Thinking back on the few days before Belle took residence at Madrona Gardens, Euly and she made appointments to spend their few final days close together. They went through the contents of Belle’s house wheedling through items to toss and those to keep, boxing some things and finding new homes for others – her clothing and shoes, some dishes, some linens and furniture – some to stay with Euly, some to go with Enaya but everything in time would disappear. Belle’s artwork was crated and found temporary solace in the loft. After winnowing down into two piles – one of papers to keep and one to recycle – all of Belle’s important documents came to rest in the loft too. Her important documents went up and an assortment of sentimental cards and an old broken down journal one Euly had read many times always passing over a chunk of pages that had been torn out.
Euly thought about how she and her mother had had such fun talking, laughing, and genuinely enjoying the time they spent together. At the hospice as well, up until yesterday, Euly’s visits had been out of true concern and love for Belle but, after her mother’s admission, she guessed today’s visit would feel strained.
Enaya wouldn’t come up until the very end, she’d said. Her sister still lived in Phoenix. The truth was Enaya enjoyed the distance from her mother. Although she apologized to Euly about the situation, inside Euly knew Enaya was relieved, relieved from any responsibility of their mother and her failing health and Euly allowed it by reluctantly forgiving her sister.
Still, with their mother’s advanced emphysema rattling loosely in her chest, the hacking and a constant bringing up of phlegm, was good enough reason for anyone to want to stay away. Euly hated to see her like this, this woman who had been so vibrant and alive not so long ago. Her mother, now this feeble woman in a hospice, was in vivid contrast to the person she used to be. At seventy-five, Belle had the weathered face of a well- reared lady, thin slumped shoulders, with blue highlights in her hair that women of her age rave about. Belle only wore worsted woolen skirts, pressed blouses, and her finest silk scarves. She loved her scarves, especially the periwinkle one, a scarf with a seam crosswise through it where it had once been cut or torn or, she couldn’t exactly remember the reason.
When Belle did venture outside (and it was rare these days), she’d always wear a beret and her scarf. Belle said they made her look dapper, she said they made her look like an artiste.
Belle had shrunk in size and it was amusing for Euly to think how she now stood two inches taller than her own mother. Belle looked like a porcelain doll in a wheelchair. The wheelchair, a recent development, made it easier for Belle to get around. Her destroyed lungs made walking impossible for her. She said walking gave her the sensation similar to running top speed up a flight of stairs for any healthy person. She equated the feeling, the loss of breath, like having a wet towel over her face and trying to breathe through it.
Surprisingly to Euly, she’d welcomed the wheelchair. Euly felt her gut wrench knowing Belle wouldn’t be around much past holidays, if that long.
The hospice, boasted amenities of finer hotels with a spa and beauty salon, and a staff made up of nurses and doctors. Madrona Gardens, set on twenty acres of verdant sloping hills in the heart of the island looked like a park with walkways and paths cut through beds of roses, hyacinth, and hydrangeas all mixed in with azaleas and tubers that appeared at the start of each season, like clockwork. The hospice even had a vegetable garden for its family members to tend if they desired. There, they called the patients ‘family members’ to make them feel at home during their stays. But, the ding of monitors, the reek of antiseptic, and the slap of shoes on tile floors as nurses sped to another dying patient’s side, resonated so profoundly that it left you feeling only sadness with the whole thing. In Belle’s case, it was a sadness that could have well been avoided. Belle’s emphysema was caused by her cigarette smoking.
As a girl, Euly used to hide away in her room where she’d open windows to let the fresh desert air blow in, away from the smoke that hung in a thin cloud through the rest of the house. The putrid resin of smoke clung to drapery, furniture, and carpeting. It made their beautiful home where Euly was raised, seem ugly. Her parents smoked cigarettes at the breakfast table and at dinner, while watching TV or cleaning. It was if an unwanted house guest lived with them year long. Like some insane cousin the girls were forced to entertain and whom Euly wanted to lock away in a dungeon. Instead, their parents allowed him to roam freely and tag along with the girls.
Her anger flared again when she thought how Belle refused to give up the cigarettes even after they’d killed-off her father.
Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
Euly desperately didn’t want to see her mother today looking like she’d been crying. She had to be strong. Then she resolved, maybe her mother’s smoking was one thing her parent’s had in common with each other, their one connection, after they’d divorced. They never stopped visiting each other and even spent holidays and birthdays together afterward. It was a relationship Euly didn’t understand.
She got angry just then and wished she was more like her detached sister. Belle and Enaya had never been close. Increasingly through the years, however, when Euly and her sister talked, Enaya opened up. And, lately, her sister complained about their mother’s manipulation with her. They’d had a fight the last time Enaya visited but neither of them would talk to Euly about it. Euly knew Enaya would certainly not put up with mother’s newest revelation. Then, she wondered if Enaya might already know about this thing Belle had kept secret from them all these years. As it was on more than one occasion, Belle had sworn the girls to silence, together and separately. This matter was ripe for confidence.
But, she slipped up yesterday. When Belle saw a change in Euly’s posture, she tried to recover by dissembling the information of her accidental unveiling by backtracking over crucial details. Her mother’s recollection of the past undermined everyone else’s. As she’d done to her so many times before, Belle set Euly into a tailspin. This one singularly important chapter in their family’s life was now put up to question.
CHAPTER SIX
Euly fumed about it and knew one thing if nothing else about herself. She knew if she never had to visit her mother again, it would be okay.
After the thought rose and sunk, she felt pangs of shame hit her squarely in the stomach and she barely heard the curse escape from her lips as quickly as the thought entered her mind, the word escaped from her mouth. Euly’s hand stopped mid-stroke through her cat’s fur. Raz made a soft groan for her to continue.
“Sorry, Raz,” she said and smoothed out her cat’s coat. It also seemed to help her smooth out her mind from the sacrilegious thought.
What was it she’d just broken, the third or fourth commandment? If what Belle had said yesterday was true, her version of the past could make a mockery of her life, everyone’s life in the small family. Even forty years later after her parent’s divorce, so much life had been lived, but this one thing would make a farce of it all.
The information struck Euly hard on the back.
Euly wanted, no, wait… she demanded clarification.
And, it was at that precise second she vowed to set off on a fact-finding mission. She’d begin with her mother. She’d give Belle the opportunity to explain yesterday’s comment and if her mother balked, she would do something else, anything else to get down to the truth.
Somehow, she would covertly ask her sister. She could go back to Phoenix and talk to Aunt Moon, anyone who might have information. What was more—she could use the information she gathered for her memoir as well, so, it was a two-fold quest.
Euly rolled her eyes when she remembered how her mother had acted after she’d made the remark. Belle had turned the slip into a drama that slid from truth to excuse. This parsing out of reality from parody was something Euly was accustomed to doing with her mother. She didn’t know when it happened but she had learned to stand on shaky ground during conversations with Belle.
CHAPTER SEVEN
>
They were flipping through some old photos together.
Lately, when Euly visited, Belle would drag out old memorabilia and divvy it up between things that would stay with her and things that would go to her sister.
Yesterday, her mother had given Euly a tattered photo album full of old black and white pictures, one Euly and her sister had grown accustom to seeing often as children. The photos, creased and worn, were trimmed as though the developer had used pinking shears around the edges.
Euly came upon a page with a photo of a group shot. It was of a backyard scene at the house where she’d grown. It was one of many neighborhood barbecue scenes.
The adults held up beers and cocktails while kids mulled around in front of a freshly-dug hole where a large empty metal pool sat in the background. Moxie, the family’s shaggy black mutt, clung next to Belle’s heel.
Belle looked stiff and wasn’t smiling. She stood off to the side of Clive almost entirely out of the frame who stood with Sandy on the other side of Clive. Clive held up a can of Schlitz and looked like he was toasting the camera man.
Euly figured the photographer was her dad from his absence in the scene itself. Sandy’s eyes were pointed downward but it also looked like the photo had been snapped at the exact time she’d decided to say something because her lips were partially opened.
Aunt Moon and Uncle Teddy flanked the other side of the photo with Uncle Teddy at the outermost edge leaning in and smiling wide.
Everyone’s arms chained around each other’s waists except for Belle’s. Her arms were crossed in front of her stomach. In the center of the snapshot was a splotch that looked like someone had spilled coffee on the picture.
Euly handed the photo to Belle who pulled her readers up from the length of silver rope around her neck to examine the picture and she froze.
“I hate that picture.” She held up the photo pinched between two fingers as if she would tear it.
“No! Mother! I want all the photos I can get of you.” She sat forward quickly and snatched it from her grip. Its edge tore. “I can tape it.” Euly could see Belle’s face cramp in anger and knew if her mother could have fought her for the picture she would have.
“I hate that photo. Give it back now.”
“Mother, no.” Euly looked at her mother with an expression of hurt and confusion.
“I’m tired of this. I need to sleep.” Belle coughed. It seemed like this one would be a bad attack but she held it off when she turned her head to the room’s window. Her chest went through a rippling of small convulsions but Belle staved off the coughing fit. Euly noticed her mother wasn’t actually looking outside but merely staring in the window’s direction.
“Sorry, mother. I’ll leave but I’m taking this with me.” Euly placed the photo inside the album and held it up as she spoke.
“She ruined my life.” She glared back at Euly. Her chin quivered but Euly stopped her by trying to be funny.
“I know, mother, I know. I’ll cut her out of each picture. I promise. What do you think about that?”
“You can never cut her out.” She believed she knew what her mother meant.
“Belle,” Euly’s tone turned parental. “Don’t you think it’s about time you got over dad’s indiscretion?” She rolled her eyes at Belle. “You are divorced, you know? Plus, dad’s been dead for twenty years.” Euly’s sarcastic manner irked Belle and she caught a word deep in her throat before letting her daughter have it – the truth she’d been hiding all along.
But, then, Belle let it dislodge with venom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The second Belle let out her words, Euly’s own well- practiced façade faltered.
Euly sat stunned and couldn’t speak for an awkward few seconds but, in that time, Belle stared her daughter down. Euly’s anger bubbled-up fast then dissipated just as fast when she decided to turn her attention toward her lap.
Belle had been persistent in her practice to sully the girls’ memory of their father. Because of it, Euly had somehow taken up on his side, made her father her cause and justified his actions, if not openly to Belle then in the way she spoke to her.
As her mind whirled around her mother’s brazen announcement, Euly focused her eyes downward. She replayed her mother’s words. Still, even the second after saying them, Euly worried that maybe she’d gotten it wrong. Maybe she misunderstood.
She pressed her hands flat onto her legs and focused on them, a little trick she’d learned in order to keep her fingernails out of her mouth. Then, she put her hands together again and crossed each finger finally making the first two into a steeple.
As she fidgeted with her hands she noticed two of her knuckles were scraped. She used the time scrutinizing her fingers in an attempt to divert her eyes away from her mother’s gaze.
Finally, Euly fumbled around for words then struck up some lame small-talk with Belle and did what she’d grown accustomed to doing – she found an excuse to leave. This time she lied and blamed her need to leave on a telephone call she expected from her publisher. Yesterday, the lie seemed to flow out easily like honey off its comb but today it stuck in her mind like a stinger.
Belle’s leak of truth (and then the suppression of it) was buffered with excuses and two-steps, a normal trait for Belle who often down-played her own distasteful comments and actions, with rationalizations.
Euly wondered about the trait, if she’d at all inherited it or learned it. Of course, she knew the answer. She’d seen the method deployed so often as a child and as a young adult, of course she picked it up, like a gun out of its holster, ready for battle.
Now, the events that surrounded her parent's break-up so long ago began to ring out of control for Euly. Things she’d long forgotten heaved back up to the surface.
Left alone, the memories had scabbed over, under a gauze, lost somewhere between fact and fiction. Now, with Belle’s confession--a ploy meant to elicit some distorted sense of forgiveness--Euly felt duped.
The only true person able to offer Belle forgiveness had long since died, her father, but he died ten years after they split. Yet, Belle unloaded this new story onto Euly quite expecting her to take the role she normally did, the role of the consoling daughter.
Belle expected Euly’s forgiveness. And, in the last few weeks of Belle’s life, Euly wondered if she was up to the task.
CHAPTER NINE
The tinny buzz whirring from the hospital TV gave a surreal, a fake quality to the seven-year-long war as the Iraqi correspondent explained the circumstances surrounding the latest suicide bombing attack.
“Why must you dwell on the past?” Belle turned her head back to the photo album, the one she intended to bestow on Euly.
“Me? Me dwell on the past? You’re the one passing on photo albums.” Euly shook her head and stopped talking. She was afraid she might say something she’d regret later. One of the nurses hurried past the door, the one with the squeaky shoes. They sounded just as though a person were chewing on rubber bands.
“We’re looking at photos, is all. Can’t you just enjoy that?” Belle returned her attention to another photo. Her nurse walked in with a pitcher of water and two glasses. Euly noticed a fresh aura follow her as though she’d bathed in lavender soap. Her makeup was slight but set off her exotic features even more, her red pouting lips and deer eyes. Her white uniform contrasted her dark skin, as dark as an Ethiopian, Euly thought.
Belle lifted her head as an acknowledgement and then looked back down at the album. The nurse’s nametag read, Artis.
“Look, dear, here’s one of you and Enaya in your ballet clothes. You both were so sweet when you danced.” Artis came around to Belle’s side and looked at the photo. She smiled at Belle and nudged her with the back of her hand. Then, she looked up at Euly and smiled at her.
Before Artis left she began humming a pining gospel tune. Euly listened as the song faded down the hall. She strained when it became nothing more than a whistle in her ear.
She too
k the photo from her mother. Euly, at age six, was wearing pink tights and pink leotards her arms were high above her head, her smile was wide and her eyes were closed but her lips were pressed together and she posed in first position.
With her eyes closed the way they were you got the feeling the sun was aimed straight into her faces. Her sister, clad in black, made a scrunched face protecting her eyes from the glare. Euly flipped the photo over. In her mother’s hand she’d written 7/4/1963.
Euly felt at a loss what to do next. Her mother obviously was not going to bring up yesterday’s topic without prodding.
“Mother.”
“Yes, dear.” Belle looked at her daughter. Euly could see the muscle in her mother’s jaw tighten when she clenched her teeth, as if she was preparing herself for a punch.
“About yesterday.”
“What about yesterday? See, can’t you just let things go?” She squinted her remark in a dare.
“Mother, this isn’t about me.”
“Well, then, perhaps it’s none of your business.”
Euly felt her demeanor crumble.
Over the intercom, a woman’s voice called out in a subdued plea for Doctor Hamlin to come to guest room 17. Belle, the resident of guest room 11, would not go lightly into yesterdays’ subject, a subject Euly needed to clarify, to understand.
“If it’s about the family, then I suppose it is my business.”
“My, don’t you have a high opinion of yourself. Not every little detail about our lives is something subject to your understanding, Euly.”
“No? Well, you brought it up and I suppose since you did, you might want to explain yourself.”
“And if I don’t?”
“If you don’t? What the hell do you mean by that, mother?”
“Euly, my past, our past isn’t something everyone needs to know about nor do I care to explain. Except it or not. Either way, it’s not my problem.”
The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction) Page 3