Raquel's Abel

by Leigh Barbour

  “Si, he saying that when I found out I pregnant. I wanting to die inside.”

  “Well, I’m sure your mother didn’t agree with that.” Now I finally understood why Maria Elena was so attached to my grandmother.

  “My mother always do what my father saying.” She kneaded her hands together then looked up at me. “She dying, Señorita Raquel?”

  “I hope not, Maria Elena.” I laid my arm across her shoulders and guided her to the steps. “Let’s go down and drink a cup of tea while the doctor’s in with Grandmother.

  We walked down the steps and were half way through the foyer when the front door opened.

  Regina was standing there, her eyes glassy and her usually alabaster skin bright red.

  “Did you call my sister?” I turned to Maria Elena.

  She shook her head. “No, I no calling her.”

  “How did you know about Grandmother?” I asked Regina.

  She tried to take a deep breath but choked. “It’s Barry. He just told me he’s getting back with his wife.”

  “No. I thought he signed the divorce papers before you went to the Caribbean.”

  “You haven’t heard the worst yet.” She looked up at the ceiling then her eyes filled with tears. “They’re expecting a baby.” She ran toward me then sobbed on my shoulder.

  I stepped back. “Regina, I honestly do care about your life, but right now I’m worried about Grandmother.”

  She jumped back as if I’d slapped her. “Grandmother?”

  Maria Elena slid her slippered feet toward us. “Yes, the doctor with her now.”

  Regina took a deep breath, looked down at the floor, then at me. “She’s just like Father. They all liked you and never cared for me.”

  I bristled. “That’s not true. Grandmother has always loved us equally.” I put my hands on my hips. “You know, not everything is about you, Regina.”

  Maria Elena nodded at me as if she were my own cheering squad.

  Regina straightened up. Her tears had stopped.

  “Maria Elena and I were on our way to have some tea while we wait for the doctor. You can join us if you’d like.”

  Regina took several deep breaths. “No, I’m going home. Call me if there’s any change.” She turned and walked out, not even saying goodbye.

  “Your poor sister,” said a deep voice.

  A big smile crawled across my face. I turned and saw Abel.

  His deep dark eyes drooped sadly at me.

  “I’m so glad you’re here with me.” I wrapped my arms around his waist.

  “The ghost?” Maria Elena’s eyes got so wide I thought her eyeballs would fall out.

  “A wonderful ghost.” I didn’t care if she saw me hug thin air.

  “Your grandmother seems to be breathing easier. The doctor gave her something.” I could feel the baritone quality of Abel’s voice resonate against me as he talked.

  I pulled away sharply as I saw Dr. Blake descending the stairs.

  “She being all right?” Maria Elena asked, looking like she’d fall over if he gave her the wrong answer.

  He gave a faint smile. “She’s resting peacefully now.” He reached the bottom of the stairs and put a prescription into my hand. “I gave her some medication I always carry with me for such occasions. She’ll be all right, but her heart is very weak.”

  I’d known she had some heart problems, but I just didn’t think…

  “She’s had a mild heart attack.”

  “Heart attack?”

  “You should remember that the last time she had an EKG, it was obvious she’s suffered many of these small attacks.”

  “So, she needs to go to the hospital. I’ll…we’ll have to insist.”

  “No, no.” His white eyebrows raised and lowered. “The journey to a hospital would only weaken her and at her age, mild heart attacks are to be expected.”

  “She’s only seventy-eight.”

  He got the kind of smile usually seen when a child does something naughty but cute. “Your grandmother may tell you she’s seventy-eight, but I estimate her age to be at least ninety-eight.”

  “But my grandmother can’t be…”

  Abel put his arm around me and whispered in my ear. “Let it go.”

  Dr. Blake walked toward the door. “Let your grandmother stay here in the house where she’s comfortable. A hospital environment would only be torture for a lady like her.” He opened the door. “Good night. Call me if there are any changes.”

  Maria Elena locked the door. “She all right. I so happy.” She started up the stairs. “You staying here with your ghost. I going upstairs.” She giggled.

  Tears welled up and I winced at the sting. “You were very right.”

  “About what?” He ran his hands down my back.

  “I never should have even listened to Regina when she mentioned putting her in a home.”

  He opened his mouth to respond.

  “I should have known that wasn’t a good idea. What if she’d been in that place when this happened?” The guilt made me tremble.

  “Your sister can be as toxic as a bad case of poison ivy and it isn’t your fault.” He pulled me close and kissed my cheek.

  I remembered the doctor’s statement about my grandmother’s age. “Abel, if Grandmother is as old as the doctor says.” I gulped and shivered with the thought. “Could she be Anastasia Romanov?”

  He wrapped his arms around me. “She always had a regal air about her.”

  When she was younger, I remember her walking as if she were floating on air.

  “I wonder if your grandfather suspected she was at least twenty years his senior.” His eyes creased as if he wanted to laugh.

  “How could a Russian princess have come to Richmond, Virginia and just blended in?” It sounded like something out of a fantasy.

  “A fantasy,” he repeated. He took my hand and lifted it to his mouth. Then he began to shower it with tiny wet kisses. “For years it was my fantasy that you would be able to see me.”

  “I’m afraid I never let myself dream of a fantasy as wonderful as you.”

  With a force his arms pulled me to him and I melted into him.

  “I am no fantasy.”

  The next day, Grandmother was back to being her normal self as if nothing had happened. Maria Elena rolled her around the grounds while Grandmother admired the beautiful autumn colors of the trees outlining the estate.

  I watched them from the French doors of the foyer, wondering what Maria Elena and Grandmother were talking about.

  “What say we take a drive on this wonderful day?”

  I turned around to see Abel in a gleaming white shirt, pants that ended at the knee, argyle socks below, and a cap on his head.

  He looked so cute I felt giddy inside.

  “I love to see you smile.” He bent over to give me a peck on the lips.

  “Where would you like to go?”

  He shot me an impish little-boy smile. “I was hoping we could visit the place where I grew up.”

  “The orphanage?”

  “Perish the thought. I hope I never see that place again.” His skin flushed and he breathed roughly. “I thought I could show you the house I lived in with my parents.”

  I felt a thrill run through me about knowing something more about Abel. “Where is your house?”

  “It’s located in a place called Church Hill.” He looked down at the floor. “I do so hope the old place is still there.”

  I smiled. “The old houses there, for the most part, are very well taken care of.” I didn’t want to mention that it was a part of the city that had been a run-down slum throughout the sixties and the seventies. In the eighties, however, the old neighborhood with its stately Victorian homes became popular with the yuppies.

  “Then we’re off?” Abel ushered me to the front door. “Allow me.” He crossed the circular driveway to my car. He reached his hand down as if to release the hood. “Where is it?” He looked at me.

  “What?�
� I inspected the front of my car wondering what he was looking for.

  “The crank, of course.”

  “They’ve done away with those.” I giggled.

  He bowed his head and I wondered if I’d embarrassed him. “Progress. I should have known.” He took a deep breath. “I guess I don’t get out enough. And, you know, you should drive.”

  I nodded. That was a good idea.

  Church Hill, where Abel was born, overlooked downtown Richmond. Nowadays, driving through Church Hill was like riding through a war zone. Some buildings looked like they’d been bombed, and others were not only restored, but glistened with bright colors and vivid ginger breading.

  Abel pointed to a steeple high up on the side of a hill. “Church Hill was named after St. John’s Church.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said looking at the white clapboard sides and a black wrought-iron fence surrounding it.

  “It’s where Patrick Henry gave his famous ‘Give me liberty, or give me death’ speech.”

  “So old,” I said out loud as I peered through the fence to the weathered stone grave markers.

  “My mother loved it here, the way you can look out at the entire city from the top of the hill.”

  I pressed harder on the gas to take us up to the pinnacle.

  “Should’ve seen how my dad’s Model T huffed and puffed up this hill.”

  We spotted a couple walking along with matching yellow sweatshirts.

  “When my mother and father would go for a stroll, my mother would wear a long dress and a hat so large it wouldn’t have even fit inside this car.”

  I turned to see his chest heaving as if thinking of his mother was painful. He saw me eyeing him and continued, “And Father was always in a top hat, sporting his cane.”

  Abel must have been so lonely all those years, running around my house with no one to talk to.

  He looked at all of the cars lining the shady avenues. “I suppose with all of these cars around, no one needs to take a horse any longer.”

  “I’m afraid horses disappeared from the streets quite a few years ago.”

  He shook his head. “I really should get out more.”

  “Where is your house?” We’d reached the heart of Church Hill where a small park occupied the center of the streets that fanned out in all directions.

  “Over there.” He pointed to a street with lazy cedars hanging over the sidewalk.

  We’d only gone a few feet when he pointed to a house in front of us. “That’s it.” He paused. “It’s painted a different color, but that’s where I was born.”

  I looked at a house that was now a light orange and the trim a yellowish cream. HHeld up by thin stately columns, the porch wrapped around the front and down the side.

  “When was the last time you were here?”

  “When Mother went into the hospital.” His voice cracked. “Then I went to your house and when my uncle came to pick me up to tell me my mother had died,” he swallowed hard. “He took me straight to the orphanage.” His jaw clenched for an instant.

  I drove farther, and soon we got a glimpse of the backyard.

  He pointed. “Right there—that’s where I used to play.”

  I saw a lovely little garden at the bottom of a set of wooden stairs. Boxwoods enclosed a stretch of recently cut grass that looked like green carpet.

  “I was an only child, so I played alone, except when my mother could spare me a few minutes.” He looked away so I couldn’t see his face. “And then she started to feel poorly…”

  “I guess anybody that loses their mother misses them for the rest of their life.” I knew how he felt. At least I’d had my father after my mother passed away.

  His hand slid over and engulfed mine. “I missed your mother after she was gone, also.”

  “You didn’t really tell me much about my mother. You just said she was never the same after Regina was born.”

  He leaned his head back and stretched his neck smiling. “Do you remember those tea parties you and your mother used to have on the back porch?”

  I felt my chest heave as I remembered my mother and I putting on frilly dresses and bringing all my dolls and teddy bears downstairs so we could have one big tea party. “My mother used to tell me that I had to make witty conversation with all of the guests.” I laughed out loud remembering her holding her pinky out when pretending to drink tea from the miniature cups.

  “I think she had as much fun as you did.” He twirled one of my locks between his fingers. “She had hair just like yours.”

  I tried very hard to remember what she looked like. “Tell me, when she got the appendicitis, why didn’t they get her to the hospital in time? If the ambulance didn’t come, then why didn’t Daddy take her in his car?”

  Abel stared straight ahead.

  “Do you remember what happened that night? Did it just burst with no warning?”

  I saw his chest rise and fall with heavy breaths. His lips quivered.

  “What is it?” Why was he acting this way?

  His voice was low and gravelly. “They shouldn’t have lied.”

  A terrible feeling ran through me like a freight train. Then a chill coursed through me giving me goosebumps. “Tell me the truth right now.”

  “Your father was trying to protect you.” His gaze was trained straight ahead as if he couldn’t face me.

  “Abel, she was my mother. I deserve to know the truth.” Terrible thoughts entered my mind. Did someone…? “Did my father…?”

  “No, absolutely not. He loved her.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then what?”

  He turned toward me. “Your mother took her own life.”

  I felt my heart miss a beat as I tried to force myself to relax. “How?” I closed my eyes and braced my head on the headrest.

  “She was in the bathtub. When your father found her, all of the blood had drained out of her.”

  I jumped out of the car and walked toward the park we’d passed earlier. I leaned against a tree, thinking I’d pass out.

  Abel came running toward me. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No.” I held my hand up. “You were right to tell me. I needed to know.”

  He took another step.

  “Please, just leave me alone for me a minute. I have to digest this news and make sense of it.”

  “But…” His breath was jagged as if he were scared for me, then he turned and faced the other direction. “I will leave you alone with your thoughts.”

  I walked around the park, trying to enjoy the way the crisscrossing sidewalks were being covered over with orange and yellow leaves. My thoughts filled with anger at both my parents—at my mother for killing herself and leaving me motherless and at my father for lying.

  Then understanding began to flow through me. My father had done what he thought was best. How could he have explained suicide to a child? My mother undoubtedly had been very sick at a time when there was no treatment for depression. Surely she thought it was the only way out.

  Abel had walked back to the car and was sitting in the passenger seat watching me. It must have been difficult to deliver such information.

  I sat back down in the driver’s seat.

  “I’m afraid I’ve turned our drive into a terribly melancholy affair.”

  “No, not at all. I feel like I have the answer to a great mystery, even if it is bad news.”

  “I prefer to console you, not bring you bad tidings.”

  The image of my mother being so unhappy that she lied down in a bathtub and slit her wrists paraded through my mind. I winced from the pain.

  “She was so melancholy,” Abel said. “She just couldn’t bring herself out of the depths of downheartness.” He reached his hand over and ran it down my arm.

  I felt a tingle at his touch.

  “I have always loved you since you were a little girl. Although you were always a beautiful baby, then a child, then a girl, and finally a woman, I loved your spirit. You were
always able to see the good in someone or something. Now I feel my love is deepening.”

  I moved my head toward him and tasted his lips. Then I realized. I pulled back. “Wait.”

  His eyes opened wide.

  “Abel, you’ve been flesh and blood for well over an hour now.”

  His mouth dropped open. “Yes, I was having such a good time I hadn’t realized.”

  “No. Don’t disappear on me.” I squeezed his hand.

  “I have no intention of ever doing that

  That afternoon, I was heavy with the knowledge my mother had taken her life. I’d always wondered what had actually happened the day my mother died so suddenly. Daddy had never been willing to talk about it and the feeling had nagged at me since then, as if I’d suspected something all along. At least I knew the truth now.

  Should I tell Regina? My father had made her a victim. Maybe if she knew the truth, she’d know our father’s rejection of her was because of our mother, not because of her. On the other hand, Regina could interpret it in another way. She might decide she was responsible for our mother’s death.

  About halfway home from Church Hill, Abel vanished. His disappearance didn’t bother me though. I knew he was able to keep his shape longer and that he was always close by.

  Maria Elena had put the mail on the little table in the foyer. I sifted through the bills then focused in on the letter from the roofing company. I’d requested they give me an estimate on repairing the slate roof. Although not visible from the front, some of the rooms in the rear already had water damage. I slit the envelope and pulled out the letter. My eyes focused on the figure: $100,000 – and that was only to fix the problem areas, not replace the entire roof.

  Where would I ever get that sum of money? And the roof wasn’t the only thing in need of repair. Would I have to get rid of the house I was born in?

  Chapter Thirteen

  A week later, I sat in my office trying to finish all of the necessary changes to the biography on Teddy Roosevelt, but all I could think about was how to get enough money to fix the roof. Realistically, even if $100,000 fell into my hands right now, that would only cover the roof. It wouldn’t include the landscaping. Many of the interior walls were brown with water leakage and some of that was because of faulty plumbing. Recently many of the bricks near the foundation had started coming loose. I needed a permanent solution. I stared at the computer screen again, trying to concentrate on how to write my conclusion summarizing Teddy Roosevelt’s life.