Authors: Kathy Reinhart
My question was sarcastic and hypothetical, but Cory had an answer for it anyway.
“Take a better look, Meg… north to south...” Pointing in the direction of the waiter, she continued, “A weekend with Popeye over there and you’d be asking yourself, Bluto who.”
I pushed my chair underneath the table and said nothing. Instead, I offered a smile as I waved them goodbye, Cory’s words running through my head. I could have disagreed, I could have made excuses but I didn’t because at that moment, I knew exactly where Brian and I stood. It took a lot of courage to admit what I’d known for a while, but now that I had admitted it, I had to say it aloud and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
Seven
...Picking up her flask, she stared at it for a moment and then placed it back on the table, deciding against another swallow...
Before I had even arrived at my grandparent’s house, I found myself wishing I had taken Charlotte up on her offer to join me. With her, I could have kept the conversation simple, without her, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fight the urge to initiate a serious discussion about the past.
“Gram, what did you mean when you said Aunt Karen wasn’t always the way she is now? How well did she understand things when she was young?”
Taking a silver flask from her purse, Gram casually looked around as if expecting to find someone else in the room. With a twist of her wrist, she poured a healthy shot of vodka into her tea.
“Well…” She tipped her hand once more, before capping the flask and returning it to her purse. She continued, “She used to speak. Simple words, short sentences, but she was quite capable of getting her point across. Why do you ask?”
“She stopped speaking after what happened to her?”
“Oh, heaven’s no! We couldn’t shut her up after that. Hell, she’d tell anyone who’d listen.” Shaking her head, she said, “Not that she knew the proper words to describe what had happened.”
“Then when did she stop speaking?”
“After you were born.”
I gave that a lot of thought. I couldn’t help but wonder why she chose never to speak again, only after I was born. As if reading my mind, Gram pulled her chair closer, a serious expression crossing her face.
“Child, you have to understand, she was able to communicate but with a limited vocabulary. She grasped only so much.”
I nodded in understanding, although I understood nothing.
“What did my birth have to do with her ability to speak?”
I saw doubt flash through my grandmother’s eyes. Realizing that she was uncertain about revealing more than she already had, I begged, “Gram, please. I have to know.”
Using every stall tactic she could think of from smoothing her skirt, to wiping the table with her bare hand, she looked up at me several times, her head making jerky movements.
When her words finally came, they were sharp and fast.
“Meg, when this happened we all agreed the truth could never come out.” Lowering her head, she continued, “I may have had a little too much to drink and chirped like a bird the last time I saw you, but I’m not so sure that telling you was for the best.”
“Why? Gram, I have the right to know; besides, without knowing who my
real
parent’s are, I have no way of knowing who I am or who else I may be related to.” I hesitated. “Gram, what I’m trying to say is… I could be marrying a blood relative.”
“Well for the love of God, child, what wretched thoughts!” Reaching for her purse, she added, “If it’ll help put your mind at ease, Brian is not relation.”
“So then you do know who did it?”
Taking a swallow straight from her flask, she looked around the room and pulled her chair in even closer to me. I instinctively glanced around the room also, not sure who or what I should be looking for.
She began, her voice low, “Meg, Pastor Graham and his wife were never blessed with children of their own, oh… and what fine parents they would have made. Anyway, one of the church members, Esther Borland, left her illegitimate teenage son, Shayne, to them in her will…”
“In her will? I didn’t know you could do that.”
“I don’t think you can really, but it was there in black and white that they were to finish raising him. Since they were childless and he was in need of a home, they took him in… being the good Christians they were and all.”
Seemingly more relaxed, she took another drink from the silver flask, not bothering to return it to her purse this time.
“Meg, the pastor and his wife were the perfect example of a happy marriage. I don’t believe anyone had ever heard them exchange a harsh word… until Shayne that is.”
I was eager to hear more and prodded, “What happened,” when she hesitated.
“I suppose the Lord was testing the strength of their marriage because Shayne put them through things one could only imagine. He stole from the collection… he destroyed church property… he ran off more than once and he was prone to set fires, but they kept trying. They prayed and they prayed but for whatever reason, their prayers went unanswered.”
“What finally happened to him?”
Sadness filled her eyes. She shook her head in heartbreaking recollection as she spoke, “It was a week or so shy of harvest time, I remember because the carnival was in. I was at Greeley’s market when one of the ladies from church rushed in as if her pants were on fire, hollering, ‘Renee Graham’s dead. She’s been killed in an automobile accident on Gunner’s Hill’.”
Picking up her flask, she stared at it for a moment and then placed it back on the table, deciding against another swallow.
“Her car had gone through the guard rail on the first sharp curve of the hill, but there wasn’t one skid mark on the road. The police had Gil Schaffer go over the car… looking for foul play I believe. Sure enough, he found that someone had cut through the brake lines. Oh, the poor pastor. He surely adored her.” One, lone tear spilled over Gram’s lashes, as she continued, “I don’t know how he ever made it through the funeral. I swear that man aged ten years in the course of one week.”
She picked up her flask again, this time taking a long swallow, stood and walked around the table toward the window. After looking out in each direction, she turned to face me.
“Meg, Renee Graham was laid to rest on a Thursday. The whole town was in mourning, not only because we had lost one of our own, but because of the manner in which we lost her. I think deep down we all suspected who the guilty party was, but even after everything he had put them through, Pastor Graham would hear nothing of Shayne’s involvement in the accident. He desperately—and foolishly—tried to believe in his innocence.”
She had drawn me deeply into her story. I felt my own eyes fill a time or two while she spoke and found myself anxious to hear more.
“What happened, did he do it and how did they find out?”
Without making me wait, she continued, “The day after the funeral, I took Karen to the church to fold the bulletins as I did every week. The pastor was in his office, working on his sermon. I returned home and was due to pick Karen up in fifteen minutes when the phone rang—it was Pastor Graham.”
Gram wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed vigorously. Even in the heat of a warm day, I watched her tremble. She was obviously having trouble continuing and paused more often to regain her thoughts.
“I can recall the exact words he said to me.” Through her vacant stare, through her tears and through her pain I saw the dark memories and anguish that had burdened her for a very long time. She continued, “When I said hello, he said, ‘Cybil, I’m sorry. I’ve let my congregation down, but I will make amends. Karen needs you now.’ I didn’t even have the opportunity to ask him anything or say goodbye before he hung up.” Choking back a sob, she spoke softly, “I raced to the church. I knew something was terribly wrong, I could feel it in my bones. When I got there, I found my little girl crying in a corner. Her clothes were torn, her hair was mussed, and the pastor and Shayne were lying side by side no more than twenty feet from her. They had each… they had each been shot in the head.”
My breath caught in my throat. I realized what Gram was telling me and suddenly I felt nauseas and wanted to cry. For an unknown reason, I felt dirty and wished I had never asked to know about my past.
“Oh my God, Gram. What you all must have gone through.”
I stood and joined her at the sink. Wrapping my arms around her, I whispered, “I’m sorry,” softly into her hair.
When I released her, she walked over to where her flask sat on the table. After another swallow, she sat and began to speak, this time with less emotion.
“It nearly killed your grandfather. She was so innocent, so pure of heart, how anyone could hurt her in such a way…” She swiped underneath each eye. “He found it so hard to be with her after that. He loved her so much that every time he looked at her, he felt that pain all over again. There was nothing he could do to help her, although he would have died trying.”
“Is that why he doesn’t go to visit her now?”
She nodded. “It was real hard on him… then there were the years in prison… well, he’s been through a lot, too.”
A few minutes passed, each of us reflecting in our own thoughts. I was in dismay, thinking about all of the pain my family had endured, while I was oblivious to it.
“Gram, I’m still curious about something. When exactly after my birth did she stop communicating?”
Displaying no emotion, Gram answered my question. “Your father…” Looking up at me, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, your uncle, Donny… oh, what a fine boy he was. Almost three years before you were born, he had taken a bride and settled in Ransom, about sixty miles from here. We had talked about what would happen to you after you were born. Karen keeping you wasn’t an option.” Pride glowing in her eyes, she said, “Donny came to us early on in Karen’s pregnancy and asked if we would mind if he and Sheila raised you up as their own.” She smiled broadly. “That had been my prayer all along. Of course, I would never have asked that of anyone, not even family, but the thought of giving you up to strangers was weighing heavily on us.”
“You wouldn’t have kept me?” I found myself surprised by the hurt in my own voice.
“It’s not that I wouldn’t have…hell child, in the end I did. Karen occupied all of my time. I was fortunate that Donny was quite a bit older than she was. He was twelve and no longer in need of constant attention when she was born. Child, it wasn’t a question of love, I just didn’t have it in me anymore. She was a full time job.”
Thinking back to the day I spent at Cherry Hall alone with her, I understood what Gram was saying.
“So why did she stop speaking?”
“From the minute you were born, she saw you as a doll, a toy to play with. Even in her state, she somehow sensed that you belonged to her. When it came time to leave the hospital, of course, Donny and Sheila took you with them, and she became very angry. Afterwards, when Donny and Sheila would come to visit, they would let her hold you while they kept careful watch, but she would become so irate each time they would take you from her, sometimes to the point of being violent. It got so we couldn’t let her hold you at all. That’s when she stopped speaking.” She hesitated. “At first we thought it might be her way of punishing us, we thought it would pass in time. But as time went by we began to realize, she had slipped into a world all her own, a place we couldn’t reach.”
This all seemed surreal, something I would hear about, but nothing that would ever really happen. It was all so sad. Gram painted a very clear picture of the past, a picture that included me, but I didn’t feel a part of it. I felt like a bystander, watching this family’s life fall apart and my only role was to stand by and say ‘what a shame’, in between tragedies.
“Gram, why didn’t I ever hear about any of this? I mean, you’d think someone would have found pleasure in informing me of my sordid start in life.”
“No one knew really. Naturally, we couldn’t keep that horrible day in the church a secret, but as far as Karen being pregnant, once we learned of it we immediately sent her to stay with my sister in New York. Everyone thought it was because her behavior had become erratic after what had happened to her, they thought it was a much-needed vacation. Donny and Sheila lived far enough away that no one questioned the birth of
their
daughter when the time came. No one was ever the wiser.”
“Clever.”
“Well, Meg, you do what you have to in order to protect the people you love.”
“Why don’t you want Gramp to know you’ve told me?”
“The fact that he couldn’t spare Karen an enormous pain always tore him apart; he said that no matter what it took, he would spare you from it. Left to him, you’d never know.”
At that moment, we heard Gramp’s old truck pulling up the driveway. Holding a finger to her lips, Gram said, “Not a word, child. No need getting his suspenders in a twist.”
I forced a smile and nodded.
“Shouldn’t we be leaving for Brickway soon anyway?”