My Very Best Friend

by Cathy Lamb

I hurried back into the house and grabbed blankets, covered her, then ran around to the other side of the truck.

  We drove through the empty streets of the country, over the stream, around the shadowy hills, past the rumbling ocean, and into the village. She insisted we leave the windows down so she could smell the salt in the air.

  “Stop here.”

  We stopped in front of the ruins of the cathedral, built nine hundred years ago, gravestones wobbling crookedly over the land.

  “It’s morbid to stop at the graveyard,” I drawled.

  “True. Rather gruesome, given the inevitable. Tell me a bone chilling ghost story.”

  “I don’t have one at the moment, except for the one about the headless woman with the hook for an arm we used to tell each other.”

  “She was scary, but not as scary as the ghost story we told about Hatchet Hunter and Chain Link Man.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Correct. Hatchet Hunter and Chain Link Man. They scared me so much, I had nightmares.”

  We stared out at the darkness, the cathedral looming, the tilted gravestones reminders of those who were here . . . then gone.

  “Don’t come to my grave, Charlotte.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to be there.”

  Damn. She makes me cry. “You make me cry, then my nose runs.”

  She held my hand. “You are a true friend, Charlotte, and I love you even when your nose is running like a sieve.”

  “Thank you. What a special image you’ve given me of my nose.”

  We drove three blocks, in silence, then stopped at the castle, the ocean splashing up on the cliff behind it, the drawbridge opening a gaping hole. It was a place where prisoners were dropped into holes in the ground, tunnels were dug to attack and defend, battles were fought and lost, and Bridget and I played.

  “Remember that game we invented near the tunnel? The one about being chased by French knights?” I asked.

  “Yes. We defended ourselves each and every time. They were afraid of our sword-fighting prowess.”

  “Powerful girls, we were.”

  “Other girls pretended they were princesses in distress.”

  “Dull. Anti-feminist. Too dreary for us.”

  “Your mother would have lost her pretty head.”

  I drove past Sandra’s Scones and Treats Bakery, Molly Cockles Scottish Dancing Pub, the golf course, Estelle’s Chocolate Room, university buildings, two ancient churches with stained glass windows, the fountain in the center of the village, and the bookstore where my mother used to buy us one book each.

  I drove on the wrong side of the street and rolled down the windows so Bridget would be closest to her park.

  “Look, Bridget.” I pointed to the ten-foot-tall steel arc at an entrance to the park.

  She inhaled, quick. “My goodness.” She put her hands to her face.

  The arc was engraved. It said, “Bridget’s Park. A Place for Everyone.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said again, as I drove to the other end to see the same arc, the same engraving.

  “The arcs were Toran’s idea.”

  She sniffled. “I love that brother of mine.”

  “Me too.”

  “When Legend comes, she’ll see this. She’ll know the truth about my life.” She struggled not to cry. “I want you to be honest with her, Charlotte, but she’ll know that in the end, I gave everyone a gift. My name was on a gift. Her mum’s name was on a gift.”

  I wondered if my heart would burst from the pain of losing Bridget. “Legend will love it. She’ll know you’re her mother. She’ll know from Toran and me that you never wanted to give her up. She’ll know you loved her your whole life. I’ll tell her. We’ll tell her.”

  “I lost myself that day when they ripped her out of my arms. I lost it. My baby. I screamed so loud, Charlotte. I fought. I hit, I kicked, and I remember they took her out of the room, and she was crying, too. My baby was crying for me, I know it, and I could hear her screaming down the hall and it got fainter and fainter and pretty soon I couldn’t hear Legend at all. Silence. Silence except for me yelling for her, trying to get her, and everyone holding me down, telling me to calm down. Calm down. My daughter, my baby, was stolen from me, and they want me to calm down.” She had started to shake, and I held her hand. “Calm down.” She took a deep, jagged breath. “Calm down.” She wiped her brow.

  I couldn’t even imagine. Someone comes and rips your newborn baby out of your arms and you never see that baby again. Never. How do you live with that?

  “Tell Legend I planned it with her in my mind the whole time.”

  “I will. I promise I will.”

  “Let’s go sit in the park before my memories kill me. They come back like that, they always have. That one awful time won’t leave my head. It’s an ongoing nightmare.”

  I helped her out. We walked twenty feet, me carrying most of her weight, and sat on a bench by the rose garden in our pajamas. It was cold, and I ran back to the truck for the blankets and wrapped them around her. She was bones and skin now, bones and skin.

  The park was almost finished. It would be one of the best parks in all of Scotland for children and families, at least that’s what we believed.

  Bridget was shriveled and exhausted beneath her robe, her cheeks sunken, but she was smiling, and I felt her joy.

  “It’s a beautiful park, Charlotte.” Her voice broke. “It has everything for children. They can be happy here. They can play and run and laugh. They can escape if they’re from homes that aren’t happy, like Toran and me. I would have loved a park exactly like this when I was a kid.”

  I was an emotional wreck, trembling. “I will miss you. Bridget, I can’t tell you how much. I will miss everything about you. I can’t imagine my life without you. All these years. Since we were babies.”

  “I’ll be here in the rose beds with you, my friend,” she whispered.

  I burst into tears, and she hugged me.

  “I’ll be walking with you down this path right here.”

  My shoulders shook uncontrollably.

  “I’ll be sitting by you, here, on this bench, listening to Toran and Pherson playing their bagpipes in the gazebo.”

  I gasped for breath, my forehead to hers.

  “I’ll be with you when you lie down on the grass and write your books.”

  I kept crying . . . and crying . . .

  “I’ll be with you when you watch the fountain with Toran.”

  I tilted my head back to the black sky and moaned, my tears drowning me.

  “I’ll watch your and Toran’s children play.”

  Our children. Here. Without their aunt Bridget. She held me under the night sky, the stars a sprinkle of kisses, the moon a circle of white fire. Bridget comforting Charlotte when it should have been me comforting her.

  My tears were a river sliding down my cheeks and onto Bridget’s, where they mixed together, two broken, sad rivers.

  “And when you’re an old Scottish lady, Char, I’ll look out for you, and smile, as you watch your grandchildren playing in the castle.”

  “I’ll miss you.” It was all I could manage, all I could do. Losing her was killing me. “I will miss you, Bridget.”

  “I will miss you, too. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for building this park. Thank you for helping me leave something behind, something beautiful. For Legend, for everyone. I love you, Charlotte.”

  “I love you, too.”

  I could hear the whistle of the train. It was on the tracks and headed straight for us.

  I held Toran close to me that night after we made love.

  “I feel like I’m dying of grief, Charlotte.”

  “I feel the same. I can hardly breathe through it.”

  We kissed, and held the kiss until we fell asleep, devastated.

  Utterly devastated.

  Pherson and Bridget sat on a bench in Toran’s backyard, hand in hand, their heads bent toward each other, black and w
hite-blond, Bridget wrapped in blankets. Silver Cat sat right beside her.

  I looked away when I saw Pherson swipe a hand across his eyes. I knew he was crying. Tough and rough Pherson, Toran’s best friend, another tough and rough man.

  They were gentle on their women.

  And Pherson was losing the woman who had been in his heart from the time we were kids.

  Day by day, that’s all we had with Bridget.

  Soon she would be gone.

  Pherson would never be the same. He had told me he had not married because he had not found any woman he loved as much as he loved Bridget.

  Bridget had been his soul mate, and they should have been together. It was there in their script. But the script never made it to completion. Someone shredded the script. Someone burned it. Someone decided his evil should wipe it away.

  I felt another rush of rage for Angus Cruickshank.

  Whoever killed him, if he was killed, had done everyone a favor.

  Bridget kissed Pherson’s cheek, soft, so soft. She whispered something to him.

  He would remember it forever.

  I cried that night for Pherson.

  For his total, forever loss.

  Bridget wanted me to drive her to the top of the cliffs, so I bundled her up in blankets and took her up. I knew exactly where she wanted me to go.

  Before we left, she dug in the brown box for letters that I hadn’t read yet and brought them with us.

  I read them when we arrived, the ocean whipped up in the distance, wind blowing the trees like rubber bands.

  April in 1975. I don’t know the date. Maybe the 25th?

  Dear Charlotte,

  My father and mum came to see me in London in my flat when I was done waitressing at a bar. Waitress. I waitress and I draw my pictures.

  It is not a nice flat. I am having troubles with bad drugs. Arms hurt. And bad alcohol. Too much of everything, but the memories don’t go away. He’s forcing me, hurting me, wearing black and white, a choker on his neck, a choker on my neck, a choker . . .

  Where is she now? How is she? How is my baby? Do you know?

  It has been months since I talked to my mum and father. Toran is at Cambridge. Smart Toran. So smart. He doesn’t know it all.

  My father said to me Sister Margaret told us what happened to you but he did not believe what she said. She had dementia Father Cruickshank told him later and tried to cook a live chicken in the oven and she danced naked outside and she lies but he said Bridget was Sister Margaret telling the truth?

  Bridget was Father Cruickshank the father of the baby did he hurt you and I said yes and he started to cry and cry but I did not comfort him because he put me in that home said I was a slut and a whore like his mum and he took my baby away from me then he sent me to live with people who scream at voices and knock their heads into walls and rock back and forth for that long and I also had straps on me and shots there too.

  And he said why didn’t you tell me and I said you would never have believed me you didn’t even believe Sister Margaret you would have believed Father Cruickshank because you love the church more than you love your family and Father Cruickshank said he would kill Toran if I told and my father he put his head in his hands and cried and cried again.

  Legend she would be two years old. Two. My girl. I will never see my girl again because of this crying father this stupid man who shrieks Bible verses.

  My mum cried, too. Bridget she kept saying I am sorry sorry sorry and I said it’s too late for you to be sorry why didn’t you help me Mum why didn’t you come get me why didn’t you save the baby why didn’t you get me out of the asylum and she said she couldn’t Dad wouldn’t let her and I said why do you only do what Dad says why didn’t you help me your daughter?

  And she cried and rocked herself hands on her head. But I said to her now you cry Mum but where were you for me for your daughter? What happened to your granddaughter? I was not a whore or a slut and you believe the priest and your husband who is mean to you.

  And I say go home crying father. You took my baby from me and you believe Father Cruickshank that I had sex with other boys and it was him who forced me to for a long time. Blood on me. Choked me. You get out now and take your cross with you and your Bible and don’t you quote scripture here where was God in my life? Where was he?

  So my father he says he’s sorry he has never said he’s sorry and I say it’s too late because it is and then gets up and tries to hug me but I pick up a pan and I hit him on his shoulder and then his shoulders sag like they have the weight of potatoes on him. I hit him again and again. Then I’m sad I hit my father.

  I might love my mother a little because she tried when she wasn’t drunk but why was she drunk? Drunk mum means she couldn’t be a mum. I told her that she said sorry sorry sorry, I love you. She tried to hug me and I said get out and never come back never talk to me again never come here and outside the flat I heard them fighting and my mum said I knew it she was not a whore look what you did to her Carney and I want a divorce and my dad said I didn’t know and there will be no divorce and they are crying both of them.

  They should have helped their crying daughter.

  Bridget

  May 12, 1975

  Charlotte,

  I told Toran everything, finally. He cried. I’ve never seen him so furious in my entire life. If Father Angus Cruickshank had been here, he would have killed him with his bare hands, I know he would. He hugged me and told me he loved me and said that Father Cruickshank would never hurt me again.

  Love you.

  Bridget

  June 5, 1975

  Charlotte,

  Father Angus Cruickshank has disappeared. Gone. My mother wrote me a letter and told me and said come home Bridget we want you to live with us everything will be different and even my father wrote me a letter and said come home I’m sorry I made a mistake I love you, daughter.

  I wonder if that priest is dead. I hope someone killed him. I would have if I could have.

  I wonder if my father did it or my mum or both of them. I cannot imagine them killing a priest. The Catholic Church is what my father lived for. He would believe he was going to hell.

  But he knew the truth about Father Cruickshank when he left my flat. He knew.

  My mother called me. I told her not to call me again. When my father called I said don’t call me again ever I hate you both. I hung up.

  Bridget

  June 18, 1975

  Charlotte,

  My parents are dead. Toran came and told me.

  They died when their car flew off the cliff outside of St. Ambrose. You know the cliff, the one on the very top. The part where it is completely straight. No curves, not a one. It was sunny. Dry. Not cold.

  They are gone.

  I hate them, I love them, I hate them, I love them.

  I caused their accident. They were upset about me, about what Father Cruickshank did to me. I know it.

  I think my father drove the car over the cliff on purpose. His favorite priest raped his daughter and he believed the priest’s lies. He took his daughter’s baby away from her. He put his daughter in an insane asylum and called her a whore and a slut. Even Sister Margaret had told him but he hadn’t believed her. He had dinner with the priest, the rapist of his daughter.

  He had loved the church and the church had failed him.

  Everything was gone for him, then. His church, his priest, his faith, his daughter. My mother was threatening to divorce him and his son hated him.

  All gone.

  Off the cliff.

  Love,

  Bridget

  When I was done we sat in silence in my truck, the ocean stretching out below. This was where Carney had lost control of his car. He and Bonnie had gone over the cliff and died.

  “This was not your fault, Bridget.”

  “I think it was.”

  “How so?”

  “I could have forgiven my father that day. Forgiven my mother. I didn’t.”
>
  “I don’t think they deserved forgiveness, Bridget. Your father was a lousy, punitive, fanatical father even before you were raped. Your mother was a drunk. They didn’t protect you. They shuttled you off to a pregnant girls’ home, believed the lies a priest told them, condoned having the baby taken away, then allowed Cruickshank to stick you in an insane asylum when you wouldn’t stop screaming.”

  “Even today, Charlotte, I don’t think I forgive them. I could forgive them as an adult, perhaps, but I can’t forgive what they did to me as a teenager. What they did to the young Bridget. . . .”

  We talked until the sun went down behind us.

  When it was dark, Bridget said, “I need raspberry pie.”

  “Me too. With ice cream and whipping cream, both.”

  We went and bought a whole pie and ate it straight out of the tin with two forks.

  Toran asked me if Bridget and I had had a good time. I said yes.

  “Do you think your parents killed Angus Cruickshank?”

  “I don’t. I’ve thought about it endlessly, all sides.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t think my father would have had it in him to kill a priest. He still would have been scared of going to hell eternally.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “No. She didn’t have a violent bone in her. She was weak, too. Beaten down by my father.”

  I didn’t know if Toran was right. When women believe their children are at risk, they turn into people they themselves don’t even recognize. Bridget’s mother had not protected her from a religious fanatic father, but against a man who had attacked her daughter?

  She might even surprise herself.

  And the timing was right. Shortly after Father Cruickshank disappears, Toran’s parents’ car goes over the cliff. On a straightaway. Were they trying to avoid prosecution?

  “For the record, Char, I didn’t kill him.”

  “I believe you.” I did.

  “There are probably many other people, people not even from St. Ambrose, who would want him dead. We may never know.”