The Pieces We Keep

by Kristina McMorris

  Again, the vice on her lungs cranked tighter. “Where?”

  “He’s in an unmarked grave within the prison walls. It’s the standard for this type of situation.”

  Standard. What a vile description for an execution. She was tempted to strike the man down. In fact, she wanted to take out everything in sight. But then, what would that change?

  She looked him in the eye. “You gave me your word.”

  “I told you I’d help him the best I could, and I did that. Believe me, it was out of my hands.” The defense flowed out as if prepared for the accusation. His voice, however, seemed to waver from lack of confidence.

  “He trusted you,” she said.

  Agent Gerard added nothing as Vivian backed away. It appeared that he, too, recognized the waste of any effort.

  From Foley Square Vivian traveled the streets on an aimless path that dimmed and cooled around her. Hours floated by without meaning. Somewhere along the way, she recalled the inscription of Isaak’s necklace and recognized its lie. The risks she had taken were great, yet this was the ghastly reward.

  Eventually she found herself standing at the Brooklyn Bridge. The water below looked strikingly like the Thames. It was at that moment, without a single tear spent, the sealed envelope in her hand, that she realized the error of her statement. What she truly meant was: He trusted me.

  PART FOUR

  So from our dreams my boy and I

  Unwillingly awoke,

  But neither of his precious dreams

  Unto the other spoke.

  Yet of the love we bore those dreams

  Gave each his tender sign;

  For there was triumph in his eyes–

  And there were tears in mine!

  –from “The Dreams”

  by Eugene Field

  51

  Mid-June 2012

  Portland, OR

  “You can do this.”

  Audra savored the encouragement from Tess, who sat behind the steering wheel of her parked minivan. In the distance, Mount Hood loomed like a caretaker of the grounds. RiverView Cemetery was set on the west bank of the Willamette River in Portland, known as a burial site of legends ranging from famed pitcher Carl Mays to the Wild West’s Virgil Earp.

  But Audra had interest in only one person here and he wasn’t a national legend.

  “For some stupid reason,” she said, gazing out the passenger window, “I actually thought that once I made it onto the property, the rest would be easier.”

  “Sweetie, nothing about it is going to be easy. That’s why I came with you.”

  A sprawling expanse of green grass and trees created a serene view that failed to grant serenity. For twenty-five minutes now, Audra had been unable to leave the car.

  She turned to Tess. “This is silly, making you sit and wait. You should be at work.”

  “No. I should be right where I am,” she said. “Besides, playing hooky meant I got to assign Crazy Cat Lady’s appointment to Cheyenne.” Any joke about the clinic’s new vet should have amused Audra, but not today.

  After all, this wasn’t just any Tuesday morning in June. It was Devon’s birthday. Consumed by the roller coaster she had been riding for more than a month, she had barely noticed the coming date that normally approached like a countdown to the apocalypse.

  Months ago, nothing on earth could have lured her here, but that was before the dilemma with Jack had come to a head. After Tess had coaxed him back to the apartment, Audra addressed him calmly. She apologized for overstepping—it seemed she was always doing that nowadays—and invited an open discussion that went nowhere. Although she’d since purchased him a new journal, which still remained on his desk encased in its plastic wrapping, she did rehang his poster and planes. This was more than a peace offering. With the help of rational thought, she had realized those objects weren’t the cause of his issues, just a means of expressing them.

  Nonetheless, for the three days since, Jack had notably regressed. No smiles or laughter. Not a word beyond necessity. Except in his sleep, of course. Although his night terrors hadn’t worsened, they showed no signs of improvement.

  One would think, with her renewed skepticism, she would be even less inclined to visit a cemetery, a place renowned for its ghostly connections. But she needed Devon’s advice. Lately the whisper of his guidance had faded to an all-time low. She didn’t expect his voice to come from anywhere but her own memories, obviously. She just hoped a site like this, where others claimed to have felt closer to him, might rejuvenate those memories and more.

  “Thirty minutes,” Tess said suddenly. “Time’s up.” For a second Audra expected her to restart the engine. Instead, she opened her door and climbed out.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m walking you over there. Oddly enough, the grave markers don’t come to the car.”

  It was one of Audra’s quips flung back at her—though typically used for much lighter topics. Tess’s support through patience and compassion had decidedly shifted direction.

  “Let’s go, my dear.” Tess held up her keys. “Can’t lock the van with you in it.”

  “Did I forget to mention I wasn’t necessarily looking for tough love?”

  Tess winked at her and closed the driver-side door. Left with few choices, Audra pried herself from the car. As soon as her door clicked closed, Tess locked the van with two beeps, removing any opportunity to retreat.

  They walked in silence past other cars parked along the curb. The long paved road wound through the cemetery. The air smelled of pine and the bloom of flowers. Clouds covering the sky were as white and fluffy as freshly fallen snow. Not until July would sunshine be a daily constant.

  Audra followed Tess’s lead in stepping onto the grass, as she otherwise would not have recalled where to turn. The day of Devon’s funeral had been a spinning kaleidoscope of flower sprays and eulogies and condolence offerings that her brain scarcely absorbed.

  “We got lucky, no doubt about it,” Tess said. The remark came out of nowhere, as if continuing a conversation.

  “With ... ?”

  “That February, when the driveway iced over and Russ slipped and fell.”

  Audra only grew more confused. “Tess, where are we going with this?”

  “I don’t think I ever told you, but if he hadn’t hurt his shoulder from that, he never would have gotten a CAT scan. The symptoms were all there, looking back. The indigestion and heartburn and nausea. We wrote it off as a stomach bug. That, and stress from work. My biggest fear was that he’d been developing an ulcer.”

  Audra saw the angle of the discussion now and resented the timing. It was hard enough to come here without an accompanying lecture. “We don’t need to talk about this here.”

  “Why? It’s the perfect spot.”

  Audra stopped walking. “Tess.”

  “If there’s any place you have a chance to finally unload your guilt—none of which you deserve, by the way—this is it.”

  “I never said I felt guilty.” Not a lie. Technically, it wasn’t anything Audra had verbalized.

  “Are you saying that isn’t a major part of why you’ve never come back here?”

  Lacking a defense, Audra looked away. She wished she could discount Tess’s reasoning. But that reasoning, she realized, held truth. Her avoidance of this site derived less from her ban on spiritual beliefs and more from an inability to stand at the grave that she had indirectly helped dig.

  “Listen, I’m not an expert on the subject,” Tess said, no longer challenging. “I’m only being a royal pain in the rear because it’s exactly what I’d need you to do if our roles were flipped. Like I said, our family was lucky. But if we hadn’t been, I’d have blamed myself for the tumor in Russ’s stomach—which would’ve been flat-out ridiculous.”

  Audra’s emotions, already on edge, were rising to the surface. She focused on keeping them inside. “So, you believe it’s about luck, then. Not that everything is somehow meant to be.” The las
t sentence emerged without the sarcasm she had intended.

  “I don’t know ... I guess I believe in a little of both. What I do know for sure, though, is you have every right to a great life. You really do, Audra.”

  No doubt, Audra wanted to believe that. She wanted a great life for Jack even more than herself. The way Tess described letting go of guilt, however, made it sound as easy as dumping rotten fruit in the trash. And it wasn’t going to be that simple.

  Tess appeared ready to say more. Before she had a chance, Audra interjected lightly, “Please, whatever you do, don’t start with the whole ‘Devon would’ve wanted you to be happy’ thing.”

  Tess scrunched her face. “Oh, jeez, no.”

  That much was a relief.

  “He definitely would’ve wanted you to be as miserable as possible.” Tess flaunted a smirk, and Audra couldn’t help but smile.

  “You are a royal pain, you know.”

  “I’m well aware. And you, my friend, are heading over ... there.” She directed her finger farther down the row.

  Delaying the task any longer wouldn’t make it easier.

  You can do this, Tess had asserted, and she was right.

  “Here goes,” Audra said. She bolstered herself with a breath and resumed her strides. The plaques lay evenly spaced and flush with the ground. A married couple ... a devoted teacher ... a mother taken too soon ...

  When it’s someone you love, wasn’t it always too soon?

  At the sixth plaque, Audra halted.

  Devon Walker Hughes

  1976–2010

  Beloved husband, father, and son

  A wave of feelings passed through her. The epitaph once more solidified reality. It was strange and surreal to be standing here again, this time refreshingly alone. There was no circle of mourners in black. No shiny, body-length coffin hovering over a rectangular hole. It was just her and a plaque and a distant scattering of strangers.

  As fate would have it, the grave marker to the right of Devon’s was for a veteran of World War Two. She could laugh at this—but wouldn’t.

  Unsure what to do now, she noted a lady on her knees in another row, placing roses in a receptacle. Audra followed suit by kneeling in her jeans and brushing some dried blades of grass from Devon’s name.

  “I guess,” she said quietly, “this is when I’m supposed to pretend you can hear me.” Speaking to a slab of granite seemed ridiculous, but then, there weren’t many things she had done this past month that didn’t fall into that category.

  “Let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re listening—just so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself. Which I am. But all the same, I’m hoping this will help stir up some ideas. As you might know, Jack has been having a rough time. We both have, actually.” Tears gathered in her eyes, a downfall of expressing the words aloud. She tried to blink them back, but a few blatantly defied her.

  She picked up her pace. “I feel like I just keep screwing up. I want so badly to help Jack, but I don’t know what he needs. Is it more attention? What am I not doing right?”

  After soothing Jack from his dream the night before, she had curled up in his bed and held him as he slept. But any bond of closeness had vanished by breakfast.

  Again, she thought of another kid, the boy who had deliberately wounded a cocker spaniel. Perhaps attention, of any kind, was all he’d been after. Audra just wished she knew what Jack yearned for, beyond the usual praises and smiles and hugs.

  “ ‘Talk—Trust—Heal,’ ” she said. “That’s the motto for the therapist Jack’s been seeing. Sadly, I think I’ve broken the second part of that in a pretty big way.” Absent of trust, she feared talking and healing were gone as well. “Bottom line, Devon, I could really use your advice right now.”

  There was no reply of course. She closed her eyes and listened for the memory of his voice. But still, nothing came. No whisperings of wisdom.

  Then again, who’s to say he would have tackled the issue any better. For two years now, while far from perfect, she had managed as a single parent. Her husband wasn’t ever coming back, regardless of anyone’s hopes or prayers. Rather than asking what Devon would do, maybe she ought to start trusting in herself.

  From the soft chirping of birds and clean scent of grass she absorbed the peacefulness of the grounds. Out of this, a recollection came to her: of their family on a camping trip.

  This time, she deliberately held on to the vision instead of pushing it away, and more images rolled over the tracks of her mind. She recalled Devon’s specialty of breakfast-for-dinner, and how at the movies he would finish his popcorn before the film even began. On one of their early dates, she’d laughed hysterically over his shocking realization that the Kenny Rogers song was about four hungry children, not four hundred. Then there was Devon’s amusing infatuation with marshmallow PEEPS and how he’d make Jack giggle by transforming candy corns into vampire fangs.

  When at last Audra opened her eyes, she registered tears hanging from her chin. They had spilled from a bittersweet pool of sadness and joy. She dried them with her shirtsleeve, surprisingly not bothered by their existence. For they signified both a parting and reuniting in one.

  So finally she can be with him.

  The phrase had persisted in her mind, but suddenly with a different perspective. Could it be, subconsciously, that this visit—this reunion—was what Jack wanted all along?

  Maybe Meredith was right. Maybe in an effort to evade the bad, Audra had blocked out all of the good, and that goodness was what Jack needed more than anything.

  “Audra,” Tess said.

  Nearly having forgotten she was there, Audra twisted around to find Tess close behind, motioning at an angle. Audra’s eyes traced the gesture and discovered a couple standing three rows down. It was Robert and Meredith with a bouquet of lilies. Naturally they would pay their respects on their son’s birthday and with his favorite flowers.

  That’s when it dawned on Audra. This could be the place to make amends. Their commonality of love and loss over Devon could surely bring them together. Same for their care of Jack.

  Meredith appeared to read these thoughts.

  Prodded by hope, Audra took a step forward, yet just then the woman pursed her mouth and cut her gaze away. An unmistakable message.

  It was time for Audra to leave.

  52

  Late July 1942

  Brooklyn, NY

  The message arrived on a Saturday morning. Vivian had just made her way down the stairs for breakfast when the courier arrived with a telegram. After assignments at three bases for a total of six weeks abroad, double the length first expected, Gene was taking a train ride home.

  Vivian would have attributed her sudden nausea solely to anxiety over their impending discussion if not for news from the day before. Her fainting spell at work, along with fatigue and absentmindedness, had led her to see a doctor at Mrs. Langtree’s urging. Given that July heat and humidity were likely culprits, it had seemed an excessive chore-until the white-haired doc, with his deductive line of questioning, jarred Vivian with the truth.

  She was pregnant.

  Months ago, a revelation of the sort would have struck with the force of a wrecking ball. Yet since learning of Isaak’s death, perhaps due to familiarity of the loss, or maybe a shell erected of guilt, she instead gained a numbness that enabled her to function. Like moving underwater, it was a slow, surreal, muted existence. She had become a spectator of another’s woman’s life.

  If you want to talk, I’m here, Luanne recently offered. It appeared Vivian’s mood had been taken as an effect of Gene’s absence. Still, Vivian couldn’t help wondering if it was true what people said, about the telling signs when in the family way. Was it plain on her face, in her eyes?

  Vivian feared this now as she caught her own reflection in the polished silverware on the table. She averted her gaze from even the waiters gliding by at the Waldorf Astoria. It was her mother’s preferred hotel during periodic stays such
as this. In a corner of the restaurant, a harpist plucked chords beside a large topiary fashioned after a genie’s bottle.

  “You’re not eating your lunch,” Vivian’s mother observed across the span of white linen.

  Vivian glanced at the citrus salmon she had but pushed around on her plate. She should have interjected an alternative when the woman ordered on her behalf. The smell of seafood was making her queasy. “I’m just not very hungry.”

  “Are you certain you’re feeling all right?” It was the second time her mother had voiced the inquiry. “You look ... a bit off.”

  “I’m fine. Really. A smidge tired, is all.”

  A commentary about Vivian’s job requiring too much energy would typically follow. Instead, her mother appeared on the verge of issuing a statement of import. But suddenly, as if to drown the words, she drained her gin and tonic. Then she set down the glass and resumed idle conversation between labored pauses and cigarette puffs. Her unspoken syllables screamed in Vivian’s ear.

  Ask me! Vivian wanted to say. For the more her mother fidgeted–with a fork, her lighter, the brooch on her burgundy dress suit-the clearer it became that, somehow, she knew.

  Regardless of the consequences, Vivian felt a growing need to share her plight. She understood there were alternatives: giving the baby up for adoption, or a secret appointment with a willing doctor. But both of these were unthinkable. Hence, it wasn’t advice she yearned for as much as an assurance she would not endure this alone. Such a comfort might even shed the numbness encaging her.

  “Well,” her mother said, an abrupt conclusion. She crushed out her half burned cigarette in the beveled ashtray. “I’d better fetch my belongings from my room.”

  “Already?” Vivian said. “I thought there would be more time.”

  “I’ve decided to take the earlier train, departing just past two. It’s unfortunate I’ll be missing Gene by just a few hours.” She waved her fingers at the waiter, a request for the check.