by Anna Quinn
“And do you think of the hummingbird?”
“Yes!” Fiona says. “All the time! And I make symbols out of lots of things. Ask me to make a symbol from something, Mommy.”
“Well,” Nora says, her stomach relaxing a bit, “what’s James a symbol of?”
They both look at him. He smiles and waves.
Fiona puts her hands on her hips. “That’s too easy! James is a symbol of love! Give me something harder.”
“Well, how about a TV?”
Fiona is quiet for a moment. Looks at the TV and then at the girl.
“Hmmm,” she says. “That … that is a symbol for a friend. Maybe also, lonely.” She adds a bit more purple to each hummingbird wing, and stands back to inspect it. “It’s perfect. Mommy, can you get me the picture down?”
Nora carefully tears the drawing from the binding, gives it to Fiona. Fiona runs to the girl in front of the TV and offers her the picture.
The girl sets her Styrofoam cup on a side table and raises her hands slowly to take the gift.
Nora walks back to sit with James, keeps her eyes on her daughter, sees the young woman hold the picture up and study it carefully and then set it on her lap. Fiona gives the girl a big smile and runs back to her mother.
“She liked it, Mommy!”
“That was lovely of you, honey.”
Fiona clambers up on Nora’s lap and nestles her head under her mother’s chin. “But Mommy, that girl didn’t talk at all. And her eyes were really sad.” She wraps an arm across Nora. “But I could tell she liked it because of the way she touched the hummingbird’s wings.” Fiona reaches up and strokes Nora’s cheek. “Like this.”
Nora squeezes her. “Hey! I’ve been waiting for days to hear about your Valentine’s party!” Fiona’s body tightens. James clears his throat. “It’s all right,” Nora says. “We can talk about it.” She isn’t sure at all if it is all right, but she feels very hopeful.
She tilts Fiona’s face up so she can look her in the eyes. “Honey, I’m really sorry for scaring you when you were sorting your candy. Really.” Fiona’s eyes well up. “And when I get home, we can talk more about why that happened, okay? But for now, let’s just be happy, like hummingbirds!” Fiona blinks away tears, giggles, relaxes. “So please,” Nora says, “tell me about your party. Did you get all your cards made?”
And Fiona tells her about each paper heart she’d made, each note she’d written, how she carefully taped a candy heart to each red envelope. And, at first, in between Fiona’s words, Nora remembers to breathe, she’s fine. But now, a slight quickening of her heart, and when Fiona begins to recite the words on each heart, “I like you!” and “You’re fun!” and “Kiss me!”
Nora begins to slip
the sweetened words
undressing her
the weightlessness before
her father heavy on
her stillness
and she raises her hips
the floating up,
stay here, stay here,
Fiona’s voice deep underwater,
she begs Margaret in the most fierce way—
“Nora!” Carol’s voice. Carol shaking, shaking, shaking her.
Eyes open. Fiona there, red cheeks wet, her little hand over her mouth, James’ eyes wet too, and the girl with the crocheted blanket holding the hummingbird picture staring, everyone blinking alarm.
“Mr. Bauer,” Carol says, “How about taking the little one out?”
“Mommy,” Fiona says then, in a tiny forlorn voice, but all Margaret can do is shut her eyes tight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
February 20, 1997
Nora lies in bed listening to Carol whisper, “—and she kept screaming, ‘Let me go home. Let me go home,’ in a child’s voice, so out of control—a code gray—five aides to subdue her, scared the hell out of her little one. And ever since then, oh God, the screaming. You’d think she was coming off heroin or something, even broke one of the aides’ fingers!”
And then, another woman’s voice: “Her husband’s getting the court involved—wants her moved to Woodhaven.”
Nora waits until they are gone before she rises from the bed. It takes her a few minutes—the medication makes it hard to think straight. She takes her red wool coat from its hanger and her sweater and jeans from the chest of drawers and lays them on the bed. She pulls off her nightgown and gets dressed, pulls on her socks and running shoes. The missing laces make her cringe, make her burn. Her heart thumping shame. She’d let Fiona talk about the hearts, believed she could handle it, but she couldn’t. Why had she felt so much better earlier, only to have Margaret fracture her again? Her brain is ruined, and now she knows this. Broken. Irreparable.
She rips a piece of paper out of her notebook, but they’ve taken the pen, so she writes clumsily with lipstick, writes with an aching shame, Fiona, I love you. Tears the paper into the shape of a heart and leaves it by the yellow roses, puts on her coat, and tiptoes to the doorway. Looks both ways. No one. She slips out and closes the door behind her and whisper-walks down the aqua-tiled corridor to the public phone booth near the exit. She hears voices and presses herself into the booth, holds her breath, and waits. Finally, here is the janitor with his rattling cart and jangly keys, unlocking the metal bar across the door. He pushes it open, and once he’s clanked through, she rushes over and jams her foot into the opening. His sounds fade and she runs down the hall and out the double doors.
It is dark and the cold stings her face. The sidewalks are illuminated by streetlamps, the yellowish glare making her feel like she’s on a stage, and she has to stop for a moment to regain her balance. But then she runs, runs several blocks down sloping sidewalks to the water. People lying bundled in the Seattle Times in doorways littered with butts and rubbish. She keeps her eyes down when the drunks and junkies stumble by. Yellow taxis speed and stop, buses lurch into curbs, suddenly enormous, their pneumatic doors hiss, their filthy pipes spew exhaust into her face and she keeps running, and now here are the cathedral bells ringing five o’clock and she can’t think about how Fiona loves those bells she can’t think about Fiona, it’s for the best, it’s for the best, it’s for the best.
Once she arrives at the waterfront she slows, breathing hard, walks between run-down warehouses to an abandoned pier. Gulls keening overhead. High tide. Waves pulse loud, slap against pilings; a sudden penetrating smell of creosote and seaweed. The rough wooden planks creak under her feet. She arrives at the end and wraps her arms around herself and looks across the blue swells to the mountains, shadows in the dim light of dawn. A ferry boat blows its horn.
She peers into the water and imagines herself diving into the blackness. Pulling herself down, down, down, mouth open drinking freedom swallowing loss lungs release forever emancipation beneath despair sinking somewhere holy.
Her arms raise and she bows her head, palms coming together like a prayer. Deep inhale. But then her grandfather’s voice: You are tough; you are stronger than you think. You are tough; you are stronger than you think … and she hesitates.
In that moment, a cry. Child sounds. She holds her breath. Listens.
Silence.
She waits. Arms still raised. Again, a cry—from behind the dumpster. She brings her arms down. Walks numbly toward the sound.
Here is the sound.
A child. Her dress is red. Her eyes are blue. A little girl sits. Arms locked around exposed knees. Rocking. Blonde hair infused with light.
Here is Margaret.
Nora shakes her head, tries to shake off the numb, the disbelief of seeing her there. The incandescent skin and bones and eyes of her. The blue eyes. Nora steps closer, tentative with apprehension that any sudden movement might make her disappear. Margaret keeps rocking, rocking, rocking. They stare at each other. Blue meeting blue.
“Margaret?” Nora says
.
“I … I … don’t want to die,” Margaret cries then, rubbing the sleeve of her blouse across her face, smearing tears across her cheeks. “Please. Please. Don’t let us die, I-I-I’ve worked very, very hard.”
“Margaret?” Nora whispers, whole body aching.
“I’ve barely, I’ve barely—” but then Margaret begins to cry again and buries her face in her hands.
Nora takes off her coat, hands shaking, and wraps it around Margaret’s shoulders. Falls to her knees in front of her. Split suddenly open, inside out. The hero child is real. The hero child who arrived each time she was needed, who knew when to play dead.
“Margaret, I am … I am …”
Margaret stops rocking, says, “Am I no one?”
This question from six-year-old pink lips.
“No!” Nora says, though the second she says it she can taste the lie. Guilt fills her. She’s hated, blamed, and denied Margaret. Used her. Wanted to drown her. Mother annihilating child. Nora draws in a breath, reaches, touches Margaret’s face. Struggles for words that won’t feel small and failing in her mouth, words true enough to bear the monster weight of this child’s pain. This child’s war-weariness. “I was wrong. I was so wrong,” Nora says. When Margaret doesn’t say anything, just keeps rocking, Nora says in a voice gaining strength, owning courage, “Listen to me, little warrior girl,” the words aching in the back of her throat, “we are not ruined. We are beautiful—beautiful and sacred and we are never giving up.” And when she says this, right there, out loud, she knows this to be true.
Margaret stares at her, weighing pain, weighing truth, weighing love, and then, eyes brimming soft, raises her arms. Nora gathers her tight, kisses her into her breast, absorbs more love than she’s ever known. Margaret presses presses presses skin into bone into light into light into light into light into light into light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It would not have been possible to sustain the decade-long effort required to write this book without the constant support of many kind, generous, and loving people.
First, thank you to my sons, Ben and Roarke, my heaven and earth, who opened my heart in ways I hadn’t known possible. I love you so much, and it is the greatest privilege to be your mother. Thank you to my stepson, Loren, who is a strong, beautiful force in our family, and has gifted us with a tremendous sense of humor and compassion.
To my husband, Peter, my touchstone, who gives me the kind of love I’ve never before experienced, who was my smartest first editor, who believes in me more than anyone I’ve ever known, who would hold both my hands each time I wanted to give up, and say, “This book is so important and beautiful and powerful.”
Thank you to Laurence for his unwavering commitment to interior truth, his fearlessness in confronting it, and his willingness to shift the frame and ask, “Is there another way to think about this?”
I am grateful to all my editors and manuscript readers: Dorothy Allison, Lidia Yuknavitch, Peggy Hageman, Marjorie Osterhout, Kate Kennedy, Karen Sullivan, Nancy Rekow, Sharon Dembro, Sylvia Bowman, Marcia Perlstein, Nyla Dartt, Courtney Vatis, and Gordon Warnock. Thank you for drawing out what I most struggled to express. Your brilliant, insightful questions expanded and deepened my story in a thousand ways.
To the crucible that is the Writers’ Workshoppe & Imprint Books. Your astounding collective energy helped me grow me as a writer. Hands down. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be the writer I am today.
And huge gratitude to the authors I’ve had the incredible honor to meet along the way, who offered fortifying advice and generous support: Rikki Ducornet, Dorothy Allison, Lidia Yuknavitch, Pam Houston, Melissa Febos, Sue William Silverman, Sonya Lea, Rene Denfeld, Sheila Bender, Susan Wooldridge, Erica Bauermeister, Jennie Shortridge, Adrianne Harun, Terry Persun, Bill Ransom, Cheryl Merrill, Julie Christine Johnson, Christine Fadden, and Louise Marley.
Thank you to my incredibly wonderful friends who encouraged and nourished me with love along the way: Karen, Maryann, Maggie, Carol, Holly, Bob, Helen, Sarah, Jason, Susan, and Tom.
This book would not exist without my brilliant, hardworking agent Gordon Warnock and the fabulous Blackstone team: Josh Stanton, Greg Boguslawski, Addi Black, Anne Fonteneau, Lauren Maturo, Jeffrey Yamaguchi, Peggy Hageman, Kathryn G. English, Josie McKenzie, Courtney Vatis, and Ananda Finwall.
Thank you to my tugboat, whose magic held me in solitude for hours on end as I wrote my heart out until the story was done.
Thank you to my sister, Eileen, who was there in ways no one else could ever know, in ways I’ve yet to find the words for.
And last but not least, to St. Margaret. I can still hear you.