Mothers and Other Strangers

by Gina Sorell

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Henri.

  “Because it isn’t true, that’s why,” said Philippe quickly. “She’s ashamed of the real truth, that she threw herself at me and I rejected her. Just like that night at the restaurant when she kissed me while we waited for the taxi. You remember that, Henri; you were across the street, watching.”

  I looked at Henri and saw it all over his face—he’d seen the kiss. That’s why he was right there as the taxi was about to take off, that’s why he was so quiet in the car. “You’re nothing like your mother,” he’d said. Had he been trying to make me feel better about what he thought was Philippe’s attempt to make a pass at me?

  “Henri, I’m telling the truth,” I said.

  “You thought it was me who kissed her, didn’t you?” said Philippe to Henri. “But it wasn’t. She was embarrassed and confused, and I should’ve helped her, and I didn’t, and for that I am truly sorry.” He took my mother’s hands in his and kissed them. “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said to her, and then he turned to Henri. “It was never you she wanted to be with, son, it was me all along.”

  “Henri, let’s just go, please, let’s get away from them.” I reached for Henri’s arm, but he tugged it away, staring at me like he had no idea who I was.

  “There’s a reason you two were drawn to each other,” said Philippe. “You are both lost souls. Let us help you find your way back, let us heal you.”

  It was the word heal that did it. I felt the bile rise in my throat, and I threw up. I looked at my mother, standing there staring at me, silent, her jaw slack. And then I ran as fast and as far away from them as I could.

  “Elsie, listen to me,” said Ted, grabbing my shoulders and bringing me back to the present. “She’s dead, okay? She’s finally dead. Be thankful you don’t have to deal with her shit anymore and move on. You’re still young. Don’t let her fuck up the rest of your life too.” He touched his forehead against mine and I felt tears on his face.

  “I’m trying,” I said quietly. “That’s why I need to do this. I need to know who she really was, and what she was hiding.” I wanted to tell him about the dreams of fire. That I knew it was my mother who had brought them and until I figured them out, she wouldn’t leave me alone. That just when I decided to move on, the scrapbook had appeared. But I couldn’t. It sounded crazy, and if Ted thought I was losing my mind, he would never be able to walk out the door. I was never going to be able to explain what it felt like to be incomplete, to long for something and someplace you hardly knew, and yet were wise enough to know that its absence defined you. I was motherless, and homeless, and nothing Ted could say would change that.

  He sighed heavily and stood up, letting me go. “Those people nearly destroyed you, Elsie. Henri, Philippe, your own mother. Is whatever she was hiding worth the risk of losing yourself? What if she is only trying to take you down with her?”

  It was a terrifying thought, and I didn’t want to believe it. But Ted was right. I had no idea what she really wanted, or what I would find.

  “I know it’s a risk. But it’s one I have to take.”

  “Well, then you have to take it on your own.” It was an ultimatum, the one I’d been waiting for and not the first one Ted had given me regarding my mother. I’d chosen my relationship with him over my relationship with her years ago, out of necessity. But we were divorced now, and I had no one to worry about hurting but myself. If Ted was finally going to have a family with Julie, we needed to let go, and this would do it.

  “I know.”

  He shook his head and grabbed his coat. “I hope it works out the way you want it to, Else.”

  “I hope so too,” I whispered, as tears ran down my face. I wished I could tell him I would always love him, that I knew I would never meet anyone as wonderful as him, and that I would always ache for him and the family we couldn’t have, but I couldn’t.

  Ted slammed the door and left, and I watched from the window as he pulled out of the driveway to go, this time for good. Once he was out of sight, I removed the ring from my pocket, slipped it back on my finger, and took a deep breath. There was no going back now.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I needed to keep moving, and with enormous relief I welcomed the fact that I was still capable of wanting to. One of the things about being depressed was my legitimate concern that a desire to do anything would never return. As terrifying as the thought of wading into my mother’s life was, the thought of never wanting to wade into anything ever again was worse. Before her death, my days had become a series of events I moved listlessly through, marking time until I could safely retreat to my bed without too much reproach. I’d go to sleep early and get up late, all in an effort to shorten my daylight hours. I’d turned getting eight hours of rest into getting eight hours of waking time. I knew I could’ve taken medication, but the idea of feeling even less than I already did wasn’t an option; the painful ache I felt in my whole body was the only thing that reminded me that I was still alive, a decision I sometimes wondered about. My mother’s death changed everything. It shook me from my slumber and stirred up all that I had been trying to bury for so long. I was about to risk the safety of my carefully managed unhappiness for the possibility of something more. I didn’t know if the truth would set me free or bury me, but I knew I had to find out.

  “It’s up here on the right,” I said to the cab driver on my way to the airport. I told him to keep the meter running and got out to take a look.

  Though the actual structure of the large Victorian on Brunswick Avenue was the same, little else resembled the rundown house I lived in when I joined the company full time and moved out of my mother’s place. The home in front of me, with its freshly painted brick exterior, shale shingled roof, and manicured front lawn, looked like it belonged on the cover of a magazine. Small topiaries flanked the sides of the bright-red door, and a large sticker on the bay window displayed the name of the expensive security company that protected it.

  I hadn’t told the other dancers what happened at my mother’s apartment on the night of my eighteenth birthday, but when I returned home hours after I said I would, finally too tired of wandering the city, Antoine saw me and knew something was wrong. He pulled me aside and asked if I was all right, and when I wasn’t able to answer him, he wrapped his arms around me and held me as I cried. Then he brought me the entire punch bowl and suggested I get smashed, which I did. Hours later Henri showed up screaming you fucking whore at the top of his lungs, and I watched from the window as Antoine and some of the other dancers physically removed him from the property and threatened to call the cops. He didn’t leave easily, and I felt sick as I saw him scream at me through the window. He looked like a wild animal, one that knew it was cornered and didn’t stand a chance. There was no way they were going to let him anywhere near me or the house, and eventually he retreated.

  Like the family I’d always dreamed of having, the other dancers had rallied around me that night and the days afterward. They brought me coffee in the morning and soup at night, and they walked with me to rehearsal. If I went into my room, they’d listen outside my door, opening it a crack to see if I was okay. They didn’t pry; they didn’t need the details of what had happened in order to have my back. I was one of them and that was enough. I had never felt anything like it before and would never really feel anything like it ever again. I don’t think any of us realized at the time how rare and special what we had was. There was something so pure about the home the other dancers and I had built together. We weren’t husbands or wives or parents to one another; we had no need for anyone to be anything other than exactly who they were. We all loved the same thing, and that was more than enough. We’d all move on, move in with boyfriends and girlfriends, and wish each other well, and promise to stay in touch, and we would try, but it would never be the same. Some of us would continue dancing and some of us would stop and find “real jobs,” and without our common language there would be little to connect us but th
e unspoken bond that had formed over those years of sharing a common passion.

  I did manage to keep track of Antoine, though. He’d gone on to have the most successful career of us all, moving to New York and becoming a principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, his picture featured prominently in their posters and programs. He’d still come to Toronto from time to time, showing up in the audience of a show that one of us was in and staying afterward to offer congratulations and a quick hug before leaving. Success hadn’t changed him, and I think all of us who knew him shared the kind of hometown pride you feel when watching one of your own hit it big. He was the one dancer I could never be jealous of, even after I stopped dancing. It was impossible to feel anything but gratitude toward him, especially after that night with Henri.

  Twenty-one years later, I could still feel my chest tighten as I stared at the lawn where he had fought Henri off, air getting trapped in my throat at the memory of it. I reminded myself to breathe. I reminded myself that a lot had happened since then. I told myself we were different people now and I had nothing to be afraid of and it was all behind me, in the hopes I’d start to believe it. I needed to believe it. In eighteen hours I would see Henri again, and I was counting on him leading me to Philippe. I’d often wondered what Henri looked like now. I pictured him still wearing his hair a little longer than average, salt and pepper by now, with the same slight build, stooped shoulders, and haunted eyes that I’d known. A slightly older version of the young man I had once loved, and not the slick version of his father that the back of his book boasted.

  I wondered if everyone remembered people the same way, frozen in the moment of time when we meant the most to each other. The Henri I saw when I closed my eyes wasn’t the man who had gone mad that night at my mother’s apartment; he was the man who’d held me in the dark and reassured me that what I thought and felt mattered. I’d held out hope that he had gone on to become a painter or poet, something that provided him an outlet for all that tormented him. I chose to believe that he had realized over time that his father had been lying and that he’d forgiven me for not telling him what happened. I used to dream about it—a different ending to our last night together than the one we had. And I’d started to let myself believe that maybe after all these years, we’d see each other again and it would be right between us. But in spite of his rebellion, and in spite of my wishes for him, he’d ended up exactly where his father had wanted him to, following in his footsteps, firmly entrenched with the Seekers. I’d read the introduction about the Seekers in Spiritual Rehab and was amazed at how much the organization had grown in the last twenty-five years. It still wasn’t mainstream by any means, but it was definitely more organized. The Seekers had a list of their other titles inside the book’s cover, and the locations of their meditation retreats in places like Hawaii, Belize, and Cape Town on the back.

  No longer an angry skeptic, Henri detailed his transition from manic-depressive drug addict to spiritual advisor and wellness practitioner. He wrote openly about losing himself to drugs, about trying to discredit the Seekers and his father. Everything he’d been through, including that night at my mother’s apartment, was in there, with the exception of myself. The little details about his father’s rape, or him yelling “whore” in front of my house after wielding a knife, weren’t mentioned. Instead he described the night as an emotional confrontation between a father and son, and the story was their road back to mending their relationship and strengthening their bond through their faith. It was history reshaped to drive only one point home: the Seekers had saved his life, and if you became a member and paid for their services, it could save yours too.

  Once the plane took off, I pulled out the hardcover and lay it face down on my tray so no one could read the title on the front. I didn’t want the flight attendant to think I was actually reading it. Having never flown first class before, I was fully expecting I would have to read the book in secret, hunched over its pages in an attempt at privacy while sandwiched between the kind of people who looked at an eight-hour flight as an opportunity to vomit their personal life onto someone who had no choice but to listen, mistaking stunned silence for interest. But I was spared by an upgrade from a flight attendant who was sympathetic to the fact that my mother had just died, and I was able to stretch out, take up two seats, and numb myself with the free wine that kept appearing before me. There was no one peeking over my shoulder or making conversation; it was just me and a few businesspeople who busied themselves with their documents.

  I tilted my chair back and closed my eyes. I was exhausted and wide awake at the same time, fueled by my desire to solve this mystery and get on with my life. And if it hadn’t been for my landlord breaking into my apartment and finding me lying on the floor next to an empty bottle of antidepressants, I might never have had this chance to do so.

  It had happened in LA two weeks earlier, before my mother died. I’d been having a bad bout again, triggered in part by the fact I had just turned thirty-nine, a birthday I celebrated alone with a trip to my gynecologist. I’d been sitting in one of those pale-blue regulation cotton gowns that tie up in the back when she once again delicately broached the topic of trying IVF. She said it was now or never, as I was at an age where my already-compromised fertility would soon begin its descent into menopause. I burst into tears. Something about the finality of it and the fact that the only person to comfort me was my physician, a woman the same age as me with four beautiful children displayed proudly in a picture frame on her desk, was just too much to bear.

  “It’s all right to cry,” she said. “It’s perfectly natural for a lot of women to mourn the end of their child-bearing years.” She passed me a box of Kleenex, and I took one.

  “What child-bearing years?” I asked, sobbing.

  Dr. Warner leaned against the counter opposite me and folded her arms across her chest.

  “I’m sorry, Elspeth. I know how hard you and Ted tried.” She paused for a moment, no doubt weighing whether or not to say what was coming next. “You know, I’m only saying this because I really believe you still have a small window of opportunity. There have been significant advances with IVF since you started trying, and we’ve had success with women in your same situation. Look, there’s never a guarantee, but there’s still a good chance.…”

  “Don’t,” I whispered, shaking my head.

  “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t want to nag, but have you been taking your antidepressants? I know you don’t like the side effects, but they’ll give you some relief, and it doesn’t have to be forever, you know, just until you’re feeling stronger.”

  I knew this was a lie. Nobody ever recommended coming off those things; why stop taking something that was working? I’d tried taking antidepressants a couple of times before, but each time I felt like a stranger in my own skin and stopped. I knew Dr. Warner was only trying to help, so I’d filled my latest prescription and carried it around in my purse, and whenever I didn’t want to stick to my routine of things that kept me, if only loosely, connected to the world around me, I reminded myself that a life of pills was what awaited if I didn’t. I hated to admit it, but my mother’s belief that pharmaceuticals were only for the weak had stayed with me.

  “Yes, I have,” I lied. I looked at the suntan marks that the straps on my sandals had made on my feet, instead of making eye contact.

  “And?” she asked, sounding hopeful.

  “Oh, yeah, they’re helping. Definitely.” I tugged at the hem of my cotton gown.

  “Good.” She sounded unconvinced. “Well, I’ll let you get changed then.”

  I took my time getting dressed and paid the nurse my co-pay on the way out. She checked my file, registered the date, and wished me happy birthday as she handed me the receipt. I nodded thanks, afraid if I opened my mouth I would cry again, and headed back to my apartment near the beach. It was the small two-bedroom apartment Ted and I had lived in when we were together. The second room had started out as
an office, and then had been converted to a baby room, and when that proved to no longer be necessary we had painted over the murals of clouds and smiling suns and had closed the door. We had talked about turning it back into an office for Ted, or a darkroom for me, if I ever actually took the photography classes that I thought of taking, instead of keeping my crummy little bookkeeping job, but then we got divorced and the room stayed as it was, empty. The rest of the apartment was pretty much the same as when Ted and I were together, furnished from the pages of a Pottery Barn catalogue: classic Americana, all pieces bought and paid for by Ted’s TV contracts. He had left me everything when we split, on the pretext it was more hassle than it was worth to ship furniture, but we both knew that I’d be sleeping on a futon if he hadn’t.

  It had been one of my worst birthdays yet, which was saying a lot. There were no birthday greetings on the answering machine. Not from my mother, which I expected, and not from Ted. He had Julie in his life now, and I had long stopped expecting to hear from him, even though at times like this, I still hoped he might call. I grabbed a cracker and a piece of cheese out of the fridge and forced myself to change into sweats and running shoes. I convinced myself that if I just took a walk, I’d feel better. With the exception of my doctor’s appointment, I hadn’t left the apartment for weeks, and the lows had been getting longer and deeper. I couldn’t start my fortieth year like this, I told myself. I’d get through it, it would pass, and when it did, things would look brighter. And that’s when the phone rang.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brennan? Elspeth Brennan?”

  “Uh, this is Elspeth, but actually it’s Robins now. Who is this?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. This is Marcy from Grace Adoptions. My files say the applicants are an Elspeth and Ted Brennan, is that correct, ma’am? Has there been a change in the marital status of the applicants?”