Bill Minough
2586 Elliot Avenue
Seattle, WA 98109
I love you with all my heart. I am so sorry for my part in all of this.
Love,
Joel
A howl burns through me. Without looking at her, I say, “You need to go.”
She doesn’t say another word. I close the door behind her and stagger into the living room, where I sink down on the couch, thinking of the long, long, long lonely months in the Magdalene Home. I was cut off from everyone but Beryl, who sent me care packages every week with a cheerful letter and candy, home-baked goods, and art supplies. Tablets, sketchbooks, pencils, pens, paints, brushes, charcoals. I filled them up, an act of sorrow and defiance, and still have them somewhere.
I have the diaries I kept, too, plus many others I’ve written over the years. Although Phoebe and I started the habit together, the practice stuck with me. They’re stored in a closet in the guest bedroom, stowed away in a fireproof safe. It wasn’t to keep them safe for the ages, only for myself, so I could go back and touch the days of my life whenever I needed to. A day written about is a day somehow saved from oblivion. Only those journals saved me, writing and writing and writing about my pain. In some deep way, I became the person I needed through that practice.
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.