When I’m back in Yarrow Heights, it isn’t the same. As if the girls don’t trust me. Even Samantha. I know: they are frightened of their father leaving us. So much divorce/families breaking up among their classmates. I have promised R. I would never seek divorce/a legal separation/injunction. If he allows me this freedom, I can remain his wife. I hope.
Waking in the early morning. In this place where I can breathe. SO HAPPY.
(Is this selfishness? R. says yes.)
(To wish to breathe, not to suffocate? Yes!)
Such interesting/warm/generous people here in Skagit Harbor. And I have a gallery willing to exhibit some of my work: The Orca.
Working on silk screens. Slow/steady. R. has not been calling me so frequently. (I know, he’s “involved” with someone in Seattle. This is fine with me. I dare not allow him to know that I know. But I wish him/them well.)
Good news: the girls will be coming to stay with me while R. is away on a shoot. R. has made me so happy, I could love him again. He laughed at me, saying that it didn’t take much to make me happy, how different I am from other women.
He kissed me/framed my face in his strong fingers. YOU KNOW YOU LOVE ME, KRISTA. I’M THE FIRST MAN YOU EVER LOVED, YOU TOLD ME. AND I WILL BE THE LAST.
The girls are here! Hardly a moment to write in this journal.
Working through the mornings in such bliss. The girls are helping me with these silk screens. At last Francesca seems to be relaxed with her mother. I had worried about R. slapping her/shaking her as he’d done when she was younger sometimes/Francesca’s “rebellious” personality/but by 15 she is much more mature. I’m so relieved she has ceased being angry with me. (I even called her “Franky” a few times, and she didn’t notice!) Samantha is joyous. And of course Rabbit is in seventh heaven, his favorite people feeding/petting/fussing over him and no fear of sudden loud voices/kicks.
The looks in the girls’ faces, seeing their mother’s work at the Orca Gallery. Of course I tried not to show it, but I almost cried. Maybe, in a small way, they can be proud of their mother, too? They don’t seem to resent it that I sign my work K.C.
Such lovely/busy days/evenings. Mero took a dozen Polaroids of us at the gallery and elsewhere. How happy we appear, yes and how beautiful. Francesca’s fine-boned angular face/unnerving green eyes. Samantha’s soft eyes, heart-shaped face. Of course I love R., I realize. R. is the father of these girls.
Mero, my closest friend in Skagit Harbor. In all the world. Confiding in me how shaken he was by the behavior of a lover a few years ago. Mero had been depressed for a year, yes he’d “contemplated” suicide but never got around to doing anything about it. After a period of “hibernation” he resumed his life again, he lives now for work/friends/family. “Just for life itself. This is all there is.”
The deep bond between Mero and me. A gay man/straight woman. Strange, and wonderful, the intense emotional connection; in ways I’m closer to Mero than to my own sister, Vicky. (Who has become impatient with me for not leaving R.) Where Vicky doesn’t seem to understand, Mero does, instinctively. I haven’t spoken to him about my marriage, but I know that if I did, Mero would understand immediately. Why I fell in love with R. at the age of 22, why I love R. still at almost 40, yet fear the man, and can’t live with him.
R. would be angry if he knew of my friendship with Mero. He hates gays—“fags.” Especially, gay athletes drive him crazy. What he’d think if he knew that the girls have met Mero . . .
On the last three pages of the journal, Mom’s handwriting was rushed, panicky. I could hardly bring myself to keep reading.
Sunday. July 27. Everything is changed.
R. came, took Francesca and Samantha back home with him. I’m alone now, sick/stunned. When I called the house in Yarrow Heights, the housekeeper answered saying, “Who is this please? Who is this please?” She’s new, someone R. has hired. She doesn’t know me, sounds vexed with me/nervous about reporting my calls to Mr. Pierson. . . .
It happened so quickly. Out of nowhere he appeared. Even the car he was driving is new. I was outside with the girls, he rushed at us shouting/grabbed a pair of pruning shears out of my hands.
We went inside the cabin to talk. The girls waited terrified in the driveway. How I wanted to shield them from this side of their father. . . . I pleaded with him, tried to reason with him. He kept repeating that he had “fresh evidence” against me. Claims that I betrayed him, our agreement about the girls. I’m baffled, don’t understand.
From what I gathered, it might be that he’d hired a private detective to spy on me. And this private detective has invented a “lover.” To make his employer the more furious/committed to persecuting me. I think this might be it. He spoke of being “pushed too far”—being “made ashamed.” When I protested, he grabbed my arm and began to shake me as if he wanted to break my neck. He shut his fingers around my throat until I began to choke, my knees buckled. Then he let me go—he laughed, saying he wasn’t stupid enough to strangle me, the marks of his fingers would be on me. There are other ways, he said. He said he’d be back another time. DUMP YOUR BODY FROM DECEPTION PASS BRIDGE. IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN—NOBODY WOULD EVER FIND YOU.
He left then, with the girls. It terrifies me to think of Francesca and Samantha in the car with that man, how easily he could swerve from the highway, have a fatal “accident.” I know now that it’s hopeless.
Rabbit and I are huddling together in the cabin, the door locked/blinds drawn. Though I know R. is gone. I’m thinking of Deception Pass, on Whidbey Island about 50 miles west of Skagit Harbor. The summer we went there, to stay with friends of R.’s at their summer place on Skagit Bay. DUMP YOUR BODY. LONG WAY DOWN. NOBODY WOULD EVER FIND YOU.
I’ve been calling home. Now the answering machine is on. Maybe in the morning . . .
TWENTY-SIX
“now you know . . .”
Now you know what you must do.
Now you will have to remember what you’ve wanted to think was a dream.
It was Freaky’s voice.
It was my own voice.
I called Aunt Vicky on my cell phone from Skagit Harbor. I was waiting for the two-forty-P.M. bus to Seattle. I was too restless to sit on the bench in front of the Skagit Harbor Café, where the bus picked up passengers. I’d read and reread my mother’s journal and the scribbled note. If you’re reading this, it means that something may have happened to me.
When Aunt Vicky answered, immediately she asked where I was. I told her, and she said, “Skagit Harbor! Oh, honey, why?”
I told her I’d come here to get something my mother had left for me.
“Franky, what? You went to get—what?”
A journal, I said. I was trying to speak calmly. My aunt’s excitement and anxiety weren’t what I needed to hear from an adult.
Since reading my mom’s journal, I guess I understood that she was dead. I knew, but I wasn’t thinking that, exactly. As long as I’d been reading the journal, in her handwriting, it was like she was speaking to me, and she was alive.
Aunt Vicky wanted to know more about the journal, what was in the journal, and I told her she could read it, I would give it to her to read as soon as I saw her.
And, I said, I guessed the police would want to read it, too.
“The police? Oh, honey.”
For a long moment Aunt Vicky didn’t speak. The understanding passed between us what this meant.
I remembered how my aunt had wanted to think my mom was alive, and would return to us. How distraught she’d been, how desperate to believe. We’d all wanted to believe.
Even my father had seemed genuine, in his “belief.”
Aunt Vicky asked me again where I was, exactly, and I told her I was in front of the Skagit Harbor Café, waiting for the two-forty bus that would get me back in Seattle, downtown at the Greyhound station, at about four P.M. Aunt Vicky said she would pick me up there.
She added, hesitantly, “Franky, you should know that your father is lookin
g for you. But he has no idea where you are.”
I tasted cold. I was very frightened suddenly.
Aunt Vicky explained, “Someone on the Forrester staff called your home, and your housekeeper called your father, and he was upset to learn that you’re not in school. He seemed to think you must be with me, or that I knew where you were. I assured him that I had no idea where you were, but I thought he was overreacting; you were probably just cutting classes with friends, at a mall or a movie, and you’d be back home at the usual time. He began shouting at me. I halfway wondered if I should call the police—he seemed to be threatening me. Before we hung up, he made me promise that I’d call him if I had any information about you.”
“Aunt Vicky, no! You can’t do that.”
“Franky, of course not. I won’t.”
I couldn’t see clearly—my eyes were blinking away tears. Every car that passed on Main Street, which had a speed limit of twenty-five miles an hour, caused me to glance up, thinking it might be my father. When a gray or silver vehicle appeared, my heart cringed.
If he finds me. If he finds this journal. If he reads this journal. If he thinks I might share this journal with anyone. If he thinks I might show it to the police . . .
“Franky? Are you still there?”
“Yes, Aunt Vicky. But I’m so scared.”
“Maybe you should wait inside the café? But he has no idea you’re in Skagit Harbor, honey. He wouldn’t think of that.”
Why wouldn’t he? I would, in his place.
This was a Freaky-shrewd thought. I didn’t share it with my aunt, who was already stressed enough.
She said, trying to sound calm, “Franky, the bus is due in ten minutes. There are lots of people around there, aren’t there? If I thought you were in any real danger I’d drive up to get you immediately. But it would take so much longer, honey. Please—will you wait inside the café?”
Hiding from my own father! That’s how desperate things had become.
I went inside the café, though. I didn’t step outside again until the bus was stopped at the curb, wheezing and hissing, bound for Seattle.
At the Seattle station, as the bus pulled in, I saw Aunt Vicky waiting for me. Her face was drawn, anxious. As soon as I stepped down from the bus, she hurried to me and caught me in her arms. “Oh, Franky! Your hair.” She thought I’d cut it.
We laughed together, feeling giddy. We were almost crying, as if we hadn’t seen each other in years.
The journal was in my backpack, safely zipped in. On the bus I’d been reading, rereading. I’d memorized the Emily Dickinson poem. My hands smelled of that sweet spicy scent. I had the Freaky thought that I would write in this beautiful lavender-bound journal too. I would complete the pages my mother hadn’t had time to complete.
“They shut me up in Prose.” But Prose can be freedom, too.
Aunt Vicky and I made our way through the busy terminal, moving quickly. I was safe now, I thought. (Wasn’t I? There were uniformed police on duty here.) Still I couldn’t help glancing around, thinking he might be somewhere, hidden among strangers, watching me.
Since my mother’s disappearance, Aunt Vicky had leased a small apartment in Seattle, but she didn’t think it would be wise for us to go to that apartment right now. My father had been calling her back, she said. Even Todd had called. “They seem to think you’d come to stay with me this morning, instead of going to school. They’re both very suspicious, and very irrational. Todd said, ‘You’re coercing my sister to testify against Dad, aren’t you? You’d better be careful, Aunt Vicky.’ After your father’s first call, I’d already left the apartment. I took some overnight things and booked us a room at a hotel near police headquarters.”
I was left breathless by these remarks. Aunt Vicky spoke so matter-of-factly. Franky wasn’t going back home to Yarrow Heights, it seemed. Franky, too, had crossed over.
TWENTY-SEVEN
the interview: september 12
When, where did I see my mother Krista Connor last?
On July 27, in Skagit Harbor. At her cabin on Deer Point Road. In the early afternoon.
Yes. My sister Samantha and I were staying with my mother for a few days while my father was out of town.
Yes. He returned earlier than he’d planned. He drove to Skagit Harbor to take Samantha and me home.
No. He hadn’t called before. He hadn’t notified my mom. He just arrived. He was angry.
Yes. Very angry.
No. Not so different from other times . . . I guess.
No. He didn’t touch Samantha or me. He wasn’t angry at us.
Yes. They went inside the cabin. They were there for what seemed like a long time. Maybe twenty minutes.
We waited.
Yes, we were afraid.
That my father would hurt my mother, that’s what I was afraid of.
Yes. Sure. I could hear his voice from inside the cabin. Maybe I heard hers. Maybe she was crying.
When they came out, my father was carrying Samantha’s and my bags. Because we were leaving then.
Yes. Straight back to Yarrow Heights. To home.
Not then, but later, he said, Your mother is in love with another man. We can never forgive her.
Yes. I met Mero Okawa. He’s a friend of my mom’s at Skagit Harbor.
Mero is a wonderful person. I hope . . . he’s all right.
I think probably he isn’t, though.
No, my Mom and Mero Okawa were definitely not lovers. Like my father has said.
They were friends. I mean, they are friends.
If they’re alive, they are friends.
Yes, I guess so. Gay. I don’t categorize people, though.
Because I don’t want stupid people categorizing me. It’s a lazy kind of thinking, and it’s cruel.
Yes. I guess I did hear them, sometimes.
Never in front of us. Mostly in their bedroom with the door shut.
My father gets angry easily. I used to think my mother provoked him, but that was a wrong way of thinking, to blame my mother for being abused.
She wore scarfs, long sleeves to hide the marks. But I knew what they were.
Because I was so scared, I think. It was easier to hate her.
No. Mom never spoke of it.
She never said anything critical of him. She knew how Samantha and I loved him.
I mean, love him. I still do.
He’s my father, and he’s Reid Pierson. That’s why.
Why? Mom was afraid, I guess. Afraid he would hurt her worse, and hurt Samantha and me. That’s what she says in her journal, and I believe that’s right.
If you’ve read the journal, then you know.
I think yes, it happened just like that.
No! I’m fine, I am not crying. I want to continue.
Yes, he did. Sometimes. It was “discipline.”
I don’t remember too well. It’s sort of vague, like a bad dream or something you saw on TV a long time ago and have mixed up with actual life.
Spankings, when I was little. Because I would disobey, I think.
Sometimes slaps, punches, hard shakings. Daddy would grab hold of my shoulders and shake shake shake me like he wanted to break my neck.
Oh, no! I believed it was my fault. I deserved it.
I still do believe that, I guess.
It’s hard to change how you feel. How you think is a lot easier.
Why? Because Dad loved us. Loves us.
He wouldn’t have disciplined us, he said, if he didn’t love us.
That’s true even now. I can understand that. But it’s a sick way of thinking, and it’s wrong.
I guess I would say so, yes. If I have to swear to it. . . .
Yes, my father did “abuse” me. And my sister Samantha.
(She won’t speak of it, probably. She’s afraid. And now that Mom is gone, she has to love Dad. I feel the same way. But I have to get beyond that feeling. I can’t protect him any longer.)
When I read Mom’s journal.
Then I knew.
Well, I guess I always knew. But I didn’t want to acknowledge it.
He said we would have to choose between them. So I’m choosing Mom.
I can’t save her, I know. I accept it—she won’t be coming back.
Samantha doesn’t know, yet. Aunt Vicky and I will have to tell her soon.
I know, I could be wrong. Maybe Mom and Mero Okawa are alive, somewhere. Like the tabloid papers say. It’s like believing in heaven—it takes away some of the pain.
The last time I spoke with my mother? August 25.
She called from Skagit Harbor. She sounded upset. She was saying she loved Samantha and me. I told her she should come back home, if that was so, but she said she couldn’t, and she couldn’t explain. So I became very angry at her. I was furious with her. Dad had said she was blackmailing us with her emotions, and I believed that at the time. Dad had said she had a lover, she’d betrayed us, and I believed that, too.
I told her I hated my name—“Francesca.”
I told her I hated her.
Yes. That was the last time I spoke with my mother, Krista Connor.
No. I didn’t hear my father leave the house on the night of August 26.
But I heard him return. At 4:38 A.M.
I hadn’t been able to sleep very well. I was thinking of what I’d said to my mother, maybe. What she’d said to me.
That she missed Samantha and me. She was crying, and I know now that she was afraid of what might happen to her. She was so afraid, and I didn’t listen. I hung up the phone.
I was thinking of that, and I couldn’t sleep.
Samantha had come into my room around midnight. She was curled up in my bed, turned to the wall, with covers over her face. Samantha sleeps really hard sometimes, like babies do.
I’m in and out of bed most nights. I never sleep through any longer. Sometimes—it’s weird—I think I’ve forgotten how to sleep. Some mechanism in the brain isn’t working; you could “forget” how to sleep, couldn’t you? I’m just lying there and my thoughts are quick and crowded and vivid like pieces of broken glass, nothing soft or dreamy about them. So I can’t let go. I’m afraid.
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