by Lia Conklin
“Any blue cheese in it?” kidded Amelia.
“Oh no. But it did call for some cardamom, which I thought was odd. We’ll see.”
The evening went by quickly as her grandmother continued her inquisition interspersed with her own memories and related commentaries. Amelia marveled at how sharp and alive she was. She made Amelia wonder what kind of woman she, herself, would be at eighty-seven. First, she had to make it there, and the way things were going, even thirty seemed like an unattainable goal.
The following morning, Amelia’s grandmother was up and about by 6:00 a.m. Amelia, though used to an early schedule, decided to lie in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, reveling in the freedom to choose whether to sleep or to rise. She finally chose to rise, more to avoid the memories of Donovan than of her own free will, and went down to the kitchen to see her grandmother.
Her grandmother was busy at the stove but already dressed to venture out for the day.
“I’m making you some pancakes, dear, but then I have to rush off to a morning tea at the governor’s mansion. The historical society I belong to is having its monthly fundraiser. Look what I’ll be wearing.”
She picked up a pillbox hat from the counter and placed it delicately on her head.
“That’s gorgeous, Grandma!” Amelia exclaimed.
“I made it,” her grandmother confessed. “And get this,” she said approaching Amelia with her head lowered. “It’s made out of garbage bags!”
“No way, Grandma!”
“Really. It is. Touch it,” she insisted, lowering her head further.
Amelia ended up taking it from her grandmother’s head and running her fingers over it. “You’re amazing, Grandma. A true innovator in the kitchen and a mad hatter!”
“Well, here are your pancakes, dear. I’m off to the Governor’s. Make yourself right at home.”
Her grandmother was out in a flash, and Amelia hurried through her pancakes, drawn to the sitting room by the television she had rarely watched in over a decade. She spent the rest of the day watching soaps and game shows and digging through her grandmother’s cupboards to snack on cookies, chips, and candy. She ended the afternoon with a sickening, yet mesmerizing, double dose of talk shows: reruns of Jerry Springer then Maury Povich. She realized how much American culture she had missed… “Not,” like the teenage snot on Jerry Springer would say.
After an evening of reality shows and CSI, she went to bed drunk on fantastic dramas that blurred the line between the real and imagined and turned her own pain and longing into a distant memory. Or had it all been imagined?
Chapter 36
Amelia continued her binge throughout the next day, this time while her grandmother bustled around town for her hair appointment and then bridge with the gals. But on the third day, somewhere during reruns of General Hospital, her drunk wore off. She knew she could no longer escape what she needed to do.
“Grandma, are you going out again today?” she called from the den, setting down her third bowl of fruit loops.
“Yes, dear,” her grandmother responded from the kitchen. “Later in the afternoon, I’m having dinner at the country club. But don’t worry, dear, I’ll cook you up something before I go. Do you like lasagna?”
“Please, Grandma, don’t trouble yourself,” Amelia replied, joining her grandmother in the kitchen. “I can cook too. But what I wanted to ask was if I could use your car today. There are a few places I need to go.”
“Without a license, dear?” her grandmother asked disapprovingly.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been driving since I was eleven. I’ll be very careful, though, and I promise I’ll get my license as soon as possible.”
“Whatever you need, sweetheart,” she acquiesced, scooping the keys out from her crocheted bag and depositing them in Amelia’s hand.
Amelia parked the car and sat for a moment looking into the drizzle that spotted the windshield. How well she remembered fall in Minnesota. Although she was not afraid of getting wet or cold, she refused to move from her place behind the steering wheel. She sat there for an hour, the windows of her grandmother’s Buick thick with steam. Finally, she opened the door.
The cold slap of drizzle upon her face awoke her from her stupor, and she began to meander through the rows of headstones that lead to theirs. She read the names and dates she passed as she unhurriedly and haphazardly made her way forward. She had been here twice before, once for their funeral and then a few months ago for her aunt’s. Neither time had she really paid attention to where they lay. Today she would.
She could no longer escape the inevitability of her approach, for in front of her lay the family plot, the Kingston pillars standing high upon the hill, a symbol of the family’s prominence in this community throughout the generations. She saw her great-grandmother and grandfather’s markers side by side and the mound of tender grass that formed her aunt’s grave. Two of her aunt’s brothers lay next to her. One bore the marking “Jonathon Kingston, Oct. 7-Oct. 10, 1952.” Amelia could hardly believe his lifetime of three days was worth the lifetime of pain for his parents. The other was for his younger brother who lived to be forty-five and died of a drug overdose, she remembered. Finally, she looked at her grandfather’s grave: Jan. 8, 1915 – Nov. 12, 1975. He had died of heart failure before she was born. She saw the empty plot next to him and knew her grandmother would soon join him, where decomposing flesh meets the satin of one’s eternal rest.
She stood transfixed, the Kingston family legacy of pain prostrate before her.
Not the entire legacy, she knew, for with the turn of her head she would see them as well. She had avoided them when she came to her aunt’s funeral, but now she turned and mechanically walked forward. She saw their names on her second step. Her third brought her to her knees before them. And her grief brought her to her belly. She lay there sobbing, the drizzle cloaking her like the sheet of damp grass that covered them. They were together again, united in the cold, damp, disinterest of the natural world.
She willed herself into the earth where her mother held out her arms and her brother taunted her with silly faces. But she could not reach them, and they could not come to her.
“Oh God!” Amelia cried, arching her shoulders back and lifting her face upwards. “Why did you take them from me? Why? I hate you! Whoever you are! You unfeeling bastard!”
He paid back her insults with a steady drizzle, constant in its indifference. None of it made any difference to Him, whether they were living, breathing creatures or rotting, charred cadavers. They were nothing. And she was nothing without them.
“I loved them so much!” she sobbed. “Maybe you didn’t, but I did. Why wasn’t that enough to let them live?” She lowered her head to the ground. “You bastard!” she repeated, her mouth buried in the grass.
She kept her head embedded in the grass until she could not breathe, and even then, she stayed there, not wanting to need the next breath. She yearned to succumb to the earth that suffocated her, to let it take her in its grasp like it held her family. When she lifted herself to gasp for air, she sobbed for her weakness. Such a paradox to create a breathing creature who fights for survival within a system of inevitable, punitive death. As much as she wanted to, she could not defy this natural law.
She had no idea how long she had lain there, but when she tried to rise, she found that her legs were too cold and cramped to obey. She made it to her knees and knelt there rocking, deciding whether to topple or try again to stand.
“Let me help you,” she heard someone say. Before she could turn her head to see the young man who spoke, he was squeezing her arm and helping her to her feet.
“You’re shivering,” he said. Amelia looked to her side to see a tall man in a black suit, his wet, reddish-blond hair smoothly plastered to his head.
“You’ve got mud on your face,” he said, removing the white handkerchief from his breast pocket.
Suddenly Amelia laughed, lifting her face to look heavenward.
“Highly convenient,
God!” she laughed.
Like the two other saviors she’d been sent, just another cosmic joke at her expense. Only this time she was not fooled.
“Thank you, but no,” she told the handsome man, dismissing him and his handkerchief with an abrupt wave of her hand. “I’m better off with mud on my face.”
With that she began her descent from the family plot. She called back over her shoulder, not to the perplexed young man returning to his nearby funeral party, though he did look back.
“See you later Mom, little brother!” and then she took a more direct path than on her arrival, returning to her grandmother’s car.
Chapter 37
The following day, Amelia began her search for the truth in the likeliest of places, the internet, but since her grandmother refused to enter the era of technology, she made her way to the public library just down the block. Her love for the public library had begun at this particular library long before she ever heard of Marty Robbins. It had a new annex now and some modern metal sculptures in front, but she felt the same as she always had as she entered—alive.
After taking a moment to discover the few minute details that had not changed during the library’s complete renovation, Amelia headed toward the computer area. It took a bit to convince one of the nearby patrons, a well-pierced teenage boy thumbing through a Popular Mechanics magazine, to borrow his library card number, but soon she was typing it in to access the internet. She pulled up the Pioneer Press website and began her search. After her visit to their graves the day before, she felt prepared for anything, and calmly with even a bit of anticipation, she fed the date into the search engine.
It was front-page news that day following the tragedy, and Amelia quickly focused in on the black and white image of the devastation. It was not as she remembered, obviously taken some time later when the smoke and dust had settled and the bodies had been removed. It showed heaps of dirt and ash and debris strewn about the lot, its center still smoldering. Staring into it on a computer monitor, Amelia felt detached, a witness to someone else’s tragedy.
Two St. Paul residents were killed in a house explosion yesterday on the 1700 block of Bush Avenue. 41-year-old Tracy Kingston and her 5-year-old son Scott died instantly in the explosion. Emergency crews arrived at the scene just after 9:00 P.M. to find what remained of the home—a smoldering crater and mounds of ash and flaming debris. The remains of Tracy Kingston, her son Scott, and their family dog were found in the rubble.
“Although it will take some time to investigate the exact cause of the explosion, preliminary evidence suggests that the explosion was caused by a gas leak,” the fire marshal reported.
Amelia plugged in the date for the following day. The next story contained much the same information with a few additional anecdotes from friends and neighbors and a brief biography of her mother and brother.
Tracy Kingston was a respected member of St. Paul’s East Side community. She was a beloved third-grade teacher at Monroe Elementary and a District 5 city council member. In addition, she volunteered with Meals on Wheels and as a Heritage Theater board member. Born Tracy Milton, Tracy grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, receiving her teaching degree at the University of Madison and later marrying lifelong St. Paul resident Robert Kingston. Tracy and Robert were the parents of two children, Amelia Sue and Scott Milton.
Scott Milton Kingston, a well-liked kindergartner at Monroe Elementary was described by his teacher, Kelly Madison, as a “friendly, eager learner, who loved to be silly.”
He would have celebrated his 6th birthday on Saturday. Lois Halstrom, friend and colleague at Monroe Elementary, spoke sadly of the planned birthday event: “I believe she (Tracy) had invited some 25 kids, and there was going to be a clown. Now we’re having a funeral instead.”
Services for both Tracy and Scott Kingston will be held at the Sacred Heart Church, 320 East 7th Street. Expressions of sympathy and contributions can be made to: Friends of Tracy and Scott, c/o the Heritage Theater Company, 2100 White Bear Avenue, Maplewood, MN, 55109.
Even though Amelia knew she was reading about her mother and brother, she felt as detached as someone who had never known them. Nothing that she read seemed to capture who they really were. Her mother wasn’t simply respected in her community, she was adored. The elderly she visited every Saturday on her Meals on Wheels rounds waited all week for her smiling face and kind words. Amelia had often gone with her mother and remembered most the sadness in their eyes when it was time to leave.
“But Mr. Larson will be starving to death if I don’t get these pork chops to him ASAP. Don’t worry. I’ll try to come a little earlier next week so we can have some more time to chat.” She used to jockey her schedule around so she could arrive early and stay late with someone new each week.
Amelia believed her mother had some political aspirations as well. She used to tell Amelia that politics needed another Paul Wellstone. She often wished aloud that she could one day have his strength and focus, that maybe then programs like Meals on Wheels would become obsolete.
Theater was her other love. Amelia suddenly remembered a conversation they had had on their way home from the Heritage production of The Sound of Music.
“It’s almost too painful to watch,” she said sorrowfully, “when all you can do is regret not being the one on stage. I don’t want you to have those regrets, Amelia,” she said, coaxing a loose strand of Amelia’s hair back behind her ear. “You go for everything you want in life one hundred percent. Promise me?” Amelia had promised her earnestly, but how could she have known how difficult, or maybe impossible, it would be to keep that promise?
A couple words in Scott’s biography did evoke some emotion. His teacher had been right; he loved to be silly. She remembered his repertoire of dances—each special dance reserved for just the right occasion. She remembered his “I’m right and Amelia’s wrong” dance above all others. Combining his “happy dance” of Russian-like kicks with Conga-line arm movements, he would flaunt his superiority throughout the house. Amelia almost preferred to be wrong, just to see that goofball show.
She remembered, too, his cartoons. He wasn’t a great child artist, but she loved the funny situations his Super Friends always got into, like Batman swallowing the Joker’s laughing gas after eating the baked beans Jeeves had served him, the combination of gasses proving toxic not only to Batman but to the whole of Gotham City. Superheroes meet potty humor. Classic Scottie.
She continued to search under each subsequent date until she located what she was really looking for. The fire marshal had released the results of his investigation and determined that the explosion “was the result of a natural gas leak that we believe originated from the natural gas valve. When the Kingstons arrived home that evening, a spark, most likely caused by a flip of the light switch, appears to have ignited the gas, triggering the explosion.”
Amelia was struck by the obvious negligence this suggested. Wouldn’t the gas company have been at fault for the explosion? Couldn’t they have sought damages that would have allowed them a lifestyle other than one of abject poverty in some third-world country? She was amazed she had never thought of that before.
She was even more amazed that her father, a newspaper journalist, would not have demanded a more thorough investigation. Why hadn’t he filed a lawsuit? Why had he accepted this simple explanation for the deaths of his wife and son and not sought redress? Had he simply been too grieved to really care?
No wonder they wanted me to find the truth, Amelia thought. Their deaths had gone unchallenged, the negligent party unpunished. And my pain, she bemoaned, unavenged. She knew it was up to her to remedy the situation, to make the company accountable for its negligence. And how, she wondered, would she make her father accountable for his?
She hated him at that moment, so intensely that had he been immediately present she would have smashed his head against the computer monitor. Instead, she settled for the image of his bowed cowboy hat framed by airport security.
Chapter 38
Making her way from the computer area, she was suddenly stopped by her name being called. She turned to see an oversized librarian bursting from behind the information booth.
“Toby!” Amelia exclaimed, wrapping her arms as far around her favorite librarian as they could reach.
“I can’t believe it’s you, or at least what’s left of you!” Toby cried, giving her the once over. “When did you get back?”
“Just…”
“Wait, wait. Let’s do this right,” Toby interrupted. “I’m going on break, Alice,” she
yelled behind her, perhaps unfamiliar with library etiquette. “Let’s get some coffee,” she commanded, dragging Amelia to the Dunn Brother’s Café, another addition to the library.
Cappuccino was coffee Amelia could stomach, so she stumbled after Toby with little resistance.
“Okay, where were we?” Toby continued after ordering them both a double cappuccino and a chocolate-frosted brownie. “Oh yes. ‘Just’…” she repeated, motioning with both hands for Amelia to continue.
Amelia laughed, nearly spraying the sip of cappuccino she was in the process of swallowing.
“I was going to say just a few days ago.”
“And how much longer were you going to wait before coming to visit your Auntie Toby?”
“I had no idea you’d still be here,” Amelia assured Toby, who wasn’t really her aunt. “I thought you’d be at some think tank in Washington, D.C., by now!”
“Always the smart aleck,” Toby admonished with a gentle pinch to Amelia’s cheek. “Glad to see not much has changed. Guess not much has changed with me, either!” she said, spreading her arms out wide. “A few more diets under my belt. Tried that low-carb one for a few days. Found out brownies weren’t on the menu and rushed to Byerly’s to officially end it. Nothing like holding on to a bad diet in between binges and later bemoaning that it didn’t work. I prefer admitting it isn’t for me right up front rather than living with the guilt and remorse. Anyway, got me that promotion to manager of the ‘oversize books’ we always joked about. Really, I’m not kidding. I asked for it one day, and they wrote it up in my job description. Something about being around those big books makes me feel normal.”
