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.
***
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.
***
See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.
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