Tell Anna She's Safe

by Brenda Missen

  I shook my head. “It sounds extremely difficult. For both of them. Did she regret it? Did she ever say?”

  Trish smiled. “There’s a loaded question. She had moments of regretting it, like anyone would. But she also strongly believed—I do too—that they were on a very specific journey together. A journey to healing.”

  I’m hell-bent on healing the traumas of my past.

  “She was determined to heal all her fears,” I said.

  “Yes, and also determined not to run away this time.”

  “She told me she was always the one to break up her relationships. She said it was so she wouldn’t be abandoned. And I know she was still seeing Curtis when she met Tim.”

  Trish was nodding. “That was her safety valve. But with Tim she realized that running wasn’t going to get her anywhere. As difficult as it was. She was determined to stay and work it through.”

  “And to get Tim to work through his stuff too?”

  “Well, not in a forceful way,” she smiled. “He knew he needed help. I saw him a few times too, as a client.”

  “You did? I didn’t realize that.”

  She nodded. “I can’t talk to you about what we talked about, except it probably can’t hurt to say he suffered a lot of abuse as a child. And he suffered from bouts of serious depression. He checked himself into the Royal Ottawa once. And he was always threatening to turn himself in to the police. It was very upsetting for Lucy. She thought she was failing to provide him with a safe house while he got back on his feet.”

  “What about Lucy—did she have a safe house?” I was thinking of the violence, the possibility of abuse.

  Trish shook her head. “I suggested she go to a shelter once. But she thought I was betraying her. Since I was also encouraging her to be patient with Tim.” She paused. “They were both going through an intense healing crisis.”

  “A healing crisis? What’s that? It sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

  “It’s something that can happen when someone is being healed—or afterwards. The healing may bring up emotions and issues that have been buried deep inside, and the healing brings them to the surface in a sudden way that puts the person into emotional—or sometimes even physical—trauma.” She paused. “I can’t discuss the details of Tim’s healing but I never meant it to come at Lucy’s expense.”

  “But it sounds like it was—literally,” I said. “I’ve heard she was thousands of dollars in debt when she died.” I didn’t word it as “fraud.” I wasn’t sure how much Trish knew.

  She compressed her lips into a sad smile. “Money was a huge issue. Money was very important to Lucy. Her security was very important. She suffered from panic attacks—you probably know. She needed to create a safe environment for herself, which meant knowing she had enough money, having a rigid schedule, planning ahead. She didn’t like surprises or changes in plans. The two years she spent getting Tim out were an incredible test of that, because she couldn’t plan anything—since his parole kept getting denied. She learned to let go a little. It was good for her. The handyman business was an even greater test. It meant she had to put out a certain amount of capital before seeing a return. I felt it was a good test for her, to risk an investment like that. To let go of holding on so tight. As a counsellor, I was there to support her decision. It was unfortunate it never paid off.”

  Unfortunate, I mused, wasn’t the word.

  She seemed to read my mind. “I don’t know whether all the money she lost was intentional theft by Tim or not. She was becoming more detached about it. But it was a long time before she got there. The more in debt she got, the more stressed out she got. Tim had no concept of how to handle money.” She sighed. “The last time I saw her it seemed like she was getting closer to being ready to move on, even without the money.”

  “And then there was Curtis,” I said.

  “Curtis. Yes. He was the other big issue. Tim was very jealous that Lucy was still friends with him. I tried to get her to see that. She was very drawn to Curtis again and Tim was afraid he was going to lose her. That may be why he started hurting her.”

  “You mean physically.”

  She sighed. “Sometime late in the summer she came to me with a badly sprained ankle. She ended up in the hospital. I did a reiki treatment on her the week after.”

  “What is reiki anyway?” I asked.

  Trish smiled. “It’s a healing treatment that originated in Japan. It involves moving the body’s energy fields around, replacing the negative energy with positive.”

  “But how do you move the energy fields around?”

  “With my hands. I hold them just over the body, not touching. It helps with physical healing and can improve your emotional well-being. Lucy responded to the treatment really well.”

  “Do you know how she got the injury?”

  Trish cocked her head, as if trying to remember. “I don’t take notes, but I’m pretty sure they fought about Curtis. She’d been to the Gatineaus. Oh, yes.” She looked at me with a smile. “She’d gone up to your house, actually.”

  “My house?” I was shaking my head. I hadn’t had a visit from Lucy the previous summer.

  “Yes, I remember she said you weren’t there. I think they were supposed to go to the racetrack or somewhere that day. Lucy hated the noise and dust and the crowds. I think she refused to go at the last minute. They had a big fight and he stormed out of the house. And she went up to your place to find some quiet by the river. You apparently gave her an open invitation to go up and use your dock?”

  I looked at her in amazement. “I guess I did. I’d forgotten that.”

  *

  NO ONE ANSWERED THE DOOR. She was glad. She didn’t want to have to tell Ellen about Tim’s antics. She remembered where the path was beside the canoe rack. She made her way down to the river.

  Only when she had written out the morning’s episode could she relax. She looked out over the river. Absorbed its stillness. There was barely a breath of wind. Even so, there was relief from the city’s heat. She was glad she wasn’t at the Speedway. She doubted Tim had gone on his own. No doubt there would be another fight about it when she got home. But at least she would be fortified by this hour of stillness. Maybe it would keep her calm even if he lost it. Somehow she had to convince him that her needing time alone didn’t mean she was rejecting him. She wondered how much longer she could go on living like this. It was getting claustrophobic. Was this progress? To exchange the fear of open spaces and abandonment for the fear of being smothered and controlled?

  She thought back to what Trish had said to her the other day—that her energy was different, better. She found it hard to believe. She was in just as fucked-up a relationship as ever. But her digestion was better too. Tangible proof. So what was different? That she wasn’t running away? Wasn’t distracting herself with other men to avoid the pain? Was facing it head on?

  She sighed. She longed to be alone. She could handle being alone now.

  The truth was this relationship was not what she had expected. And the rage she felt about that was stronger than anything Tim could direct at her—raging anger at herself that it might be just another painful, unhealthy, dead-end relationship.

  She looked out at the river. Who would have thought a river could be so stagnant. But of course it wasn’t. The stillness was an illusion. If she threw a stick into the middle it would get downstream, eventually. And somewhere underneath there were currents. Strong currents. Currents people couldn’t see. Currents of forgiveness. They were inside her. Somewhere. For Tim. For herself.

  She thought about Ellen and Marc’s house up on the hill behind her. Did Ellen feel abandoned when he left her every summer? What kind of relationship was it, anyway, when he was away so much?

  A motorboat carved into the bay, made a big circle, and sped out. The waves from its w
ake rolled in and rocked the dock. The swaying made her feel sick. She stuck her journal back in her bag and headed back up the path.

  *

  “LET ME GUESS,” I SAID. “When she came home Tim accused her of being at Curtis’s. He lives up in the Gatineaus too.”

  “Yes,” nodded Trish, “that’s exactly what happened.” She related the events in a calm voice. Her hands were still, never straying from her lap. She seemed somehow detached from the events she was telling me about. “Tim was convinced Lucy was having an affair with Curtis. She told me he forced her down on the bed, said he wanted her to show him how Curtis had done it. She struggled and the futon came partly off the frame. Her foot got caught in the slats. She wrenched it so badly she blacked out for a moment or two.” She looked at me then and I realized I was wrong. She wasn’t detached at all.

  She swallowed and continued. “When she came to, he forced her. Told her he was in control now and she had to do whatever he said.”

  I closed my eyes. Oh God.

  Trish’s voice came as from a distance. “She managed to get him to take her to the hospital, even though she hated hospitals. On principle. Because of her experience as a toddler. Did she tell you about that?”

  I nodded. “You mean being in isolation with the chicken pox. She said her mother never came to visit her.”

  Trish was nodding. “But she also hated hospitals because her mother died in one. And she had never made her peace with her mother. Being in the hospital with her sprained ankle brought that whole experience back. Her mother was an alcoholic.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “But she died of cancer,” Trish continued. “I think it was cirrhosis that developed into liver cancer. That would have been a dozen years ago.”

  “Do you mean Lucy was upset at her mother all through her life because of that one time she was left alone in the hospital?”

  Trish gave a sad smile. “She felt unwanted and abandoned all her growing up years. She used to say she was brought up by a house and four walls. Her father was stern and demanding and her mother wasn’t there. She just did what was expected of her in that generation. It was after the war. As far as I remember, her mother was escaping from Hungary. I guess it was sometime during the revolution. She met Lucy’s father on the boat. He was English. They were both coming to Canada. They got married and she got pregnant with Lucy. It wasn’t an easy birth. Her mother had to have a caesarian. Lucy used to say it was because she didn’t want to leave the safety of the womb.”

  I smiled. “I bet she came out kicking and screaming.”

  Trish smiled too. “I imagine she did. Her mother couldn’t handle someone as….” She paused. “As volatile as Lucy. She was a poet, with a poet’s sensibility. It sounds like she may never have wanted to have children. But by the time she realized that, she’d had two.”

  *

  SHE WAS ON HER BIKE, on her way to deliver a report to Health Canada in Tunney’s Pasture—the “bureaucratic ghetto” she called it—in the city’s west end. It was the beginning of August. The worst of July’s heat and humidity were gone. She should have been enjoying the bike ride in the cooler air, but the farther she got from home, the stronger the panic grew. Her stomach was going into a knot, her heart was beating faster, her mind racing out of control. The world was a dangerous place. The city, the roads, the cars, the people, they were all dangerous. She wanted to be back home, back to safety.

  She forced herself to concentrate on making the pedals go around, to stop at stop signs, stay close to the curb. She had to get the report delivered, had to go into the very kind of building she dreaded.

  She turned into Tunney’s and took in the maze of low-rise box buildings and the one high-rise that towered over the others. She made herself take deep breaths and find a parking meter to lock her bike to. One step at a time, she told herself. Lock the bike, take your bag out of the carrier, walk to the door of this ugly brown building, open the door, sign the visitor book at the security desk. Focus on what you’re doing right now. Don’t think about what’s to come. It’s safe to be walking through this door.

  She made herself navigate the maze of corridors and cubbyholes to reach the one that belonged to her client. Made herself block out the glare of the fluorescent lights and the intimidating clicking of high heels on the unyielding floor. The sight of her client, smiling from behind her desk, forced her out of her fearful self. She plastered a confident smile on her face, shook the proffered hand with a firm grip, made a joke as she handed over the work.

  Under the professional facade, her twelve-year-old self was trembling, and silently pleading, “Can I go home now?”

  *

  I TOLD TRISH HOW I had always assumed Lucy was an only child, that she had never even mentioned Anna to me.

  “I think in a lot of ways she did think of herself as an only child,” said Trish. “Or at least the only abandoned child. Her mother may not have been as distant with Anna, simply because she was younger. Or maybe because she wasn’t as hard to handle as Lucy.” She smiled. “I’m treading on dangerous ground here—it’s just speculation. Lucy rarely ever talked to me about her sister. But having met Anna at the funeral, I can imagine there were a lot of reasons Lucy might have had for secretly resenting her.”

  “Like what?”

  Trish paused, considering, I suspected, whether she should continue with her speculation. After a moment, she said, “Anna has a poise and control very much the same as Lucy described her mother having. That would have been a minefield for her.”

  “Seeing her mother mirrored in her sister.” I was remembering Anna at the funeral. Playing the consummate hostess. I could imagine Lucy’s mother being like that. But Anna had been controlled only on the outside. I knew how upset she was about Lucy. And how hurt by her sister’s rejection of her all these years.

  Trish echoed my thoughts. “I suspect the mirror was only physical and that Anna didn’t act as distantly as her mother.”

  I nodded. “Little sisters tend to look up to their big sisters. But if that was the case, wouldn’t that make them closer?”

  Trish smiled a sad smile. “You’d think so. But family relationships are never rational.”

  “Nor any relationship,” I laughed.

  “As I say, I’m just speculating and I think I’d better stop,” said Trish.

  *

  SHE WAS IN HER ROOM again. Face down on her bed. Sent by her father for yelling at her mother. Yelling seemed to be the only way to make her mother notice her. Except it didn’t. Her mother seemed to look right through her. As if she didn’t know where the sound was coming from. Which made her yell louder. Which brought her father running.

  She heard a sound and turned over. A small figure stood in the doorway. Eyes big with distress and concern. Eyes expressing everything she wanted her mother to express. Her sister took a tentative step into the room.

  “Go away.” It came out more harshly than she intended. But she couldn’t comfort her sister, and her sister certainly couldn’t comfort her.

  Anna turned and ran. Slamming the door behind her.

  She knew Anna hadn’t meant to bang it so hard, but it gave her a perverse satisfaction anyway. To get a rise out of someone. Even if it was just her sister, who didn’t deserve the way she treated her.

  *

  I TOOK A SWALLOW OF my rapidly cooling tea and looked at Trish. “You said before that you and Marnie were friends with Lucy, and with Tim after he got out.” I wasn’t sure how far to take this line of questioning—or how far she would let me take it. I didn’t want to give away my suspicions about Marnie being the second person Tim had called from my house, or about Tim and Marnie already knowing Lucy was missing on the Sunday. If Trish mentioned that to Marnie….

  Trish began fidgeting with her ear, pulling on the lobe. It was the fir
st time I’d seen her hands move. “We had them over to dinner a couple of times. Marnie’s from the Sudbury area, and she and Tim found they had a lot in common—he’s from somewhere in rural Ontario. They had similar upbringings, both came from poor families and lived mostly off the land. Marnie’s a bow hunter and when she found out Tim used to hunt she tried to get him interested in the club she belongs to. She invited him to go with her on several occasions, but he never took her up on it. We were trying to help him to feel part of the community, but he wouldn’t respond. I think his fear ultimately blocked him.”

  I was tired of that word. It seemed to be an excuse for everything.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  The hand went up to the ear again, pulling on the lobe. “I gave her a treatment just a few days before she went missing.”

  The day I had found her the cottage in the paper, she’d mentioned she’d had a massage. “We spoke that day,” I said. “She told me she felt better for it.” I hesitated. “I heard Tim injured her pretty badly.”

  Trish nodded. “He punched her in the sternum. She was in pretty rough shape—so much so that I went to her house instead of her coming to me. She was in a lot of pain, and dazed from the painkillers. But upbeat. Things seemed to be looking up. You asked if she seemed more jittery toward the end. In fact, she was calmer than I’d ever known her to be. It was like she had a lot of surface static. Which was understandable given everything that was going on that last week. But underneath I could feel a calm.” She smiled. “I told her it was like hearing a radio station under all the static, and she said, ‘As long as it’s CBC, not some twangy country station.’ That was one thing about Lucy—she never lost her sense of humour, no matter how bad it got.”

  I gave a wry smile. “Did you talk to her again after that?” I might be getting to dangerous territory, but it seemed an innocent enough question.