25 Years

by Tara Taylor Quinn

Because she thinks if I don’t come, Colin will kiss her. But he won’t. Ugly you are, Lily-puke-tian.

  A brat you are, she’d snapped in reply.

  Ryan, I forbid you to harass your sister and Colin. Just go along and behave nicely. Your father and I are going to the flea market.

  Ryan did not say he would rather go with them. Can’t I stay here by myself?

  No, you may not. If you recall, you’re not allowed because you took the canoe out by yourself last time. And Lily will tell us if you misbehave.

  I’ll deal with you myself, she hissed to Ryan behind her mother’s back.

  If he did that Yoda thing in front of Colin, she might just leave the little creep on the other side of the lake and go somewhere else with Colin.

  But why did Ryan have to come at all? This was a date, or should have been! She’d told her parents.

  And now Ryan was coming along….

  LILY EMERGED from the past like someone arriving back in the present after a trip through a time machine. He didn’t even want to come. And he’d taken the canoe out by himself before and gotten in trouble for it.

  He didn’t want to come, and I didn’t want to take him, and I’d told my parents the night before. It was my mother who made me take him.

  It didn’t excuse her, Lily, for her negligence. Nothing would do that. She simply wondered if her mother remembered these details.

  Yes, she must.

  So how could she blame Colin?

  Maybe to quiet the loudest voice of blame in her mind. That voice must be Marie’s own. She must have been blaming herself for twenty-five years.

  Colin blamed himself. Lily blamed herself.

  Her mother must blame herself, too, had to. Because no mother would forget those words, forget any detail of the situation.

  Which made her behavior all the more inexplicable and unjust, yet made Lily sorrier for her than ever. She felt terrible as a sister directly responsible for her brother’s death. How must her mother feel as a mother even indirectly contributing to it?

  But how hard of her mother, how brittle Marie was, that she never spoke aloud of her own guilt yet allowed Lily to bear hers.

  Maybe she can’t, Lily reasoned. Maybe she just can’t stand to say the words out loud.

  Or maybe, it occurred to her, her mother had forgotten that she was the one who’d made Ryan go with Lily and Colin. Maybe she’d blotted out the truth in favor of a version she preferred.

  But what could knowing this change?

  As she got ready for bed, she remembered Colin holding her close, holding her face in his hands, saying, I don’t want you to go. Telling her to watch out for deer on the road. Telling her to be careful. Loving her with such sweet and urgent intensity. She’d seen him look in on Luke, who lay sprawled diagonally on the bed in his own room, blond mop of hair spread every which way, tiny elfin face turned upward in sleep.

  For the first time in her life, she knew what it was to be in love and to be loved with the same strength in return. It had never been like this with Drake, with anyone.

  Her mother had said plainly that her parents would never make Colin a part of the family. Lily believed her. Her father alone, perhaps—but he was a unit with Marie and followed her lead in such things.

  Did it matter to her whether her parents ever accepted Colin and Luke? Would it matter to Colin or his son?

  She fell asleep surprisingly fast and dreamed of him, dreamed she was having dinner at his house, dreamed he kissed her, dreamed he loved her.

  THE PHONE RANG at one-thirty in the afternoon the following day. The plan was to scatter Ryan’s ashes right at sunset. Lily couldn’t remember if she’d told Colin when it was to happen. She definitely hadn’t mentioned it the night before.

  Her mother answered the phone. “Camp Boreal, Marie speaking.”

  Lily watched her mother’s stern face for a moment, then turned away, determined not to react to whatever happened if it was Colin. Helen sat at the kitchen table where she’d been showing Marie the afghan she was crocheting to sell at a church Christmas bazaar.

  The yarn was cheap, and Lily found herself saying, “You know, if you made it from wool or cotton, people would probably pay more for it.”

  “No. People want convenience: they want machine-washable, and no one wants to pay too much.”

  “But think of all the hours you’re putting into it. It’s worth a lot.” Why not choose materials that will make it look that way?

  “Lily, the phone is for you.”

  Yes, definitely Colin. Her mother gave her the frostiest of glances as she handed over the receiver. “You’re right, Helen. Much better to economize.”

  “Lily, Luke’s very sick. Mosi thinks it’s meningitis—” Colin sounded as though he couldn’t quite believe it “—and he’s going to drive us to the hospital.”

  “He was fine last night.”

  “He woke up after you left. I thought it was a cold. I guess it’s contagious, but Mosi says he could have picked it up on a trip to the library with me—or anywhere.”

  Fear shook Lily. Meningitis could kill children. But Colin must know that, too. They were doing the right thing, the only thing.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Colin said quickly, reminding Lily that he’d said he believed Luke wouldn’t be taken from him. But she could tell that now he didn’t believe with such certainty. His voice sounded different, caught in unreality. “Would you mind coming over and feeding the birds and Winky? I don’t have any volunteers today, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll give you a call tonight to let you know what’s happening. If I can leave him. I think I might be in a hospital room for a while.”

  “Okay. Yes. It says what they eat on those clipboards outside the mews?”

  “Yes. Be careful. There are directions by the pressure cooker for the ones who need cooked food and also on the charts. Mosi will be back tomorrow, but just write down which ones you feed. If in doubt, don’t feed.”

  “Okay. Kiss Luke for me. I’ll pray for him, Colin.” Because I can’t stand if something happens to him. God, don’t let anything happen. The unpredictable cruelty of life. “Where are you taking him?”

  “Bemidji, to start with.”

  “Okay.” I love you both. She didn’t say it. She hung up and walked toward the stairs.

  “Are you going somewhere?” her mother asked.

  “Yes, to the Aerie.” As her father and Bert walked into the house from outside, Lily encapsulated what had happened and what Colin had asked her to do.

  “When will you get home?” her mother asked. “This is a very important day. This is the reason you came here from across the country.”

  “It’s hours till sunset.” Little Luke with his little elf face, the child she had loved from the minute she saw him. “I’ll be back.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “I certainly hope Luke will be all right,” said her father.

  Lily met his eyes with a deep surge of gratitude, surprised not just by the sentiment but that either of her parents knew Luke’s name. “Me, too. I love that little kid. You should see him climb trees.”

  “I have, actually. From the lake.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “You seem a little rattled, Lily. Let me get the keys, and I’ll drive you over. I’ve always wanted to see those birds.”

  Something ceramic banged down on the counter.

  Lily didn’t look. “Thank you, Dad. I’ll just grab my handbag. My work shirt’s in the car.”

  “Speaking of working,” Marie said, “I haven’t noticed you doing much work on that book you mentioned to your father.”

  I have to get out of here.

  She hurried up the stairs but had not reached the top when she heard her mother say, “Is it too much to expect that on this one day you could stay here instead of driving her to that man’s place? And looking at those birds with her?”

  On the landing, she heard Marie’s voice reach a shrill scream. “Don’t you care what ha
ppened to Ryan? Don’t you care that we’re putting him to rest today?”

  Lily couldn’t hear her father’s reply. That was usually the way of it. Her mother was loudest, angriest, most manipulative and meanest. As she gathered up her purse, she swept up her own car keys, just in case she reached the bottom of the stairs and found that her mother had talked her father out of driving her to the Aerie, which was entirely conceivable.

  “I never expected you to betray me in this,” Marie continued to her husband as Lily returned to the kitchen.

  Bert, she saw, was examining some photos on the mantelpiece, clearly removing himself from the center of the family argument. In contrast, Helen sat at the table frowning and watching the debate between Marie and Patrick as though it was a tennis match, but one she’d been invited to referee.

  Lily’s father rubbed the back of his neck beneath his ponytail. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Of course, you don’t! There’s nothing to say,” Marie replied. “We’re scattering Ryan’s ashes, and you want to go do favors for the man responsible for his death.”

  “I was responsible for his death.” Lily could bear it no longer. “We’ve talked about this, and you know it’s true.” Could she say the rest? There could be no kindness in saying it. “I had a date with Colin, and he hadn’t made a date to babysit. Ryan didn’t even want to come with us.”

  Silence.

  Her mother had not forgotten. Lily saw that. And saw another truth. “But it doesn’t matter. You told me to take him, and it was my job to take care of him. It wasn’t Colin’s job. It wasn’t Colin’s fault at all. It was entirely mine. And you know it, Mom.”

  “Because you were with him. And you want to be with him again, maybe for the rest of your life.”

  “Surely there are many men in the world,” chimed in Helen. “Especially in your life, Lily. You don’t have to choose a man your mother dislikes, do you?”

  The idea that her mother be allowed to choose the man she, Lily, should or should not love was so wildly dysfunctional that Lily could only stare at Helen in disbelief.

  Patrick, however, replied, “Parents who expect to choose partners for their children expect too much. And too little.”

  For a moment, Lily actually wondered if her father would ask Helen to leave.

  But it was Bert who said, “Helen, let’s go out in the canoe and see if we can spot those loons again.”

  “We can do that later, after we know what’s happening tonight,” Helen told him.

  “Well, I think I’ll go.” Bert went out the door to the porch without another word, and Lily saw him starting for the lake.

  “I’d better go feed the raptors.” Lily headed for the door herself, no longer expecting her father to accompany her.

  “I’m ready,” he said. “Marie, would you like to come?”

  “Of course not! Lily, if you like Colin Gardner so much, why don’t you just move over there?”

  “Helen,” Lily said, “would you please give the three of us some privacy?”

  Helen gazed up at her defiantly. “I think I should stay and support your mother in this. I was there, Lily, remember? I know what happened.”

  “Actually, you weren’t there. You were doing something else. I was Ryan’s babysitter.”

  “I’ll be all right, Helen. There’s nothing to support.” Marie turned on the kitchen tap to fill the sink with water and wash the few cups and saucers sitting on the counter. “Lily’s an adult, and she’ll do what she wants. There’s nothing to talk about, either, but if she wants to talk, I can listen.”

  “I’ll be outside on the swing,” Helen told her, as though speaking to a person terribly fragile. “Call if you need me.”

  Lily had never in her life felt so close to striking another human being.

  When the door shut behind her cousin, she turned to her parents. “I just want to say this. It was my fault. I will never forgive myself, never excuse myself. Colin is not the person he was at sixteen any more than I’m the fifteen-year-old I was. If you want me to choose between you and him, Mom, I will choose myself.”

  “The way you did that day?”

  Lily paused. “I meant that there’s no choosing between Colin and my family. I would never make that kind of choice. I can stay somewhere else, not at this house. Whether it’s the Aerie is not the issue.”

  “Why does he have to inflict himself on our family and drive us apart? You’re the only child I have!”

  Lily had never seen her mother so irrational.

  “This is the other thing I need to say, Mom. Hatred, bitterness—whatever—for what happened—it won’t make anything better. I don’t want to lay Ryan to rest in an atmosphere of animosity and sniping. I don’t want to feel those things. I can mourn him, mourn what I did. But, Mom, if you keep blaming and hating, it’ll just burn you up inside. How can you bear the pain of carrying all that rage?”

  “I’ve done it for twenty-five years,” Marie screamed. “Don’t you dare try to tell me how I should feel about my son’s death. I listened to all that crap when it happened, people saying ‘God has His reasons,’ and other nonsense. But I’m damned if I’ll take it from my own daughter.”

  “That’s not what Lily’s saying.”

  Again, the anomaly, Patrick standing up to his wife. Lily knew he would pay—in less than two seconds.

  “You be quiet! What have you ever done? Did you ever understand? Did you love Ryan like I did?”

  “So much you wanted his company that day?” Lily said, then put her fingers to her lips, as though trying to place the words back in her mouth.

  The slap came before she knew it. Hard and bright, memory of long-ago times, before Ryan had died. Because her mother had been known to hit. Her. Ryan. Their father.

  Lily walked out of the house.

  Helen turned her head, her face waxlike with its bowl haircut.

  If I speak to her, I’ll say something really bad.

  I shouldn’t have said that to my mom. No mother wants her children’s company all the time. It doesn’t mean she didn’t love Ryan, didn’t love him fiercely.

  She had. Ryan was a genius, and Marie had shared musical interests with him. She had seemed much better able to deal with a son than a daughter. Ryan’s fascination with Star Wars had been more understandable to her than Lily’s wanting Guess jeans or Frye boots or so many other things that had mattered to her.

  Boyfriends.

  A date without her brother along.

  Helen rose from the swing and passed her without a word, with a glance that seemed at once accusing and triumphant. How could you do this to your parents? Fortunately, they have me to comfort them.

  Lily was glad to be behind the wheel of her own car, driving to the Aerie to do what Colin had asked. In the silence, alone, she could think about Luke, pray for his recovery, figure out if there was anything she could bring him and Colin at the hospital. Because she was going there after she fed the birds.

  Ryan’s ashes were important to her. His memory was important to her—and beloved. But her mother seemed not to want her. Rather, as she always had, Marie wanted some other daughter. A daughter like Helen. Above all, a daughter who would never love Colin Gardner.

  Or his son.

  SHE HAD JUST FED the eagles, getting the biggest birds over with first. She had carried a live rabbit to them in the small cage used to transport prey and released the rabbit into the mews, then shut the door when she heard tires on gravel outside.

  Leaving the mews building, she stepped outside, expecting to see Mosi’s pickup truck. Instead, she saw her father climbing out of the Land Cruiser.

  Winky barked at him and ran to Lily, apparently to alert her to the visitor.

  She hoped, stupidly, that perhaps her father had persuaded Marie to come along, but he hadn’t. He was by himself.

  “Oh, Dad. It was okay. You didn’t have to come.”

  “I told you, I wanted to. Besides, I imagine there are parts of thi
s operation where an extra pair of hands would be useful.”

  They didn’t speak of her mother or of Ryan. They talked instead of the tiny Northern Saw-whet Owl, which could kill prey larger than itself. Lily had seen this one eat a shrew and told her father how particularly vicious shrews seemed. “Their teeth!” she exclaimed.

  He agreed about the ferocity of shrews, and neither of them mentioned that other meaning of the word, label for a sharp-tongued, bad-tempered woman.

  Lily introduced her father to Socrates and said that Mosi was taking the owl’s X-rays to Minneapolis to see if one of the veterinarians there might be able to perform surgery on his wing. Her father assisted her in killing and cooking a chicken for the merlin. Feeding the raptors, including the juveniles, using the blind and hand puppets, took more than two hours.

  When they were done and Lily was washing the pressure cooker in the clinic sink, she told her father, “Well, it’s still a few hours till sundown. I don’t know if Mom wants me there—”

  “I’m sure she does.”

  “Dad, afterward, I’m planning to drive to Bemidji to see Colin. Under those circumstances, do you think Mom will want me there when you scatter the ashes?”

  Her father pursed his lips.

  She waited for him to answer.

  “Lily, I know you think I’ve always let your mother be too much in charge in our family.”

  She said nothing. There was no being in charge of Marie, that was for certain. And her mother wasn’t going to change. She’d been caustic and judgmental for as long as Lily could remember.

  “I am in love with the woman. I always have been. She is difficult, but she’s also brilliant. The soft part in her was for Ryan. I’ve never really found another.”

  “So you’re saying she won’t want me there to scatter Ryan’s ashes if I also befriend Colin—even now, when his son is ill.”

  “No. In fact, I told her it was inappropriate to conduct this ceremony while you have other urgent demands on you. I told her we should do it while you’re here and when you’re able, and that we should extend an invitation to Colin.”

  “Did she slap you, too?”

  He didn’t answer.