Susan Meissner - Why the Sky Is Blue

by Unknown

  At noon Mom called me from the airport. “We’re going to spend a few hours with Spence and Natalie and the baby before we come home,” she told me. “Is that okay?” Like I was the mother.

  I didn’t care if she wanted to see Spencer, Natalie, and their new baby, but I was all mentally prepared to see her at three o’clock. Now she and Dad wouldn’t be home until after five.

  “So Wes and Nicole are still with you?” I said.

  “They don’t mind,” Mom said right away. “It’s on the way, anyway.”

  Spencer and Natalie lived in Apple Valley where Spencer was a youth pastor at a large church. He and Natalie had been married for two years. Their first child was a baby boy they named Noah.

  “Okay. Fine,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. Guess it didn’t work.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Everything’s fine, Mom. Really,” I said.

  “Olivia and Bennett are all right?” she said, probing for more assurance.

  “Mom, you have only been gone five days,” I said.

  “I know, but...but I had this funny feeling when I woke up today that...that something wasn’t quite right,” she said.

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “Mom, the kids are fine, okay?” That was true.

  “Well, we’ll see you later today,” she said after a pause.

  “Right,” I said. “Drive carefully.”

  I hung up.

  The afternoon dragged by. I went to the school at three to get Olivia and invited her to come back to the shop with me. On the way, we picked up Bennett. When the shop wasn’t busy, I liked having my kids with me. Michael had fixed up a room in the basement for them to play in. Sometimes Trish brought her daughter Alex, who was Olivia’s age, to play with my kids.

  Trish offered to get the place ready for the Friday night book clubs and writer’s group so that I could leave at four. All of our upper rooms would be used that night. We had three high school girls running the kitchen and the coffeemakers for the thirty people who would be coming to the Table for Friday club meetings. We also had a jazz coffee bar on Friday nights that began at eight and ended at midnight. Michael and I often liked to come and host those evenings.

  But we weren’t going to be there that evening. My mom was coming home, and I wanted to talk with her.

  I made sure when I left the Table that afternoon that I had Rosemary’s letter with me.

  My parents pulled into our driveway about six thirty. They had been home already—our acreage is just a few miles away from theirs—and had also dropped off Wes and Nicole, whom we would see the next day for brunch. Nicole’s brunches are a Saturday tradition. It’s how she tests all the new things she wants to try out at the Table. Nobody likes missing them.

  Olivia and Bennett ran out to meet Mom and Dad with Bogart dancing at their heels. I watched as my parents made their way onto the porch where I stood. It’s hard to believe my parents are in their mid-fifties. They both still look like they can take on the world. I was reminded of the time when that was just about what they had to do.

  The letter almost felt warm in my pocket.

  They had brought pizza from town with them—an unexpected treat—and little gifts for the kids from Atlanta. We sat outside in the May sunshine, and I let Olivia and Bennett have as much of my parents’ time and attention as they wanted. Later, my mom helped me get them into bed, and then we headed downstairs. Dad and Michael were watching a baseball game, and I asked my mom if she wanted to join me on the porch.

  I suddenly felt very nervous. I was also glad this conversation had not taken place at the bookstore that afternoon, but that we were having it on my front porch at twilight, where the blue sky of the day was melting into the diamond-laced sky of the night.

  “Mom, I need to tell you something,” I began, instantly getting her attention. “A letter came in the mail for you yesterday. And...I opened it.”

  “A letter? Who from?” she said, not concerned at all.

  I swallowed. “From Rosemary.”

  She merely blinked at me, like she was waiting for the last name to roll off my lips. “Rosemary Prentiss?” she said softly, like she had been expecting to say that name all day.

  “Yes.” I said and looked away. “I’m really sorry I opened it, Mom. I couldn’t let it sit there unopened. I just had to read it.”

  She didn’t seem to care at all that I had intruded—and for some dumb reason I wanted her to. “What did she say?” My mother’s voice was barely a whisper.

  I looked over at her and could see that she had already imagined the worst—that Lara had been killed. I could not bear to have her think that even for a second. “Lara’s okay, Mom.” I said. “But Rosemary isn’t. Here. You should read it for yourself.”

  I pulled out the letter from my pocket and held it out to her. She just looked at it but didn’t take it.

  “Read it to me,” she said, looking at the letter, not at me.

  As I read it, I began to cry, even though I had read it so many times already without shedding a tear. Mom began to cry too. When I was done, neither one of us said anything. I folded the letter, put it in its envelope, and placed it in her hand.

  Then a light breeze skipped across the yard, drying our faces as we sat there in silence.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she finally said, shaking her head. And though she said it out loud, I don’t really think she was saying it to me. It was like she was saying it to herself. Or to God.

  “What am I supposed to do?” she said a few seconds later, like they were two different questions, and I guess they were.

  “Oh, God...” she whispered and dropped her head. The letter made a crinkly sound in her hand.

  “You don’t have to decide anything today, Mom,” I said.

  She raised her head and looked past me, into the shadowy horizon. “Decide?” she said. “I thought I did that already. I never thought I would be asked to decide again.”

  “You shouldn’t have to,” I said, a jab at God, I guess.

  “You don’t think we should take her?” my mom said, her brow furrowed.

  “I don’t know what I think,” I said after a moment’s pause.

  “You were the one who wanted to keep her,” she said thoughtfully.

  “You were the one who said we couldn’t.” I didn’t mean for it to feel like a barb, but I’m sure it must have. But there was no return volley. My mother just sat there. I began to regret what I’d said. But she had a faraway look in her eyes like she had long since moved on to another thought.

  “How can I not take her?” she said.

  “You can write Rosemary and tell her you won’t,” I said.

  But I didn’t really want her to do that. And she knew it.

  Neither of us really knew what we wanted.

  It was like being right back where the whole thing started. The only difference was, this time I was in the loop.

  By the time the baseball game was over, my mom and I recovered enough to appear to our husbands as if we had merely enjoyed a long, woman-to-woman chat under the stars. She and I agreed to say nothing to anyone about the letter for the moment. She wanted time to think, and she needed to consider what my dad’s response would be.

  The next two weeks were awkward for us. At the shop we acted as if there was nothing unusual on our minds, but every time our eyes met, we were both reminded of the letter. Sometimes I would catch my mom staring off into space, completely absorbed in thoughts that had nothing to do with old books. At home, I would find myself likewise distracted. Michael asked me on more than one occasion if I was all right. I hated lying to him.

  School was let out, and Seth amazingly passed all but one course. It was an algebra class that I really couldn’t help him with. But Michael is good in math, so Seth starting coming to the house in the evenings for tutoring so he could pass the class in summer school. Michael had also given Seth a lamb to raise for the upcoming county fair, and Set
h couldn’t keep it in town where Wes and Nicole lived, so Spock lived in our barn. I think Seth liked having Spock at our place because it gave him reason to come over.

  On Friday of the first week in June, my mom came to me in the studio. I was working on a commissioned piece for City Hall. She stood there admiring my rendition of Blue Prairie’s main street, saying not a word. I could tell she had something on her mind.

  “You’ve decided something,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, apprehension quickly filling my mind.

  “I’m going up there. I want to see her.”

  I knew my mother would not travel all that way to see Lara and then decide to let her be shipped off to Uncle Unbeliever. She was going up there because she wanted her and just needed to find a way to convince my dad they should take her.

  “That means you want to bring her here,” I said.

  My mom continued to look at the painting.

  “I suppose it does,” she finally said.

  “So you’re thinking Dad’s going to be okay with this?”

  She shrugged, as if the weight of that prospect was already too hard to bear.

  “I want to come with you,” I said, expecting her to protest. But she didn’t.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m not ... I can’t tell your dad. Not yet.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Mom.”

  “This is just like before,” she said to me. “There are no good ideas.”

  Then she started to walk away.

  “I will tell him when the time is right,” she said. “I have to see Lara first, or I won’t have the courage to ask him.”

  21

  Telling Michael that my mom and I were going away for the weekend was easy; she and I had done it a few times before when she wanted to go to outlying estate sales where books were listed on the sale bill. But this trip had nothing to do with Tennyson’s Table, and I simply couldn’t let Michael think that it did. I didn’t feel good about Mom’s not being completely honest with Dad, and I felt no compulsion to deceive Michael in the same way.

  “There’s something my mom wants to do,” I told him. “Something I will explain when we get home.”

  He smiled when I said that, but it was a puzzled smile.

  “What are you two up to?” he said.

  “I promise I will tell you everything when we come home,” I replied.

  It must have occurred to him then that my mom was terribly sick and that we were on a journey to get a second opinion.

  “Your mom’s okay, isn’t she?” Concern whisked away the smile on his face.

  “She’s fine,” I said quickly. “Really.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me what’s in Duluth?” he said.

  “It’s actually Two Harbors, and I will tell you,” I assured him. “When I get home.”

  Bennett and Olivia were a little upset about my leaving them for the weekend, but I promised them both a little surprise for helping their daddy take care of things while I was away.

  Mom and I left on a Friday morning a little before eleven o’clock on a day that would later blossom into a scorcher. I don’t know what my mom told Nicole about our trip. She just told me not to worry about our shop while we were gone, that Nicole had it all under control.

  We were on the highway for a little while when I asked Mom if she called Rosemary or made hotel reservations. She told me she had done neither.

  “I just want to take this one moment at a time,” she said.

  “So we’re just going to show up at her door?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” she said, watching the road but clearly distracted.

  “Don’t you think we should call first?” I asked a few minutes later.

  “I don’t want any of this to take place by phone. When I see the house, I will decide what to do.”

  I just left it at that.

  We drove a few more minutes in silence, and then I asked her what she had told my dad about where we were going. She didn’t answer right away; it was like she was still trying to decide if she did the right thing.

  “I told him you and I had a special little mission to accomplish and that I would explain what it was when we got home,” she said.

  That sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Did you tell him we were going to Duluth?” I said.

  “We’re not going to Duluth. We’re going to Two Harbors.”

  “Okay, did you tell him we were going to Two Harbors?”

  She paused.

  “Yes.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He asked if we knew anybody in Two Harbors.”

  “And you said...”

  “I said it didn’t matter if we did or didn’t, that we were going to stay in a hotel.”

  So she had answered his question without outright lying to him.

  We had just passed the Twin Cities when I realized I had finally been given an incredible opportunity to discuss That Which We Do Not Discuss. We were on our way to see Lara. I could ask anything I wanted, and my mom couldn’t possibly ignore it or redirect the conversation. With every mile, we were drawing nearer to Lara, and I had a ton of questions on my mind; some that I had carried with me since the day we moved to Blue Prairie. I had my mother captive in a car for the next two hours. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. There was so much I wanted to know and so much I forgot I wanted to know, until that moment. I hardly knew where to begin.

  “Whatever happened to the man who attacked you?” I asked first.

  My mom sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “He’s sitting in a Stillwater prison cell, I suppose.”

  “Does he know? About Lara?”

  “I don’t know. And I really don’t care,” Mom said, adjusting the rearview mirror, though I am sure it was positioned just fine. “He is no one to her. Or to me.”

  “Do you hate him for what he did?” I asked, getting bolder by the minute.

  She didn’t answer right away. I guessed she hadn’t thought about it in a long time and had to consider how she felt about the monster of a man who changed all our lives.

  “I used to hate him for his part in giving me a child I wanted and couldn’t have,” she finally said. “But I don’t hate him anymore. I have no feelings whatsoever for him. I don’t even know what he looks like.”

  “You never remembered any of it, did you?” I asked. “You never remembered what happened the night he hurt you.”

  “That was the one splendid thing God did for me,” she said, a little irreverently for her. “He swept away any memory of that awful night. Sometimes I forget to be thankful for that.”

  I moved on.

  “Do you think about Lara? I mean, before this letter, did you ever think about her or wonder about her?” I asked.

  My mom glanced at me, a weak smile forming on her lips.

  “Of course I did,” she said, turning her eyes back to the road. “She was born on Memorial Day, Kate, a day already set aside for remembering.”

  “Is that the only time you think about her?”

  Mom shook her head.

  “In the beginning I imagined every milestone. I wondered about her first step and her first tooth and her first day of school. But over the years it became easier not to give in to the desire to imagine. And that made it easier to live with what happened and what we had to do,” she said.

  As she said this, I remembered sitting by her hospital bed on that long-ago day, Lara in my arms, just twelve hours old. My mother asked me then if I understood why she and my dad were giving Lara up for adoption. I told her I understood her reasons but didn’t agree with them. I wondered if that was still how I felt. I really wasn’t sure.

  “Do you still think you did the right thing?” I asked. “Do you ever wish you had kept her?”

  Mom thought for a moment and then answered without looking a
t me.

  “Yes, we did the right thing. And, yes, I wish we had kept her.”

  In Duluth, we stopped at a Hampton Inn near the shore of Lake Superior and got a room for the next two nights. Mom decided she didn’t want to stay in the little town of Two Harbors; I think she wanted to be able to escape from time to time, if need be. Though stiff from the long drive, we got back in the car and headed toward Two Harbors, about twenty-five miles away. I pulled out the map we had made using the Internet, which would lead us to Rosemary’s house. It was a little after four-thirty in the afternoon when we entered Two Harbor’s city limits. The little highway just blended into the town’s main thoroughfare. In some ways it looked a lot like Blue Prairie. The red lighthouse on its hill above the North Shore was unlike anything in our little agricultural town. But the people, the shops, the cars— they all looked the same. My heart was pounding. I’m sure Mom’s was too.

  We found Rosemary’s street quickly enough and began to search the house numbers, both of us fidgeting in our seats. Finally, the last house on the corner came into view. Rosemary’s house. With a For Sale sign in front and the word Sold plastered across it.

  It looked empty.

  I cannot describe the despair of that moment. Neither of us could believe it.

  “We’re too late,” my mom said, in a voice that was half a wail and half a whisper. “Rosemary’s dead and Lara’s gone!”

  I refused to believe it. I was the queen of No Surprises. This could not be happening.

  “No way,” I said. “Pull into the driveway.”

  She did, and I got out of the car. It was still hot and sticky outside, but I hardly cared. I went up to the front door and knocked. There was no answer. I peered in the front-room window. Mom joined me, worry creasing her face like a mask.

  “Look, there’s furniture still inside,” I said.

  She looked in as well.

  But something wasn’t quite right. There was indeed a couch and a coffee table and a bookcase visible, but there were no books on the bookshelves, no pictures on the wall, nothing to indicate who lived there and what they loved.

  “If you want to buy that house, you’re too late,” someone said from behind us.