by Kelly Rimmer
“I hate you!” Tim shouted, making up for lost time with the childish outbursts, it would seem. He ran out into the backyard, and Jeremy silently stood to follow him, leaving me and Patrick with the girls. Patrick sighed and ran his hands through his hair.
“I have to go to work,” he said helplessly.
“It’s okay,” I said, hugging Beth a little closer. “You go. I’ll try to explain it to them over the day.”
“And...” Patrick hesitated, then asked me reluctantly, “Mary, I hate to ask this, but could you pack for them, too? I just don’t...” His voice wobbled, and he swallowed hard. “I just don’t think I can do it.”
“Of course. I’ll see you tonight.”
* * *
I tried my best to explain to the children that Daddy had done everything he could, but that they needed to live with their grandparents now. I told them a highly fanciful story about four wonderful children who went to live in a castle and had the best adventures ever, but halfway through Tim got up and went to sit behind the sofa.
I knew what that meant, and it nearly killed me to let him sit in there and grieve. On top of losing his mother, Tim really was about to lose his father and his home, and there was nothing I could do to make it better.
Ruth and Jeremy were starting to understand, and they were sullen and sad, holding one another’s hands as they moved around the house. And Beth seemed oblivious, but then when she saw me packing her clothes away, she watched me, an intense look of concentration on her face.
“Mommy?”
“I’m Aunt Maryanne, Beth.”
“Mommy,” she said stubbornly.
“What is it you want, child?” I asked her impatiently.
“Mommy, I stay,” Beth said, climbing up onto the bed and pushing my hands away from the suitcase.
“I’m not...it’s not up to me,” I whispered, and then stupid, hot tears filled my eyes. I blinked hard and kept on with the packing. “I can’t do anything about this. There’s just no other way this can work.”
“She’s upset because no one wants us,” Tim said from the doorway. I glanced back at him and found him staring at his shoes.
“That’s not true, Timmy. Lots of people want you. That’s the trouble. This is just the best way for you all to stay together.”
“No. The best way for us all to stay together is for you to keep looking after us. Where are you even going anyway?” Tim said stubbornly.
I opened my mouth to explain it all to him—that my life was in California, that my career was the most important thing, that the world had to change and I could see that change and most people couldn’t, so I needed to be a part of it. But he was six weeks shy of four years old. Asking most adults to think of the big picture beyond themselves was too much—how could I ask the same thing of a tiny child, and one who’d already seen such depths of pain?
“You’ll still see Daddy every Sunday,” I said unevenly. “And Grandmother and Grandfather have that beautiful house, remember?”
“I hate the castle. Grandfather is mean. And Grandmother is mean, too. Why don’t you want to stay?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I don’t want you to go. And I don’t want to move in with those people.”
“You have to,” I exclaimed, and a tear trickled over onto my cheek. Tim looked up at me, confusion and hurt in his gaze. “There’s just no other way.”
But then I looked from Tim’s miserable gaze to Beth’s huge blue eyes and I saw Grace in those children and I felt it right in my gut—the unmistakable sense of belonging. These children were hers, but my sister was gone and they were scared, and my love and grief for her had somehow grown and evolved until it was now shaped like love and a fierce protectiveness for her children.
It seemed that in the ten short weeks I’d been in their home, I had inadvertently allowed myself to be dragged into this broken little family. I was a part of them now, and they were a part of me.
I couldn’t just walk away and let my parents take these children away from their father. The four of them had been through too much; they had seen too much already that they couldn’t understand. They needed comfort and cuddles and love and endless picture books each night, and sending them into that formal, oppressive atmosphere at my parents’ house would change them in ways that couldn’t be undone.
Somehow, through all that had happened, I’d been swallowed whole by my dead sister’s family, and even if I’d wanted to extract myself, I didn’t have a clue how to start doing so.
Tim slunk away, shoulders downcast. Beth slid off the bed and waddled after him. Ruth and Jeremy were still watching cartoons on the television.
I unpacked the suitcases, then I made a call to Professor Callahan to start the process of blowing apart every little thing I’d worked so hard to achieve back in California.
Beth
1996
“We still haven’t figured out whether to sell the house or rent it,” Jeremy says as we all sit around the dining room table on Sunday night, waiting for the mysterious Maryanne to make an appearance. This afternoon while Ruth and I cooked the meal, everyone else busied themselves packing up the rest of the house, and not surprisingly, the process moved much quicker when a whole team was there to work.
The house is all but empty now, other than some heavy furniture we’ll probably sell. The kitchen area is last to be cleaned out, and I’ll start that tomorrow—this will be our last family meal here. I’m nervous that the tradition will die, especially because it’s often been a strain on Tim and Alicia and Jeremy to travel back here each week.
“The bill from the hospice will come any day now,” Tim murmurs. “But let’s face it—we can’t hold on to the house forever. Let’s just list it now and get this over and done with.”
“And I still think we need to keep the house,” Ruth counters. “This place is too special for us to cut our ties with it all together.”
“Beth?” Jeremy prompts.
“I think that every time you three find yourselves feeling uncomfortable these days, you deflect your internal discomfort by raising the subject of what to do with the house,” I say. “I suspect you do this because you know the subject of the house will cause drama, and the drama will distract you from your own feelings of loss. Unfortunately, once you start talking about it, you all panic at the first sign of drama even though you thought you wanted it, and that’s when you try to handball the topic to me.” Beside me, Hunter and Ellis both quietly chuckle.
My siblings all stare at me for a moment, then Ruth says wistfully, “Remember when Beth wanted to be a pop star?”
“That’s right. She wanted to join The Monkees,” Tim laughs.
“With her singing ability, The Monkees was probably the only band she would have been allowed to join,” Jeremy says wryly. “You know...on account of them not actually singing their own songs. Get it?”
“Do you see what you’re doing now?” I say, laughing in spite of myself. “You’re still nervous, but now you’re deflecting the nervous energy by making fun of me.”
The doorbell rings. Our laughter immediately fades.
Ruth rises, and we all watch in silence as she walks down the hallway to the front door. We hear voices as Ruth and Maryanne greet one another. They stop on their way back through to the dining room so that Ruth can introduce Maryanne to her sons, who are playing Jenga in the family room. And then the footsteps come closer, and the silence at the dining table is broken as Ruth and Maryanne enter the room.
My aunt is short and thin, but even at first glance I see that she has a flair for the dramatic. She’s wearing a black-and-crimson caftan and a startling array of chunky jewelry—enormous bauble earrings, a matching necklace of oversize beads and more bracelets and rings than I’ve ever seen on one human being at one time. Her hair is raven-black and cut in a bob, with pieces on either sid
e of her face that hang just a little longer, dyed the same stunning red as the trim on her caftan. She’s is wearing a full face of makeup over her pale complexion, including winged eyeliner that I couldn’t pull off even if a professional helped me apply it, and red lips several times brighter than the red in her hair.
The whole look is artsy and quirky, but it’s also severe. I can’t even begin to guess how old she is. She’s surely somewhere around Dad’s age, but she doesn’t look it. I don’t know if that’s a side effect of her style, or just that she’s aged particularly well.
She scans the room with her bright blue eyes, and then her gaze lands on me, and I am suddenly overwhelmed by memories of my mother.
I’m lying in the bed, cuddled up beside her, under the heavy duvet and she’s stroking my hair.
I’m curled up on her lap; she’s reading me yet another book.
Burnt eggs for breakfast again. Hugs that smell like cake. Safety and comfort and love.
Intellectually, I know I’m having this reaction because Maryanne has the same pale complexion and dark hair that Grace and I also shared. And this woman—this stranger—is, in effect, a direct link to my mother, and this is the very first time I can remember meeting any of Grace’s relatives. The rapid-fire stream of memories makes sense. Even the bubbling emotions make sense. I just didn’t expect to find her so familiar, and I don’t feel prepared to feel this way. It takes me a minute to collect myself, and just as I do, I think I see a flash of emotion cross Maryanne’s face, too. Whatever it is, it clears in an instant, and then she’s greeting us with a casual, somewhat formal tone.
“Hello, all,” she says, and she lifts a hand to wave at us. My gaze drops to her long fingernails, painted in a glossy red, and the heavy bangles on her wrist that clang as she moves her arm.
Tim stands, hand extended to shake hers.
“Tim Walsh,” he says. Maryanne quirks an eyebrow at his formal introduction, then shakes his hand.
“Lovely to see you again, Timmy,” she says mildly. “Still taking the lead, I see.”
“Uh, okay...”
I think I see something of a flush on Tim’s cheeks above his beard, and he turns back to me and gives me a strained look.
“And you, Jeremy.” Maryanne approaches my other brother, shaking her head incredulously. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?” Jeremy asks cautiously.
“Ruth tells me you’re an earth sciences professor.”
“That’s correct.”
“How surprising,” Maryanne muses thoughtfully. “I’ve kept my eye on the papers over the years, half expecting to hear you’d been arrested for something.”
I suppress a giggle, which Ruth and Tim altogether fail to do. Soon we’re all laughing—except Jeremy, who’s trying very hard to scowl. He drops the act after a moment or two and shrugs.
“Let’s face it. We all know it could have gone either way.”
As everyone laughs, Maryanne turns her attention to me.
“Bethany,” she murmurs when I come close to her. “My goodness.”
For a moment she seems almost overcome. She rests her hands on my upper arms and stares at me, then she pulls me in for a hug. I let her embrace me, but I’m not entirely sure why I get this display of affection, and everyone else got a polite greeting. When I turn back to face the rest of my family, I see the surprise on their faces, too. I shrug, a little self-conscious, then introduce her to Hunter and Noah. Ruth takes over to introduce her to Ellis, and then Tim introduces Alicia.
“And where is...” She looks around as she sits in an empty chair at the dining table, and then says hesitantly, “Ruth, you said this is Patrick’s house...?”
Tim, Jeremy and I all look at Ruth, who winces. In a surprising display of reticence, she doesn’t leap to explain, leaving Tim to fill the gap.
“Dad passed away recently. Just a few weeks ago,” he says carefully. It still hurts to hear those words, and I swallow the lump in my throat as the truth of that statement sinks in all over again. But compared to our muted reactions to what’s still very tender news, Maryanne’s shock is palpable. Her jaw drops and her eyes widen, and she grips the armrests in both hands, her knuckles turning white.
“My God,” she whispers, blinking rapidly. We all sit in a horrible silence for several moments, until Ruth catches my eye and gives me a frantic what do we do next? look. I decide I’ll try to break the awkwardness, but before I can, Maryanne gives a funny cough that I think might actually be a sob. I rise automatically, wondering if I should try to comfort her, but she rises, too, and says, “I’m dreadfully sorry. Could someone please direct me to a bathroom?”
Ellis saves the day, leading her down the hallway and away from the rest of us.
“Ruth!” Jeremy whispers. “You didn’t think you should mention that Dad died?”
“It didn’t seem to be the kind of news you deliver over the phone. Besides, I didn’t expect her to get so upset. I mean—God, as far as we know, they haven’t even seen one another in forty years!” Ruth whispers back, but then she looks at me in a panic. “Help. I don’t know what to do now.”
“Let’s serve dinner,” I say. “Let’s just try to keep things casual. We can’t leap right into an interrogation about her sister’s death after that.”
“Good idea,” Alicia says, rising. “I’ll help.”
I join my sister and Alicia in the kitchen, and we work in near silence as we serve the casseroles Ruth has prepared.
“I’m sorry about that,” Maryanne says, reappearing in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes are dry, but her lips are pursed.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t warn you about Dad,” Ruth says, uncharacteristically hesitant. “He was sick for a long time, but his passing is very new and I wasn’t really...” She clears her throat. “Honestly, I didn’t realize you were at all close, but even so, it seemed better to tell you face-to-face.”
Maryanne looks between us, then asks carefully, “What did he tell you about me?”
Ruth gives me another panicked look. It’s almost a novelty to see my sister intimidated. I’d be enjoying it much more if this wasn’t all so awkward.
“We didn’t even know you existed until recently. But Dad was very unwell toward the end and quite confused—he had a form of dementia as well as serious heart issues. He said your name a few times, but not much of what he said made any sense by that stage. It took us a while to even figure out who you were.”
Maryanne’s gaze turns sharp.
“I see. So why did you look me up?”
“Well, we have a lot of questions...”
“About?”
“Ah...mostly about Grace’s death,” I say carefully.
“What would you hope to achieve by asking me about her?” Maryanne asks. Her chin is high, but there’s an incredible tension in the way she’s holding herself—flared nostrils, overly stiff posture, even a crease between her eyebrows. I get the real sense that nothing about tonight is unfolding as she expected, and she looks more than a little shell-shocked.
“We just want closure,” Ruth admits, and we share a sad look.
“Your mother’s death was an awful business, and it’s not something I like to think about even now,” Maryanne says flatly. Her body language is increasingly defensive, and I’m painfully aware that we’re losing her. We need to turn this around if we’re going to have a real conversation tonight.
“We have a lot of questions about her, and Dad is gone now. We don’t really have any one else to ask,” I say gently.
“And why didn’t you ask Patrick about these things while he was alive?”
“We didn’t realize there were questions to ask, to be honest,” I say. I’m noticing a pattern—she’s defensive with Ruth, ignoring Alicia altogether, but watching me closely. I have to suspect that maybe, if she did know us once upon a time, I wa
s special to her.
It seems like an awful thing to leverage, but I’m running out of options here, especially when Maryanne says abruptly, “If your father wanted you to have further detail, he’d have given it to you a long time ago.”
“Did your family have some kind of falling out with Dad?” Ruth asks. Maryanne frowns at her, and she shrugs hesitantly. “It just seems so odd that we never even knew you existed, that’s all. He was on his own for so long without any help at all. It never occurred to us that Mom had family, let alone a sister just a short drive away...”
Maryanne visibly stiffens, and I realize she’s heard Ruth’s question as an accusation of neglect.
“Ruth,” I say, scolding her. “Why don’t we all sit down and—”
“It was an exceedingly complicated situation and I have no doubt that every decision your father ever made was what he thought was for the best for the four of you.” She inhales sharply, and then adjusts her caftan. “I really think I should leave. I’m not feeling well.”
“Please stay,” I say, although I’m unsurprised that she wants to go. She looks quietly devastated, and even if we do convince her to stay, I know we’ll need to leave any potential questioning about Grace or Dad or anything else for another time. “I hate to think we’ve upset you, or even made you uncomfortable. We’ll just get to know each other a little. Please.”
Maryanne’s expression softens a little as she stares at me, but then her eyes fill with tears and she waves vaguely toward her head.
“Migraine, sweet girl. I really need to go. I’m sorry.”
It’s clear that Aunt Maryanne is leaving. Ruth fetches her bag as I follow her to the door. Maryanne pauses and stares at me, and then at my sister. Her eyes cloud, and she stops long enough to gently touch my upper arm.
“When you think about your mother, all you really need to know is that she was a beautiful soul. She loved so deeply, and she loved you all more than anything. I see her in the both of you, and it makes me very happy to know that some wonderful part of her has lived on.”
