by T. Greenwood
“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking of how good it felt to get those little crimes out on the table. To confess. “I don’t love you, Frankie, not in the way you need me to. I love Eva. I don’t know how to change that. It’s not going to go away.”
But instead of the quiet absolution of my mother or sister and the odd benediction of my father, Frankie seethed and then got so close to my face I could tell how many hours it had been since he had last shaved. The scent of alcohol on his breath was strong, his teeth gray from the cheap Chianti. “You disgust me.”
Normally our arguments would have ended here, but this time his words were not enough. They were weak weapons. But his hands were strong, and it was his hands that lashed out next, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me so hard my teeth knocked together. He stepped back, seemingly stunned by what he had done, but there were no apologies. No excuses. Instead he just turned on his heel and walked out the back door.
And then he was raging around the backyard smashing all of the girls’ eggs they had so carefully dyed and painted and decorated. Stomping his feet as though he were killing cockroaches. I could hear the fragile shells shattering underneath his wingtips. For nearly a half hour, he flung himself about the backyard, not resting until every last egg was nothing but colored dust beneath his feet.
Shaken to the white-hot center of my body, I locked myself in the bathroom, watching through the window as he waged his own private war. Only when I heard the door slam and then his drunken heavy footsteps on the stairs did I dare come out. He had disappeared upstairs, likely passed out, and I knew it was now or never.
Quietly, I went up to Mouse’s room and hurried her out of her nightgown and into her clothes. I went to Francesca’s room next and found her awake as well and crying. She was sitting in her window seat that overlooked the backyard. She had clearly witnessed his reign of terror over the Easter eggs.
“We’re going back to Gussy’s,” I said, but she only stood motionless, still staring out the window.
“Francesca,” I said again, but she wouldn’t look at me.
My impulse was to slap her. To threaten and frighten her into action. But I didn’t have to, because suddenly she turned to me, her head still hung, and stood up. And silently, she went to her chest of drawers, gathered her clothes and shoes, stuffed a hairbrush and underwear into a bag.
When she finally looked at me, her face was that of a child again. Just a little girl, her cheeks stained with tears. “I’m sorry, Mama,” she said.
I felt my heart plummet, my face grow hot. I was so ashamed. How could I have blamed her for this? For any of this? I shook my head. “No. You have nothing to be sorry for. You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you understand that?”
She shook her head.
And then I went to her and pulled her close to me. “This is not your fault. None of it.”
I took Frankie’s keys from the hook by the doorway, and I hurried the girls into the car. It felt wonderful to leave him stranded for once. For him to be the one rendered immobile, a prisoner in this house.
We drove through the night, arriving at Gussy’s just as the Easter sunrise was glowing pink behind the green mountains. And in that moment I felt completely reborn, risen. As if I had been resurrected. I had never felt so close to God.
Gussy was clearly surprised to see me pull up in Frankie’s car, but she acted as though it were the most normal thing in the world. As though this had been the plan all along.
“Well, look at you girls . . . you look hungry enough to eat a cow. Good thing I just made pancakes.” She winked at me and ushered the girls inside.
I had never been so grateful for my sister’s house in my entire life. Frank was sitting at the kitchen table; their girls, I imagined, were still upstairs asleep. There were two Easter baskets on the table, which Gussy lifted up; she said, “I was wondering why these baskets were on my doorstep this morning! Looks like the Easter Bunny knew you were coming.”
I saw Chessy grimace, and wondered how long the memory of her father crushing those Easter eggs would stay with her. “Thank you, Gussy,” Chessy said, accepting the basket. Inside each basket was a small bottle of perfume and a crème-filled egg. Her daughters’ favorites.
“What about Nancy and Debbie?” Mouse asked, digging her finger into the soft filling of the egg, which she had uncovered from its foil wrapper without anyone noticing.
“I think maybe they’ve gotten a little too old for the Easter bunny,” Gussy said. “Maybe you could save them a couple of jelly beans?”
After devouring three pancakes each, the girls went off to play in the family room. Gussy set them up with a puzzle and Frank disappeared into his study, leaving Gussy and me alone.
“What happened?” she asked.
And, without hesitation (I was finished with secrets, with lies), I told her everything.
Without uttering a single word, Gussy nodded. “Okay. Okay. So what next?”
I knew that after Frankie finally figured out what had happened, he would also figure out where we had gone. And while I was definitely trying to leave him, I also knew there was no sense in trying to elude him. I knew he’d catch the first train to Two Rivers and then thumb a ride to Gussy and Frank’s. My only consolation was that it was Easter, one of Frankie’s holidays from drinking. Perhaps, hungover and sober, he wouldn’t be nearly as rash as he had been last night.
This was, after all, what I’d been planning to do all along: my plans were simply expedited by a few months, but still, exactly what I had hoped to do. I had left Frankie. I had left Frankie. The reality of our midnight departure suddenly became vivid as Gussy’s kitchen filled with light. I knew the important thing now was to keep a steady head, to modify those elements of the arrangements as needed but not to panic. The one major glitch was the money. I had no money but the weekly grocery allowance Frankie had doled out to me, and I’d already spent half of it on an Easter dinner we wouldn’t be eating. I knew I could borrow money from Gussy and Frank, but if this was going to work, I’d need more than that. I couldn’t count on Frankie being reasonable about any of this. I would, eventually, need to find some sort of work. I’d have to get the children enrolled in school. I’d have to find a place for us to live. Suddenly, the enormity of it all was too much. I felt like I had standing underneath the Prudential Building that awful day in Boston, the world growing voluminous and scary around me. And strangely what came to me then was my father’s voice, quoting someone, I don’t remember whom. My father, a man whose work exceeded the number of hours in a day. The secret to happiness is counting your blessings while others are adding up their troubles. What an odd comfort. What strange solace.
“I need to get in touch with Eva,” I said, thinking of my blessings. Counting.
“Of course,” she said.
I stayed at the house while all of the girls went off with Frank and Gussy to services, and I paced. It was Easter Sunday, and Ted would be home with his family. I imagined them all dressed up for church, each of the girls with their baskets. Rose would be so big now, nearly four years old. Eva, her belly swollen with the baby, her feet and hands following suit. There was a chance, just the smallest chance, that she might stay behind.
I looked at the clock. It was ten o’clock exactly. Most Sunday services were at ten. If she was home, if she had stayed behind to make Easter dinner, while Ted took the children to church, she would be home alone. And if not, if Ted was, for some reason, in the apartment, I could just hang up. Or I could say I had a wrong number. It was that simple, right?
My hands trembled as I lifted the phone from the receiver. It seemed heavier than it should be, as though it had been weighted down with sand. I could barely dial her number, though it was ingrained in my memory.
The ring trilled through my entire body, and I found myself holding my breath. She wouldn’t be home. There is no way that Ted would have left her alone without the children on Easter Sunday. This was crazy, I thought. But then I heard the phone
click, and her voice, as soft as skin. As if she knew it was me on the other end of the line. As if she had been expecting me.
“Eva,” I said, feeling a rush both wonderful and terrifying.
“Billie?”
I knew I didn’t have a lot of time. I needed to tell her exactly what to do. “I left Frankie. I’m at Gussy’s now, but we’ll be at the lake. If you can get the children to the train station, I’ll find a way to get you.”
The last four years had been spent trying to find my way to Eva. I thought of those years like an elaborate labyrinth: twisting and turning, running into walls at every turn. And at the center was Eva, my beautiful Eva. I was so close now, just on the other side of the last wall.
“Eva?”
My heart sank, realizing that this was foolish. It was like someone trying to escape from Alcatraz. The walls were made of steel; the locks were rusted shut. The key hung from Ted’s thick waist. It was a ridiculous dream, one about to be shattered with her words.
Her voice interrupted my desperate reverie.
“Thursday,” she said. “I’ll be there Thursday.” And then she hung up.
I felt like I’d been struck by lightning. My entire body buzzed and hummed, my veins and nerves the raw, plucked strings of a guitar strung too tightly. By the time everyone came back from church, I felt like I might just explode with excitement.
“Can you drive us to the lake?” I asked.
“Of course,” Gussy said.
Frank said he’d deal with Frankie if and when he showed up to retrieve us and his car. Frankie respected Frank, and so I hoped there wouldn’t be any trouble. “Thank you,” I said. Frank was a calming force, and if anyone could keep Frankie from going berserk, it was him. I told him to tell Frankie I just needed some time to clear my head. That I’d call him in the evening.
“Have you spoken with Eva?” Gussy asked softly as we drove through the new spring foliage toward the lake.
I looked at her, nodding. “She’ll be here Thursday.”
Halfway to the lake, we stopped at Hudson’s for some supplies. Gussy and Frank didn’t usually open up the camp until Memorial Day; there would be nothing but dusty tins of flour and cans of beans in the cupboards. The water would be off, and the cap still firmly topping the chimney. There would be dead mice in the traps, dead flies on the sills, cobwebs in every corner. The water pump would be off, the hot water heater dormant, every inch of every surface covered with dust. Luckily, I knew that the task of readying the camp was just big enough to occupy me for the next four days. I didn’t know what to do with the girls though. It was too cold to swim; there might even be patches of snow in the yard. Autumn came early at Gormlaith, and spring came late. Summer was just a quick breath between the deep sighs of spring and fall and the interminable breathlessness of winter.
I used the little bit of grocery money I had left to pick up all of the staples we would need as well as fresh produce and milk as I would have any other summer. But it wasn’t summer; it was only March. And it wasn’t vacation; it was my life.
I’ve left my husband, I thought.
As I was bringing my basket of items to the register, I stopped once again in the produce section. There was a bin filled with bright red apples: Baldwin apples, those hardy winter apples that Eva loved. My heart felt swollen in my chest. These apples had somehow survived the harsh winter, plucked and packaged and transported here, without bruising or losing their color. They were survivors, these apples. I filled the rest of my basket with them, marveling at the simple beauty of their endurance.
That afternoon after Gussy left us at the cabin, I washed the dusty mixing bowls and a pie plate, affixed the apple peeler to the counter, and handled each of those apples as though they were polished gems instead of mere fruit.
“What about school?” Chessy asked. All of this was making Chessy nervous. She liked order, needed order, and change of any sort made her uneasy. Change of this sort was terrifying. “We have school tomorrow.”
“I’ll speak to your teachers. I’ll get your work, and you can do it here.”
This was my quick answer for a question that plagued me. It wasn’t even April yet. They still had two and a half months of school left. I could enroll them at the school in Quimby, but it didn’t seem fair to thrust them into a new classroom this far into the school year. Mouse would be fine, but I knew that Chessy would struggle. I just needed for Eva to get here. She would help me sort through everything. She would help me figure it all out.
“Don’t worry,” I said, though I knew she would, as would I. The logistics had changed with this accelerated departure from Hollyville, from our lives. Still, I told myself, people moved all the time. And they were children, the most resilient creatures in the world. Eva and I could teach them at home this spring, and then in the fall start them off fresh at school.
“Eva will be here with the kids soon,” I said, because I wanted to offer her something, and this was the only real thing I had (though it didn’t feel real at all).
“Really?” she asked. And the expression on her face was of someone torn, agonizing. Frankie had convinced her that what was going on between me and Eva was wicked, but she also loved Eva. Her flushed cheeks and wide eyes belonged to a girl divided, between the childhood need to trust and adult understanding. Between relief and shame. It was an expression I would see on her face a zillion times more over the years. But now, in this moment, it made my heart ache. But it also made me more resolved in my decision to leave Frankie.
I nodded. Eva would be here, and she would know exactly what to do. And we would be together. Everything else would just fall into place. It would have to.
Frankie arrived at Gussy and Frank’s on Sunday afternoon as I was sprinkling cinnamon and sugar on those apples. Apparently, he stomped around their kitchen until Frank asked him to leave and then he took the car I’d left parked cockeyed in the driveway, and took off. When I spoke to Gussy she said that while he made a big show, he also seemed to be running out of steam, defeated. He apologized to her, as though she were the one he’d shaken until her teeth rattled and head ached. The one he’d spat at, screamed at, and humiliated. Red faced, he admitted he hadn’t always been the best husband, but insisted that he was a good father, that he didn’t deserve to lose his girls. She also said that before he left, he handed her a check made out to me in the amount of $500. He’d told her it was for the children. That no matter how he felt about me, he loved his girls. And then he’d left, like a dog running off, tail tucked between his legs. Shamed. Ashamed.
My eyes stung. I didn’t want him to put up a fight, to insist that we come home. I hadn’t wanted a battle with him; I’d already been waging one for years. But his easy surrender made me suspicious. I didn’t trust it. Frankie was a fighter, and his tossing in the towel seemed suspect. But I had little choice but to take his gesture, his leaving, the money, at face value. Eva was coming, and whatever resistance Frankie did or didn’t offer was nothing compared with what Ted was likely to do.
“Johnny?” I say into the phone, barely recognizing my own voice.
“Billie,” the man says. His voice is deep like his father’s. Sonorous. Eva once said that Ted’s voice was the only gentle thing about him. “Listen, I’m so sorry to call this late. I know you were planning on driving down tomorrow. But I’m afraid there’s been a bit of an emergency. . . .”
For a moment, I feel flooded with relief, whatever has happened in Johnny’s life becoming secondary to the possibility that I will not have to go through with this. That whatever has transpired in his world will release me from this obligation. It makes me feel selfish. Awful.
“What sort of emergency?” I ask.
“I don’t want to go into it on the phone. I just need you to trust me. Is there any way you can come tonight? I think it’s important that you come tonight.”
“What?” I ask, feeling the blackness and stars descending again. What on earth could have happened that he would need me t
o rush my visit? At what point did my coming even become so critical?
“Please, Billie,” he says, that warm, deep voice cracking suddenly. The man is gone, and the child I remember is on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, this wasn’t the way I had planned this. Please, if you possibly can, just meet me at Mass General, and call my cell when you get here.”
I hang up and sit down in the kitchen nook, staring at the dead phone in my hands. I could just go back to bed, I think. I could just pretend this was a terrible dream. But something snags in my chest. Something old. Something primitive. And so instead, I go back to the guest room where Gussy is still deeply asleep, and I gently touch her shoulder.
“Gus,” I whisper into her white curls. “We need to go to Boston tonight.”
Gussy doesn’t ask questions. We both simply dress quietly in the dark, and as I make coffee for the road, Gussy drafts a note to Effie and Devin, leaving it on the kitchen table. We’ve gone to Boston. John says there’s some sort of emergency. We’ll call in the morning. Hope to be back at the lake sometime next week. Thank you. Kiss those beautiful girls.
“I hope they see it,” she says.
“Put it under the sugar bowl. Effie takes sugar in her coffee. She’ll see it. Plus they’ll probably wonder where we’ve gone.”
Gussy grabs the lunches Devin has prepared from the refrigerator and packs a makeshift breakfast for us: oranges, bagels. It seems silly; morning is still so far away.
“Do you want me to drive?” I ask. Gussy has never liked driving in the dark, and I figure that driving might be exactly the distraction I need for the next three hours.
“Do you mind?” she asks, as we quietly close the screen door and walk through the wet grass to Gussy’s car.
I slide into the driver’s seat as Gussy buckles herself into the passenger’s seat. We put our coffee cups in the cup holders, and I clear the windshield of condensation and leaves. The sound of the blades across the glass is loud, and I worry the car will wake Effie, Devin, and the girls. I turn off the radio and back slowly out of the driveway.
