by Lisa Rusczyk
CLEO
Where was I? Oh, yes. Barbie had told me about Mother’s mental health history, about the hidden identity of our father. The family secrets. I was angry that she suggested things might not be as straight-forward as they seemed on the surface.
When I got home from the beach, Angelica hugged my knees then ran out of the room and wouldn’t speak to me. Cecil told me she was ticked that I had gone away overnight and hadn’t taken her with me.
“You have a little sunburn,” he said.
“We sat on the beach for a few hours yesterday,” I told him.
He asked if I had a good time.
“Yes, we did. It was nice,” I said.
He kissed my forehead and said, “Then why do you look like you want to slap someone?”
I told him what Barbie had revealed to me. He listened thoughtfully without interruption. When I was finished, he said, “I always thought it was something like that with your mother, back in Nebraska. How she wouldn’t leave the house, the tight look on her face when I came over, how it took some time for her to relax.”
I was surprised. “You knew all along?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know anything. It was just a hunch. Listen, Cleo. Don’t let it get you so worked up.”
I told him, “What makes me angry is that nobody told me until now. So she’s mentally unstable. What’s the big deal? Why all the secrets?”
He said, “Like Barbie said, big family in the area, wanting to keep it hushed. It’s probably as simple as that. Or maybe they thought you knew, had figured it out or had been told. Families with secrets don’t exactly talk about them over dinner.”
“That’s true,” I conceded. I didn’t tell him about Barbie’s last comment, about how she thought there was “something” to Mother’s state of mind. I would be revealing the Beacon to him if I talked about that. I didn’t want Cecil to know about the Beacon. It was my secret, my own little thing that was all mine and had nothing to do with my ordinary life with my family in Powelton Village.
Cecil took my hand and said, “If you need to know more, write your mother a letter asking her about it. Or better yet, why don’t you go for a visit? We can afford it. I’m sure they would all like to see Angelica.” I heard a little bitterness in his voice, knowing how we both felt that nobody in our families had even seen our daughter.
I rubbed my crispy cheeks and thought this over. I didn’t think a letter would do any good. But maybe I could do something, get some real help for my mother if I went down there. After what happened with her other psychiatrist – my father – I assumed they might be keeping her from getting proper care. Thus the strange letter and no further correspondence since then.
I told Cecil, “I couldn’t take her. I could go, but I don’t want Angelica exposed to whatever is going on down there.”
Just then, Angelica decided she had forgiven me and she ran to me and climbed on my lap, tears in her eyes. She said, “Love you, Mommy. You promise to take me with you next time?”
“I promise, baby,” I told her.
I booked a flight for a week from Sunday and called Grandmother to tell her I was coming. She didn’t sound surprised, but did ask why I would come “without any reason.” I told her it had been too long since I’d seen my family and I was feeling nostalgic.
She said, “Well, you are always welcome.” She asked if I was bringing Angelica, and I told her that my daughter was too afraid to fly. I would be coming alone. She told me they would send a car for me at the airport.
The rest of the week while Cecil was at work and Angelica was at school, I read all the time. My thoughts were so wrapped around my mother, trying to remember clues from my childhood, that I didn’t even fantasize much. I thought about Nikki only when I was trying to fall asleep, remembering our conversation on the beach and his friendly hand-holding. Now that I was away from those moments when he had done it, it seemed unusual for a man to hold a married woman’s hand like that. I reminded myself that, at the time, it wasn’t odd. It felt just right, like reassurance through body language that we were becoming great friends and that there was nothing to be afraid of when we were together. Really, though, did I have any inkling what it meant to him? I had no idea. Each time I thought of it, I pushed back my doubts as far into the back of my mind as I could, like I did with being self-conscious about my weight whenever I was plump, and tried to focus on believing what I wanted to, that what it felt like at the time was what had happened.
At the Beacon on Friday night, with 88 Fingers hitting all 88 of those keys, the young, shaved head fellow strumming on his guitar and Reed and Barbie sitting next to me deep in a conversation, I was relaxed and a bit drunk. Nikki had been feeding me red wine again, and as you can see, reporter, it may very well be my great weakness. Nikki could tell it brought down my inhibitions. I wanted to talk to him, but he was busy; it was crowded, even for a Friday. Swan was spinning on the stage in her pink ballet shoes and I had nobody to talk to so I just enjoyed the show. I felt more comfortable than I had on my previous visits. I suppose the beach experience made me feel more like one of the crew.
Nikki took a break at one point when he brought me another glass of wine. He smiled at me and touched my hand, which made my heart flutter a little. He asked, “Have you ever had a tarot reading?”
I glanced at the beaded curtain as it gently swayed almost in time with the music.
“Yeah,” he said, “It’s what they do in there sometimes. Astra is doing some readings. Since you’re comfortable with her, think you’d give it a go?”
I said, “I’m not exactly comfortable with her. I only met her once.” But I was smiling and with the drink and the bizarre frenzy of music and Nikki grinning and holding out his hand to me, I nodded and he led me behind the beaded curtain. I was a bit displeased to see D.D. sitting in a corner with her eyes closed and fingers held in little circles on her knees. I recognized the pose as one of meditation, but her eyes flashed open as I was watching at her and they turned to tight spikes when she noticed Nikki holding my hand. Her eyes snapped shut, but the corners of her mouth drooped down.
We sat on some pillows on the floor next to Astra, who was shuffling cards and telling a young man not to worry too much about something in her reading. She said, “It will work out and it won’t hurt as much as you think it will, dear.”
The young man nodded thoughtfully and thanked her for her time.
“It’s what I do,” she said with a modest bow of her head, as though this gift of foresight she was exercising could never be understood by the sightless.
“Astra, Astra,” Nikki sung her name. “What about Cleo, here? I don’t think she’s ever had her future read. What do you say?”
Astra smiled at me and gestured to the pillow across from her, shuffling her cards. “I thought I’d be reading your cards someday.”
I moved to the pillow she wanted me to sit on and she handed me her deck with a sense of reverence. Nikki explained that the cards carry energy of all who touch them. I didn’t know anything about that, but I held the cards with as much delicacy as I could. The deck was much larger than an ordinary deck of cards. Nikki and Astra watched me.
“What am I supposed to do?”
They both laughed, Nikki patting me on the shoulder. Astra said, “You shuffle them, dear. And try to clear your mind. Once you think you are done, give them back to me.”
I shuffled awkwardly, like I was handling a deck made of jagged glass. A card dropped out, face down. I reached to pick it up, but Astra dragged it to her knee. “When a card falls out, it could be a significant influence.”
I pushed the cards around in my hands a few more times, and then handed the deck to Astra. Whereas this room behind the beaded curtain once held an uncomfortable suspicion that it was full of charlatans, now that I was a focus of it, I was completely curious.
She laid them out in front of her face-up. I saw cups and swords and cards with names like “The Hermit” and “The Emperor.”
“And this as a greatest influence. Another Major Arcana card, how rare is this? But don’t you go thinking this card is literal. Many do, dear. This card shows that something under the surface of your very existence is about to come out. You will have to sacrifice something to continue on the path you are now on.”
She fell silent and exchanged a glance with Nikki while I looked over the cards. She then scooped them up and started shuffling.
Nikki said, “Well, what did you think?”
I took a deep sip of wine. I thought some of it was interesting and could have relation to my life, but it was also vague. However, seeing that picture of the man in the noose unsettled me. I didn’t know why then. I told Astra and Nikki that it was an unusual experience. I thanked her and she smiled that same smile she had given the man before me.
Now I felt much better about the room behind the beaded curtain. There wasn’t anything bad or hokey about it. It was just a room, after all. I stood and examined one of Rivers’ newer paintings of a road in the country. Nikki stepped up next to me. “Not so scary, was it?”
I answered, “I didn’t think it would be scary, just, well. I don’t know what I thought.”
“Sit with me and finish your drink.” We sat on pillows away from Astra, who had started another reading for a middle-aged woman. Nikki asked D.D. if she minded watching the bar for a little while. D.D. stood up and left the room, her expression nonchalant, but I could just feel her jealousy with every perfect step she took, and her red hair in the candlelight looked like she had set it on fire.
We talked of many things, Nikki and me. I don’t remember exactly what, but the night passed quickly, heads bowed together and much joking and careless touching. His bleached hair was getting so long that it tickled his eyes and he repeatedly flicked it away with a head toss. He told me about his life and I told him some of mine. I’m sure you don’t want to know all the details of his history; some things are best left out. But suffice it to say he was as charming as ever and he kept a smile on my face with his antics. I felt like I was having the college experience I should have had and I didn’t want to say goodnight to him, but as the music had died down to only 88 Fingers playing soft jazz, I knew it was time to go. We both stood and Nikki kissed his fingertip, and touched my nose. “Come back next week?”
I smiled and left, loosing my footing from the drink and the thrill of the night on the narrow stairwell to the door.
Barbie was waiting at the bus stop when I arrived and she nodded at me. “You stayed later than before.”
I told her I had a wonderful time.
She said, “I heard Astra gave you a reading. She was excited about it.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “How so?”
Barbie shrugged her thin shoulders. “She always gets excited by new readings. She’s pretty good, don’t you think?”
I told her I thought it was vague.
“Keep it in mind for the next few days, see what you think then,” she said.
The bus pulled up and we boarded. Halfway home I broke the silence by telling her I was going to visit Mother. She picked at a loose thread on her shirt and said that she figured I would after what she had told me. She said, “Who knows what Grandmother is doing to her. It’s good that you are going. I would, but I just don’t have the money.”
“I could buy you a ticket,” I said.
She shook her blond head and made a face like I had offered to buy her a plate of raw liver to eat. “I never want to see that old witch of a grandparent again if I don’t have to. Not even at her funeral.”
“Barbie, she’s not that bad,” I told her, but Barbie would not listen.
I flew to Birmingham on Sunday morning and a driver picked me up and took me to my grandparents’ mansion. Nobody greeted me when I first went inside, so I set down my suitcase and looked around. I found a note on the kitchen table that told me my grandmother was at a lunch date she couldn’t miss and Grandfather was on one of his hunting trips. So much for a long-awaited reunion. I went upstairs, feeling miffed that nobody was here to meet me, hoping I would find my mother in the same room she occupied when I used to live there.
The door was closed. I knocked softly, feeling like I was a prowler in the huge house. I heard movement on the other side, then my mother’s voice. “Who’s there? Who is it?”
I said, “Mother, it’s me.” I tried the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. “Unlock the door.”
“Cleo?” she said.
“Yes, I came to see you. Didn’t Grandmother tell you?”
She lowered her voice so that I could barely hear her. “Nobody told me. Go away. I can’t open the door.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I’m locked in here, like I told you in my letter. Only my mother can come in.”
I was stunned to see that she actually was some sort of prisoner in her own room. I said, “Grandmother isn’t here. Nobody is, except the servants. Do any of them have the key?”
It seemed she had walked away from the door because I barely heard her say, “Go away.” Then all was silent.
I went back to the kitchen and made myself some coffee and waited, flipping through a home decorating magazine that was on the table. What was going on here? I couldn’t concentrate on any of the words on the pages. My mother’s voice had sounded like her throat had a belt around it, so weak and strained. As I was sifting through my confusion half an hour later, I heard someone come in the front door.
“Cleopatra, I see your suitcase. Where are you?” Grandmother called out from the front hallway.
“In the kitchen,” I called back.
She came in carrying a bag from a department store and gave me a stiff hug and a kiss on the cheek. “So good to see you again, after all this time. I picked up a dress for Angelica while I was at the mall.” Out of the bag, she pulled the ugliest, frilliest pink dress that even a doll would have reservations about wearing. “She can look like a Southerner for some special occasion. I see you made coffee. Just what I need.”
We sat at the table together and sipped coffee as my grandmother filled me in on what all the family in the area was doing. “Now, tell me all of what you have been doing.”
She had made no mention of my mother at all, and I wasn’t going to let that pass, as all the while she talked I was burning with anger about my mother’s imprisonment. “I went to mother’s room. She said you locked her in there.”
Grandmother’s face pinched and her eyes flicked to the tabletop. A touch of pink flared up under her blush. Her eyes met mine again. “Cleo, you know I wouldn’t do that. She actually told you I had locked her in her room?”
“I tried the doorknob,” I said. “She told me only you could go inside, that she couldn’t open it.”
Grandmother sighed and looked out the kitchen w
indow at the cloudy day, losing the fake charm she had when she came into the room like dropping a Mardi Gras mask when it came time to go to bed. She rubbed her coffee mug with long, delicate nails. “She can open it. She has the only key.”
I clenched my mug and gritted my teeth. “What?”
“Oh, please. Don’t make me repeat myself, you heard me just fine,” she said.
I told her, “It’s an expression of surprise.”
Her face sharpened more still, holding pink a prisoner in her cheeks, like she was thinking about taking a belt to my rear like she would have done to her own kids when they were growing up. “Do you think I am proud of this? I can’t do anything for her. She won’t come out, no matter what. She’s as good as a horse with four lame legs.”
I stood up with so much force that my chair fell over behind me. “She’s my mother! How can you say that?”
Grandmother stood too, but slowly, and I heard her knee joints crack. She braced her hands on the edge of the table and quietly said, “There will be no outbursts. I expect that kind of attitude from your sister, but not from you. Now, pick up that chair and sit down.”
I didn’t know what else to do but comply. Once I was seated and my breathing had slowed, she also sat down and sipped her coffee, staring at me all the while. “What do you know about your mother?”
Trying to steady my voice, both out of an old fear of her and knowing that I needed information and therefore had to play her game, I told her what Barbie had told me, leaving out the “special” part.
“Well, that’s about the gist of it,” Grandmother said. “She refuses care. I have tried to bring doctors to her, since she won’t leave her room, but she won’t talk to them.” Her tone softened. “It’s like having a ghost in the house, I tell you. We try to keep it quiet, but word has gotten around after all these years. It’s humiliating. And it’s not just that. You must know I want to help her, but I can’t unless she helps herself.”
I asked her if she thought I could do something to convince Mother otherwise.
Grandmother looked out the window again. “Nobody can help her.”
I told her, “I can try.”
She kept staring out at the beautifully landscaped backyard. “She wouldn’t even let you in her room.”
I said, “She lets you in. Why don’t you ask her to open the door? I’ll just keep quiet behind you.”
She slowly pushed her coffee mug away and stood up, looking down at me. “She’s nothing like how she used to be. Hide your surprise. It will upset her.”
We went up the stairs and to Mother’s room. My grandmother knocked on the door. “Sandra, let me in. I need to talk to you.”
I heard mother’s choked voice say, “I don’t want her to see me like this. Tell her to go back home.”
Grandmother’s voice fixed stern, commanding a child to clean her room or do the dinner dishes. “Open this door, Sandra and see the daughter who has flown all the way here just to talk to you. It isn’t proper to act like this.”
Silence, then, “Just for five minutes. Is she with you now? Oh, God, has she heard all of this?”
Grandmother said, “Of course not. I know how you act. It would make her feel terrible to hear you say such things. I’ll go get her and you unlock the door.” She put a finger to her lips to let me know to keep quiet. As we waited, I heard the door unlock with a brassy click. I reached for the doorknob, but Grandmother stopped my hand, squeezing my wrist so hard that my fingertips throbbed. After another moment passed, she let go of my hand and knocked on the door. “Sandra, I have Cleo with me. Might we enter?”
“Yes,” she called out from what sounded like the other side of the room.
I opened the door to a dimly lit room. Red, red was everywhere. Red walls, red fabric-covered furniture, red carpet. The lampshades were red too, and cast a red haze over the whole room. The red drapes were closed to the cloudy day outside. There was a strange, herbal scent filling the place, like I was in a church.
Mother sat in her four-poster bed with the red down comforter tucked around her hips. Her long blond hair hung limply around her head in different, uneven angles, like she had cut it herself with a pair of pinking shears. I walked in, watching her stony face, and was transfixed by what I saw. She made Barbie’s lost soul appearance look like that of a trendy teenager. She was so thin that she made not a dent in the mattress she rested in, and her red shirt hung off her shoulders like she was a kid wearing hand-me-downs. Her face had been eaten quickly by time, lines in all the wrong places as though her skin hadn’t seen the things the rest of us see as we get old.
She clenched the blanket tightly, eyes darting over me, examining me as closely as I was watching her. I heard the door shut behind me. My grandmother had not followed me inside.
I walked slowly, feeling like if I made a sudden movement, she might hide under her covers. I sat on the bed and took her right hand, noticing that she still wore her wedding rings on her left. Her hand was clammy and cold, bony and fragile, and I had the feeling she was turning into a living skeleton.
I said a simple, “Hi.”
“Cleo,” she said, “You look…Beautiful. You’ve lost weight.”
I told her that chasing a kid around would do that.
My attempt at humor escaped her. She only kept staring, looking for something that can’t be expressed in words.
“Mother, I came because of your letter. Barbie told me about our father, well, about everything,” I told her.
Her claw of a hand slipped out of mine and she resumed twisting the comforter. “Your father is a good man. Never let anyone tell you differently.”
“I know that,” I said. “I came to get you some help.”
She smiled oddly, like I had said I liked her new hairdo, which I didn’t. “I see now.”
I didn’t know what she meant. “What do you see?”
“You are like us, like Barbie and me. Like us.”
I was even more confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She said in that tight voice, “You are in touch with the others. The ones very few know about or see or hear. I can see it so clearly.” She beamed pride as though I had told her I’d won the Nobel Prize.
I said, “You should see a doctor. This isn’t right, you hiding in this red room and never seeing anyone.”
She kept smiling. “Red is my favorite color. I’m happy here, the way things are. I have plenty of company from the others. Don’t worry about that. They are much nicer and more interesting than the living see-ables.”
I said, “The what?”
She giggled and waved her hand at me as if I’d made a joke. She told me, “I can be with your father all the time. He’s here now. I know you can see him. Right over there.” She pointed a spindly finger at an empty red chair, but her face fell into the strange patterns of lines again. “He’s not there now. You chased him away.”
I was desperate to get her help at this point and said the first thing that came into my head. “You should come live with us, with me and Cecil and Angelica. You could be happy there. I could get you the kind of help you need.” Grandmother obviously had let things get too far, what with her horrible humiliation.
Her eyes bulged and her mouth hung open. “With you? With you!” Rage filled her face as quickly as a faucet unleashed of its water. “You left me! How can you think I would ever come with you?”
“Mother, wait –” I said, but she cut me off.
“You both left me with her and him! You don’t give a – a – anything about me!”
“What are you talking about?” I tried to get in, but she started screaming.
“Her, of all people, how could you have done this to me? First your father, then Barbie, then you, of all people! I knew I could trust one person never to leave me, and you did it. You did right after that wedding to that Cecil. You’re nothing to me anymore!”
I raised my voice to be heard. “I haven’t left you at all. I’m right here, l
ook.” I tried to take her hand again, but she jumped out of bed and pointed at the door. I hadn’t been able to tell with the blanket over her legs, but she wasn’t wearing any pants, just red underwear.
“Get out, get out, getoutgetoutgetout!” She screamed for my grandmother, who opened the door and took my shoulders and dragged my numb and shocked body from the room as I protested weakly over my mother’s screams that she had it all wrong, that I was there to help.
I was shaking from head to toe and we could hear her screaming, “Get out, all of you!” over and over all the way to the kitchen, where the sound was blocked by the angles of the huge house. Grandmother seemed tired, and had an I-told-you look about her. She sat back in her seat at the table and said, “So, now what do you want to do, Cleo?” She gazed at me with indifference, and I knew I was not welcome there anymore. I had a return fight on Friday, but it was clear to me that I couldn’t stay more than another minute.
I told her, “This isn’t over,” and I walked to the front hall, grabbed my suitcase, and went outside. The driver was waiting for me, either knowing all along this would happen or had been given instructions by someone else who did.
At the airport I forked out the extra money needed to catch the next fight to Philly and called Cecil to tell him to pick me up.
Angelica was in the car with us on the ride back from the airport, so I couldn’t talk about what had happened. Surprisingly, she wasn’t angry with me. It was late at night and we were all tired. I slung my suitcase on the floor of my bedroom and put Angelica to bed, telling her in as kind of a way as I could muster about the rolling green hills of Birmingham and imitating the Southern accents. She said she thought the accents sounded funny.
In bed, I told Cecil all of what happened.
He responded, “What is she talking about, these others?”
“How do I know? She’s crazy, and she needs to be in a hospital or something,” I said.
He said, “You really offered to have her live here?”
“Oh,” I said, “I guess I should have asked you first.”
“No, it’s not that. I would welcome her here, you know that,” he replied. “It just surprises me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you seemed to want nothing to do with your family all this time,” he said. “I’ve been surprised at how much you see Barbie, to be honest. You two were so different as children.”
I nodded and he put his arms around me, stroking my back. Of course, he didn’t know that it wasn’t Barbie I was spending all my time with. It was the Beacon and Nikki that kept me out late and coming home drunk. I closed my eyes and surprisingly fell asleep.
The next day I drank coffee on the porch and watched the sun rise, thinking about everything that had happened the day before. I ran it over and over in my mind, trying to figure some way I could have made it go better. Maybe I should have played along and said I saw the “others” too. Or I should have resisted Grandmother from pulling me out of the room and stood my ground until my mother had stopped screaming, then really got to the root of what was going on. How could my mother accuse me of leaving her? All children grew up. Could she really resent me for that? It never came across in her letters. What could I have done differently to have helped her?
When it was time to wake Angelica up, I went to her room, but she wasn’t there. I found her in my bedroom and she had opened up my suitcase and was running her hands over and over the pink, frilly dress Grandmother had bought her. The old woman must have stuck it in there when I was in Mother’s room, knowing I would be leaving after the visit.
“Mommy, it’s so pretty. Is it yours?”
“No, baby,” I told her. “Your great grandmother bought that for you.”
“Me! It’s mine?” She grabbed it to her chest. “It is so so so pretty. Can I put it on?”
Cecil got out of the shower as Angelica was dancing around the room in her new dress.
“What’s that?” he said, towel around his hips.
“Grandmother bought it for Angelica,” I told him.
Angelica sang out, “I’m a princess! Look at me, Daddy.”
He gave me a look over my head that commiserated with me how atrociously an eyesore the thing was, then said, “Well, aren’t you the belle of the ball?”
“I’m the belle of the ball! Can I wear it to school, Daddy, please?”
I answered for him. “You have a uniform, Angelica, you know that. You can wear it when you get home. Okay?”
She wore that dress out, I tell you. She wore it every day. We wouldn’t let her wear it in public, but putting that thing on was the first thing she did anytime she came home. She would say, “I’m the belle of the ball!” and we couldn’t call her Angelica when she was wearing it, only Belle. Eventually, it was all she answered to.
You are opening another bottle, reporter? There’s still a glass in the old one. No, not complaining. Not at all. I’ll just refill with the last of the bit that is left.
