Surviving Valencia

by Holly Tierney-Bedord

  I looked back at her standing there on the patio, holding that cookie sheet like it was so, so terribly heavy. Her head cocked to one side, an expression of exasperation on her face as my dad shuffled back to her, taking his time on the stepping stone path. This was their thing, their dance, the way they lived. Doling out and accepting a lifetime of disappointments. How much of their relationship and anger was because my mother had been pretty and now was not? Despite losing Van and Valencia, I believe that was her greatest loss of all.

  Even now as an adult, I am barely able to follow how it works. Why would one girl care if another girl she hates has a pretty mother or sister? Why was that enough to sometimes afford me a fleeting glimpse of kindness and respect? I did not understand it then and I do not understand it now. If Adrian and I have a baby someday, I will do my best to teach her all I know, but I will not be able to teach her this.

  Chapter 17

  After dinner the four of us sat huddled around the patio table, pork chop bones anchoring the Styrofoam plates from blowing away, an endless train of mixed drinks prepared by my father coming our way. We were all shivering a little but no one made a move to go inside. After months of winter, these not-quite-frigid nights were cherished. Adrian was trying to make conversation, not understanding that my parents have no interest in anything except landscaping and bowling. During a lapse in the conversation, I took the opportunity to reveal my true motivation.

  “I’m going to visit Valencia and Van’s graves while I’m here,” I said. This was met with silence. My mother picked up her drink and finished it, then waved it at my father to show she needed a refill.

  “I haven’t been there for a long time,” I continued. “I think I might go tonight.”

  “The cemetery is going to be soggy tonight. You might as well wait until tomorrow or the next time you’re here,” said my mother.

  “Can I have the keys?” I asked Adrian, holding out my hand, “I’m going to go there now.”

  “You’ve been drinking quite a bit, Sweetie. I don’t think you should go anywhere,” he said.

  “Give me the keys.”

  “Who needs another one?” asked my dad, rising from the table.

  “Adrian, give me the keys,” I said.

  “I’ll take one more, easy on the ice,” said Adrian.

  “She’s had too much to drink,” said my mom to Adrian, shaking her head.

  “No, Mom. I have not. Adrian, quit ignoring me. Give me the keys.”

  “But you’ve been drinking,” he whined.

  “Actually, I haven’t had nearly as much as the rest of you.”

  “Roger, where did you get this glass? I swear, we used to have a set like this. Tall ones, short ones,” Adrian called to my father, holding up a glass available at any garage sale.

  “That’s the only one we have left anymore, so don’t break it,” joked my father through the screen door.

  “Put some extra maraschino cherries in mine, Roger,” called my mother.

  Was I invisible? I pulled my sweater tightly around me, shivering. Adrian fit in so well, I realized. Perhaps not intellectually, but he was every bit as disloyal to me as my parents were. I wondered what was next. I pictured the three of them signing a document and a paddywagon arriving to take me to an insane asylum.

  “I came here to visit their graves and that is what I intend to do,” I said. No one even looked at me. I reached for the keys in Adrian’s pocket and he grabbed my wrist. It didn’t hurt so much as anger and surprise me.

  “I love those little cherries,” sang my mother. Then she burst into a giggle fit.

  “Adrian!”

  Finally he turned to me and made eye contact. “If you’re going, I’m coming with you and I’m driving. I haven’t had as much as you.”

  “You’ve had much more than I have. Let me go. Let me do this alone.”

  He stood up. “Roger, Patricia. We’ll be back shortly. It’s going to be too dark to find our way tonight, but your daughter, God love her, gets these ideas…”

  “No. I really need to do this by myself,” I said.

  “I’m not losing another child!” said my mother, sounding shrill and wasted. This surprised me. I often felt that she thought of me as some kind of relative, but not her child. A younger sister, perhaps.

  “Adrian, please,” I whispered.

  My dad was back with a bucket of ice cubes. “Try these cubes. Tell me what they taste like.”

  “I like this game,” said my drunk mother, popping one into her drink. “Well Roger, let me think. Don’t tell us. These taste like ginger.”

  “Noooo. Guess again.”

  “Figs? Fig Newtons?”

  “Closer.”

  “Are these made of prunes?”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  And then, miracle of miracles, Adrian handed me the keys.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, feeling genuinely grateful. The cemetery was only a mile away. I ran to the car and got in, immediately locking my door as if I were in a scary neighborhood. I adjusted the seat and took a second to catch my breath. It was such a relief to be alone. I felt the pressure in my head instantly begin to dissipate.

  Start the car.

  Hurry hurry.

  Get away before someone stops you.

  I decided I might never come back. The best thing to do, the only solid option, was to drive forever.

  Adrian tapped on the window then and I had no choice but to open it.

  I lowered the window and he leaned in. “I just wanted to give you a kiss. Be careful.” He kissed my temple. “Don’t stay away too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Too many more of these are going to make me sick,” he said, holding up a fresh drink with a plastic sword of cherries bobbing in it.

  “Well, you can always just stop drinking them, you know.”

  “Can I?”

  “Can’t you?”

  “The ice cubes are frozen prune juice.”

  “That’s gross.”

  He leaned in for a kiss on the lips.

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I rolled the window back up. It was starting to get much colder out.

  He stood there, seeming less like the enemy than a sad and trustworthy dog.

  You have to be married to understand how quickly it can change like that. And change back.

  He waved as I pulled away. I was glad he wasn’t with me.

  Chapter 18

  Valencia and Van have the first two gravestones in our family plot. When they died my parents bought four plots: the two for my brother and sister, and two for themselves. My parents’ graves already have their names and dates of birth chiseled into the brown granite, with vacant spaces awaiting their dates of death to be filled in. Back when they did this, I asked why there weren’t five gravestones. They explained that I would want to be buried with my husband and it would happen so far in the future that I shouldn’t worry about it.

  “What if I don’t have a husband when I die?”

  “You will,” said my mother.

  “How do you know?”

  “Everyone gets married. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Could I stay in Valencia’s place?” I asked. After all, it was empty. But they were saving it for her, in case someday her body turned up. The possibility of Valencia was a firmer placeholder than the reality of me.

  I felt then and still feel that they should have bought another plot. Not a headstone, but a plot. A space for me. Who cares if it was expensive? Who cares if it would have seemed strange and morbid to the neighbors?

  “Don’t feel bad, kiddo,” my dad had said. “Just be glad you’re up here instead of in there.”

  “I want to be in there with them,” I said.

  “Oh, is that what you think?” he said, not so kindly.

  That was what I knew.

  “Please buy me a spot too. I want to be with all of you.”

  “You’re not actin
g very grown up,” said my mother, overhearing. I can picture her, looking haggard, looking like she could not take anymore.

  “I just feel left out.”

  “Will you listen to yourself? Think of what you’re saying. You should be very, very ashamed of yourself.”

  “I just –“

  “Quit taking this personally,” said my mother. “It’s not about you.”

  I took it very personally though, when I was eleven years old, to see the place where the four of them would rest together eternally, with no space for me.

  Tonight the graveyard was black. For the first time, it seemed like it might not have been a good idea to come here alone. I found a flashlight in the glove box and made my way through the cemetery, following the skinny beam of light, trying to remember where they were. At the point when I started to feel like I should just give up until it was light out again, when I looked back and the car looked so frighteningly far away, I found them. I crouched down, making sure to keep my butt off the squishy wet ground, and shined the flashlight across the headstones.

  Van was first. Evan Roger Loden. He’d never been known as Evan a day in his life. June 15, 1968 – November 26, 1986. A chintzy, faded ribbon on a plastic wreath flapped in the night wind. It said Son. The last time I had visited, the same wreath had been here, but it had been new. Had my parents been here between then and now? I pulled the wreath from its rusty metal stake, and also removed the tattered one leaning up against Valencia’s grave that said Daughter. There were rules against leaving these tacky pieces of garbage here year round. I was surprised some groundskeeper hadn’t taken them down a long time ago.

  I looked around me, making sure I was still alone. The cemetery is creepy at night. It is not the ghosts I am afraid of. There are so many places to hide. I shined my light around and then let it fall on my sister’s headstone. There was a chalky pile of bird poop on it. I rubbed at it with the corner of the faded ribbon. The night wind picked up and a prickly sheet of icy rain began to fall.

  I crouched back down a bit, and pulled my collar around my face. This was no longer surreal. When had it stopped being surreal? That is when the emptiness takes over for agony. Once you become numb, you never feel anything quite as acutely again. I suppose being numb robbed me of much that other young people enjoy. It is what it is.

  Valencia Patricia Loden said the words neatly etched in granite. Who, since she was born ten minutes after Van, had managed to score herself her own birthday, but not her own death day. June 16, 1968 – November 26, 1986. I followed my old superstition of standing in front of Valencia’s grave, since there was not a skeleton beneath me, just dirt.

  I waited to feel something. I touched the gravestones, running my fingers over the texture of their names.

  “Van?” I whispered. Could he see me? Did he remember me? I wish I believed he was watching me.

  The wind was blowing harder and I pulled my sweater sleeves around my fingers, clicking off the flashlight so I could be alone with them in the dark.

  “Valencia, who am I?” I whispered. I felt stupid for saying this aloud and caught myself looking around, as if someone had heard me. I wanted to cry. I wanted to connect to them. But I just kept feeling empty. My legs started to burn from squatting to avoid the wet earth, so I let myself sit on the damp grass, let the icy, pellet-like drops of rain dampen my hair and face.

  You might as well go, I told myself. What were you expecting?

  But I stayed there, shivering, pathetically jealous of my dead brother and sister. They knew things I did not, might never know.

  Chapter 19

  I was more excited about the weekend that Van and Valencia were moving to La Crosse than possibly even they were. It was going to be a mini-vacation. We were all going to spend the night there. I was not entirely sure what I was expecting it to be, but I had the vague notion it would be cool. In the days leading up to their departure, I was too caught up in my imaginings of dorm life and pizza parties to think beyond that weekend. The reality of a house that would be losing forty percent of its inhabitants, two thirds of its children (and the important children at that), in one swift weekend was too much for my eleven-year-old brain to comprehend.

  Three days before we planned to leave, my dad borrowed his brother’s truck and began loading it up with boxes. I had already packed an overnight bag. It looked like a sausage about to burst. It was filled with everything from hand-me-down bikinis of my sister’s to a hot pink Shaker sweater, and plenty of makeup. I had the vague, secret notion that I could trick a college boy into thinking I was sixteen or seventeen. That was as far as my fantasy had evolved. I was sitting on my bed, reading ‘Teen magazine, my mind split between the trip to La Crosse and school starting in less than a week. It might not be too late to reinvent myself as a Stylish Girl. With all of Valencia’s old clothes, I might finally stand a chance.

  I heard the sound of knocking on my doorframe and I looked up. No one ever knocked on an open door. You were lucky if they knocked even if it was closed. My mother was standing there with a sheepish look on her face. “Hi. Mind if I sit down by you?” I knew instantly this was no good. She sat on my bed and peered at my magazine. “What are you reading?” I showed her the article about starting the year off right, with fresh new styles. There was a picture of a fuchsia-mouthed girl with a fun ponytail erupting from the side of her head.

  “Cute,” said my mom. “I could do that to your hair if you want.”

  “It might make the older girls pick on me.”

  “Hmmm. Listen, Honey, your dad and I were thinking that you might want to stay at Heather’s house this weekend. I called Heather’s mom already and she said it was fine. Then you’ll be all ready to start school on Monday.”

  “What?” I felt my face growing hot. This could not be happening.

  “I worked it all out with her. She said you can order take away food on Saturday night.”

  “It’s called take out. And I don’t want any. I want to come with you!”

  My mother sighed, loud and dramatic like a dog. “Don’t whine. It’s been a long day already and I am not in the mood to listen to you.” She stood up, leaving a big butt print on my bedspread. I wanted to smooth it out but I imagined it was infested with her germs. I looked up at her hard, determined face.

  “Why? Why can’t I go? Valencia and Van want me to say good-bye to them. I want to see where they’re going to live. Why are you doing this?”

  “It’s settled. I already talked to Heather’s mother. It’s final.”

  “But why?”

  “The last thing I need right now is a tantrum out of you.” She picked up my overnight bag and set it on the bed. “Pack this with reasonable clothing you can actually use, including something to wear to school on Monday, because you’re going directly from Heather’s to school on the bus with her. Understand?”

  “No. What did I do? Why can’t I go with everyone else? I’ll be good.”

  “Your dad and I need a break and we’re going to stay there an extra couple of days. And you’re going to stay at Heather’s. You’ll have fun on the farm. Maybe they’ll put you to work and you’ll realize how good you have it here.”

  “I didn’t realize you needed a vacation from me.”

  “Get your clothes in order before Friday because once you’re at Heather’s you can’t come back here and pick new outfits. Understand?”

  She got up and walked to the door.

  “Should I pack it with clothes for Tuesday and Wednesday too?” I yelled, “Should I just pack it for the whole week in case you never come home?”

  “You’re walking a fine line,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

  I sat on my bed, kicking the mattress with my heels until they hurt too badly to continue. I had told a lot of people about this weekend. Now I would show up riding Heather’s manure-stinky school bus on the first day of school and everyone would think I was a liar.

  In Seventeen and ‘Teen I read about gir
ls who got to visit their older sisters at college and stay overnight. They would do things like make popcorn and set each other’s hair with hot rollers. I would never be that girl because my parents would never allow it to happen. I got up to look for Valencia. She was my only chance at changing their minds.

  Her bicycle was gone so I went to Van’s room to ask him if he had seen her. He was lying on his bed, reading a book. His room smelled like mint chewing gum and cologne.

  “She went to babysit the neighbors while their mom’s at the dentist or something,” he said.

  “Oh. How long ago did she leave?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe an hour ago.”

  “Well how nice and free it must feel to just pick up and go babysitting,” I said.

  Van looked at me quizzically and went back to his book.

  Valencia started baby-sitting when she was eleven years old. Now I was eleven and not only was I not allowed to babysit, but my parents still made Valencia or Van stay with me if they left for more than a quick errand. They were hypocrites. They made me sick.

  I went back up to my room, completely defeated, and shut the door. Almost immediately someone knocked on it.

  “What do you want?” I mumbled.

  “Can I come in?” asked my mom.

  “I don’t care.”

  She opened the door and stuck her head in. A tight, stressed smile was on her face and in her hand was a plastic baggie filled with what looked like sand.

  “Shake and Bake for dinner, so you better snap out of it if you want to eat with the rest of us.”

  Chapter 20

  I didn’t feel like staying at the cemetery any longer, but I didn’t want to go back to my parents’ house either. I drove around, scanning my periphery for cops and bars. If it wasn’t for the letters Adrian had received I would have gone straight back, perhaps would even have invited him along in the first place. But now everything was changing. Adrian was no longer my whole world. I could feel myself breaking away from him to protect myself. I wanted an explanation so badly that I had actually considered confronting him. How great would it be to have it all explained away and to go back to feeling peace again. But what if there was no explanation, and I unraveled our world? I would be left with nothing.