“When Spider Webs Unite” by Anita Veel

 

As I pulled into my garage, my neighbour Lorraine piloted the beast she calls a car into her own driveway with her Christian rock music blaring. The dissonance between the booming music and the earnest lyrics encouraging me to “quench my soul with the elixir of God’s love” made me giggle, despite my dismal mood. Especially as I knew Lorraine had likely spent the day eviscerating white collared criminals in her role as a forensic accountant. She loved it when they cried. I worked with families to identify and treat hearing loss in young children. I hated it when they cried.

Given the opposing nature of our personalities, we were either going to love or despise each other. I had thought she was a total bitch when they first moved in beside us and she’d applied a remarkable level of commitment to returning the favour.

Our passive-aggressive skirmishes over fence lines and armour stone had been obliterated two summers ago by the news that our husbands, who’d hit it off despite our best efforts, had both been killed during a boating accident up north.

Our lives had been woefully, but somehow still beautifully, entangled in a delicate web ever since. We used the web analogy to define our new reality because Lorraine once told me there is an Ethiopian proverb that says, “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.” Restraining lions was impressive but I’d be grateful enough if our webs could somehow help us snare our teenagers. Especially now.

My beautiful, cross-country running, mall-frequenting daughter Chayse has refused to speak or leave her room for almost two weeks. Lorraine’s beautiful, baseball-playing, algebra-loving son Marcus has refused to come home for the same amount of time. We were certain the timing was no coincidence, and we were both worried sick.

“I heard from Marcus today,” Lorraine said by way of greeting. “He’s found a new couch and has been staying at that ding-dong Lucas’ house.”

“Any chance you can convince him to come home?”

“I don’t know.” Lorraine sounded exhausted. “What could possibly be going on that both of our kids have clammed up? I told Marcus I didn’t care if he was on drugs, if there were naked pictures of him online, if he was flunking school, if he stole something …”

I could see her wracking her brain for anything that could have caused Marcus to flee.

“I don’t care what it is,” she continued after a long exhale. “I just need him to come home.”

“Come over after you eat, and we’ll brainstorm,” I told her as we headed to our respective front doors.

Dinner consisted of questionable leftovers and a new brand of tea that promised to have me sleeping like a newborn baby. I had just finished cleaning up when Lorraine let herself in through my back door.

“Seriously, Rach. What could have happened?” Lorraine kicked off her shoes on her way to the fridge to pour herself a glass of wine.  She waved the bottle at me and I shook my head in response. Most nights, she drank enough for the both of us. That was why she took the lead on battles fought during the day, handling much of the legal manipulations and financial bullshit that comes when one is widowed. I kept watch for us at night, when the delusions and demons came out to play.

I was about to tell her for the thousandth time that I had no clue when we heard a quiet slam and a stifled scream from upstairs. The hair on the back of my neck stood up when these sounds were followed by the distorted sound of a man’s gruff voice.

Neither of us hesitated as we bolted for the staircase leading up to Chayse’s room. I grabbed the wine bottle from the counter as I blew past the island in the middle of the kitchen, flipped it so I had it by the neck and smashed off the bottom of the bottle. It may have been overkill but widows are savage when their children are involved.

We paused on the landing outside Chayse’s door and shared a series of silent commands that would have made a Navy Seal proud. Lorraine threw the door open, and we both stormed through the doorway, ready to do battle.

“Mom! What. The. Hell.” Chayse jumped out of her bed and looked furious that we had breached her sanctuary. I was stunned. Not only because those were the first words I’d heard her say in two weeks, but also because Marcus was sitting on the floor beside her, surrounded by a collection of polaroid photos that had fallen to the floor when Lorraine and I burst through the door.

“Are those what I think they are?” Lorraine said as she slowly backed out of the room, her face stricken.

“Where are you going?” I couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Marcus was here! Why was Lorraine trying to leave? Why were Chayse and Marcus scrambling to shove the pictures into a backpack that was sticking out from under the bed?

“Everybody stop,” I said. No one listened, and Lorraine was almost at the landing leading back downstairs. “Stop. Stop. STOP.” There was enough force behind my last command to make everyone obey.  Lorraine let out an animalistic groan and slid her back down the wall until she hit the floor.

“Marcus. Tell me what is happening. Now.” My tone left no room for debate.

Lorraine answered me instead with a small, resigned voice. “No, Rach. You can’t ask him to be the one.”

“Be the one to what? What in the actual hell is happening right now?”

“Chayse and Marcus, go downstairs and wait for us in the living room,” Lorraine said.” Watch out for the glass and do not even dream of getting within five feet of a window or door. If you are not there when we come down, I will call the police and report you as missing.”

Marcus held out his hand and Chayse grabbed it in a practiced motion that made me wonder if she had done it a million times before. Had she? Was there a secret relationship between Marcus and Chayse? Was Chayse pregnant? Lorraine and I had drunken dreams about the speech we would give at their wedding. We could handle a baby.

Lorraine heaved herself back to a standing position as the kids scrambled past, went into Charyse’s room, and grabbed the photos from the bag under the bed. She extended them to me with shaking hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I flipped the photos over and gave my brain the time it needed to process the graphic photos of our husbands. Together.

“The kids saw these?” I asked. My vision tunneled red, and I knew I was about to pass out.

“Sit down before you fall,” Lorraine said. She had seen me though enough trauma to recognize my patterns.

“Explain,” I said. I tried to sit on the bed, but my vision was badly blurred, and I smashed my knees on the nightstand on my way down.

“I’m not sure I can,” she said.

“Try.”

“I think it started shortly after we moved in beside you. I didn’t know what was happening while they were alive. I found the pictures about three months ago as I was cleaning out the garage. I have no idea how Chayse and Marcus came across these pictures because I burned what I found.”

“Motherfucker,” I said. My mind was racing.

“Well, no. More of a father-fucker, I’d imagine.” Lorraine gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth as I stared at her in shock.

“Are we joking about this?”

“Can we?” Lorraine asked in a small voice.

“Should we?” I was incredulous. “We have broken kids waiting for us downstairs.”

“I know, you’re right. I’m hopped up on adrenaline and not making any sense,” Lorraine said. She knelt in front of me and held my hands in hers. “I didn’t know before, Rach. I promise you that I didn’t know.” 

We looked at each other for a long time. Lorraine returned my stare without flinching, letting me see the weight of the burden she had carried alone until now.

“Father-fucker,” I sighed. “Really?”

“Too soon?” Lorraine cautiously interpreted my willingness to joke as a sign that I recognized she was not responsible for any of this mess.

“Too soon,” I confirmed. We sat together for a long moment, each lost in our own thoughts.

“They were in love,” I said finally.

“What?” Lorraine asked.

“They were in love,” I said with more conviction. “And we wish they could have told us when they were alive because all we want is for the people we love to be happy.”

My sentences were choppy, but my thoughts were clear. “We love them, and they loved each other. That is what we tell the kids. Everything else this means to us as their wives needs to be packed away.” I was trying to convince us both, but I also desperately wanted it to be true. Imagining that our husbands had been willing to sacrifice our families for anything less than a soulmate was unacceptable.

“Okay,” Lorraine said as she processed this strategy.  “Okay.”

Lorraine and I slowly straightened the mess in Chayse’s room. We recognized this stall tactic for what it was but took the time needed to weave ourselves back together. Eventually, web intact once more, we turned to face the lions in the living room.  

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Anita Veel lives in Mississauga, Ontario with her husband and two children. Anita is the third generation of her family to go into teaching. Prior to that, she worked in corporate communications for almost two decades, including several years spent as the head of corporate and regulatory affairs for one of the world's largest forest products companies. When not reading, Anita dreams of new places to visit, Ubers her kids, and feels guilty about the exercise regimen she is not yet following despite her advancing age.

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