House of Cry

by Linda Bleser

  The look of disappointment on her face cut through my defenses. I didn’t know where I was or why. It seemed counterproductive to fight with the only person who might hold some of the answers.

  “I want to get back to my own life, my own things,” I said, deflated.

  “But you just got here.”

  “I don’t even know where here is. I want to go home.”

  “Why? You weren’t happy there.”

  “I was.” Even to my own ears, the declaration rang false. “Wasn’t I?”

  She waited, letting the silence speak for itself. Sure I had my regrets. And maybe I thought if things had been different my life would have been better somehow. That didn’t mean I wasn’t happy. Concerned, yes. Worried that I might choose the same path my mother did, maybe. Sometimes. Everyone had their own what-ifs, didn’t they?

  “So this is your chance,” she said. “Your chance to find out who you might have been. To answer your own personal what-if.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to explore anything. I just wanted to get back to what was familiar.

  “There are rules,” I argued, still trying to get my feet back on solid ground.

  “Really? Who says?”

  “Everyone. The universe. There’s order and reason and logic. We aren’t simply slipped off into alternate realities by some, some … apparition.

  “Maybe,” Maya countered, not seeming the least bit insulted to be called an apparition. “Or maybe it’s part of human nature to look for order and reason and logic. And maybe it’s human nature not to see the very things that challenge the rules they expect.”

  That was a lot of maybes. My head throbbed. I pressed my palms to my temples to ease the whirling chaos in my brain. “I’m so lost.” The sound of my voice held the plaintive cry of a child.

  She reached for my hand and cradled it in her own. “That’s why I’m here: to help you find your way.” She turned my hand and placed the pin on my open palm, then closed my fingers around it. “Everything you need to know is right here.”

  I wanted answers, but her mystic mumbo jumbo only raised more questions. “None of this makes sense.”

  “It’s your job to make sense of it,” she said. “You can spend all your time denying what you’re experiencing, but that would be a waste of time better spent understanding why you’re here.” She released my hand and stood. “Watch,” she said. “Watch, listen, and learn.”

  She started to walk away, then stopped. “Oh, and Jenna?”

  I looked up, hoping for some words of wisdom to guide me.

  Her eyes twinkled. “Have a happy birthday,” she said, then turned and left me alone with the dead.

  *

  When I drove back to the house, I was relieved to see that Parker’s car was no longer in the driveway. I didn’t want to deal with him on top of everything else tonight. I walked into the kitchen. It smelled like lemon and cinnamon, prickling familiar sense memories that shouldn’t exist. How could I feel so at home in a house that I didn’t remember?

  I put a kettle on the stove and waited for the water to come to a boil. My mind swirled with questions. Within moments my mother came into the room. Wordlessly she sat at the kitchen table. Without asking, I prepared two cups of tea and joined her. The homey kitchen atmosphere was more conducive to talking than the more formal dining room.

  “Parker had to leave,” she said, cutting into the leftover cake.

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I simply waited.

  “He’s worried about you.” She hesitated, then added, “He seems to think you blame him for everything that’s wrong with your life.”

  Was that possible? In the absence of my mother’s tragic suicide, had I shifted all the blame for my failure and unhappiness onto someone else? If so, what did that say about me?

  I raised my shoulder in an annoyed shrug. “There’s nothing to worry about. I just have a lot on my mind, that’s all.” For some reason this concern from an older brother I didn’t know grated on my nerves. I wondered if he’d been overbearing all of our lives. My reaction felt justifiable. After all, I’d always been the older sibling, the one who took care of everything. I wasn’t comfortable giving the title to someone else. As unreasonable as it was, a part of me deeply resented his existence in a world where Cassie wasn’t born. I’d traded a sibling I loved for one I didn’t even know. It wasn’t fair.

  There was something else to consider. I couldn’t deny that I was unreasonably jealous. Parker hadn’t had to struggle in a motherless world. He wasn’t constantly reminded that his birthday was a day of mourning rather than a day of celebration. He had all the things I’d been denied—a fantasy mother and a tragedy-free life. He’d stolen what was rightfully mine.

  I pushed my annoyance aside and focused on my mother. She’d aged well. At fifty-three, the only lines on her face were laugh lines. I searched the farthest reaches of my memory for my mother’s laugh, but all I could come up with was either a self-deprecating sneer or the cries of hysteria from behind locked doors. This mother with clear eyes and a ready smile was foreign to me.

  Watch, listen, and learn.

  This seemed as good a time as any to start. I swirled the tea bag in my cup, desperately searching my mind for some common ground to start a conversation. The only thing I could come up with was my mother’s poetry.

  “Have you written any new poems lately?”

  She stopped, a forkful of cake halfway to her lips. “Poems? What in the world made you ask that? I haven’t written poetry in years. I’m surprised you even remember.”

  In a world full of surprises, this was the biggest one of all. Writing defined who my mother was. She poured all of her heart and soul into those poems. Marjorie Parker Hall was a flawed human being and an inadequate mother, but she was first and foremost a brilliant poet. I simply couldn’t separate the two.

  “How could you stop? Writing was everything to you. The most important thing.”

  For a moment I saw a wistful sadness sweep across her face. There, then gone, replaced by a steel I’d never seen in the mother of my memory.

  “You choose what the most important thing in your life is. I had a family to think about. My children were more important.”

  That simple declaration hurt most of all. Isn’t that what I’d always wished for? I remembered as a child tearing up one of my mother’s books. I’d ripped the pages out because she cared more about her poetry than she did about me. I’d wanted her to come home, but I knew that the love of one small soul could never compete with the adoration of her readers.

  I’d watched the ragged pieces flutter to the floor, and it had felt good at first. It felt as if I were reclaiming my mother somehow. Then it stopped feeling good, but it was too late to put the pages back together again. I scooped them up in a messy pile, my eyes scouring the room in search of a hiding place. My hands slid across the rough oak planks, frantically brushing the tattered pieces into a rounded pile. I barely noticed the splintering wood piercing my finger. When I did, I tugged at the splinter, watching my blood fall like teardrops onto my mother’s poetry, hungrily absorbed by her words. The sight mesmerized me. I couldn’t put it into words, but somehow I knew it was a sign.

  I’d wanted a mother who put me first, before her own pain and sorrow. And yet, that possibility came with its own guilt, as if in gaining a mother I’d robbed the world of its voice. “Are you sorry?” I asked, almost afraid of her answer.

  “Sorry? No, not at all. I’m content with the choices I’ve made.”

  That was a lie. I could feel the yearning coming off her in waves. She could deny the dream all she wanted, but I wasn’t fooled for a moment. Her smile was a mask. I, of all people, knew how much effort it took to keep that mask in place. I knew how exhausting it was to put it on in the morning and what a relief to slip it off at night.

  “Do you remember the last poem you wrote?”

  She didn’t hesitate, and her answer came as no surprise. “It was call
ed ‘House of Cry.’ I was in a dark, dark place.” Her gaze grew distant, as if she were looking far off into the past. “I had to make a very important decision. One I knew would define my life. If I made the wrong choice, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

  “Did you?” I asked. “Did you make the right choice?”

  She smiled, and there was no trace of doubt in her eyes. “Absolutely. I made the only choice I could live with.”

  Choices. I was tempted to show her the poem I still carried in my pocket. But what good would that do?

  I unconsciously reached up to my collar and stroked the jeweled branches of the pin my brother had given me. Another clue. I didn’t ask about the choice she’d been forced to make. I could see it was personal, and I already felt like an intruder. Whatever it was, it had made the difference between life and death. She hadn’t sacrificed her art; she’d chosen a path that stilled the poet’s voice inside screaming for release. She’d chosen a life of contentment.

  I took her hand in mine. It was a strong hand, a dependable hand. There were still so many questions swirling inside me, but a peaceful calm fell over my heart. I hadn’t lost my mother. She existed somewhere in a universe where she’d chosen a path more, rather than less, traveled.

  My tea had grown cold, but I drank it anyway to wash away the sweetness of birthday cake on my tongue.

  “Why all the questions?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess birthdays make me nostalgic.”

  “You’ve always been one for dwelling on the past.”

  I had to stifle a snort. At least there was one constant between this life and the one I’d left behind.

  “You have to be careful, though, Jennie. It’s easy to lose your way if you’re always looking behind you instead of watching where you’re going. You can’t change yesterday. The only thing you can control is what you do today.”

  I swallowed a snappy retort. There was wisdom in her words. Perhaps the poet inside hadn’t been smothered completely. Maybe my mother would find her voice again, only this time the voice would be one of hope rather than despair.

  There was one thing I had to know, but I couldn’t ask outright. Trying to keep my voice light, I asked if she’d ever thought about having another child.

  “I might have,” she said. “I’d always wanted a big family. If your father hadn’t left …” She took a deep breath and let it out with a slow sigh. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be. But I can’t complain. You and your brother are everything to me. I couldn’t ask for better kids.”

  I wish I could have told her about Cassie, how sweet and pure her soul was, how she could light up a room and make you laugh even when you thought your heart was breaking. About the way she’d sit on the floor with her kindergarten class and make their eyes shine with wonder. But it would be needlessly cruel to tell her about the child she never had. And what good would it do? My mother couldn’t go back and change things. None of us can. The only thing we have any control over is today.

  We talked for hours. It was simple and sweet, the kind of conversation shared by mothers and daughters around kitchen tables the world over. Like the fictional character in Flowers for Algernon, it was only now that I’d experienced this mother/daughter bond that I could truly understand and appreciate what I’d lost when my mother died.

  When I finally went to bed, I slept immediately and dreamlessly.

  6

  I woke up feeling at home—not just in my room but in my body as well. I sat up and stretched, making a closer inspection of my surroundings. The walls were sunny yellow, a color I would never have chosen myself. But it worked in here, especially with the morning sunlight peeking through sheer white lace curtains.

  I found myself facing the new day with a sense of wonder and expectation. I hopped out of bed and searched the closet for something that felt more like me. I settled for a worn pair of jeans and an eggplant-colored T-shirt. I ran a comb through my hair, free now of the harsh black dye. The natural caramel color complemented my skin. I barely recognized my own face in the mirror. It was softer. The hollows beneath my cheeks were filled in, giving me a rounder, more youthful appearance. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I looked happy, but I did look content. That scared me a little. Contentment was dangerous. It meant I had something to lose.

  With one last glance at the stranger in the mirror, I turned and followed the sound of singing to the kitchen, where I found my mother cooking breakfast.

  “Pancakes?”

  She turned. “Oh, there you are, hon. I know you usually grab a yogurt on your way out the door, but I thought you should have something a little more substantial this morning.”

  How many times as a child had I dreamed of a scene like this? A loving mother making sure I had a warm breakfast before heading off to school. Someone who’d be there waiting for me to come home, to kiss my brow and help me with my homework. Now that I didn’t need mothering anymore, now that I’d learned to survive on my own, she’d finally appeared.

  I poured a cup of coffee, then sat down at the table. I raised the cup to my lips at the exact moment my mother nudged the sugar bowl in my direction. I stumbled, realizing my mistake too late to stop. Instead I took a tiny sip of the steaming brew and scowled. “Ugh, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to drinking it black.”

  “When did you stop using cream and sugar?”

  “Just the other day,” I replied. “I thought I’d cut the extra calories out of my diet.” It was a small lie compared to the larger lie looming over us—that my dead mother and I were chatting over pancakes and coffee.

  The only problem is that the daughter she thinks is sitting across from her has a lifetime of shared memories and experiences. All I have is a vague memory of a mother, a heart full of anger, and questions I can’t possibly ask. Questions like Why did you kill yourself all those years ago? And the most important question of all, Could I have done something to save you?

  I’d spent my life screaming at ghosts, but now that my mother was here, I still had no outlet for the anger I’d kept festering inside me all these years. How could I demand explanations for what, in her experience, never happened?

  I took a deep breath, consciously pulling myself out of the past and into the present. My mother was dressed in a summer-casual business suit. “Busy day?” I asked.

  “Busy week,” she replied, setting a steaming plate of pancakes on the table. “It’s National Library Week, and we have a full schedule of events. Today I’ll be entertaining the fourth-grade class from Mourningkill Elementary School.”

  So she worked at the library. How appropriate. It made sense that the wordsmith inside her would seek out a place where she was surrounded by books. Did she touch them, run her hands lovingly along the spines while images of unborn poems ran through her mind?

  I fondly remembered long hours spent sitting in the library as a young girl, surrounded by volumes of fairy tales where I’d lose myself for hours at a time. I could still remember the thrill of holding my first library card, opening the door to a thousand new worlds, and still felt that same sense of wonder and mystery when I walked through the library doors.

  “Sounds like fun,” I said. “Mind if I tag along?”

  “Of course not, honey. But you have that appointment this morning.”

  “Appointment?” I stared at my plate, not meeting her eyes. Silver-dollar pancakes swam in a puddle of thick, sweet syrup, the sight of which made my teeth ache.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot.” My mother’s voice took on a chiding note. “Parker went to a lot of trouble to get you this job interview. Don’t let him down.”

  Oh, great. Now I had to deal with guilt on top of everything else. Well, at least that explained one of my questions. I was still unemployed, despite my promise to look for a job. And just like I’d read in the journal, Parker was intent on putting me to work and saving me from a life of mooching off my mother.

  I’d done a lot of thinking last night about
the situation I was in. If I wasn’t trapped in a dream, then somehow I’d entered an alternate reality. This life wasn’t mine. So whom did it belong to? And where was the displaced soul whose body I now inhabited? When and if I went back to the world I knew, would this reality cease to exist? Or would the person who belonged here come back to find I’d made a mess of her life while she was gone? The possibilities made my brain hurt. I’d have to ask my friend Maya—if I ever saw her again.

  She’d told me to watch, listen and learn. That implied a journey, and I clung to the hope that at the end of the journey I’d find myself back where I belonged. Until then, the safest thing to do was to live this life as if it were my own. Trust my own instincts and follow through with any obligations. If that meant going on a job interview, then that’s what I’d do. I just had to figure out when and where.

  I made a production of looking around the room. “I don’t remember where I left the directions.”

  “Everything’s in your briefcase,” my mother said. She got up, walked to the closet, and came back with a leather briefcase. She placed it on the table between us with a knowing smile. “So I guess you have everything you need now, right?”

  I nodded, eyeing the briefcase. It didn’t look like something I’d have picked out. Probably a gift from my ever-helpful brother. I hoped everything I needed was in there. Maybe more. Every little bit of information helped. What kind of job interview would it be? Was I even qualified? In my own world, I was a bartender at a hard-rock lounge. In this world, if I could believe everything written in the journal, I was an aspiring musician. What in the world could I be qualified to do? My mother rested her hand on my shoulder. “Look, I know this isn’t exactly what you’re looking for. But it pays well and will tide you over until your big break comes along.”

  She reached for her plate, but I told her I’d clean up. It was the least I could do, since she’d gone out of her way to make breakfast.

  She leaned over and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “In that case, I’ll head out. Why don’t you stop by the library after your interview and let me know how it went?”