Paper Castles (24 page)

“My mother was sick when I was born. Well, actually, she’d been sick before, but it got bad when I was born.”

“What kind of illness?”

“The kind you don’t talk about.”

Phil’s eyes were steady. Unwavering. He gave her space and time to find the words. Words she’d hidden in dark corners. Words she’d been told never to speak.
It’s Nobody’s Business
, came out to put a stop to the telling, but it was too late. The door was open, words had already escaped.

“Beverly was locked in her own private darkness, from the time she was a young woman. Private, except for when it spilled out onto everyone else. It spilled out when I was born. It was more than any of the local doctors could handle. She had to go to a sanitarium for more than a year.”

She saw Phil’s lips roll in as he studied her face.

“And that’s when Neenie came to save us.” Savannah felt her voice soften around Neenie’s name. “Thank God. We bonded like mother and child from the start. I followed her around like a baby duck. And I’m sure it must have been difficult for my mother when she finally came home and I wanted nothing to do with her. They said I cried if she picked me up. Only Neenie could soothe me. To this day, I feel bad about it.” The last line floated out on a sigh.

“You were a baby.”

“I know. But as a mother, I know what it feels like.”

“Then as a mother, you must know she forgives you.”

“I suppose.” Savannah fidgeted with the fringe on the end of the blanket. Pulling and straightening the threads into perfect alignment.

“Anyway, my mother and I never really connected. We both tried. We still try. But it’s so... strained.” She lifted her shoulders, then let them drop. “Her illness came and went without warning. Circus highs, then lows like a swimming hole with no bottom in sight. Suicide attempts. More hospitalizations.”

“Mental illness tears a lot of families apart.”

“The manic times could be just as frightening. I came home one day and Momma was riding high. Had the house torn apart, saying she was going to repaint every room. Kip and I knew something was wrong. You could feel the forced frivolity. She’d be on a high for days. It was exhausting to watch her. Then she’d collapse.

Kip and I learned to lean on one another. We’d stay as far away from the house as we could, only coming home for dinner. When I think back on it now, I feel sorry for my sister. Rebecca was so much younger than us, she was left on her own. At least Kip and I had each other.”

She sat for a moment, gathering the scattered fragments of her past. Sorting them into neat little piles. After being held down for a lifetime, images flooded to the surface. Some were faded and brittle, threatening to crumble if she picked them up. Other images, though yellowed around the edges, were still crisp.

“We were never allowed to talk about it,” she said. “Even among ourselves. That’s what I couldn’t understand. It made it so much more frightening. Do you know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“Everything had to be kept, quiet. Hush-hush. Not to jeopardize my father’s career, I guess.”

“I can certainly understand how they wouldn’t want that kind of private news to get out. It was back when mental illness was grossly misunderstood. In many ways it still is.”

“You’re right, and people can be cruel. It took years for her to be properly diagnosed and receive treatment and medication. All those years in between, my father was her protector. He’d never broach a word against her. I admire him for that. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him, watching the woman he loved descend into the pit, time and time again, with no way to save her.

Whether she was away at the san or locked up in her room, we kids had to carry on with a smile. It seemed we were always trying to make up for the chaos by over-achieving in everything else. We were always so perfect on the outside while mania raged behind our front door.”

Phil nodded along as she spoke. When she took a break, he let her sit quietly, gathering her strength to start again.

“I don’t want to make it sound like there was never anything good. In between her episodes, I caught a glimpse of the woman my father fell in love with.”

She leaned her head back, eyes closed as she ran her fingers over one of the more elusive memories. Beverly sitting at her dressing table, a silken hand reaching for a powder puff, generously dredged into soft talc, then lifted to alabaster shoulders. Savannah watched as it glided in slow motion down to her mother’s décolletage, leaving a misty cloud of fine particles dancing in the air. It was like witnessing a sweet-smelling version of the Milky Way.

“Beverly tried to be the perfect wife and mother. During her good days, she threw fabulous dinner parties and was always the best-dressed woman at any event. She sparkled. I think it was important for her to prove, that she was... I don’t know.”

“Worthy?” Phil said.

“Perhaps,” Savannah nodded. “But I also remember thinking she was made of glass. And I was so afraid I’d be the one to break her, again.”

She looked over at Phil to see if he was still with her. He was. There was no sound, just the steady rise and fall of his chest like the waves rolling up on the shore and the steadiness of his eyes on her. He was taking it all in.

She remembered back to their first meeting, sitting at the dining room table surrounded with her case files and a tape recorder, and how she’d felt uncomfortable under his intense gaze. Now it felt neither invasive nor disconcerting, but rather, liberating. Never in her life had she been so
attended.
He seemed to catalogue every blink of an eye, every time she licked her lips and turned away. He was listening to her gestures, listening for the unspoken story.

“The problem was, Phil, you just had no idea when she’d lose her grip on perfect. I came home from school one day and found her in the bathtub. She’d tried to slit her wrists. I was alone with her. I didn’t know what to do.”

Savannah’s voice was little-girl thin, the memory fresh as yesterday. Her mother’s graceful hand, pale and lifeless, draped over the side of the tub. Savannah remembered being plunged into another realm of existence, her senses seemed heightened beyond normal capacity. The loud thumping in her ears was the drip, drip of blood running from her mother’s wrist, down her fingers. Hitting the cold tiles with a tiny splash, little starbursts of blood. Redder than red. And the smell of it: until that moment, she never knew blood had a smell.

Wake up, Momma, Momma wake up.

I don’t know what to do.

“I called the operator and told them my mother was hurt. Blood was everywhere.” Savannah swallowed the memory of utter helplessness. “She was gone for a long time, after that.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten.”

Phil leaned in toward her. His hand reached for hers, fingers gently caressing, his hand holding hers. Had she dreamt this? Was she dreaming now? Was this her, sitting on a blanket on the beach, calmly exposing family secrets to a man she’d only met a few months ago?

Was she dreaming?

Or was she remembering?

Something familiar was in his touch, in his hand cradling hers... As if she’d been here in this moment before. As if she’d known Phil in another lifetime. And it was all right to tell him everything, because he already knew.

“It must have been an incredible burden for a ten-year-old,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “I know it makes no sense...but in little Savannah’s mind, Beverly didn’t get sick
when
she had me. She got sick
because
she had me.”

Phil’s shoulders slumped, as if her words born of pain, nurtured in the darkness of a young girl’s fears, were a physical weight. His eyes met hers, and a thousand understandings flowed between them.

“It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s what your heart believed before your head knew better.”

Savannah looked at him, eyes wide. “The stories we tell ourselves as children are like ribbons that wrap around us. We twirl and spin and they keep winding tighter and tighter. By the time we’re adults, it’s almost impossible to untie the knots.”

She looked down at their hands, fingers responding to a pull of the heart.

“I’m sorry.” Phil untangled his fingers and pulled back, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have done that. I just got caught up in the story. And felt…”

“Sorry for me?”

“Yes.”

“It’s okay. Don’t be sorry.”

She tried to tell herself his hand reaching for hers was nothing more than any friend would do. He had empathy for a sad story. It was pure instinct on his part.

Her hand refused to believe it.

“When the police told me about Price being shot, the first thing I thought of was the blood. After finding my mother in the tub, I have an irrational fear of blood.”

“Not irrational at all.”

“You know, I’ve never seen the pictures of the crime scene. I never want to. I see it every night.”

She told him about the nightmares. How in dreams, she killed Price over and over until she was soaked in his blood. Phil never took his gaze off her face. His eyes willed her to give him every last scrap. He was the safe place she’d been looking for, the floor where she could lay it all down. Maybe, once it was all at his feet, she could walk away from it.

They sat there, each digesting stories from their vantage point. Savannah looked up at the skies, surprised a meteor hadn’t crashed at her feet, wiping out humanity.

She remembered a science class field trip when she was twelve and seeing a real meteor up close. She was so excited to see this bit of the universe that had traveled billions of miles, tearing through space to get here. She pressed her nose up to the glass enclosure with keen disappointment.

This was it?

It was just a rock. Nothing at all like the star stuff she’d envisioned.

Her own meteors sat here on the beach now. Just rocks. Powerless. She’d poured herself out, emptied her soul of filthy comic secrets. Yet the waves still rolled up onto the sand, Daisy was still chasing birds.

And Phil was still looking at her.

His expression filled with something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

She shrugged at him. “What?”

“I’m so impressed with you. You’ve been through more than most people could imagine. Yet you’re sitting here. Not curled up in a corner somewhere.”

“I don’t have any choice.”

“Yes, you do. You do have a choice. You’re choosing to be strong and determined. Why you don’t see that is a mystery.”

“Now you sound like Neenie.”

“Well then, I’m in good company.”

H
UDDLED ON the beach the next morning, Savannah pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders, drawing her knees up to her chest. Daisy sat beside her, watching and waiting for the first careless bird to chance coming within her reach. Savannah watched the horizon for the sun like a sailor’s wife waiting for her man to return from sea.

The sun poked its head out, spreading golden fingers along the horizon like a cat stretching after a long nap. Then, red began to mix with the rays of gold.

Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.

The storm was on its way. The waves churned higher and angrier. Crashing and rolling over one another in their frantic rush to reach the shore.

Savannah rested her cheek on her arm, sighing with the first contented breath she’d had in a long time. Last night’s conversation was a purge. She’d flung open the closet door of her soul and flooded it with light. The secrets scurried across the floor with no place to hide and she’d stomped them into extermination. Flashlight in hand, she illuminated the dark corners, showed Phil the dried blood on the floor. By listening to her, by hearing her, he helped drag the guilt and the shame out and hang them on the clothesline.

Daisy barked and got up. Savannah turned to see Phil walking toward her and Daisy ran out to greet him.

“I came to watch the show,” Phil said. “Any seats left?”

“You’re in luck. An orchestra seat just opened up.”

Phil eased himself down beside her. “I brought coffee.”

“Thanks.” Savannah took the cup and wrapped both hands around the warm mug.

“Looks kind of angry out there.”

“The storm’s rolling over the sea. I love a good storm.”

“What?” Phil looked at her askance.

“Well, not a hurricane. I just love when a storm rolls in and clears the air.”

Like the storm of words that tumbled over one another last night, she thought. Though her future remained as unpredictable as the pending storm, a small sliver of optimism poked through the clouds. It warmed her cheeks and she turned her face to its light.

“I was listening to the weather report,” Phil said. “They’ve still got it listed as a tropical storm. Sounds like most of it should miss us.”

“Good.”

“How did you sleep last night?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the horizon.

“The first unmedicated, full-night’s sleep I’ve had in…ages.” She paused, reflecting on how her sleep wasn’t only deep and dreamless, it was
innocent
. “I hope I didn’t scare you with my deathbed confession.”