Buried

by Robin Merrow MacCready

  “Mom, let’s start over. I realize some things that I didn’t before I left today. I was wrong when I freaked out. I was mad, but I shouldn’t have scared you like that. I was right about the recovery, though—you have to do it yourself. I’ll support you, but it’s up to you, and I’ll do whatever I can to stay out of it. Maybe we should see someone together.”

  She’s out of it, I think. Maybe I should save this until later.

  I give you a gentle shake of the shoulder. Your body falls back on the pillow. What I think is your dark hair is really your blood. Your mouth gapes open and a thin string of spittle trails your cheek. Your half-lidded eyes look ahead at nothing.

  I jump back. “No,” I say. Then I lean over and jiggle your arm. It just flops.

  “Mom!” I bend close and lift the mat of sticky hair. You have a three-inch slice in the back of your head. Blood has drained into the bed and covered the pillows and sheets. I’m wobbly, and the room goes from dark to pinpricks of white, but I can’t faint. I have to be with you.

  I lean over you and yell in your ear. “Mom! What’s happening?” The odor of vomit wafts up from your lips, and I can see where it has dried your hair in stiff clumps and gone into your ear. “No, Mom, don’t leave me, don’t leave me now. It’ll be okay. I figured it out today. We just need a balance. That’s what we never had, a balance. It’s always one way or another. I just never figured it out until today.”

  I lie beside you and put your smooth hand on my cheek. “That fight was good, you know. It was the snap in my head that changed everything. That snap was good.” I pull up the quilt and entwine our arms. You’re cool and limp. No wiry feeling, no pointy limbs and fast moves. “I snapped and got really mad, but at the same time I realized some important things. I just learned them too late. I’m so sorry, Mom. I can fix it.”

  I snuggle closer and smell the musky scent of your hair mixed with cigarettes and beer. These are scents that I know, but the metallic smell of blood makes me shake.

  “Mom, I’m scared.” I lace our fingers together. “I never told you about another time I was scared, and I always thought I should.” Moonpie hops up on the bed and sniffs your mouth. He turns a circle and lies down on your stomach.

  “The time the social worker came, when I was in third grade, it was because of me.” I try to relax the lump in my throat by breathing, but the smell of blood is frightening. “I couldn’t get you out of bed one day. Nurse Gooch told me to call her if I was ever scared, and so I did. As soon as I told her you wouldn’t get out of bed, she got so freaked out and her voice started to get loud and high and I wished I’d never called her. So I lied. I told her that you were up now, just going into the shower. I said it was a big mistake, that you were just sick, but she must have called the social worker because a lady came. I made sure the trailer was clean and you were beautiful and sober. But it was my fault that you got in trouble that day.”

  The night creeps in unnoticed, and I make a list in my mind of things that I haven’t told Mom. No more secrets between us. The front door rattles. It’s Linwood. I look at the clock. Typical. It’s ten o’clock and he wants to see Mom. I stay as still as a mouse. He swears and thumps down the steps. I hear the roar of his engine as he revs it before backing out.

  I lie still and tell Mom the things on my list. About the time I buried my pee-soaked sheets and pajamas in the backyard before it was a garden. I couldn’t let her see; I couldn’t bear the look she’d give me. I tell her other things.

  A blanket of peace wraps around me and I sleep. When I wake, I know what to do. I don’t know how I’ve figured it all out, just that we’ve made this decision together, Mom and me, and I feel peaceful.

  When I lift her from the bed, I hear the clink as her anklet falls to the floor, but I keep moving through the mess I made, and past the bloodstained rug by the door. I carry her, Moonpie following, through her favorite place, her garden, and lay her behind the workshop.

  “Claudine!” Candy’s voice traveled through the rain to me, but I stayed with Mom. I felt for her fingers and made myself small. The rain beat my back in a steady stream.

  “Claudine!” Her voice was closer now, but I didn’t move.

  “The storm’s over!” It was Linwood.

  I could hear them open the shop door and call from inside.

  Moonpie scrambled out of my arms and scooted around the shop.

  “Mom?”

  “Hey, Angel,” she said.

  In the dying wind, I looked around at the destruction. A spruce tree was down, pine limbs littered the garden, and water crept across the road.

  “We made it, Mom.”

  “It’s not really over. There’s always the cleanup.”

  How deep do you dig to bury your mother?

  The ground gives way to the spade. It shouldn’t be this easy. I grip the handle tighter, refocus, and plunge the blade into the sweet, musty earth. The soil tumbles into the hole. Bending and scooping, I place it carefully in a pile to my right and kneel down.

  How long should it be? I stretch out beside it and press the back of my head into the ground to make an indentation and dig my heels in to mark the length. I have a ways to go. I walk over to the blue tarp and grab one end. I feel the hard knobs of Mom’s ankles through the blue plastic. My stomach lurches.

  “It’s just a heavy tarp,” I say, dragging the body toward the end of the grave. I drop the legs when my palms get sweaty. “It’s just a heavy tarp.”

  I walk backward as fast as I can until she’s even with the end of the hole. Her chestnut hair peeks out from under the plastic, and I squeeze my eyes shut and mark the length with the spade.

  How long? Another two and a half feet? With four neat, quick efforts, I finish the length. I dig out the inside and realize that the deeper I dig, the harder it is. Composted garden soil is easy, but below is stubborn, untended earth. I think there must be a reason they say “six feet under.”

  I draw her body toward me, feel the weight of her, and wonder if I can let her go. The hole is black. It might be two feet deep, maybe less. I don’t know, but I let go and she thuds to the bottom. It’s an unnatural sound. I paw the earth on top of her, and I shovel until I can’t shovel more. I want to be done.

  I rest in the garden and look toward the beach. The moon has sunk behind the trees, and the sky over the sea is pink and purple, a hint that it is morning in Deep Cove.

  “What the fuck!” Linwood and Candy stood at the corner of the shop with shining flashlights even though it wasn’t dark.

  “Oh my god, Claude. What are you doing out here?” Candy said.

  I went back into my head and made pictures of Mom at Jackson Heights with her therapist, but it didn’t work. I saw Mom in a white tractor-trailer sitting close to Gary in the front seat. I added details like music. They listened to Mom’s favorite hard-rock station and ate snacks.

  Candy scooched down and rested her hand on my leg. I pulled away.

  “Claude? Come inside. You’ll get sick.”

  “I can’t.” I took a handful of wet soil and patted it on some blue tarp that showed through. A few soggy flowers tumbled down.

  “What the hell is this?” Candy said.

  I looked at the muddy ground, then my dirty hands, and finally the tarp.

  Linwood knelt beside me and put his head in his hands. “Oh my god.” He took my arm and swung me toward him, his cap pouring off rain in streams. “What did you do?!”

  I closed my eyes; I closed the door to his voice. I heard nothing.

  Candy held me in a bear hug. Linwood got up and paced up and down in front of the grave like some kind of wild animal. The door in my mind opened again, wide, too wide, and a screeching light flooded my mind. I tried to hide from the noise.

  It was Linwood’s cry for Mom, and it blew the door wide open. His dying animal cry cut right through me, and I opened my eyes again to a blast of white pain.

  17

  MAKE A CIRCULAR HOLE with the spade and set the s
oil aside. The Madonna lily bulb fits snugly, and I sprinkle bonemeal the way Mr. MacPhee told me to. I place the snow globe and a letter on top of Mom’s casket. It says:

  Dear Mom,

  Princess is not just bright blues and yellows. She is brave, courageous, intelligent, tolerant, and loving. She will protect you, Mom, and besides that, judging by Grandma’s reaction when she saw it, I’m pretty sure it was yours before it was mine.

  And here’s the last thing I forgot to tell you. I forgot to say that I loved you all the while you were drunk and all the while you weren’t. Even when I was taking care of you instead of the other way around, I loved you deep and true. If I’d known it was okay to be angry AND to love someone, it would have been better for both of us. I think of you when I’m in the garden.

  —Claudine

  I take a spade full of soil and sprinkle it over the letter. Behind me Candy cries and blows her nose.

  We had to wait two weeks to have a service. I needed to get better, and someone had to find Grandma and tell her. I wouldn’t do it. Candy found Ms. Frost’s telephone number in my jeans and called her. I stayed there for a while, and sometimes Candy slept over at the trailer so I was never alone. But the hole I carry inside me makes me feel that way at times. Grandma’s here now, and I still feel very alone. I’m the guest now in my trailer. It’s not home anymore.

  We stand in a circle around Mom’s headstone. The MacPhees insisted on buying it for me and Mom. I wasn’t so sure, but then nobody could find Grandma, so I said sure, she’d like that. Mom never had a problem with the MacPhee favors—it was me.

  I am still and silent, but I let myself feel everything around me. Every cry from Candy is a knife to my heart; even Linwood’s frozen stare, a stab of pain. But along with the pain I feel other things. I feel people rub my back, squeeze my shoulder, and say things like, “Call me anytime.”

  And each changing leaf is so amazing since I opened my eyes. I let the autumn colors cut deep as they fall from the trees. I don’t want to go back to that deep, dark place, my cave of denial. I won’t hide my shame inside where it grows so big, it buries me alive. I am awake now.

  We drive to Seaside Cottages, where people have brought food to share. Candy has laid out a table heaped with food and drinks. Ms. Frost and Mr. Springer sit alone, munching on deviled eggs and talking. They smile a little when I come over. For a second I don’t speak, I just feel. I weigh each emotion to see if it’s a real feeling or a cover-up feeling—the kind I have so I don’t have to feel the real one.

  This is a real one; I know it. I’m glad to see them. I’m grateful.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Sit down,” Mr. Springer says, patting the bench.

  “I’m glad you came.”

  He looks at his empty plate. “We wanted to,” he says.

  “Claudine, we’ll be here for you whenever you need us,” Ms. Frost says.

  I think about this. They both look like they might cry, and I let myself have a feeling about it. I can’t put my finger on it and I decide it feels weird, but it’s okay. I say, “Thanks.”

  We look at one another. It’s a look I’ve never shared with adults. I think it might be honesty, or understanding. I like it.

  Over at the food table I think I see Matt. He’s wearing a sweater and looks smaller than usual. I see the curls resting on his shoulders, and when he turns sideways, I know it’s him. I walk over.

  He touches my arm. I blush.

  “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  “Thanks. And thanks for coming.”

  “Everyone’s here,” he says. I look around and see Hanna, Chris, Blake, Willa, and Deb. Lydia and Mrs. MacPhee are talking, and for a second I want to stop them, but why, I think, why do that? What feeling is that? I’m too tired to figure it all out, but I know I can’t hide anymore.

  “If you want to talk, just give me a call,” Matt says.

  “I will. I think I’ll call you.” I look right into his eyes and I don’t turn away. I start to count to five but stop myself.

  Instead I say, “You know the hole, the unfillable one that aches day and night?”

  Matt nods and looks away. I think I may have said too much, and I wish I had counted instead.

  “It helps to talk about him,” Matt says. “It seems like it would be the opposite, but it hurts and then it feels better. I’m a better listener than I used to be. Really.” Then he punches my arm gently.

  Hard fingers squeeze my arm and pull me away from him. It’s Grandma. “Let’s chat, dear.”

  I try to recognize something in her too-tanned face. The deep lines tell me that most of her day is spent sitting in the Florida sun, not working.

  “What is it, Grandma?”

  “Why don’t you come back to Florida with me? It’ll be a fresh start.”

  I still don’t remember her. Then she cocks her head and brushes my hair from my eyes. I remember now, but I don’t feel anything good and I should, because that’s what I’ve been trying to do.

  “No, Grandma, you go ahead. I need to finish out the year here, and then maybe I’ll visit.”

  I’m shocked to see tears in her eyes.

  “What is it?” I hand her one of my soggy tissues.

  “Nothing.” I’m betting she’s feeling some shame like the rest of us who loved Mom. Could we have done more? I wonder that every day.

  “You go ahead back, then, Grandma.”

  “Okay. And we’ll keep in touch for sure, Claudine. The trailer is yours for now. Don’t worry about it.” It’s a guilt gift, but I’m fine with that. She kisses me and disappears into a group of people near the door. I have a feeling her stuff will be gone when I get back to the trailer.

  Liz is standing with a plate of mini-quiches. I haven’t talked to her since the day of the hurricane. When she calls and Candy or Ms. Frost holds the phone out to me, I freeze. I have no bearings in this new relationship where she is confident and I am the messed-up one. I don’t know how to be me now.

  Liz sees me watching her and comes over, holding out the plate. I take a quiche, but I don’t eat it.

  “Claude, something terrible happened, but you and I are okay.”

  I turn and start walking. Everything about her reminds me of my lies. My deep denial, the professionals call it. Liz knew I was in trouble. She knew me when I didn’t know myself. So why am I angry at her?

  She stops me. “Come on, we’re like sisters, Claude.”

  I feel my throat tighten.

  “I want to be there for you whenever you need me,” she says.

  She is so good. She’s doing the right thing again and I am frozen.

  “And I need you to be there for me. You know, those times when I need to talk. There’s nobody who knows me like you do. You have to come back and be there for me. That’s what friends do.”

  This penetrates my shield. She still needs me.

  She sets the quiches down and puts her hands on my shoulders. “I miss you, Claude.” The wisps of her silky hair brush my cheek as she grabs me up in her hug. “I can’t lose you.”

  Hugging her back, I say, “I can’t lose you. And I can’t lose me either.”

  18

  THE SEAWALL IS BACK IN PLACE, and people are parked along the beach. Lazy waves slap at the rocks like the hurricane never happened. I sit on the hood of the car and watch them come and go. The tide is going out.

  It’s late October, but my feet are bare. I touch the anklet, trace the letters, and feel the coolness of the links as I unclip it. I put it to my lips and pull my arm back to heave it into the waves but stop.

  I’m not ready to let Mom go, and I decide I don’t have to. Clasping it around my ankle again, I think about second chances and how everyone has them. They come right after a mistake, and before making another choice, but you have to feel your feelings first.

  I’ve been seeing a friend of Lydia’s named Dr. Palmer. He’s okay. He mostly listens, but every once in a while he asks me a question or says some
thing to make me see things differently. Like last week, after I told him about messing up my chance at the Charles Hart Scholarship.

  I went on and on about how I screwed up, and Ms. Frost would be mad at me, and Candy would be disappointed, and how I was just like Mom, and the MacPhees wouldn’t be surprised, and all he said was, “So?”

  “Well, it’s true,” I said.

  “And?” he said.

  “Well, I did mess up.”

  “It’s okay to make mistakes, Claudine.”

  My throat closed and I forced myself to swallow.

  “You missed that scholarship, and it’s okay.”

  I shook my head and looked at my fingertips. They were sore, but beginning to heal with the help of Candy’s hand cream.

  “Think about it. What’s the worst-case scenario?” he said.

  “Everyone knows I didn’t get it.”

  “So?”

  “I can’t afford college without it.”

  “Are there other scholarships?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “How can you find out?”

  “I can ask Ms. Frost.”

  “How do you feel right now?”

  “Ashamed. Embarrassed. Both.”

  “Why?”

  “I screwed up.”

  “Do you have any other feelings?”

  I sigh loudly. I don’t want to do this. He’s digging again. He wants to talk about Mom. “I’m scared.”

  “About what?

  “Talking about it.”

  “Talking about what?”

  “Mom.”

  “Her death?”

  I nodded my head.

  “Why?”

  “It’ll be real if I say it out loud.”

  “Even if we don’t talk about it, it’s already real, Claudine. It really happened.”

  I pick up the basket and walk the beach collecting sand dollars, starfish, and sea glass to take home to the garden. I notice the new skin that grows on my fingertips and nails. New skin and new feelings.