“You had choices, Mom.You just made the ones that suited you. Or should I say the ones that spited your parents and your upbringing.”As I listened to myself say those last words, I thought,
Hats off, Mom.You made your point.
She wiped her hands on the towel in front of her and picked up the knife to chop vegetables. I stepped back and leaned on the counter behind me.
Shrieks erupted from the backyard. We all looked out the kitchen window and saw Doug spread-eagled on the lawn with seven-year-old Elliot and five-year-old Francis crawling across his back. Peter stood to the side watching. No doubt he wanted to keep his clothes pristine.
My mother waved the knife in her hand at the window. “Holly, I am not going to stand here and bare myself for you.You can either listen to me or you can wake up twenty years from now and realize time wasted is time you never get back.” Peter, thinking my mother was waving at him, nonplussed by the knife
in her hand, waved back. She smiled, and I felt a physical jolt, because that was the smile I used when I needed to hide my true feelings.“Holly, have some courage, and for once in your life face reality and take steps.”
“Mom.” Sarah moved toward my mother as if to physically shut her up. Obviously, this was not unfolding the way Sarah and my mother had planned. Sarah should have known better than to give my mother permission to discuss my life with me and then expect her to obey boundaries.
“You are a fine one to talk to me about facing reality,” I said.
“It breaks my heart to see you’d rather blame your father and me for your inability to manage your life,” she said. “Would you really rather stay stuck in the past, keeping all of us there with you, instead of letting go, moving on, and finding out who your family has become?”
A dinner plate crashed to the floor. Good thing, because I had no answer for her. Without shifting her gaze from my face, my mother caught the cause of the plate’s fall—a little hand filled with chocolates—as it slid back across the counter next to her. I waited for her to scold Francis, who, as the smallest and quietest of the group, had no doubt been dispatched to sneak candy for all of them. She dropped the corner of her mouth, turned, reached for a handful of chocolates, opened his other palm, and filled it. Then she sent him away with a kiss on the head.
Who is this woman?
I braced myself with my hands on the counter.
The doorbell rang. Happy for an excuse to escape the kitchen empty-handed, I said, “I’ll get it.”
“That must be Dan,” said my mother.
Walking into the entryway, I felt the same anticipation I used to feel when I left school in the afternoons. I opened the front
door half expecting the School Bug to be waiting at the curb. Instead I saw a man I would have recognized anywhere, even though what was left of his red hair had all turned gray, and the lines on his face bore witness to the life he’d led.
“Holly,” my uncle said as he embraced me. “Your mom said you were flying out.”
“Yeah.” I stepped back to let him pass. I checked again for the School Bug and then shut the door.
My uncle smiled. “I sold it a long time ago.”
I hugged him tightly. And without either of us uttering a sound, everything unsaid was understood.
“Let me take your coat,” I said.
“Thanks.”
I opened the closet, pulled out a hanger, and then turned back to him.Time stopped for that moment and I saw a younger version of him sitting next to me in a different closet in a different house. The weariness that hung about him then was barely detectable now.
I shook my head. His eyes squinted.
“I just had this flash of you sitting next to me in my father’s closet.” My heart skipped and then constricted.
He sighed deeply. “I remember that day.” Then he hugged me. “Holly, it’s so good to see you.”
“You too, Uncle Dan. I’ve really missed you.”
“Sarge,” yelled Doug from behind us. I felt like someone had just let all the air out of my lungs. My uncle turned and they high-fived each other. I grabbed his other arm.
He turned back and looked intently at me. “Are you okay, Holly?” The concern in his voice was genuine. I pressed my hands against my temples, trying to force what was coming out to stay in. I took several deeps breaths until my mind went pitch-black.
Then I opened my eyes, smiled, and said, “Shall we see what the others are doing?”
After dinner we sat in the living room opening gifts.The rectangular space provided plenty of distance between me and Peter. I staked out the fireplace on one end and Peter sat on the opposite end in front of the tree with the guys.
Elliot was reviewing with Uncle Dan the instructions for the model airplane I had brought for him. Francis stood over by the tree marking a gingerbread man hanging midway as his target. I watched him pull it down and then look around to see if anyone had noticed. He locked eyes with mine as he quickly bit the little brown head clean off. I laughed. Another generation bewitched.
Sarah turned toward me and I nodded over to her son. I didn’t have enough fingers to count the number of times Sarah and I had bitten off heads, arms, and legs when we thought nobody was looking.The doughy thickness paired with smart decorations belied the actual teeth-breaking quality of those fat men who caused the branches to slope. Even so, each year we approached them thinking this time they’d taste as good as they looked.They never did.
“Holly.” Sarah handed me a big box.
“Wow, Sarah, I didn’t think we were going nuts this year.”
“We helped wrap them, Aunt Holly,” said Francis. Elliot glanced up from his model plane and nodded in agreement.
“One for each, including you,” Sarah said.
“Each?” said my mother.
Peter sat down next to me. “What did you get?” he said.
“All those presents.” Francis pointed at the box.
“One for each?” said my mother. “Do you know what that means?” She looked askance at Peter.
“No idea,” he said.
I slid away from him and placed the box between us.
“It’s a sister thing,” said Sarah. Doug handed Peter a gift.
“Don’t worry,” said Sarah.“Just like our little gingerbread friends over there, it looks better than it is.”
I opened the box and inside were six wrapped presents. I smirked at Sarah. I unwrapped the first one. Ah, a meditation candle. Next the square package. It was a leather cosmetic case. I ran my hand across it, trying to wipe away the bitterness souring my stomach. I reached for the soft package. Hanes Beefy Ts. I couldn’t hear it yet, but I knew that the tsunami my body had tried to warn me about earlier was looming on the horizon. I put down the shirts.Three gifts remained.The shape and weight indicated a set of books. My fingers trembled, then chose the other gift. I tore at the wrapping and inside was a rectangular box. I lifted the lid. A hand mirror? How strange. I looked sideways at Sarah. She smiled. Okay, the envelope or the set of books. I slipped my finger under the seal and opened the envelope. Inside was a ragged piece of paper. I pulled it out.The essay I had written for school back in sixth grade. How did Sarah end up with it?
“We can talk about it later,” said Sarah. “Open the last one.”
I turned it over and wedged my fingers between the wrapping and tape until the gift was free. The Chronicles of Narnia. All seven books.The wave roared at my back.
“Mom read those to me,” said Elliot, who had left his plane to watch me open the last of my gifts. “
Prince Caspian
was my favorite.” I flashed him a befuddled smile, unsure whether to be grateful or resentful that he had interrupted the vortex building inside me.
“Holly,” said Sarah, “you’re eating chips.”
“As a child, Holly always loved Ruffles,” said my mother nostalgically.
That brought me back. “Well, until you put me on a diet,” I said.The criticism I used to feel was not there anymore.
“It is always okay to indulge; you just have to moderate,” said my mother.
“I know. Just a few.” I smiled.
There was one unwrapped box remaining. My uncle picked it up. He turned to my mother and said, “Betty Jane?”
My eyes frantically swept the room for cover.
Was she here? Did she sneak back?
My breathing quickened. I shut my eyes.The Committee’s house remained empty, filled with dust instead of Christmas. I opened my eyes again. My uncle looked startled.The scar on his neck pulsed.
“What did you call her?” My question came out ragged, like my breath.
“That’s his pet name for me, Holly. Have you forgotten?” said my mother.
“I didn’t . . .” The edges of the Ruffles cut at my stomach. I sat back feeling dizzy. Everyone was silent. The Christmas carols on the stereo sounded tinny in the background.
Uncle Dan held out the flat box like a peace offering to my mother.
“Well,” she said. She reached for the box. “I have something now that I want to show you girls.”
Doug had been around my mother long enough to know they’d been dismissed. “Let’s go see if the game is on.” He motioned to the men and boys as he left the room.
Sarah and my mother sat on either side of me. My mother opened the box and pulled out a photo album. As far as I knew there was no record of our lives growing up. I didn’t remember my parents owning a camera. Sarah and I got Kodak Instamatics for Christmas when I was twelve and she was sixteen, but that was way too late to account for the early years.
My earlier vitriol replaced by surprise, I said, “Mom, where did you get these pictures?” I touched the plastic cover page with photos of my parents’ wedding.
“I’ve always had them stored away in boxes. I finally decided to put them in an album.”
As Mom turned the page, Sarah and I both exclaimed at the same time, “Baby Sarah!”
There was my sister, tiny and wrinkled.At her baptism, in her stroller. Crawling, walking. This went on for several pages, the three of us commenting and cooing. My mother lifted the next page and then hesitated. Sarah placed her hand over my mother’s and gently turned it. I choked on my laugh. Drew in a sharp breath. My mother grabbed my hand. I closed my eyes tight. I opened them. Squeezed them shut again.
“Aiden,” Sarah whispered.
My mother ran a finger across the photo of a smiling boy sitting on a red fire truck. “My Little Bean,” she said softly.
The wave crashed down on me. Everything in my body went rigid. Something inside me screamed,
Run for cover
. Something else willed me to stay and look. I beat at it with everything I had. Then the force of that picture dragged me, struggling, forward. I started to cry. Sarah put her arms around me, and then I wept.
My mother patted my hand. My weeping shifted to a low keening.
Sarah rocked me.
“I know it’s hard, Holly,” whispered my mother.
“You have to forgive yourself, Holly.” Sarah stroked my hair and squeezed me tighter.
When there was nothing left. I lifted my head, opened my eyes, and looked at the picture of the smiling boy. I touched the picture lightly and said, “Aiden.”
{ 24 }
I
t was a typical late-August day in the Miller household. My alarm clock went off at five a.m. I crawled out of bed and tiptoed to Sarah’s room, quietly opened the door, and crept over to her bed. Sarah had kept her room like a sauna with a space heater running all night. The air was rank with the warm, damp smell of urine.
“Sarah,” I said. “Wake up.”
Sarah groaned. “What time is it?”
“Early.”
At almost eleven, Sarah had long gotten over her shame about wetting the bed since the age of five. She threw back her covers, dragged the blankets and pillows to the floor, and pulled the sheets off the bed.
“Help me,” she said as she hoisted up one end of her bed.
Every morning we turned her mattress over; and Sarah always left her heater on regardless of the temperature outside so the flipped side was always dry. I wondered now if it was the
adrenaline that made it possible for a six-year-old and a ten-year-old to flip a mattress.
Sarah put on her bathrobe and slippers, then gathered up her sheets and slipped out the glass door. Her room opened onto the back porch and her best friend lived in the house behind us.After hearing about the consequences of being caught with a wet bed, her friend’s mother had agreed to let Sarah wash and dry her sheets before my mother woke up. Sarah always slept through the alarm clock and this was how I became complicit in her morning subterfuge.
I went back to bed for another hour and a half of sleep. Aiden’s shriek jerked me out of my dreamless state.
Five-year-old Aiden had wet the bed again. I don’t know why this surprised me. He wet the bed every night, and every morning my second alarm was the sound of my mother’s screams punctuated with a leather belt slapping onto my brother’s bare skin. Sarah had never included Aiden in her deal to wash sheets. All I did was tell him to hide his belts instead of leaving them lying around. Maybe he did.Who knows?
Aiden took those beatings every morning. I couldn’t stand to hear them. I hated it. So every morning I sandwiched my ears with my pillow to drown out the noise. It never worked.
Once, Aiden called out my name. He knew I helped Sarah. I just pressed my pillow harder against my ears.
When my mother beat Aiden, she’d yell,“How dare you wet the bed! How dare you.” As if he did it just to spite her.
I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. I could have woken him up too. But I didn’t. I could have made Sarah take his sheets. But I didn’t.
Aiden used to always say to me, “Holly, we don’t have to do what Sarah says.Two against one will win.”
I could have used her own bed-wetting as leverage and made
her take his sheets too. The three of us could have managed it. Instead we were two—me and Sarah. We managed fine. Aiden? You can see how he did on his own.