“You can’t?” Mel asked her, deadpan. “C’mon, Cara. She’d been waiting for him all these years. That’s why she left in the first place. She figured he’d come looking for her one of these days, that in reality, he couldn’t live without her. And then she’d have the last word, the upper hand. I guess she was wrong about that.”
“How so?”
“Well, shit. The man died on her. After all this, all the years of arguing, the years of cheating on her. After failing the child she left him to take care of, like I was a trade-off. After finding his way back to her and giving her three shitty years of his disease, three shitty years of watching him die a little bit every day. He got the last laugh, I guess. He got the final say.” She lit a cigarette, sucking deeply on the end of it. Mel never smoked inside her flat; this was definitely an exception.
They were quiet, contemplative. Mel had every right to be bitter; she’d lost so much. First her mother, then her innocence. She’d had so much stripped from her, so much taken away.
“She wants me to fly back there. To Nashville. She thinks I owe it to Dermott to come and say good-bye to him. She thinks I should be grateful for the years he cared for me after she left.”
“You? She can’t possibly be serious. She thinks you owe it to Dermott to fly across the country.”
Mel nodded her head slowly, drawing on the last of her cigarette before stubbing it out in the ceramic bowl she was using as an ashtray. She exhaled, blowing the smoke away from the table. “Yep.”
Leah was disgusted, vocal. “Mel, my God. Has she lost her mind? She can’t possibly think that you would fly across three time zones to attend the funeral of a man who abused you, after your mother walked out of your life and left you with him. She thinks you owe this to Dermott. I suppose she thinks you owe it to her, too. Mother of the Year. Shit. What gives her the right?”
“I’m going, Leah.”
They all stopped, frozen. “What?” Cara asked her. “You can’t possibly be serious, Mel. You can’t go?”
“I’m going, Cara.”
Mel could be headstrong, but this was ridiculous. She hadn’t seen her mother in over twenty years, maybe closer to thirty.
“Bea doesn’t know what happened after she left. She doesn’t know what Dermott did to me. You can bet your life that Dermott didn’t tell her.”
“You don’t have to prove anything, Mel. There’s no unfinished business, nothing that needs to be dug up and rehashed. You’ve got a good life now. You’ve raised Bella to be a beautiful woman. It’s not your job to go back and pick up the pieces from all of that. There’s nothing left that needs to be tended to,” Leah lectured.
“Look, Leah, maybe you think this is crazy and, shit, I’ll admit it, there’s a good chance that you’d be right. Dermott certainly doesn’t deserve my sorrow; and he definitely doesn’t deserve my kindness, either. Bea left me with him and this is how he repaid her, how he repaid both of us. But if nothing else, Bea should know that the man she spent waiting for all those years, the man she spent caring for until his last dying breath, well, he wasn’t the man she thought he was. She deserves to know that.” The tears came quickly for Mel, raw with emotion and sick with the memories.
Leah shook her head. “She doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve to know anything about your life. She left. She doesn’t deserve anything from you. Not now, not ever.”
“Maybe it’s not for Bea, Leah. Maybe the desire to tell Bea about what Dermott did to me isn’t for her, after all,” Mel shouted. “Maybe it’s for Bella. Did you ever consider that? Maybe it’s important for me to tell Bea about Bella. She exists, you know. Dermott took everything that I had, everything that I was, and destroyed it. But he gave me Bella, too. He gave me a child, a family that I didn’t have. He replaced what I had lost; he replaced what I’d had with my mother. Only now I was the mother.
How could I possibly feel any sadness for this man who set my life in motion and forced it down this road? How could I feel any empathy whatsoever for his lifeless body, especially after all these years? And yet I do, Leah. I mourn for his being gone, for the life he pissed away in a bottle of alcohol and for the years he and Bea were constantly at each other, for the family they pissed away. I mourn for his inability to know what to do with me, for the fact that he couldn’t manage to keep it all together. And Isabella? My beautiful daughter who was brought into this world through such hate, through such distaste for anything resembling love? God, I mourn for the fact that she’ll never know her father. His pathetic life wasn’t worth her time or energy, but God, how unfair to be dealt those cards. She had no choice in the matter, she never got a say about that.”
The room was dead quiet, still. With shaking hands that she couldn’t control, no matter how hard she tried, Mel lit her third cigarette in less than fifteen minutes. She was chain-smoking, lighting one right after the next so that a haze of blue smoke hung thick in the small kitchen. Finally, Cara reached over and propped open a window. Then she went to sit next to Mel, sharing a kitchen chair with her and holding her at the elbow to steady her.
“You should go,” Paige said slowly, breaking open the silence that had settled across the room. She spoke to the room, not necessarily to Mel herself. She spoke to them all, and to no one, in a voice that was recognizably her own, but sounded even stronger, more assured than anyone knew she could be. Gone was mousey Paige, the apprehension that normally hung at the end of every sentence. “You should go, Melanie,” she said again, and smiled at her friend. “You owe that to yourself. You owe that to Bella.”
21
“I won’t have you go alone,” Cara said to Mel, firmly. Mel was pulling clothes from her closet, refolding and laying them across the bottom half of her suitcase. She would go for four days only. She had decided and purchased the ticket overnight. “I’ll go with you. I haven’t been anywhere in God knows how long and David owes me one. Christ, he can hold the agency together for a few days.”
“I can’t ask you to do that, Cara.”
“You didn’t.”
Cara had the office manager book her flight and phoned Jack to tell him he would need to take the kids for the weekend. He and Barbie had moved into a new house with plenty of space for all of his children. There was no reason to think he couldn’t manage them for a few days.
Her only real concern was Katie. Cara was reluctant to leave her, but Isabella promised to stay with her, promised to keep an eye on her. Even Leah vowed to make regular visits to Mel’s flat, checking in on Katie and swearing to call Cara the minute she suspected anything was wrong. In the end, though, it was Katie herself who guaranteed Cara she would stay on her program. She had approached her mother and looked her in the eye—really making strong contact—for the first time in as long as either of them could remember.
“I promise you, Mom, with everything I have. I know how important this trip is for Mel. And I know it’s important that you feel like you can go with her. I won’t drink. No parties or driving or crazy binges. It’s the first time in a very long time, but I can honestly tell you that the desire is gone, really gone.”
“Are you ready to come home yet, honey?” Cara had asked her much too eagerly, pushing Katie’s hair away from her face, then pulling it back the way it was, the way she knew Katie liked it in the first place.
“I’m getting there. Maybe we can talk about it when you come back.”
Cara hugged her tight, resolving not to force her, for every time she did, it felt like Katie ran from her.
“Deal.”
Mel and Cara left on the red-eye. Their flight was crowded and cramped, making it nearly impossible to sleep. Melanie stared out the porthole window, watching the million tiny lights, houses and businesses on the Peninsula disappear behind them. She heaved a sigh and ordered a Rum and Diet Coke.
“Do you know what you’ll say to her? I mean, first off? Have you thought about it?” Cara asked her, while flipping through a magazine.
“No.”
<
br /> “It might be better that way. It probably wouldn’t matter, anyway. Even if you rehearsed the first line. No telling where it’ll go from there.”
“No.”
“We can turn around if you change your mind, you know. We can get right back on the next plane and come back.”
“No, Cara. I need to do this. There’s no turning back now.”
The plane touched down in Nashville near seven o’clock in the morning. Outside dark, pregnant clouds hung thick in the sky, threatening to break free at any minute. Mel and Cara made their way through the terminal to the rental car counter in less than ten minutes. Mel handed the clerk her driver’s license and credit card and was settled behind the wheel of a LeBaron in record time.
They maneuvered their way through the city, and then onto the interstate, south to Shelbyville. Homes dotted the miles along the way, brick ranchers with acres of open space on either side of them, landscape that they weren’t used to seeing. Cara’s home was older, and much smaller, and in the summer when the windows were open, she could make out the dinner conversation coming from her neighbor’s kitchen, not more than 100 feet away. Mel’s flat shared walls, one tiny apartment lined up next to the other.
“Of all the places in the world to go, how’d she end up here?” Cara asked, checking the directions Mel had printed and handed to her to navigate.
Mel shrugged her shoulders. “Guess it was just the last place she stopped. Once she stopped running.”
“Are you going to put that thing out?” Cara asked her, coughing, choking on the residue of Mel’s third cigarette. She held the lit butt outside the open window, but smoke snaked its way inside the window and hung on the fabric of the seats.
“Maybe. Probably not before we get to Bea’s house.”
Bea’s home, as it turned out, was an eleven-hundred-square-foot double-wide trailer with rusted aluminum siding and waist-high weeds that covered the back end of the unit. Out front, two plastic green chairs sat facing each other in the dust. A chained boxer greeted them, barking furiously and noisily in an out-of-control fashion.
They parked in the dirt lot next to the trailer and Mel leaned over to check the address on the paper again.
“This is it,” Cara said to her and she nodded.
Mel sucked in the last of her available oxygen and opened the car door without any hint of hesitation, charging forward on the property as if she owned it. It was as if she was to hang back and wait on her decision, she just might turn the car around and speed off.
“I can wait here. If you want, that is,” Cara called after her, opening the passenger door with more caution, slowly and methodically. She stepped out of the car and onto the hard, dry dirt. The land desperately needed the rain that looked promising.
“Do whatever you want, Cara. You can stay there or come with me. It really doesn’t matter.”
Cara was hoping to have been invited, included. Instead she watched as Mel stomped up the three metal steps that led to the door of the trailer and pulled back the screen door. She knocked loudly, her knuckles rasping on the peeling wood, and let the screen slam shut in front of her.
Bea was quick to answer. Rail-thin and wrinkled over every inch of her body, she wore a cheap white blouse that hung much too loosely on her concave chest and left her looking like a skeleton. Her gray hair looked like the sun had set in it a long time past; all that was left were fleeting streaks of color that had once shone. Her cheekbones were sallow and sunken from too many cigarettes, and her lips were pressed into a thin, hard line.
“Mama?” Melanie couldn’t help but ask.
Bea pushed open the screen with her right arm, and then cleared her throat, coughing up the phlegm that had settled in her chest.
“Melanie. It’s about time you dragged yourself home.”
Mel was sinking, stuck in quicksand. Her legs were weak at the knees, incapable of inching forward. Cara could see that without help she would go down, succumb to Bea’s cruel words in a minute.
Home?
Home was where she had come from, where she had started out last night when she kissed Isabella good-bye at the airport. This was not home, no part of this place belonged to her.
Bea stared at Melanie, waiting on her to make a move. Instead, Cara stepped forward and caught her attention.
“Cara? Is that you? Did you come all this way with Melanie? Well, you two come on in and I’ll fix you some lemonade. Too hot to be standing out here gaping at your mama. ’Sides, those clouds are gonna break free any minute and you’re gonna get soaked if you’re standing out here.” Bea’s voice had changed in an instant—sweeter, and more contained—when she realized she had company, real company.
Cara approached the trailer slowly, carefully and considerately. She looked at Melanie, waiting for her friend to come to life, hoping that if Mel had anything left she’d dig deep inside and find it right here and now.
“It’s good to see you, Bea,” Cara tried, filling the empty, uncomfortable space that hung amid the three of them. She took Mel’s hand and tugged at her, dragging her along, propping her up as she stepped hesitantly inside. They’d come to make a point, to finish what had been left so long ago. They weren’t going away empty-handed now. “Lemonade would be perfect, just fine.”
“It has been a long time.” Melanie struggled to find the words, waiting for them to come to her. She had expected she’d know just what to say, exactly the points she wanted to make to her mother. Her mother. She was standing in front of the woman who she’d called her mother all her life, for no particular reason other than she’d never adopted a more fitting name, something that might have worked better, something slightly more appropriate.
God, Bea had aged. Her outside appearance, any signs of beauty or femininity, anything soft at all, had long been replaced by signs of a hard life. Her hands had aged horribly, rough, leathery skin atop crooked, bony fingers and short, unkempt, ragged nails. She stooped when she walked, limping on the left side as if she needed to have a hip replaced or her knees had gone bad.
Inside, the trailer was cramped and cluttered, filled with dusty knickknacks and neglected, shabby furniture that desperately needed to be replaced. The windows were full of grime, the curtains tacky and threadbare. Mel looked around in awe, struck by what a pathetic life her mother had led.
Bea emptied an ice tray and then poured lemonade into three large unmatched glasses, slowly and purposefully. With her back to Mel and Cara, she said, “I expected you would have come out to see us sooner than this.”
Cara could feel the tension build in the small space, pushing on the trailer walls until it wanted to burst forth and blow out the dirty windows. She watched Melanie’s eyes grow small, just slits, really, and a crease formed at the spot above her nose where her eyebrows would have come together had she not had them waxed and manicured every few weeks.
“Well, I figured you would have come back by now, too. But I guess we were both wrong,” Mel said.
There she was, Cara thought. There was the friend she knew, the woman she’d expected.
“I’ve been taking care of your father, Melanie. Three years that man has been ill, right here in this trailer. It took everything we had just to keep us going. I worked all day to earn enough money to pay for his medication, stayed up half the night tending to him.”
“He was not my father.”
Bea was quiet, thinking on her words. “No, no I suppose not. Not technically, anyway, though he might as well have been.”
“No. He was not my father.”
“Now I know that Dermott had his issues. Believe me, I know. You don’t think I went about my business because life had been a bed of roses with him, do you? Of course not. But he always kept a roof over your head. Until, that is, as I understand it, you got all smart on him and moved out. Thought you could do better staying with your friends, is what I understand.” Bea glanced sideways at Cara, standing silently in the corner. “No harm, of course, Cara, but really Mel shoul
d have just stayed put. There was no need for her to burden your family with one more mouth to feed. So sweet of you and your mama to take her in. Joanie was always such a doll baby.”
Melanie had had enough. It took everything she had not to completely lose it and shake her mother senseless. At some point she became aware that she was gaping, flabbergasted at Bea’s version of the story. She couldn’t even imagine where to begin.
Mel stood abruptly, tall and commanding at once. “Why did you leave?”
“Oh, for goodness sake, Melanie, you’ve just gotten here. Do we have to go through all of this now? When it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other?”
“Why, Mother? Fill me in on the details. I mean, if you don’t mind, that is.”
Bea sighed. “It’s all such water under the bridge, Melanie. So many years that have gone by now. Do we really have to revisit the past like this?”
Mel held firm, her feet planted on the floor. On this subject she wasn’t willing to budge; she saw little room for negotiation, so she waited Bea out.
“I told you, Mel. Dermott was a good man. But he had a wandering eye. Always had, I knew that. But at some point you just get tired of being disrespected, I guess. At some point, you just realize that it’s time to go. I finally knew it was time to go.”
Mel couldn’t stand it any longer, everything in her wanted to come spilling forth. Every birthday and Christmas her mother had missed; every secret she had kept. “But you left me, Mama. You left me. You up and packed your bags and dropped out of sight and we didn’t hear from you for years. We never even knew where you went. What kind of mother does that? Who in their right mind leaves her daughter to fend for herself? You knew Dermott was incapable of taking care of me. My God, Mother, he had moved out. I had to call him on the phone and drag his sorry ass home. And let me tell you, he was not fucking pleased about it, either. I don’t know where he was or whom he was with then, but it did not please him to have to move home and take care of a sulky, stubborn teenager that wasn’t even his to begin with. For God’s sake, who does that to their own daughter?”
When I'm Not Myself Page 23
