Authors: Kelli Bradicich
Chapter Twenty Two
The rusty gate screeched as Ingrid dragged it open. Libby, Kristian and Sebastian unloaded the car, buckets, brooms, and gardening tools. Emmy walked with her mother up a cracked cement path riddled with weeds to the ramshackle cottage.
At the front stoop, her mother cleared her throat and said, “This is the house I’ve always tried to forget about.”
Emmy looked around at the overgrown rose bushes strangled by taller weeds and scrub. Spider webs laced the doorframe and windows. The key had to be forced into the lock and jiggled until the door gave way.
“The ghosts from our past,” Ingrid muttered.
Emmy didn’t need any further explanation. She followed her mother into the house. They walked through the living room. Ingrid yanked the rotting curtains open. Some ripped in her hands. Dust motes swam in the light streaming through windows so covered in grime views of the outer world no longer existed.
In the greenish light, Emmy watched as her mother struggled to speak. Emmy took over for her
. “It’s a mausoleum.”
Ingrid cleared her throat
. “The ah – um – a few days after your dad and I crashed in the river, Maya and I packed a bag, closed all the curtains, locked the door and left everything behind. It was hard enough being here with all of my family gone. Your father made it easier to handle but then when he drowned too…I didn’t want to be next.” She sighed. “Now here I am again. But Maya’s gone now. Kind of a full circle.”
“Are we coming back here to live?”
“No. What? No.”
“Then it’s not a full circle.”
“But it’s something I have to face. Say goodbye to.”
Emmy led the way into the darkened hallway. From the doorway of a tiny room, lit only by filtered light through the blinds, she saw
Hot Wheel
cars lined up on a track and
Star Wars
action figures spread over furniture. A large patched bear sat on the bed, its head flopped to the side. Homework lay open on the desk. “It’s Uncle Pete’s room, isn’t it?”
“Mum couldn’t bring herself to pack it up. She left everything the same. She never forgot to dust his room after that, though. Once a week. Saturday mornings
.” Ingrid smiled, “Maybe I should have kept that up. Come down to clean once a week.” But then she shook her head. “I couldn’t have done that.”
Emmy stood for a moment longer. It felt weird to be walking around this strange house stuck in time. She stepped back, edging closer to her mother
, discovering her gone.
“Mum?” Emmy called, skipping back into the hall. She found her in another bedroom. Emmy’s head and heart were thumping. It felt
as if they were intruders. She tried to calm herself. Her mouth was dry and with all the dust a tiny cough kept catching in her throat.
Ingrid drew Emmy close. “This was my bedroom.”
“It looks grey,” Emmy said, taking in the frills on the single bed and books on the bookshelf.
“It was a soft pink. Pete’s room was blue. My mother was traditional.”
Emmy saw a shrine set up in the corner. Dusty photos of her father were set in hand decorated frames. She stared at his face, the way he stood, tall and proud, muscles flexed. It was like getting to know him all over again. She’d never seen those photos before. In amongst them, Emmy caught sight of a close up picture of a puppy, held tight in his arms.
“Is that Dad’s dog?”
“Huh?” Ingrid asked, bending down to look at the photo too. “Oh.”
“What?”
“The dog drowned with the car. He was in the back seat. Just a puppy.”
A sense of knowing filled Emmy, but she pushed it aside and listened to her mum.
“When the car plunged into the river, your father made me wind the window down but I couldn’t get it down far enough. Water was gushing in so fast but the window jammed. We were stuck in the car. It was like the river was swallowing us.”
“How’d you get out?”
“I don’t know. The car was full to the top. I tried to take in a last gulp of air up at the roof of the car. Your father dragged me by the leg. I took in all this water. I think with the car full he managed to get the door open. He kept his head.
“The next thing I was on the bank coughing my lungs out and he was gone. The last I saw of him was his jeans as he dived back under. He didn’t come back – neither did the dog,” Ingrid choked.
Emmy watched in silence as her mother reached for a plastic hair clip, and dusted it off. She placed it to her lips. Emmy couldn’t stop looking for the changes in expressions that crossed her mother’s face with the flood of memories. “That’s not how you told the story to me all those years. You said he saved you but he never came up.”
“He did. But we both wanted him to save the puppy.”
“Mum…”
“Then, when the doctors checked me over, they told me I was pregnant with you.”
“So we survived.”
“That we did.”
Many thoughts hung between them.
“Why do you think we are the only two to not be taken by the river? I mean, that day it had its chance
, right?”
“Well, you weren’t even born yet.”
“But it could have got us both then. It took my dad.”
“We were just not meant to be taken that day. Maybe you were meant to be born. Who knows?” A small smile tweaked at Ingrid’s lips. “I don’t think we should be talking about this. It’s
as though we’re tempting fate.”
“Maybe we aren’t meant to drown in Mercy River. Maybe, we’re afraid all the time for nothing.”
“Don’t ever underestimate its power.”
“Mum. It’s only a river.”
Her mother reached out and covered Emmy’s mouth with cold dry fingers. “No more.”
Emmy felt the heaviness of the silence in the room, and couldn’t help looking over her shoulders for the ghosts. They weren’t there.
Ingrid rocked back and laughed.
Emmy took the clip from her mother and placed it back near the shrine. She followed her out into the hall and pushed the door to the main bedroom open. On the bedpost of the huge wooden bed, a dressing gown hung. Her mother lifted it. The towel
ling was stiff and dust swirled into the air around them. Ingrid buried her face into the cloth and came up coughing. She began to cry.
Emmy took the gown from her, dropping it on the bed. She reached out for her mother. “It’s okay, Mum.”
“I thought it would smell like them. They both wore it. They fought over it.”
“It’s been a long time. Scents fade,” Emmy said, deciding it was better to put the gown back on the bedpost. “I bet your
mum and dad are both watching now. Actually, I know they are. They don’t want you to be sad. It was so long ago. So much has happened.”
“Maya and Kristian took me away from here. I still felt sad sometimes, but mainly scared. That river can get so loud. But there was nowhere else to go. Every time I started to forget them, the rains would come and I’d remember how they all drowned.”
“Rain changes everything in the mountains.”
“Maya convinced me to teach you to swim. I was always so petrified I’d lose you too.” Her mother swiped at the tears on her face. “I’m so bloody stupid. I can’t keep running from it. The pain catches up. It always does. Maya’s dead now. I just can’t lose anyone else. Living on a mountain top hasn’t stopped death from finding me again.”
“I miss her.” Emmy gazed into her mother’s face. With a slow nod from Ingrid, she noticed it change.
“I would’ve been lost without Maya and Kristian back then. They became the family you and I lost.”
“Moving up to the mountain was the best thing you did, Mum.”
“Sometimes I wonder, Em. The times I see you struggling just to speak to people…I really wonder what I’ve done to you. Maybe I should’ve stayed down here and raised you on my own.”
“I don’t think we would’ve been happy. Not down here. Not without Maya and Kristian and Sebastian. They’re our family. And I love the mountain. It’s who I am. It’s where I fit.”
Ingrid took Emmy’s chin in her hand, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Maybe, you’re supposed to go back out into the world and show people how to be as sweet as you are.”
Her mother grinned down at her. Emmy felt some of the coldness in her chest melt. She lived for those moments when Ingrid was able to step far enough away from the fear and saw her as she really was. They were rare. Thanks to Maya she now realised it was love.
“Things have a way of working out in the end, don’t they?” Ingrid said.
“There is one thing I do know for sure Mum.”
“What’s that?”
“From what you told me today, I know for sure I’m never alone.” She pointed to herself and her mother. “We’re never alone. We’re being protected.”
“How do you mean?”
“When I go under water I see the faces, my father, my boy-uncle Pete, your mum and dad. But sometimes there is also a dog yapping. It’s an excited bark. It’s happy. You never told me about the puppy before, have you?”
“I don’t know
. Maybe I have.”
“I don’t remember you saying anything. It makes me think the ghosts are real.”
“Really?” Ingrid chuckled. “Who am I to say you’re wrong? I’m not going into that river to see them for myself.”
“So you believe me?”
“Maya told me you still saw them.”
“So you
do
believe me?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, does it?”
“I did hear the dog. You never told me about the dog- not that I remember.”
“Emmy
, I believe you.”
“Do you think Maya’s down there with them now?”
“Don’t know.”
“I want to know.”
“Not yet, Em. I’m not ready to let you do that. Don’t let that river trick you into believing you are safe.” Ingrid went back into the lounge room to get the memory box that Kristian had made her. “I just need to grab a few things.”
In the faded pink childhood bedroom, Emmy noticed the way her mother’s face changed, becoming younger. Her eyes spr
ang to life as she remembered the past. The memory box was in the centre of the room, ready to be filled. Inside were photographs, figurines from her dolls’ house and some old birthday cards. A music box lay open beside her, fully wound and tinkling a tune.
“What’s the song?”
“Edelwiess.”
“It’s beautiful. I’ve never heard it before.”
Ingrid sifted through some of her favourite books. “Remember when I used to read
Bambi
to you when you were little?”
“And we’d cry when the mother died.”
“I was always crying for my mum.”
“I felt so sad for Bambi, out there in the wilderness on his own.”
Her mother placed the book in the box, turning back to her bookshelf and running her fingers along the titles.
“I think you should take them all,” Emmy said.
Ingrid looked at the shelf and shook her head slowly. She ran her fingers through the dust. She reached back in the box for
Bambi
and put it back on the shelf. “They’re all just things. They’re not going to bring my family back.” Quiet tears flowed down her mother’s face. “I’m here to get things but I don’t want anything.”
“What about just a special thing to help you remember each of them. “That dressing gown. That teddy bear. We’ll wash them up and just have them in our cabin.”
“Dressing gowns and teddy bears aren’t people. They’re all gone.”
Emmy reached up for the framed photos of her dad. “What about these?”
Ingrid took the photos and swiped at the dust. She was crying but also smiling and laughing. “It’s like it all happened yesterday but at the same time it’s like it happened so long ago that it didn’t happen to me.”
“Confusing.”
Her mother dropped the photo, dropped onto the dusty carpet, curled up and sobbed.
“Mum? I’m sorry
.” Emmy winced. She bent down to press her cheek in her mother’s hair. “It was a long time ago. You have me now, and Kristian and Sebastian.”
But her mother kept crying.
“We all love you Mum.”
Emmy hugged her mother tighter.
Her mother bucked and rocked.
Emmy scrambled back.
Ingrid was on her feet and out of the room.
The sound of the front door groan
ed as it was opened and then slammed.
Emmy sat alone with the dust motes circling. She sneezed. She dropped the photos in the memory box, went to her grandparents
’ room for the dressing gown and then swiped the patched up bear from her uncle’s room. She figured she’d see how they were washed up. The dust made her eyes water. She coughed as she stepped out into the sunlight, grateful to be closing the front door behind her.
Her mother was leaning against the van.