When I'm Not Myself

by Deborah J. Wolf

  Bea wrapped her hands around one of the glasses, running her palms up and down against the condensation. She stared intently at the lemonade, at the ice cubes that were melting quickly in the steamy, unbearable heat.

  “I didn’t have a choice. You were too young to understand that then, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

  “Everyone has a choice. You had a choice. You just chose something else. You picked to leave. You picked to leave and leave me with him. I don’t know how I can ever forgive you for that. I don’t know how I can ever forget what it was like to be left. Do you have any idea about what it feels like to be left?”

  “Yes, Melanie. I know exactly how that feels.” Bea’s voice was small, weak, but caustic and cynical. Even all these years later, she was resentful and bitter. “It was all I could do to leave you there. I had no job, no life, no one to turn to and no place to live. I knew if I left you that you’d have food and a roof over your head. If I’d taken you with me, I wasn’t even sure I could give you those things. Imagine what it must have been like for a mother to wonder how she would be able to feed her children. Imagine what it must have been like for me to wonder where we would have slept that night. I hadn’t worked in years. I had no job, no income of my own. When I left, I went to a shelter for a couple of weeks. Then, later, when I was able to scrounge up enough cash, I went to Atlanta to see my sister, and then finally here to Nashville. I had already lived a life of nothing with you, long before Dermott rescued us. I couldn’t bring myself to do it again. I had every intention of coming back for you, really I did. But by the time I tried, you were living with Cara. And I knew you’d be better off there. I knew that Joan would take better care of you even than I could myself.”

  “You never should have left me,” Melanie said again, hurt rising in her voice. She shook her head back and forth, angry that her mother wouldn’t accept responsibility for her actions, even now. “What could have possibly been that bad, so horrible that you would leave me with him?”

  “Oh, Melanie, it’s so long ago now. So very long ago that it all happened that it’s not worth drudging it all up. I’ve buried it, moved on. When your father came back here, he was so sick. What could I do? He didn’t have anyone to take care of him. He didn’t have anything in his life. Even after all he’d done to me, I couldn’t turn him away. He needed someone to take care of him. And Dermott and me? It didn’t take long before we made peace with our war. It was so long ago and so much had passed between us. None of that was important. What was important was that we could set it aside. What was important was that after all this time, we could set it aside.”

  “There are some things you can’t set aside, Mama, no matter how much you try,” Mel answered. There was a hard, controlled edge to her voice that she fought to keep in control.

  “Oh, sugar,” Bea started, and then stopped when she saw the look on Mel’s face, a reaction to the affection in her tone. “Melanie, please,” Bea pleaded with her, but Mel wasn’t quick to soften.

  “I think you owe me an explanation, Mother. At least that much. You owe me some sort of an explanation, if you can even find one.”

  “I can’t give you one, Melanie. No matter what I tell you, after all these years, you won’t understand it. And, at this point, it may not be important. Dermott is gone now. With him went all the sins of his past, all the years that fell between us like a sharp sword. In the end, I forgave him for what had come between us, and he forgave me for leaving. There was nothing more than that. There was nothing left unsaid, nothing left unfinished.”

  Melanie turned on her heel and set down her bag on the worn table. She dug through the contents, pulling out her keys and wallet, her sunglasses case, until she found what it was she was looking for. She held the small photo album, a portable, purse-size version littered and stuffed with photographs of Bella. Tears streamed down her face, her cheeks heated and splotchy.

  “And for this? Were you able to forgive him for this?”

  In her shaking hand she held the page open. In the shot, Bella was five, maybe six. Her face was sprinkled with freckles, her brown eyes large and untamed. She’d lost her first two teeth, a gaping hole in the middle of the bottom row.

  Bea stepped forward to look at the photo, pushing her glasses to sit on the top of her head. She was nearsighted but up close her vision was nearly 20/20. She stared at the photo, intent, looking for recognition in the face of the little girl who was staring back at her.

  It was true that Isabella had resembled her mother; she always had. If nothing more, Bea should have seen her own daughter in the photo, a resemblance far too obvious to set aside. But Melanie had chosen this photo for a reason; there was no closer shot that resembled Dermott more than this one. Something about the way the camera had captured Bella, as if proving out her paternity once and for all. And yet at the same time, her features resembled Mel’s. Her eyes held the same inquisitiveness that Mel’s often had, her smile, the confidence.

  “Who is this?” Bea asked, calmly controlled. She held the photo between her thumb and her forefinger, gripping it tightly. She couldn’t take her eyes off the child, familiarity slowly dawning on Bea.

  “Her name is Isabella. She’s my daughter.”

  Bea swallowed hard, shock registering on her face, but careful not to let on. She sat in the shaggy recliner in the corner, one leg tucked up under the other, and flipped through the album Mel had brought, stopping to study each shot, Bella frozen through the years. “She’s beautiful, Melanie. She looks like a really nice little girl. I wish I’d have known.”

  “She’s no little girl; not anymore, anyway.” Mel was not done with her, distaste had settled on her tongue and she was determined to spit it out. “And you’ve had no desire to know about this little girl. You had no desire to know anything about your own daughter, never mind the child I have raised.”

  “That’s not true. I always wondered about you, Melanie. I always prayed you were safe and cared for.”

  “But I wasn’t. There wasn’t anything of the sort going on, Mother. Home was hell. You should know; you ran from it.”

  “That was different. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Neither did I. You left me there without any sort of choice. There was nowhere I could go, nothing I could do.”

  They squared off like two cocks ready to move in for the kill. Bea looked through the last of the photos and folded the album closed, handing it back to Melanie.

  Mel shook her head, refusing to take it. “The photos, they’re for you. I brought them for you to keep.”

  “Oh. Oh, no, I couldn’t, Melanie. She’s your daughter; you should keep these.”

  “She’s your granddaughter. Don’t tell me you don’t see it, Mother. You sit there and look through these photos and you’re listening to me tell you that life was surely no picnic in Dermott’s house and you’re going to pretend that you don’t even see it?”

  Bea had, of course. And Melanie knew it. Bea had tried to hide the shock that registered on her face every time she took in a new photo, but it was near impossible to camouflage. Melanie had chosen specific shots in which Bella had more often resembled her father than she did her mother. Mel knew that Bea saw it and she wasn’t willing to let her go. Not on this one, not this time.

  “I know you can see it, Bea. I know you look at those photos and wonder how in the world my daughter, my own flesh and blood, looks so much like your husband. How in the world could Isabella have managed to look so much like Dermott when I’m clearly not related to him? It’s not as if he was my father.”

  Bea finished the last of her lemonade and swallowed hard. Her stomach jumped and lurched, turning over. “Don’t be ridiculous, Melanie.” She delivered the words flatly, with little emotion at all as if she wasn’t willing to give it even a minute’s consideration.

  Mel was ready for her; she had expected as much. She picked up the photo album from where it sat on the small, Formica kitchen table and opened it to a shot
of Isabella when she was just two or three. “Here, Mother, look at Bella’s chin. You can see it plain as day, there’s no denying it. Bella has Dermott’s chin, strong and square and forceful.” She flipped forward a few pages. “She has his ears, too. You can see them here, large, full earlobes that weigh down her whole face. This is one of those rare times she wore her hair pulled back. She hates it pulled back off her face because she can’t stand those damn ears. Dermott’s ears. She got those. She got his spitfire temper, too, though we’ve worked hard to keep that in check.”

  “Wait a minute, Melanie. Help me understand just what it is you are suggesting.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m telling you plain and simple that this child, this twenty-two-year-old beauty of a child who is smart as a whip and quick and funny and interesting as all get-out was the result of your husband’s actions. He raped me, Bea,” Melanie pleaded. “You left me there and he repaid you by hurting me.”

  Bea’s bony arms shook; the loose skin flapping back and forth. Her hands were incapable of grasping anything and she had to lean on the side of the table for support. She desperately wanted a cigarette and she fumbled with the broken zipper on her worn leather purse before she ripped it open and rummaged through the contents, pulling out an empty pack. She was low on cigarettes, tight on money.

  “I’m sorry, Melanie, but I just can’t believe that you would accuse Dermott of something so horrific, something so monstrous. Dermott would never have done something like what you are saying. Never.”

  “I’m not accusing him, Mama; I’m telling you what happened. You didn’t have to be there to know that what I’m telling you is the truth. Look at her, Mother,” Melanie screamed and thrust the album at her mother again. “Look at her. You can see it in every ounce of her. I didn’t think it would be so obvious. You know, at first, when she was so little. I would spend hours at night with Isabella on my lap, just staring into that big, beautiful face, looking for signs. And I swear they weren’t there, not at first, anyway, not visibly. But then they’d appear, just right out of nowhere, haunting me like a bad dream. Imagine what that must be like, Mama, to see something you despise so greatly in someone you love so much.”

  Bea was rummaging through drawers, pulling out pens and index cards and rubber bands. She was desperate for a hit of nicotine; she was an addict searching for a fix. She coughed up a good amount of phlegm, spitting it into the handkerchief she kept shoved in the pocket of her jeans.

  Finally, Melanie could stand no more, her mother wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t talk to her. Mel pulled a pack of Camels from her own purse and slid them across the countertop at Bea. The pack stopped short in front of her and she yanked out a cigarette quickly, cupping her hands around it to light it and sucking in deeply on the hit, the poison settling in her lungs and calming her immediately.

  “Listen,” Melanie started again, more calmly this time. “I didn’t come here for anything other than to make sure you knew who you’ve been dealing with all these years. Isabella’s a wonderful young woman, much better than I ever professed to be at her age. She’s poised and bright and has a wonderful future ahead of her. I couldn’t be more proud of her. And she’s mine, Bea. Make no mistake about this; she’s mine. I chose to bring her into this world, despite the violent, horrific way she came to be. I’ve done my best by her, and she’s got a great start.

  “So, like I said, I’m not here for anything other than to make sure you understood just who Dermott was, just what he was capable of. You can cry over him and bury him in the ground and pray for his soul, but before you do all of that, before you send him on his way, I thought it was important for you to realize just who he really was, just what he had really done. I don’t think you had any idea of whom you were leaving me with, what he was really like. But now you know, okay? Now you know the nightmare that I had to live through all those years ago.”

  Bea smoked the last of her cigarette until it was nothing more than a nub and wanted another one immediately. She refrained from taking a second from Melanie’s pack. Instead she popped two pieces of Trident into her mouth, letting the peppermint flavor seep into her teeth and the back of her throat. Instantly she coughed wildly until her cheeks and neck burned bright, blotchy red spots. Melanie waited on her, a hand on her hip, the other hand tapping her nails on the countertop.

  “Look, Melanie, I’ve known who Dermott was all along. I’ve been well aware of what he was capable of. I’m not sure what you’re out to prove here, but I can tell you that he was not a man who would have raped someone, never mind the child that he was supporting, the child he considered to be his own. I may not know everything about that man, but that I can tell you unequivocally. Dermott Paulson certainly did not make a habit of impregnating teenage girls.”

  “Are you telling me that you don’t believe me?” Melanie seethed between clenched teeth.

  Bea shook hard, her entire body convulsing and trembling. She wasn’t sure what to make of her daughter, the brazen accusations that she had confessed like loaded weapons. She shook her head hard at Melanie, the deep crease of a frown worn into her jaw muscles. She’d have liked very much to have covered her ears and blocked everything out around her, but she knew that would only infuriate her daughter further. Instead she sat and leaned back in the worn, threadbare recliner that Dermott had taken to sitting in for hours on end the last few months of his life. It smelled of his body odor, his stench, sweet and pungent the way Bea had remembered him when he moved in with her. She had been so glad to have him back; she’d known he’d come on his own one day, and he had, showing up on the cement-block stoop that backed to the side door of her trailer. She knew right away that he was sick, that the years of alcohol and nicotine had finally permeated their way through his bloodstream and his soul, polluting both. She knew that he came back to her because he had nowhere else to go, no one else to take care of him. And yet she hadn’t cared, not one bit. He was back, and he was reliant on her, to make what was left of his miserable life just a bit more bearable.

  They’d long since buried the past; they never even discussed it after Dermott moved in. Dermott certainly wasn’t going to reclaim it, and Bea had no desire to hold him accountable any longer for what he had done to her, the rage that had overcome her when she’d found out so long ago that he had been sleeping with Mirabelle Anderson, that he had moved out so that they could be together.

  And now here was Melanie. Long, lost Mel. Waking up what had long been put to bed. Showing up on her doorstep as Bea had asked her to do, but with news that Bea was in no way prepared to digest.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, pushing the photo album across the table in denial. “No. No, it can’t be. It just can’t be.”

  22

  Bella had promised her mother that she would stay at the house with Katie while she was visiting Bea. It was the compromise that they’d finally worked out after Isabella had turned Melanie down for the hundredth time on her offer to fly to Tennessee and meet her grandmother. Bella had no desire to meet the woman who had started the firestorm that had erupted into her life, and quite frankly she didn’t understand what it was that was dragging her mother there, either. But Bella knew better than to push.

  Bella opened the door to her mother’s flat, two grande extrahot lattes in hand for Katie and her. Katie’s bags were packed and stacked just inside the front door.

  “Katie?” Isabella called out to her, tossing her keys onto the front table.

  Katie popped out of the bathroom, toothbrush in her mouth and foaming at the edges. “Hang on,” she gurgled, and ducked back inside to spit. She emerged a minute later, wiping at the corners of her mouth with a hand towel. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Bella answered her and handed her the hot coffee gingerly so that she wouldn’t burn her hand. “What’s all this?” she asked, motioning toward the pile.

  “Goin’ home. My dad’s coming to pick me up in about an hour,” she answered without any signs of bitterne
ss or distress.

  “Your dad? Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s time. I’ve been here long enough.”

  “My mom would tell you to stay. You know that, don’t you? You don’t have to leave just because she’s gone to see Bea. You can stay here as long as you like.”

  “I know,” Katie answered, nodding her head. She believed her, too. Melanie had told her as much a few nights before while she sat sorting through old pictures of Isabella to take with her. Katie had approached her quietly, unsure still of what she wanted to do. Mel had patted the floor next to her, encouraging her to sit with her.

  “I’m thinking of going home, Mel,” Katie had said to her, quick breaths pushing the words out for her.

  “Do you think you’re ready? I mean, you’ve stayed on your program and been amazingly dedicated to your own health, and I’m really, really proud of you. But do you think you’re ready? You know, to deal with everything at home? Your mom? And your dad, too?”

  Katie thought on it a minute. She had done some serious soul-searching on the matter and been back and forth over the scenarios. She wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to deal with any of it, but she also knew that she wouldn’t know if she could do it until she tried. “It won’t be easy; I know that. But it’s time, you know. It’s time for me to go and face everything that I left, everything that I left in such shambles. Until I can do that, until I can tolerate a day without a drink in a place that makes me want to have one, then I won’t really know if I can do it or not.”

  Melanie nodded her head. “That makes a lot of sense, Katie.”

  They sat for a few minutes together, shuffling through the stack of photos. The shots were, for the most part, pictures of a time before Katie was born. Isabella was just a baby, then a toddler and a full-fledged little girl. The photos were worn at the edges, and had been handled once too often.