Whisper Me This

by Kerry Anne King

  As I walk, focused on my breath and my feet, my body becomes fully mine again. And every solid step, every conscious breath, cements the new reality in place.

  I am not an only child, and all those false memories are not false after all.

  Marley.

  The name stops my feet, right in the middle of the sidewalk.

  My mother lied to me. Deliberately. Repeatedly. She told me Marley was the product of my overactive imagination. Sent me to a counselor so the counselor could tell me I was delusional. “No more looking for Marley,” Mom said. “No more asking about her. No more telling stories about her. She is not real, Maisey. Grow up and let this childishness go.”

  But the birth certificates don’t lie, and at my parents’ house I have the shredded picture of my mother holding two babies. I don’t need to have the copies in my hands to revisit the details. My brain retains the evidence. I can see the legal seal, the important information in three-dimensional font.

  Mother: Leah Lenore Garrison.

  Father: Alexander Lloyd Garrison.

  Which means not only was Marley real, but my father is not my father. How is it possible to live thirty-nine years on this planet and never guess that your parents are harboring secrets of this magnitude?

  The first clear emotion I feel is anger. Not a slow-blossoming, warming anger, but a solid wall of rage that hits me like a sledgehammer and nearly knocks me over sideways.

  How dare my parents—both of them, not just my overcontrolling mother but my beloved father, too—lie to me like this? Because now I have a secret, a secret I don’t want and never asked for. My entire middle-class upbringing has been a lie, and the people I need to confront with that are not available for questioning.

  Leah’s Journal

  Let me begin with the smallest of my regrets, and that, my dearest Walter, is you.

  When I first found you, even when I married you, I confess I did not love you. I wormed my way into your life and your heart like a parasite into an apple, and for most of the same reasons. From the first minute that I sat in your office and looked at your kind face and your honest eyes, blurred by those finger-smudged lenses in those old-man glasses you used to wear, I knew that above all things you were safe.

  And that is all I was looking for. A shield. A new identity. A father for Maisey.

  That, and somebody I could manipulate into letting me keep my secrets.

  Any guilt I feel over those old machinations is small and fleeting, because I fell in love with you after all, beyond my expectations or intentions. You—us—the love we found together, that was a surprise, my Walter. The rest of my life has been rigorously planned, I suppose. Maisey thinks me rigid and obsessive. She uses softer words, but I hear the tone behind them. I saw it in her eyes the last time she visited, and I know why she never comes home.

  The truth is, I don’t know any other way to be.

  I always thought you never knew I had been splintered and glued back together, but I wonder now if I’ve underestimated you. I’m not going to ask. We are what we are, after all these years. Some things should be allowed to slumber undisturbed.

  Chapter Eleven

  When I get to the hospital, I charge up to Mom’s room. I have some things I need to say to her.

  She’s lying there, eyes closed, an oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth. Her breath rattles in her chest. She looks tiny and shrunken, like an unearthed mummy, and the better part of me regrets the pain I’ve caused her by keeping her alive.

  The better part of me is small and weak and completely subsumed by grief and betrayal and rage.

  I put my lips close to her ear and whisper, “How could you lie to me like this? What happened to my sister? What did you do to Marley?”

  She stirs for the first time since I’ve entered the room. Her head rolls side to side on the bed. Her right hand lifts an inch above the covers.

  An impossible hope blossoms. She’s going to wake up, just like that, and talk to me.

  But then her breath catches. There’s a horrible gurgling sound in her throat.

  And then everything stops.

  Her hand falls back to the bed. Her head stays where it is, turned toward me so I can see the closed eyes, the slackness of her mouth.

  She doesn’t breathe out.

  I hold my own breath, waiting for her, willing her to start back up. She can’t just lie there, like a wind-up toy that’s stopped in midmotion.

  A clock ticks.

  Nothing happens.

  I erupt out of my chair and burst out into the hallway, looking for somebody—anybody—to help. There’s a button or something I should have pushed, but I can’t remember where it is, and I’m not going back now.

  “Help me! She’s not breathing!”

  A thin, sparse-haired man wielding a mop in the hallway looks up at me. “What room?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think. Just get somebody!”

  “Be right back,” he says. “Just hold tight.”

  He sets off around the corner. I run back into Mom’s room, hoping hoping hoping this is all part of my faulty imagination, and she’s breathing again.

  She hasn’t moved.

  Her skin has taken on a dusky-blue color.

  I grab her hand, which already feels colder, and start babbling a stream of incoherence. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry; please don’t die now, not like this. Give me a chance to make it right . . .”

  Sharp voices come through the speakers out in the hall.

  “Code blue, ACU.”

  A nurse comes in, on the run. My nurse, the one who listened and patted my hand. She’s at Mom’s bedside, feeling for a pulse in her throat, then leaning over to listen with her stethoscope.

  “What are you waiting for?” I demand. “She’s not breathing.”

  The nurse straightens, slowly, and meets my gaze. “Her heart’s not beating.”

  “Aren’t you going to do CPR? What are you waiting for?” I’m stuck in a horror movie where nothing makes sense. I put my own hands on Mom’s chest, as if I’m going to do CPR myself, only I haven’t a clue what I’m supposed to do.

  “She’s a no code, honey,” the nurse says, pronouncing each word carefully. “You agreed to that. It’s in the doctor’s orders and hanging above her bed.”

  I shake my head.

  “No. Whatever I said before, it was wrong. I was wrong. You have to bring her back. I’m not ready . . .”

  Running feet pounding in the hallway. A rattling sound.

  Three staff members hit the room, one of them pushing a cart.

  My nurse holds up a warning hand. “She’s a no code.”

  “No, she’s not,” I say. “Thank God you guys are here.”

  The man looks from the nurse to me, and then to the No Code sign posted above Mom’s bed.

  “I’m her daughter. I agreed to the no code, but I didn’t know—I didn’t mean—I changed my mind. Please, help her.”

  “Family wishes,” the man says to my nurse. “No time to argue. We’re on or we’re off.”

  “Is she the decision maker?” another nurse asks.

  My nurse nods, and the three go into instant action. I step back to the corner of the room, forgotten and out of the way. The male nurse kneels on Mom’s bed, puts his hands on the center of her chest and starts CPR compressions. Her body jolts like a rag doll.

  One of the nurses rips off Mom’s gown, slapping pads on her chest, hooking her up to a machine. Another administers medication into her IV with a syringe. Somebody else holds a mask attached to a bag over her nose and mouth, pumping air into her lungs.

  I can’t even see her anymore, she’s so surrounded by people.

  Then, just like on TV, somebody shouts, “Clear!” The man doing CPR lifts his hands. Everything stops. Mom’s body jolts. They all wait.

  And then it starts again.

  A hand grasps mine, and I glance up into blue eyes luminous with compassion. “Come away. You don’t need to watch t
his.”

  It’s tempting to let this kind person lead me away, but I twist free of her and shake my head. This is my fault, all this noise and chaos. I insisted on trying to bring Mom back; if she chooses to come back, the least I can do is be here when it happens. To listen if there’s a miracle of last words. To tell her, if she regains consciousness, that I’m sorry.

  And still, through all this overwhelming grief and fear and loss, my anger is an ever-present demon. It tangles itself in all the other emotions, stealing the sweetness from my love, poisoning my fear. I watch from the doorway, until finally everything stops.

  “I’m calling it,” somebody says. “It’s 9:56.”

  Shoulders droop. Heads bow. But only for an instant. Then gloves and gowns start coming off. Leads are disconnected. Machines are turned off. Somebody rolls the crash cart out of the room.

  A pair of eyes finds me; the man who called time. “Oh my God. What is she doing here?” he asks a nurse who is pulling a sheet up over my mother.

  But nobody stops me as I drift from my corner over to the bed. Mom is naked under the hastily pulled-up sheet. There’s a tube taped to her mouth. IVs in both arms. Pads stuck to her chest. Her hair sticks up wildly on her head.

  The room is deathly silent.

  “No loved one should have to watch this,” the man says. “Let us clean her up, and then you can come to say good-bye.”

  “I’m the one who wanted this.” My voice breaks on a sob. Tears start pouring, and it feels like they’re coming from somewhere other than my eyes, somewhere deep at my center, where a vital part of me has broken open. I double up around the damaged place, both arms folded over my belly, trying to suck in air. Breath refuses to cooperate. I’m too broken inside. Blackness traces the edges of my vision. A loud roaring fills my ears. My knees are going loose, and I’m just about to fall when breath finally comes rushing into my oxygen-starved lungs.

  My body makes a noise I didn’t know I was capable of, a loud keening wail of loss and betrayal. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”

  There are voices telling me to breathe. Hands pushing and pulling, compelling me away from my mother’s still form laid out on the bed. Away from the terrible silence caused by her lack of breathing. I have no clear awareness of where we are going until I find myself sitting somewhere dim and quiet, all the voices gone.

  When my vision clears enough to see, I’m looking directly at an angel. White wings, outstretched hands, face all kindness and compassion.

  Only a statue, and I’m glad it isn’t real. Any angel coming to me now will be an avenging being. My last words to my mother contained anger and accusation, and then I brought down a whirlwind of torment on her.

  I’m as shocked by this as I am by the suddenness of her death, the way she could be breathing one moment and not breathing the next.

  Here.

  Not here.

  My mother.

  Some stranger with a lifetime full of secrets.

  These conflicting realities sit side by side, and I can’t summon an emotional connection to either of them.

  “Here. Drink this.”

  Not the angel talking to me, but a mere human, more boy than man, sporting a still-adolescent beard. He offers a glass of water and a sympathetic smile. To me, the smile looks pasted on. A solicitous mask that he’s learned from somewhere and donned.

  Comforting Expression Number 3, for a grieving woman in shock.

  He pushes the glass of water into my nerveless hands. “Drink a little. Really. It’s good for shock.”

  Shock. Is that what this is? I feel like I’m encased in a shell of ice. If I move, if I drink the water he’s extending to me, the ice will crack, and I will feel . . . something. I’m not at all sure I want to do that, but my hands move of their own accord, accepting the glass and bringing it to my lips.

  He’s right.

  The sensation of ice-cold water flowing down my throat, into my stomach, serves to wake up the rest of my body. My arms and legs feel weighted, and there’s an elephant sitting on my chest.

  “Better?” the man asks.

  I nod, not speaking yet, and take another swallow.

  “I’m Chaplain Ross. Would it be all right if I pray for you?”

  It’s phrased as a question, but it’s not meant that way. He is hell-bent on prayer. I can feel it. And at the moment, I’m not on the sort of terms with God where this is a comforting idea. But my childhood beliefs are deeply ingrained, and saying I don’t want his prayer feels like sacrilege.

  He pats my hand. His is clammy. He smells sweaty, nervous. If I were a better person, maybe I’d feel some kindness toward him, but as it turns out the very first emotion to really hit me here in the chapel is irritation.

  “I know you’re heartbroken right now,” he says, still patting, “but I assure you, there is comfort in God.”

  “How old are you?” I ask him.

  He blinks rapidly. His eyes are pink-rimmed, the lashes so pale they are barely visible.

  “I don’t think that is relevant—”

  “I think it is. You want to tell me about the comfort of God. I’d like to know if you’re old enough to have ever needed comfort.”

  “Age has very little to do with the need for God.” He says it politely enough, but with an edge that is a reprimand. Point taken. I don’t know his life. Maybe he was an abused and battered child. Maybe his entire family was killed by a drunk driver when he was six.

  I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

  “What is your faith base?” he asks.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Do you attend a church?”

  I don’t. I haven’t been inside a church in years. “Lutheran, I guess,” I tell him, giving him the church of my childhood, the church my parents still attend. Or have attended.

  “Our Father,” Chaplain Ross intones, his voice dropping into a soulful register, “we know that you are the source of comfort for all who mourn. Our help, our rock, our solace . . .”

  If he’d gone for a genuine heartfelt, please-bless-Maisey sort of prayer, I might have stayed. It is quiet and peaceful here in the chapel. But I’m not going to hang around and listen to this fledgling boy–man use prayer as an opportunity to tell God what he already knows.

  Without apology, I get up and slip away. The chaplain, eyes firmly shut, continues to pray. Maybe it will do him some good. There’s precious little hope for me.

  Leah’s Journal

  In fairness to myself and all my decisions, I will allow myself to invoke my childhood as a defense. Is it strange that I don’t miss my parents? I never missed them. Not once since I fled my old life to manufacture this one have I even been tempted to contact them. Probably they are dead by now.

  Does this make me a bad person, Walter? I can see the sorrowful expression on your face if I were to tell you this. Never judgment from you—never that—but still. Deep in your eyes, a change in your opinion of me. You, who would never abandon anybody.

  You cared for both of your parents until they died. Supported your sister through cancer, talking to her every day, never shying away from her pain. How different my life would have been if I were more like you. But I am who I am, and I have done what I have done.

  Does it help if I say that the presence of both my mother and my father in my childhood was superficial and had less impact than my favorite books? Dad was an alcoholic, and Mom was a shell of hopelessness. I don’t blame them for this, mind you. Both of them were carrying out longstanding family traditions. I don’t imagine it occurred to them that there might be another way to be.

  Neither one of them beat me or was even verbally abusive. They didn’t have the energy to spare for that. I didn’t matter enough to them for that. I vaguely remember that Mom might have worked when I was little, before the baby brother came along, only to be snuffed out in a meaningless crib death. After that, she did nothing but watch TV and smoke, endlessly. One or the other of them bought groceries, at least
until I was old enough to be sent to the store. Nobody cleaned house in any meaningful sort of fashion.

  My grandmother, my father’s mother, was the salvation of my childhood. All that I remember of hugs and stories and security came from her. I remember her apartment, overwarm and cramped but clean. It smelled of lemon and vanilla, not tobacco and whiskey. She baked cookies for me. She would make the dough, and we would lay them out on the cookie sheet, her crooked old hands and my young ones side-by-side, working together.

  She died when I was fourteen, and the empty hole she left in my world was the portal into what happened next.

  Chapter Twelve

  The doorway of Dad’s hospital room stops me like a force field. I stand there, watching him, my body and my emotions trying to encompass this new shift in reality.

  Walter Addington. The man I’ve called Dad all my life, the parent I’ve always been the closest to.

  Whether he is really my father or not, whether he lied to me or not, my love for him is deeply rooted, and it’s my job, now, to tell him that Mom has left us both.

  He’s sitting up in a chair today, no longer tied to the bed. His hair is combed. But he still looks frail and old and so very much alone. A wave of grief swamps me. How can I do this? How can I be the one to walk in and tell him?

  I find myself hoping he’s still confused, that the truth about Mom’s death won’t sink in.

  His eyes, focused on the TV mounted above his bed, finally swing around to me, and I don’t have to say the words at all.

  “It’s over, then,” he says. “Was it peaceful?”

  No, it wasn’t peaceful. It was a final battle of wills between her and me, and I’ve lost again. Shame shoulders its way into my already toxic mixture of grief and anger and betrayal. Maybe I’m a coward; maybe it’s the better part of me trying to protect him, but I can’t tell him the truth.

  “It was peaceful,” I tell him. “She died in her sleep.”