speech therapy, and things like that. I flipped to the second page and then the third. Still nothing.
Then I saw the last page. Mom’s savings account. The balance surprised me – just over thirty thousand dollars. I hadn’t realized Mom had so much cash at her disposal. I assumed most of it came from Dad’s life insurance policy. I wasn’t sure how much the policy was worth when he died, but I assumed it was at least one hundred thousand or so. It only made sense. I thought, looking at the balance, that Mom must have kept a certain amount in a savings account in the event of emergencies, and I hoped the rest had been invested somewhere safe. I’d find out soon enough when I began digging through the rest of her things.
But before I folded the papers and returned them to the envelope, another number caught my eye: $14,550. That number appeared in an entry at the bottom of the page under ‘Yearly Debits to Date.’ So far that year Mom had withdrawn over fourteen thousand dollars from her savings account.
What for?
I thought back over the previous year. Had Mom encountered any difficulties? Had the house needed a new roof? Had there been car repairs? Had
there been a crisis with Ronnie – medical or otherwise – that required a large outlay of cash? I couldn’t think of anything.
My mother didn’t travel. She didn’t gamble. She didn’t even buy clothes for herself. What had she done with $14,550?
I looked through the drawer for anything else of note and found nothing. There were no other bank or credit card statements, just coupons and pens, rubber bands and paper clips. I shut the drawer.
I decided to look one more place before I left Mom’s house – Ronnie’s room.
Ronnie didn’t like anyone going into his room when he wasn’t there. On the day of Mom’s funeral and the night Mom died, he’d let me come in there because he was there already. He kept his room neat and orderly, with some but not much help from Mom. He lived in fear that someone – like his little sister – would come in and wreck things, which I’d done on more than one occasion when we were under the age of ten. Given the extreme circumstances of the moment, I had to believe he would forgive me if I entered his private space.
I didn’t expect to find much. Ronnie kept jigsaw puzzles and sketchbooks stacked neatly on a shelf by the room’s lone window. He shared that analytical, logical side of his personality with Mom and not really with me. I opened his closet. Everything hung neatly on hangers, and the shoes were lined up on the floor, two by two, like animals ready to enter Noah’s ark. I didn’t see any loose papers or cards. I closed the closet door.
I was ready to leave when I saw the photo next to Ronnie’s bed. Ronnie used a small nightstand, one made out of cheap particleboard. It had a drawer and two shelves, and on the top sat a lamp, an alarm clock, and an empty water glass. The framed photo rested on the bottom shelf, almost obscured by a box of tissues.
I went over and picked it up. My heart flipped when I realized it was a photo I had never seen before. In the shot, Ronnie and Mom stood behind two small children about three and five years old. Everyone smiled big and goofy, the kids hamming it up like performers. Everyone looked happy. More than happy. Ecstatic. And I had no idea who the kids were.
I guessed it was a recent photo. The four of them were standing outside near a lake, and the trees in the distance were thick and green – it must have been summer. Just a couple of months ago? Was it possibly the last photo ever taken of Mom?
I traced my finger across the glass in the frame, right over her face. I swallowed hard. Who were these goddamn kids? And who had taken the photo?
‘Okay, Mom,’ I said. ‘You’re coming with me.’
I threw the photo – frame and all – into my purse and left the house.
27
Ronnie lay with a sheet pulled up to his chin, his eyes closed. I stood and watched him sleep, his chest gently rising and falling with each breath. The air made a soft whistling sound as it passed in and out of his nostrils. He looked peaceful.
I thought about the new will and my guardianship of Ronnie. If all this ended the right way – when it all ended the right way – and Ronnie was released, he would be in my care. He needed a place to live, structure, and stability. My graduate school life provided none of those things. Still, my mind ran through the possibilities. I could schedule my classes and teaching for a few days a week and stay home with Ronnie on the others. With Paul’s help and understanding from my professors …
But then, when I graduated? When I went looking for a job, one that might send me anywhere in the country to teach? I had refused to promise Mom for the very same reason. I wanted a career, a life. I didn’t see how the two went together.
Ronnie’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked against the light from the bedside lamp, then looked over and saw me.
‘Hi, Ronnie.’
He smiled. ‘Hi, sis.’
I went to the side of his bed and sat down. I ran my hand over his arm, which was still beneath the sheet. I remembered when Dad was first in the hospital. Nothing makes a person seem more vulnerable and weak than being wrapped up in a hospital bed.
‘How are you?’ I asked. ‘Are you feeling okay?’
‘I’m okay,’ he said.
He seemed less morose than he had before. I couldn’t be sure how much of that had to do with whatever drugs they were giving him to even out his moods.
‘Are you getting enough to eat?’ I asked. ‘Shoot. I should have stopped and got you a sandwich or something. Do you want me to go out and do that?’
‘I ate my dinner here,’ he said. ‘Not too bad.’
‘Good.’
Then he said, ‘I don’t want to be here any more.’
His words hit me in the chest, as if someone had taken a two-by-four and whacked me there. I struggled for air. ‘I know, Ronnie.’
‘I miss home,’ he said. ‘I miss Mom.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I do too.’ I rushed to speak before he could say anything else that would break my heart. ‘Look, I’ll talk to the doctor in a minute. I’ll find out what’s going on. You’ll probably just have to stay here a little longer.’
‘That’s what Paul said. He wouldn’t take me home either.’
My brother didn’t sound angry or emotional. Just resigned. I think the resignation in his voice, the defeat, made it even worse. I decided to change the subject as fast as possible.
‘You know what I found today?’ I asked, trying to sound chipper. To my own ears, my voice sounded high-pitched and a little crazy, laced with false cheer. I might have found myself on the receiving end of a visit from the men in white coats. ‘Do you remember Peppy?’
Ronnie’s face brightened a little. ‘Of course,’ he said.
Peppy was a white poodle. Someone Dad knew had found him abandoned on the interstate when he was just a puppy. This person asked Dad if he’d like to take the dog, since he knew Dad had two kids. Peppy lived with us for more than ten years, until he had to be put to sleep when I was in high school.
‘Do you remember that picture Mom took of him?’ I asked. ‘The one where he’s wearing the Santa hat?’
Ronnie nodded. ‘He used to jump on us in the yard when we came home from school. Every day he came running out to us.’
‘Mom let him out so he could do that,’ I said.
‘He used to sleep in my bed sometimes,’ Ronnie said.
‘Sometimes? He slept in your bed all the time. He wouldn’t sleep with anyone else.’
‘I know.’
‘You know? Then why did you say sometimes?’
He tried to suppress a grin. ‘I didn’t want you to feel bad.’
I laughed at his slyness. ‘I was mad then. I wanted him to be my dog, but he was yours. He lived with the whole family, but he loved you the most. He was your dog.’
‘He went to Indiana Beach with us,’ Ronnie said.
‘That’s right.’
We’d rarely taken vacations when I was growing up. We weren’t poor by any means, but we didn’t have an excess of anything. And Ronnie’s extra schooling and medical bills took a bite out of the family budget. In fact, Mom didn’t have any real sense of financial security until Dad died and she collected on his life insurance policy.
But one summer when I was eight, the vacation bug bit my parents. All four of us piled into Dad’s Ford Taurus and we drove across the state line to Indiana Beach, a cheesy, family-friendly resort area someone had built on the shore of a man-made lake in west central Indiana. We spent five days there, going on the rides on the boardwalk and swimming in the small roped-off enclosure they’d made for kids in the lake. I could still smell the cotton candy and the popcorn, the elephant ears and the hot dogs they grilled along the midway. Ronnie loved it. We all loved it, but for some reason we never went back.
‘Peppy got carsick,’ Ronnie said. ‘He puked in the backseat.’
‘He did. That’s right.’ It didn’t sound like fun, riding down the interstate in a hot car with a puddle of dog puke at my feet, but I couldn’t think of it any other way. ‘Dad was furious,’ I said.
‘He said he didn’t want to bring Peppy in the
first place.’
I laughed. ‘Oh, my God.’ I closed my eyes and the memories were all right there, as vivid as anything on a movie screen. Dad in his Ohio State baseball cap. Mom in her sunglasses. The green car, the passing scenery, the fishy smell of the lake. I closed my eyes tight, squeezing off tears.
Something touched my arm. It was Ronnie, reaching out for me. ‘It’s okay, sis,’ he said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Thanks, Ronnie.’ We clasped hands. His skin was warm and a little clammy from being tucked inside the sheet, but I didn’t mind. We held on to each other, and I gathered myself.
‘You’re welcome, sis.’
‘I wanted to ask you about something else,’ I said.
I bent down to my purse and took out the photo. Ronnie and Mom and the two mystery children weren’t at Indiana Beach in the picture. I had no idea where they were standing, and I was counting on my brother to straighten it out. I handed the photo to him.
‘Ronnie, who are these kids in the picture with you?’ I asked.
He took the photo, and his brow creased. ‘You took this from my room,’ he said.
‘Yes, I did, Ronnie.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m trying to find some things out about Mom. I had to go in there.’ He didn’t look mollified, but I pressed on. ‘So, who are these two little kids with you and Mom?’
‘You know them,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t. I’ve never seen them before.’
‘They’re our cousins. That’s what Mom said.’
‘Cousins?’ I leaned forward and looked at the photo again. We didn’t have any cousins. Dad was an only child. Paul had no children. We were it, the whole generation. ‘I don’t think that’s right.’