by Linda Bleser
Dedication
For my husband, Jud
I can’t imagine any reality
without you by my side.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
March 15, 1995
Today is a day of great import.
Jenna liked the sound of that. Maybe one day she’d be a famous poet like her mother. She scribbled the phrase in her journal. Well, it wasn’t really a journal, just a drugstore notebook, but it was a special place to share her hopes and fears and secret dreams. The words that had sounded perfect in her head, however, now felt clumsy on paper.
She crossed out the sentence and wrote
Today is a day of destiny.
No, that wasn’t right either. How could she put this feeling into words? The day felt ripe with possibility. It had weight, substance, and a sense of wonder. She crossed out the previous sentence and wrote
Today is my thirteenth birthday.
There. That said it all. Today she entered the mysterious world of teenagers. Practically a grown-up.
She stepped into her favorite pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt. Just because she was a teenager didn’t mean she couldn’t be comfortable. She raked her hair into a ponytail and tiptoed to her bedroom door. She opened it an inch and sniffed, hoping to catch a whiff of bacon and maple syrup. Surely her mother would get up early to make Jenna’s favorite breakfast. Wouldn’t she?
Jenna sniffed again, but there was no sweetness in the air. Nothing. The house was quiet. Everyone must still be sleeping. Maybe she should just go down and make a bowl of cereal or something. But what if her mother was downstairs wrapping presents or decorating the living room with bright birthday streamers?
She didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Instead she went to check on her sister. Cassie’s room was all pink and poufy, with a princess bedspread and fluffy marshmallow pillows. It suited her. Cassie was five years younger than Jenna, still a little girl. Her hair fell in perfect golden curls even when she jumped out of bed in the morning. She was just about perfect in every way.
Cassie wasn’t in bed. She sat at her little desk, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped protectively over something. “Don’t look,” she called out as Jenna entered the room.
Jenna covered her eyes, barely hiding the smile on her face. Suddenly she was struck by a sense of déjà vu, the feeling that she’d taken that same step, breathed that same air, and knew exactly what Cassie would say before she opened her mouth.
Then the moment was gone, leaving behind only a sense of wonder.
“One more second …” Cassie mumbled.
Jenna peeked through her fingers as Cassie spun around. “There! You can look now.” She held out a lumpy object wrapped in a paper napkin and tied with a faded shoelace. “Happy birthday!”
Jenna closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around Cassie. “Thank you.” Then she swiped the clumsily wrapped present from Cassie’s hand because—well, because a present was a present after all.
She opened it slowly, surprised when it was completely unwrapped. “Cassie. This is …”
“I didn’t have any money to buy you a present, and I wanted to give you something special.”
“It is special, sweetie.” Jenna cradled the plastic figurine in her hand and gazed at the familiar blue jumper and curled pigtails. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, complete in every detail, right down to the ruby slippers. Cassie had the entire set of figurines from her favorite movie—the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and even Glinda the Good Witch. But Dorothy was her favorite. “Are you sure you want to give her up?”
“Well,” Cassie shuffled her foot over the carpet, eyes downcast. “I was thinking it might be a birthday loan. You can have her for now, then when it’s my birthday you can give her back to me. We can trade every year. That way we both get to enjoy her.”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Jenna said, giving her sister another warm hug. Cassie’s birthday was a month after Jenna’s, so she’d only be giving up her favorite figurine for a few weeks, but it was the thought that counted.
“I’ll put it on my bookshelf,” Jenna said. “It’ll be safe there, and you can come and play with it any time you want, okay?”
Cassie nodded, never taking her eyes from the figurine. It was obvious she missed it already, which made her gift all the more special … even if it was more of a loan than an actual gift.
Cassie crinkled her nose and sniffed the air. “Is Mom making you birthday pancakes?”
Jenna shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I’ll go check.” Cassie scooted out of the room before Jenna could stop her. Not that Jenna would have. She was as anxious to begin the birthday celebration as anyone else. How often did a person became a teenager anyway?
Jenna gazed at the figurine in her hand, rubbing the tip of her thumb over Dorothy’s tiny ruby slippers. “There’s no place like home,” she whispered, then smiled. “Especially on your birthday.” Jenna realized that it didn’t matter how many birthday gifts she received, this would be her favorite. She tucked Dorothy in her pocket and headed for the door, determined to find out for herself what was taking her sister so long.
As Cassie’s bone-chilling scream shattered the air, Jenna realized in an instant that nothing would ever be the same again.
She’d been right the first time:
Today was a day of great import.
2
Present Day
Twenty years ago today my mother died. To the rest of the world, Marjorie Parker Hall was an award-winning poet. To me she was simply Mom. Her suicide left its thumbprint on the rest of my life, but the damage had been done long before she actually went through with it.
I can see her now, her hair spilling from low-slung ribbons, long tanned legs crossed one over the other with one kitten-heeled sandal dangling like a mesmerist’s charm from the tip of her toe. Her cigarette served as punctuation, pointing and circling and jabbing the air as she recited the same line of verse over and over again, words and smoke slipping fluidly from her lips.
I ate corn chips for breakfast while my mother wrote about her life draining away like bloody mother’s milk. I lost myself in television fantasies, yearning for chocolate-chip mommies while my own mother butchered tyrants on erasable bond. I think I knew, long before I could put the feeling into words, that I was nothing more than a misplaced modifier in the journal of her life.
An old memory floated to the surface. “Mom? Mom?” I tugged on her sleeve trying to get her attention. “Mom, I can’t find my black crayon. Do you know where it is?”
She patted my hand, but there was no comfort in her touch. She stared at a spot over my shoulder. Even when she spoke to me, it was like I wasn’t really there. “It’s in the graveyard, honey. That’s where all the black crayons go.”
No matter how many new boxes I opened, the black crayons always disappeared.
Like other neurotic poets before her, my mother was obsessed with death. She danced with it, seduced it like a lover, blanketed it with metaphor, and reeled it in like slippery coils of bloody rope. Death was a seedy playground littered with her own words. While my mother co
nstantly courted death, I don’t think she ever expected it to be so final.
After she killed herself, I found a handful of black crayons scattered in her dresser drawer. I wrapped them up in a rubber band and hid them in my room. For nine months I colored with nothing but black crayons, until they were worn down to paperless nubs too small to grip in my thirteen-year-old hands.
*
I sat at my desk and ripped the pages from my journal. After tearing them into confetti-size pieces, I flushed them down the toilet. Nothing in my life had permanence, not even the pages of my own journal.
My mother was the writer. She rewrote her life as it unfolded and never finished editing until she was sure her audience would be completely satisfied with the final result. She could produce a waterfall of words that danced and sang and breathed. She carved open her soul and bled onto the paper.
I’m nothing like her. I felt no compulsion to leave a trail of thoughts behind for loved ones and strangers to follow like a trail of bread crumbs. My thoughts were mine and mine alone. Every day was a fresh page with no history to regret and no future to impress.
I’m nothing like my mother.
If I say that often enough, perhaps I’ll begin to believe it.
Today is my birthday. As usual, I won’t celebrate. It seems vulgar somehow, since today is also the anniversary of my mother’s death. I often wonder if she realized the added betrayal of committing suicide on my birthday? Or was she long past the point of caring or even remembering her children existed. Then I feel selfish for thinking she should have considered my feelings in the midst of her pain.
Yet every year the question haunts me. What hurt most was not that she wanted so badly to die but that she couldn’t love me enough to live. Then, like my journal entries, I tear up the thought and flush it away.
But I can’t erase the image imprinted in my mind—part memory, part nightmare. Was it true or had I embellished it over the years? Could there have been that much blood flowing in a red rush across the black and white kitchen tiles? Did I really see the torn flesh of her wrists pulsing slower and slower as she stretched her arms out, as if begging forgiveness with her final breath? Surely I hadn’t watched her die that way. Had I?
And yet I can see the scene as clear as day—Cassie cowering in the corner, her hands covering her eyes in denial, the remnants of her scream still lingering in the air.
I tried to save my mother. I did. I wrapped a dish towel around her wrists, trying to stem the flow of blood, begging her not to leave us. Futile, foolish words tumbled from my lips. “Mommy, don’t go. Mommy, please. I’ll be good.”
The rest is a blur. My father rushed into the room, still in his pajamas. “Jesus, Margie, what have you done?”
He pushed me away. “Take your sister upstairs. Go!”
But I couldn’t move, couldn’t leave her this way.
He grabbed me under the arms and lifted me away from my mother’s side, breaking the spell. “Go now. Get your sister out of here.”
That did it. Cassie shouldn’t see this. I rushed her upstairs, where we huddled together, and eventually the sirens howled closer and closer. Then silence. We were left alone. Wondering. Waiting.
I rocked Cassie for hours. When I tried to stand, she grabbed my arm, her eyes wide with fear. “Don’t go, Jenna. Don’t leave me all alonely.”
“Never,” I promised. “I’ll never leave you.” Like she left us. “Never, Cassie. I promise.”
I traced a fingertip along my own wrists. My skin quivered sympathetically. The feeling was one of sensual promise. It would be so easy. So very, very easy. If not for the promise I’d made to Cassie.
The phone rang, but I ignored it. My friends and family knew better than to call with birthday greetings—especially today of all days. Today I turn thirty-three, the exact same age my mother was when she killed herself. If I’m going to do it, today would be the day. The delicious symmetry of following in her bloody footsteps on this day of all days was almost too hard to resist. My fingers clenched, gripping an invisible black crayon the way an ex-smoker reaches for a cigarette before realizing it’s no longer there.
When the phone rang again, I decided to get out of the apartment. The rooms felt too small for my dark mood. It happens every year, knocking me off kilter, then lifting again once the day passes. Somehow I always manage to get my balance back. Every year that passes is another victory over whatever self-destructive genes my mother may have passed on to me. But this year was different. This year I felt as if I were at a crossroads.
The sun was ridiculously bright outside after a long winter of gray, sunless skies, promising an early spring thaw. Patches of dirty snow lined the path, stubbornly resisting the killing rays of the sun. Like the stubborn snow, I too resisted the sun’s appeal. It was too bright, too real. Sunshine is for the living. It seemed to mock my thoughts, which would be better suited for the invisible night.
I walked with no destination in mind, yet wasn’t surprised when I ended up at the cemetery. I often wandered among the gravestones. The solitude suited me. I walked through the gates, beneath the wrought-iron scrollwork—Mourningkill Cemetery. It was the one and only place where the name of our town seemed perfectly appropriate.
The stillness was almost peaceful. If not for the rows of markers, I could have been meandering through a park, with its manicured grass and flowering shrubs. Stone benches were scattered throughout the park-like setting, allowing mourners to read, pray, and grieve. I made my way over familiar paths. I had spent enough time in this cemetery to practically recite the names on each individual headstone. Perhaps in a sense I’d been the ghost treading over hallowed ground and haunting the dead all these years.
I passed tombstones of marble and granite and stone, each one like a familiar friend. The monuments were carved with heartfelt inscriptions: loving husband, cherished wife, devoted mother. Till death did they all part.
Saddest of all were the lives cut short too soon. I passed a grave site that always broke my heart—a weeping stone angel prostrate with grief over a tiny carved coffin.
Addie Rose
May 14, 2004—September 1, 2004
Forever our Angel
As always, I said a simple prayer for the child whose time on earth was so brief and the family who would forever mourn their loss. I wondered what little Addie would have become. Doctor, lawyer, tortured poet? All that promise unfulfilled.
I slowly made my way to my mother’s graveside. The simple stone marker was unadorned, with a single inscription beneath her name. Her words live on.
There was more truth in the engraved words than the more traditional epitaph Beloved Wife and Mother.
I wasn’t the first to visit her grave today. That came as no surprise. Strangers often visited and left gifts behind—flowers and candles and scribbled tributes. They came seeking wisdom, guidance, and hope. My mother’s grave was a mecca for wounded women who felt she understood their pain and spoke for them when they had no voice of their own. Women who thought they knew her. Maybe they do. Maybe they know her better than I ever could.
A slip of paper weighted by a rock caught my eye. I knelt down and reached for it. The page was torn from a book of my mother’s poetry. It was creased and worn, as if someone had carried it in a pocket for years. I read the words of my mother’s poem and heard her voice beckon from beyond the grave.
HOUSE OF CRY
From six pounds of squalling meat
To six pounds of stone-cold ash
How do you measure a man’s life between
Do you count the people he loved
Or those who loved him in return
Is it measured in kisses or tears
By peace or pain or candle prayers
Is it valued for the lives touched along the way
Or nothing more than the measure of time
Lived and died in the House of Cry
I folded the paper and placed it in my pocket. I hoped that whoever had left th
is poem no longer felt the need to read it and wonder. I hoped that they’d left the darkness behind.
I heard rustling behind me and stood, brushing the grass from my knees. My sister Cassie silently joined me. She glanced once at the headstone, and then turned away. “Here you are.”
“How did you find me?”
“Oh,” she said with a wave of her hand, “I just followed the dripping trail of misery you left behind.”
“Hah. People drip sarcasm. They wallow in misery.”
“And you would know, wouldn’t you?”
Only Cassie could get away with teasing me on today of all days. I shrugged a shoulder. Maybe I was a little obsessed with death, but who could blame me?
Cassie rolled her eyes. At twenty-seven, she still had the face of a cherub with a halo of golden hair. Even strangers smiled when they passed her on the street.
“Why aren’t you at school today?”
Cassie shrugged. “It’s spring break. I get a week off from runny noses and screaming rug rats.” She said it with a smile. Cassie loved each and every one of her kindergarten students and treated them as if they were her own. She would make a wonderful mother one day.
“So, what was so important that you felt the need to track me down?”
She held out her hand. “I wanted to give you your birthday gift.”
I took the faded Dorothy figurine from her with a smile. “Aren’t we a little old for this?”
“You’re never too old for tradition.” Cassie sent a quick, sidelong glance to our mother’s headstone, then looked away again. “Besides, I have something important to tell you.”
I closed my hand around the figurine, squeezing tight as a familiar feeling of déjà vu washed over me.
“I found us a house,” she said.
Her statement got my attention. “A house? What for?”
“Well, your apartment is a dump. No offense. And I’m moving out of Dave’s place. I thought this would be good for both of us. A fresh start.”