Me, Cinderella?

by Rose, Aubrey

  How could I explain to Mark that I didn’t share his feelings? I had known unrequited love, but it had always been from the other side. Cute boys I crushed on would dismiss me without a second thought, or worse, insult me with pity. Knowing how terrible rejection felt, I didn’t want to hurt Mark, but I most definitely didn’t want to lead him on either.

  All of that would have to wait, though, because I was not about to let some romantic attachments get in the way of the main reason I had wanted to come to Hungary in the first place. I pushed back the covers and slid out of bed quickly, pulling on my clothes in the quiet dim room. The other girls slept on. The first day of sleeping in came at the end of a long week, and everyone except for me was taking advantage of it. Some beds emitted the faint sounds of snores and sleepy murmurs, and others were silent as tombs.

  An emotional pang shot through me as I walked out to the stairway where I had first found Lucky. I hoped that Eliot would be taking good care of him. Of course he would. Still, I missed the small, boisterous kitten.

  Not wanting to be caught by Mark, I eased the doors open and then closed them behind me, tiptoeing down the steps and then walking briskly down the sidewalk. By the time I turned the corner, my thoughts had already turned away from Eliot and Mark and towards my family. My mother. In my pocket my fingers slipped over the scrap of paper where I had written directions to the cemetery where she was buried. I only hoped that I could find her when I got there.

  The sky seemed bright as I walked quickly on, and I whistled the notes of the Satie that had been playing in my head all morning.

  I’m on my way, mom, I thought, and smiled.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As I walked to the cemetery snow began to fall softly around me. Arriving, I couldn’t believe my eyes—the place was huge, three long city blocks at least at the front of it, surrounded by iron fences taller than me. My Nagy had told me that my mom was buried in the back of the cemetery, to the right. I had imagined a small plot of graves, but now that I looked across the street at the cemetery, I thought I might be there for hours searching for the right grave. Maybe there would be a caretaker I could ask.

  A street vendor outside of the cemetery waved me over, and I stopped to look at her flowers. Not a single other person was on the sidewalk, and the old woman was eager to see me. She spoke in Hungarian first before realizing that I was American.

  “For the one you visit,” she said. “The one you love.” She held out bouquets for me to choose from.

  The flowers had been wrapped in brown paper to shield them from the cold, and I picked out a small bunch of white roses. The woman accepted my money gratefully and smiled, showing a crooked grin.

  “Bless you, child,” she said, and turned away, humming. I inhaled the delicate scent of the roses and walked on toward the entrance to the cemetery. Cypress trees lined the edges of the graveyard behind wrought iron fence that kept souls inside and vandals out. The metal bracing of the entryway arched over my head as I entered.

  Passing through the gates, I heard nothing but the soft whistling of the wind through the cypress trees. I walked forward quietly, and snowflakes fell all around but never seemed to land on me. Rows of stone slabs marked the buried. Carved angels and wreaths stood eroded at their edges, proving true the saying that nothing lives forever, despite the hopes of those who commissioned the monuments that stood above their tombs. Many of the gravestones had lost their lettering already to time and weather, some slabs cracked from being frozen and thawed over however many number of years they had been there.

  Ahead of the entrance, a number of private family plots clustered together, the tombs topped with huge statues. Famous people, I thought, or rich. I skirted the edge of the plots but as I walked by, my coat snagged on a low iron gate into one of the plots. I stooped down to free the fabric, and the name on the grave made my breath stop for just an instant.

  Herceg.

  Was this where Eliot’s wife was buried? I looked up at the plot, my coat now freed from its snag. Several graves organized themselves into rows, the stones above them carved ornately with scrollwork. The iron gate creaked at my knees as I pushed it open and walked in. I looked around guiltily, as though I was an invader.

  I didn’t belong here. It felt wrong to be here without Eliot, to stand in this sacred spot. I stepped away but my eye caught on a small statue of an angel, its arms thrown up in the air as though dancing. I paused to look and saw the name carved into the top of the stone. Clare Herceg. I brushed the snow off of the rest of the stone. A few lines of Hungarian were written underneath, a prayer or a poem. The date of death was ten years ago.

  It must be her. I looked around again, feeling like somebody was watching me from afar, but there was nobody else in the cemetery that I could see. I turned to leave, but then turned back. My fingers trembled as I pulled at the ribbon on the bouquet of white roses. I tugged the bouquet in half and laid the flowers down at the front of the grave. Whoever Clare was, Eliot had loved her and she had loved him. I felt a connection with her, standing there in the drifting snowflakes and looking down on her grave.

  Then I left the plot, not looking back over my shoulder. My breath already was coming faster as I moved toward the part of the cemetery where my mother would be buried. It didn’t look like any caretakers were around, so I would have to find her grave myself. I walked on, my toes beginning to freeze as my feet marked a trail towards the places where snow had drifted into piles on the paths through the cemetery.

  My hand hung at my side, white fingers clutching the remaining bouquet of roses. Row on row and still nowhere near the end. The trails here ran crooked at the edges, overrun by brown and deadened weeds no hands had torn out in the springtime. My mother had been laid there, among the paupers and the unknown, the homeless and the kinless. I ached with guilt for not having come earlier, but the anger at my father inside me had altogether disappeared. Emptiness took its place, a quiet space in my mind amid the grief threatening to flood my senses.

  The last row. I turned to the right and saw the slab, knowing it was hers before I read the inscription. The stone was whiter, newer, and the front glowed brighter in the daylight than any other around it. Dark patches of lichen crept up the uneven, pockmarked sides of the white slab, spiders crawling over stone. I knelt down and brushed the frost off of the front inscription.

  Katalin Tomlin

  1961-1992

  Just her name and those dates. Nothing that mentioned she had been a loving wife and mother. Nothing about her, not a “Rest in Peace” or a “Forever in Our Hearts.” All of my vague memories, all of her life, reduced down to a name and number. Why hadn’t my grandmother’s family done something for her? It felt wrong.

  “Mom,” I whispered.

  When I touched the cold marble, it was as though the barricade that I had built up over the years, the dam that I had made, cracked and crumbled, swept away in a fast-moving river that was fed by some secret underground source. I broke down and wept: my face grew warm, then hot, then burning. The wind picked up and whistled among the cypress trees at the perimeter, the cold murmurings of a faraway tribunal.

  “I’m sorry,” I cried. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, mom. I’m sorry.”

  I did not know what I was apologizing for. For the years lost and taken for granted. For every mischief I got into. For waiting so long to grieve.

  It had been too long. I didn’t even remember the sound of her voice. Slowly, but surely, the pieces of memory, so fragile and precious, had cracked and melted and ebbed away on the tides of time like so much glass being fractured, crystal by crystal, into sand. Her voice that had sung to me when I was young.

  The tears ran and wet my collar as I pressed my handkerchief to my face and soon it soaked through, and still I cried and cried, the wet and dripping handkerchief clutched between my fingers in a paralysis of sorrow, nothing mattered. Not even my nose dripping so much, my tears wrinkling my face, so hot and wet and constant. My mom’s body was h
ere, under me, and for the first time in a long time I let myself care. I let my emotions rise up inside me and take over, and in the roar of hurt and pain I found myself again.

  I sat there for a long time, until I was steady enough to stop sobbing.

  “I love you, mom.” I pressed a hand on the stone. It was cold and hard and dead, so unlike the tree in my grandmother’s yard. I thought that I would want to stay and talk, but now that I had seen where she lay buried, I didn’t want to. I didn’t know why. It struck me that I had been expecting more to come of my visit, for the world to stop, to change direction.

  I stood up and touched my collar. It felt frosted, and that was when I realized that my hot tears had turned to ice in the air here. I pulled the coat collar out and brushed the frost away. There would be more tears later, but for now the world felt peaceful. Not numb, not suppressed. Just peaceful.

  Walking out of the cemetery, my thoughts were a jumbled mess. I didn’t even notice when a car pulled up next to me, and I started when the car stopped at the curb in front of me and the driver got out. It was Eliot. He looked at me over the hood of the car, and I just looked back. I didn’t care how horribly puffy and red my eyes must be. He didn’t care for me anyway, so why should I care what he thought? Eliot walked around the front of the car to me.

  “I’m glad I found you, Brynn! I talked with Mark already, but he said you had been gone since the morning. I thought you might be here.” Eliot stopped in front of me, just then noticing my bleary face.

  “Brynn? Are you alright?” He dug in his pocket and brought out a fresh handkerchief. I took it gratefully and blew my nose. The sun had broken through the afternoon clouds and its rays warmed the top of my head.

  “I’m fine. Just went to go visit my mother.” I said nothing about seeing his family’s plot, about his wife.

  “Your mother? I—I had no idea. I thought you were visiting your ancestors… Of course. I’m so sorry. Brynn. Forgive me.”

  Before I could stop him, he pulled me into his arms and hugged me tightly. My heart pounded against his, and we stood together for half a minute that seemed like a lifetime. His chest rose and fell and pushed mine to breathe with it, and for those moments we were breathing as one person. A surge of desire ran through my nerves as his hands touched my back, ran along my shoulders possessively. Then I remembered everything, remembered that he had pushed me away, and anger rose up to take its place. I needed to be alone, to think about my mom. I did not want to have Eliot edge his way back into my thoughts.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, keeping my frustrations bottled. “Did you come here to…” I waved towards the cemetery, not wanting to say his wife’s name.

  “No, no,” he said. “Nothing like that. I came to take you to the academy, if you’ll let me. Your, ah, friend Mark is on his way there already.”

  “What’s the hurry?” The last thing on my mind right now was Mark or Eliot, and I resented having my day interrupted by two people I had diligently been trying to avoid.

  “The problem.” He opened the passenger side door for me, and I reluctantly got in. “You two found a nice little opening into the answer. I checked it out earlier this morning.”

  “Oh?” I crossed my arms. “Not last night?”

  Eliot recoiled with the snide remark, as though I had slapped him across the face.

  “I’m sorry I interrupted you last night. I was so intrigued, and this is such a new avenue to explore, I couldn’t help but come. But I am very sorry to have disturbed the two of you.”

  I flushed. “You didn’t disturb anything. Really.”

  “Really? He seems enamored of you.” Eliot’s smile was pained, but his emotions towards me were mere trivialities.

  “What do you care?”

  “Again, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to become involved with any of the other students,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “It would be a mistake.” I nearly spat out the word. “And I wouldn’t want any more of those.”

  Eliot said nothing, just stared ahead through the windshield where slush spattered the glass.I fumed out of the window, and we rode the rest of the way in silence. When we arrived at the academy, I slammed the car door shut behind me.

  “Brynn?”

  I spun around to see Eliot standing, his hands open in innocence.

  “I’m sorry for how you feel right now. If it’s my fault—”

  “Of course it’s not! Of course it’s not your fault!” Adrenaline tensed my muscles, and another wash of grief tore its unyielding way through my body. I shuddered.

  “What is it, then?”

  “I thought it would change things,” I said, blurting out the thought that had been at the forefront of my mind since I left her graveside. “I thought it would change things to see her grave. But nothing changed.” I looked up at him, wetness burning in the corners of my eyes. “Nothing.”

  Eliot paused in thought. A snowflake fell on my eyelash, and I blinked it away, a tear falling from my eye.

  “Go again. Go again tomorrow.”

  I looked up at him. The distance between us felt huge, empty.

  “Why? What will have changed tomorrow?”

  “You will have changed.”

  I held my chin up. If he thought I was only a child, he was wrong. I would not be manipulated again, not by any of his high speeches. Not when he didn’t have the courage to put into action the advice he gave to others. When I spoke again, my words turned his face white.

  “And what about you?” I said. My voice was cold, dead. “When will you go visit your wife?”

  In legends, nobody dies peacefully. Villains die violently, heroes die unluckily, and if it isn’t arrows or spears it’s poison or drowning.

  My mother died violently, and that’s all anyone ever told me. She went to Hungary to take care of my grandmother who had hurt her back, and one day when she was walking down the streets of Budapest someone killed her and threw her body into the river.

  My father went to identify the body and see her buried, but he would not let me go. I was too young, he said, and I had school to think of. Later, after he had come back, I begged him to tell me what he had seen, but he never did. I had dreams where a hooded figure would stab me over and over again, tear my body to pieces, throw me into a dark river. My father didn’t know how to comfort me. Some nights I would wake up screaming. Some nights we both would.

  They say time heals all wounds, but not always. Sometimes wounds pucker over and leave scars, and sometimes they heal silently and secretly, so that only one person knows the hurt was ever there. Sometimes they fester until another person comes along to cut out the rot, and then they bleed clean and fresh again. A second chance to heal.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Eliot didn’t respond to anything I said, and the meeting at the academy with Mark was brief and awkward. I sat on the other side of the table and listened as Eliot explained a number of different options we had to explore now that we had broken through the solution to the first, specific case. Occasionally he would glance up at Mark, but never at me.

  Then he left, and Mark and I were alone in the university library. I began to gather up the papers to go, but Mark put his hand on my arm.

  “Brynn?”

  I turned to see him only inches away from me, his body so near mine that I could feel his breath on my skin.

  “Mark—”

  “I need to talk with you.” His face was so serious that I almost laughed out of sheer nervousness.

  “About what?”

  “Come on, Brynn, you know about what.” He leaned in as if to kiss me, and I stepped back.

  A lump rose in my throat and I coughed. I didn’t want to do this to Mark. He had been one of the best and closest friends I’d ever had. But I didn’t feel the same way towards him, and he deserved to know that.

  “Mark,” I said carefully. �
�I don’t think we should go any further with this.”

  His face dropped into a mask of apathy. He only looked like this when it hurt, I could tell. “Why?”

  “I just— I don’t feel that way towards you.”

  “You kissed me back. Last night.” His voice pleaded with me, and his careful mask began to crack.

  “I’m sorry, Mark. I was excited about the problem. We both were.”

  “But I thought…look, Brynn, I know we could be a good couple.”

  “Mark, don’t.”

  He forged ahead with the words that I’m sure he’d been practicing all last night. “I really think there’s something between us, Brynn. I’ve always felt it. You’re so special to me, and you always have been. Just give me a chance to be that person for you, too.”

  “Mark—”

  “Don’t do this,” he said, his voice cracking. “Please, Brynn, don’t throw this away without a shot.”

  “I’m not throwing anything away. I just don’t think we should be together. Not like that.”

  Mark paused, his brow furrowed deeply. He looked tortured, and I wished that there was something I could do to console him. But any kindness I had in me was safely tamped down. If there was one thing I didn’t want, it was to send mixed messages. No more hugs. No more shared smiles. No more anything for a while.

  “I don’t understand it.” His voice turned hard, and he looked away from me. I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there, waiting.