Tell Me Something Real Read online

  “My dad’s wood glue, mostly. Some crazy glue. After everything was stable, I ran a match up and down the sides to make it stick more. See that?” She points to the base of the structure, to the corners where the panes come together. “I melted candle wax over the glue. I like how it looks. It softens the glass too, takes away the sharpness. Makes it safer to handle.”

  We lean closer to the piece and note the different expressions and poses of Mom. In the far corner, two figures rest in a coffin bed. I squint to see Adrienne, grade-school age, curled against Mom.

  I take my eyes away from the piece and look at Adrienne. She looks disheveled and exhausted. Paint and glue dirty her fingernails. A stray marigold petal clings to her hair. She wears the same ripped jeans and wrinkled T-shirt as yesterday. For the moment, there’s an absence of anger. Just a bandaged hand and a broken memorial to Mom. Hothouse flowers exposed to the cold.

  That afternoon we go to the Catholic school as a family, the three of us and Dad. I expect the classrooms to resemble a chapel with burning candles and biblical-themed stained-glass windows. While it has religious flourishes, portraits of Mary and ornate wooden crosses, the school is as institutional as mine. Smaller rooms, cleaner desks, and fewer students, all looking crisp in their ironed uniforms.

  A circle of girls speak in hushed tones. I wander over to find out what they’re talking about: a Little House on the Prairie episode. They all wear dainty sterling crosses, and one of the girls added a few saint medallions to her necklace. I want to ask if she emulates the saints, if this is some phase only obsessively religious nine-year-olds share.

  Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception accepts Marie, along with Dad’s generous check. The school principal, Sister Mary Margaret, a woman we recognize from Mass, isn’t disturbed by Marie’s behavior, not even surprised. Instead, she jots down notes and suggests books that will focus her piety and prayers. We don’t go as far as to tell her about Marie’s shorn hair, how she thinks her prayers somehow spared Mom’s life.

  We sit in the principal’s small office, the only adornment a picture of the pope.

  “What about clothes?” Adrienne asks. “Marie likes to wear these special shirts.”

  Sister Mary Margaret smiles, yet still manages to look stern. “Yes, I’ve seen them and they are quite impressive, but you can’t wear them here. We have uniforms.” She presents Marie with a folded bundle.

  Marie accepts the plaid skirt as though it’s a gift from the holy spirit. Who knew cheap polyester could be regarded as divine? She smoothes the fabric.

  “I have something else for you, Marie,” the sister says as she runs her finger along the spines of a full bookcase. “Here.”

  Butler’s Lives of the Saints. “I think you’ll enjoy this more than any of the other students. I’ve had that since high school.”

  “Thank you for loaning it to me. I’ll take good care of it.”

  “It’s for you, Marie. Think of it as a ‘welcome to school’ present.”

  My heart swells with gratitude for this woman, as nondescript as a Ford sedan, dressed in a simple khaki skirt and white blouse, who just saved my baby sister. A superhero without a cape. That guidance counselor was right. It’s an obvious choice, the best one, to send Marie here, a place where she feels safe. She isn’t the first to be rescued by myths and invisible friends. As we say good-bye and walk out the office door, Marie looks over her shoulder at the stained-glass windows.

  Adrienne and Marie drop Dad and me at the house before setting off to buy knee-highs and Mary Janes—items Adrienne thinks will somehow complete Marie’s new school wardrobe. A makeover: less tortured martyr and more studious school girl.

  Dad and I sit in his study, a long and pale room the color of the sky on a breezy afternoon. His drafting table faces the window. Stacks of books and files cover the surface. More stacks, some on the floor, blanket the carpet. The piles obscure the framed photos, most of our family with a few scenic shots, the rest architectural. As I glance around, I notice that all of the pictures of Mom—wedding, honeymoon, island vacations—are flipped over, face down, completely hidden from view. But not packed away.

  “Will it work for you and Adrienne to drop Marie off and pick her up like usual?” he asks. “We need to get back into a routine.”

  “You sound like Barb.”

  “I’m trying to be like Barb.”

  I’m not prepared for his voice to catch, for his knuckles to turn white, revealing a fresh scar. It’s then that I notice the window, the pane cracked like a fault line, the point of impact the size of his fist.

  I inspect his hand. “When did you do that?” I ask, searching my mind for a memory of Dad losing it. Not a single one. “What happened?”

  He avoids my eyes. “I did it after I told you about your mom. When you were asleep.”

  I shake my head, too shocked to push him, too worried about what else he’s broken, what parts of the house and his body. My father, so gentle he refuses to eat rabbit and lamb, punched his fist through glass.

  “Are you okay now?”

  “Better.” He gives me a weak smile.

  I glance at his calendar, spread open on his desk, the week filled with scattered appointments with names I don’t recognize. He’s due back at work in two weeks. Everything will change then. Maybe we’ll be too busy to think about her every second, waking and sleeping. Maybe then my music will be about more than Mom. She is seeping into everything in my life, every molecule.

  He follows my gaze and puts his finger on Friday, tomorrow, four o’clock in the afternoon. Dr. Shepherd.

  “That’s our family counseling appointment.”

  “I don’t know if Adrienne will go,” I say.

  “Good thing Adrienne isn’t the parent. She needs to give it a try. She might feel differently once she sees a counselor.”

  “She already has. We both have.”

  He leans back in his chair, waiting for me to continue, his mouth set in a straight line. I tell him about Zach and the crystal pitcher and the posters and Dr. Whelan.

  “And you thought it was a good idea to handle this on your own? Your mother was the one who wanted you to take care of everything. Not me. You need to come to me with this. Do you understand?”

  “We had to take care of Marie, and I wanted to give Adrienne a chance, you know, to have some time to figure this out. I’m telling you now.”

  He leans forward, his arms folded on the desk. “Do you see?”

  “See what?”

  “Sometimes we have to wait, especially when things are difficult and a lot is happening at once. This is why I needed time to tell you about your mom.”

  I’m not a runner, but it takes everything I have to keep my butt in the chair. I don’t share Adrienne’s constant fury, like the quiet hum of a wasp’s nest. Mine flashes like a comet streaking through the sky, fast, appearing for a fleeting moment before burning out. Now my anger flares so brilliantly it could light up the night. “It’s not the same thing. You let us think she was dying!”

  “I didn’t say it was, but I am hoping it gives you some perspective.”

  Only one thing will give me some perspective, what was born from my piece, unintentional but necessary. “I want to see her.”

  “Vanessa, this is not what I meant. You don’t need to see her to understand where I’m coming from—”

  I lean forward, pleading. “Yes I do.”

  “It won’t help. She can’t give you anything. She can barely speak a sentence. I’m not saying this to hide anything from you.”

  I place my palms on his desk, pressing hard. “Then show me.”

  “Maybe in a few days. I can take you after school, but I don’t want Marie to know. She’ll want to come and that would be devastating for her.”

  “Dad,” I say. “I want to go now. Today.”

  “That’s out of the question.”

  I smack the desk, startling us both. “No, it’s not. We can get in the car right now and drive the
re. You want to help me, right? Then take me. Please, Dad. I need to see her.”

  He rounds the desk and pulls me into a bear hug, holding me hard like he did when I was little, like he does with Marie. “Let’s talk to the therapist first, okay?”

  I shake my head. “No, if I don’t do it now, then I’ll wimp out. I have to do this. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” I don’t, though, not with my head; there’s just something inside me propelling me forward, something I can’t explain.

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Yes,” I say, and I feel his embrace tighten protectively. Even when he lets me go, as I follow him to the car, he holds onto my hand.

  He pushes open the heavy glass door and approaches the front desk. A stout woman emerges, smiling, saying his name. They talk like old friends. I watch her dark braid sway from side to side as she escorts us down the pistachio-colored hall, around a corner, and into a smaller lobby. The facility is painted in a sherbet palette: orange, strawberry, and pineapple. Colors of false cheer.

  We reach a desk enclosed in safety glass. She rings the buzzer, waves at the nurse behind the glass. “Babcock,” she says. Before she leaves, she turns to Dad and says casually, “See you tomorrow. Take care.”

  The nurse signals to a security guard and waves us through. I hear another buzz, and the guard opens the metal door and walks us into another room, small, white, windowless. Gone are the ice-cream colors. I’m reminded of the guards at the border crossing, the way they’re both hyperaware and disinterested at the same time. I look around the room, bare as a prison cell. I imagined nurses and monitored walks through a garden, hedges masking fences. I know it is a psych hospital, but I hadn’t pictured security guards and buzzing locks.

  I would take a seat, but the room is empty. I turn to Dad with fear on my face.

  “This is worse than I imagined,” I say.

  He steps toward me and wraps his arm around my shoulders. “I know.”

  Someone buzzes open the door and there is Mom, walking with a man wearing blue scrubs. She wears a bathrobe and pajamas I don’t recognize. Someone cut her hair to her chin, and it looks nice. It frames her face. She gained back some weight. Not a ton, but enough to make her look human instead of like one of Adrienne’s Day of the Dead portraits. It takes me a minute to notice her drooping eyelids, her open mouth. She shuffles forward. “Sweetheart,” she slurs.

  “What’s wrong with her?” I ask.

  The man, a nurse or an orderly, I can’t tell, says, “They’re still working on her meds. She comes and goes. I’ll be right outside. Shout if you need anything.”

  The room feels ice cold. I flash back to pills, injections, and infusions. A prescription-fueled nightmare.

  She says a garbled sentence twice before I understand her words. She speaks without enunciating. “I miss you,” she says. She seems too tired to stand. She reaches out to hug me, and my first instinct is to step back before forcing myself to stop and greet her. I don’t know if I’ll see her again, if I can survive another encounter. This is good-bye, and I root myself in the moment.

  She smells of rubbing alcohol and orange juice. She breathes through her mouth. Mom doesn’t move, and after a few moments, I worry that she fell asleep, but then she says my name. Nothing else, just my name.

  Mom can’t explain herself. She doesn’t have answers. This loss feels completely, univocally true. I start to cry, and then, almost immediately, try to stop. I’m there with a purpose: my music, my only language.

  I lower myself to the floor, cradling the cassette player in my hands. “I want you to hear something, Mom. Can you listen?”

  “Vanessa,” she says again.

  I pat the floor. “Sit.”

  Dad helps her down and they sit across from me, side by side, and stare at the tape player like it’s from another world, evidence of extraterrestrial life. I press play.

  Mom leans forward, and I think of Mrs. Albright’s story about Beethoven, how he rested on the floor, next to his maimed piano, to absorb the vibrations. Anything to experience the music. I tell myself that Mom is doing the same, but she looks away and jiggles her leg. She strokes Dad’s face.

  He doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move away. Tears stream down his cheeks as he meets my eyes. He understands the piece.

  I was wrong—it is impossible to say good-bye in any language, words or music. She is out of reach, fingering a loose thread on her bathrobe, oblivious to any sound except for what is in her head. We will be here forever, suspended in this state of half truths and grief. We’ll never know why she did this, or how we let her, all of us her witnesses. All of us her casualties.

  Dad and I startle when she slaps the stop button. “I need to rest. I have chest pains. I need to see my doctor. I need to take something for this pain.”

  “But there is nothing you can take, Iris. You need to live with it.”

  “That’s not what my doctor says. She says I shouldn’t be in pain—”

  The air leaves the room. I try to breathe, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Nothing’s changed, but everything has. “I need to leave,” I say, knocking on the door. “Dad, please. Now!”

  The man opens the door. I turn to Mom, who stands in the middle of the room, and I see a flicker of recognition. She is just below the surface. I have months of practice seeing her like this, almost visible through the fog of drugs. We’re back in her bedroom after an infusion. Peonies blooming on the nightstand. Mom struggling to get comfortable. Me feeding her pills.

  Wait for me.

  Scoot.

  Before I can stop myself, I throw my arms around her, letting go as fast as possible. Catch and release.

  “Bye, Mom.”

  She calls my name, several times, but I don’t look back. Dad follows right behind.

  I understand why Dad punched the window. I want to hurl the cassette player through the windshield, anything physical to mimic the shattering feeling inside me. To drown it out.

  He unlocks the passenger door and I climb inside the car.

  “You go every day?” I ask.

  He nods. “For now.”

  “God, Dad. You still love her.”

  He takes me by both shoulders. “You do too. That music, Vanessa. It’s extraordinary. I’ll always love her, but that doesn’t change or excuse what she did. She’s safe here, and you and your sisters are safe from her. That is what really matters.”

  “You’re torturing yourself by going. I can’t go back. Ever. Why do you bother? She’s not even Mom anymore.”

  He sighs. “The woman I married—the woman who had you and your sisters—is somewhere inside her. That’s why I go back. I want to see that woman again, but I’m beginning to think that will never happen.” He rests his head against the steering wheel. “I didn’t want you to see her like this. This is better than her screaming, though. I’m glad you didn’t see that.”

  “I didn’t understand, Dad. I really didn’t.”

  “I know, and I didn’t want to expose you to this.”

  I slap the tears from my cheeks. I wish I didn’t have to live with the memory of today. There isn’t any peace in this.

  “It’s not going to get easier,” I say. “We’ll always know she’s here. I wish she was far away. I don’t want her to be so close. I want to study music, Dad. I want to transfer. Please let me go. It’s the only way I can get away from her.”

  He doesn’t lie to me. He doesn’t try to make me feel better by saying she’ll improve. He looks me square in the eye and says, “This will never be easy, no matter where you are.”

  When Dad pulls me close, I finally feel a sense of relief, however slight. It’s just like the moments when we saw the hummingbird and the harvest moon, only visible to the two of us. We need to protect Adrienne and Marie. This is something I never want to share with them, something I never want them to see.

  Something else shifts inside me. I will transfer. No matter what, I will go. If I don’t allow myself t
o play—really play—then I won’t get through this. I need my family, I need Caleb, but I need music more. Mom can’t be my future.

  We drive toward the freeway. I turn on the radio. “Something” by the Beatles. My head fills with the song and Mom’s voice singing along, so clear, like it’s the only music I ever heard.

  Fourteen

  We strike a deal, Marie and me, that she’ll leave her hair intact if we make a month’s worth of saint shirts, one a night until we fill her drawers. We skim Sister Mary Margaret’s gift, Lives of the Saints, a thick volume with few illustrations. Even though Marie dismisses the male saints, as well as females over the age of twenty-five, she has dozens of new discoveries. A bizarre sorority of virgin martyrs.

  Joan still reigns supreme, but Ursula, the patron saint of school girls, catches Marie’s interest. Adrienne, who agrees to illustrate the T-shirts, scans Ursula’s descriptions, arching an eyebrow as she reads.

  “I totally approve,” Adrienne says. “She’s badass. In order to avoid marrying some king, she took her ladies in waiting on a pilgrimage. She said she had to have ten girls come as companions, but each girl had to bring one thousand virgin maids with her. Eleven thousand girls went off in boats, but then some assholes killed them. Vanessa, with Caleb coming back, I doubt you’d be eligible for the virgin voyage. Lucky you.”

  I toss Marie’s first communion book at Adrienne, who dodges it like she’s the soccer player in the family. I almost envy Marie, so clearly destined for the cloisters.

  We spread out on the floor, carpet instead of beach towels, lamps instead of Mexican sunshine, and huddle close. Adrienne puts on a Blondie album, her new favorite, and sings along with Debbie Harry as she sketches the boats sailing across the sea, small dots in the waves, a Milky Way of vessels. Despite Marie’s pleas, Adrienne refuses to draw saints in their final moments of torture and death. Marie picks Saint Agnes next, kneeling in prayer with steepled hands and a wry smile. The patron saint of chastity, yet Adrienne somehow makes her look slutty.

  “It’s crazy, but I miss the clinic,” Adrienne says. “Not Mom’s crazy fucking bullshit, but, you know, how we were together.”