Chapter Fourteen
Where Thou art, that is Home…
Pete knocked on Mallory’s patio door, feeling a bit like a spectator, one who had no idea what was going to happen next in the movie of his life. The past twenty-four hours had been that mind-bending.
He’d kissed Mallory at the shelter. He’d danced with her in his house, even though she’d never gone farther than the foyer he’d painted with Emma. She’d talked—really talked—about her past and herself. Then they’d held each other until she was either going to leave or he was going to lead her upstairs to the bedroom he’d shared with his wife and make the sweetest, deepest love to her he knew how.
He’d promised to visit today, needing her to let him when she’d felt so close to letting go when she’d first arrived last night. She’d agreed that they should talk more, sounding a little like she was swallowing some particularly nasty medicine rather than looking forward to it. Then he’d gotten another midnight call about his child that had helped him relax a little about whether she’d honor her commitment. This time Mallory had asked him to let his daughter stay, at least until morning.
As he waited for her to answer his knock, he remembered how freaked he’d been the first time he’d visited, dreading dealing with the stranger inside. Anticipation hummed through him now. He needed to know more. She had to tell him more. And he had to find some way to convince her that regardless of her secrets they still had a shot.
Mallory had survived so much more than the little that she’d shared with him so far—and what she’d revealed had been heartbreaking enough. She seemed to be fighting the emotional connection she clearly still felt to her mother, as much as she distrusted the efforts folks on Mimosa Lane had made to become part of her life. Yet her heart kept making room for his child. And what about him? Was she willing to make a bigger place for him, too?
He wasn’t altogether comfortable with how much he wanted that answer to be yes. But being comfortable wasn’t what drew him to Mallory, he’d accepted. Feeling alive was. Every time they were together she challenged him to grab for life again with the same fearless, relentless determination she did. Her grit and faith and hope, after everything she’d fought her way back from, were awe inspiring.
After Mallory’s call he’d stared across their backyards from Polly’s room, at Mallory’s tree and the solitary world she’d built for herself on the other side of her sturdy fence. He’d resolved almost nothing about whatever they were becoming to each other, except that he wished he had half her strength. And that he wanted to help Mallory believe in the love and belonging she so clearly wanted, as successfully as she was helping him be the father Polly needed.
There was no answer to his knock, just like the last time. He squinted through the wall of glass that the morning sun had turned into a reflective mirror. In the shadows beyond he saw a nearly empty living room the same as before, with one poignant exception.
They were curled up together on her nondescript couch, like kids snuggled before the Christmas tree waiting for Santa. They were both in their pajamas, their hair wild and covering much of their beautiful faces. They looked so peaceful with Polly’s body sprawled half on top of Mallory’s, both of their heads resting against the cushions.
He slowly rolled the patio door open, expecting Mallory to wake at any moment. She was a light sleeper, she’d said. Considering everything he’d learned about her, the wonder was that she’d mastered the art of sleeping at all. Her formative years had been spent guarding her mother and their belongings through endlessly long nights, often in places where they had to have been in very real danger.
She sighed as he stepped around the sheers that as far as he knew had never been released from their wall-mounted ties. But instead of waking she curled Polly closer, her cheek pressed to the top of his child’s head. Watching them, Pete felt his life click into sharper focus.
Waking without Polly to get up to begin living their day together had been difficult after a week of focusing on nothing but rebuilding his connection with her. He hadn’t known what to do with himself and hadn’t been able to wait for Mallory’s call. Only it hadn’t just been Polly he’d come searching for. He knelt in front of the beauty before him. He’d rushed over in his sweats and bare feet without having even his first cup of morning coffee, needing to be near both of these mysterious, mesmerizing creatures.
You’ll find me again, in someone else…someone who’ll show you the way…That will be me, Pete…
He ran gentle fingers down the flannel sleeves of Mallory’s red nightgown, until they tangled with her own. He squeezed, wanting to believe she’d give them a chance. He lifted her hand to his lips. Smiling, he watched her eyes drift open as if he’d awoken a princess in a fairy tale.
She smiled back, an instinctive response so free of self-preservation it grabbed at his heart. Then her eyes closed again, and she nestled deeper into the cushions. Polly’s head lolled against her breast.
“I haven’t seen her sleep this soundly in a long time,” he said.
Mallory yawned, her eyes still closed. “She was up late last night. I doubt she’ll wake before lunchtime.”
“You planning on being lazy, too?” He kissed the corner of her mouth. That got her eyes open again. “Or can I tempt you with some coffee?”
She straightened, caution creeping into her expression. But something of last night’s dance still remained. Enough that she squeezed his fingers back before letting go.
“Come with me to the Christmas party next weekend,” he asked again, needing her to say yes so he’d know she wasn’t already planning her escape from what had deepened between them. “It’s no big deal. There will be so many neighbors there you won’t have to spend any more time with any of them than you want to. It would mean a lot to Polly—and me. Let me show you the best parts of Mimosa Lane. Let me show you that there’s a place for you here.”
“Coffee,” she said in a hushed voice, the last of sleep’s softness evaporating. She scooted out from under Polly and resettled her gently on the pillows. She rose to stand beside Pete, revealing a screen print of Grumpy scowling back from the flannel that fell in soft folds all the way to the bright-blue polish on her toenails. “I can’t deal with neighbor talk without at least one cup of caffeine in my system.”
She led the way to the kitchen that perfectly matched her nightclothes. The playful ways she managed to celebrate life in her own unique way, while other parts of her world seemed so barren, made him smile. Was she making up for some of the things she’d missed as a child? Was she refusing to see her world as anything but a bright celebration now that she’d come so far? She was a puzzle he wanted to take his time figuring out.
She pulled a container of coffee from the sky-blue refrigerator and tossed it to him. Before he’d even caught the thing, she’d slumped into a chair beside the table, her elbows propped up, her head dropping into her hands.
“Is this what a hangover feels like?” she mumbled.
Chuckling, he crossed to the coffeemaker, found a fresh filter in the cabinet above, fed grounds into the thing, and filled the reservoir with water.
“You’ve never been drunk?” After turning the appliance on he took a seat beside Mallory, his hand reclaiming hers.
“I’ve never had a drink.” She yawned and reached for the Mickey Mouse cookie jar that stood watch in the center of the table. Its lid came apart in her hands, two chunky pieces falling in opposite directions.
“Not once? Not even in college?” He peered inside Mickey. The sight of Emma’s beautiful jewelry jolted him. But he reminded himself that his wife would have been glad that Mallory had come into his and Polly’s lives the way she had.
Mallory looked from him to Emma’s trove of vintage Trifari pins, then back. “I worked my way through college. A lot of nights. When I wasn’t working, I doubled up with extra classes, trying to minimize my expenses and get out as quickly as I could. There wasn’t time for partying. Even if there had been,
my mother was bipolar and self-medicated with booze since she was a teenager. Losing control isn’t high on my list of fun things to try for myself.”
“Were you worried it was hereditary?” he asked, not surprised by her mother’s diagnosis but hurting for Mallory even more now that he knew it.
She pieced the two parts of the cartoon mouse’s head back together. “I think this’ll be fine with a little glue.” She looked up at him, as if it were the most important thing in her world that he agreed. “Do you have any superglue?”
“Yeah.” He took the broken lid and studied it carefully. “I have exactly what you need to fix it.”
She nodded. She reached into the cookie jar and pulled out several of the pins, different types of flowers, blue and yellow and white.
“I knew before I went to college that I probably wasn’t going to be like her.” Her thumb traced the delicate curves of Emma’s jewelry. “My mom had been sick since she was a little girl. She got pregnant with me in the middle of a hypermanic episode and never remembered who my father was. She was only sixteen when I was born, and was in and out of the hospital for treatment until she ran with me. You usually present symptoms in early adolescence. I was probably out of the woods by the time I’d caught up on my studies in high school and was ready for college. But…”
“You weren’t taking any chances.” Her home life must have been a cautionary tale to never lose control or take chances, even before she’d run with her mother. “So you decided to focus on school and work and your family and everything else that was important to you?”
She sighed, tilting her head to the side, her expression both sad and serene—her gaze unflinching. “I never got my family, Pete. It was already messed up when I was born, and we did the best we could, especially my grams. But there was too much wrong from the start, too many daily battles and disappointments—including me. Can you imagine what it must have been like for my grams and papa to raise me because my mother couldn’t? Then to have her snatch me away, thinking they’d never see me again? And when I came back home, I couldn’t…I just couldn’t be there and be happy the way my grams needed me to. She wanted a granddaughter, someone to love and spoil. And all I ever wanted was my mother…”
“Your grandfather was gone by then?” Pete tried to picture a disconnected home life like the one she was describing. His own parents were gone now, but before he’d lost them to a freak car accident, he’d always known he could depend on the people who’d nurtured him for anything he needed.
“Papa died while I was wandering around with my mother. When I decided to go with her, when I told her my grandparents were going to have her committed to a long-term facility and ran when Mama asked me to, I gave up my chance of ever seeing him again.”
When she decided.
She gave up.
“You were only six,” he pointed out, in awe of her courage and capacity to love deeply, despite every obstacle. “And you left them to take care of your mother.”
She shook her head. “You need to stop thinking that my life has been anything like any of the people around here who you’re sure I’ll fit in with at that party. If you’re looking for me to have any clue what makes real families happy and healthy and whole, you and everyone else are going to be disappointed.”
She had a beautiful kitchen, a fantastical tree, a whimsical wardrobe, and it was all wrapped up in an empty house full of curtainless windows through which she could see the picture-perfect world going on around her, outside of her, just beyond her reach…
No, he didn’t have any trouble picturing Mallory not being able to trust in what a nurturing, thriving family could be like.
“Your grandmother took you back?” he asked, unable to stop the questions from coming now that he had her talking. “You said you were homeless until you were twelve.”
“Since I was six, yeah. Until my mom was so sick I had to call my grams to come get us. And, yeah, she always did whatever she could for me and my mother, no matter what we put her through. But by then something was just broken that no one could fix.”
“Between you and your grandmother?”
“Inside of me, I think. I couldn’t be happy with her with my mother gone, wondering where Mama was and needing her to come back for me.”
“You were twelve and hardly knew your grandmother anymore. And I can’t imagine what it must have been like trying to take care of your mentally ill mother under such extreme circumstances. Of course that changed you.”
“I tried. I really thought I could. I tried for six years, and then I had to be the one to turn my mother in. I didn’t have a choice. I called my grams and told here where we were, and within a week my mother was in a hospital near her house and I was back in my old room like none of it had ever happened. Except it had. I started volunteering at my first shelter for a high school project, and that felt like coming home again. Before long, I was spending every free minute in the assistance community instead of with Grams.”
Pete tried to match the end of her story to the snippets that she’d shared last night. He wanted to understand what she was trying to tell him. “Helping people like your mother is why you became a social worker?” he asked. “Then a nurse?”
Mallory shrugged.
“I absolutely think,” he pressed, “what you’ve been through is why you understood how alone Polly was feeling. Like no one was really listening to her or understanding how much her world had changed forever after losing Emma. It’s not hard to understand how your wandering life with your mother made you gifted at helping other people find their way. Charlie and the other kids at the shelter, and Polly, and me. You know better than any of us what hurting that way is like, and you pulled yourself out of it at an age very few people could have.”
“Don’t make me out to be something I’m not.” She tensed and dropped the pins back into the cookie jar.
Pete wasn’t feeling exactly relaxed himself. The emotions storming through him were too close to the surface—desperation and panic that he wasn’t used to having muddle his thoughts about things. Suppressing his reaction to stress was part of his job. But dissociating from his emotions at home had nearly cost him his daughter’s love. He didn’t want to make that mistake with Mallory, so he let the feelings fly free. He could deal with whatever he had to if it meant understanding better what she was going through.
He walked to the coffeemaker, poured two mugfuls and brought them back with him. He hadn’t seen sugar on the counter or in the cabinet. He guessed that meant she liked hers strong and black like he did. She took a sip and sighed.
“So what aren’t you?” he asked, wrapping his hands around his mug to keep himself from reaching for her.
Polly hadn’t liked that, his wanting to hold her and make her better at times when she simply couldn’t be better. Now that he looked back, there’d been times when Emma had pulled away, too, from his insistence that she was going to make it. Even at the very end when the doctors had said there was no hope, he’d wanted her to believe she could beat her cancer. He’d let his need to believe it, his fear, become a burden to her for too long.
“I’m not some tragic heroine,” Mallory said, “in a story about how everything works out beautifully in the end, and all you have to do to make your dreams come true is love hard enough. You do have to believe, and you do have to love, and you have to hope and keep hoping or you’ll lose your mind and give up. But none of that makes the worst of what’s happening to you go away. It just helps you keep going and doing the best you can, no matter how bad it gets.”
Pete drank his coffee. She sounded so matter-of-fact talking about devastating emotional scars and her growing acceptance that she was too deeply tied to her past still to ever heal completely—at least not enough for her to share more than a few passing moments with a family like his or the Perrys or the Davises. As if she weren’t freaking amazing for becoming what she was now—a survivor and a warrior who everyone on Mimosa Lane would feel privileged to kn
ow if she could relax enough to give them the opportunity. Somehow he had to find a way to convince her that she could. For Mallory’s sake, and not just because he was more desperate by the minute to keep her in his life.
“How did your mother end up back on the street if your grandmother put her in the hospital once you came home?” She’d gone out of her way not to explain that one obvious piece of her story.
She raised her mug in a toast. “There you have it. The key to me and her that’s not going to change even if I do find her wanderin’ around Atlanta somewhere. No matter what I did, she stayed sick. She was too sick from the start for me to help, and too sick to see what that was doing to me and my grandparents. And in her eyes I betrayed her when I called my grams. When Mama woke up in the hospital she’d been transferred to, she refused to talk to us. When she was well enough, before anyone knew she was strong enough or thought to move her to a secure room in the psychiatric wing, she ran again. Alone.”
“She left you.” He’d already guessed, and he hated the defeat in Mallory’s tone, her empty acceptance.
“She was never with me,” said the woman who’d bumbled every attempt her neighbors had made to draw her into their community. ”Mama was so young when she had me, and so sick, and so in denial, from the start she was never with anyone but herself. Of course that didn’t stop me from trying to be whatever I thought she needed me to be, to get her to choose me over getting away from her parents. I tried so hard she nearly died before I stopped.”
“But your grandmother was there for you. She took you back home, right?”
“It doesn’t really work that way, you know. Just being near someone doesn’t mean you’re with them. Grams tried. I tried. It shouldn’t have been so hard, having the simple things I’d always wanted that other families had. But I couldn’t…attach again. I couldn’t be with Grams the way she needed me to. Just like my mother never could be with me. It took me a long time to accept it. I looked for her for years, all over Atlanta and the rest of the southeast, making calls and asking around. As recently as last year I was still putting feelers out every once in a while. I knew I’d never find her if she didn’t want to be found, but I couldn’t accept it. When I left social work and moved to Chandlerville I told myself I was finally done. My mother was gone for good, and I was happy it was over. That’s what family turned out to mean to me.”
Christmas on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel) Page 19