by Harper Bliss
“Every family’s different, but none of them are free of burden.”
“That may very well be true, but some will always be more toxic than others.” My fingers stroke her neck. “Over the years, I’ve gotten somewhat of an eye for it. It only takes me a few practicums to figure out which of my students might have an overbearing mother or an absent father. And every so often, I see myself. A shy, retiring first-year biology student trying to adjust to life on campus. As much as college set me free, it was hardly an easy time for me either. To be thrown into this new world with zero confidence. Actually, no, I’m putting it wrong. To meet all these new people and discover that most of them had no problem displaying their personality and attracting other people just by being themselves. My freshman year was hell.”
A rush of air floats over my skin as Kay expels a sigh.
“What?” I push myself up a bit more.
“It could just have been your personality. You’re shy. So are a billion other people on this planet.”
I don’t immediately reply. I try to picture Kay in college. What would she have been like in a place like that? I try to fit her into the categories of people I’ve made up in my mind. The ones I came up with in my early twenties, when I had nothing better to do than study my fellow students and come up with the theory that some personality traits seemed to be universal and always seemed to fit a certain type of person.
“I think, socially, you would have done well in college.”
“Socially?” Abruptly, Kay’s posture goes rigid. “As opposed to what? Intellectually?”
“What? No, I don’t mean it like that, Kay. I’m not referring to that at all.”
“Do you think I didn’t get into college because of my intellectual capacities?”
“God no, absolutely not.”
“Well then, you should work on the disparaging tone you use sometimes.” Kay glowers at me. “Are you even interested in the real reason why I didn’t go to college? Or are you too busy navel gazing and complaining about your privileged, but oh-so difficult life?”
“What the—” I barely recognize the kind, patient person I fell so hard for. Instinctively, I pull the sheet up to cover my naked flesh. Kay must have had the same idea, because we tug at the sheet at the same time and there’s not enough of it to cover the sudden distance between us and our bodies. “I think I’d better go.”
“Why?” Kay drops the sheet and gets out of bed. She stands there, illuminated by the midday sun slanting through the window, her skin bare, but holding no appeal to me. “Because running is what the Goodman girls do?”
Anger rises in me, the unstoppable fury I recognize from my youth, a ball of rage crashing through my flesh, obliterating everything. “I confided in you. I told you everything because I never, not for one second, believed you would hold it against me like this. I trusted you.”
“Ella, listen to me.” She sits back on the bed. “I’m not throwing anything in your face. The only point I’m trying to make is that a difference of opinion does not have to lead to an all-effacing argument.”
“Difference of opinion?” I’m almost foaming at the mouth with rage. It’s difficult to pull a sentence from the storm that brews in my racing mind. “I thought you understood.” It’s all I can say.
“Your sister, who didn’t come back for anything else, came back for you. Both your parents are alive and, despite not being able to express it the way you want them to, they love you.” She taps her chest. “I am here for you.”
Trapped inside the red mist in my head, I can’t possibly find a way to understand why Kay seems to have turned on me. “Fuck you,” I scream, before trying to locate the few clothes I was wearing when I came here.
“Don’t run.” Kay’s voice is firm enough to stop me in my tracks for a split second, but her hold on me seems to have disappeared already. A sense of utter betrayal rips through me. “Ella.” She walks from behind the bed and positions herself in front of the bedroom door. “Stay.”
“Why should I stay?”
“Because we’re both only human.” She crosses her arms across her still bare chest. “I may seem like this flawless creature to you, someone with infinite wisdom and patience who always says the right thing, but, just like you—just like your parents—despite doing my best with what I have, I fail sometimes.” A lone tear dangles from her eye. “And today is the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death, so excuse me if I can’t listen as attentively while you go on about how your parents screwed you up.”
“Oh shit.” My clothes drop from my hands. “I’m so sorry.” I walk over to Kay and, without thinking—or asking for permission—throw my arms around her. “I’m so so sorry.”
“You didn’t know,” Kay sniffles into my ear. “I didn’t mean—” Her words stall as she rests her head on my shoulder.
“Let’s sit for a minute.” I try to coax her toward the bed again, but Kay holds me in such a tight grip, I can’t move.
“Will you come to the cemetery with me?” The fragile tone with which she delivers the words cuts right through me.
“Of course.”
Kay eases her grip on me, starts to pull back. “I’m sorry. I’m usually not such a wreck about it.”
“It’s fine.” I let my hands slide down her sides in search of her hands. “No apologies required. Remember?”
She nods, a pained grin on her lips.
I feel strangely privileged to see her this way, with her soul on display.
“Tell me what you need?” I’d do anything to have the light turn back on in her eyes.
“Go be with your family.” A sterner note has crept back into her voice. “That’s what I need, for you to be with them. To try.”
“Okay.” It feels as though some unknown sense of perspective has been unlocked, like the clouds have parted and a sudden, unexpected ray of sunshine is lighting up a spot that hasn’t been illuminated for years. “When do you want to meet?”
“Whenever you’re ready. Just come by the lodge. I’ll be around.”
“I can stay a while longer if you want.”
“No. I’m fine being alone, Ella. I cherish it.”
“Okay,” I say again, but, although my replies may seem automatic, the fire in my heart is back at full throttle. I curl my arms around her waist again and look her in the eyes, before planting the most gentle of kisses on her nose.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A mixture of nerves, relief, and a strange sense of nostalgia wars inside of me as I pull up to my parents’ driveway, Nina in the passenger seat. We were both silent on the way over here, sunk deeply into our own thoughts and predictions of how this afternoon might play out.
As soon as I slam the car door shut, a familiar head pops up in the kitchen’s side window—as though someone in there is perpetually doomed to wait for a sign of another person’s arrival.
“Fuck, Ellie,” Nina says, leaning her elbow on the roof of my rental car for a moment, “I’m bloody nervous. Can you believe it?”
“Come on.” I walk to the hood and extend my arm. Hand in hand—something we’ve never done since Nina turned twelve—we walk toward the back door of our parents’ house. It opens before we have a chance to knock. My mother, her face as pale as the sheets she seems to always have drying on a line in the backyard, steadies herself against the wall while she stands there speechless. Of all the tears I’ve shed myself, the tears that brimmed in Kay’s eyes this morning, and the ones that dangle from my dad’s overly sentimental eyes at the most inopportune times, my mother’s tears in this moment get to me the most. They seem to slice a piece of resistance right out of my heart.
“My girls,” my mother mumbles, almost inaudibly. “Come here.” She opens her arms wide.
As if drawn by a magnetic force, Nina and I inch closer, still holding hands, and fall into Mom’s arms. As twisted as the thought sounds in my head, this moment would never have happened if I hadn’t tried to take my own life. The embrace turns awkw
ard quickly—not everything can be instantly resolved just by showing up—and our arms drop to our sides; the three of us shuffling our weight around, not yet knowing what to say.
“I’d better call your dad.” Mom breaks the silence. “Guess where he is?”
We know this question doesn’t require an answer and Nina and I exchange an eye roll before following Mom inside. As though unburdened of something already, we crash down on kitchen chairs while we hear Mom shout out Nina’s return into the phone in the living room.
“He’ll be here soon.” Mom’s voice has returned to normal. “Coffee?”
“Why don’t I take care of that?” I rise, wondering if everything is still kept in the same spot. “Sit down, Mom.” I sound like the caring, helpful daughter I always failed to be. I never even realized my own mother suffered from the same demons that brought me down—that I was, essentially, repeating her mistakes because, beneath it all, we are so similar.
“I’ve got it.” I’m certain not wanting to sit and being served by me is a display of some sort of deep sentiment, but it doesn’t matter. Both Nina and I are sitting in her kitchen, even I can feel the significance of that singing in my blood. I can tell—so easily—that Mom doesn’t know how to deal with this fact just yet, but her life has suddenly changed dramatically. From having lost us both to being about to serve us coffee. I understand that she needs that moment with her back to us. Possibly to bite back tears—that outburst in front of us in the doorway must surely have been enough for her—or to just take another breath and let it register. Or, perhaps, to revel in that feeling of instant, pure happiness for a while longer, before we all have to start talking.
Within a matter of minutes, the three of us are hunched around the round kitchen table—still the same one we used to eat dinner at more than twenty years ago—steaming mugs of coffee in front of us.
I fully expect Nina to begin the conversation because, out of all three of us, she’s the easiest talker. But my sister is uncharacteristically quiet. She gazes into her mug as if all the answers lay buried in the dark liquid it holds. That’s when I know she’s going to pieces. My news. The flight. Turning up on the doorstep of the house of her youth. Not even Nina’s bravado is strong enough to withstand that storm of emotion.
“Tell me everything.” The earlier brokenness in Mom’s voice has healed already. I used to resent the steeliness in her tone—especially when used to downplay one of my accomplishments in school. Later, I theorized it must have been her way to make Nina feel better about not getting A’s all the time. More than anything, I know it’s how she hides herself—one of the many signs I missed because I was too busy creating my own mask of steel. “When did you get back?”
“This morning.” Nina sits up a bit straighter. “Ellie e-mailed me last week and I, uh, just had to come.”
Mom nods and, for a second, I expect everything to just be like it always was. After all, we’ve all become such experts at beating about the bush. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” There’s still a trace of the familiar victimhood in Mom’s voice—as though the mistakes she made were forced on her—but her tone is softer.
In the days before my suicide attempt, I used to lie awake at night, thinking of all the instances in my life when I had, completely by instinct, reacted to something in the exact same way my mother would, and vowed to take a pill for every single one of them.
Behind me, the door opens with a crash. I can’t see him, but I can feel my dad’s large physical presence in the narrow kitchen. I hear his breath being expelled rapidly from his lungs and, although this can only be imaginary, I hear his bones creak under the weight he carries.
“Where is she?” he booms, although, when I turn around, I can see him staring Nina straight in the face. His eyes are wet already. I quickly glance at my sister, who seems to be getting up in slow motion. I half expect her to give Dad a friendly jab on the arm, crack that smile of hers, but instead, she opens her arms and gives him a hug.
For all the tears that run down Dad’s cheeks, he’s not much of a sniffler. I always got the impression that he hated those outward signs of a sensitivity that never really befit him, that those inadvertent tears were not something he ever learned to hold back despite trying very hard.
Kay’s words flit through my mind. Your family loves you. And I know that they do, but love isn’t everything. I loved Thalia, and look how that turned out. I’m in love with Kay, but, being who I am, I was ready to walk out on her this morning.
After Nina left, in my eyes, my parents’ love for both of us quickly translated into pressure on me. The one daughter that remained. Getting A’s was never an issue, but choosing not to go to Oregon U was. All the hopes they pinned on me, albeit never spoken out loud, only drove me away further. Because I knew I’d never give Mom the chance to be mother of the bride. Or to have a brood of grand-children like her sister has. I knew I would never introduce my dad to a future son-in-law with whom he could talk about football and when to plant green beans in his garden—two subjects he could, ironically, easily have discussed with me, if we’d ever been on those kind of speaking terms.
Once Dad has sat down and Mom has poured him some coffee, the kitchen goes silent. I can’t help but wish that Kay were here. She would know what to say. And I could use a supportive hand on my knee right about now. Because this sort of silence is what I’ve always hated the most. The kind that holds a thousand unspoken words, heavy with quiet reproach, deafening—and paralyzing—because of everything that can’t be said.
It’s okay to say you’re sorry for what you’ve done. Dr. Hakim’s words break through the fog in my brain at the right time for once.
“I’m sorry,” I say, in my classroom voice—loud and confident and fake. “I’m sorry that what I did is the reason why we’re all together here. I’m sorry to have put you through it.” The rehearsed confidence has drained from my voice already. “I’m sorry—”
“It’s okay, Ellie.” Dad, who’s sitting next to me, puts a hand on my arm.
“No, Dad, it’s not.” I remember the moment before the pills knocked me out. The immense relief that came with it—the exact opposite of what I’m feeling now.
“It’s in the past now. The most important thing is that you’re here.” I can tell he’s had a few beers, otherwise, words like that would never leave his lips.
“Why?” Across from me, Nina’s face is covered in tears. “Why did you do it?”
“Give her a break, Nina.” Mom’s voice is harsh again, but Nina doesn’t back down.
“If she can’t tell us, what good is all of this? Or shall we just sweep everything under the rug again?” Nina’s scolding glare roams across all three of us. “Shall we have some cake and pretend this is simply a long-awaited family reunion?” She fixes her gaze on me. “When my sister tries to kill herself, I want to know why.”
“I don’t need a break, Mom. We have to talk about this.” I swallow hard. “It’s why I came back.”
“I just want to make clear that I, for one, don’t require an explanation.” Mom sighs heavily. “I’m fully aware that this family needs to have some difficult conversations, but this is not one of them.” The look of compassion she shoots me is not one I’ve seen before—or, at least, not one I’ve ever chosen to remember.
“It’s okay.” For some reason, I too, feel compelled to break the unspoken no-unnecessary-touching rule of the Goodman family. I take my mom’s hand in mine and squeeze it. “I want to explain.” I suck in a deep breath and focus my gaze on a frame holding a picture of me and Nina when we were six and nine. “The reason why I chose not to live anymore was because I—” I stall because, in hindsight, the very reasons that seemed so clear to me at the time, are now extremely fuzzy around the edges, too undefined to be proclaimed out loud. And because any words I may manage to squeeze from my throat already sound invalid in my head. I feel small again, inadequate, a let-down. How I feel right now, facing my family, always feeling like I’m about
to lose another battle in the war of the never-ending assault of my brain on my soul, is the reason why I did it. But I’m not exactly an expert at translating the carnage in my mind into understandable sentences.
I glare at the three of them and consider how their mistakes have affected my life and, ultimately, my decisions, too. Two pairs of blue eyes and one pair of grey-green ones stare at me, waiting for some sort of deliverance, waiting for me to set them free with my words, and I may equally hate them and love them, and they may be my family, the same blood running through our veins—the same inadequacies testing us every day—but I don’t owe them an explanation. Not for something I can barely explain to myself. Not for something that is beyond words. I acted. I shook the pills from the bottle. I wrote the letter. I cried for help and this is where it got me. This is where I am. Surrounded by my family, the people who made me, and who, I know this now, would walk on hot coals for me. And I wonder, when will it ever be enough? When will I be enough? I look into their misty-eyed faces, and I know this is enough. The four of us in Northville attempting a conversation. It’s more than we’ve had for twenty years, possibly forever.
It’s not perfect, but it’s us. The silence that now grows is different, because I fill it differently. I used to only be able to crowd it with negative assumptions. She’s not saying anything because she’s thinking this or that. Dad is silent because Mom looked at him that way. Nina broke all ties with us because we’re a horrible family.
What have you ever gained from being negative? Dr. Hakim has asked me about a million times. When has it truly helped you?
In this moment, my choice is to fill the silence that surrounds me with positive thoughts. They’re here because they care for me. Nina came back because she loves me. What I did hurt them, but they’re still my family, and I love all three of them no matter what. The bond between us is unconditional.
