73
Inside the house we all used to live in, there is one pair of shoes at the door. The kettle perpetually steams. I use the same water glass six times before I wash it. I break dishwasher tabs in half. The hangers in each closet are spaced two inches apart and there’s nobody here to move them. There are splotches of tea on the hallway floor that I haven’t yet wiped, although I think about doing it every day. I put inordinate importance on organized drawers, and the plants are overwatered. There are forty-two rolls of toilet paper in the basement. I nearly always forget to remove this item from the list of groceries I reorder every other week online.
I hope for a mouse, and I know this is strange, but I often yearn for the comfort of a regular visitor, the crinkle of a bag in the cupboard or the scatter of claws on the hardwood; brief, nonverbal, predictable company.
On some weekends, I turn on the Formula 1 races. The pitchy hiss of the engines and the British commentary take me back to Sunday mornings before swim lessons, when I’d bring you eggs and coffee, toast without the crust for Violet.
* * *
? ? ?
I’ve grown used to the loneliness, but there was someone who only came over when Violet was at your house. He was a less than successful literary agent whom Grace introduced me to. He liked to fuck me slowly with the bedroom windows wide open, listening to the footsteps on the concrete of the sidewalk. I think feeling close to the strangers outside made him come faster.
I’m starting with that, but it won’t make the right impression. He was measured and intelligent, and he was a reason to cook at night, to open a bottle of wine. He used up the toilet paper. He added warmth to the bed when I needed it on occasion. I liked the fact that he never asked about Violet—they didn’t exist to each other. I hadn’t met a man who was easier to be around, in that sense, than he was. He didn’t like to think about the fact that I had children—that my body had birthed and had fed. You thought of motherhood as the ultimate expression of a woman, but he didn’t; for him, the vagina was nothing other than a vessel for his pleasure. To think of it otherwise made him physically queasy, the way others felt when they gave blood. He told me this once when I told him I had an appointment for a Pap smear.
He read my writing and we talked about what I could do and what could sell. He wanted me to write young adult, something commercial and angsty that would work with the right cover. Something, in other words, that would work for him to represent and monetize. Sometimes I wondered about his motives, in that respect. But I was on the cusp of the age when women worry about disappearing to everyone but themselves, blending in with their sensible hair, their practical coats. I see them walk down the street every day as though they’re ghosts. I suppose I wasn’t ready to be invisible yet. Not then.
1972–1974
Henry’s sense of parental responsibility seemed to have died with Etta. His heart was too broken to care for anyone else. He blamed himself for Etta’s suicide, although he was the only one who did—Cecilia knew he loved Etta, and that he had tried. Nobody said a word to Cecilia about what happened. Nobody knew what to say.
She barely went to school after that, but she was smart enough to keep her truancies below the point where they’d expel her. She had a hard time facing anyone there, and the feeling seemed mutual. She suspected all anyone saw when they looked at her was her dead mother hanging from a tree.
She spent most of her time reading poetry, which she discovered wandering the town’s library during the classes she skipped. The collection wasn’t very big. She could make it through the entire two shelves in about two and a half weeks, and then she would start over again. She had dreams of finding Etta dead with her head in the oven, like Sylvia Plath, whose books she sometimes slept with under her pillow.
She began writing her own poetry, filling notebook after notebook, although she didn’t think any of it was any good. She did this until she turned seventeen, the year before graduation. She had decided by then that she needed to make her own money if she wanted to leave town and become someone new.
She took a caregiver job with Mrs. Smith, an elderly woman who lived a few doors down. Mrs. Smith had left a help wanted sign on her front door in printing that looked like a child’s. She was deaf and nearly blind, but she could still go about most of her business on her own. She needed someone to help with things that her hands couldn’t feel their way through anymore, so Cecilia would mend her clothes with a needle and thread or pinch the right amount of spice into her stew. She wasn’t used to helping anyone but herself, so she found this role unexpectedly satisfying, if a little tedious at times. But she liked that she could go around a familiar house without another person’s demons threatening her day. There was a kind of peace and order there she had never felt before.
When Mrs. Smith died in her sleep, Cecilia was the one who found her, lying halfway off the bed. One shrunken breast had fallen out of her white nightgown. While she thought of what to do next, she took the tin from the woman’s top dresser drawer. Cecilia had watched Mrs. Smith tuck her money away when she came from the bank each week. She found $680, enough for a ticket to the city, and room and board for a couple of months. Cecilia wondered if maybe Mrs. Smith had meant for her to have it—she had never tried to hide it from her, and she had no next of kin. Or at least this thought made her feel less guilty when she took every last dollar.