Remember Us

by Lindsay Blake

  Benjamin hushed him and tucked his blankets in tight so he couldn’t fight. Carl snorted so loudly, I hoped Maya couldn’t hear it through the phone lines. When he glared back at me, I closed my eyes once more.

  I don’t know how many girlfriends Benjamin had through the years, but I adored Maya, knew she was a keeper. Why it had taken Benjamin so many years to move toward something more permanent with her was beyond me. I stopped asking him after the first year because he got ornery about it.

  If there was anything I’d learned about my offspring it was that they had minds of their own, and it simultaneously stupefied me and made me proud.

  “Yeah, I’m working on it now, love you babe. Talk soon.” From my squinted vantage point I watched Benjamin shove his phone into his pocket and move toward Carl with the gadget. I always thought Maya was a little goofy with her “snake oils,” but they smelled comforting. Lord knows nothing else in this dismal place smelled even halfway as decent.

  As Benjamin lectured Carl on being open-minded, telling him the oils would support his body systems, I held in a grin. Carl looked as if he was gearing up for a fight, but before he made his vexing public, Benjamin spilled an entire bottle of Frankincense over them both.

  “Is it because you forgot the gold and myrrh?” Carl glared at our son.

  “Dad jokes,” Ben muttered as he grabbed a purple bottle, placed ten drops of an oil he called “Forgiveness” into the gizmo and turned it on.

  “I don’t like the smell.” I hadn’t thought it was possible for Carl’s frown to deepen, but there it was.

  “That means you need it.”

  “Says who?”

  “Maya.”

  “Oh, okay then, that changes everything.” Carl made little attempt to mask the oozing sarcasm.

  “Dad, give it a rest already.”

  “Humph.” Carl closed his eyes and let the Forgiveness wash over him. If only it was that easy.

  Carl opened one eye and scowled. “Of course, I’ll be a free Carl in this second chance at life. I’ll be open-minded and wild, grow out my graying locks, maybe get a tattoo. But there is no need to talk about it, no need to squash my soul with a lavish speech.”

  And with that, he turned his back on us both.

  “Lord have mercy, son, I’m elegance personified. I haven’t had a T-shirt on this body since 1979, and I don’t plan to start now.” I felt the lightness of my silk shirt under my folded arms as I offered what I imagined was a superior expression to my son. Benjamin, who’d bought the three of us Superman T-shirts “so we could match Dad,” stood across the kitchen counter from me.

  “There’s no need to lob it at my face, Mom. And this is for Dad, you know, the man you flew from another country to see.” He brandished the offending offering in my direction.

  “Benjamin, unanimity begins in the heart, not displayed across this body in tawdry form for all the world to see.” I pulled out a bowl and spoon, measuring cups and a knife.

  “I’ll keep it for a few days in case you change your mind.” He grabbed his laptop from the kitchen table and shoved it into his satchel.

  “There’s really no need.” I cubed the butter. “But, I will purchase a nice Superman brooch off the Amazon which should keep the peace and keep it classy.” I watched his strong shoulders disappear down the hallway as he departed without comment. It mystified me that he and Reese were once small enough to live inside my body and now they were so full-grown; so full of opinions.

  I would wear the brooch proudly, especially since I’d never seen Carl look worse, not even when he had pneumonia on our second anniversary, not even when he had his annual man cold. He was clammy and green about the edges. I was shocked when I arrived and saw the state of things. Shocked. Carl looked plumb awful, all gray and wispy. They were barely feeding him.

  I snuck casserole after casserole into the hospital room, but those nurses must have been born with a sixth sense. I got into more than one wrestling match with them, just trying to feed my man. Every time I came back, the hospital staff handed me another list of preferred foods they’d compiled for him. It started with kale and ended with carrots.

  “Dullards.” So I was back in the kitchen, starting from scratch.

  Benjamin reentered and moved to the table, pulling out a stack of papers.

  “This mama’s got a family to feed and Lord knows no one else has their head screwed on straight enough to throw together a decent meal in this place. It’s fully up to me and Loretta Lynn.” Having Carl in the hospital gave me a renewed sense of purpose for coming. Day after day, I turned up my Loretta and marched back to the stove.

  Benjamin offered me a thumbs-up. “I’m going to get a bit of work done, if you don’t mind me sitting here, Mom. My room is too depressing.”

  “Go ahead, sugar, you know I’ll keep to myself.” I eyed with dismay the ingredients lined out before me. “Good gravy.”

  “Hmm?” Benjamin didn’t look up.

  Thankfully, I had mad talents in the kitchen and I concocted a carrot, coconut, and kale casserole I knew would be world famous. I added extra cheese, extra love. I threw some butter and crackers on top. Carl would drool. He’d always loved my cooking. If there was any way to lessen his hatred of me, it started with butter, ended with cheese, and would be assembled in this kitchen.

  “When I have time to myself again, after nursing Carl back to life, I really should consider writing a recipe book.” I slid the casserole into the pre-heated oven and watched Benjamin look between his computer and the stack of papers.

  “Uh huh.”

  “This morning I purchased a colossal sequin purse to sequester today’s casserole, and I applied a bit more blush and a pretty purple hat to distract the guards.”

  Benjamin sighed loudly and typed something on his computer. I slipped surreptitiously through the doors. I had time to apply some fragrance before the food would be ready for transportation.

  Baby, I’m coming.

  When I arrived, Reese stood at the foot of her sleeping father’s hospital bed like a sentry, and I excused myself yet again. Benjamin was my only ally. And Rocky too. Reese hadn’t spoken twenty words in a single sentence to me since I arrived, and I needed to minimize her opportunities to flaunt rejection.

  Laws, she was pretty as a peach. I was surprised at the difference between the photos Benjamin had shared through the years and her youth and beauty up close.

  It had been years since I last saw my Reese. One thousand, four hundred and twenty-eight days to be exact. I did the math on my plane ride south. I saw her at my father’s funeral and right after that Benjamin had us “run into each other” at his place in Knoxville without giving either of us a heads-up, as if multiple sightings in a row might make a difference. She’d insisted on sitting at the exact opposite end of the table from me that night, was marginally cordial, nothing more. But I would have known my baby girl in a crowd any day of the week. That mattered little, as she didn’t want to see me.

  Over the past thirteen years, I’d seen her a total five times, and after she led with, “Hey,” she categorically refused to go deeper.

  “Well, I’m fine, thanks for asking.” But she walked away even as the words left my lips. She didn’t wait to hear whether this was true or only a lie I told myself and others.

  I knew deep down my babies needed me, so I came. Sure, I had other things to do, but I’ve always been one for taking care of my kids. Okay, some would insert the obvious here, that I left them in their formative years, which wasn’t quite the same as taking care of them. But I didn’t leave them, I left Carl. They happened to live in the same house, and it got complicated.

  I had a psychiatrist once tell me the twins probably thought I abandoned them too, but I’ll tell you what I told him: I don’t want to talk about it.

  I had my life all set up in Canada, but I left the maple syrup and the igloos in a hurry to come be with my people. When I made my plans to travel back to Omaha, my friends fluttered about me
and asked what it would be like to see Carl, to go back home after all this time, but I didn’t tell them my secrets.

  I told them it would be horribly painful, which was true.

  I didn’t let them see how much it hurt.

  I said it would be surreal, seeing Carl and my kids all together again.

  I didn’t tell them the thought of that ripped my heart clean in two.

  I said it was needed.

  I didn’t say it was thirteen years overdue.

  When I left all those years ago, I moved to New York, to make my big city dreams come true. My parents said I was being childish, they begged me to go home to Carl, then told me sternly. I stopped talking to them. Carl’s parents wouldn’t take my calls. My best friend, Bryony, listened for hours, told me she understood, then told me to go home, that I should talk to Carl, say to him all that I said to her. I stopped talking to her too. I couldn’t bring myself to call Neil and Leah, hear the accusation in their voices, so I didn’t bother picking up the phone to ring Charlie’s parents.

  Nowhere, nothing made sense. And just like that, New York was suddenly too dingy, too overcrowded, too close to Omaha and all I’d left behind. But where to go from there? The world, which had once seemed so full of life and possibilities, a vibrant map of the unexplored, grew stifling, stale.

  When I was young, maybe seven or eight, my great-uncle Henri moved in with us. He told me story after story of his childhood in Canada. He told me he had a cottage and made shoes and sang. He was happy. He painted his stories with colors so glossy I was in the meadows with him, and I was happy too.

  I decided to move to Canada.

  I wanted to be happy again.

  So after three weeks, when New York was too confining, I bought a one-way ticket for the only other place in the world I’d ever craved, a place I’d never been but knew I would grow to love.

  When I flew to Canada, thirteen years previously, I was squished in a row with a family of five. The children were all younger than the twins, but it didn’t check the nostalgia. Reese used to wear her hair in pigtails like their youngest’s. The last time I’d seen Benjamin, less than two months before—but still more than a lifetime—he’d been wearing a red plaid shirt like their eldest’s.

  The three squirmed and complained beside me, and their mother gave me a squinty-eyed glare when I watched them. I wanted to say, “No, it’s fine, I have kids of my own. I’m not annoyed. I’m not a creep. I’m just a mother.” But my voice had left me, and I looked away as she hugged her daughter close. I cried the entirety of the three-hour flight from JFK to Toronto, the heartbreak issuing forth in salty tears I tasted for days.

  When the flight attendant announced we would be landing soon, I gasped in great quantities of air, focusing it toward my wildly beating heart. My shoulders pressed hard against the airplane seat, and I closed my eyes. Canada would be my new home, my new life. My second chance to do it right.

  My mom was a Canadian citizen so immigration was a breeze. When the forms asked me if I was married or single, I left the boxes blank, preferring deportation to admitting my new reality. There would never be a need to look backward. There was only here, only now. Until now became a moment that demanded my return.

  4

  Reese

  After a week, Dad and Ben formed a united front to insist I leave the hospital for at least one night of sleep.

  “Your odor is offensive and a shower is in immediate order.” Ben was never good with subtle.

  Three hours later, I sat opposite Ben’s lanky frame on the porch swing, enfolded in the corners of Aunt Frances’s homemade quilt, the detailed stitches lost in the darkness between us.

  “I talked to Charlie today.” I pulled my feet onto the swing and readjusted the towel around my wet hair.

  “Cool.”

  “He’s doing okay.”

  “Okay.” Ben shifted and the swing moved with him.

  “I asked him if I should stay longer or come back to work.”

  “Geez, Reese. You’ve been telling us all what to do since you were seven.”

  “Ben, he’s technically my boss, plus he knows all the weird dynamics of life here.” I missed Charlie, and some days I trusted his opinion more than my own, especially when it came to family stuff.

  “Right, no one knows it better. So what did he say?”

  “He said to come back.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I think I’ll stay.” The doctors weren’t saying much and I’d become paralyzed, fixated on the reality of death. It was as if, for the first time, I’d allowed myself to acknowledge there truly was an end in this life. The knowledge had settled in my bones, seducing me with the notion of staying here, caught in time, of family too, forever. “But being here…” I couldn’t finish.

  “I know.” Ben exhaled.

  The night was alive with the sounds of crickets, the neighbor’s barking dog, the anticipation of a coming storm. So tonight I held the blanket, I held the stars, I held all the pieces of the moment in the quiet of my heart, and I let myself be. I rested my head on my twin’s shoulder.

  Everything about 5371 Florence Boulevard, from the furniture to the smell, reminded me of That Day.

  That day.

  The second time my world crashed around me.

  When everything changed between us.

  The memory lived inside me so strongly I could have sworn it was yesterday and not eight years ago.

  “You’re wasting your time with this photography.” Dad’s words echoed in my ears for nearly a decade. “It’s a nice hobby, but you’ll never make any money doing it.”

  “Dad, I don’t care about money and not wanting your kid to be an artist is so cliché.”

  “Asking art to pay the mortgage is a fool’s errand.” His nostrils flared. “You need to care.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You’re just like her,” he yelled and for a second, none of us moved.

  “I hope I’m not like either one of you,” I screamed back, heart racing, blood pounding.

  He threw the salt shaker toward me, narrowly missing my head. “Pick a real career!” He slammed his fist on the table. “If you end up going to that art school I won’t support your decision or help you financially.” It was the most he’d spoken at dinner in years, the only time my dad had ever yelled at me.

  I saw red and fury mixed as his face blurred. My breathing slowed down until there was a hum between my ears.

  Thank God for Ben. Out of nowhere, Ben stood up to our father.

  “Reese is a brilliant photographer, Dad.” He spoke with an authority your average seventeen-year-old wouldn’t possess. “She can and she will make an excellent career with her work, and you will regret not backing her.”

  “Except I will not back her!”

  I had never seen him stronger. Ben took my hand and we left the house, grabbed Charlie, and headed to Amsterdam Falafel & Kabob in Dundee. The vibrant colors and buzz of the shop stood in sharp contrast to my mood.

  “It’s probably because your dad is still sad about your mom,” Charlie offered between bites. “Or because he grew up on food stamps and he’s legit worried about the money.” Charlie’s parents were loaded and didn’t care if he spent the rest of his life twiddling his thumbs.

  “And remember, Mom loves all things artsy.” Ben pointed his kabob at me. “So your foray into photography must’ve hit too close to home.” Those crazy boys threw theory after theory at me, but I spent the next hour sobbing and shaking my head.

  Afterwards, I didn’t speak to Dad for the next six months. He didn’t yell anymore, but he didn’t speak to me either, his expanding taciturnity our new normal. There had been many low moments with my father, but I always counted that night as the worst.

  Ben and I graduated, and right before I drove off to college, I gave Dad a quick hug. Nothing more. He kept his word too, not offering a dime toward my post-secondary education. Ben offered me half the checks he
got from Dad, guiltily and generously, but I refused. I’d paid my own way since I was sixteen.

  Dad was a practical man. He put up with my photography and entertained my camera obsession, but he never truly embraced my skill. It was Bernice who surprised me the Christmas before she left with our basement darkroom. She blindfolded me, and as we walked down the steps into the red-lit room, I could smell the chemicals. She had bought the enlarger at a yard sale and purchased the chemicals, trays, and paper from Rockbrook Camera. She told me she’d spent hours drilling the clerk on the proper supplies to buy, and she’d purchased double quantities of each.

  “I imagine you will never run out of photos, so I didn’t want you to run out of printing materials.” She cradled my face between her soft hands and kissed me on the forehead.

  Dad came down there once. I hadn’t heard him call my name, and as I stood over the fixer he opened the door and barreled down. I showed him the image in the tray and he looked back at me without comment. He didn’t get it.

  After she left, it became my sanctuary. My escape.

  In all the years since, I could never untangle the root of his aversion—was it a lack of understanding or something more? Was it a place to focus his frustrations or a version of concern? Whatever it was, it built a thick-bricked barrier between us, which widened by the season.

  He didn’t attend my senior exhibit, where I won the showcase. He didn’t show up for my college graduation either. Over the years, I had been both impressed and disgusted by his stubbornness, pride, and short-sightedness. When I thought of our father, there was only a messy mix of confusion and sadness. Dad’s Black Hole. In my adult life, I saw him once every couple of years. Being too busy to be bothered turned out to be easier than I thought, and Dad didn’t push me if I said I couldn’t make it home.

  That day and my career had been the elephants in the room ever since. We’d called an unspoken détente since I’d been back under this roof, but I wondered if he sensed the hurt seeping through the walls like I did.