by Alison Ryan
22
On the drive home we put the windows down and listened to Tracy Chapman. Her powerful alto voice and the sincerity of her somber lyrics lulled me into a brief sleep. A muggy, June breeze hit my face. I could hear McKenna and Rhiannon have a quiet conversation up front but I didn’t have the energy to strain to listen. I was suddenly very tired.
When we pulled up to the house I could see my Grandma and Mom were back. Aunt Shayla’s van slumped in the driveway next to Grandma’s truck.
“Thanks, guys.” I leaned forward and squeezed them, still groggy from the drive, “Want to hang out tomorrow?”
“Screw tomorrow. Come over tonight after dinner and sleep over. Bode said he would drop off a couple of bottles of Boone’s Farm later tonight. Strawberry Hill!” McKenna chirped.
I laughed, “Sounds good to me.”
I walked up the porch and turned back to look at Rhiannon and McKenna as they walked down the path towards the Holts’ house. Last month I didn’t know them at all. Now they were my best friends. Within a week they had seen me through so many different emotions. They knew me in a way my own mother couldn’t, in the way only your friends know you. Their definition of me wasn’t heavy with the past. Who we are to our family is something that never changes, for the most part. But with these girls, I had the chance to be whoever I wanted to be.
I could hear the clinking and clanking of plates and silverware being set. Aunt Shayla lay in the Barcalounger watching Wheel of Fortune. She waved to me as I came in.
“Hey, girl.” She said, still watching Pat Sajak.
“Hey, Aunt Shayla. Been here long?” I said, sitting down on the sofa.
“Not too long. Your momma is actually making dinner tonight. Seems like maybe she’s turning over a new leaf.”
I nodded, “Maybe so.”
“Hopefully it lasts more than a couple days,” Aunt Shayla said. “Do anything fun today?”
I shrugged, not answering.
Grandma slowly ambled into the room. I scooted over so she could join me on the couch.
“Hey, angel,” Grandma said. As she sat down I could tell she was winded.
“Hey, you.” I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “You doing okay?”
“I am now. I was wondering when you’d be home. Have fun with Ryan?” she asked.
“Yep.” I grinned at her, “I had a milkshake at Juniper Jill’s.”
“Oh, now that’s some good stuff. You’re really getting acclimated to Rutledgeville life.”
We sat quietly and watched Vanna White turn tiles while my mother moved around in the kitchen.
“What’s for dinner anyway?” I asked as I leaned into Grandma’s bony shoulder.
“Chicken parm.” Grandma ran her hands through my hair, “She says it’s your favorite.”
“When we go out to eat, yes. I’ve never in my life eaten it at home though. This should be interesting.”
To my mother’s credit, it wasn’t terrible. All four of us sat in the dining room eating off of plates that had been sitting in Grandma’s china cabinet for probably a decade.
“I just thought it would be nice to actually use it.” Grandma said, “It’s silly that people spend so much money on something with a functional purpose that they just leave in a dusty cabinet.”
As we ate, my thoughts were elsewhere. Who was Bennett?
“So where’ve you been all day?” Mom asked, handing me a plate with crescent rolls on it.
I grabbed two and said, “I went with Ryan to help him with a yard. Mrs. Kent says hello by the way.”
Grandma nodded as she chewed, “Oh, yes! I love Helen. So sweet of you to help Ryan with her yard. It gets to be messy pretty fast.”
“Yep,” I said. “Then he took me to Juniper’s. I had an unfortunate run-in with a girl named Courtney Showalter.”
“Oh the Showalters. Her daddy is the football coach,” Aunt Shayla said, putting a heaping helping of chicken and pasta on her plate. “He has five kids. I think Courtney’s second to last. She’s a pistol.”
We kept eating. I wanted to wait for everyone to be close to finished before I told them about the rest of my afternoon.
As Mom started putting our plates in the sink to be washed, I took my moment.
“I also went to the cemetery.” I said. Grandma dropped her fork on her plate.
“You did?” Her voice was shaky, “Why didn’t you go with me?”
“You told me not to. And I saw that you guys had left the flowers I wanted to give Granddaddy so I had Rhiannon and McKenna take me.”
My mother was at the sink, leaning against the counter, her arms locked, elbow deep in dishwater and soap. I could see her left foot tapping nervously.
“It took a little bit to find him.” I continued, “But Rhiannon did and I paid my respects.”
Grandma nodded, “That’s very good. I’m sure he would love to know you were there. Next time I’ll go with you.”
“But there was something else,” I said. Aunt Shayla wasn’t eating anymore.
“McKenna left her purse so when I went back to grab it I noticed there was a small flat stone next to Granddaddy’s. Someone named Bennett who died about ten months before I was born.” The stillness in the room was unbelievable. I don’t think I had ever had such a captive audience.
“Anyway,” I said. “I noticed he had my same birthday, my same last name. But I have never heard his name uttered in this house. Never once. But this can’t be just a weird coincidence, right? So I thought I would ask you. Who is he?”
As soon as I stopped talking, a bellowing sob came from my mother. It chilled me to my core. It was the kind of painful cry I had heard the other night when my Aunt Shayla had begged me to talk to her.
“Mom?” I said. Grandma was standing up slowly, moving towards my mother who was having a complete nervous breakdown, her elbows covered in suds.
“Naomi,” Grandma’s voice shook. “It’s time, honey. It’s time to tell her.”
“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Her voice was trembling, her crying so hysterical I could barely make out what she was saying. I immediately wished I hadn’t said anything, that I had kept this secret to myself.
But there was no taking it back.
“Let’s take her to the living room.” Aunt Shayla was up and walked over to Mom. My mother, who had never given Aunt Shayla as much as a hug in front of me, collapsed into her large arms. She cried and shook and wouldn’t even look at me. I had seen my mother have her share of crying bouts, normally induced by alcohol, but this was completely different. It scared me.
“What the hell is happening?” I said. Grandma motioned for me to follow them.
“We’ll tell you everything,” Grandma assured me. “We have to get your mother calmed down. This is not an easy conversation.”
I was sick with anxiety as I settled myself on the sofa. Aunt Shayla put my mother in the recliner and Grandma sat down in the Barcalounger. One of them hit the remote to turn the television off. It had been playing Jeopardy.
My mother’s tears still fell but her sobs had quieted down after a few moments. She looked at Grandma and begged her, “Please. I can’t say it out loud. Tell her. Please, Momma.”
For the first time in my life I didn’t see my mother as my mom or Grandma as my grandma. I was reminded that before me they had only belonged to one another. That my Grandma would always be my mother’s Momma and that right now she needed Grandma to be stronger than she had the courage to be.
“Addie.” Grandma started, “Bennett was my son.”
My head throbbed. Her son?
“You never told me you had another child,” I said.
“No. I didn’t. There are things that happen in life that are too hard to speak of. But it wasn’t right that I didn’t talk about him because he’s as much a part of my heart as you are. Bennett was my youngest son. He was eleven years old when he died in a car accident.” Grandma paused for a moment, glancing at Mom who was shaking
in her chair.
“Bennett was in a car with someone who had been drinking the night before. The driver was in a hurry to drop Bennett off at his baseball game and was very tired from being up late. It was an accident and the driver was fine but Bennett didn’t make it.” Grandma paused again, “The reason your mother is upset is because she was the driver.”
As soon as Grandma said it my mother was sobbing again, her cries shaking the entire house. I was chilled to the bone by this realization yet at the same time it was like a puzzle piece that had been missing my entire life. It was an absolutely tragic thing to learn but at the same time it also brought answers to so many questions I had held in for so long.
“When you were born, your mother didn’t want you to know what she had done. It ate her up inside to know she had lived while Bennett had died. Her survivor’s guilt has accomplished nothing other than making herself pay for an imaginary debt she thinks I hold against her.” Grandma spoke to my mother now, “But she forgets she is also my child. And though there isn’t a single hour I don’t think of Bennett, there’s also not a single hour I don’t thank God that I still have my daughter. And that all I want, before I leave this world, is for her to finally forgive herself because God and I forgave her a very long time ago.”
I was crying now thinking about how difficult all of this must have been for every single person in this room. But how upset I was that it had been hidden from me. Just like Grandma’s sickness had been hidden. Just like the identity of my father continued to be hidden. I was sick of the lies and the secrets. I was too old to keep the repression going. Suddenly I was sick to my stomach.
“I need to go.” I said, “I need somewhere to think. I need to get out of here.”
My mother wailed across the room, “I knew it. She’ll never look at me the same again. I wish I was dead. I’m tired of failing everyone. Now she’ll see me how both of you see me. She was the last one who didn’t know.”
This was too much. My hands shook.
“Grandma, please. I can’t do this. I need a place to breathe.”
She nodded and I bolted out the front door. I had no idea where I was going. I just knew I needed to be alone.
The Story Continues…
This is the beginning of a long journey for Addison McCurtis and her family. In my next book, we’ll see the ramifications of the McCurtis secret, the return of Rachel Lawson, and learn even more about McKenna, Rhiannon, and the rest of the residents of The Rut.
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Acknowledgments
First off, this book wouldn’t exist without Mechanicsville, Virginia. It’s my own Rut, a place I was always so ready to leave but one which I can look back now and be profoundly grateful for having grown up in. The friends I made there are still some of my best friends today. You’ve seen me at my best and at my most embarrassing. And yet you still love me anyway. We might not talk as much as we used to, but my love for all of you has never waned. So this is for Jamie Baughan, Sarah German, Becky Peyton, Marianne MacDougall, Jessica Weiss, Bryan Marshall, Whitney Beck, Sarah Butler and literally a hundred other people from my hometown. Thanks for the long car rides to nowhere, all the hours of listening to Q94 while discussing our futures, and just always showing up for me. And also, I know most of you have different last names now, but these are the names you will always be in my heart.
