“Why do you think she did it?” Anna asked.
Jilly pressed her head back into the soft pillow and closed her eyes. She knew they needed to deal with why Mamma sent the painting, but the thought of it made her so tired.
“Jilly? Do you think she wants to make things right with us? Have us back in her life?”
Jilly could sense Anna moving closer to her bed. She couldn’t reply. Tears leaked out the side of her eyes and rolled down her face.
What if that’s true? Would she finally love me?
“Jill?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. She never tried when we were young. We were like little ghosts in her house. She didn’t even take us to therapy after …” Her voice choked off. “She’s not a good mother, Anna. She doesn’t care.”
“Are you sure?” Anna’s voice seemed to float on the air, soft, airy, even hopeful.
That hope caused pain to lance through Jilly’s chest. She understood it.
The door opened and a nurse bustled in, a clipboard in her hand. “What? You’re still here? Visiting hours ended a long time ago.”
Anna got up off the bed, ready to rush out of the room.
Jilly grabbed her arm. “No. I need you to stay with me.”
The nurse puckered up her lips, looking very nunnish, and Jilly said, “I need my sister here. You don’t want a repeat, do you?”
The nurse’s baggy eyes widened and she looked down at her clipboard. Her brows clenched and her mouth drew up tight as a drawstring as she scribbled something on the chart, looking as though what she wrote offended every sensibility. She shook her head and moved to the bed, thermometer magically appearing in her hand. She didn’t speak a word to Jilly while she checked her vitals and scribbled the results on the chart. When she finished, she turned on her heel and stomped out, as much as her soft shoes would allow.
“I could have gone, but do you really need me here?”
Jilly reached a hand for her sister and Anna sat close, taking it between her own again. “Yes, yes I do need you. I’m feeling rather shaky at the moment. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. I’m willing to just sit quietly, though, if you need to rest.”
“Maybe, but I kind of want to talk first.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to know what brought this on?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“Gregg and I had a fight.”
Anna couldn’t help but be surprised. She never saw Gregg and Jilly fight, though she knew fighting was normal for a married couple. They just seemed like two halves of the same whole.
“He wanted me to talk about what has been bothering me and I wouldn’t. We ended up fighting and then this time he wouldn’t back off. I ran out of the room and before I even knew what was happening, I sat in a corner of the kitchen with a knife in my hands. I don’t even remember picking it up.”
“Oh, Jilly,” Anna said softly.
“Gregg found me like that and called an ambulance.”
“Does Gregg know about Mamma? Have you ever talked about her?”
“No. Gregg doesn’t know anything about her. It’s like I just sprang from the ground, fully raised, and there were no parents involved as far as he’s concerned. He doesn’t even know my father was some artist Mamma had a one-night stand with. I’ve always been too ashamed to tell him. He’s always wondered about my past, of course, but from my reaction every time he brought it up, he decided to let it go, I guess. Until last night.”
“Because of the exhibition? Of course that would make him curious.”
“Yes, but he knows me well enough not to come right out and ask. Last night he finally got tired of me not talking and he started asking.”
“Well, you really can’t blame him, can you?”
“No, and that’s the thing. I’ve been trying to blame him and you and anyone else in my life rather than looking to the source. I even accused you of doing that, when here I was doing the same. God, I was so self-righteous. You must have hated me.”
“No. It made me look at myself for the first time in a very long time, maybe the first time ever.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” Anna pulled her hand away and ran both through her uncombed hair.
“What conclusions did you come to?” Jilly asked. “What are you going to do about Rob?”
“What about him?”
“Oh, come on, we all know how he treats you.” Jilly stopped, wondering if she should take it all the way. Then the words seemed to spring from her lips fully formed. “All the women he parades around town?” At the look on Anna’s face, Jilly wished she could take the words back.
Anna looked shocked for all of ten seconds before the truth began to dawn on her face. The transformation was startling.
“You didn’t know.”
“I suspected recently, but I didn’t know for sure.” Anna gave a weary sigh. “But, thanks for confirming it. Now I can do what I planned without feeling bad.” Anna stared at the floor.
“What’s that?”
“I’d already decided to leave him. Now, I know I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I’ll move into a hotel for a bit, but I’m going back to Toronto, Jill.”
“What?” Jilly shot up in the bed and gasped at the pain in her arms.
“Hey, hey, relax. Don’t do yourself damage.”
“But Anna, you can’t go back. What will you do?”
“I don’t know, Jill, but I’ve seemed to go wrong ever since I left there, so what I’m thinking is if I go back to the beginning and start there, maybe the next path will be a better one. Don’t worry, I’m not going to stay away forever. We’ll still see each other.”
Jilly pulled Anna into a fierce hug. “How am I going to live without my big sister?” Her voice was muffled against Anna’s hair.
Anna pulled back and looked in Jilly’s face. “You’ll do fine. But you need to deal with this pain. So I think you need to come back with me to see Mamma. Let’s face it together.”
Jilly thought about it, surprised that she didn’t hate the idea. She wasn’t excited about going home, but maybe Anna was right. Doing it her way hadn’t been a barrel of laughs.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” Anna said. “Really? Just okay.”
“Yeah, okay. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Well, yeah.” Anna sat back and smiled. “I guess I expected a fight and you took the wind right out of my sails.”
Jilly smirked.
“You sure love that, don’t you?”
“Yep.” Jilly could feel her eyes begin to droop and Anna must have noticed.
“Okay, I’m going to go home and get a couple of hours sleep. You need some rest too. When do you think they’ll let you go?”
“Well, I’m here voluntarily, so I can leave anytime.”
“Then you talk to Gregg in the morning, but I’m going to book the tickets for us to leave in a week or two. Will that give you enough time to get things settled?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Okay. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and take out half our savings. If I don’t do it now, Rob will lock everything down. Once I leave, whatever I take is what I’m going to get.”
“That bastard! I hate what he’s done to you.”
Anna patted Jilly’s leg and got to her feet. “It’s okay now. I’m glad. I won’t feel any guilt leaving him.”
Anna pulled Jilly close and hugged her tight. “I love you, baby girl. You know that?”
“I love you too, Sis.” Jilly kissed Anna on the cheek. “You go get some sleep.”
“You too.”
Anna stopped at the door and turned. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “We’re going to make it, you know.”
She didn’t wait for an answer.
Alone, Jilly thought about Mamma.
Chapter 11
The house was quiet when Anna got home from the hospital. Rob wasn’t up yet. She crept up the stairs and paused outside their bedroom door. She didn’t want to get into bed with him, and if she slept in the guest bedroom he would wonder what was going on. She didn’t want a confrontation before she was ready.
She went back down the stairs and wandered around the house, trying to settle her nerves. Her brain spun out of control and she couldn’t nail down a single coherent thought.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Mamma and how she and Jilly ended up the way they were. She’d always thought they had done pretty well with their lives, but lately wondered if she’d just willfully kept her mind closed to the reality.
In thinking over their childhood, Anna couldn’t come up with a single event that brought about Jilly’s pain and her own inability to open herself up to the people who loved her. That’s how she’d always lived. It was no wonder Rob had sought female company outside of their marriage. She knew her coldness was in large part to blame. As much of a stick-in-the-mud as he could be, he was still a man. Anna pushed aside thoughts of her husband. She didn’t want to understand him. She wanted to be angry and blame him.
Mamma had never hurt them outright. She’d given them food, shelter and the basic needs children have to survive. What she didn’t give them was herself. She held herself back as though she were an ice queen up in her castle ruling her subjects with distant words. There were no cuddles, kisses, and tickles. No bedtime stories or jokes. She and Jilly had grown up in a world of ice in which only their love for each other could melt some of their frozen parts.
By the time they were teenagers and Jilly’s artistic talent in full bloom, Mamma began to get more involved, but with no change in her austere manner. She just became more demanding. She pushed Jilly to do better with her painting, to “go deeper, be honest, dammit!”, until Anna had to scrape up the pieces of her sister and try to put them back together again. She gave and gave until she felt like nothing more than a pale image of herself.
Jilly at first complied with Mamma, happy to have gotten her mother’s attention at last. Mamma wore her down until finally Jilly snapped. They would scream and yell at each other until Anna, in desperation, intervened, only to feel the blast from both of them. Their house blew hot and cold until Anna was in a perpetual state of anxiety. She never knew which way the temperature would go until she’d stuck her wet finger up to test the air. She took to keeping to her books and studying, only emerging when the shouts would no longer allow her to concentrate.
Soon after this period, Jilly began cutting. Anna only became aware of it after it had been going on for some time, she suspected at least six months. Despite the turmoil and the cutting, Jilly continued to paint, constantly trying to win Mamma’s approval, which never came. She finally gave up once she had the approval of the now most important person in her life. Matty didn’t care if Mommy painted, as long as she was there to care for him.
“You’re still up?”
Rob’s voice brought Anna out of her memories. He stood outside the kitchen, neatly dressed and ready for work. She glanced at the clock on the stove.
“Why are you going to work so early?”
Early morning meeting with your girlfriend?
“I have a client coming in from out of town,” Rob snapped as though she didn’t have the right to question him. “What’s wrong with you?” Rob’s mouth turned down. How had she not seen how ugly he’d become?
“I’m fine.” Anna took a step back and turned toward the island counter. She pressed both palms onto the top and dropped her head. Weariness swept over her so fast, she felt dizzy. “I’m tired. I was at the hospital all night with Jilly.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you about it later. I’m going to bed.”
“Okay, I’ll talk to you after work then. What are we having for dinner?”
Anna pushed away from the counter. She walked out of the kitchen without saying a word to Rob. She knew he wouldn’t come after her and demand an answer. What she’d told Jilly a few hours ago came back with perfect clarity. Their marriage was over. She knew it; Rob knew it. He hung on to keep up appearances, but wasn’t willing to do anything to make it better. She hated him for it, but she hated herself more for letting him treat her like a stick of furniture. Was there anything sadder than a woman who allowed a man that kind of power?
Anna went into her office, closed and locked the door behind her. She needed to get everything out before her body would relax enough to fall asleep. She sat down at her desk, pulled her journal forward and picked up her pen.
Her thoughts were in such disarray that she found it difficult to grab a hold of one long enough to make it coherent. She struggled for a few seconds then dropped the pen, resisting the urge to fling it across the room. Where had this anger come from?
Anna leaned back in her chair and stuffed the anger back down. She took deep breaths and focused on the large portrait of Matthew, hanging over the fireplace, her favorite focal point of the room. They’d gotten him to sit still enough for the artist to capture his essence in oils—a not so minor miracle at two years old. Anna had paid dear for the painting, but as she looked at it for the hundredth time, she knew it was worth every penny. She would never have a child of her own, so Matthew had taken on the role of most important person in her life. She admitted freely that she indulged him, something Jilly complained about forcefully and often, but Anna didn’t care. He would grow up far too soon and wouldn’t need his auntie anymore. What would she do then?