Unbreathed Memories

by Marcia Talley

  Julie giggled. “If we didn’t have heads, we couldn’t eat. Is Gramma going to have cookies?”

  Julie must have been thinking of my mother’s famous soft, melt-in-your-mouth ginger cookies. I figured that Mom hadn’t even had time to unpack the cookie sheets, let alone bake anything on them. “I don’t know, Julie. But we could stop at the grocery store and get some pizza.”

  “Yay, pizza!” Dylan lived for pizza.

  “Pepperoni!” chimed in Sean. “No mushrooms.”

  “Abby likes mushrooms,” said Julie. “Don’t you, Abby?”

  I felt as if I’d stepped into a time capsule and been whisked back forty years. As I drove south on I-97 listening to the happy patter and good-natured squabbling of the children, I recalled wondrous cross-country trips as the U.S. Navy moved us from one duty station to another. Sometimes Daddy would hitch up a trailer to our big Chrysler and drag it behind. We’d camp in national parks along the way—Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Yosemite. I smashed my finger in a door at the Tetons and bled all over my new plaid shirt. Mother washed it out in a tub of cold water, using an old-fashioned corrugated washboard. Funny the things you remember.

  Sometimes we’d pull off the road where a flashing neon sign announced “Vacancy” and “Free TV,” and, if we were really lucky, “Heated Pool.” We loved staying in inexpensive motels where my sisters and I would get a room of our own. With our parents locked safely behind the connecting door, we’d watch TV late into the night, falling asleep while the black-and-white images still flickered on the cheap knotty-pine paneling.

  “The Doorknob to Hell,” a small voice intoned from the backseat. We were heading east on Rowe Boulevard, just approaching the Naval Academy stadium where a water tower shaped like a golf ball on a tee towered over the parking lot.

  I glanced into the rearview mirror and tried to catch Dylan’s eye. “Who told you that, Dylan?”

  “Nobody. Looks like a doorknob is all.”

  “Yeah,” Sean agreed. “There was this giant …” and the twins launched into an improbable story involving dinosaurs, devils, and underground caverns, interrupting each other to heap one extravagant detail upon another until Julie clamped both hands over her ears and even I screamed for mercy. But in the left-turn lane at Taylor Avenue, waiting for the light, I looked back over my shoulder toward the stadium. The kid was right. Darn thing did look like a giant doorknob.

  Ignoring our pleas, Sean reached the climax of his story and began making woo woo noises and waggling his fingers at his sister.

  “Make him stop, Aunt Hannah! He’s scaring Abby!”

  The light turned green just then, of course, so I couldn’t deal with Sean until we had pulled into the parking lot at Graul’s Market.

  I unbuckled my seat belt and swiveled around. “If you can’t behave yourself, Sean Patrick, I’ll have to leave you in the car while the rest of us go shopping.”

  I wouldn’t have, of course, but Sean didn’t know that. He hung his head until his dimpled chin touched his chest, tucked his hands snugly between his knees, then looked up at me through white-blond lashes. “Can I pick out the pizza?”

  “You can each pick out a pizza.” Auntie Hannah wasn’t usually so generous. I just wasn’t in the mood for any hassles. Exhausted with worry and racked by guilt, I could focus only on getting to my parents’, anxious to find out if my passion for truth had ruined my sister’s life.

  A few minutes later, I paraded into the supermarket, three perfectly behaved children in tow. It was too good to last. Dylan wanted to take the shopping cart and tear through the aisles like Mario Andretti, but I nipped his racing career in the bud by putting him in charge of my purse, a large bookbaglike satchel that contained everything I own. He hung it around his neck like a feedbag. At the checkout, he reached in and solemnly extracted a twenty-dollar bill from my coin purse and handed it to the cashier. Sean, meanwhile, correctly pegging me as a softie, had selected two candy bars and tried to slip them into the shopping cart when he thought I wasn’t looking. Julie, ignoring us all, danced Abby up and down the tabloid magazine racks. Abby laid a noisy kiss on Leonardo DiCaprio, then moved on to smooch with Bill Clinton. Cheeky little rabbit. I had forgotten how it was, shopping with kids.

  Back in the car, the children were strangely subdued, and I wondered if they were worrying about their mother or had simply run out of gas. By the time we reached the spot where the road forks left to Providence and right to the Naval Academy golf course, Sean and Dylan had fallen asleep with chocolate on their lips and the bag of groceries sandwiched between them.

  I pulled into the drive behind my father’s black Lincoln and set the brake with relief. Paul’s blue Volvo was parked on the street in front of the house next door. “We’re here, sports fans!” I reached back to unbuckle Julie, stepped out onto the driveway, then pushed my seat forward so the kids could get out. As Sean started to run off, I grabbed him by the hood of his jacket. “Not so fast, big fella. Carry the bag for me, will you?”

  He wrapped thin arms around the bag in a bear hug and plodded up the walk. “Help, Aunt Hannah! I can’t see!”

  I flipped down the automatic door lock and smiled after my nephew, as he staggered with slow, exaggerated Frankenstein steps up the walk, acting for all the world as if the bag weighed fifty tons. How could someone as screwed up as my sister Georgina have managed to raise such sweet kids? Oh, Lord! What if she had killed her therapist? What if she went to jail? I couldn’t imagine Scott handling the kids. Especially Julie. Inside that clever head of hers wheels were turning, measuring, weighing, taking everything in. And that defiant little chin, just like our Emily. At least Emily had turned out all right—eventually—although there had been times when she was in high school when I would gladly have strangled her. I shuddered, remembering Dr. Sturges’s distorted face. Not nice, Hannah. You shouldn’t joke about stuff like that.

  I stepped through the door the kids had left open. Amid stacks of packing boxes still piled in the entrance hall, Paul greeted me with a hug and a soft kiss, his lips lingering on mine just long enough that I began to forget where I was and what brought me here. “Hold that thought,” I whispered against his ear. “Right now I have to cook up a few pizzas for lunch. Want some?”

  “Pepperoni, no mushrooms?” Paul asked, hopefully.

  “Pepperoni, no mushrooms.”

  Paul touched my lips with his index finger. “I love it when you sweet-talk me like that.” A long, satisfying minute later, he followed me into the kitchen where Sean had abandoned the grocery sack, leaning crookedly against the refrigerator door.

  Paul tore open the pizza boxes while I fiddled with the high-tech dials and buttons on Mother’s new stove, trying to get the oven to turn on. “Where are Mom and Dad?” I asked.

  “In the living room. Watching TV. They were waiting for the news, at least that’s what they were doing until the recent invasion of adoring rug rats.”

  I rummaged through the cabinets, looking for something to bake the pizzas on. “What a mess! How are they taking this?”

  “Neither one’s saying much. Could be shock, I suppose. Your dad’s wearing a hole in the carpet with his pacing while your mother’s keeping a stiff upper lip. She’s confident it will all turn out to be a colossal mistake.”

  I found the cookie sheets—Mother had unpacked them, after all—and Paul slid the rock-hard pizzas onto them. While we waited for them to bake, I quietly brought Paul up to speed on the events of the past twenty-four hours and my role in them. I was relieved when he hugged me and told me that he thought I had done the right thing by telling the officers the truth.

  After pizza and Coca-Cola, consumed around the big coffee table in the living room, talking of everything else but, the children entertained us with a corrupted version of Monopoly. Even though they made up their own rules, which the boys kept changing to benefit themselves, it was Julie, I noticed with satisfaction, who ended up owning all the railroads, with hotels on both Boardwalk
and Park Place. Paul eventually settled the kids in the basement recreation room with a bag of videos he had rented from Blockbuster, while the grown-ups waited upstairs for news from Scott. Mother sat in an upholstered Queen Anne armchair and kept trying to smile and make small talk—“I think the garden is going to be lovely once I get my roses in”—while Daddy busied himself between mugs of coffee by taking books out of boxes and arranging them in order by size on the bookshelves. How much coffee could my father drink before his blue eyes turned brown, I wondered.

  Sitting next to Paul on the sofa, I threw out conversational tidbits—jokes I had read on the Internet—that glowed, then quickly died, like sparks from a campfire.

  My mother laid aside the magazine she had been flipping through without actually reading anything in it. “Why doesn’t Scott call? He’s got to know that we’re worried sick.”

  “I guess he’s got a lot on his mind right now, Mom.”

  “But you’d think he’d at least check in to make sure the children are OK.”

  “He knows the children are OK. They’re here with us.”

  Mother sighed. “I suppose so.” She chewed on her thumbnail, a habit she had recently acquired when she finally gave up a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

  I didn’t think I could stand one more minute of not knowing. I had to do something. Anything. Surprised I hadn’t thought of this before, I excused myself, went into the kitchen, and picked up the phone. My sister-in-law’s boyfriend, Dennis Rutherford, was a Chesapeake County police officer. Although Chesapeake was several counties to the south of Annapolis, I was convinced Dennis would have an inside track with his colleagues up in Baltimore. But Dennis wasn’t home. Disappointed, I left a detailed message, then rejoined the family broodfest.

  When the phone finally rang, it wasn’t Dennis, just somebody selling a lawn care service. Mother screamed into the receiver, “We don’t want any!” slammed it back into the cradle, and burst into tears. Dad stood by the fireplace with a book in each hand, staring helplessly at his sobbing wife.

  It was Paul who saved the day. “C’mon, Lois. I’m taking you shopping.”

  Mother and I always enjoyed a little retail therapy now and then, but this was a new role for Paul.

  Mother pulled a fresh tissue from the box on her lap, dabbed at her eyes, and looked up doubtfully. “Where to?”

  Paul shrugged, palms up. “Home Depot?” The giant do-it-yourself store would carry many of the items on Mother’s list, things she needed for the house, such as towel bars, curtain rods, and lightbulbs. I was amazed at what the previous owners had taken away with them. My parents had been operating for almost a week without toilet-paper holders. First things first. No wonder Mother had sent Ruth and her dandy little mirrors and wind chimes packing.

  After Paul had helped Mother into her coat and the door had slammed shut behind them, Daddy flipped on the TV, and we caught the five o’clock news. The anchorman on Channel Two, with hair so sculptured his hairdresser deserved a line in the scrolling credits, didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Dr. Sturges had fallen or been pushed over the balcony during an apparent struggle. Robbery had been ruled out. The police were still waiting for the medical examiner’s report. My father must have been listening to the broadcast, although his eyes weren’t on the TV. Suddenly, the pile of books he was holding teetered, then collapsed into a heap on the floor. “Dammit to hell!” he muttered, just loud enough for me to hear. Without picking anything up, he left the room, smack dab in the middle of the report. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  I watched, puzzled, as he threaded his way through a maze of packing boxes on his way to the kitchen. What had upset him? Something the reporter had said? Or maybe he was just sick to death of unpacking books and wired from too much caffeine. Whatever, I was relieved when he returned a few minutes later looking normal and holding a cold bottle of beer. Coffee and beer. Uppers and downers for the masses. Daddy perched on the arm of the sofa and took a long drink, then turned his attention to the TV. But now the reporter had moved on to describe a fire that was burning out of control in a warehouse near Fells Point. Daddy grunted.

  “They didn’t mention anything about Georgina, Daddy.”

  He set his beer down on top of the Capital. I watched as the moisture from the bottle slowly soaked into the newspaper. “That little girl doesn’t have her head screwed on straight, but there’s no way in hell she could have killed anybody. What can the police be thinking?”

  They’re thinking they don’t like to be lied to. I didn’t tell Daddy about that. I couldn’t predict how he’d take the news that I ratted on Georgina. If he found out about it later, it wouldn’t be from me.

  Leaving the TV playing on low volume, I helped Dad unpack books, fighting the old librarian’s urge to put them in alphabetical order by author and title. Size is good. So is color. I rearranged a shelf so all the blue bindings were together, then ended the row with a two-volume set of yellow-bound essays. The complete works of Patrick O’Brian, my father’s favorite novelist, went on the next shelf down. I left him to check on the children from time to time, finding them happily eating popcorn and watching The Lion King for the umpteenth time.

  When the doorbell rang, I was thumbing through an ancient paperback copy of Thunderball. I rushed to the door, thinking it might be Dennis, but the officer with her index finger on the button wasn’t Dennis. She was Sergeant Williams, with her partner, Detective Duvall. It didn’t compute. What the hell were they doing here in Annapolis?

  Suddenly I panicked. “Where’s my sister? Has something happened to Georgina?”

  Officer Williams didn’t answer. “May we come in, Mrs. Ives?”

  I stood in the doorway like a stone fool, one hand grasping the doorknob, the other balled into a tight fist. My heart was pounding. Something must be wrong with Georgina! I took a ragged breath. “Not until you tell me why you’re here.”

  Officer Williams shifted her weight from one foot to the other, then ran her short, stubby fingers through her light brown hair. “There’s no need to worry. Your sister’s fine, under the circumstances. We sent her home with her husband over an hour ago.”

  An hour ago? I couldn’t believe Scott hadn’t called. What a selfish clod!

  I continued to block the door. “Then why are you here?”

  “We’d like to talk to your father.”

  Daddy appeared suddenly at my shoulder. “What about?” The deep, confident voice that had caused many a young sailor to quake in his deck shoes had no perceivable effect on this lady. She didn’t even blink.

  “Is there someplace we can go where we won’t be interrupted?”

  That was odd. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d come to talk to me after everything I’d blabbed to Officer Williams. But Daddy? What could they want with him? I glanced quickly at my father, hoping for a clue. He looked bewildered and didn’t answer right away, so I blurted out, “We can go to the kitchen, I suppose.” I tugged on his arm.

  My father led the officers down the hall with me following close behind. Once in the kitchen, Daddy leaned against the dishwasher and waved the officers toward the table. “Have a seat.”

  Officer Duvall turned to me and drawled, “We’d like to speak to your father alone.”

  “Daddy?”

  He frowned, deepening the natural crease that separated his eyebrows. “I’d rather she stayed.”

  Officer Duvall shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”

  “I’ve nothing to hide.”

  Officer Duvall settled his ample behind into a chair that groaned alarmingly under his weight. I wondered if the chair had been screwed back together securely after being disassembled for the move. He pulled a small notebook from his inside breast pocket, turned to a blank page, and smoothed it open on the tabletop. Officer Williams remained standing by her chair and regarded my father coolly. “Your daughter believes you had something to do with Dr. Sturges’s death.”

  If it had
been me, I would have shouted it, but Daddy’s voice remained calm and steady. “That’s perfectly ridiculous!”

  “Mrs. Cardinale claims that Dr. Sturges invited you to come to her office last week in order to assist with her therapy.” Officer Williams sat down, laced her fingers together, and laid her hands on the table in front of her.

  Daddy looked thoughtful and began chewing on the knuckle of his index finger. A sure sign of nerves. Something was getting to him.

  “She says you became angry during the session. She says you lost your temper.”

  Officer Williams hadn’t taken her eyes from Daddy’s face and, with the long practice of a commanding officer, he had traded her gaze for gaze. But now he looked away. “I wasn’t there.”

  “Are you telling me that your daughter is lying?”

  His head snapped around. “Of course she’s lying.”

  “You saw her this morning,” I reminded the officers. “Georgina was a mess.”

  “True. But in this case, we have a corroborating witness. The housekeeper claims she heard raised voices.”

  My father shrugged. “Sturges is a shrink. I imagine voices get raised in that office all the time.”

  “But, sir, your name appears in her appointment calendar.”

  I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. “Daddy?”

  I caught his eye, but he looked away. His shoulders sagged. Clearly the interview wasn’t going the way he had expected. “Get me a cup of coffee, would you, honey?”

  I emptied the dregs from the coffeepot, thick as syrup, into his cup. My heart raced. When I returned to the table, he was sitting down at it. Anyone coming in just then would think we were about to play a hand of bridge.

  Daddy took a sip from the cup I gave him, grimaced, and said, “OK. I’ll admit that I attended that damn-fool therapy session. But that was the only time I was ever in that loony woman’s office.”

  Duvall made a notation in his notebook. “Just that once?”

  “Yes.”

  Officer Williams leaned forward. “Tell me, what was it that made you lose your temper?”