by Kelly Rimmer
“But who will look after us?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t even know how to make us eggs.”
“I know.”
“Grandmother isn’t going to stay, is she?”
“No,” I said, swallowing. “Grandmother won’t stay.”
“Will you?”
I shook my head, and my tears at last spilled over.
“Timmy, I can’t stay, either. This isn’t my life.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Tim said, but his eyes had filled with tears. “I just want my Mommy.”
Great, rolling sobs were now bursting from within me, and when Tim started sobbing, too, I could only hold him tight in my arms. The other children came to see what the fuss was about, and I had to have the same conversation with the little ones, who cried as soon as they saw us crying, and soon the five of us were all sitting on the back steps, sobbing as though the world had ended.
* * *
It felt so strange that after all those weeks of coming to the house every night, Mother and Father retreated immediately. Father came from the bank, but he set about packing up their belongings right away, and then he helped Mother up from the stretcher.
“Where are you going?” I asked desperately.
“Home,” he said, jaw set and shoulders locked stiffly. “We need to go home.”
“But...now?”
“Yes, Maryanne. Now.”
Patrick arrived home just as Father was leading my near-comatose mother from the house. His eyes were dry, his expression blank and I could see he was in some kind of shock. He shook Father’s hand, and then pushed past me into the house without a word.
“Father, I don’t know what to say to him,” I choked. “Please don’t leave me here alone with them.”
Father closed his eyes briefly, then he helped Mother to stand by the car before he turned to me.
“We need to go home to grieve and to think this through. I’ve tolerated him for these weeks because I had to, but we all know where the blame really lies.”
My eyes widened, and my nervous, guilty heart skipped a beat.
“Where?”
“With him, Maryanne,” Father spat, pointing at the house. “She probably ran away. He never treated her right, and now she’s dead, and...” His face was red, his hands in fists that trembled violently with the force of holding back punches he desperately wanted to throw. “Jesus Christ. In the lake, Maryanne. For a month. He should have taken better care of his wife.”
I started to cry again and I wrapped my arms around my waist.
“Father, please believe me. This isn’t Patrick’s fault.”
Father grunted, then he opened the car door and took Mother’s arm, lowering her gently into her seat.
“How many of those damned pills has she taken this time?” he muttered.
“I didn’t see how many, but I’m guessing it was a lot,” I whispered thickly.
Mother gazed up at me, her expression completely blank.
“You’ll need to help him, Maryanne,” she said.
Father stepped out of the way, and I bent to kiss Mother’s cheek, then croaked, “I will, Mother. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I closed the door behind her, and Father cleared his throat once...twice...a third time. He was blinking rapidly now, still shaking with grief and an impotent rage, still glaring at the house behind us.
“That bastard barely looked after her and the kids when she was alive,” he said. “How is he ever going to cope now?”
“I have no idea,” I admitted weakly. “I just have no idea.”
* * *
As I stepped back into the house, Patrick passed me on his way back along the hall. He was still dry-eyed, but he was carrying a bottle of whiskey now. He went straight into his bedroom and closed the door behind him without a word.
I found Tim behind the sofa in the living room. He was crying, rocking back and forth, rubbing his upper arms as if he was cold. The lovely new outfit my mother had surprised him with that day seemed ridiculous now, and I wanted to haul him out of there to at least hug him, but when I tried to coax him out, he shook his head and whispered at me, “I don’t want to upset the children. They cried before when they saw me cry. I’ll come out when I can be brave.”
He was a little shy of four years old. I didn’t want to leave him alone there, so I sat on the sofa in front of him and I tried to take his advice. I have to be brave. I can’t upset the children, either. So I forced myself into a numb state of shock—promising myself I could weep later, in private once everyone was asleep.
The twins and Beth were tearing around the house and the yard again, apparently having already forgotten the awful news I’d delivered earlier. They asked me for snacks and I gave them some of Mrs. Hills’s lemon slice, and after a while, Ruth came back inside.
“Mommy in heaven now,” she parroted thoughtfully.
“Yes, sweetie.”
“I want to go to heaven, too.”
“You can’t, Ruth,” I croaked.
“Mommy will come back soon,” Ruth assured me, patting my arm gently, and then she tore off again, no doubt to squabble with her twin about one thing or another. I had similarly awful conversations with Beth and then Jeremy as the hours passed, but Tim remained stubbornly behind the couch, and Patrick was still in his bedroom.
And I sat there on the sofa in the center of my sister’s rundown house, surrounded by my mother’s extravagant splurges, and wondered how on earth we were all going to cope now that Grace was really gone.
* * *
Eventually, I convinced the children to eat and then I bathed them and put them to bed. Only once the house was silent did Patrick emerge from the bedroom. His eyes had taken on the kind of intense bloodshot hue that only comes from hours of weeping.
I was washing up the dishes from the childrens’ dinner, but I left the sink to serve him a plate of ground beef and vegetables. He was good and drunk, and as he sat there, he swayed a little.
“I’m sorry I was so awful to you that first day,” he said suddenly.
You shouldn’t be.
“You were under a lot of pressure,” I replied, my voice weak with guilt I hoped he wouldn’t hear.
“I couldn’t have survived the past four weeks without you. And it can’t have been your fault. Not really.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, his breathing suddenly shaky again. “She was a woman on her own in broad daylight, just waiting to meet her sister after shopping, at least as far as the world knew. You weren’t even in a bad area of the city. What has the world come to that a woman can’t even wander the city alone in broad daylight?”
“None of this is fair.”
I meant those words to the very depths of my soul. In a fair world Grace would never have been forced to resort to such measures.
“I shouldn’t have blamed you, Maryanne,” Patrick whispered, and his face crumpled. “I still don’t understand how you could kill your own baby like that, but you’ve been nothing but good to me and my kids. I should have done a lot of things differently in my life, but I can’t change any of that now. Just...please believe me. I am sorry for the things I said to you.”
I started to cry because as much as I’d never liked Patrick, his distress was so near to me and so raw. In that moment I wasn’t sure I’d actually survive the guilt of my role in my sister’s death. I sank down into the chair beside Patrick and patted him on the back, just as little Beth had done for me.
“You don’t have to worry about that now, Patrick,” I choked between whole-body sobs. “Please.”
“But don’t you see?” he croaked back. “We always think there’s time to do better. I was always going to man up one day. I really was, I promise you. I was going to stop drinking and pay the bills and teach the kids how to
use tools and to buy Grace nice things and I was going to love her the way she deserved to be loved. But I ran out of time and I let her carry this family all on her own and I told her she h-had to harden up and I...” He was a mess—his face was beetroot red, his expression twisted with grief and shame. He was leaking pure grief—tears and snot and even spittle as he spoke with such self-directed fury at all of the ways he’d let her down. And all I could do was to watch him suffer, because there was nothing at all I could say to make any of this better.
“I never even got to say sorry.” His voice rose as if he was bewildered by life, and the way that it promises us happiness and delivers only heartache. “There is no fucking time, Maryanne. There’s only now, and Grace isn’t here now, and I won’t ever get to say sorry to her. I can only say sorry to you.” He was bawling like a baby, and fumbling for my hand. I let him take it, and he squeezed my fingers hard, then rested our hands against the cracked vinyl of their dining room table. “Please let me say sorry to you instead.”
“You have to be brave, Patrick,” I choked, thinking of Tim’s sofa fortress, and how even the child had known to protect the littler ones. “The children are going to need you to be brave. You’re going to have to put all of that behind you in the past and build a new future for them on your own. It’s too late to say sorry to Grace, but you can do better for her kids.”
And Patrick let go of my hand, pushed his dinner away and slumped onto the table to weep into his arms.
* * *
I decided I would leave a few days after the funeral—I couldn’t wait to get back to California. I was going to positively inhale the freedom of my old life, and finally take some time to grieve. I was so busy with Patrick and the children that I hadn’t found time to really accept that Grace was gone, let alone process my role in her death. I kept promising myself that as soon as I was on that train, I’d let the floodgates open.
But first, I had to find the letters. I told Patrick I was reorganizing the house to make it tidier, and I pulled things out of cupboards and closets and I searched through every single nook and cranny I could find.
I was searching through the children’s clothes one afternoon when Father came around to talk to Patrick, and at first, I assumed they were discussing funeral arrangements. But then Father left the house in a huff, slamming the door behind him, and Patrick stormed back into his bedroom and I realized they’d actually been quarreling. I tried to ask Patrick about the incident, but he was in such a state, I didn’t have the heart to force the matter. He’d run out of whiskey and there was no money for more, but after that day, he stayed in bed with the drapes drawn and for the most part, kept the door closed.
Ewan had given him a week of bereavement leave, unusually generous on account of his guilt at having dragged Patrick back to work just before Grace’s body was found. When several more days passed with Patrick still essentially catatonic, I decided to leave him in peace. This gave me more time to search, and besides, soon enough he’d have to go back to work, so the least I could do was to let him have these short days to grieve before we laid Gracie to rest.
I kept things running in the household—tending to the children, doing the housework and such. I even decided I’d try to arrange care for them for after I went home. I saw Mrs. Hills out fetching the eggs from the hens in her backyard, and so I called her over to the fence.
“How are you today, Mrs. Hills?” I said as cheerfully as I could.
“Maryanne, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. After the funeral, this has to stop.”
“What has to stop?”
“It’s not right at all, love,” she said, pursing her lips. “I know this has been a trying time, but you can’t go on this way.”
“I know,” I said, still a little confused. I knew I wasn’t the best stand-in mother in the world, but I really had been doing my best under extremely trying circumstances. “But...have I been doing something wrong?”
“I don’t know about where you’re from, but where I’m from, a man and a woman don’t live alone under one roof unless they’re married.”
“Mrs. Hills,” I gasped, then I scowled. “Are you really suggesting that anything untoward would happen between me and my recently deceased sister’s husband? I suggest you think very carefully about what you’re implying here, please.”
“I’m just saying that if you’re planning on sticking around, you should look for alternative accommodation,” she said, her expression softening a little. “People talk, Maryanne. It was different when your parents were here, but they’re gone now. I know you’re focused on getting through the funeral, but as soon as it’s over, it’s time you made this right.”
“I’ll be going back to California after the funeral, for your information,” I snapped, but then I remembered that I had come to ask for her help, so I pulled all of the animosity out of my tone and said very gently, “Actually, I was very much hoping we could count on you to help Patrick with the children once I’m gone.”
“Are you crazy, young lady?” Mrs. Hills gasped. “Those children are hellions.”
“Oh, they aren’t that bad,” I muttered, glancing back over the fence, just in time to see Jeremy push Ruth over so he could steal the cupcake she’d been eating. When I glanced back to Mrs. Hills, she raised her eyebrows at me. “The thing is, there’s just not many people we can ask. Couldn’t you take them at least a few days a week?”
“Your parents will have to step up,” Mrs. Hills informed me haughtily. “That mother of yours will have to do it.”
I piled all of the children into Father’s car that afternoon and drove them to my parents’ house. I couldn’t help notice the way that the houses grew larger and the streets grew wider, until we were in a patch of paradise where every house had at least two stories and a late-model car in the drive.
The children hadn’t been to Mother and Father’s place since they were babies, and as we pulled into the yard, they stared wide-eyed at the expansive gardens and the huge house. When I parked and helped them all out, Ruth jumped up and down with glee.
“I want to see the princess!” she said.
“What princess?”
“She thinks it’s a palace,” Tim muttered.
“No, darling. This is Grandmother and Grandfather’s home,” I said, and I watched as all four faces fell in disappointment. “Oh, come on, children. They aren’t that bad.”
But as I sat with Mother in the living room to talk about the future, she started off the conversation by shrieking at the kids.
“Don’t touch anything, do you hear me? We have nice things in this house. It’s not like your place. You keep your filthy little hands to yourselves. Is that understood?”
“Mother,” I whispered, shooting her a look. “They’re unsettled because of...you know. And besides, you can hardly blame them if they don’t know how to behave here.”
Mother raised her chin stubbornly.
“We’ll soon fix that, Maryanne. Don’t you worry.”
“I actually wanted to talk to you about what will happen after the funeral, when Patrick goes back to work. He’s going to need your help.”
“Father and I have spoken about this, and we have decided that the best thing for everyone is for the children to move in here,” Mother said. I nearly dropped my teacup. It clattered against the fine china saucer and Mother’s gaze narrowed on me. While her attention was off the children, Jeremy picked up a vase.
“Jeremy!” I gasped, reaching out to snatch it off him. “Please, Jeremy. Please just sit there on the rug and watch the television and I’ll give you some candy when we go home, okay?”
He smirked, then dropped heavily onto his bottom, elbowing Beth on the way down. Beth immediately burst into tears and climbed up onto my lap. I gave up on the cup of tea, setting it carefully onto a coffee table so I could focus on my mother’s shocking announcement.
“You’re really going to let Patrick move into your house?”
“Oh, heavens no,” Mother said, nostrils flaring. “The children will live here. He can visit them on Sundays.”
“But...” It took me a long moment to digest what she was saying. “But... Mother...”
“Darling,” Mother said, sighing heavily. “We had our concerns all along, didn’t we? Even with Grace there to run the house he barely managed to keep that family afloat, and now it’s just too much for him. Those children need more than Patrick can give them.”
“Yes.” I couldn’t argue with that at all. “They absolutely do need more than he can give them. But he needs those children, and those children need him—now more than ever. If you really want to help, then maybe offer to babysit them for him—”
“I will babysit them,” Mother said stiffly. “They’ll be living here soon enough. I’ll be babysitting plenty.”
“Have you and Father even talked to him about this?”
“Father told him a few days ago.”
It all made sense then. No wonder Patrick couldn’t get out of bed. He’d just lost his wife, and it seemed that he was about to lose his children, too. My heart sank.
“This is a very bad idea, Mother.”
“Well, if you can think of an alternative, I’d like to hear it.”
“Help him find his feet,” I pleaded with her. “Grace always believed there was a good man in there somewhere, under all the mistakes he’s made.”
“And do you think that?” Mother asked me pointedly. “Has he stepped up over these past weeks to show you what a great father he would be?”
I hesitated, then sighed.
“He’s very sorry for letting her down. I do think we need to give him a chance—just a little support until he figures out how to manage on his own.”
“It’s too late for—”
“You did this with her, too,” I interrupted. My temper was starting to simmer, and I tried to calm myself, but I had so much unprocessed pain just waiting to erupt. “You are so judgmental. The world is so simple to you, looking down on everyone from up here on your ivory tower. You were hardly perfect parents yourselves!”
