Forty-six
The house is silent when I wake up the next morning. My eyes fly first to the clock—12:48 p.m.—then to James’s empty bed. I have no idea how I got here and no recollection of putting on the pajamas I’m wearing, which is very scary. I refuse to consider the possibility he undressed me and put me to bed last night.
I roll out of bed, feeling like I’ve been drugged and then run over by a bus, and strip off my pajamas. They don’t feel out of place like they should if someone other than me put them on. The few times Sam has helped me put my clothes back on, I’ve had to totally redo everything. It just felt…wrong.
By the time I find my bra in the laundry basket--cringing at the pain it’ll take to fasten--slip on a long-sleeved shirt, and put on my last pair of clean jeans, the reality of what I’m about to do sinks in. I’d hoped for answers this morning, but James isn’t here and I can’t put off the inevitable. Won’t.
Our linoleum is scuffed up pretty badly where James scraped off the hardened noodles and where the chair my father threw crashed to the floor. More alarming are the fist-sized holes peppering the dining room wall. I imagine my head with a same-sized hole, with my brains a shattered mess on the floor like the phone before James swept it up.
I walk over to the stove and run my finger through the black soot from the fire. It comes off pretty easily. I trip over something, the wooden spoon, when I grab the paper towels from the counter. The knife is in the sink. James or the paramedics or someone must’ve picked it up. It sits blade-down in the pot I’d been cooking in, drowning in murky water. Beside it, the blackened pan with bits of meat dried to one of the edges waits to be cleaned.
My stomach churns violently. I’m determined, though. I need to clean up the blackness marring the stove. I have to. My mother would’ve wanted it this way, I think. It’s a stain that reminds me of my father and what he’s done to my family.
Blackness. The story of my life.
No, the story of her life.
It takes me ten minutes to clean up the soot. Dropping the wad of dirty paper towels in the garbage can, I head for the door.
Meadowview Cemetery sits at the base of the hills and is the only cemetery in town. After a ten-minute trek through neighborhoods, the gravity of my situation so heavy I feel like I’m carrying a backpack full of stones, I turn up the long, winding drive that leads to the mausoleum.
The lawn stretches out like white, speckled football fields in either direction, which seems oddly enormous for a town as small and unimportant as Granite Falls. I guess the picturesque foothills were attractive to whomever decides where to put memorial cemeteries. More than half of these markers, identical flat rectangles on the ground, belong to veterans of one war or another.
Maybe Sam’s dad is buried here.
No, I won’t think about Sam. This isn’t about him.
Halfway up the hill, I reach the normal graves. Some have nondescript stone markers like the military graves, others have tall marble statues shaped like saints and angels. Most fall somewhere in between with their waist-high granite gravestones. Though I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about death—mine, my mothers, wishing for my father’s—cemeteries freak me out. Specifically, gravestones freak me out. Maybe it’s because I can’t imagine anyone having anything good to say about me. I’d rather not have one when I die.
My mother was cremated and interred—that’s all James would tell me, which had been more than I wanted to know at the time. Easier to imagine her ashes scattered in the forest or dumped in the stream. Now I wish I’d asked for details because the enormous mausoleum is daunting with its exterior walls covered in what looks like hundreds of metal post office boxes. I’ll never find her in the sea of names and numbers.
I almost turn back. The closer I get to the walls, the less sure of myself I become. Right as I convince myself of the stupidity of coming here, a stooped man who looks like an older, thinner version of Santa Claus steps into my path. “Can I help you?”
“Uh…” I turn away to hide my face, but my gaze lands on a grave marker. Here lies Reyes Markham, beloved son… I force myself to look at the man. “I’m trying to find where my mother is buried. Or stored. Whatever you do with the ashes after someone is cremated.”
We start walking toward the mausoleum and he gives me a sympathetic look that, for once, isn’t patronizing. “Recent interment?”
“A couple weeks ago, yes.”
“Name?”
“Amanda O’Brien.” I’ve never said her name aloud before. It hurts more than I expect.
He studies my battered face. “She wasn’t cremated.”
The ground drops out from beneath my feet, but somehow, I find a way to follow the man when he turns back around and heads out into the maze of grass, marble, and granite. There’s no way we could’ve afforded a full burial. How did James pull this off?
And then it hits me. He only has two thousand dollars in the bank. The money we’ve been saving to get out of our house paid for this.
Anger hits me first, but then guilt like the clumpy, wet dirt beneath my feet chokes it off. No wonder he didn’t tell me—he probably thought I’d get mad at him. And I would have. But after last night, after realizing how much he must have loved her to do this, picturing him doing all of it alone hurts almost as much as watching him fall apart.
All the more reason I have to do what I’m planning to do.
I know which grave is hers before we reach it. The grass growing on the fresh mound of dirt is sparse and young. When I see the two wilted bouquets of roses he bought at Enchanted Garden, tears prick at my eyes. I assumed he’d given them to Leslie.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the stooped old man says when we reach the grave. He gives me a slight nod and heads back toward the road and the mausoleum.
I stand there for what feels like an hour, looking everywhere except at the fresh dirt, the wilted roses, and the pretty granite my brother picked for her gravestone. Swallows swoop from tree to tree farther up the hill. A lazy breeze sifts through the gravestones and caresses my cheeks with its warm fingers.
Being out with Sam as much as I have been, my face isn’t as pale as it used to be. My tan ends there, though. Healthy face, ghostly body. Maybe I should stop wearing jeans and long-sleeved shirts. Maybe my scars will fade if I gave them a little sunshine. With my father in jail, there won’t be any more bruises to hide once the newest ones fade.
I’ll start small—maybe I’ll put a folding lawn chair in the backyard where no one can see me and sit in a tank top and shorts. I’ll drag James out there, too. If anyone needs sun and a little relaxation, it’s my brother…
No matter how hard I try to distract myself, the beauty and peacefulness of where I’m standing forces me to remember how ugly my mother’s life was. I picture the wonder I saw in her glassy eyes that night in my bedroom. If everything James has told me about her is true, if she didn’t willingly give up on me and him, maybe she deserves this. Maybe, in killing her, my father did her a favor.
Slowly, I let my gaze trail from the bright green shoots of grass peeking out from the dark brown dirt to the thicker grass at the base of the gravestone. The stone itself is gray with white flecks, pink swirls, and baby blue veins running through it. Maybe he’d meant the pink and blue to be me and him, and the white to be her. The gray overwhelming all three colors has to be our father.
Amanda O’Brien
November 22, 1972 – June 20, 2010
Gifted with death
You were my sunshine
The words blur. I should have been here to hold James’s hand instead of wallowing in selfishness and hatred. My chest aches when I picture him standing in front of a glossy casket, staring down at her lifeless body alone. I picture his big shoulders shaking and his strong arms wrapped around himself because there was no one there to hold.
It’s more than I can handle.
“I’ll come back,” I say to the gravestone and immediately feel stupid. My mother can’t hear me. She’s never been able to hear me.
My hands shake and sweat trickles down the back of my neck. I need to calm down. If I’m this tense already, there’s no way I’ll make it through what I have to do at Sam’s. Slow, deep breaths, Sarah.
As I weave my way back toward the road, I notice hundreds of calla lilies are growing in brilliant clumps of fiery oranges, pinks, and yellows under every tree I pass. I hesitate. My mother’s grave looks drab compared to the ones with fresh bouquets and flags and shiny metallic pinwheels sticking up from the ground. I pick two of the pink ones and march back to the mound of dirt above her, setting the lilies in the center. One for me, one for her. They match her gravestone perfectly.
“I’m sorry for believing the worst,” I say, “and for not saving him like you wanted. I’m going to fix everything, though, so don’t worry.”
It’s not an I love you and I’m not ready to forgive all the years I screamed for her and she never came, but I think I understand my mother a little better now. She gave my brother and me up to protect us, just like I’m about to give up Sam to protect him and James.
It always comes back to James.