by Amy Meyerson
I sat on the towel Mom had placed on the floor. I was ready to stay, ready to listen. I wasn’t quite ready to sit on the stair beside her.
“I should have told you everything when you were twelve. You would have understood.” She braved a look at me. I wasn’t sure what she saw, what expression I gave her in return, but her hands slowly unwound and she rested them in her lap. “When you went to Billy’s funeral. When you said you saw Evelyn’s grave. I thought you figured it out. And then when you didn’t, I chickened out again.” Mom stretched out her legs, shaking them like she was trying to release the past from her tense muscles. “It was my fault. I knew what I was doing. Billy loved you, but he couldn’t be a father. Not without Evelyn. Everything got so complicated. I should have told you when Billy and I got into that terrible fight. How do you tell a twelve-year-old that her entire life has been a lie? Maybe it wasn’t about Billy. Maybe I just didn’t want you to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you,” I said.
“Billy hated me. He still does.” And with that, the tears erupted. Mom hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook violently. I’d never seen Mom like that before. It was beautiful and confusing and violent, like Mom was rupturing, a fissure opening to expose her insides.
“This is so selfish of me. You’re the one whose life has been turned upside down and here I am crying.”
“So stop crying,” I said coldly, and she did, startled by my callousness. It wasn’t her turn to cry just because I wasn’t. My eyes didn’t sting. I didn’t feel that tingling sensation like before you sneeze. I was emotionally exhausted, and I wanted the truth. I didn’t want comfort. I certainly didn’t want to comfort her. I wanted her, finally, to talk to me.
I walked over to the bookshelves in the living room and found a copy of The Tempest. I brought it into the foyer and sat beside Mom on the steps. I flipped to the second scene, Prospero’s speech to Miranda, where Billy had left me the first clue.
“Billy sent me a copy of The Tempest before he died. It was the first clue.” I waited for her to gasp and say, Why didn’t you tell me? Instead, she took the book from my hands and read the dialogue on the page. “At the beginning, it seems like a play about vengeance but it’s really about forgiveness. See here?” I pointed to Prospero’s words. “Even as he explains how he was betrayed by his brother, he admits, ‘I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated to closeness and the bettering of my mind.’ Prospero left the daily responsibilities of his estate to his brother while he was distracted by his studies. Billy didn’t hate you. He knew that he was as much to blame as you were.”
From there, I walked Mom through each of the clues after The Tempest, reframing them into the version of the past and Billy’s quest as an apology to Mom: Jane Eyre, where Billy acknowledged his regret over their estrangement. “It wasn’t meant as a dig. Jane’s uncle always felt guilty about the fight he had with Jane’s father, who died before they could make amends. That’s how Billy felt about his fight with you.” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where Billy initiated my journey into the fantastic world of his past. Frankenstein, where John Cook had exposed Billy’s misguided attempts at grieving, where Billy was forced to accept that he could never bring Evelyn back. He couldn’t figure out how to keep living, so he began running, chasing his own monsters. Fear of Flying, where Billy and Sheila had tried to allay their grief with their bodies, their desire. Persuasion, where Burt wasn’t vain or superficial, but senile with regret. The Grapes of Wrath, where I went to Big Bear and saw the house.
“You were there?” Mom asked. Her face looked younger suddenly, like she was a teenager again, roaming the hallways of her high school, arm in arm with her best friend.
I found my phone and showed Mom the photograph of the banister. “Their initials are still on the railing.” She ran her fingers over the screen as though she could feel the carving. “Do you remember Lee?”
“Who worked at the bookstore?” she asked.
I explained to her that Bridge to Terabithia had led me to Lee and he’d told me wonderful stories about Evelyn, and also stories about Billy’s guilt. I flipped to the epilogue of The Tempest and showed Mom where Billy had left a letter, an apology asking us to forgive him, to set him free. “He wants you to tell me everything. He wants me to forgive you, too.” And I realized as I said it that he did. Billy wanted me to free him. He also wanted me to free these secrets, to end the destruction they had caused.
“I still don’t know what you fought about on my birthday,” I said. “I know it had to do with Billy being my father, but he didn’t tell me what happened. He wants you to show me. He wants me to understand from your perspective.”
None of the people I met—not Sheila, not Lee, not Burt—knew what had happened between Billy and Mom. He hadn’t told them about their fight. In his letter of apology, he hadn’t told me, either. He said he didn’t know how to apologize to Mom, but he did. He was allowing her experience of their argument to be the only account that existed.
Mom closed The Tempest and placed it in her lap. “Where should I begin?”
* * *
I don’t understand, Mom said when the doctors found her in the waiting room. Carbon monoxide?
The police will complete an investigation to determine how carbon monoxide got trapped in the house, the doctors reported in practiced voices. It likely had to do with the storm.
Are they okay? Oh, Mom, any time you had to ask that, you already knew the answer.
The doctor started with the good news. Billy was still on an oxygen tank, but he was stable. They were monitoring his levels closely. Too much oxygen could lead to its own problems. He was partially conscious and they’d begun to administer decongestants to help with the barotrauma and sinus problems.
The bends, the doctors explained. Like scuba divers sometimes get.
The doctors said they would have to monitor him for a few days, but the chances of any lasting effects were unlikely.
And Evelyn? Mom asked.
You never know how you will react. Mom would have imagined she’d be frantic, on all fours, pounding her hands on the cold linoleum floor. She didn’t even cry. Not until the funeral when Evelyn’s body was slowly lowered into the ground. Evelyn’s father had wanted a Catholic ceremony. Evelyn was atheist, and Mom was glad she hadn’t been so paralyzed by grief that she hadn’t known to fight Burt. Billy was useless at that point. He could barely put together a sentence much less a cohesive argument.
In the ER, the doctors continued their story. They’d had to do an emergency C-section. The baby’s pulse was faint. They’d incubated her and she was stable. She’d have to stay in the hospital for another week or so.
“You were a fighter from the beginning,” Mom said. “It’s a miracle, really. You shouldn’t have survived.”
And Evelyn was a fierce protector to the end, her body holding on until the baby was cut out of her.
How’s Evelyn? Mom asked again. She needed to hear them explain it. She had to remember. She knew she had to be the one to tell Billy.
There were complications during the C-section. The doctors said they had been monitoring her oxygen levels and pulse closely, but once she began to seize, they were unable to save her.
I don’t understand, Mom said.
She’d had an amniotic fluid embolism, which had caused the seizure.
We’re very sorry, the doctors said in the same practiced voices.
Mom kept saying it: I don’t understand. An embolism? A seizure? Until Dad pulled her into his chest.
Can we see the baby? Dad asked the doctor.
“Evelyn was desperate to be a mother,” Mom told me. From the moment she and Billy got married, she’d started planning the family they were going to have—three kids, and a dog. A golden retriever because it was the type of dog the perfect family would have in a movie and that’s what they were going to be, p
erfect, nauseatingly so. For four years, Evelyn monitored her menstrual cycle, her ovulation. When, month after month, her period arrived, she visited fertility specialists, three in total. She’d tried everything. Insemination, ovulation induction drugs, nothing worked. “She’d given up hope. And then one day... And then one day...”
Mom was waiting for Evelyn at a booth in the diner where they always met. As soon as Evelyn walked in, Mom sensed something about her was different. Nothing obvious. She was only about six weeks pregnant. Her cheeks were rosier than usual, and she seemed like she wanted to burst into song.
Look at you, you’re glowing with life. Mom hugged her best friend and said all the things you’re supposed to say. Congratulations. I’m so happy for you. You’re going to make a wonderful mother. These things were true. She was happy for Evelyn. Evelyn was going to be an incredible mom. But everything was about to change. It was ugly, Mom knew. Still, she couldn’t shake a prevailing disappointment that they couldn’t continue to be women without children together.
“After, that was what I felt the worst about. The entire time, as she grew bigger and bigger, I kept wishing that she wasn’t pregnant, that she wouldn’t become a mother.” Mom cried harder, and I had to fight the urge to console her. I wasn’t ready to commiserate with her, to help her forgive herself.
“I never wanted kids,” Mom said once she’d steadied her breath. Even in her thirties, she’d still clung to the open road, to the possibility that with one phone call, she could take off. Of course, she couldn’t. She had Dad, and besides, that mystical phone call never did appear. “I didn’t want kids. I only ever wanted you.”
Mom said she’d never seen so many tubes on such a small baby. Mom was hit with a maternal desire like a hot flash.
“You were so blue,” Mom said. The nurse let Mom touch my head, and she cupped my small skull, bluish skin peeking between black fuzz like bruises. Evelyn would never get to touch me like this, Mom thought. She would never get to touch me at all.
Mom didn’t know how Burt had learned that Evelyn was in the hospital. Somehow, he was always abreast of Evelyn’s life, as if he had private detectives monitoring his distant daughter’s every move. He barreled into the hospital demanding to see Evelyn.
I want to see my daughter, Burt barked at the nurse unlucky enough to be sitting at the station when he arrived.
Mom rested her hand on Burt’s shoulder. He regarded her without recognition.
Suzy, she explained. Billy’s sister. Why don’t you come sit down. She guided him toward the waiting room.
After Mom repeated what little information the doctors had given her, Burt asked if Mom knew who was in charge of the investigation. Had they been to the house yet? Had they interviewed the emergency responders? How long did Evelyn seize before she died? The ideas were building behind Burt eyes.
Billy, he said. This is Billy’s doing, isn’t it?
“Burt never approved of Billy. It didn’t make sense,” Mom said.
In high school, Burt didn’t like Evelyn seeing a college boy, even though Evelyn and Billy had been dating since before he was in college. When they got back together, Evelyn would bring Billy to their monthly dinners, and Burt would ignore Billy’s questions about advances in fertilizers or cross-breeding trees. Each month, as the women Burt brought to dinner changed, Billy remained, and each month while Evelyn was polite to the woman in rotation, asking her questions about her burgeoning acting career or her humanitarianism, Burt would act as though he didn’t know what Billy did for a living or where he was from. Billy’s Judaism, as nominal as it was, became the issue when they decided to get married. Think what your mother would say, Burt told Evelyn, making her so angry she stopped speaking to her father for three months until Billy insisted that she invite him to their reception.
“I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Burt blamed Billy,” Mom told me.
Billy was in the hospital for another week of unprecedentedly low temperatures. The snow didn’t melt. It grew hard and turned to glass, cracking under your feet as you walked. “We were lucky for the cold weather. Otherwise, the police might not have figured out what happened.” Or unlucky, perhaps. If they hadn’t located the vent on the roof, clogged with snow, maybe Billy wouldn’t have blamed himself. Maybe Burt wouldn’t have blamed him, either.
Burt stuck around Big Bear long enough for the snow to begin to melt, long enough to cause trouble. He went to the house. He met the detectives. He forced the issue of foul play, which the detectives dismissed, making Burt more determined.
“We didn’t learn about the independent investigation until Burt began fighting Billy for the inheritance, for custody.”
“Custody? Of me?” I tried to imagine what that life would have been like, Burt’s big house filled with employees in place of family, furniture in place of friends, wives in place of mothers.
“The whole thing was terrible. It lasted nearly two years. Burt refused to let it go. Billy would say, ‘Let him have it all, I don’t deserve it. I killed her.’ So, we couldn’t let Burt’s lawyers near him. Dad had to take care of everything. It was horrible, what Burt put Billy through.”
Ten days old, I was finally released from the hospital. Billy and I came to stay with Mom and Dad. They set up a bassinet in the room where Billy would sleep. Billy took one look at the bassinet and shook his head.
I can’t. Put her in the other room.
Billy, a newborn shouldn’t sleep alone, Mom explained.
Will you watch her? Billy asked, his attention shifting from Mom to Dad.
I don’t think that’s a good idea, Dad said.
You’ve got to get used to her, Mom added.
I don’t trust myself. Please, Suze. Please don’t make me do it. And Billy looked so desperate that Dad moved the bassinet into their bedroom, sure to tell Billy that this was only temporary.
For the first few weeks, Billy wouldn’t even hold me. “All new fathers are afraid of babies, like they’ll break them, but this was different.” Billy would watch Mom rock me, singing sweet lullabies.
You’re such a natural mother. Look how she responds to your voice.
She’ll respond to you, too, Mom said, holding me out to Billy. He shook his head. It’s not your fault. It was a terrible accident. You can’t keep blaming yourself.
Billy would nod absentmindedly before leaving the room. Eventually, Mom stopped asking Billy if he wanted to hold me. She stopped telling him accidents happen. She stopped pleading with him that he shouldn’t blame himself.
* * *
When I was six weeks old, Billy left. Going to see an old friend, the note on the dinner table said. Be back in a few days. —B. No, thank you. No Please take care of my daughter. Just Be back in a few days. —B.
Dad was the first to see it. Mom was still in bed after waking up with me three times in the night. Dad stormed into the bedroom, holding me against his chest as he waved the letter toward Mom. Mom was stunned by how natural Dad looked with me in his arms.
Did you know anything about this? Dad shouted. I started to cry and Dad rocked me, cooing to me and kissing my head.
Of course I didn’t know, Mom said, reaching for the letter.
He just leaves?
Mom read the note. It says he’ll be back in a few days.
So we’re supposed to take care of Miranda? He was glowering, but his voice rose with my name, like the prospect excited him.
We take care of her, anyway. I’m happy to do it.
That’s not the point, Dad said, storming out with me still in his arms.
Mom remained in the bedroom, half-asleep, trying to piece it together. Where did Billy go? Why hadn’t he left a phone number? A name? Was he trying to disappear? He wouldn’t do that, she decided. Billy would never abandon Evelyn’s daughter.
Dad was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffe
e, and rocking me in the bassinet. He made funny faces at me, and Mom watched, realizing that Dad never made funny faces, that he was always serious. It was nice seeing him with his tongue curled, his eyes crossed. It was fun seeing him relax.
I’m sorry, he said as Mom sat down beside him. It’s not your fault. It’s just...the longer we let this continue, the harder it will be for Billy. Mom knew what he was really saying. The longer they cared for me, the harder it would be for them to let me go.
“I don’t know where Billy was those few days. It did something, though, because he started going to group therapy after that. Pretty soon, he started holding you. He’d give you back as soon as you started to cry, but he was engaging with you. It was never meant to be permanent. We were doing everything we could to get him back to normal.” The new normal, anyway, which would never be normal. Still, Billy had to try.
* * *
After six months Dad had had it.
This can’t continue, Dad said to Mom. They were in the kitchen, talking in whispers. Billy was upstairs, asleep in the guest room. I was asleep in their bedroom. It’s been six months.
I know how long it’s been.
And you’re okay with this? He’s never been alone with Miranda. He won’t even change her diaper.
What will you have me do, David? He’s mourning.
He can’t live with us forever.
No one’s talking about forever. He needs a little more time. You want me to let Miranda live alone with him when he’s still like this?
They were staring intensely at each other, until Dad looked beyond Mom, and she followed his gaze toward Billy. He leaned against the island, his eyes wild with pharmaceutically induced sleep.
Just getting some water, Billy explained, walking past them toward the sink. They watched him fill a glass of water and walk out of the kitchen. They heard his rapid footsteps up the stairs, the door to the guest room whisper shut.
Do you think he heard us? Mom asked Dad.
Of course he heard us.