Coming Home

by David Lewis

  Bill touched her elbow and winked. “Wanna see the house? Won’t take long.”

  Jessie nodded, still distracted. Her grandmother led them into the family area straight ahead, the kitchen off to the left, the alcove overlooking the backyard. She pointed to various knickknacks and paintings, describing in detail her reasons for each purchase, adding a plethora of insignificant details. It was almost eerie the way Grandmother could carry on so superficially, as if only the surface of life seemed to matter. Jessie wondered how her own mother had emerged from this world unscathed.

  As a child Jessie had once watched a Munsters rerun, a popular wacky comedy from the sixties. The pretty blond girl, who’d been saddled with an unusual family, had reminded Jessie of her own mother. In fact, Jessie had once gone so far as to ask her mother if she’d been adopted.

  Mom had burst out laughing. “I don’t think so, honey. And I have the birth certificate to prove it. Besides, you’re the spitting image of your grandmother.”

  Jessie must have looked aghast with the pain of it all, because her mom had pulled her into a comforting and laugh-filled hug.

  “Honey, I’m just kidding. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it would scare you so.”

  Truth was, Mom seemed oblivious to Doris Crenshaw’s faults. Jessie still remembered her mother’s patient words to her dad after numerous conflicts: “She doesn’t mean any harm, Frank. We must be patient with her. Just humor her, if you can.”

  That was never enough for her father. Nor for her. Yes, it was unbelievable that Mom had grown up within the walls of this house. A true miracle. It all came back in frightening clarity.

  They were now back in the foyer. What followed next was more like a military briefing than a tour. Apparently, her grandmother expected her to spend the night. She provided a point-by-point explanation of all the amenities, obviously a speech she had recited many times before. Her heels clicked against the wood floor as she explained the breakfast routine, the maid schedule, the locations of the various rooms.

  Bill fidgeted while Grandmother prattled on. “Doris …”

  The woman continued, seeming not to hear.

  “Doris …”

  “Bill, what?”

  “Jessie has not been properly invited to stay.”

  “Oh … well. But you are staying, aren’t you?” She looked from Jessie over to Bill again, her manner suddenly hesitant and perplexed.

  “Do you think she assumed she could stay?” Bill said rather meekly.

  “Oh, well … no …”

  Bill turned to Jessie, his eyes twinkling again. “Ms. Lehman, we’d love to have the pleasure of your company. However, we would understand fully if you have a schedule that may prohibit …”

  “Is that you in there, Bill?” Jessie replied, smiling but embarrassed with his courtesy. After all, according to etiquette, she was the one in the wrong for showing up unannounced.

  He grinned back. “What do you say? I make a mean omelet. I even cook the bacon for guests. But there’s only one way I can introduce you to a true Montana breakfast. You have to be here to eat it.”

  Grandmother seemed terribly ill at ease. An impossible thought crossed Jessie’s mind. In spite of the whirlwind feelings—anger, confusion, frustration, even curiosity—she felt a strange inner pull, detached from everything else. While she still could scarcely look at her grandmother without feeling a surge of anger, she couldn’t say no, either. At least not for Bill’s sake.

  “I can stay … the night,” she replied, acutely aware of how rude it must have sounded.

  “Fine, then,” Grandmother said, tossing Bill a crusty look. “And you’re welcome to attend church with me tomorrow. I certainly hope you won’t rush off.” Doris eyed Bill again. “Bill does his own thing on Sunday mornings, but … I would … appreciate your company.”

  He placed his hand gently on Jessie’s shoulder, aligning himself with her again. “She’ll decide about church tomorrow, Doris. She may be tired after a long drive.”

  “Yes, of course,” Grandmother nodded quickly.

  They said good-night and Grandmother darted down a narrow hallway toward the master bedroom. The moment of her leaving was punctuated by a sense of relief.

  Bill asked Jessie for her car keys and brought in her overnight bag. Together, they started up the wooden steps. Midway, Bill stopped. “Notice the squeaks?”

  Jessie took another step, testing her weight, listening. “What squeaks?”

  “Exactly,” he said, looking pleased. “Couple years ago, I redid these steps. There’s a special technique for it. It’s all in how you place the wood.”

  “You must be a genius.”

  Bill chuckled, apparently embarrassed. When they reached the balcony overlook, Jessie leaned hard, taking several deep breaths. She felt light-headed just from ascending the stairs.

  “We’re a mile above the ocean,” he reminded her. “Take it slow.”

  Bill wasn’t kidding.

  “You okay? I can get some water.”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine, just … out of breath.”

  Standing straight again, she placed her hands on her waist, taking another deep breath. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her mother’s childhood room, only ten paces down the hall, and felt a knot in the pit of her stomach. She met Bill’s worried gaze. “I’m fine,” she assured him.

  He gestured toward his room in the opposite direction. “If there’s anything I can do, just call. I’m only a few footsteps away.” The softness in his eyes glistened with a natural moistness.

  “It’s good of you to stay, Jessie,” he said. “It means a lot to her, you know.” With an air of uneasiness, he looked away, as if he’d said too much. A rather striking contrast to his country-bumpkin demeanor.

  Jessie smiled tentatively, unsure of herself.

  Bill led her to the end of the hall toward her old room, opposite her mother’s former room. She looked away, unable to deal with the strange emotions connected with the room.

  Along the hallway wall was a collection of framed photos of her mother.

  “That’s just a few,” Bill supplied, as if reading her mind. “Most of ’em are down in the grand room.”

  Jessie had seen them all before: her mother’s elementary school years, a high-school graduation photo, the nursing photo that had been her personal favorite, several wedding pictures—without the groom, naturally, and one of her mother in a wheelchair, apparently taken in a park setting, with the fragment of a white building off to the right side. Pine trees provided a shadowy cover, lending an artistic contrast to her mother’s face.

  “She was a beautiful woman,” he said after a moment. “I’m sorry I never met her.”

  “You would have liked her,” Jessie said, realizing she had crossed her arms again.

  “I’m sure of that,” he agreed.

  He cracked the door open for her and bid her good-night before retreating to the opposite end of the hallway.

  Taking two steps into the room, she locked her gaze on the window with its white jail-like crossbar panes and wondered if she still had the limberness to negotiate the steep asphalt roof and climb down between the shuttered windows. She was almost tempted, in spite of remembering her earlier assessment of the second-story height from the street.

  The room had a quaint feel with its hardwood floor and assortment of antiques. A dark wood dresser stood against one wall, and linen-covered nightstands flanked the canopy bed. She’d forgotten about the window seat overlooking the front yard. Since her final getaway, the room had apparently become a place to board overnight guests. From tonight’s conversation, Jessie had learned—actually, she was reminded—that her grandmother enjoyed entertaining important people in the classical music world.

  Apparently, her music teachers’ group didn’t have the budget to fly in the big-name workshop conductors, thus leaving her grandmother to spring for the expenses, something she obviously didn’t mind. She was also the person of cho
ice to entertain traveling violinists, singers, and guest conductors when they preferred a more personal touch. Grandmother didn’t neglect to mention her personal connection with the symphony personnel, most notably, the conductor and his wife.

  All evening, Grandmother had dropped names with abandon, which seemed pointless because Jessie wasn’t familiar with half of them, but it did explain the photos here in the guest room. Two walls were filled with garish snapshots of her grandmother with nearly every important classical musical figure in the world. It was blatant and embarrassing, and Jessie wondered if her guests didn’t see right through it.

  Front and center, the largest photo showed her grandmother, in much younger days, with an affectionate arm around Vladimir Horowitz himself. Standing on the other side, his wife, Wanda Horowitz, the daughter of the famed conductor Toscanini, looked less than pleased. She scowled defensively at the camera as if worried the camera might steal her husband’s world-renowned pianistic soul. All this made Jessie wonder again how Bill, the awshucks handyman, fit in with Grandmother’s world.

  The hardwood floor began to feel harsh beneath her feet. She sat on the white-laced bed, removed her shoes, and searched for the appropriate location for them. She thought of Darlene and the misguided promise to call her upon arrival. She wouldn’t arrive in Oregon anytime soon.

  Suddenly feeling exhausted, Jessie quickly disrobed and slipped into her striped pajamas—“antiromantic apparel,” Darlene had called them. “When you get married, I’d trade those in,” she’d said and the irony of it hit her between the eyes. I won’t be getting married anytime soon, either.

  She lay back on the bed, closing her eyes as the events of the entire day swirled in her mind: visiting the old gift shop, weeping like a baby in front of the old house, eating ice cream at the Rock House, visiting with Mrs. Robinette, who couldn’t stop talking about Andy, who was, by now, a happily married man. “My word, he’s tall now… .”

  Jessie smiled wistfully. Life goes on without me.

  Then there was Laura, the ghost-obsessed girl. She pondered Laura’s perky behavior and felt a closeness to the youngster. “Molly knows me,” Jessie remembered telling her. Laura had said, “Maybe you’re a ghost! They keep doing the things they did when they were alive.”

  Pretty much fits me, Jessie thought.

  As a desperate girl of twelve, she would never have imagined she’d finally return here of her own free will. The surreal sensation was even more pervasive now. She felt her mother’s presence everywhere she turned in this old house.

  Jessie pulled herself up slowly and went to the window. She placed her hand against the wall to steady herself, almost too weary to stand, and spotted her car across the street. She felt a wave of claustrophobia when she realized that Bill had locked the gate with her car outside of the fortress. I can still get out, she consoled herself.

  “Nobody locks anything in the Broadmoor, but you know how your grandmother is,” Bill had said.

  Yes, I sure do, she’d thought. And with her car parked outside the protection of her grandmother’s wrought-iron estate, it certainly seemed as if she were truly half in and half out. It struck her that she’d lived her entire life that way: poised to live but never really living.

  She turned and sat on the window seat, facing the door. She thought of her mother’s room again, just a few feet away. Was it locked? She swallowed hard. What would happen if she slipped inside … just for a moment? Just thinking about it, she was once again gripped by a mixture of muddled emotions—fear, curiosity, sorrow—but none stronger than longing. She felt literally pulled toward the room.

  Before she could change her mind, she rose and went to her bedroom door. Cracking it open, she winced at its whining creak. She peered down the dim hallway, first one way, then the other. Seeing no one and hearing nothing, she tiptoed across the hall. In a flash, her hand was on the knob, twisting. The door was locked, and she felt a sudden twinge of despair. She worried that Bill might have heard the clicking of her attempt, and nervously she glanced down the hallway again.

  She crept back into her own room, closed the door, and turned out the light. Slipping beneath the covers, she pulled them up to her neck and held them tightly as her eyes became accustomed to the dark. In spite of her fatigue, sleep did not come immediately.

  Her mind wandered, as she tried to process everything. She was struck with the realization of how easily she was remembering things she thought had been buried in her mind. It called into question Dr. Roeske’s declaration eight years before.

  … “You’ve repressed your entire childhood, Jessie.” She’d responded flippantly, “So what?”

  “Repression is a form of emotional protection, but it carries a heavy toll,” the doctor replied.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” Jessie asked.

  Roeske tried to change the subject, perhaps weary of her combativeness. But she pressed him, ready to argue. “C’mon. You said you’d play fair.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “I can do complicated.”

  “We need more time,” he argued.

  “Give me your best textbook explanation, Dr. Roeske. Repression 101.” She was taunting him, but he complied anyway.

  “In your case, it’s the habitual avoidance of painful memories, leading to memory specific amnesia. You’ve buried the pain, but you’ve also buried the memory within your subconscious. For the moment it seems to work. Unfortunately, pain refuses to be buried alive. It claws its way to the surface until you find yourself experiencing acute emotional responses with no apparent cognitive source. You must uncover and solve the cognitive—the memories—in order to alleviate the accompanying painful emotions.”

  “English, please?”

  “You asked for complicated.”

  “Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

  “Visit a mental institution,” he said curtly, “and you’ll see a few extreme examples.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s called insanity, Jessica. Worst-case scenario, repression can lead to insanity.”

  “Oh, puhlease,” she whispered to herself….

  Her memory of that session was laced with regret, and she now wondered if she had wept because she’d been denied the chance to apologize for her poor behavior.

  Her mind drifted to her mother’s old room. The last time she’d seen it, there were stuffed animals on the bedspread, huddled beneath another four-poster white-laced canopy bed. The rich oak wood flooring was accented with a braided multicolored wool rug and pieces of her mom’s childish artwork graced the wall closest to the fireplace.

  Beneath the tall windows was another window seat, with interior shutters opening outward toward the expansive backyard, overlooking a rich, dense collection of maples and oaks, which rarely thrived in Colorado. Like Peter Pan’s entrance into a fantasy world.

  Jessie had asked her father about the room, and as usual he was not impressed.

  … “Mom loves it,” Jessie had protested. “It’s cool. It’s like going back to when she was my age.”

  “Your mother doesn’t understand what your grandmother is trying to do,” her dad said, looking away as if he’d said too much.

  “Do what?”

  Preoccupied with his tools, her dad was silent.

  “Trying to do what?” she repeated.

  Her dad sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  No kidding, Jessie thought….

  Her head pounded and the room swirled. Leaning up on her elbow, she felt dizzy and a little nauseous. She made her way to the private bathroom adjoining the guest room and found an aspirin in her travel case. She filled the crystal glass beside the sink with water and swallowed the bitter-tasting tablet. A strange revulsion swept through her, and she gripped the sides of the sink. Her field of vision went black, and for a moment she considered slipping to the floor slowly instead of fainting but struggled against it. Suddenly she found herself kneeling on the floor anyway, and for a
moment she wasn’t sure where she was. She took several deep breaths, now grasping the sink legs. Confusion overwhelmed her.

  Too much, too soon, she thought faintly. The whole day, including her encounter with Brandon last night, was like overeating and suffering from indigestion. “That’s all …” she whispered. “I’m emotionally exhausted. The old memories have thrown me for a loop.”

  But you didn’t remember everything, did you, Jess? You’ve barely grazed the surface. Hardly a nick. If you did remember—truly remember—your life would never be the same… .

  She shivered. The words seemed to come from outside of her.

  Where did they bury your mother?

  Jessie pulled herself to her feet, violently pushing the thoughts or words or whatever they were to the back of her mind, and held the edges of the sink with both hands, leaning down. She was making an effort to get back to the bed when another wave of nausea swept through her. She slumped to the bathroom floor again, realizing that nothing she’d eaten tonight was going to be digested.

  Fifteen minutes later, she finally made it back, slumping into bed only to encounter an immediate spinning of the room again. She closed her eyes tightly and took deep breaths. It’s the altitude, she told herself and eventually her mind settled down. She fell asleep just after midnight.

  Chapter Twelve

  IT WAS FIVE-THIRTY when Andy rose for the day. He showered, threw on a pair of khaki shorts and blue T-shirt, and slipped into his sandals. He’d slept restlessly, glancing at the clock off and on all night.

  He stopped at McDonald’s, picked up a large coffee, and headed for the mountains. Highway 105 was nearly deserted on a Sunday morning as he headed south. He opened the windows and let the wind blow through his hair.

  “Mom, Dad, there’s something you need to know.”

  “What is it, son?”

  Andy shook his head and sighed. He’d never really appreciated the expression “stuck between a rock and a hard place” until lately. “What am I supposed to do?” he whispered to the wind, but his vague prayer only seemed to bounce off the morning sky.