The Starfish Sisters: A Novel(88)
I run a thumb over Joel’s young handwriting on the page and think of how lost he must have been, too, sent away for an act of rage that did, actually, save me. When the church burned down, my father was enraged, but he and Karen never came back to Blue Cove. When I declared my intention to emancipate myself, he barely fought me. I think he knew he’d met his match in Beryl.
Acting on some impulse I don’t take the time to analyze, I pull on a thick jacket and a rain hat, tie on my shoes, and head down the hill. It’s drizzling, and the wet air dampens my face and makes my hair curl. I barely notice.
The ruins of the church are hard to make out, but I know where it was and can pace it off easily. I wade through the weeds and wildflowers, my jeans getting wet, until I find a concrete pad that must have been the front steps.
As if the steps are there, I walk forward, through the place the front doors would have been, into the sanctuary. In my mind, I build it back in place, the pews and the windows with the midcentury geometric stained glass, the charmless walls. I build the altar and the pulpit where my father reigned in his good wool suits, his ties always demure stripes, his blond hair brushed back from that chiseled face. I hear him exhorting us sinners to get down on our knees. I allow myself to feel the terror when he saw my belly in the kitchen of this very building. How I ran. How he caught me. And literally nearly beat me to death. He bruised my liver and my kidneys and I couldn’t see out of my left eye for nearly two months. It was a miracle that the baby survived, apparently whole and healthy.
I turn in a circle. How was it that they never charged him for child abuse? Was it like “domestic abuse,” best left for families to manage on their own? After all, I was pregnant and had shamed the preacher.
I will never know. What should have been and what is are often two different things.
Rain begins to fall slightly more exuberantly, and I turn one more time, imagining Joel in this space, spilling gasoline or lighter fluid or whatever accelerant he used, and setting the whole thing on fire. He was extremely thorough. Beryl told me later that it burned down almost before the fire trucks could arrive.
A fierce sense of love fills me.
To that broken boy, I whisper, “Thank you.”
To that broken girl, I say, “You’re okay.”
I’m still here.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Phoebe
I retreat to my studio, dive into color to ease my heart, so I don’t have to think. Not about anything. About Jasmine and Stephanie moving or keeping that letter hidden from Suze all these years—her face crumpling as she read the words, words she didn’t share. About the responsibility I bear for her losses. So many losses.
On my tray, I mix a half dozen pinks, palest rose to deep saturated peachy pink, and aimlessly smear them on a primed board. I’ve turned Pandora to Amma’s favorites, a playlist from the ’60s and ’70s that never fails to ease my heart, and as I paint, I sing along to Tap Root Manuscript by Neil Diamond, the “Childsong” she loved. We captured a phrase from the children’s singing and used liquid embroidery pens to write it on pillowcases, and I can hear only one bar and be transported—
Amma.
If I could have anything in the world, I would ask to sit with her again for ten minutes. Sit with her and hold her hand and spill out my troubles. The vision brings tears to my eyes, and I rest my hands on the table, peering at her favorite chair as if she will appear. I see her at about seventy, when her hands had begun to be a little gnarled. She wore colorful blouses that always seemed to have a spot of paint on them somewhere. She loved berry lipstick and never wore any other makeup. Her cheeks and chin and even her forearms were deeply wrinkled as time went by.
Standing there in her special room, I allow the sense of her to take over. I’m so hungry for her, for her wisdom, her cackling laugh. She smelled of apples and oil paint. She loved Joel and believed he was the best artist of the three of us, even though she tried to pretend she didn’t. I see her bending over his work, pointing out some small thing.
I see her standing on the beach on a cloudy day, wind blowing her long hair, her eyes closed, hands raised in praise and love. To God, to nature, to all the things so much bigger than us. She believed in the holiness of things. She believed in nature. She believed in art and creativity and being kind.
She was unfailingly kind. It’s a quality that’s been lost in the modern world. But without her genuine kindness, her love, Suze would have had nowhere to go.
And I, her granddaughter, who loved her as if she had created the earth and everything in it, became the opposite of everything she was. I have become tight and small and guarded and mean. How did I keep that letter for so many years? How much pain did that single act cause in the lives of two people I loved?
How does love act that way?
I bend over, feeling that failure in my every cell. It surges and burns, and breaks the stiffness in my spine. Something inside me, bound tight and hard as a package tied with string, tears open. Dark matter spills from it, and dark thoughts, and mean words.
“Amma!” I cry, and give in to my grief. I sink to the floor and wail. “I’m so sorry!”
I cry for so long that my eyes are grainy and my face burns with salt. When I’m done, I can only take myself to the fainting couch and sleep, feeling something dark and heavy dissolving.
In my imagination, Amma strokes my hair. I love you, child, just as you are.