by Terry Lee
“My God,” she whispered. “Who was this woman?” Why her mother had written this, she had no idea. What she did discover, however, was that almost every entry contained information and stories she’d never heard before.
Closing the book, Grace pulled a pillow tightly across her stomach. The pages explained why her mother pushed her so hard to become a teacher, her mother’s own desire to teach, and why that never happened.
“No wonder I never knew my grandmother.” Bitterness filled her mouth. “The woman sounded like a bitch.” Grace drummed her fingers on her chin and thought of the “darkness” her mother referred to in her notes. “Guess that explains the control issues.”
In some ways the words she read made her mother seem more real…fallible, but certainly more human. Grace flipped the switch on the bedside lamp and eased down into the covers. Tears filled her eyes and rolled onto the pillow as she thought of the sadness and pain her mother had kept to herself for so long. “I’m sorry, Mom. I really am. I wish I’d known.” So much for no tears tonight.
CHAPTER 41
QUINLAN AND MARY
“I’m so frustrated!” And drained. She’d spent most of the afternoon depleting her Kleenex supply.
“How could she have found my journal?” Quinlan felt nauseous when she thought back on Gracie pulling the spiral notebook from the box. “She was never supposed to see that.” Quinlan sat at the desk in her living quarters, her fists at her temples. She felt like pulling her hair, so she did; didn’t help. “I threw that away years ago.”
Dropping her head into her hands, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to refocus. Her breathing slowed after a few moments, quieting her mind. She flipped to a clean page in her notebook and wrote Questions & Comments in big bold letters across the top.
Where’s Adam?
Why is Gracie going back to school?
Who is Cherry?
Hannah is too young to have a boyfriend
Why can’t I fix the dining room centerpiece?
Gracie needs to do something with her hair
Gracie needs to start planning her Thanksgiving meal (a month away)
Quinlan eased the pencil eraser along the edge of the notebook and read back over the list. Her pocket buzzed. She fished out her phone and saw she had a text message. Ruby had given her Cliffs Notes lessons on texting. Quinlan pushed the icon.
how r u? btw, rain 2mro. thot ud wnt 2 no… ltr, r
Quinlan stared at the cryptic message. She figured out the how r u, didn’t have a clue about the btw, and 2mro required three rounds of phonetics. Having no patience or interest in the rest, she snapped the phone shut and shook her head. Ruby.
The next day Quinlan arrived at the Commons a little after noon. She sat at one of the wrought iron tables, her fingers drumming the notebook in her lap.
At one o’clock Angela strolled in. “Waiting long?”
“No, not at all.” Seemed like forever.
Angela’s blonde curls were pulled back away from her face and clasped at the nape of her neck with a gold barrette. Her attire was winter white linen slacks and matching silk blouse. Her cheeks, brushed with faint peach highlights, blended well with the deep coral wide belt around her waist.
Impeccable taste, Quinlan thought. Her eyes moved to Angela’s hands. And a fresh French manicure. She thought of her own nails and stuffed her fists into her jacket pockets.
Angela took a seat and pointed to the notebook. “What is that?”
A flush moved up Quinlan’s neck and onto her face. She pulled her hands from her pockets to cover the notebook, feeling less adamant than when she hammered out the list the night before. She shrugged. “Just some things I wrote down, that’s all.”
“Let’s take a look, shall we?” Angela asked.
Quinlan hesitated and then placed the notebook on the table.
Angela rotated the tablet and read the list. She raised her eyes to Quinlan. A long, uncomfortable moment passed. “Let me ask you,” Angela said. “Why are you here?”
Quinlan’s throat felt like a dry creek bed. “Beg your pardon?”
Angela pursed her lips together, tapping them with her finger. “Why did you come back?”
Her eyes gazed upward to the clouds for an answer. “To save Gracie?”
“From what, exactly?” Angela’s tone was smooth and calm, but direct.
There were a thousand things she had once thought Gracie couldn’t do for herself. Now Quinlan asked herself the same question. She had yet to come up with an answer. Her eyes fell to her lap.
“Okay,” Angela began. “Let’s look at what you’ve written.” She scanned back over the list, causing Quinlan to squirm. “I see several items here that were addressed in the synopsis on the computer.”
“Really?” Quinlan asked, genuinely surprised. “I didn’t…I guess I didn’t…read that far.”
“And these other…comments,” Angela continued. “Is that what you call them?”
Quinlan cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“The centerpiece, Grace’s hair….” Angela moved to the bottom of the list. “A Thanksgiving meal?”
“She needs to start planning now.” Her voice gained momentum. “She’s as slow as molasses and, well, it just won’t get done….” Quinlan’s voice drifted off.
“Let’s put the list away.” Angela closed the notebook and passed it back to Quinlan. “Now. Remember the painful memories you tapped into the other night?”
Her brows came together. “How did you know that?”
Angela ignored Quinlan’s question. “Remember what came up for you? Concentrate.”
She didn’t need to concentrate. The memory still burned inside of her. It wouldn’t go away and served no purpose except to bring up the pain she buried a long time ago. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tell me what you’ve learned,” Angela’s voice gentle.
Quinlan sat for long seconds, thinking how much she hated those words. Her throat tightened. Tears threatened. “Do we have to do this now?”
Angela reached across and covered Quinlan’s hand with hers. “I think it’s time.” Her smile was reassuring. “Go ahead.”
She took a slow deep breath. “I just wanted to make things easy for her.”
“And how’d that work for you?” Angela asked.
“I thought, well,” Quinlan said. “Until….”
“Until when?”
“Now.” Quinlan’s lower lip trembled. “Nothing I’ve tried works. She won’t listen to me. I don’t know what else I can do.” She pulled out fresh Kleenex and blew her nose. “You know what I’ve been going through. Why does it hurt so much?”
Angela sat back and folded her hands in her lap.
“They tricked me.” Quinlan huffed a few times and then sat up straight, her face reddened, nostrils flaring. “That’s what they did.”
“Who?” Angela asked.
“The Advisory Council.” Her voice cracked. “That’s why they let me come back. They knew I’d fail.” Even in her highly agitated state Quinlan controlled the flaring nostrils. She still had some dignity, if only a thread.
Angela ran a hand through wavy blonde curls.
“What do you want from me?” Quinlan glared at Angela. “What do they want?”
Angela sighed deeply and shook her head ever so slightly. “Oh my.” She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “Quinlan,” she said. “All your life, what did you want to do more than anything else?”
Crossing her arms Quinlan leaned back and studied the near perfect Cover Girl. A long moment passed. “Be a teacher.”
“That’s right.” Angela said. “Now, tell me.” She used her index finger for emphasis. “What do teachers do?”
She raised her eyebrows to a duh height, wondering what heavy drug Angela had mixed with her morning coffee. “Teach.”
“And, do teachers do things for their students, or do they teach them how to do things themselves?”
; Where’s she going with this? Quinlan wondered.
“A teacher prepares a student to think, evaluate, take risks, fall down, re-evaluate, and learn. And then…move forward.” Angela paused. “Parents are teachers too.”
The impact of Angela’s words seeped to the depths of her soul. Her eyes rounded and filled with tears. She dropped her head in her hands, sobs erupting from the pit of her stomach. “I failed at that too.”
Angela placed an arm around Quinlan’s shoulder. “It’s not about failing. You did the best you could,” she said. “You held on to a lot of pain during your life.”
“I have nothing to offer—my whole life has been a failure,” Quinlan choked out, blinded by new shards stabbing old pain.
“Listen to me. The greatest gift a mother bird gives her babies is to teach them to fly,” Angela said. “She pushes them out of the nest.” Angela hugged Quinlan tighter. “She doesn’t clip their wings.”
Quinlan fumbled for fresh Kleenex.
“You held on so tight, not for her…but for you,” Angela said. “She eased your pain.”
Quinlan felt like a lump. A frumpy lump, huddled next to Angela. “What do I do now?”
“You free her. Say goodbye to the physical need you have to keep her close; time to push her out of the nest, let her fly.”
“She really doesn’t need me?” Quinlan felt like an empty box, the kind that once held large appliances.
“Of course she needs you,” Angela said, “but not in the physical sense to do things she can do for herself.”
“Then what? What can I possibly give her?” The tears ebbed, but the nose still dripped like a leaky faucet.
“What she needs, what anyone needs, is love—the unconditional kind; support, encouragement. Be her cheerleader.” Angela held out her fist. “Rah, rah, rah.” She stood. “It’s not too late. Your intent was always in the right place.” She placed a hand on Quinlan’s shoulder. “When you’re up to it, go back to the blue computer” she said. “Take your time and be more thorough. Look for the bigger picture.” She then walked away, leaving Quinlan alone with her thoughts.
Quinlan remained seated for a long time, her mind reverberating Angela’s words, “It’s not too late.” Her world revolved so tightly around what she didn’t want for Gracie she failed to recognize the helplessness she had created in her own daughter. Somewhere deep inside she must have known Gracie’s low sense of self stemmed from her own need to control. Over the years, even Tom had allowed her to have reign over his life. He hadn’t necessarily agreed with her demands…what were the words he used to say? The path of least resistance.
~~~
She spent several hours at the library thoroughly reading the synopsis on the blue computer. She returned to her living quarters, overwhelmed by what she had learned.
Gracie thought Adam was having an affair. Turns out he had been sent to Beijing for six months, leaving Gracie in charge. Her Gracie. The daughter she had convinced herself couldn’t survive a day on her own. And here she is making adult decisions, running a household, going to school, and even volunteering.
Gracie’s summer volunteer assignment introduced her to Cherry, a young deaf child. Her ability to interact with the little girl had even resulted in an award for her efforts. Now she volunteered in the girl’s class once a week. Quinlan had to smile, remembering her own days as an attendance clerk and the students who worked for her.
Hannah’s girlfriend/boyfriend thing seemed pretty harmless at this point. And as expected, she didn’t find any answers to help rearrange the centerpiece or whether Gracie had even thought about Thanksgiving.
She lay on her bed fully clothed. Surely this had been the longest day in her recorded history. Her eyes closed. What have I learned? She drifted off.
~~~
She looked around. She sat in a lone straight back chair on the floor of a large gallery, the entire Advisory Council before her.
“So tell the Council, if you please, what you have learned.” The address came from a woman standing before her.
A prosecutor? What is this? A trial? Just as she opened her mouth to speak she felt a warmth in the middle of her chest, unlike the achy coldness she held for most of her Kathryn life. It spread around her like a heated cloak. She straightened in her chair and pushed her shoulders back. A sense of peace moved through her.
“What I have learned is….”
~~~
Quinlan opened her eyes and sat up. Morning sunlight filtered through the sole window in her living quarters. She stiffly got to her feet and winced at the wrinkled clothes she had slept in.
She quickly bathed and changed into a fresh outfit. Grabbing her ID bracelet and another wad of Kleenex she stared at the blue media device.
“Worthless, that’s what you are.” She headed to the door, paused, and wheeled around. “Oh, what the heck.” She pushed the ear buds into place and dropped the device in her pocket.
“It’s quite a handy gadget if used correctly,” came a man’s smooth, deep voice through the earpieces.
Quinlan hadn’t realized she’d turned the dang thing back on. She found the on/off switch and stopped. It was off.
“May I ask who this is?” she asked.
“You may.”
Quinlan waited. Silence. “Well?”
“I’m waiting for you to ask,” the voice said.
Something had shifted in Quinlan during the night. Her impatience, irritability and sense of urgency had been squelched. Was it a dream? Even the man’s voice booming uninvited through her earpieces didn’t rattle her. Quinlan smiled and cleared her throat.
“With whom am I speaking?” she calmly asked.
“George, madam.”
Quinlan’s eyes rounded. Advisory Council George? she thought, unsure what to say. Fortunately, he supplied the next line.
“You’ve gone through a much-needed transformation during the night,” he said. “Pay heed. To understand your heart...to give back, you must learn to be a good listener.”
George’s words penetrated the air around her. Be a good listener. Doesn’t sound too hard. “Okay, I can do that. Thank you.”
~~~
“You put her through a trial?” Mary asked. “Seems a bit drastic even for you, I must say.”
George smiled his knowing smile. “Yes. And I think it worked well.”
“I hope you’re right.”
There was no reply from George, only the occasional tapping of his cane as he left Mary’s office.
CHAPTER 42
QUINLAN
Quinlan stood on the sidewalk outside her living quarters and fished in her pocket for her iPod. She flipped the switch, scrolled to direct access and immediately found herself on an oversized towel on the west beach of Galveston Island. Gracie sat next to her. The air smelled salty and felt unusually warm for late October. Quinlan took a deep breath. It had been a long time since she’d smelled the ocean. Sea gulls swooped and laughed overhead as lazy puffs of white clouds rolled across the bluer-than- usual sky. The waves sang their melodious white noise which soothed the mind and calmed the heart. But, Gracie in Galveston? Alone?
Grace hugged her knees and stared out across the water.
“The tide’s coming in, Gracie. You’ll need to move the towel back.” Quinlan eyed the foamy curls edging toward them.
“What did you used to tell me?”
“Huh?” Quinlan forgot about the tide.
Grace panned the sky above her. “The sky is bluer in October than any other month of the year. Was that it?”
Quinlan stared at her daughter. Is she talking to me? She hesitated only briefly before responding. “It’s November.”
“Maybe, November,” Grace said. “I never even thought to ask where you learned that.”
She studied the water in front of her. “My sixth grade teacher.”
“You’d remind me every fall to notice how blue the sky was.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
Grace si
ghed deeply. “You know, I never figured out the Easter thing,” she said. “Well, except for the baskets you made for the kids. I got that part.”
“What Easter thing?”
“What did that mean, dying on Easter Sunday?”
“Easter Sunday?” Quinlan asked, honestly surprised.
“I’ll probably never know the answer to that one, will I?”
“Honestly, I didn’t know it was Easter,” Quinlan said. “That morning I just wanted to wait until you left the room.” She eyed Gracie and noticed a quiet strength; a calm, almost peaceful demeanor cloaked her daughter.
Grace brushed tangles from her face and rested her chin on her knees. She reached in her beach bag and pulled out the two sea beans. “Mine and yours; our gifts from the sea.” She rubbed fingers over the almost identical dark brown sea treasures.
Quinlan’s throat tightened, her eyes filled. Her gift sat at her side.
Dropping the twin sea beans on the beach towel Grace reached in the bag again. This time she retrieved Quinlan’s spiral notebook.
“Oh no. Please don’t.” Quinlan felt the dread and pain of her past seep into her bones. “I never wanted you to read that.” She watched Gracie flip through the notebook.
“There’s so much about you I never understood, Mom.”
Quinlan sat perfectly still, willing the spiral notebook to disappear. She distinctly remembered burning each page, foolishly convincing herself the memories would be erased forever.
“I never knew how hard your life was.” Grace raised her sunglasses and wiped her eyes. “What you had to go through. I wish you would’ve told me.” She held the notebook against her chest.
“I didn’t want anyone to know, especially you.”
“It might have helped, you know,” Grace said. “You always wanted me to be a teacher. I never understood why.”
“I just wanted everything for you I never had.” Quinlan felt a tear slip down her own cheek.
“You know the strangest thing about all this?” Grace dropped her knees to sit cross-legged, turning to an earmarked page in the notebook. Her finger stopped halfway down a page. “Here it is.” She cleared her throat. “When you talked about your darkness you said you felt helpless, desolate and vulnerable.” She pulled a Kleenex from the side pocket of her beach bag and blew her nose. “That’s exactly how I felt, Mom. Always.”
