What could we do? I was afraid for you to find out the truth, that I was not your real mother. Lena did not want you to feel that she had discarded you. We were desperate to do what we could to keep Travis and Barbara Jean apart without revealing our own sham.
We chose to sacrifice Margot and the memory of her beloved father. We knew exactly what we were doing and the result it would have. She visited us again the day after Barbara Jean’s birthday.
“Lena, he was the only father you ever knew. I know he loved you. He always considered you his oldest daughter. I was sometimes so jealous of that. Can’t you make peace with him?” Margot pleaded. Lena walked out of the room. Margot turned to me with an open mouth.
“You have no right to ask that of Lena,” I said.
“I am her sister. I have every right.”
“Just like your father had the right to berate his stepdaughter in the name of God?” I asked.
“I didn’t say she had to agree with his religious views. I think he was a bit over the top myself.”
“Oh, and did he expose his private parts to you while you were praying? Did he burn your thighs with cigarettes and tell you not to scream? Did he blame you for his impotence because you were too ugly to excite a man?” As I spoke, I made myself into ice—slick, cold, and clear.
“Did she tell you that?” Margot folded her arms around her torso. “My God, she is delusional. She needs help. My father was a minister in a church for over thirty years. His parishioners loved him.”
“I am not talking about his parishioners.”
“Why would he violate Lena and leave me alone? My mother was there in the house with them for God’s sake.”
“I don’t care what you think, but it’s Lena’s truth, and she is not going to the funeral,” I said, calmly. I was about to walk away.
“I cannot believe that I ever defended the two of you to him. He was all the time telling me about your perverted ways, and I defended you.” Margot’s voice was faltering. “And you. You are the mastermind. Lena does anything you say. You probably planted these things in her mind to lure her into your bed. You are sick. That’s what you are.”
I did not deny any of it. She talked herself into her own denial.
“Are you through?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Then get out of my house.”
“You can’t throw me out. I’m leaving. And don’t you ever come near my son or me ever again. You are a witch.”
It was so easy. I cried for days in the privacy of my bedroom. Lena was braver than I was, unless, of course, she was feeling less guilty.
We tried to hide our emotions from Barbara Jean, but we didn’t have to worry. She was sick with her own grief over the loss of love. She couldn’t understand why Travis didn’t return her calls.
Lena took her to the lake, but she wouldn’t get in the water. She sat on the shore and sketched and sketched. Her pencil strokes were angry and aggressive as Lena’s swimming strokes had been the first time I brought her to the lake. I didn’t interfere, nor did I join them. Blue Lake was always a poor substitute for the Aegean.
At the time of BJ’s party, we did not know that time was running out. When Lena got sick, I finally realized all that she had meant to me. She was the person who had stayed by my side through it all. I tried to give back to her all that she gave me, but the task seemed too vast, especially in the cancerous years. I took her to Greece after she lost her hair. We toured the places I knew, even though the landscape had changed. At last, I took her to the village where I had grown up. Magically, it was as I remembered it. Not only did I recognize some of my playmates among the time-withered faces, but some of the older citizens as well. Women who were grandmothers when I left were still making breads. I wondered if I had misjudged their ages or if time did not have the same hold on these inhabitants.
I took Lena to the water. She clasped her hands in delight at the cobalt surf. Immediately she began to strip, and I followed suit. We were two old ladies swimming buck naked in the sea. I saw the burns and tattoos on Lena’s body where the radiologist had done her job. Her scalp, pink and slathered in sun block, was beginning to show signs of hair. It should have pained me to look at her floating there in the last hours of daylight, but when I looked on her face I saw only the markings of tranquility. We were not separate from each other or the rest of the world. With water and sky, and hope and pain, male and female, bigot and martyr, we swam. This is the moment that I carry with me. It is how I define my life.
Dear Judy, when you read this account, if you read this account, I expect your first reaction to include judgment. You may even think it is my due, but it is madness to think you can judge others and not blacken your own spirit. I speak from experience. Instead, I invite you to cleanse your soul in the waters of the sea.
You may think you would have chosen a different life, but I have come to believe that is not true. Life does not happen to us. We choose our experiences. Whatever disease you have invited into your breast, you have the power to set it free.
Daughter of my heart,
Dare to depart.
Come swim along with me.
As always—your loving mother,
Anja
♦ 54 ♦
I DIDN’T RETURN to my room, choosing to remain on the sofa with my thoughts. I knew now that this letter had been too late for my mother—deliberately distanced from her. It seemed intended for me alone, existing as my birthright. But what was I supposed to do with this information? What was Nonna telling me with her message? My subconscious mind continued to process the letter even after I drifted into an uneasy sleep. At first my dreams were turbulent though unremarkable. But in the still hours when dawn grants dreams longevity, I dreamed I was with my mother. Mom looked as she did in those years right before cancer took its toll. Her hair was curly and graying slightly, but her eyes were still bright. She was walking up ahead. I called to her, but she didn’t turn around, so I ran to catch up with her. We walked for a long time down a rocky beach without acknowledging one another. Then we reached a cliff and the beach stopped abruptly. Mom turned to face me, her daughter.
“You know you almost drowned once when you were a baby,” she said. “It was in a neighbor’s pool. Your father rescued you. I was always terrified of the water.”
“But you swam all the time,” I said.
She did not hear me. “I saw you first, but I wouldn’t get into the water even though I knew you were drowning. I just stood there and watched. I could not believe how beautiful the water looked with the sun dancing on the surface and your hair swaying under the water.”
I reached out for my mother, but she was already walking away in a floating motion over the cliff where I could not follow her.
“Mom, where are you going?”
“So beautiful.” She kept on walking away from me, and then she was gone.
“Mom, wait for me,” I called after her.
Feeling utterly alone, I turned around, hoping Mom would reappear. Nobody was behind me, but down on the beach, about a quarter mile away, Sam was standing. He was waving and calling to me, “Come on, Mom.”
And then over my shoulder, I heard the sound of the surf. I turned to the horizon, but the sky and the sea were the same color. I couldn’t determine boundaries, but as if by magic I saw three porpoises leaping in the distance. They were swimming away from the shore and I watched them until I could no longer see them, but at least now I had a line that could divide the sky from the water.
I WOKE BEFORE Bryce and Sam did, but I sat on the sofa for a long time just looking at my hazy reflection in the front window. Who was the person I saw? Was she wife or daughter, mother or lover? And the names? Which one fit this vision of pink faced girl/woman with the leathery hands and sun chapped lips? Out of the reflection came a craving, which I reached for and pulled to me until it nudged out all the questions of the morning. So many masks. Some I had chosen to wear over the years, but some were a
lready there, painted in henna, decorating my skin with their deception.
My love for Travis went beyond the moment; it was past, and it was future. Our love was a continuum to which I belonged. But did it even matter? How could I break up my family? Would it be better to keep my time with Travis as memory where I could keep it protected, perfect, and whole? In that same instant I knew that there was no Bryce, only Travis, but how could I be the one to desert the life we’d promised to sustain with no thought to impediment? All my fears assaulted me, and I kept hearing Sam call to me over and over in my mind.
Come on, Mom. Where was he leading me?
I liked to believe there were two endings to my story and that either way I would be fine. But I didn’t have two lives to live. I was Lena, standing once again on the brink of two possibilities. And still, I didn’t know. How had she based her choice—on her love for Nonna or on her love for her child? I loved Travis. I loved my son. Somewhere in those great loves, my fate was waiting for me. I could breathe only because I held on to the surety that by this time tomorrow I would move forward with only one of my two lives.
As a warm-up, I turned my mind to easy determinations. What should I do this morning? Take care of the dog. And after that? Make breakfast. What should I make for breakfast? Blueberry muffins. I would make blueberry muffins.
Jules padded over to me, and I rubbed the scruff of his neck. He had slept beside me all night, a departure from his recent patrol beside Sam’s bed. I rose and followed Jules to the kitchen where our morning routine awaited me. So much of life was routine, and I knew that whatever tomorrow brought or the day after that or next week, I would still be rising each morning and feeding this dog. I would dress and brush my teeth and feed my son and make jewelry. I would make love and cry at movies and open birthday presents and visit the dentist. I found a weird calm in my customs, and the thought never occurred to me that this was the eye of a storm, around which all my life’s turmoil swirled.
Carefully, I washed the fresh berries. Bryce loved blueberries. I pushed that memory away. For the moment the tasks of rinsing the fruit and checking for stems was my mind’s only design.
Bryce came into the kitchen first, pulling a sleeveless tank over his head.
“Come on, Jules. Inside, boy.” He opened the door, and Jules bounded toward Bryce. Oh, the love of a dog. Bryce wiped Jules’s legs with the towel that was beside the door, and the dog responded with a sloppy kiss. I looked back at the two of them, and tried to gauge Bryce’s mood.
Bryce returned my gaze and saw the muffin tins on the counter. He walked over to where I stood by the sink. Reaching over me, he grabbed a large blueberry and put it into his mouth.
“I’m sorry I was in such a bad mood when you came home last night.” He closed in behind and put his arms around me. “You don’t have to talk about it. I won’t ask that of you. I love you.” I let him hold me, but neither of us knew what to do next. The embrace was wooden but not comfortless. Bryce kissed the hairline near my ear. He had often kissed me in just that spot. I didn’t move. My heart fluttered in its cage.
Bryce spoke in a low voice. “I’m going to drive out to the track and go for a run. I need to work some things out of my system. When I come back, you can just put our cards on the table, okay? You can just give me an answer.”
I didn’t respond. Bryce gripped my shoulders and slowly turned me around.
“Please tell me it’s not hopeless,” he said.
I couldn’t look at him directly. “Not hopeless,” I repeated.
He kissed the top of my head and then lifted my chin.
“That’s all I needed to hear.” Bryce nodded. He grabbed another blueberry and checked his watch.
“I’ll be back in forty minutes.”
“Oh God, what am I going to do?” I asked aloud after Bryce had left. I looked at the calendar on the refrigerator. Sunday.
Sam entered the kitchen. “Where’s Daddy?”
“He went running.”
“He didn’t leave, did he?”
“Leave?”
“For Michigan.”
“No, Sam, he’s not going yet.”
“Is he going today? That’s what he said last night.”
“Did he say that? I don’t know.”
I pulled my son into my cotton nightgown. The rough edges of his cast caught me at my waist.
“I bet you’ll be glad to get that cast off.”
“Yeah. But I am a little afraid.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I just want Dad to be with me when the doctor saws my cast off.”
If I could, I would have pulled him back into my womb. His head was right at my belly, and I stroked his hair with the same movements I had used on my growing abdomen when I was pregnant.
“My brave boy.”
“My brave mommy.”
I laughed and cupped his chin. Sam smiled up at me with more faith than I had in anything at the moment. Here he was, so real and trusting, the key to it all.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too.” He squeezed my middle and planted a playful kiss near my navel.
“I kissed your belly button,” he said.
“Yes, you did.”
At that moment, looking down at my son, I didn’t have the strength to split from Bryce. I couldn’t break up Sam’s world, my world, and rebuild it again. That was why I put off telling Bryce about Travis. He didn’t need to know. Last night with Travis was good-bye. He would come to see it that way, and I hoped in time he could forgive me. I had made the vows to Bryce, and no matter how powerful the love I shared with Travis, it did not release me from fulfilling the obligation I had first to my son. I remembered my dream. It was so vivid now.
Bryce would try harder; we both would. We could make this work, I told myself. If we hurried, we could leave tonight and have enough time back in Michigan to register Sam for school. Karen could handle the house. I could resume my old life, and Travis would slip back into the places where he had always been—in my heart as a remembrance, in my blood as a cousin. Travis would understand. He had done much the same thing when he surrendered my needs for his mother’s years ago. I had survived the pain of losing Travis once. It had changed me before, and no doubt would change me again, but I would survive.
Sam disappeared to play with his figures. I forgot about the muffins I was making, and instead entered the lean-to. My studio was tidy, as it had been when I prepared for Bryce and Sam to arrive. The concrete floor was cool on my bare feet as I shuffled over to the ventilation hoods. Normally I didn’t enter this space with bare feet for fear of the metal shavings that dusted all surfaces, but the space was unusually clean, and if this was truly my decision, I had to stop thinking of this as my studio. I had to stop thinking, period; I had no choice.
I lost myself in action, my best narcotic. While packing, I didn’t consider time. I unscrewed the tip from my torch and loaded my bricks and charcoal pads into an empty cardboard box that had never quite been thrown away. I sorted through a few random items, but mostly, I emptied whole drawers into that box without looking inside. I lost myself in my task until there wasn’t much else to do. Bryce would have to help me lift my anvil. My tools were already situated in my red Craftsman tool chest. I spun to look at it and noticed the framed picture of Bride sitting on the shelf above it.
“Yes, Bride. Here we go again. Last time. I promise.”
I turned her three faces down, deposited her in the box, and wove the cardboard flaps over one another to close the box. Just as I put the box atop the worktable, I heard a car door slam.
“Sam, Daddy’s home,” I called down the hall, and ran out onto the porch. But when I got there, it was Travis who stood before me on the sidewalk. I looked down to see that I was still in my nightgown. I had no reason to feel shy around Travis. He’d seen me in far less, and though it seemed ages ago in my mind, I reminded myself that we’d been intimate only the night before. Regardless of that f
act, I felt vulnerable and awkward in the light of this morning and my recent decision. Here was my lover, come to claim me. He didn’t know I was leaving, and I had to tell him. Somehow, I had deluded myself into thinking that this meeting would never have to happen.
“Hi,” he said.
“Oh … Travis.” My voice caught on the words. They sounded far away, like an echo.
“Were you expecting someone else?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that Bryce—”
“He’s still here?” he asked with genuine incredulity.
“He went running.” I scanned the road for any signs of Bryce. “He’ll be back any second.”
“Oh hell! When I didn’t see his car I thought he went back to Michigan. I came to take you and Sam to the lake.” Travis climbed the stairs to join me on the porch. He bent to kiss me, but mercifully Sam came barging through the door.
“Travis!”
“Hey, buddy.”
Sam sprang into his arms. “Mom, are we going on the boat today?”
“It is Sunday,” Travis pointed out.
I was quiet.
“It’s okay, BJ.”
“Yeah, Mom, it’s okay!” Sam agreed.
“BJ, you did talk to Bryce, didn’t you?” Travis asked.
“When I got home last night, I—”
“You didn’t talk to him.” Travis eyed me carefully and then shook his head. “Tell me what this is. Tell me why I am here, BJ.”
“Not here. Not now.” I looked at Sam whose smile had vanished. He looked at me with confusion.
“Mommy, can we go with Travis? We haven’t been on the boat in a long, long time.”
None of this should be happening. My thoughts swam. How could I get Travis off of this porch so I could get on with my life? I couldn’t think.
“Mommy, please? Can we go?”
I didn’t have a chance to answer; and my world got a little smaller. Bryce walked up the sidewalk from the barn. I hadn’t heard his car. He stood on the curb; his flushed body glistened with sweat. He looked up at all of us on the porch as if we were players on a stage, acting out some comedy of errors. I was still standing in my thin nightgown next to the stranger who was clasping his son.
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