House of Cry

by Linda Bleser

  In my world, I’d worked three jobs to pay the rent and help with Cassie’s tuition so she could follow her dream of becoming a teacher. I had no regrets. She was good at what she did, and the kids loved her. But it wasn’t too late for me. Now that Cassie was settled, I could follow my own dreams.

  I just had to figure out what they were.

  I closed the yearbook, sat yoga-style on the floor, closed my eyes, and tried to make sense of my predicament. Up until now I’d been concentrating on the differences between the life I remembered and the one I’d been thrown into. Maybe I was going about it all wrong. Maybe the answers were hidden in the points of commonality. What remained unchanged? Perhaps those were the markers I needed to focus on.

  From what I’d seen so far, the library was unchanged. The cemetery, minus my mother’s celebrity marker, remained. And the house, which I mentally referred to as the House of Cry, seemed to be at the center of all of it.

  Thinking of the house reminded me of another similarity. Bob Hartwood, the realtor who’d first opened the door to the House of Cry and beckoned me inside. Was it simply coincidence that we had run into each other outside the library, or were we destined to meet? Was there something greater at work here? I could almost see patterns forming from single threads to create a larger tapestry.

  *

  I found my father’s house easily enough. It was a modest single-family in a suburban development. What surprised me was the fact that he wasn’t living there alone. My father had a second family. This was the same man who couldn’t be trusted raising two little girls after my mother’s death, who left the job of an adult to a thirteen-year-old child. In my wildest dreams, I wouldn’t have pegged him as a family man. Yet here was proof—a fenced-in yard littered with bats and balls and Tonka trucks. Good grief, did I have more brothers?

  I rang the doorbell, hoping to catch an honest reaction on my father’s face that would clue me in to our current relationship. Instead a harried woman answered the door. Her face was clean of makeup, and her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail.

  “Jenna.” She wiped her hands on her pants with more force than necessary, leaving pale, floury streaks on either side. “What are you doing here?” The look on her face made it clear she wasn’t happy to see me.

  “I, um … want to talk to my father.”

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.” She shook her head from side to side, her lips pursed with disapproval. “Well, he’s not here. You’ll have to save your ammunition for another day.”

  Ammunition?

  “I’m tired of you coming around here to beat him up,” she said. Her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. “Let it go, Jenna. The past is the past.”

  “I just want answers.”

  “No, you want to make him suffer, and you do that very well. You know he wouldn’t turn you away, but then he’s miserable for weeks, and the kids and I have to deal with it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Let it go. Please. Just take your daddy issues somewhere else and leave us alone.”

  Daddy issues? I almost laughed in her face. I’d gone from having mother issues in my last life to having father issues in this one. And apparently they were serious enough to turn this sweet-faced woman into a fierce bodyguard.

  The woman stood in the doorway, arms folded defensively. I wanted to reassure her that I was no danger to her or her family, but I didn’t even know her name.

  “Go on back to your mother,” she said. There was something in her voice I couldn’t put my finger on. Bitterness? “She made her choice a long time ago, and now she has to live with it.”

  There it was again. It all came down to choices. “I’m sorry,” I said again, hoping she’d hear the sincerity behind my words.

  She glared at me, unmoved by my apology. Perhaps she’d heard those words before and they hadn’t changed anything. Whatever. I knew I’d need more time than I had to heal this rift with my father and his new family.

  For everyone’s sake, I hoped the door wasn’t completely closed. If I couldn’t engineer a reconciliation on my own, then maybe my misplaced doppelganger could when she returned to her rightful place in this life.

  On the way home I tried to make sense of things. It seemed that even in this world, where I’d had every privilege I’d ever dreamed of, I still wasn’t the nice person I appeared to be. I had continued the pattern of blaming other people for my problems: my mother, my brother, and now my father. Maybe it was time to stop blaming other people for my failures and take responsibility for my own life.

  *

  I drove around longer than necessary. Soul searching wasn’t something that came naturally to me. If anything, I went out of my way to avoid introspection. Maybe up until now I had been afraid of what I’d find if I dug too deep into my own psyche. It was as if I didn’t know myself at all.

  Then it dawned on me that there was someone who knew me well enough to answer these questions. I pulled the car over and dug through my purse for my cell phone. I scrolled through the numbers, not surprised to find the name I was looking for.

  Hadn’t Maya made a point of steering me in Diane’s direction? Maybe she was trying to tell me something.

  Before I could talk myself out of it, I hit the button to dial her number. I closed my eyes and listened to the phone ring. Please be there, please be there. When she answered, her voice was the same as I remembered. Tears rushed to my eyes. Only then did I realize how much I’d missed her.

  “Diane? This is Jenna. Jenna Hall.”

  “Well, aren’t we formal today?” Her voice held a trace of amusement. “What’s up, Jen?”

  And just like that, all the years slipped away. I clutched the phone with a trembling hand, seeing her face clearly in my mind—laughing eyes and springy blond curls that refused to be tamed. Memories came rushing back to me—our first day of school, waiting for the school bus together and discovering we both loved the Backstreet Boys and the color purple. We were best friends from that day forward, inseparable on the playground, doing homework together, and spending the weekends together either at her house or mine.

  I remembered long, lazy summer days at her parents’ camp, sitting on the pier at the lake. We were two skinny, sun-freckled girls, our freshly painted petal-pink toenails skimming over the water’s surface. Sunlight sparkled across the waves like a legion of dancing fairies as we whispered secrets in each other’s ear, played truth or dare and “what if?” for hours on end until her mother called us in for dinner, then stayed awake long into the night, laughing so hard our sides ached. I’d forgotten all about those magical days growing up with her constant presence by my side. Or maybe I’d pushed those memories from my mind so it wouldn’t hurt so much to remember what I’d lost.

  How could I have cut her out of my life? I’d been so trapped in bitterness and jealousy that I’d let something precious slip away. Was it too late to call on that friendship again? Could I make up for the years we’d lost? I had to hold onto that glimmer of hope. I didn’t know the woman who called herself my mother, and my brother was a stranger. Diane was the one constant linking me from this world to the one I’d left behind. I had to try. “God, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “Are you okay, Jenna? You sound strange.”

  I wasn’t sure how to reply. I cleared my throat. “I just … I really need to talk to you.”

  “Sure. Come on over. I’ll put the coffee on.”

  Could it be that simple? Obviously the rift in our friendship had never happened in this reality, but I wasn’t sure I knew how to be a friend anymore. Worse yet, I wasn’t sure I knew how to accept the friendship of another. Maybe that was another lesson I had been sent here to learn.

  I cleared my throat. “Diane, I need to ask you a favor.”

  “What is it Jen? You’re scaring me. You’re not sick, are you?”

  “No, it’s just …” I took a deep breath. “I was hoping we could go someplace for a drin
k, and my car’s acting funny. Would you mind picking me up?” How could I explain that I didn’t even know where she lived? Asking for directions to her house would sound crazy. But that was nothing compared to the mountain of crazy I was about to drop on her. If my instincts were right and she was the same dependable person I remembered, then she might be the only one I could count on to help me figure out what was happening. And if I planned on opening that particular can of worms, I’d need more than one drink to work up the courage.

  “I’ll be right over,” she said.

  I held onto the phone long after the line went dead. I’d finally found something—someone—to anchor me to my remembered past, and I didn’t want to let go.

  9

  I came home to an empty house. Odd how easily the word “home” slipped off my tongue. This house had felt like home from the first moment I’d set eyes on it. Bob had opened the door, and I’d looked over his shoulder and fallen immediately and hopelessly in love with the house. And here I was having lived a life that I didn’t remember, but the feelings were the same. And so was Bob. It was almost as if we were destined to be together.

  Me, Bob, and the House of Cry.

  I hadn’t been home for more than ten minutes when Diane pulled up in the driveway. I met her at the door. Her face was both familiar and different, as if a new set of life memories had altered it in subtle ways. Her hair was lighter than I remembered, with artfully placed highlights, and professionally smoothed and straightened. I missed the wild mass of curls.

  It wasn’t just her hair that had changed, however. She was smoother than I remembered, more put together, as if she were in a class one step above me. Her handbag alone probably cost more than an entire week’s salary at the Flying Monkey—including tips. Despite the obvious differences, I wanted to throw my arms around her and hold on tight, but I knew that would only raise suspicions. In her world we hadn’t been estranged for six years.

  Diane gave me the once-over. “I thought we were going out?”

  I glanced down at the casual outfit I’d managed to rescue from the sea of dresses in the closet, a stark contrast to her fashion-conscious outfit. “I planned on changing. Come help me decide what to wear.” I smiled, hoping this was something we’d done a thousand times before. I imagined best friends did things like that all the time.

  We chatted as I changed into something more suitable, then pulled my hair out of its usual ponytail and ran a hot iron through the kinks. I added a whisper of mascara and a quick sweep of lip gloss. A glance in the mirror revealed a different reflection than I was accustomed to seeing.

  Diane’s reflection grinned back at mine. “I don’t think I’ve seen your hair in a ponytail since we were twelve years old.”

  I gave a half shrug, as if it were no big deal. Diane was as sharp as I remembered. We’d only been together ten minutes, and I’d probably already missed half a dozen nonverbal cues that friends develop over the years. It wasn’t going to be easy keeping up the subterfuge for long. She was already calling me out on minor inconsistencies. It wouldn’t take her long to notice the big ones.

  That might not be a bad thing, however. Maybe Diane was just the person I could talk to about this strange situation I found myself in. And if this turned out to be permanent, it would help to have someone on my side.

  “I’ll drive,” she said, turning to leave. “How about Diablo’s?”

  “Sounds great,” I replied, grabbing my purse and following her out the door.

  *

  Diablo’s was a family-style restaurant that specialized in hot everything—barbecued ribs, spicy nachos, and hot, hotter, and hottest wings. I was hard pressed to find anything on the menu that wasn’t smothered in jalapenos or dripping with hot sauce.

  I closed the menu and ordered a salad and my first glass of white zinfandel, knowing I’d need more than one to pull off this charade.

  Diane ordered a pomegranate martini. I realized too late that I should have just waited and followed her lead. She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “So, what’s up?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I stammered. “What do you mean?”

  She tipped her head and gave me a narrow-eyed stare. “You’re acting strange tonight. The hair, the makeup, the whatever the hell you were wearing when I showed up.” She threw out her arms in a WTF gesture. “You can’t stand Diablo’s. It’s a running gag between us. I suggest Diablo’s, you cross your eyes and make gagging noises, and then we go somewhere else to eat. And white zin? Really? You’re the first one to make fun of people who drink white zinfandel.”

  “Wow, I’m a bitch, huh?”

  “No, but you’re definitely not yourself tonight.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Try me.”

  Our drinks came. Just in time. I grabbed my wine and downed it in two quick gulps, then pointed to Diane’s glass. “Bring me one of those,” I told the waitress before she had a chance to escape. “Please,” I added, not caring if politeness was out of character or not. I was about to shatter Diane’s image of me anyway.

  I took a deep breath for courage and let it out with a sigh of resignation. “What do you do when everything you’ve always believed in gets turned upside down?”

  Diane raised an eyebrow. “Oh good, I’m glad you started with a simple question.”

  I laughed, breaking the tension. “You’re right,” I said. “I’m not myself tonight. In fact, I’m not the Jenna you know at all.” The wine I’d gulped down went straight to my head, giving me the strength I needed. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “You know what they say: start at the beginning.” She twisted her glass, staring at me in a way that gave nothing away.

  “The beginning. Remember how we used to play ‘what if?’”

  Diane nodded.

  “Okay, so pretend we’re playing that game.” My second drink came, and I took a slow sip, trying to find a way to explain without sounding too crazy. “What if you became trapped in an alternate reality? What if you woke up one day in a world that was kind of like but different from the one you remember?”

  “I’d think I was dreaming.”

  “At first, yeah. But then, when you didn’t wake up, you’d start to question your own sanity. You might think you’d gone crazy and everyone around you was sane.”

  “That’s still a possibility.” She grinned, taking the sting out of her words.

  I’d thought the same thing myself. “But how would I know? It’s not as if there’s any way I can prove it.”

  Diane considered it for a moment. “The only way I can think of to prove it is to talk to someone who knows you better than you know yourself. Someone who can tell at a glance if you’re lying and call you out on it.”

  “Someone like you?”

  She leaned forward and held my gaze. “Yeah, someone exactly like me.”

  “You might think I’m crazy.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” she said with a laugh.

  I caved. The temptation to unload my story to someone was just too great. But I had to get the hardest part over first if I was going to do this. “In my world we’re not even friends anymore.”

  She jerked back, her eyes wide with surprise. “Why not?”

  “I let you down. It’s a little confusing. In your world you and I went to college together, right?” That was a piece of information I’d uncovered going through the journals in my room.

  “Sure, just like we’d always planned.”

  “Well, in my world that didn’t happen. I couldn’t afford college after my mother died …”

  “What?” The shock on her face was real. So was the worry I saw in her eyes. In an instant she’d gone from humoring me to fearing I really had lost my mind. “Your mother died?”

  I nodded, tears stinging my eyes. The thought of losing my mother hurt even more now that I’d gotten to know her as an adult instead of through the eyes of an abandoned child.

  “Maybe
I should just start from the beginning like you said.”

  Diane must have signaled the waitress when I wasn’t looking, because another set of drinks arrived.

  “In my world,” I said, reaching for more liquid courage, “my mother was a famous poet.”

  I reached in my purse and pulled out the wrinkled poem I’d taken off her grave. When I’d awakened in this world, the paper was in my pocket. I didn’t know how or why it made the trip with me, but I knew it must be important somehow. I straightened out the wrinkles and turned it toward Diane so she could read it.

  Her mouth moved as she read the lines to herself. When she finished, she sat back and shook her head. “Your mother wrote this?”

  I nodded. “It’s pretty typical of her poetry. Dark and depressing, like her. She killed herself when I was thirteen years old, but a legion of women kept her memory alive with regular pilgrimages to her grave. I found this there just before I woke up in this reality.”

  Diane studied the poem. She gave me a questioning glance but remained silent. Maybe she sensed that any interruption would stop the flow completely, and I’d never get up the courage to finish.

  “So after my mother died, I spent most of my time taking care of myself and Cassie.”

  “Cassie?”

  “I have a little sister in my world. No brother. I met Parker for the first time two days ago.”

  “No big loss,” she said. “He was kind of a turd growing up.”

  I was surprised that I was able to laugh. I had no idea whether or not Diane believed any of what I was saying, but at least she added a bit of levity to the situation. And she hadn’t called the people with the white jackets. Not yet anyway.

  “So that’s why we didn’t go to community college together. I couldn’t afford college. You went to school out of state, and that’s where you met your husband.”