Circle the Soul Softly

by Davida Wills Hurwin

Yeah. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” My voice is just as forced. I send a smile in his direction and am jolted by the intensity of his stare. We look away and walk in silence until he asks, “Want to sit for a while?”

  We find a spot without kelp and hunker down as the sun starts to sink. He doesn’t put his arm around me; he does scoot up close. The air’s cooling but the sand is warm from the day. We’re shoulder to shoulder as the sun sets …“like a fat orange candle….”

  Whoa.

  Point Reyes—I was with Ginny’s family—we were watching the sunset. I scribbled the poem on the back of the take-out menu we’d gotten from a tiny restaurant called Lew & Colleen’s, where Ginny’s mom was ordering food. Ginny was cuddling with her dad on a rock near where I perched, and I was jealous. I missed my daddy. He wasn’t around me much these days—he preferred to hang out with Michael. Wow. Already, I’d folded up the real memories and concealed them from myself. I missed him; that’s all I knew. And that’s when I wrote the poem.

  “Katie?”

  I look toward David and stare blankly for a few seconds.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Take a breath. Be here, BE HERE.

  “Sure? You’re looking a little spacey.”

  “No, I’m good.” I am. I’m here. I’ve remembered a poem.

  “I’m sorry I was such an asshole,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “At Prom. I was an asshole.”

  “Oh.” I have to struggle a bit to catch up. “David, it wasn’t just you.”

  “Uh, yeah. It kinda was.”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to let me say my speech or what?”

  He sounds almost petulant. I nod and wait.

  “Okay, this is what I think. I think when two people have a relationship, sometimes they understand each other, and sometimes they don’t. Especially when it comes down to male or female. Make sense?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Okay, say like there’s a ‘male’ role and a ‘female’ role—basic biology, you know—procreation and all that shit.”

  “The sex thing.”

  “Exactly. The sex thing. That’s what happened! I wanted you and then you were naked and I wanted you more, but all of a sudden you got freaky and I …I knew I should have stopped, but I didn’t, and I was an asshole.”

  I start to speak but he puts up his hand.

  “No. Listen. I knew something was wrong and I pretended I didn’t. Then I got pissed at myself and you and everything got messed up and nothing came out the way I meant. I don’t know what I meant. I just know I love you and I would never hurt you. And I am really sorry I did.”

  I’m here, 100 percent, I understand what he’s saying to me—and I think I just may let him take the blame, at least for now. “I love you, too, David.”

  “No shit?” He looks like a little boy who got forgiven for breaking Grandma’s favorite lamp. I pull his head in to kiss him, and two big-footed Lab puppies choose that exact moment to land smack dab between us. We burst out laughing.

  “Oh dear,” this anorexic redhead in a workout suit hollers, “I am so sorry.” She jogs toward us, dyed hair flying, leashes in hand—Stacey in thirty years. The puppies tumble all over, nipping ears and tails, licking whatever skin they find. We’re in hysterics, the stomachache and tears kind, until a seagull flies low and the puppies are off again, chasing it down the beach as their owner chases them.

  “You are a dog person,” David announces as soon as we’re able to calm down.

  “Oh yes. Definitely, no two ways about it.”

  “You’d have to be, wouldn’t you? Because I am.”

  “It’s a soul thing.”

  “Exactly.” This time the kiss happens and we cuddle after. “So, are we okay?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. Are we?”

  “Uh …yeah, I think we are.”

  “Then, cool.”

  “But you do need to tell me what my mom said about my dad.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not now, but soon. ”Way to go, Katie. Polar bears, begone.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  My brother gathers huge rounded stones from the cliffs to the north of us and makes a circle with them in the sand, ten feet or so from the high tide line. In the center he piles dried kelp and the bits of driftwood he’s picked up.

  “Michael, are you sure it’s okay to light fires here? Because I saw a sign that—”

  “Shhh.” He goes back to his job. “I know what I’m doing, Skates. I was a Boy Scout, remember?”

  “You were not.”

  “Well, I wanted to be. And that’s almost as good.” He grins his stupid-brother smile. “Besides, didn’t you say you were cold?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Okay. Hello? I’m fixing that. Can we shut up a minute and let me do it?”

  When the fire finally gets going—and yes, he uses matches and not the old rub-a-stick scout trick—I have to admit it’s pretty much the perfect ending to an awesome Sunday. Casey and David have just left. Mom and Robert are upstairs. And me and the Bro, here, are in sync.

  “It’s all set,” he tells me. “I’m going home the week they get back from Cabo. I told Mom and everything.”

  “Is she pissed?”

  “Not a bit.” He grins. “I think she’s kinda relieved.”

  “Who can blame her?”

  “Hey—are you implying I’m hard to live with?”

  “No, I’m saying straight out you’re still a butthead.”

  “That’s better.”

  “And I’m gonna miss you, a lot.”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna miss you, too.” He stirs the fire with a stick. “It’s kinda funny, huh, just when we finally start getting to know each other.”

  “Yeah.”

  We have a Nice Sibling Moment here—which is actually not so rare these days. I find myself wondering what we were to each other in our past lives. If it’s true souls travel together, we must have had at least three or four lifetimes together.

  “Why did you tell me that time that our father liked me best?” Okay, where did that come from?

  “Left turn at Idaho,” Michael says with a little chuckle. “Didn’t we have this conversation already?”

  “You got someplace you have to be?”

  He tosses a log on the fire and makes a face at me. “You could just see it in him, Skates; he watched you all the time. He took you places, he played ball with you—or at least he tried to—you were basically hopeless. Sports challenged. You couldn’t catch it when he handed to you.”

  “Yeah, but he did the same stuff with you.”

  “Not because he wanted to. More like he had to, like Mom said or something.”

  I don’t like the tone of his voice. “Michael . . .”

  “Don’t worry, it only really sucked the year I was getting punched out by Kyle and Paul. Third grade. I didn’t know what to do, and Dad didn’t seem to have time to tell me, even though he was laid off then. Remember that? How moody he got? Anyway, he sure made time to hang out with you.”

  The hair on the back of my neck starts to prickle.

  Michael’s mouth tightens. “It pissed me off.”

  “He went in my room?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Did he shut the door?”

  “Yeah, of course, that was the worst. He shoulda been in my room, hearing about my life, even if he was depressed. No offense, Skates, but you had Mom.”

  “Wait a minute—did you hear me talking to him?”

  “Not a bit. I stuck my headphones on and pretended I didn’t care. And then he got sick, and it didn’t matter anyway.”

  I am so fully alert right now I hear butterflies. “Michael, he didn’t get sick until I was in seventh grade.”

  “Nope. I was in fourth—you were in second.”

  “No, no. I remember the conversation Mom had with us—we were in the living room and she told us he had cancer. I was in
seventh grade.”

  “I know exactly the time you’re talking about, Skates, but that wasn’t the conversation. She was telling us he might not make it; that the chemo didn’t work.”

  “I am so confused.”

  “You really don’t remember this?”

  “No.”

  “By then he’d been doing chemo for years.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He was diagnosed and went for a second opinion. He had his lung removed, got radiation and chemo, and then he was okay for a while. But it showed up again. It all went on for years, Skates. I can’t believe you didn’t know this.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t know what he did in my room.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Never mind. Later. So, what else?”

  “Well, okay, he had a couple of remissions, and we kept thinking it was going to be all right. But cancer cells kept showing up other places. Finally he just gave up.”

  “What do you mean—he gave up?”

  Michael’s mouth is twisted. “Just what I said. He gave up. This doctor had a whole new kind of drug he wanted to try, but Dad wouldn’t do it.”

  “You sound mad, Michael.”

  “He could’ve tried it. It could have worked. We might not even be here now. But, oh well, huh. It was his choice and he couldn’t handle it. So he quit.”

  “You are mad.”

  “That would be dumb, wouldn’t it? He’s dead.”

  “You still get to have feelings about him.”

  “Okay. Hold on. Stop. You are sounding way too much like a shrink. I’m really not into this conversation anyway, so let’s either, you know, change the subject, or you go talk to Mom or David. Somebody who likes this kind of shit.”

  We bump sort of awkwardly around the house for the next few days. I feel like an actor who memorized the wrong script and didn’t figure it out till the middle of act two. There I am, onstage, blustering through my lines, playing my actions, when suddenly I discover the back story isn’t at all what I believed it to be. I don’t recognize the other characters. I barely recognize myself.

  Did Michael know why Dad was really in my room? Has he buried the memory like I did? Questions and more questions—like who are you if you’re not what you remember? If what you believed happened in your life wasn’t true? Does that mean what I perceive now isn’t real either?

  I consider telling David everything. I also consider going back and confronting my brother—what did you really know? Why were you angry with me? And why are you running away now?

  But something stops me, some unfamiliar little voice I don’t recognize, arriving from outside my brain and interrupting my thought process. My soul speaking? I have no idea, and right now, I don’t care. Circles and souls make as much sense as anything else.

  THIRTY-NINE

  It’s weird enough to know your mom is getting married. But when you actually walk down the aisle as maid of honor, and your brother escorts her and gives her away—then you enter the land of Truly Frickin’ Strange.

  The ceremony’s in a tiny glass-enclosed chapel not too far from Bob’s Beach House, thrust over the ocean and framed on the mountainside by ancient eucalyptus trees. Not too many guests are invited—a girlfriend of Mom’s, Steve and his parents. The few cousins left in Mom’s family are people we barely know; invitations were sent, but only gifts arrived. Robert has several friends, but no family present, either; his daughters do not show up. I ask David, and Michael brings his new girlfriend, Paris.

  I do the step-touch thing down the little aisle and stand over to one side. Robert enters from behind the altar as my mom appears in the doorway. Corny as it sounds, she glows. Outlined by the sky and the ocean, she stands posed like a ballet dancer as she takes Michael’s arm; they float toward us.

  I’m split in two: loving the absolute adoration on Robert’s face when he looks at my mother and the little trace of tears in my mom’s eyes, and obsessed with poring over my last conversation with Michael. All pieces of that same huge puzzle.

  Two people preside over the ceremony. A white-haired woman priest with an incredibly gentle, melodious voice, talks about the vows that souls take in the sight of God. How two people come together and love each other so much they want their love witnessed by their family and friends. I sneak a peek at David—his eyes are glistening. I check Michael in his place opposite me—his eyes are shuttered.

  In his turn, the male priest reads the vows that Mom and Robert wrote. They include the honor and cherish in sickness and health stuff, and a part about us—Robert’s idea. The male priest reads it out loud; Robert repeats it to our mom.

  “I promise to respect and to care for your children, Michael and Kaitlyn, to honor their lives, to show them all the love I am capable of giving, to shelter them whenever possible, and to try to have the wisdom to help them to grow.”

  Once again I find Michael; I want him to share in the tenderness and affection I’m feeling now for Robert, for Mom, and for him. He won’t acknowledge me. The handsome young man who escorted his mother has morphed to a dark, melancholy boy. I want to freeze time, go and wrap my arms around him, and tell him everything’s going to be all right.

  Then it’s done. We take every imaginable photo and head back to Bob’s Beach House for the reception, where the caterers have spent the morning arranging things exactly the way Mom wants. David and I drive with “the wedding party” in an incredibly outrageous Rolls-Royce limo. David holds my hand like he’ll never let it go and beams like a kid arriving at Disneyland. Michael’s back in place again; I realize he wasn’t remotely conscious of himself during the wedding. Paris slips her arm through his and snuggles close. He makes his “Oh shit, what do I do now” face, I start giggling, Mom glances over and beams at both of us.

  Two hours later the celebration has settled. Robert’s deep in conversation with one of his friends. Michael and David and Paris are arguing politics up on Michael’s balcony, and my mom’s standing by herself at the edge of the deck, just out of the sight of the party. I want to go sit with the ocean and ponder the day, but something draws me down to her.

  “Hey you mommy,” I say, softly, so I won’t startle her.

  “Hi, baby.”

  “You happy?”

  “Yes. I am.” She reaches over and takes my hand.“You?”

  “Doing pretty good.” I smile, she turns back out toward the water, with the same look I imagine I get on my face as the ocean calms me every night. Like mother, like daughter?

  “Want to take a walk?” she asks.

  “Sorry, can’t, my mother said if I get the dress dirty —”

  “What the hell does she know? Come on. Just keep it out of the—wait, shit, you know what? Get it wet. Go surfing. Catch a fish in it. I don’t care. Come on. Let’s walk.”

  We head up the beach in bare feet, hand in hand, holding up our skirts. We go all the way around the cliff that bulges out and into a little alcove where there’s no house overlooking us. I imagine we must appear a tad strange in our fancy gowns, sitting on a sand bluff.

  “Can I tell you something?” I ask, noticing how young she seems right now.

  “Of course.”

  “I like your husband.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. He’s very cool.”

  “Well, I certainly think so.”

  “It’s still kinda weird, though, isn’t it? Being here, and everything.”

  She nods.“Very weird. But good.”

  “Yeah.” I can feel us both relaxing as we listen to the waves. Then: The old Blurt Technique. “Mom, how long was Daddy sick?” Will I ever leave well enough alone?

  “Four, five years, I guess. Why?”

  “I thought it was only a couple of months.”

  “No, baby. Much longer.”

  “Why didn’t I know that?” My voice is turning whiny.

  “You were a little girl. You didn’t need your whole childhood taken up with cancer.”


  “Michael knew. He’s not that much older.” Shut up, Kaitlyn. Shut UP.

  “Michael didn’t leave us much choice.”

  “It’s still not fair.” Strike two. Why can’t I leave this alone?

  “I’m sorry, honey. It seemed right at the time. I just wanted to protect you.”

  “I wish you had.”

  Strike three. We’re both out.

  How can I be so angry and not know it?

  She starts to reply but checks herself. I can see her face working not to cry, and I wish for Stupid Kate to appear. This Being Present thing sucks. I hurt people. I hurt myself. I spit out little barbs I don’t even know I feel. I turned my mother’s whole life upside down by remembering my father, and now I rub her face in it. On her wedding day.

  I’m good.

  “Mommy, I’m sorry.” The words come out husky and low, but I know she hears them. She doesn’t move, except to gather in her shoulders. We’re in tableau on the sand—is it going to be the opening scene or the final one? If she won’t turn around—it’s curtain, and I won’t know what to do.

  She sighs.

  “Look what I’m doing,” she mutters as she uses the hem of her dress to dab at the makeup streaks on her face. “This dress costs more than I do.”We both smile. Then she stares straight into my eyes and suddenly, there’s nothing else in the world except my mother and me.

  “I don’t know how to fix it, Katie.”

  “I know. Me, either.”

  “I would give my life to change what happened.”

  I can’t find any words.

  “I didn’t know. I should have. But I didn’t.”

  I manage a nod.

  “I love you,” she whispers. “You’re my baby girl.” One of those tears she was holding back finds its way down the side of her cheek.

  “I love you, too.”

  She kisses my forehead, then puts Mom-arms around me and pulls me close. Stupid Kate waves as she exits. My mother and I sit watching the ocean, me wrapped inside her hug.

  FORTY

  I have the dream—running down the hallway, just as scared as ever, and the Monster’s getting closer. He laughs as his slimy claws touch me and even though I know it’s my dad—I also know it isn’t—and I run faster, around the corner and straight toward an open window that’s never been there before. I leap before I realize how high it is, but I’m okay, because I’m flying … except then I start to fall, tumbling over and over myself, screaming—until that strange little jerk happens that always wakes me up.