CHAPTER 18
ABI
Punishment
Fire wakes me. It blazes from the sole of my foot, up the back of my calf to my knee. My breath and pulse instantly quicken.
I know that when I jerk the cover off I won’t see flames or melting flesh. I won’t see charred skin or bloody blisters. I’ll just see that my toes have turned a purplish red and are swollen and shiny.
A flare.
I grab a pillow and wad it up under the bend of my knee to keep my foot from touching the bed. Anything that comes into contact with it is excruciating. Even the air feels hot and heavy.
I had hoped since it didn’t bother me much last night that my trip to Sam’s would go unnoticed by my traitorous body.
It didn’t.
This is my punishment for going barefoot to see Sara, for stepping on rocks and chasing a child around the lake’s edge with nothing to protect my foot. How could I have been so careless?
As I lie back, covered in the cold sweat that comes from intense pain, I know that I wasn’t being intentionally careless. I was caring very much, just not about my own health and wellbeing. I was thinking only of Sam, his dying wife, and their little girl.
I still can’t believe what a crazy, tragic, surreal situation this is. And, somehow, I’ve gotten myself right in the middle of it. I still don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to do with it.
Questions race through my mind, and as they do, I can feel my pulse ratchet up, anxiety creeping in like an insidious bedfellow.
What does Sara really expect of me?
What does Sam really expect of me?
What will happen to their family when Sara dies?
Will I really be expected to step in and take her place?
Did I make that promise? Did I make them all a promise that I have no hope of keeping?
The heat in my foot increases, like someone is holding a blowtorch to my heel, burning away my skin and searing the nerves underneath.
I cry out, half gasp half moan, into the quiet, so wrapped up in my circumstance that I can’t talk myself down from the ledge. Not yet. There is an order to things when a flare happens. I know it will get worse before it gets better. And I know why.
This pain is a reminder. It is a physical reminder of what I’ve done, of what I won’t ever be able to escape. Of what I don’t deserve to escape. My body won’t let me forget.
For most people, the pain of the past is something that, with time, can be overcome. But not for me. The pain of my past will always be with me. If there is a lull in my life, a moment of happiness, it won’t last. It hasn’t and it won’t. It can’t. Not anymore.
I let myself spiral. I allow my mind to go back to that day, back to the life I took and the ripples that one moment in time caused. The ripples that one moment in time will always cause. There is no escape. There is no running from this.
I embrace the agony of it. I force myself to relive it, second by second, until I’m sobbing in the darkness, my soul as tortured as one soul can be. Only then, exhausted and in anguish, do I drift into a sort of calm numbness that can only be found in the aftermath of a devastating storm. It’s as though when my body and my mind reach the tipping point, it all goes into a state of suspended animation. It’s the only place I can find real rest. That and death. They are the only reprieves for me.
Only I’m still alive. At least partially. There is a part of me that died that day, a part I will never get back, but the rest of me lives on. Kind of like my mother. We are alive, but not really.
Some amount of time later, as the fog begins to part, I think again of my mother, of how I need to go see her. And how I need to write the letter telling her about everything.
That letter is the first thing I think of when I wake four hours later, when I finally manage to climb up out of an exhausted sleep. I can’t put it off any longer, so I hobble to the small desk in the corner of the master, careful not to anger my still warm and tingly foot, and I open the top drawer in search of pen and paper.
I find some beautiful stationary that will quite nicely serve my purpose. The top of the page boasts a watercolor rendering of the view from the dock out front, and I know this will be perfect for my letter. I feel along the back of the drawer for a pen, and when I find one, I uncap it and begin writing immediately. The words pour out so quickly my fingers struggle to jot them down fast enough.
With writing the words that I so desperately want to say to my mother comes a release, a peaceful sense of closure, of rightness similar to what I felt when I arrived here in Molly’s Knob. This is something I needed to do. Needed. Just one more thing that proves I’m on the right track. I reassure myself that I am. Over and over and over. I just have to stick with the plan. Stick with the plan. Stick with the plan.
The plan is the key.
********
The sun is high in the sky and I’m on the interstate, over an hour from Molly’s Knob, when I realize I left the letter lying on the desk.
“Well, shit,” I mutter in irritation, glaring at my purse where it sits in a heap on the passenger seat. I don’t have to look inside it to know it doesn’t contain the letter it’s supposed to. I was just finishing up the last few lines, with every intention of folding it and putting it in an envelope to slip into my purse, when my phone rang. I got up to get it and got sidetracked, never making my way back to the letter. I know exactly where it is. At home on the desk, precisely where I left it.
Damn it.
Anna Sturgill, a woman who I’m learning is at the center of pretty much every charitable event and activity in all of Molly’s Knob, called to ask if I’d be interested in running in a 5K for Autism. While I probably look physically capable of something like that, I’m not.
But Anna doesn’t know that.
No one does.
I politely declined, and she then asked if I’d be willing to work one of the refreshment stands placed along the route instead. Someone backed out and she was left with an unattended table, which led me to believe running in it wasn’t the purpose of her call after all, but rather working it.
I happily agreed to man the refreshment stand next Saturday and she promised to be in touch with all the details. We hung up and the rumble of my stomach sent me toward the kitchen for food rather than back to the bedroom for my letter. That’s why it never made it into my purse.
I’ll bring it next time. I make the mental assurance, even though I’m still mad at myself for being so airheaded. I blame Sam. He’s got my mind, my emotions, my world turned inside out. He was always the center of everything when we were together. The sun my existence revolved around. I guess that’s just one more thing that never changed. He’s consuming to me, even when he doesn’t try to be.
The trip to the facility where my mother resides is longer from Molly’s Knob than from Charleston, but it’s still not such a long trip that I won’t be seeing her every three or four weeks. She probably wouldn’t miss me if I didn’t come, but that’s not the point. I’d know. I’d miss her, even though she more closely resembles a handicapped younger sister than my mother.
When I pull into the parking lot of Serenity Gardens, I’m assailed with the same feeling that always hits me when I get here—a profound sense of relief and love. Even though Momma doesn’t know she’s my mother, she is still my mother, and just seeing her smile and hearing her laugh, just being with her, soothes me in the way that only a mother can. Her presence is like a cool cloth to my fevered brow or warm tea on a chilly evening. She’s my mom. My blood. My family. The only real family I have left in the world. There’s something special about that, even if she doesn’t quite understand it.
“Hi, Dorothy,” I say, waving to the receptionist. She has cocoa skin, a wide smile, and eyes as welcoming as the first breeze of spring.
“Well, hello, pretty girl. Where you been?”
It’s been almost a month since I’ve been here. At least someone noticed my absence.
“Had some things to take care of before I went on vacation.”
“Ohhhh, where’d you go?”
“I’m renting a cabin at the lake where I grew up.”
“Sounds like heaven. You need some company, you just call up ol’ Dorothy and she’ll come see you. I make a mean chicken pot pie.” She winks one dark eye and waves me on as she buzzes the door. I smile and nod.
The scent of food, the remnants of lunch no doubt, and the stale air of a long term care facility strike my nose the minute I step through the door. For some, I’d say it’s an unpleasant smell, something that means their loved one is near death. It might smell like the end or giving up, primarily because it’s usually the elderly that wind up in places like this. Not so with Momma. She’s like a child and she spreads joy to these people. For her, this is a happy life and a happy place. And that’s why, for me, it smells good, like my mother’s sparkling eyes and gleeful laugh.
I walk slowly down the hall, speaking to the people I know. Nurses, orderlies, patients. Even some family members of patients. Over the years, many have come and gone. Losing some of them felt like losing family. For that reason, I am friendly and open, but only to a certain degree. I learned the hard way that getting attached to any of these folks isn’t a smart thing for me to do. I’ve got too much weight to bear as it is. I can’t add loss after loss after loss to that.
I hear my mother before I see her. “Can’t you make it curly?” Her voice is loud and distinctly child-like.
“Your hair is curly.”
“Can’t you make it curlier? Like this.”
I smile, imagining Momma holding up a picture of some young girl with curly hair. For whatever reason, she’s been fascinated by curly hair since the accident. She doesn’t realize she’s older and that her coarse, graying hair won’t do the things it did when she was younger.
I turn into the doorway to her room and see her sitting in a straight-backed chair while Kimberly, the resident hair dresser at Serenity Gardens, stands over her, curling iron in hand. Momma’s hair is curled loosely around her face, but according to the magazine picture of a popular actress whose hair is downright kinky, loose curls are not what she wanted.
“Your hair won’t curl that tight, Miss Marlene.”
My mother’s face screws up into a pout and she throws the magazine. For the most part, she’s upbeat and sunny, but like any kid, she’s prone to temper tantrums and bouts of poutiness. Luckily, she’s also easy to distract with something shiny and new and fun.
“I like the curls,” I announce as I set my purse down and take the box I brought out of its bag and tuck it behind my back.
Momma turns toward my voice, her face lighting up when she spots me, hair all but forgotten. She remembers me, but in a vague way. She rarely knows my name, yet I’m not a stranger. She knows me, but not really. It’s bizarre. Some part of her recognizes my face—whether through some shadow of her missing memories or some miracle of her new ones—and love shows on hers. It’s not maternal. Probably not even familial. It’s more the love a ten year old might have for a favorite friend. Maybe. But still, it’s love and I’ll take it.
As I approach, her gaze drops to my hands, one of which is still behind my back holding her gift. Her mouth and eyes round into matching Os of excitement. “You brought me a present?”
I nod and she claps her hands just like a child might. I stop and sink into a squat in front of her chair, and with a flourish, reveal what I brought her. She looks it over, turning the box over and then over again, examining the back and the front before her lips break into a pleased smile. “Bottle top jewelry kit. I love jewelry!”
The curls are forgotten. The stylist is forgotten. For the moment, I am forgotten, too, as Momma takes the box to her bed and begins to spread out the contents on the old comforter that graced her mattress for years before the accident. It probably doesn’t mean anything to her, but it does to me. It’s part of our past together. Something that links us.
“Thanks, Abi,” Kimberly says, shaking her head in exasperation. “Sometimes I can get the curls right, but other times…”
She comes around twice a week to wash and style my mother’s hair. She takes care of all the grooming needs of the patients here—shaving, trimming, shampooing and drying. If she has a helper or partner, I’ve never seen him or her. It’s always just been Kimberly.
“I think it looks great.”
She squeezes my arm before she turns to start gathering up her things. I sit down on the bed next to Momma and don’t even notice when Kimberly leaves.
Today, I need something from my mother. I feel it—a desperate need for…something. I just don’t know exactly what it is.
Advice? Comfort? Assurance? All of the above?
It doesn’t really matter. She’s incapable of providing any of the above. But I came anyway.
I long to call her Momma, to let those two syllables fall from my lips, and for her to take me in her arms and tell me it’s all going to be okay. Only I can’t have any of that. Calling her by anything other than Marlene confuses and upsets her, and she’s not familiar enough with me for any show of affection like a hug. Every now and then, she’ll sidle up next to me and sort of lean in, like she, too, craves the contact, but it’s rare. Each time she does it, I go straight to my car and cry like I’ve lost her all over again.
“Marlene, do you like it when I visit?” I ask.
“Yep,” she says, not even looking up.
“Do you think you’d miss me if I didn’t come again?”
She stops what she’s doing and looks up at me. “You’re not coming back?”
“No, I’m coming back. I just wondered if…if you’d miss me if I was gone.”
“Oh. Okay.” Not an answer at all, but when she resumes playing with the jewelry set, I know it’s the only one I’ll get.
I wonder at the way her mind works. It’s a mystery to me how she could end up like this. And yet here she is. Here we are.
I think about the letter I wrote her, about how she’ll probably never read it and, even if she does, she might not understand it. But I wrote it anyway. I had to. I wanted her to know. Everything. All of it.
They say confession is good for the soul. Maybe that’s true. I hope so, because my soul could use some good.
To confess to Momma for any other reason, however, makes no sense. Yet…I did. It seems I’m always seeking things from her that I know I won’t get. The most I can hope for is a smile of hazy recognition, a couple hours of playing with children’s toys, and the occasional leaning of her thin frame into mine. Yet…I seek anyway.
The human mind is a peculiar thing.
I fight back tears, bitter tears of yearning that I hold closely in check, and I watch as Momma chooses a sticker from the sheet in the box and places it in the center circle of a bottle cap necklace before slipping the plastic chain around her neck. She takes the cap between her fingers and smiles down at it. I smile, too, albeit a watery one. I’m not looking at the jewelry; I’m looking at her.
Then, strangely, suddenly, as if I’d called her name, my mother looks up at me. I watch as her smile begins to fade. Tentatively, she reaches out to touch my hair. Her hand is gentle and hesitant as she moves it down to stroke the side of my face from temple to chin, pausing only to cup my cheek.
Her eyes are locked on mine and I hold my breath, willing myself not to cry as she stares at me. I want to beg her to know me, to recognize me, and to love me. But I don’t. I simply stare back at her. And wait.
Finally, with great purpose it seems, she removes her hand to reach up under her hair and pull the necklace over her head. She looks at it, her thumb brushing reverently over the sticker she just placed, and then she slips the chain over my head instead.
A gift.
The first she’s given me since her accident.
I pull my hair out from under the flimsy plastic chain and settle the bottle cap against my breastbone. Momma’s lips curve into a different, more tender kind of smile and she presses her palm to my chest, covering the charm. She holds her hand there. She’s quiet, as though, intuitively, she knows this moment is special.
The heat from Momma’s hand leaches into my skin, providing its own bit of comfort. We sit like that for several long seconds, and for just a heartbeat, she’s my mom again and I’m her daughter. For just a minute, she’s not broken and neither am I.
Only, in reality, we both are.
Something within her mind intrudes on the moment, bringing back the woman-child my mother has become. Her expression shifts and, with the zeal of a pre-teen, she dives back into the jewelry set to make something else, taking out beads and sifting through bottle caps for just the right colors.
Grief gushes through me. I want that moment back. I want my mom back.
Blinking rapidly to clear my eyes of the water gathering there, I look down at the charm she gave me. I wasn’t paying attention to how she’d decorated it, but I’m paying attention now. In the center of the bottle cap is a sticker of a yellow button.
A button.
When I was a little girl, my mother used to call me her button. It was a pet name. Nothing special. Just some silly little thing between us.
It doesn’t seem so silly now.
My pulse stutters and, for a moment, I am overcome with hope.
Could this mean…?
Is it possible…?
Is there any way that, on some level, Momma knows me?
I watch her hopefully, praying for some other sign that she meant to do this, that she remembers me, that she knows me. I watch and I wait, her fingers working nimbly as she pushes beads onto a bracelet. When she finally smiles up at me, however, that hope is dashed. I see the same friendly child I always see. There is no guile in her eyes, no pain and no suffering, but there is also no real recognition either.
That moment, whatever it was, is gone.
I smile to cover the ache inside, and when my heart breaks into another, smaller piece, I decorate it with bottle caps and buttons and stickers, and I label it simply Momma.