To Dance With the Devil

“I didn’t want to be late. Besides, it was just a dash across the parking lot. It’ll heal in a couple minutes.” In the meantime, it hurt. But I wasn’t going to say that.



She harrumphed. “You need to take better care of yourself.”



Talk about your pot calling the kettle black, I thought, but I forced myself to be diplomatic. I didn’t want to ruin the new accord between us. “I’ll try.”



“Do that.” She grinned at me and I couldn’t help but grin back.



Then, with a flicker, my mom and her shrink, Dr. Thomason, joined us via split screen.



Dr. Thomason was a big man, probably a good six six, built like a linebacker, and obviously Polynesian. He was dressed in a dove gray suit with a white shirt and blue-and-silver-striped tie. His smile of greeting was warm but professional. My mother sat next to him, wearing prison orange, on a long couch not much different from the one Gwen and I were seated on.



My mother, Lana Graves, had once been a beautiful woman, and you can still see the echoes of that beauty in her bone structure. But years of heavy drinking and drugging have put a lot of rough miles on her. Even now, clean and sober, she looked hard, brittle, and angry at the world. Her hair needed a good cut and a dye job, to make the two inches of dark roots match the yellow blonde of the rest of her hair. The bright orange jumpsuit washed out her skin and hung limply on a frame that was moving past thin and on to skeletal. Honestly, she looked older than my gran, and not nearly as nice.



She didn’t bother greeting either me or Gran. Instead, she glared at the screen and said, “What have you done with Ivy? Where’s my baby? For days now she hasn’t come when I called. What have you done?” She spat the words at me.



“Lana…” Dr. Thomason’s voice was calm but firm.



Shit. Well, wasn’t this getting us off to a fine start. “Hey, Mom. Good to see you, too.”



At my sarcasm, Gran’s expression darkened. “That’s enough! Both of you.” She looked directly into the screen, but I could tell it was my mother she was addressing. “Lana, baby, Ivy’s in heaven. She found her way home.”



“No!” my mother shrieked, launching herself to her feet. She pointed at the screen, at me. “You did this. You. You’re nothing but trouble. Well, you’re not taking her away from me again. I won’t let you. You’re not taking my baby from me again!”



“Lana, stop,” Gran ordered. But Mom wasn’t listening to her. She wasn’t listening to Dr. Thomason either as he tried to get her to sit down and calm down. Instead, she started calling my sister’s name, shouting for her the way she had when we were little, when she called us in from playing outdoors—to no avail. When she finally realized that Gran and I were telling the truth, that Ivy was never coming back, she started sobbing hysterically. Dr. Thomason called a halt to the proceedings so that he could deal with her privately.



Half the screen went dark. I stared at it for a long moment, trying to decide what I was feeling. I knew I should care that my mother was distraught, but I didn’t. That lack of feeling was so cold it scared me. But it was the truth. “Well, hell. That was useless.” The words popped out of my mouth, unbidden.



“Celia Kalino Graves!” Gran snapped.



I sighed and decided an apology and a change of subject were probably in order. “Sorry, Gran. So, um, how are you doing? How are you liking your new place?” Yeah, I was re-covering old ground, but it was the best I could think of under the circumstances.



She gave me a level look, to let me know that she absolutely knew what I was doing before letting me get away with it. “Yes, I am. Quite a lot. It’s so beautiful and peaceful. The view is magnificent.”



“The stairs are a pain in the butt, though.”



She laughed in spite of herself. “Yes, they are. But there’s a trail. It’s longer but less steep. I tend to take that instead. It’s easier on my knees.” She paused, her eyes going a little distant, her expression wistful. “It’s hard to believe Ivy’s really gone.”



“Yes, Gran.” My vision blurred. I hadn’t expected to cry. I didn’t want to. But the tears were very close to the surface. It wouldn’t take much to push me over the edge.



“What was holding her here?”



I swallowed hard. Talking about this, even to Gran, wasn’t easy, but she deserved to know. I forced myself to form the words, my voice soft and rough. “It was me. I blamed myself for what happened, felt guilty because I didn’t protect her. She died trying to save me, when I was the one who was supposed to take care of her.”



“Oh, honey, no. No. You can’t believe that! It wasn’t your fault at all!” Gran leaned forward, her expression earnest. “You mustn’t blame yourself. You were a child, a victim of those horrible men.” She was crying, tears sliding down her cheeks silvered by the light of the cameras. She pulled a cloth handkerchief from the bag next to her and wiped her eyes and nose.



I felt my throat tightening, and I had to fight to make the words sound normal as I said, “I finally figured that out and forgave myself for surviving.”



“That’s all that was holding her here—your guilt?”



I nodded. My vision was so blurry I couldn’t see the screen. Gwen passed me a box of tissues. I used a couple to wipe my eyes, then blew my nose noisily.



“I’m so proud of you, Celia.”



I looked at the screen, startled.



Gran continued, “And I’m so sorry. I was so blind.” She shook her head. She was still crying, wringing her hands around the old-fashioned handkerchief. “I did what you said. I went to a seer.” She stopped talking abruptly as her tiny body was racked with sobs. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I should’ve known. I didn’t believe…”



Oh, hell. During that last fight, I’d been angry enough to tell her to go to a clairvoyant and look at the past, to see for herself what had actually happened. It had been a cruel jab and I hadn’t actually expected her to do it. There were things she hadn’t known about that were beyond hurtful. “Gran, stop. You can’t beat yourself up over this. You were always there for us. You made sure we got by. You didn’t do anything wrong.”



“I should’ve known. You tried to tell me. I should’ve listened to you.”



I stopped, thinking hard. She was right—she should have known, and I had tried to tell her. But she hadn’t believed me, hadn’t been willing to believe that her daughter could sink so low. Still, saying that would only hurt her more. She didn’t need more hurt, didn’t deserve it. I didn’t want her to spend the rest of her life racked with guilt, thinking “what-if?” I wanted her happy and whole. In that moment, it was very important that I say just the right thing.



If only I knew what it was.



Then something occurred to me, something she had said to me not that long ago. “Gran, do you remember the night after you sold me your house? Do you remember what you said to me when we were sitting on the porch drinking margaritas?”



She blotted tears from her eyes with the wadded-up handkerchief in her hands and, though she didn’t say anything, I thought I saw a small nod. So I continued, “You told me that ‘people aren’t perfect. You have to forgive them. And you need to forgive yourself.’ Well, I forgive you. And you need to forgive yourself. We can’t undo the past, and I don’t want what happened to ruin our future.”



“I don’t know if I can,” she whispered.



“You have to try. Please, for me?”



I waited for a long moment until finally I saw her nod.



8



Gwen had blocked out enough time for a double session, figuring that we would need time after the family therapy conference to go over anything I needed help dealing with. Even though family therapy had been a bust, we needed the time anyway.



There was a lot to discuss. We talked about my mother a little, but not for long. I’d hashed out those issues again and again over the years. I’d made peace with my decision to cut my mother from my life until she became less toxic. I love my mom. I can’t seem to stop. But I’ve decided I don’t have to participate in her drama, don’t have to accept the blame she keeps shoving in my direction. And I won’t. So while her histrionics were upsetting and made me frustrated and angry, they weren’t the huge problem they could have been.



No, my big worry was the problem with my gran. She was in so much pain. For good or for ill, she loved my mother with her whole heart—sometimes to the exclusion of her whole mind. Again and again over the years, Gran had done stupid things that had enabled my mom’s bad behaviors. But she’d done those things for the right reasons, truly believing Mom was a better person than she actually was. I felt bad, knowing how much it must have hurt Gran to have that illusion shattered. I told Gwen that I wished I hadn’t suggested she see a psychic to find out the truth.



“But you did. Why?”



“Because I was tired of being the bad guy. It was always my fault. I was always the problem.”



Gwen nodded. “And now you’re not.”



“But I hurt her.”



“No. The truth hurt her.”



“But I’m the one who forced her to see it.”



“No. That was her choice. She could have ignored your suggestion. Instead, she found a psychic and had that person show her the truth. Now that she has that knowledge, she can make informed choices. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”



Gwen was right. The Bible says that the truth will set you free. I’m not sure I agree, but I hoped that in this case it would lead to much more honest relationships among the three of us in the future. But oh, getting through the present was going to be hard.



By the time I left Gwen’s office, I was better, though I still felt like I’d been put through the wringer. Intellectually, I knew that we’d made huge progress, but I was emotionally shaky. That always brought the vampire in me closer to the surface. So before I did anything else, I made sure to drink a nutrition shake and chow down on some baby food. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate anyway, and was rewarded by feeling the beast settle back down.