Young Writers Society

Chapter three; Present Day

“Mom? Are you okay?”

If you have ever traveled in your mind to a past experience, you should know that it’s hard to be jerked back into reality when you’re far away from it. Fumbling in the clutches of your past makes you forget about all that’s present. My vision blurred and I blinked a few times. At last, my eyes cleared and I looked down at my ten year old daughter looking up at me curiously, half expecting to see my mother’s short, frail body standing in front of me.

“I’m fine, Sylvia. Where’s your father?”

“He said he was going to take a few boxes inside, and then to see if the house was safe. He wanted me to check on you.”

I touched my beautiful daughter’s dark brown head and said again, “I’m fine, honey. Let’s go find your dad.” I put my arm around her shoulder, which wasn’t a big difference considering at her age, she was already five foot four against my five foot eight and growing quickly. Together, we walked to the back door. The first room we entered was the laundry room, just a small cubby that held a simple washer and dryer, but was big enough to fit a few people. Without looking around, we passed through it and came to the dining room, set with an oak table and four chairs to match, a china cabinet, and a doorway that led into the kitchen. I gave the kitchen a glance and then disregarded it, directing my daughter to the other doorway that led to the living room and staircase. I saw about four cardboard boxes at the foot of the staircase and looked up to see my husband coming down the stairs. I looked up at his six foot two figure as he reached the bottom and immediately read the same concern etched on his face as he studied mine. His face, usually soft and kind, had a rugged edge to it this morning; the consequence of not shaving his quick to grow beard in more that three days. His stubble reached out from his chin and cheeks, finally spreading around his mouth. My eyes finally reached his deep, soft brown ones and a comfort settled somewhere inside of me. Andrew Black was the love of my life. He reached out and rubbed my left arm.

“How are you doing, sweetheart?” he asked, glancing toward Sylvia while she stepped out from under my arm and went to explore the fireplace in the living room. I attempted, rather pathetically, a brave, reassuring smile and said, “As good as can be expected, I suppose.” His eyebrow rose quizzically, as if he knew I was thinking about more. “It’s just a lot of memories coming to me that I haven’t thought about in years,” I elaborated further. His smile was empathetic and he slipped his arm around my shoulders, bringing me to his chest. I felt his beard graze my forehead as he kissed me. I flashed him another false smile to reassure at least a microscopic of his worries and we walked toward our daughter.

“Who’s this, Mom?” I heard Sylvia ask, and I took what she was waving in my face. Looking more intently at the object, I realized it was a photograph encased with an expensive silver frame. I had seen this many times before and I even remembered posing for it. “This is your grandmother, your uncle Paul, and I in front of this house,” I explained to her, pointing out who was who with each name.

“But you were so small!” she squealed and as always, I delighted over her smile and giggles.

“Well, I was only eight years old.” I put the photograph back on the mantle, where Sylvia must have found it. My mother had put it there years ago. My fingers lingered on the center of the picture, touching the faces of what used to be my only family. “Perfect!” Virginia Kaysen had shouted with glee as she carefully placed the newly framed picture on the stone. She turned to me with a smile. “Now, Cecilia, whenever our family is going through a difficult time, we need only to look at this picture to remind ourselves that families stick together: even when things get tough.” Still in the stage where I thought my mother was the most intelligent person in the world, I nodded earnestly and stood on the bottom stone of the fireplace where I could see the picture more clearly. We had taken it a week before by Martha Edison. Paul, thirteen and already as tall as our five foot five mother, stood in between my mother and I. Our arms were around each other and bright smiles lit up our faces. We were happy.

I felt a hand cover my own and I turned, realizing it wasn’t my mother’s hand but Drew’s and I wasn’t eight years old.

“Lia?” Drew said softly. He tore my stagnant hand away from the mantle and intertwined our fingers to keep mine away from the photo. He was about to say something else when his cell phone rang. I left him to it and walked to where my daughter was. She was sitting on the beige couch flipping through a book she had found on the coffee table. I sat next to her.

“What do you have there, honey?”

“Leaves of Grass,” she said slowly, reading the cover of the book. “Walt Whitman.”

It had been my mother’s favorite book. I turned my head away, not wanting to see it, and instead averted my attention to Drew just in time to see him shut his cell phone almost angrily. He sighed deeply before he turned. I knew who it had been before he even spoke the words.

“That was the funeral home, Cecilia. Sarah won’t have anything to do with them still. They need you over there to make a few more arrangements.”

I put my thumb and index finger into my tightly closed eyes, shaking my head fiercely. “I thought I was finished with that.” He shrugged, not knowing what else to do, a helpless look planted on his face.

“You go,” I said, searching for an escape route. “Take Sylvia home and you can go. I’ll stay here.”

“Take Sylvia home by herself? Why don’t you just go home as well?”

“Sarah’s there.” Sarah Kaysen, once Sarah Edison, was my brother’s wife and was temporarily living with my family and me at our house.

“Lia, I don’t think it’s a good id-“

“Drew,” I interrupted my voice firm. “Sarah will take care of Sylvia. Even in her state, she will. You can make the arrangements just as good as I can. You know what needs to be done. Please. I can’t go back there right now. And I still have to get things straightened out here.” Our eyes caught. “I can’t,” I said simply. I saw understanding in his eyes, but still concern remained.

“But by yourself…” The rest of the sentence hung with all its uncertainty in the air.

“Please,” I said again, desperate, “I can’t go back there. Drew, I’ll be fine. I promise.”

After a few more minutes of his apprehensive disagreements, Drew finally and reluctantly decided in my favor. He bent down and gave me a quick kiss before taking Sylvia’s hand.

“Can I take this, Mom?” Sylvia asked me, gesturing to the book she was still holding in her hand.

Still not wanting to see the book, I turned away and said, “Sure, honey. I’ll see you in a little bit.”

I heard the shut of the front door as my husband and daughter walked out and a few minutes later the engine started outside. After that, all I heard was silence. I could even feel the stillness of the entire house crawling through every inch of my skin. Any feeling of ease I had while Drew was with me was now gone.

“Well,” I said to myself aloud, “might as well start somewhere.” I put my hands on my knees and pushed myself up. I decided to start at the bottom and work my way up. Taking the box that my husband had packed bubble wrap in, I headed toward the dining room. I examined the dining room table more closely, running my hand along the length of it as I walked. You could see where my two fingers had drawn a line, the crumpled dust on my hand, the proof that I had touched it. I put the box on the table and took out the bubble wrap, setting it aside. I turned around to face the china cabinet. Besides the overwhelming amount of dust that inhabited the wood and glass, it was exactly as I remembered it. In it were all of my mother’s favorite dishes; plates and cups other people had given to her in her lifetime. Most were rather extravagant and beautifully painted patterns occupied most of the delicate plates. Others were of more sentimental value or had been given to my mother as gifts to feed her collector’s hunger. The first plate I reached for was the one that had been my mother’s favorite. It was a family heirloom in some sorts, something that had been passed down to the women in my family for four generations. Its design along the edge of the porcelain plate was brilliantly crafted in blues and greens. My mother had told me the supposed history behind it over and over when I was a kid staring up into the cabinet glass.

“When you great-great grandmother, Laura, turned eighteen,” she would always begin, “her parents flew her to France to celebrate her birthday. In the most romantic city in the world and unsupervised for the first time in her life, she fell in love with a twenty-three year old Frenchman by the name of Frederique de Fleur. Now, Frederique was a very handsome gentleman, but was born into a poor family. All he had when your great-great grandmother met him was the clothes on his back, the love in his heart, and this plate.” She would then hold the plate up lovingly, handling it as if it would break at any time. “His mother had given it to him, just before she died. It was all she had to give. Back then, this plate was probably worth thousands of dollars, but even in his years of poverty, he didn’t sell it. He chose to live a poor man’s life instead of selling the only memory he had left of his mother. Laura fell in love quickly with Frederique and him with her. Their romance blossomed but they were running out of time. Laura was only there for a month and Frederique could not afford to fly back to the states with her. So, Laura decided to stay in France with him, to sacrifice the riches of her family and risk being disowned to be with the man she loved.” She would pause and stare at the plate, sadness etched on her face. “What happened then, Mama?” I would press. She’d shake her head, nodding off into the sadness of the story. “Frederique was killed the day Laura was going to tell her family about them; stabbed to death while trying to recapture a purse a thief had stolen from a woman right in front of his eyes. Losing him devastated her and she was never the same after that. This plate was the only thing she had left of true love. She came back to the states with it, heartbroken, and grieved for years. Finally, she married an American man, your great-great grandfather. He loved Laura with a passion, but she could never return his love, for her heart had been given away long ago. She passed down this plate to my grandmother, who then passed it on to my mother, who finally passed it on to me. She let it go with one message: never marry someone you know you’ll never love.” Mother would grow silent then, lost in the story, lost in the patterns on the plate. “Will you give it to me one day, Mama?” She’d turn to me, smile broadly, gently put it back into its place, and pat my head. I never heard anything she said after that. All I focused on was that I had made her smile.

My mother could always tell a good story, fiction or non. I wrapped the plate in bubble wrap and moved on. It took a good while to pack the rest of the things and when I was finished, I had a box full of dishes. I took one last look around. My family, meaning my mother and brother, had had a lot of good times in the kitchen, before my mother stopped cooking. She stopped doing everything, really. She stopped doing all of the things it meant to be alive. I sighed and carried the box to the welcome mat by the front door. I set it down and wondered what to pack next. Now that I had most of the glass in the house safely packaged, I decided to go upstairs and work my way down. There were four rooms upstairs: a bathroom, what used to be my parent’s room, what used to be my room, and an extra room we had used for storage. The extra room we had all used, I to store my books, Paul to view the stars from the balcony adjoining the room, and my mother to put her countless notebooks and papers she kept to herself. The first room I came to after I climbed the stairs was my own. I had painted it white the year I turned fifteen. By then, I was weary of all color. My entire life my mother had wanted to paint everything over and over again. Once she chose a vibrant color to splash the walls with and spent two or three days painting it, a week later she decided against it. She was never satisfied with any of the results. I decided to keep my room white and give life to the room with paintings instead. My queen sized bed was the centered on the wall farthest from the door and the quilt I had slept with as a teenager was still made up nicely on top. The closet to my left was still filled with blouses, jeans, and an assortment of shoes and other accessories that I had left over fourteen years ago. I ignored everything else in my room and only focused on finding one thing. I walked to the bed, kneeled down, and reached my hand under.

What I brought out was a music box that Paul had given me for my fifteenth birthday. I hadn’t packed anything in my room, even the box, and even while I knew I was leaving it, I never really understood why I felt the need to. I had loved the music box from the first time I saw it, had played the song in it a countless amount of times. In the month of April just after I had turned sixteen, I had put it underneath my bed with a feeling that I had to leave it and would return for it one day. I had been right.

It was a fairly large size for a music box and opening it, even after fifteen years, it still played the music to “Somewhere over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. There were jewelry pieces, among other objects, in the box, but I paid them no attention. My gaze landed on what I had been looking for; a note that Paul had written to me on the inside. ‘You’ll find happiness somewhere over the rainbow, kiddo. Never stop searching for it. Love you, Lia’, was all it said. It was enough. I hugged the box to my chest, sunk down to the floor, and sobbed.

Chapter four; May, Nineteen ninety-nine

I never knew my father. My mother refused to talk about him whenever I asked, which, and I blame my twelve year old inquisitive nature, was a frequent thing in my house. The routine had become as such: I would ask, she would refuse, and I’d stomp to my room, furious. Paul would come in seconds after I slammed my door infuriatingly, doing his best to answer any questions that I had. His name was Evan Paul Kaysen, I found out, and he and my mother had met and married in their last year of high school. Paul had only been ten when he left, and his memory of him stood out much more than mine. Out of the two of us, Paul was hurt the most by our father’s hasty departure. I never had a father to miss. Paul, on the other hand, had a closet full of memories to ponder about. One thing I did remember was that he was tall, a lot taller than my mom. Paul said he got his blue eyes from him; my own eyes were a pale hazel. Paul’s hair was a dirty blonde, which he said he got from our father, while mine was a very rich brown like our mother’s. My most vivid memory of my father is also my very first memory. It was when I was four and the four of us were walking along the shore at the beach. Paul had my mother’s hand and I sat on top of my father’s shoulders. I had an assortment of wonderful emotions floating about inside. I could feel the wind; I thought I could see for miles, I felt as though I could fly. I saw my father smiling up at me, which made our mother smile as well, and I saw my small fingers wrapping around his light hair. I could see his eyes laughing, his bright blue eyes that were the same as Paul’s. Growing up, I hadn’t been sure if this memory was real until I asked Paul. He told me he remembered that day as well, and I was extremely joyful to hear I had at least one memory of the man that left.

Paul informed me of what exactly happened the day he left when I turned twelve. “It was just another day, like any other,” he started. “The day dragged on and everything was fine, everything was perfectly normal. Mom made breakfast-“

“Well, now that isn’t normal,” I’d intervene with my sarcasm and he would ignore it and keep on talking.

“Dad went to work, came home. It was that night when it started, after I went to sleep. I woke up and heard the two of them arguing. I don’t remember ever hearing them argue before that night. I followed their voices to their room. The door was closed so I opened it slightly to see what was going on. Most of the arguing was over by then, and he was packing his bags. Mom was begging him not to leave, pleading with him to stay for us. After that, he didn’t say a word. He looked at Mom for a long while, and then walked out with his suitcase and found me hiding at the door. He told me he had to leave and I asked him not to. He looked as though he was about to cry. He summoned me to go in your room, woke you up, and told us both that he loved us. He said to ‘take care of your mother’ and then told us goodbye. And then he left. Mom locked herself in her room for an entire week and we had to stay over at Martha’s.”

My mother wouldn’t talk about him, or why he left, after that day. Paul and I were left guessing and eventually, we learned to quite asking, to just keep our assumptions to each other. When I was eight and he was thirteen, Paul guessed he had been an alcoholic and a drug addict and that he has been in rehab all these years. I guessed that he had been called off on a secret job in an exciting foreign country somewhere, to feed his spy occupation, and he would show up someday soon with his sincerest apologies and gifts and stay forever. As we got older, of course, the hard truth hit us. He left us, and he wasn’t coming back.

Paul came into my room one day in May, sat down on my bed, and watched me do my homework at my desk. I finished a math problem I had been working on and turned to him. He was looking at me strangely, almost as if he was staring right through me.

“Paul?” I said, putting down my pencil and turning my full attention to him. “Are you okay?” He stared at me and titled his head. He looked as though he was just now noticing that I was there.

“I was sitting on the porch stairs and Mom came out and sat beside me,” he started to explain vaguely. “’Your father used to sit out here all the time’, she said, and I was so shocked that she mentioned him that I couldn’t even say anything. When I finally could, I asked her where he was. She said he was probably dead. When I asked from what, she just looked so sad and got up. I checked when I came in. She’s locked herself in her room.”

“Do you think he’s dead?” I couldn’t help but ask. A part of me was saddened by my mother’s confession.

He shook his head, nodded, shook his head again and then stared out the window. “I don’t know. Do you think we could feel it, if he was?”

I shrugged, and we both grew silent. After a minute, I asked, “Paul, why do you think he left us?”

It took an eternity for him to answer. I could tell he was searching for an answer, as he probably had been since the day our father had left six years ago, as he probably would for the rest of his life. “I don’t think he wanted to leave us. I think he wanted to leave mom.”

I never asked Paul about our father after that day.