Emily, Gone

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “No way!” Kelly said. “How awesome would that be? We could have a party and invite them all!”

  “I’d have to ask my parents,” Lara said, “but my dad really wants me to be happy, so I’m pretty sure he’d be cool with it.”

  That same week, she and Kelly began planning a reunion for the first-semester break.

  Kenny left for Daytona the twenty-ninth of January.

  “I’m sorry I’ll miss Lara’s birthday,” he said, “but my start date is February 1.”

  “She understands,” Angela said. She handed him a thermos of coffee along with the sandwiches she’d prepared for his trip. With a look of sadness scrawled across her face, she gave a sigh and said, “I’m going to miss you terribly.”

  They kissed goodbye. It was long and sweet and filled with a desire they both knew would go unsatisfied for a long while. When the kiss ended he held her close for another moment, then broke free and climbed into the car. Tears clouded her eyes as Angela watched him back out of the driveway and disappear down the block.

  “Take care of yourself,” she whispered, but by then he was gone.

  With Kenny gone, sleep was almost impossible for Angela. That first night she tossed and turned endlessly. For the past twenty years she had fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and his arm curled around her. In all those years, they had not slept apart even once. Without him, the bed felt as big and empty as a snow-covered stadium.

  For hours, she lay there remembering the warmth of his hand against her arm. She was always cold, but he seemed to radiate heat. She shivered, remembering how the brush of his thigh against hers or the touch of his hand was enough to warm her. Tonight she’d pulled on two extra blankets and a heavy comforter, but still she felt chilled.

  She scuffed her feet together trying to warm them as she thought of other things: how over the next few months she’d be busy packing, deciding what to keep and what to give away. She pictured the long stretches of highway Kenny would drive and wondered if he had made it all the way to Daytona or settled in a motel along the way.

  It would be only five months, Angela told herself. Next week she was hosting book club, and following that she’d take Lara shopping for some new clothes to wear on the class trip. Then there would be the prom, the graduation ceremony, and the parties that went along with it. Even though she could name dozens of things that would keep her too busy to miss Kenny, she couldn’t move past the emptiness of that bed.

  After several hours of sleeplessness, she got up and pulled on the sweater Kenny had bought the year they were married. It was stretched out of shape and had a hole in one elbow, but in it she could catch the scent of him, and, oddly enough, it kept her warmer than the stack of blankets piled one on top of the other.

  A thin ribbon of daybreak was beginning to show on the horizon when Angela finally drifted off to sleep. By then she had come to the realization that it was going to be a very long five months.

  A NIGHT OF MOVIES

  Time is measured differently for everyone, and for Angela the days dragged by like an old man lugging a sack twice his weight. In April she began packing things away. Some would go into storage until they found a house, and others would be taken to the furnished apartment. Day after day she made trips to the Goodwill store with things they no longer had use for. First to go were the crib and high chair she and Vicki had bought in Paducah, then the baby clothes she’d stored thinking Lara might one day have a sister. Next were stacks of hardly worn wool sweaters and a pair of snow boots Lara had outgrown.

  Each thing seemed to have memories stuck to it, some lighthearted and funny, others heavy as a sack of stones. The afternoon she folded her old Dimitri’s Diner uniform and packed it into the Goodwill bag, her eyes clouded with tears. Vicki died wearing that same shirt, and although she could give the uniform away, she knew she could never rid herself of that memory.

  When she moved on to clearing out the hall closet where they stored folding chairs and holiday tablecloths, Angela came across the movie projector Kenny had bought all those years ago. Behind it was a box filled with reels of film. For years he’d taken movies, documenting Lara’s journey as she went from baby to toddler and in time to a gangly preteen. Afterward they’d continued sporadically until she moved on to junior high, then they stopped, but Angela couldn’t remember why.

  Even though the hallway was littered with piles of old sneakers, soccer uniforms, and guest towels, Angela carried the projector to the living room and plugged it in. At one time they’d had a screen, but she had no idea where it was now. She pointed the lens toward a blank wall, threaded a roll of film through the machine, and snapped on the power.

  The light flickered, and then there she was: Lara at four years old at her birthday party, a Mrs. Beasley talking doll in her arms and a huge smile on her face. As Angela sat and watched the pictures jump from one spot to another, it was as if she were living it all over again. She smiled at the close-up of Lara with a smear of pink icing on her chin and laughed when she proudly held up four fingers to indicate how old she was. In the background Angela saw herself chatting with Mindy Snead, who’d moved away some five or six years ago. After a while the angle changed, and there was Kenny, younger, his face partly hidden by the beard he’d worn for a few years. The shadow of the tall pine was stretched across the yard and shading Lara’s face as the film flickered to an end.

  A door slammed. “Mom? Are you here?”

  “In the living room,” Angela answered as she flicked a switch to rewind the film.

  Lara came through the door, tossed her backpack on the chair, then eyed the projector and grinned. “Are you watching the old movies?”

  “Yes, this one was from your fourth birthday.”

  “Oh, I love that one! Play it again!”

  Angela didn’t need to be coaxed; there was nothing she enjoyed more. She snapped the projector back on and started the tape again.

  “Oh my gosh. Look at Dad with that beard!”

  “He had that for years. I think you were about six when he finally shaved it off.”

  Moments later the camera zoomed in on Lara hugging the doll, and she gave a squeal of delight. “That’s my Mrs. Beasley talking doll!”

  When the film came to an end she said, “Play the one from that first Christmas when I was a baby, the one with my birth mom in it.”

  Angela rummaged through the box, but none of the tapes was marked. “It might be this one.” She pulled a spool of tape from the box and threaded the machine, but what came on-screen was the 1984 Girl Scout Jamboree.

  “Oh, look, Mom, there’s Amelia Baxter. She was my science buddy in eighth grade. We did that experiment where we almost blew up the classroom.”

  “Good thing Ralph Reed was your teacher. If it had been Mrs. Pennefort, she would have flunked you both.”

  There was a close-up of Lara waving the camera away from her, and after that a circle of girls gathered around a campfire laughing and toasting marshmallows. When that film ended, they continued to search for the first Christmas Lara had asked to see. Instead they found one of a group of eight-year-old girls crowded into Lara’s room for a sleepover. The next reel was of the second grade school play where Lara had stumbled across the stage in a fairy costume and a flower garland that kept falling off.

  She laughed. “Oh my gosh, I was so pathetic!”

  “No, you weren’t,” Angela said. “You were only seven years old, and you had as much stage presence as any of the kids. Cathy Contino said you were wonderful.”

  Lara turned with a bright-eyed smile. “This is so much fun, Mom. Let’s watch them all, then we can mark the cans with the name of the event and the date.”

  Angela pulled her daughter into an affectionate hug. “Pumpkin, that sounds like a perfect evening to me!”

  “You haven’t called me ‘pumpkin’ in ages,” Lara said with a giggle. “Are you going nostalgic on me?”

  “I guess so.”

  That evening Angela or
dered a pizza, and they sat amid the piles of half-packed boxes watching the years roll by. Vicki was in only two reels: the first Christmas and that first birthday party.

  Lara squealed. “Look at the size of that teddy bear. It’s as big as I am!”

  “Your mama was working at the diner then and had extra money. She went all out for your birthday, even got you a musical jack-in-the-box, but the thing petrified you.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Well, of course not—you were only a baby.” Angela hesitated a moment, then asked, “Do you remember anything about your mama?”

  Lara studied the image on the wall, then shook her head. “Not really. I know what she looked like because of the pictures, but I don’t remember anything.”

  “It’s a shame you never got to know your mom; you would have loved her.”

  “What was she like?”

  Angela smiled as the memories flooded her mind. “She was funny and sweet with a ‘let the devil take tomorrow’ personality. She loved music, and sometimes she’d play the radio so loud it would feel like the floor was shaking. When we were kids, she was the wild and crazy one. She’d hatch a plan to sneak into the movies or steal a trinket from the dime store, and I’d go along with it.” The thought hung in the air for a moment, then she laughed. “The funny thing is, I usually got caught and she didn’t.”

  “What about when she got older? Did she still do crazy things?”

  A look of sadness drifted across Angela’s face. “I didn’t see much of Vicki then, not until she brought you and came to live with us. After our mama died—”

  “When did she die?”

  “Mama?” Angela’s thoughts drifted back to that year, to things she’d never spoken of, things she’d kept hidden in the back of her mind. “She died the year Vicki turned thirteen. With her gone, life was a nightmare for both of us. Our daddy was a terrible drunk. I took it for as long as I could, then I left, got a job as a waitress, and moved in with a girlfriend.”

  “Did you take my mama with you?”

  Angela shook her head, then began rewinding the roll of film. She’d thought after so many years the memory would have dulled, but it hadn’t. The regret was still there, as painful as shoes a size too small or an almost invisible paper cut. “I should have,” she replied solemnly. “But I didn’t. I was just a kid at the time. I promised Vicki once I got on my feet I’d bring her to live with me, but it never happened.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, a fleeting second when Angela could look back and see things as they actually were. She gave a wistful sigh, then said, “A year later your mama and I took a trip to Paducah together, but that was the last time we saw each other until she showed up here with you.”

  “Didn’t you try to get in touch with her?”

  “Of course I did, but Daddy said Vicki had left home, and he didn’t know or care where she was.”

  “How awful.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  Lara allowed the thought to settle, then she asked, “What about my dad? Over the years you’ve told me a lot about Mama, but every time I ask about my dad, you say there’s nothing much to tell. Did you ever meet him?”

  Without looking up, Angela took another roll of film from the box and threaded it through the machine. “No, never.”

  As she slid the film between the rollers and tightened the reel, Angela felt a pang of guilt. She hadn’t lied, but neither had she given Lara the truth. Perhaps she should have said that his name was Russell Murphy and that he and Vicki lived together in an apartment complex where the landlady knew her as a baby—but the avoidance of truth had begun a long time ago, and it was too late to turn back now. She remembered the forgiveness begged for in Vicki’s letter and the contents of the box brought back from Wynne Bluffs; those were things Lara didn’t need to know. Angela was a mother, and a mother’s job was to shield her child from harm; that’s exactly what she was doing. Like Pandora’s box, the past was better off left untouched. Once opened up it could reveal truths no one wanted to know.

  “I don’t even know his name,” she said, the lie slipping off her tongue. “Your mama was very secretive about him. She claimed he belonged to the past, and it would be better if the two of you never met.”

  “But jeez,” Lara griped. “He’s my dad. Mama should’ve let me decide that for myself.”

  “I’m certain she didn’t expect to die so soon. Maybe she planned to talk to you about it once you were older . . .”

  Angela allowed the rest of her words to trail off. She’d always believed there was more to the story, but she’d pursued it a number of times and each time came away knowing nothing more than what she’d known at the start. Lara had enjoyed a happy childhood, and that was what every mother hoped for. Perhaps Vicki felt the best gift she could give her daughter was the gift of not knowing.

  Glancing down at the box of films, Angela said, “We’ve got five rolls left. Should we keep going or finish up tomorrow?”

  Lara’s look of sadness morphed into a smile. “Keep going.”

  The next five rolls jumped around; first there was her seventh birthday, then she was a toddler pushing a musical lawn mower across the living room floor, and after that a summer when she was nine and running merrily through the sprinkler.

  The next roll explained why Kenny had stopped taking movies. Lara was sitting on the steps of the front porch painting her toenails, and when the camera approached she waved it off. She made a face and stuck out her tongue; although the sound was missing you could see her saying, “Get out of here with that thing.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Lara said. “Why was I acting so horrible?”

  Angela laughed. “I think it was because you didn’t have any makeup on.”

  It was almost three a.m. when Angela threaded the last roll onto the machine. It was a smaller roll of tape and one she’d almost forgotten about. Vicki. Sitting in the rocking chair with Lara in her arms. She moved back and forth slowly, lovingly touching her finger to the tiny nose, then burying her face in the chubby rolls of Lara’s neck.

  Lara sighed. “Aw. It looks like she really loves me.”

  “She did love you, pumpkin, more than anything else in the world.”

  After Lara had gone to bed, Angela packed the labeled rolls of film back into the box and carried it to the bedroom. These were too precious to let out of her sight. When they left Fairlawn, she would carry these with her in the car.

  The second week of June, Kenny flew home for Lara’s graduation, and it was a weekend of nonstop craziness. First there was the ceremony, then a dinner with Lara’s friends and their families. That was followed by round after round of picture taking and yearbook signing. It was not until Lara left for a party on Saturday night that Angela had a few moments alone with Kenny.

  As they sat side by side on the sofa, she leaned her head against his shoulder and said, “It’s hard to believe the time has finally come. In two weeks, we’ll be leaving for Daytona.”

  “You’ve got the map where I highlighted the route, right?” Kenny said. “And you’ve scheduled the car for service?”

  Both times she gave a nod without lifting her head from his shoulder.

  “You’ll be driving a thousand miles, so make certain you tell Harley to check everything over carefully.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said and playfully trailed her finger along the inside edge of his thigh.

  PECAN STREET REVELATION

  Hesterville, Spring 1989

  As the twins grew, so did the Homestead Bed and Breakfast business. Year after year there would be more bookings, and it was not unusual for both of the spare bedrooms to be filled. Only on a rare occasion did the guests have dinner with the family, but it was the breakfasts that Rachel enjoyed.

  By then the twins were in the eighth grade, and like George, they were up early and out the door without sitting at the table for a full breakfast. George generally wrapped a fresh biscuit in a napkin and carried it out with him
. Hope grabbed a container of yogurt, and Henry wolfed down a bowl of cereal so rapidly Rachel could at times almost believe it had never even been there.

  The guests were the ones who lingered at the table. They told of where they were from and the families they would return to. They complimented Rachel on her scones or blueberry pancakes and often remained at the table to have a second and sometimes third cup of coffee. In an odd way, having strangers at the breakfast table eased the loneliness Rachel felt after Mama Dixon’s passing.

  Although she could sometimes go days or even weeks without missing Emmy, the memory was always there. Rachel never booked guests for March 10; it was Emmy’s birthday and a day she kept for herself. On that day, after George and the twins were gone from the house, she took the locket with Emmy’s picture from the drawer and allowed herself to cry. Each year she tried to imagine what Emmy would look like: at age two with pale-blonde curls and at five with two front teeth missing and a smile much like Henry’s. As the years went on, creating an image of Emmy based on Henry became more difficult. As babies they’d looked almost identical, but as he grew he developed boyish features that would differ from Emmy’s.

  This year, a week before Emmy’s birthday, Rachel had signed a permission slip for the twins to go on a field trip that would celebrate the end of the school year. Next year they would enter the freshman class, and the year after that they’d move to the big high school shared by three towns. Such a milestone caused her to start thinking about Emmy even before everyone else had left the house. She took the locket from the drawer and tucked it into her pocket; once she was alone she would visit with her lost child as she had for the past eighteen years.

  The previous night she’d dreamed about Emmy and seen her laughing and dancing but from afar. She caught sight of the long blonde hair falling across her shoulders, but there were only glimpses of her face—there and not there and never long enough for Rachel to study it or commit it to memory.