What She Forgot

by Margaret Lashley

  Am I just another Bernstein, looking to blame my mother for my screwed-up life? she thought as she steered the Prius. We’ve never been close. Will her death make any difference?

  Children automatically take the word of their parents as gospel. Deanna had been no different. According to Melody Young, she’d been a movie star. Warren McMasters had fallen in love with her at first sight. They’d married and would have lived happily ever after—if Deanna hadn’t come along and fucked it all up.

  During her childhood, the three photos on the table had provided damning proof. Mother had been gorgeous. Father had looked happy and wealthy. Then Deanna had been born, and Warren’s health had failed. Somehow, she’d made him sick! Warren had died because of Deanna, and her mother’s life had been ruined. Had it been too much to ask that Deanna clean up the mess she’d caused?

  Guilt had soldered into place Deanna’s loyalty as Melody’s dutiful daughter, lackey, and faithful groupie. And with no other relationship for comparison, her mother’s harsh words, impossible demands, and capricious whims had been accepted by Deanna as “normal.” Throughout Deanna’s childhood, the two had existed together, yet always apart. Deanna had remained as separated from her mother as she had from Warren, only by a different kind of glass.

  MOST PEOPLE CHOSE TRAVEL routes based on what they wanted to see along the way. Deanna planned her route to achieve the opposite effect. To avoid certain places, she would take backroads, shortcuts, and drive miles out of her way, if necessary. The half-dozen places she avoided encircled St. Petersburg like a chokehold. Of them, Lynette’s Bakery was one of the worst.

  As Deanna approached 38th Avenue, the pink-and-white sign loomed large on the left-hand side of the road. Even though it was late November, Deanna could feel the broiling heat of that horrific day. Perspiration broke out on her upper lip as her mind drifted back to June twenty-first, the day of her fifteenth birthday ....

  As per their customary ritual, Melody had insisted Deanna model the ill-fitting pantsuit she’d ordered for her from Sears. After being chided for her slumping shoulders, too-short legs, and the looks-spoiling bump on her nose, it had been time for phase two of the birthday festivities: The Story.

  Deanna had sat on the couch and listened dutifully while her mother, between drags on a cigarette and sips from a vodka gimlet, relayed in excruciating detail, the story of how Deanna had come into—and thus, ruined—her life.

  No detail was spared of the ordeal Deanna’s birth had put poor Melody through. It began with Deanna destroying her favorite, expensive Turkish rug. Deanna had kicked through her mother’s amniotic sack while Melody was standing over the five-thousand-dollar carpet.

  After staining the passenger seat of the Mercedes beyond repair, Deanna had tortured her mother with six hours of excruciating, womb-ripping agony. It had been Deanna who’d caused poor Warren so much anxiety that he’d died of a heart attack three days later. And, conniving little creature that she was, Deanna was born on the longest day of the year, just to prolong Melody’s suffering.

  As a child, Deanna had been both ashamed and horrified by her mother’s story. She’d imagined herself so wicked that, on her day of birth, both time and space had been altered in order to give the sun extra time to blaze angrily down upon her newborn head, evil spawn that she was.

  Deanna had carried that burning, secret shame until, at the age of thirteen, she’d learned about earth cycles at school. Only then had she realized her birthday happened to fall on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Relieved that perhaps she wasn’t the antichrist after all, Deanna had begun to burn with a new kind of shame—her own gullible ignorance.

  From then on, Deanna had swallowed her mother’s story with a bitter grain of salt. But what happened on her fifteenth birthday caused Deanna to spit the story out entirely.

  Melody Young had given her daughter a twenty-dollar bill, along with instructions to pick up milk and eggs at Publix, and her own birthday cake from Lynette’s. Too young to drive, Deanna had no choice but to bike four miles in the blistering summer heat, wearing the long-sleeved, polyester pantsuit that hung about her skinny frame, stifling her like a nylon sauna.

  Deanna had been overheated and drenched with sweat when she’d opened the door to Lynette’s Corner Bakery. The cool air had given her an instant brain-freeze headache.

  “I need a birthday cake,” she’d panted.

  The counter clerk had given her the once-over. “What kind?”

  “Uh ... the cheapest you’ve got.”

  The counter clerk didn’t bother to hide her disgust. “Who’s it for?”

  “Deanna,” she’d answered, then cowered in a corner as the clerk piped her name on the small, white-frosted cake.

  “This okay?” The clerk held up the cake. Happy Birthday, Deena!

  “That’s fine,” Deanna had nodded. “Thank you.”

  As Deanna recalled, that had been the best part of her fifteenth birthday.

  Deanna had put the cake in her basket and biked home. When she’d gotten to the alley running behind her house, she’d again been drenched in sweat. Faint from the heat, she’d wiped her brow and leaned her bicycle against the garage. As she’d clicked the kickstand into place, Deanna had overheard two women talking in the alley.

  “Be careful of your new neighbor.”

  Deanna had peeked around the side of a plumbago bush. She’d recognized the old lady who was speaking. Thanks to her mother’s restrictions on talking to the neighbors, Deanna hadn’t known the woman’s name—only that she lived a few houses down on the left.

  “Whatever for?” the other woman had asked. She was the new neighbor. A slender, wiry woman in her late thirties, she and her daughter were moving into the house next door.

  The old woman had sneered and stuck her chin toward Deanna’s house. “That woman who lives there. Melody Young. She ain’t right in the head. Claims she’s a movie star. Thinks she’s too good for regular folks like you and me.”

  When the new neighbor had turned to look at Deanna’s house, she’d ducked behind the bush. “Well, surely she must’ve been successful to afford a house like that.”

  “Yeah,” the old woman had scoffed. “If you count a couple of toothpaste commercials and a trashy horror flick as success. Nope. That tramp got her money the old fashioned way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She dropped her knickers for it. More than twice, too. But she hit the jackpot when she got herself knocked up by Warren McMasters.”

  “The film producer?” the other woman had asked. “He died ages ago, didn’t he? Wasn’t he in his seventies?”

  The neighbor woman cackled. “You know the old saying. Find a rich old man, give him a bath, and put him in a draft.”

  “Are you saying she killed him?” The woman’s voice had sounded more indignant than horrified.

  “Why else would a young woman marry a man forty years older than her?”

  Why, indeed, Deanna thought. She stepped on the gas and blew past the bakery on 4th Street, the words as fresh in her mind as when she’d overheard them twenty-odd years ago.

  For her fifteenth birthday, Deanna had received a cruel kind of clarity. Her mother’s version of the truth wasn’t to be trusted. In that moment as she stood behind the plumbago bush, Deanna’s childish, blind faith had flitted away. In its place rushed in a kind of itchy awareness—a suspicious wariness that perhaps she hadn’t killed Warren after all.

  Perhaps her mother did.

  Deanna turned the Prius into the back alley that ran behind the houses on her mother’s block. A few lots in, the sight of the overgrown plumbago bush hit Deanna in the chest like a hurled brick.

  No, it hadn’t been a childhood fantasy. It had really happened.

  The overgrown plumbago bush stood as a silent testament, marking the spot where Deanna had learned her mother was a tramp. A liar. And, quite possibly, a murderer.

  Christ! Will the pain ever go away? Deanna thought
. She pulled up into the brick driveway and parked. After a deep breath to calm herself, she climbed out and walked to the back of the car. As she opened the trunk, she glanced next door at Mrs. Havenall’s house. The windows were dark.

  She’s probably already at the funeral, Deanna thought, pinching her lips into a weary line. Mrs. Havenall had been the other woman in the alley that awful day so long ago. She’d learned the horrible gossip about her mother the same moment Deanna had. But to Mrs. Havenall’s credit, she’d never once mentioned it to Deanna.

  Deanna herself had remained just as tight-lipped about the incident. Over the years, there’d been many times she’d been tempted to confront her mother—to find out the truth from her own lips. But what would have been the use? As far as Deanna was concerned, Melody Young made up the truth as she went along.

  A drop of rain pelted Deanna’s nose. She checked the time on her cellphone and blanched. Cripes! The funeral starts in twenty minutes!

  Deanna hoisted her carry-on from the trunk and slammed the lid. Lightning flashed as she jogged up the brick driveway. A light sprinkling of cold, gray rain dampened the shoulders of her black suit jacket. As she reached for the bronze knob to the back door, her carry-on suddenly refused to roll. The handle snapped from her grasp.

  “Ugh!” Deanna grabbed the handle and tugged at the luggage. “Come on!”

  She yanked again, but it remained stubbornly fixed in place. The overgrown grass sprouting between the bricks had wrapped tightly around one of the wheels.

  Deanna growled with frustration. “I don’t need this. Not now!”

  She gave the carry-on another massive yank. It didn’t budge. She turned, grabbed the handle with both hands, and set her feet firmly. She leaned back to put her weight into it and pulled. The luggage came free, sending Deanna tumbling backward. She landed flat on her ass in the damp dirt.

  As rain pelted her hair and ruined her mascara, Deanna looked up at the dark kitchen window, half expecting to see her mother there, laughing down at her.

  Who am I kidding? Deanna thought. I’m as big a mess as my mother. A screwed-up psychologist—the blind leading the blind.

  As Deanna stared at the black, unblinking pane of glass, a tear mingled with the rainwater running down her cheek. It was a tear not for what was, but for what now could never be.

  Chapter Eleven

  “YOU CAN’T ESCAPE ME, spider lady.”

  The lips mouthed the words from rote. Eyes darted wildly, following every image on the TV screen. Tarancula Now played on the worn DVD, the sound muted, the actors’ voices replaced by that of the watcher.

  On-screen, a bare-breasted Spidey Hawkins writhed in a macabrely seductive fashion, trapped in the silken threads of a trampoline-sized spider web.

  “No! Please! I’m a virgin!” The lips mouthed in perfect time with Spidey’s. The first pulse of arousal throbbed.

  The spider was coming ....

  The watcher used to find more pleasure in fantasizing about rescuing Spidey Hawkins from the mutant spider. But lately, that fantasy had lost its luster.

  Spidey Hawkins—aka Melody Young, was gone.

  The watcher’s eyes flinched at the lightning-bright flash of the laser gun held by the actor on-screen. The weapon delivered its payload directly to the gigantic spider’s most vulnerable spot—the opening above its gnashing jaws. The creature exploded into a million globs of spidery goo.

  Spidey Hawkins was saved.

  But as the credits rolled, deep within the spider’s lair, unbeknownst to Spidey and her saviors, a silky white egg sac as big as a human torso was hatching.

  Out crept a new spider to replace the old.

  A younger, nearly identical version.

  The daughter of Tarancula.

  Chapter Twelve

  MAYBE IT WAS STUPID. But she’d been compelled to do it. And now, because of it, Deanna was late for her mother’s funeral.

  As she opened the door to Gilchrist Funeral Home, the guilt pressing down on her shoulders slid inward along her collarbones and dumped into her heart. Not only was she late, she was also a disgrace.

  Deanna had planned to look her best for the funeral. Melody would have wanted it that way. But caught in the rain, her damp, dirty-blonde hair hung limp and frizzy at her shoulders. The back of her black skirt bore the muddy watermark of her fall in the backyard. She was a mess, both externally and internally.

  I should’ve gone straight from the airport to the funeral home, she argued with herself. No. The trip to the house was non-negotiable. I had to get it.

  Deanna took a deep breath and grasped her purse as if her life depended on it. Inside was the talisman she’d gone home to fetch—so she wouldn’t have to face Melody alone. She hurried through the funeral home’s foyer, but as she entered the chapel, one look at the casket turned her limbs to wet cement.

  Melody Young was waiting for her.

  Slowly, Deanna willed herself—dragged herself—down the aisle, inching past row after row of empty pews. The gold trim glinted on the shiny, white casket, sparkling from a different angle with each belabored step Deanna managed. Mrs. Havenall had done well. The casket and flowers were just as they’d planned during Deanna’s trip home last year.

  A sad, bone-tired smile crept across Deanna’s lips as her mind went briefly to the gray afternoon she’d spent showing her mother caskets from her laptop computer. It had been her mother’s idea. Melody hadn’t been dying. She hadn’t even been sick. She’d just decided all of a sudden that she wanted to get her affairs in order, and she hadn’t trusted Deanna to do it right on her own.

  Glamour queen Melody Young had picked out a shiny, white, virginal, Goldilocks coffin, remarking that it complimented her complexion. She’d insisted on having a bouquet of white roses to hold in her hands, as if she’d been some kind of saint. “One must display class to the end,” her mother had said, then had taken another drag on a filterless Camel cigarette. When Deanna had nearly choked on the irony, she’d blamed it on the second-hand smoke.

  Deanna took another tentative step down the aisle of the chapel, half expecting Melody to sit up and blow a smoke ring in her face—one final prank. Haha! I’m not dead after all! You can’t get rid of me that easily!

  Two feet from the open casket, Deanna caught her first glimpse of her mother lying in situ.

  She nearly swallowed her tongue.

  It really was her. Melody Young—the woman who’d refused to change her name so she could remain “forever young.”

  There she lay. Silent. Wooden. Waxy.

  Deanna blinked in disbelief. How is that possible?

  But when her eyes opened, Melody hadn’t sat up and laughed. She was still lying in the coffin. She was still dead, her lined face betraying her desire to remain forever young. Even so, she still fit into the blue sequin evening gown she’d worn as Miss Sunshine City nearly forty years ago. It was ridiculous, but it had been her burial wish.

  Vanity, thy name is Melody, Deanna thought.

  The undertaker had gotten the gown right, but her mother’s hair was all wrong. Her signature 1980’s big hairdo had been styled into soft, even curls. Her lips were painted pink, not red. And where was her mother’s horrendous blue eyeshadow? It was supposed to go all the way up to her pencil-thin, drawn-on eyebrows ....

  Deanna nearly bit through her lip to keep from grinning. Maybe she’d have the last laugh after all. She leaned over the coffin and whispered, “Dear lord, Mom. You almost look respectable.”

  Deanna reached into her purse and pulled out the object she’d dashed home for. It was the framed photograph of Warren in his tuxedo, her mother in the same sequin gown she would now wear into eternity. Deanna tucked the picture into her mother’s coffin. “I’m sorry if I ruined your life,” she whispered. “Now you can be with Warren again.”

  “Geez!” a voice sounded behind Deanna, startling her. “Would you look what they’ve done to her?”

  She turned to see a tall, thin, silver-haired
woman scowling and shaking her head. Deanna smiled.

  “Mrs. Havenall!”

  Deanna hugged her old neighbor. “Thank you for coming. I forgot to tell you on the phone ... thank you so much for helping with ... you know ... the funeral arrangements and all.”

  Mrs. Havenall shrugged. “How could I not? She was your mom. And she was my friend.”

  “Still, it was really good of you.”

  “It really was no problem, honey. But did you see what they’ve done to her? She looks like somebody’s grandma. I was worried this would happen. Your mother ... well, she would die if she—” Mrs. Havenall caught herself mid-sentence. Her mouth hung open. She shot Deanna a horrified look. “I’m sorry!”

  Deanna patted her hand. “Don’t worry. It’s okay. You’re right. Mother would have hated it.”

  Mrs. Havenall shook her head. “If we send her to the grave like this, she’ll be turning over in it.”

  “I know. But what can we do?”

  “I brought my makeup bag. Do you mind if I ... you know ... try to fix her up a bit?”

  “Really? Are we allowed?”

  “Who cares what’s allowed. This is an emergency.”

  “Okay. To be honest, it would be great. If I let them bury Mom like this, she may come back and haunt me forever.”

  Mrs. Havenall cringed, then laughed. “You and me both.” She studied Deanna, then Melody. “Gee. Except for your noses, you two look so much alike.”

  Deanna stared at the body in the casket. “Mom always said my nose ruined my looks.”

  Mrs. Havenall blanched. “Deanna! I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know. Listen, this day isn’t about me. It’s about Mom. Or should I say, Melody Young, beauty queen and movie star. Do your best.”

  Mrs. Havenall put her arm around Deanna’s shoulders. “Okay. I’ll get to work. Keep an eye out for the funeral director. He may not be too keen on the idea.”