by Kelly Rimmer
Father Jenkins anoints Dad’s forehead and administers the Last
Rites. The priest stays in the room with us after that, taking one
of the floral sofas to silently pray and offer his support.
But my four siblings and I cuddle up around Dad on that big,
comfortable bed, and we’re all speaking softly to him, right up
until he breathes his last tortured breath a few hours later.
My father’s arms have always been around us—holding our
family together, keeping us safe. He releases us now, but I know
that’s only because the work is done, and the time has come for
him to continue his journey alone.
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Maryanne
1959
A week after Patrick returned to work, Mother and I were sit-
ting in the garden sipping tea in silence, watching while the chil-
dren played. She’d arrived that morning with a bag of clothes
for the kids, and it was strange to see the four of them in their
brand-new outfits instead of their usual, worn out clothes. Beth
was so delighted with the ribbons had Mother gifted her that
she was sitting aside from the others, stroking a ribbon with a
grin on her face.
“I need to get them toys next,” Mother mused.
“Oh, Mother,” I sighed. “Please don’t overwhelm them with
things.”
“All of these things are helping them get used to me,” she said
stiffly. Beth was certainly taken with her ribbons, but Mother
didn’t seem to have noticed that the kids would extend their
hands for her gifts, then run to the other end of the yard.
I heard the sound of a car pulling into the drive, but from
where we were, I couldn’t see who it was, so I rose and walked
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toward the gate. We weren’t expecting anyone, so I tensed right
away, but when I saw the shape of the police car there, my
body shifted into some hyperalert mode. Every beat of my heart
against the wall of my chest felt too strong, the tea churned in my
stomach and I heard everything—the birds in the trees around
us, the tinkle of the children’s laughter behind me, the officers’
footsteps on the gravel as they approached me.
No. No. No.
Grace had been missing for almost a month. Father and Pat-
rick had visited every hospital within driving distance, check-
ing for Jane Does, and had spent hundreds of hours flashing her
photograph all over the city, looking for leads. But perhaps some
part of my heart had clung stubbornly to hope, because when I
saw the policemen remove their caps, and when I saw the awk-
ward sadness etched onto their young faces, I was forced to face
a truth I still desperately wanted to deny.
“What’s this?” Mother said, approaching behind me. I heard
her give an awful squeak and I knew she’d quickly come to the
same conclusion I’d reached. “No,” she said, and then her voice
became a wail. “No, Maryanne. Don’t let them tell us.”
“Mother, please,” I whispered, taking her elbow. “We can’t
hide from this.”
“Miss, Madam,” the taller of the two policemen greeted us.
“Please,” Mother said, her voice strained, her sense of eti-
quette apparently persisting even in the worst moment of our
lives. “Please take a seat with us so we can talk.”
If there was any doubt in my mind what the police had come
to announce, it disappeared when they walked into the garden
and saw the children. They exchanged an awful glance, and I
wanted so much to weep then, but I knew I couldn’t do it out-
side—not with the kids right there.
“Should we go inside?”
“No,” Mother said stiffly. “We stay here.”
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So we all sat around the little table, and then one of the of-
ficers said very quietly,
“I am sorry to—”
“Can I get you some tea?” Mother interrupted him, her voice
rising a little hysterically. “We need tea, Maryanne—”
“Mother,” I pleaded. “Let them speak.”
“Madam,” the tall policeman said, very gently. “I’m sorry to
tell you that we have recovered a body from Lake Washington
last night. The body is in an advanced state of decay. However,
some of the clothing was intact. It matches—”
“No,” Mother said, standing. “I really need to get that tea—”
“—the description you gave us of Mrs. Walsh’s blue-and-
white polka dot dress. The medical examiner has concluded
that it is almost certainly her.”
Mother sat heavily. The birds in the trees kept singing and
the children kept playing even while my heart was breaking in
my chest. I started to cry then, the full weight of the decisions
I’d made finally coming to rest on my shoulders. Those babies
would never again know the comfort of her arms, and the trag-
edy of that loss alone seemed unbearable.
“Well?” Mother demanded hoarsely. “What happened to my
daughter?”
“There’s no way to be sure,” the shorter officer said very qui-
etly. “Of course, we’ll do our best to find out who’s responsible,
but it’s fair to say that a body dumped in the river is a somewhat
reliable indicator of foul play.”
Mother made another whimper in the back of her throat and
shot to her feet.
“Excuse me,” she said stiffly. As she walked to the house,
she covered her mouth with her hand and began to run. Alone
at the table with the officers, I gradually became aware of the
sound of ragged breathing. I looked around to find out who was
making the sound, and then I realized it was me.
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“Do you have any idea how she died?” I asked. My voice
sounded desperately high.
“It looks like she’s been in the river for weeks, Miss,” the
office said awkwardly. “And with this hot weather…well, the
medical examiner said he’d try to do an autopsy, but to be com-
pletely honest, I don’t hold any hope you’ll ever know for sure.”
The worst of it was, I couldn’t help but feel some relief about
that, and as soon as I recognized the emotion, I hated myself.
The police wanted the address of Patrick’s job site so they
could deliver the news. They said someone would go to the
bank to tell Father, too.
“You can’t deliver news like this over the phone,” one of
the officers said as he straightened his hat. “Once again, Miss.
We’re so sorry.”
They left then, and I went inside to find Mother so that I
could comfort her, or she could comfort me, or at least so that
I didn’t have to be alone with the children while I carried the
/>
weight of the news. But I found Mother lying on the stretcher
bed, staring at the ceiling. She was silently crying, her makeup
staining the tears that ran down her cheeks and into her hair.
She clutched the little pill container against her chest as if it were
some kind of lovely, comforting teddy bear.
“Mother?” I asked unevenly. She looked up at me and I saw
that she was seeing me through a medicinal glaze. I’d never felt
as alone as I did in that moment.
Gracie. Oh Gracie, what have I done?
I made myself a fresh cup of tea, having forgotten all about
the tea that I was halfway through drinking when the police
arrived. I took the fresh cup out to sit on the stairs at the back
of the house and I watched the children play and I tried to fix
a mask in place.
Be a grieving sister, not a guilt-stricken murderer.
Logically, I knew that I hadn’t performed the procedure my-
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self and I couldn’t be held responsible for this outcome, but emo-
tionally, I was entering the first phase of living under a cloud of
guilt that would come and go for decades. Yes, Grace begged
me to help her, but I found the doctor. I arranged the proce-
dure. I got her most of the money. Oh, God, I even drove her
there and when she was scared, I didn’t tell her that she could
still back out.
“Aunt Maryanne?” Tim climbed up to sit beside me on the
ramp, his expression steady and very serious. I looked at him
with bleary eyes, staring at him through a haze of shock, bat-
tling to resist an urge to beg that child for forgiveness.
“Yes?” I croaked.
“Did the policeman find her? Is Mommy coming home
soon?” he asked me, his little face shining with hope.
It wasn’t my place to tell him, but I knew intuitively that
Patrick wasn’t going to be in any state to explain it to the chil-
dren. I wasn’t nurturing or gentle or kind, not the way Grace
had been. I wasn’t motherly at all…but that day I was agoniz-
ingly aware that I was all that the four of them had. I opened
my arms to him and he climbed up onto my lap, shooting me
wary side glances as he nestled against me.
“Sweetheart,” I said, straining to keep my voice level.
“Mommy had to go away to heaven.”
“But I don’t want Mommy to be in heaven,” he said, scowl-
ing. “We want her to come home.”
“Sometimes God needs people in heaven even more than we
need them here with us,” I said, lying through my teeth because
I didn’t even believe in God myself, especially that day. But what else could I possibly say? I made a mistake. I did everything wrong.
She’s never coming back and it’s my fault.
“But who will look after us?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t even know how to make us eggs.”
“I know.”
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“Grandmother isn’t going to stay, is she?”
“No,” I said, swallowing. “Grandmother won’t stay.”
“Will you?”
I shook my head, and my tears at last spilled over.
“Timmy, I can’t stay, either. This isn’t my life.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Tim said, but his eyes had
filled with tears. “I just want my Mommy.”
Great, rolling sobs were now bursting from within me, and
when Tim started sobbing, too, I could only hold him tight
in my arms. The other children came to see what the fuss was
about, and I had to have the same conversation with the little
ones, who cried as soon as they saw us crying, and soon the five
of us were all sitting on the back steps, sobbing as though the
world had ended.
It felt so strange that after all those weeks of coming to the
house every night, Mother and Father retreated immediately.
Father came from the bank, but he set about packing up their
belongings right away, and then he helped Mother up from the
stretcher.
“Where are you going?” I asked desperately.
“Home,” he said, jaw set and shoulders locked stiffly. “We
need to go home.”
“But…now?”
“Yes, Maryanne. Now.”
Patrick arrived home just as Father was leading my near-co-
matose mother from the house. His eyes were dry, his expres-
sion blank and I could see he was in some kind of shock. He
shook Father’s hand, and then pushed past me into the house
without a word.
“Father, I don’t know what to say to him,” I choked. “Please
don’t leave me here alone with them.”
Father closed his eyes briefly, then he helped Mother to stand
by the car before he turned to me.
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“We need to go home to grieve and to think this through.
I’ve tolerated him for these weeks because I had to, but we all
know where the blame really lies.”
My eyes widened, and my nervous, guilty heart skipped a
beat.
“Where?”
“With him, Maryanne,” Father spat, pointing at the house.
“She probably ran away. He never treated her right, and now
she’s dead, and…” His face was red, his hands in fists that trem-
bled violently with the force of holding back punches he desper-
ately wanted to throw. “Jesus Christ. In the lake, Maryanne. For
a month. He should have taken better care of his wife.”
I started to cry again and I wrapped my arms around my waist.
“Father, please believe me. This isn’t Patrick’s fault.”
Father grunted, then he opened the car door and took Moth-
er’s arm, lowering her gently into her seat.
“How many of those damned pills has she taken this time?”
he muttered.
“I didn’t see how many, but I’m guessing it was a lot,” I whis-
pered thickly.
Mother gazed up at me, her expression completely blank.
“You’ll need to help him, Maryanne,” she said.
Father stepped out of the way, and I bent to kiss Mother’s
cheek then croaked, “I will, Mother. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I closed the door behind her, and Father cleared his throat
once…twice…a third time. He was blinking rapidly now, still
shaking with grief and an impotent rage, still glaring at the
house behind us.
“That bastard barely looked after her and the kids when she
was alive,” he said. “How is he ever going to cope now?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted weakly. “I just have no idea.”
As I stepped back into the house, Patrick passed me on his
way back along the hall. He was still dry-eyed, but he was car-
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rying a bottle
of whiskey now. He went straight into his bed-
room and closed the door behind him without a word.
I found Tim behind the sofa in the living room. He was cry-
ing, rocking back and forth, rubbing his upper arms as if he was
cold. The lovely new outfit my mother had surprised him with
that day seemed ridiculous now, and I wanted to haul him out
of there to at least hug him, but when I tried to coax him out,
he shook his head and whispered at me, “I don’t want to upset
the children. They cried before when they saw me cry. I’ll come
out when I can be brave.”
He was a little shy of five years old. I didn’t want to leave
him alone there, so I sat on the sofa in front of him and I tried
to take his advice. I have to be brave. I can’t upset the children, either. So I forced myself into a numb state of shock—promising
myself I could weep later, in private once everyone was asleep.
The twins and Beth were tearing around the house and the
yard again, apparently having already forgotten the awful news
I’d delivered earlier. They asked me for snacks and I gave them
some of Mrs. Hills’s lemon slice, and after a while, Ruth came
back inside.
“Mommy in heaven now,” she parroted thoughtfully.
“Yes, sweetie.”
“I want to go to heaven, too.”
“You can’t, Ruth,” I croaked.
“Mommy will come back soon,” Ruth assured me, patting
my arm gently, and then she tore off again, no doubt to squabble
with her twin about one thing or another. I had similarly awful
conversations with Beth and then Jeremy as the hours passed,
but Tim remained stubbornly behind the couch, and Patrick
was still in his bedroom.
And I sat there on the sofa in the center of my sister’s run-
down house, surrounded by my mother’s extravagant splurges,
and wondered how on earth we were all going to cope now
that Grace was really gone.
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* * *
Eventually, I convinced the children to eat and then I bathed
them and put them to bed. Only once the house was silent did
Patrick emerge from the bedroom. His eyes had taken on the
kind of intense bloodshot hue that only comes from hours of
weeping.
I was washing up the dishes from the childrens’ dinner, but I
left the sink to serve him a plate of ground beef and vegetables.
