“It doesn’t make sense,” I told Dr. Weisz. “I love Tom.”
“You are carrying a great amount of fear,” he said, resting his chin on folded hands. “Your friend was brutally murdered, and it’s reasonable that you are slow to trust.
“You’re not scared to love, perhaps, but you’re scared to love and lose and that keeps you at arms’ distance.”
“I am a very patient man,” Tom said one night as we came up for air after an hour of foreplay that left us both breathless. “I know you need to move slowly. I want you to be sure when you lose your virginity.”
Lose my virginity. Is that what he thought? This man who knew me so well knew me not at all.
All this was running through my mind as I slipped the ring onto my finger on that blustery day in March.
“I, I’m not sure what kind of wife I’d make, Tom. I’m not sure I’m loveable.”
“That’s for me to judge, right?”
I smiled. At that moment Grace and Mt. Moriah hovered at the periphery of my thoughts. “You’re conquering your grief, JoAnna. I think this relationship with Tom has helped dissipate the grief, the loss you feel,” Dr. Weisz had said. And although I wasn’t sure that the grief wasn’t as mammoth as ever—like a brick under my feather pillow—at that moment, on that evening with Tom, I made a conscious effort to smile, to say yes. I could be a good wife. I could make Tom as happy as he made me. I could begin a life that Grace and I had dreamt of so long ago on my twin beds.
“Yes.” I leaned over and kissed Tom with all the tenderness within me.
With my eyes wide open.
In the simplest of ceremonies we wed in the Loyola courtyard in late June, when whisper soft summer breezes were bringing out the best of Chicago. I wore my mother’s tea-length ivory lace gown, saved for me all these years by Doro. She arrived with it two weeks early so she could do last minute alterations. Running my fingers over the lace, I imagined I could smell my mother, that she was touchable. Trying on the dress, turning back and forth in front of the mirror, brought tears to my eyes and Doro’s.
“Anna’s daughter has grown up to be a beautiful woman,” Doro said. “Beautiful in and out.”
Theresa was my maid of honor, wearing a short pink lace sundress. Joel Phillippe, Tom’s best friend from high school, was his best man, and a handful of our friends from Sandalwood & Harris, as well as some of Tom’s childhood friends, were there. Four rows of chairs offered plenty of seating. Beyond Tom, so dapper in his charcoal suit, Lake Michigan lapped the shores—and with each murmuring wave I felt more resolute, more secure. This was happiness.
I could tell that this small, slightly informal affair was not quite what Tonya had imagined for her son. She didn’t know I had pushed hard for a justice of the peace.
“I know you’re not sure about religion, Jo,” said Tom. “But I just can’t be married in a courtroom. Can we compromise?”
For him? The man who was nothing but gentle and patient with me?
“Of course. But if we’re going to have a pastor perform the ceremony, are you okay with it not being a priest?”
He knew what I was thinking.
“You want Maddy.”
“Yes.”
“I think that’s perfect.”
As we sat at their dining table, making the modest plans, Tonya Rivers, who had been nothing but gracious to me, looked as if I was in the witness protection program.
“You don’t want to invite anyone from your home? Mount …”
“Moriah. And no, just Maddy and Doro.”
I knew what she was thinking. What kind of girl has no friends from home? Has no connection with home?
“Leave her alone, Mom. She’s very private. She lost her best friend, and home is not home to her right now.” I overheard Tom whispering to his mother as I was carrying dishes to the kitchen. Later I asked him if he understood how I felt.
“Honestly, Jo, no I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I don’t accept it. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you.” He kissed my hand. “I know you.”
He didn’t know me at all.
Tom stuck to his pledge, and we first made love on our wedding night. He moved slowly, gently, pausing to gauge the expression on my face.
This is progress, Dr. Weisz, I thought. I’m naked and vulnerable and I’m okay.
Truly, in those first few months as a newlywed, I was happier than I had been since moving to Chicago. Since Grace’s death. Since ever? Tom was so steady, his demeanor so kind. With him I could glimpse a future and a happiness that eclipsed the last few years.
In those early days, Tom was a balm to my scarred heart. I could not get enough of him, conversations with him, eating with him, grocery shopping, and cleaning house with him. I threw myself into life as a Mrs. I bought a slipcover for Tom’s Goodwill sofa and, then, fearing it was too plain, bought paisley pillows for the top. I planned dinner parties with people from work and called Doro, frantic for recipes I could manage. We spent Saturdays at yard sales, purchasing outdoor lanterns and salad bowls and video tapes and Christmas coffee mugs.
I fired Dr. Weisz. Already I had whittled down my visits to one a month, and I no longer thought them necessary. I was cured. I was happy and told Doro so.
She was cautiously happy about my happiness.
“Come home for a visit, Jo. Everyone here would like to see you and meet Tom.”
And there it was, the tiny thorn like a hard pea in my breast.
Instinctively, I made excuses.
“Tom has so many weekend photoshoots,” I said. “And, anyway, I’d prefer for you and Maddy to come and have fun in the city.”
Tom passed through the room in time to hear my excuse. He brought it up later as we were getting ready for bed.
“You know, I’d love to go see Mt. Moriah and the Inn and meet everyone. And since when do I have weekend shoots? Only two since March.”
“It’s just better here, Tom,” I said. “You’d get bored with the mountain in a day.”
“But I want to see where you’re from. You’ve seen where I’m from.”
“And you’re from a good place,” I blurted out before I could think how it sounded. “I’m from a place that is better forgotten.”
He frowned before picking up his book. I picked up mine and read the same lines over and over.
“It’s important that you return home at some point, JoAnna,” Dr. Weisz had said. “It’s important that you go back in order to move on.”
The hell with you, Dr. Weisz, I thought, as I deliberately turned unread pages. I have moved on.
And I had. Grace was far from my thoughts most of the time.
Best of all, I was writing again. I had set Jillsandra aside and was writing poems. Already I had a binder full—many of them dark but some quite lovely. Often at night I read them silently to myself, soothing myself to sleep on their lilting waves.
I was also lulled to sleep by liquid peace. Two glasses of wine at dinner, followed by a vodka tonic or third glass of wine at bedtime, and my eyes became deliciously heavy.
“Is my wife becoming a lush?” Tom asked, sliding into bed beside me and looping his hand around my waist.
I smiled. “Perhaps.”
Tom nuzzled my neck. “Just wondering if our budget needs to include the fifths of vodka you’re going through.”
“Can my successful photographer not afford it?” I raked my fingernails gently across his back.
Tom leaned up on one elbow and tucked my hair behind my ears.
“You okay?”
“Of course. Don’t I look okay?”
“You look incredible. I just don’t remember you drinking this much when we started dating.”
“Other than the time at Tony’s.”
“Let’s don’t bring that up.”
I pulled him in for a tight embrace. “I’m fine, Tom. I’m happy.”
So at what point did I begin to feel as if I could not breathe? As if I was suffocating? Looking back, perhaps
our first Christmas was the beginning.
In December I again resisted Tom’s and Doro’s requests for us to go to Mt. Moriah. As it turned out, we didn’t go anywhere. Two days before Christmas the finest of snowflakes began to drift down around noon. By rush hour, six inches were on the roads and traffic was gridlocked. My afternoon meeting was cancelled, but I knew Tom was booked solid until five o’clock in undoubtedly unpleasant meetings with Adam and Candace. I left a message with his assistant that I was taking the train home. Exiting the train, I slid my way down the street and around the corner to our little bungalow, lowering my head as a buffer to the pelting snow. Our house was pitch black, and suddenly an old familiar panic rose in my throat.
I turned and saw no one on the street. Everyone was either, like Tom, still trying to make it home, or locked inside with roaring fires and vegetable soup. I hurried up the steps and inside, flipping on every light. Suddenly I felt so completely alone.
I changed into fuzzy pajamas and padded my way on sock feet through the house that rattled from the wind and groaned with the radiators.
Calm down, Jo. Tom’s delayed in traffic. Get a grip, I told myself. Yet I could sense only darkness around me—in the sky enveloping the house, in the emptiness filling the rooms. In my racing heart. I knew Tom was dead in an accident.
I also knew where to find comfort.
On a shelf in my closet I kept a basket of “supplies”—a quart of vodka, a bottle of Merlot, a pint of gin. Tom had made one too many comments about drinking, so I thought it best to keep a stash away from his questions. I also felt the need for something that was mine alone. In the time we had been married, the more I became Mrs. Tom Rivers, the more I wondered where JoAnna Wilson was. It felt deliciously luxurious to have a basket hidden on my shelf. Somehow the secret made me me again.
Three hours later the Merlot was gone and I was asleep on the sofa, Doro’s wedding afghan over me. Headlights shone in my eyes, and moments later Tom was inside, stomping snow off his boots.
“Jeez, I thought I’d never get to the turnoff.” He draped his hat and down jacket over a chair and flopped down on the end of the sofa, swinging my feet into his lap. “Well you look comfortable. I’m hungry as hell.” He sniffed the air like a bloodhound. “But I don’t smell anything going.”
“I guess dinner is my job?”
Tom frowned. “No,” he said slowly, deliberately, “dinner is the job of whoever gets to the house four hours before the other person.” He sighed and walked toward the kitchen. “I’ll do it. How about an omelet?
“Oh, and I was going to stop, because we’re out of wine but no one would let me over so I just kept going.”
No sooner had he said it than his eyes fell on the bottle protruding between my hip and the couch cushions.
He pointed. “We had wine? Where?”
“I had it.”
“What do you mean you had it? Where?”
“I had it on the shelf. It’s not a big deal.” I struggled to my feet and lost my balance, sitting back down hard.
“It’s a big deal to me. Show me where.”
“No, sir, I won’t.” I was on my feet now, pushing past him to the kitchen, grabbing a skillet out of the dish drainer.
Behind me Tom started opening and closing cabinets. Then he grabbed my elbow and turned me to look at him. Run, I thought. That silly old feeling in the pit of my stomach. Run.
“Our kitchen is not that big, Jo. Where’s the stash?”
“It’s not a stash, and you’re hurting me.”
He let go and walked to the coat closet, a sliver of space barely big enough to hold our coats. Then to the guest room and its closet.
“Tom, for God’s sake, what’s gotten in to you?”
“Into me? I come home to find my wife catatonic on the couch having polished off a bottle of wine that she’s evidently been hiding.” His hands ran through the sides of his hair. “It’s not normal to hide alcohol, Jo.”
“I wasn’t hiding it. I was keeping it.” I walked to our closet and pulled out the basket, realizing how the situation looked as I held the basket in my hands. My voice was quiet and trembling. “I just wanted it for myself. I didn’t want to be judged.”
Tom surveyed the basket for a full minute before taking it out of my hands. His voice was steely.
“I don’t judge you, Jo. You know I don’t. But this, this sneaking alcohol—it just feels scary to me.”
I was crying, Merlot tears of shame.
“Are we having our first fight?”
“Yes, I think we are.”
“I’ll keep the basket in the kitchen.”
“Thank you.”
“Are we okay?”
“We are okay, Jo. Are you okay?”
Although I nodded, I wasn’t sure. What I did know was that I would get a new basket and a new hiding place.
Despite the way our holidays started, we spent a decadent two days holed up inside while snow buried the world. We slept late and lay around in our pajamas. On Christmas Eve, Tom brought two sleeping bags and blankets in to the living room, situating them under our tiny, rather pitiful spruce.
“Am I missing something?”
“I’m introducing you to a Rivers family tradition,” said Tom. “My sisters and I used to lie like this staring up at the lights, speculating on when Santa would come and what gifts he’d bring. Well, actually I knew the truth but being a good brother I kept up the facade. The twins were determined to catch Saint Nick in the act.”
“Did it ever work?”
“Once we almost made it. It was probably one in the morning, and the twins were about four. We had fallen asleep and all of a sudden Tracy peed herself. I’m talking a massive pee. Once we all realized we were swimming, we hightailed it to our beds pretty quickly.”
“You’re banking on me having a big bladder.”
Tom winked.
We drank Irish coffees and held hands, the two sleeping bags outstretched to make a bed. We awoke the next morning to an overturned half-empty cup drenching the sleeping bag.
“Well it’s not pee,” I said.
Tonya and Thomas called early Christmas morning. Then Maddy and Doro. I know Tom wished he was in his home in Aurora, jousting with his sisters and eating his mother’s sausage breakfast casserole. As for me, I was home. Mt. Moriah was just a long ago address.
Two days after Christmas, the salt trucks had cleared enough that the delivery trucks could get through. On a Saturday morning, a FedEx driver handed me a box at the door. Before I could open it, Tom rushed into the room and grabbed it from my hands.
“That’s definitely bigger than a breadbox,” I said. Indeed, it was a large flat carton.
“I’m sorry it didn’t get here in time for Christmas,” Tom called from the kitchen where he was opening the box so I couldn’t see. “Doro had to help me with this one.”
“Doro?”
He sauntered back into the living room, the mystery box behind his back.
“Yep, it’s a little project we worked on together. It’s not wrapped but, well, here.” And he lay the feather-light box in my outstretched hands.
What could Tom and Doro have been working on together? Inside the box lay an eighteen by twenty four canvas collage of Grace and me over the years. Dressed as sheep for the Christmas pageant. Trick or treating at age nine. On our bikes in the driveway. My eleventh birthday party, her fourteenth. Eating ice cream on the steps with Tuck. In our waitress uniforms at the Inn, sticking our tongues out at the camera. In prom dresses, hands on hips. Arms linked in our caps and gowns. I was looking into the distance; Grace was smiling directly at the camera.
My feet threatened to buckle, and I sat down hard on the sofa. My face must have registered my feelings. Months of relegating Grace to the deepest corners of my mind, of being a Rivers and not a Wilson, months of pushing Mt. Moriah to the farthest reaches of the earth. Gone. I was back in June 1997, and Grace had just died.
“Thank you,” I whispe
red, so quietly I wasn’t sure I had uttered it out loud.
“I know how much you miss your friend,” Tom said. He looked intently at my eyes, where tears were gathering. “I thought it was a good idea—kinda bring good memories back to you.”
“Yes. It’s a really sweet idea.” I kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I’m going to make breakfast.”
But first I carried the canvas to the guest bedroom, where I slid it, photos to the wall, behind the coats and summer clothes. Then I moved to the bathroom, opened my cosmetic bag and took a strong sip of courage.
That night I couldn’t sleep. Since Tom and I had been together, my dreams had slid away like the memories that haunted me. Unlike many wives, I liked my husband’s snoring. The syncopated rumbles were soothing, a gentle percussion drowning out my own thoughts. Often I would slide my hand under Tom’s pillow, knowing his hand would be there. Linking thumbs or whole hands with him, I would fall into peaceful sleep.
But not on that Christmas weekend. The canvas in the closet taunted me like the porcelain clown on Doro’s dresser when I was little. I was so frightened of it Doro put it inside the china buffet. But I knew it was there.
My nightmares returned. They would no longer be eluded by newlywed bliss. My dreams knew me for what I was. They alone knew the secret fear that wrapped around my heart like a snake.
Tom stood sentry over my night terrors. Many times he awakened me, holding my wrists so I wouldn’t resist him, turning me into his arms as my heart beat wildly in my chest and tears tracked my cheeks. It was her face, Grace’s, that I saw in my dreams, her voice that I heard.
“You’re safe, Jo,” Tom would whisper. “I’m right here. I got you.”
Once I was calmer, when the fear had subsided, Tom pushed my damp hair from my eyes and searched my face for an explanation.
Mt. Moriah's Wake Page 17
