The House

by Anjuelle Floyd

  Knowing that Elena had wished for Anna to be a boy made Anna all the more determined not to see her mother. She would not be a portal for Elena’s anger, and malcontent to enter the baby she carried inside. Anna sought to protect her child. She did not know she was carrying a girl.

  Upon reaching home, she switched off the ignition. Her father opened the door and was about to get out when Anna asked, “Why did you marry Mama?”

  “It’s what we did back then.” Anna’s father spoke a truth evidenced by the creases deepening into his dark, brown face upon a body that no longer stood straight and tall. “It’s all we knew, what was expected of us, to marry and have a family.”

  “Did she ever seem to love you?” Anna had always been certain of her father’s love for her mother. “Was she different back then?”

  “She was more honest,” Reverend Elijah said. “Your mother was very clear. She hated life with her parents. They had been Louisiana sharecroppers who owned less than the beans they picked.

  She said she couldn’t go back home, that if she did, she would die either by God’s will, or her own hand.” Anna’s father began to cry. Holding back her own tears, Anna reached across the seat, and enveloped him.

  I can’t go back home. I won’t. Anna had spoken similar words to Edward on the day she graduated college. She married him the next day. Those same words crisscrossed Anna’s mind as she writhed in the throes of delivering Linda. Edward had been in the Mediterranean overseeing the sale of some resort condos on the coast of Cyprus when she entered labor. Anna called their neighbors, Doris and Charles Martin. Doris drove Anna to the hospital while Charles remained at the Martin home with David and Theo, then ages four and two and a half, playing with the Martin’s son, Adrian.

  Charles had helped Anna into the car before taking the boys back to their home. Rattled and knocked by the spasms of contractions rippling through her during the drive, she had contemplated the warmth and support of Charles’ hand to her back. She had wondered what woman Edward might have been with.

  The memory of Charles’ hand brought comfort to the pain and ache of Anna’s loneliness when hours later she fought to give birth to Linda, her third child. She concluded it similar to what Edward provided the women with whom he slept. Following the delivery, and with Linda’s tiny infant lips sucking from her breast Anna again considered the warmth of Charles’ palm and what the women in Edward’s life, and whom she had never met, provided him. Anna’s mother, Elena, lay three floors above ebbing toward death.

  The madness rooted in Elena eventually blossomed in Anna as a well hidden, but no less powerful, obsession with Edward’s unfaithfulness. Anna’s ruminations on the women with whom he transgressed his marriage vows both consumed and fueled her instincts toward mothering. The commitment to giving her children what she never received from Elena grew stronger. Anna’s determination toward loving her children without condition became a vicious cycle propagated by Anna’s attempt to shield herself from the hurt of Edward’s absences. The more she gave, the less of her self remained in the marriage. Edward would not notice should he ever discover his way back home.

  Anna’s children had survived Edward’s long absences to which she offered no excuses or explanations beyond, “Your father is working.” While her statements held substance and carried weight against David and Theo’s minds fast approaching adulthood, Linda had thought otherwise. She was suspicious of their father’s pro longed time away.

  When Linda was fifteen, Edward brought his new protégé home to dinner. Gabrielle was her name. Thirty-years-old, she sat at the other end of the table adjacent to Edward. Hurting and angry, Linda was upset about having to sit next to the woman she considered an enemy. Anna had prepared a special meal, despite her suspicions of why Edward was bringing Gabrielle into their house.

  The entire family sat around the dinner table eating when nineteen-year-old David, a college freshman, reported with serious demeanor and controlled pride, “I aced my calculus test.” As a philosophy major, math had not been his strong suit. With his sights on entering law school, he had been worried about the test.

  “Wonderful. I knew you would do it.” Anna had patted his shoulder then asked him to pass the bread.

  “Thanks, but I had to prove it to myself.” David handed her the basket.

  Like his father, Anna thought as she buttered her roll then eyed Edward cutting into his trout. “If I can keep this up, I’ll be finished with an A, or at least a B,” David said.

  “You will.” Again Anna touched his shoulder. “Please pass the potatoes.” She didn’t worry about her weight at that time.

  Theo blurted, “Charles and Doris, I mean Mr. and Mrs. Martin, are getting a divorce.” Their son, Adrian, attended high school and played on the local soccer team with Theo.

  “Who told you?” Anna asked. Serine, then twelve, and at the other end of the table quietly observing Edward rapt in conversation with the vibrant Gabrielle. No one except Anna appeared to have heard any of what Theo was saying. “She’s been upset about something.” Anna didn’t mention that in the past month she had given six of her own Valium to Doris.

  Sandwiched uncomfortably between David and Gabrielle, Linda picked at her food.

  “Are you alright?” Anna asked. Linda placed her fork on the side of her plate and drank some water.

  “Adrian says he’s going to live with his mom,” Theo continued. “His Dad says that’s better since he doesn’t have time to take him to school and soccer practices.”

  “Well he’s only got this year, really three months, before he’s on his own,” David offered. “When school’s out in May, he can get a job and save up money. Then he won’t have to bug them and he can stay out of contact while they’re hashing out everything. After his freshman year in college, he can get a job on campus and never have to come home again.”

  “It’s not that simple, Mr. Philosopher,” Theo bit back. “College costs money.” Even at seventeen, Anna’s younger son showed signs of the deep but practical thinker.

  “Unless Adrian wants to spend the rest of life stuck between his parents bickering, he’d better toughen up,” David said. “He’s on his own now.”

  Serine remained mesmerized by the circus at the table. Linda, across the table, continued picking at her food. Theo and David continued their discussion of the Martin’s divorce. Edward shot a glance at Anna, and returned to conversation with Gabrielle. Ed ward and Gabrielle were quite animated in discussing plans for Gabrielle’s place at Manning Real Estate. Anna hadn’t felt the kind of excitement that she imagined was flowing between Edward and Gabrielle in a long time. Gabrielle was his protégé and new interest. Gabrielle lived in America. There would be no leaving her Anna suspected; no sadness or depression after he departed and began a new round of selling foreign properties. Slowly, she began to ponder and imagine that the beautiful, lithe Gabrielle was perhaps the woman for whom Edward would leave her when the right time came. A divorce would destroy the children should Anna request or Ed ward demand one. Anna grew fearful that Edward would announce plans for a change both in his business and his marriage that night.

  Again, Anna met Linda’s gripping gaze. Hurt and betrayal flowed through, emotions that were and should have been Anna’s, but that she could not accept and allow to surface. She remained calm as Linda’s frustration bubbled.

  Theo admonished David. “The key to Adrian surviving the breakup of his parents is more than gaining entrance to a good college. Life as he knows it is gone. It’s dead.”

  Anna’s heart sank upon hearing those words. She glanced at Edward deeper in the throes of discussion with the beautiful Gabrielle and Serine, who could have passed for Edward and Gabrielle’s daughter. Serine watched, ever more mesmerized by the two.

  Theo said of Adrian, “He’s worried. And scared.”

  “He told you that?” David asked.

  “No.”

  “Then who?” Though he would eventually settle for aspects of the law that r
equired little or no time in the courtroom, David was already displaying lawyerly tactics of demanding answers.

  “The counselor at our school,” Theo said. Even then, he had the ability to see between the carefully structured lines of life. Serine remained fascinated and glued to watching her brothers battle within the discussion. Only Linda seemed to realize that the argument was not simply about the Martin’s divorce.

  Anna, fearing and realizing that Theo knew something she didn’t want any of her children to know, whispered to her younger son, “You went to see a counselor?”

  “We all need counseling,” Linda said with her eyes fixed upon her plate full of food uneaten and growing cold.

  David turned to her. “What did you say?”

  “We all need someone to talk to. Everyone in this family,” Linda said.

  “About what?” David asked as if he had destroyed all memories of Linda’s problems. He had been away at Stanford in Palo Alto when she had taken an overdose of pills the last time. Dread moved through Anna like a tidal wave overtaking an island.

  Linda said, “We’re like the Martins.” She lifted her head and added, “Mom and Dad are just like Mr. and Mrs. Martin. Dad doesn’t love Mama and she—”

  “What did you say?” Edward stopped talking to Gabrielle.

  “You don’t love Mama,” the words fell from Linda’s lips like water from a jagged cliff.

  “Don’t embarrass your mother like that, or me.”

  “You embarrass yourself and Mama, by bringing her in here.” Linda pointed to Gabrielle.

  “Close your mouth.” Edward hit the table.

  “It’s true.” Linda lowered her head. “You don’t love Mama. And you don’t love us. That’s why you stay gone all the time. You only love the women that you’re with.” Linda pushed back her chair, wobbled to her feet, and left the table. Her unsteady gait revealed that she had taken one of Anna’s Valium again.

  Naked we come into this world. And naked we shall leave.

  Seven days after Linda entered the world, Anna stood at her mother’s grave site. As pallbearers had lowered her casket into the ground, Elijah Chason recited scripture amid the hundred or more mourners in attendance of Elena’s burial.

  The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul... Yay, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil. The Lord is with me ... Anna recited those words, and others under her breath half a decade later and while observing Edward assist other pallbearers in lowering Elijah’s casket into a rectangular space cut into the ground beside Elena.

  Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee your presence. If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there ... If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea ... Your hand will guide me ... Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night ... Anna had spoken little to her father in the years following her mother’s death. It was not due to distance. He lived across town in North Oakland near the church he had ministered for three decades. Elena’s death had hewn a large hole in Elijah Chason’s life. Anna had tried filling it with dinners she prepared and daily phone calls that waned to every other day, and then once a week. Soon, he re fused to eat the meals, and Anna eventually saw that it was best to leave her father to his loneliness and let him suffer in silence. She finally settled on calling him each Sunday after she he returned from mass. Having delivered his sermon at Roadside Baptist Church, two blocks down from Union Street, he would have arrived home.

  The time eventually came when Reverend Elijah no longer gave sermons. Anna’s patience never strained. She continued to call, Elijah sometimes not answering. Anna took to leaving letters in his mailbox. Answering machines, voice and e-mail had yet to arrive. Though Anna seldom ventured to her childhood home on Union Street, her will to connect with her father while staying outside the net of his misery remained strong until his death.

  Naked we come into this world. Naked we shall leave. Anna now lay in bed wondering what she would utter to herself, hold as comfort, and offer as prayer when others would lower Edward’s casket into the earth.?

  Chapter 21

  Anna awoke the morning after Grant’s and Matt’s departures feeling vague and tentative about her ability to adapt to Edward’s dying. Like her eldest and youngest, David and Serine, Anna would have to stretch beyond her means, exit the known and enter a zone of discomfort, a place she had successfully avoided. She had married Edward in order to escape the misery of her mother, Elena, and her inability to hold intimate relationship with her family. Anna married Edward prepared to love and grow close with him. Now that he was dying, she mourned, not simply the closing of his life, but the death of hope and the loss of what could or might have been.

  The aroma of bacon and eggs drew Anna from her bed. Venturing downstairs, she entered the kitchen where Theo turned to her with a smile and said, “I wondered when you might be getting up.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Half-past eleven.”

  Shocked that she had slept so late, Anna was even more disturbed that Theo seemed untroubled that she had done so. Their conversation last evening had overturned rocks of truth and shattered boulders of long-held beliefs deposited inside Anna. It also troubled her that Theo had usurped the kitchen, her area of expertise and escape, and made it his place of calm and safety. This was all Millicent’s doing, Anna silently grumbled.

  Theo handed her a plate of eggs, bacon and toast.

  “Thanks.” She took her plate to the table and sat.

  Theo joined her. He had been cooking all morning. “I got excited when I heard you in the shower. This is fresh, just for you and me.”

  “I guess we could call you the resident chef,” Anna said.

  “I suppose so. And I hate to eat alone.” He smiled.

  Again Anna thought of Millicent and silently groaned.

  Theo brought some eggs to his mouth, chewed them, swallowed, and said, “Linda and Brad have gone for a walk. They ate earlier.” He sipped his coffee. “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Fairly well.” Anna grew awash in the shame at how much she relished her son’s thoughtfulness and caring. She drank some coffee.

  “I think you should know that Serine’s been involved with both Grant and Matt for the last two years. I spoke with her this morning.” Theo explained, “She’s back in L.A., was on her way to court. She’s pretty shaken up. I told her she at least owed you an explanation.”

  “She’s got to choose. At least give back Grant’s engagement ring.” Anna shook her head.

  “Like I said last night, Matt and Grant have known about one other.” Theo finished his eggs, and sipped his coffee. “As for Serine’s disjointed perspective on the matter, you might want to speak with David about that. Serine looks to him for guidance.”

  Anna lowered her fork onto the edge of her plate. She sighed and leaned back in her chair.

  “David left a message on Linda’s phone,” Theo explained. “The funeral was yesterday.” Again Anna sighed. It was all too much. Theo continued, “Heather’s going to be at her father’s for another week or so cleaning out the house, and packing his things.” Anna stared at Theo’s smooth, dark face. “David will be back late tomorrow, or the following afternoon. He has a fair amount to attend with Heather’s father’s estate.”

  “I can imagine.” Anna wondered when David would be called to do the same with Edward’s belongings. In light of David’s statements at the dinner table nights earlier, Anna debated how much she wanted to involve her eldest son in handling Edward’s estate. She would need to speak with Henderson about that.

  “I’d like to know how the service went,” she said. “I should have been there. In fact, why isn’t David sharing some of this with me? I am his mother.” The brunt behind her words hit Theo like a cold gust of wind. Glimmer dimmed in the eyes of her younger
son. “I guess I’d like to know I’m still needed.”

  “David is a thirty-three year-old man,” Theo said. “You’ve given enough of your time, and yourself to him and all of us.”

  Lifting her cup of coffee, Anna asked, “Is that why only you persisted in calling when I stopped?” Anna had at one time wondered how Theo’s persistence in calling involved the other three. Now she knew it was personally driven.

  “You were hurt,” Theo said. “You need to let that go.”

  “You mean the hurting,” Anna corrected.

  “It pained you to ask for a divorce. Even more since Dad was fighting not to give it to you. Like always, you pulled away from us.” But this time Anna had not been living in the house with her children.

  “I didn’t want to involve you.”

  “We were already involved. He’s our dad. You’re our mom.”

  Anna stared at the food growing cold upon her plate. Her mother’s voice arose. Waste not, want not. The futility of all Anna had dedicated her life to—remaining faithful, and honest to Edward, their marriage, and their children cut at her heart. Despite Theo’s understanding, and forgiveness of her actions, Anna felt she needed to explain why she had withdrawn. The silence between them pulled at her. It pained Anna that she could not explain what she had hoped to gain from not speaking to her children. She also felt ashamed of what she had experienced with Inman, passion and intimacy, and beyond that, the hope of being loved.

  Yet on learning of Edward’s terminal illness, Anna had quickly retreated back to the house where she would care for him. Did she love Edward, or not? The love she had held onto throughout their marriage died fifteen months ago. Anna looked at her coffee and recalled how Edward had never looked up when she placed the cup of decaf on the desk beside him. He had continued scribbling furiously across the document representing the lucrative sale of a property.

  Anna now wondered of her ability to hold fast to the all-encompassing love she had nurtured and spread upon her children. She felt proud that as adults living in the world under their own steam, they sought and received comfort from within their own ranks. It also shadowed her with a sense of having been excluded, even though she had instigated the estrangement by withdrawing. Anna sensed that her children, like her, held questions not simply about her marriage, but about her as an individual, who she was, and who she had become in seeking a divorce from Edward.