Norma
AS I WALKED THROUGH THE HOUSE I’D SHARED WITH Mark, my footsteps
echoed. The only evidence of the life we’d lived were the nails that had once held paintings and the shelves that now sat empty, allowing the dust to settle. Dishes, taken from their home in the cabinet, covered the countertop, ready to be wrapped and packed away. Shadows roamed freely across the bare floors with little to impede or bend them. A peace comes after the chaos of change. There’s a strange acceptance and quiet acknowledgement that the change has happened and now it’s time to navigate that odd time in between, before the final goodbye. Mark and I had love, just not a future. And as hard as it was, we both knew this. We both understood. We were in no hurry to make anything official—we would get around to the signing of papers later. We wanted to step quietly into the new lives we were creating for ourselves.
Mark moved back to Boston a few weeks after we got home, still uncertain, still questioning my decision. It was difficult to watch his confusion turn to resentment.
“You just can’t make these decisions on your own.” He was standing in the hallway, on his way to the spare bedroom.
“I don’t know how to explain this to you, Mark. I just can’t do it.”
“We can do it, Norma. We. Why do you always assume you’re on your own?”
It was the same refrain until it wasn’t. One day, he just stopped asking, stopped talking altogether. All I could do was walk away, mumble my apologies and cry myself to sleep. I didn’t know how to put into words, how to make him understand, that the decision had been made for me.
Somewhere in the echo of time, the universe had decided that happiness of a certain kind was not to be mine. I would have to find joy elsewhere.
Finally, Mark took the things he wanted, his clothes, the antique wedding ring that belonged to his grandmother and a few paintings we’d collected in our six years of marriage, and left. I looked inside the decorative box where we stored our wedding memorabilia and everything was still there, untouched, left for me to mourn over, for me to do away with. The guest book, opened on the day and not since. The leftover invitations wrapped in red ribbon. But I had no right to a broken heart, so I closed the box and set it with the rest, piled and ready to be carried to the next phase of my life. I still have it, packed away in the back of the closet in the spare room.
I was almost done packing when Aunt June and Alice pulled into my driveway, unannounced. They were going to a cottage they’d rented by the ocean, and my house was on the way. I hadn’t told anyone about the separation and impending divorce. I couldn’t imagine that they would accept my reasoning, and I’d never been a very good liar. It seemed easier to not tell anyone, to wait until it was necessary. They were surprised, of course. Mark and I had always been happy. No one was there to witness the burden of sadness after Sarah died. That sadness that stayed long after the sympathetic looks, after the casserole dishes were cleaned and returned to their owners.
Aunt June offered to go get food and then we could all sit down and devise a story my mother would accept. As she pulled away, Alice took my hand and led me into the house. The bare walls made the rooms feel smaller, the light brighter.
I told her everything.
“Oh, honey, no,” Alice half-whispered.
“I thought you would be the one to understand, to take my side.”
“There are no sides here, Norma. I want what you want.” She came over to the couch to sit next to me, setting a box of albums on the floor. “You can’t let your mother’s past determine your future. You are two very different people.”
“Are we?”
“Yes, you are. You have a quiet strength that she doesn’t. You can take anything life throws at you and bounce back.”
“Maybe, but I don’t want to have to bounce back. Why hurt when you can just avoid it all in the first place?”
“You don’t miss Mark? That didn’t hurt?”
“Yes, of course it did. But not like losing a child. I can’t go through that again. Maybe Mother has more strength than you give her credit for. Maybe I’m the weak one.”
Alice was quiet as I stared out the window watching a bee tumble from one dead lilac bloom to the next, searching for nectar that was long since gone. In spring, I loved that lilac, bursting with purple, invading the house with its sweet smell, and I envied the new owners, who would be able to open the window and breathe it in, just as I had done for the last three years. “Did you know that lilacs were used at funerals to mask the smell of the
dead?” I looked back from the window to Alice. “Deflecting.”
“Tired of talking. I never get to talk about happy things anymore.” “And the stench of dying qualifies as happy?”
We both started to laugh, and I began to feel lighter.
Aunt June returned with enough Chinese food to feed ten people. We sat on the floor as the sun started to sink behind the lilac bush. We spilled rice, we slurped noodles, and Aunt June devised a lie.
“We’ll tell them that Mark cheated,” she said between bites. “Or that he was impotent.” She started to laugh, and I thought for sure that water was going to come out of Alice’s nose, but they kept it together, barely. I waited for them to dry their tears and catch their breath.
“Aunt June, the first one is cruel to Mark, and I think that the second might give Mother one of her headaches. One from which she might never recover.”
“I suppose you’re right, but I think it’s cute how you think she won’t get one of her headaches when you tell her the truth.” Aunt June ate the last of the fried rice before we cleaned up. Then they helped me pack the rest of my stuff and ready it for the movers in the morning.
Before the loss, Mark and I used to rent a cabin on a lake in rural Maine for two weeks each summer. When our house sold, I took my modest half of the profit and put a down payment on the cabin. There, I could get away from everything. When sitting on the deck, watching the sun set over the water, everything seemed to be right with the world. At night, the darkness was almost complete apart from the stars, little pinpricks of light breaking
through the black. And it was quiet, so very quiet. The only sounds came from nature itself: the wind as it rustled the leaves, the occasional sound of an animal passing through the woods, the warble of a loon. I thought that the peacefulness of the place might dampen the disappointment I knew my parents would feel when I told them about Mark, so I invited them, along with Aunt June and Alice, to spend the weekend. We would eat together and sit by the fire at night. Mother would complain about the chill of October, and Father would quietly sip his whiskey. Aunt June would annoy Mother, and Alice would calm everyone down.
The drive to the lake was peaceful. I like to drive with the radio off and the window down. There’s something meditative about it that eases my tension. I picked up groceries and cleaning supplies on the way. I left early so I could get the cabin clean enough that Mother wouldn’t feel the need to tidy and scrub the weekend away. I got off the interstate in Bangor and followed Route 9. If you followed it far enough, you’d end up in Canada, but I turned at the junction for Machias and headed for the lake road. I like the wildness in this part of Maine, the trees decaying into bogs, the colour of the berry fields as you drive past. There’s also a sadness, abandoned houses, scorched fields in fall. A solitary and untamed landscape with rare flashes of colour.
The lake shimmered in full sun when I parked the car. I didn’t unload right away. I needed to put my feet in the water. I walked in up to my knees as I held the hem of my dress. Stones dug into the bottom of my feet, and tiny waves bounced off my shins or moved past me to the shore. Beyond the tiny peninsula that jutted out into the lake and provided the privacy I loved, I heard children hollering. Occasionally, a canoe would float past, but generally, it was uninterrupted solitude. In the summer, if I was up early, I liked to walk into the lake naked and lie on top of the water. I liked to watch the mist evaporate above me, my ears immersed so I could listen to the quiet hum of nature under water. But on this day, I just stood there, my face in full sun, momentarily forgetting that I would soon have to explain Mark’s absence.
THE SMELL OF Pine-Sol drifted out of the open windows and everything was spotless when my parents pulled in. Father got out of the car and stretched. Mother started unloading potato salad, cold ham and her suitcase. They
were still unpacking the car when Aunt June and Alice pulled in behind them. There were hugs all around, some stiff, others soft.
“Where’s Mark?” Mother asked as she came out of the cabin after inspecting it for cleanliness. I was pleased that I seemed to have passed inspection.
“He’s down in Boston this weekend,” I said.
Aunt June shot me a look, but I turned away from it. I’d decided to wait until they were halfway through their whiskey and sitting around the fire to tell them. The fridge inside the cabin was filled with food, and the counters overflowed with baguettes, cookies and marshmallows for later. We spent the day cooking and eating, talking and laughing. Mother even laughed when Aunt June slipped as she was trying to get into a kayak and fell in the water, emerging wet and sputtering. She was unhurt and couldn’t help but laugh too when she saw my mother bent over, clutching her stomach, tears running down her face.
“A good belly laugh at my expense,” Aunt June said, grabbing her sister into a hug, leaving her damp and gasping for breath.
“I haven’t had a laugh like that in years. It was worth the drive,” Mother said.
I’d rarely seen her this happy. It was so unlike her to give herself over to joy. I felt a pang of guilt for the news I had to share. Father tended to the barbecue while Mother and I set the picnic table. Aunt June and Alice poured some iced tea into a Thermos and went for a walk along the trail that wound itself through the woods and around the lake. Dinner was ready when they got back, flushed from the exercise.
As the night started to settle in and the lake stilled and the moon crept up over the trees, I knew that I had to tell them. Mother had been asking about Mark, how his job was going and how he was feeling. The last time I’d seen her, I had lied and told her that he had the flu. She asked if I was ready to try again. She was looking forward to being a grandmother. I mumbled incoherently and turned away from her hopeful face. We were sitting around the fire, all five of us a little tipsy. There was a lull in the conversation and a loon warbled out on the lake.
“Mark and I are getting divorced. He is in Boston this weekend because he lives there now. We got rid of the house and I live in a nice apartment.” It came out as one long word, the pauses between words disintegrating in the telling. The loon called again but all eyes stayed on me. The orange
light of the fire cast their features into semi-darkness. I was light-headed, and their confusion made them look evil. Aunt June and Alice looked down at their hands, Mother looked at me and Father looked at Mother.
“Well . . .,” she said.
“Lenore?” my father said, waiting to see how she was going to react. He seemed ready to get up and pull her away.
“What did you do?”
Father stood, but I waved my hand and he sat back down.
“I didn’t do anything, Mother. It was a mutual decision. We wanted different things, that’s all.”
“Is this because of the baby?”
My heart quickened. I knew she would ask, but I still felt a stab of pain.
I took a sip of wine before raising my eyes to meet hers.
“Yes, in a way. Mark wanted to try again, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to go through what you had to go through before I was born.”
“Are you blaming me?” She leaned forward in her chair and looked like she was about to fall into the fire. Father put his hand on her shoulder and pushed her back into her chair.
“No, of course not.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. Only my mother would take my grief and make it about her. But hadn’t I expected this? Even expectation doesn’t always prepare you for the way things turn out.
“Lenore, I think what she’s saying is that she doesn’t want to endure the pain that she watched you endure. She’s making a sensible decision for her,” Alice whispered across the fire. The crackle of the flames rang in my ears, and I got up and walked toward the water. Their voices were carried away by the sounds that the woods make at night. The moon was almost full. A tiny sliver was missing, but its brightness reflected off the water. There was a ring around it, a halo of blue. I turned back and saw Alice leaning in to talk, saw Aunt June get up and pour another drink. My family was cast in silhouette. When I turned back to the water, I was overwhelmed by the scent of campfire and boiled potatoes. I swear I heard a child laugh from somewhere close by and the quiet murmur of adult conversation. Not the voices of my family. Voices that carried an accent unfamiliar but known. I could feel the cold grass on my small feet and the rough fabric of a patchwork dress. The edges where patches were sewn together rubbed against my leg. I could see my tiny hands holding a doll made of socks and button eyes. I looked back up at the moon and then to the fire, where I
thought I saw my mother wave for me to join them. Or maybe the light was playing tricks on me. Or maybe it was a dream, a vision meant for sleep creeping in, confusing and unfinished.
“Norma.”
I jumped and the feeling disappeared just as quickly as it had come. It felt like a waking dream or maybe even a memory. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
“She doesn’t mean to be this way.” My father took my hand in his. “You know she doesn’t mean to be this way.”
“Yet she is.” I was determined not to cry. “Please give her time.”
“But you understand, don’t you?” I looked into his face, barely discernable in the faint light of the fire and the glow cast by the moon.
“I do. And I don’t blame you. It was hard watching your mother suffer. And it was hard on me as well. That kind of grief leads people to do things they normally wouldn’t. It’s good that you and Mark could part as friends. It’s good you didn’t let it happen to you.”
Aunt June and Alice had talked to them about the breakup while I stood by the lake, lost in a memory stirred alive by the moon.
“Do you remember my dreams?” I said.
I felt his hand stiffen. His fingers held mine just a little bit tighter. “I do. I didn’t think you did.”
“I didn’t until now, until the moon.”
He dropped my hand and started to pick at the skin at the corner of his thumbnail.
“Give your mother time. She’ll come around. And let’s not mention the dreams.” He hugged me, a long, tight hug, before he turned and headed back to the fire. I took one last look at the moon and its reflection.
Aunt June had put my mother to bed, and Father followed, closing the screen door gently behind him.
“To be honest, that went better than I thought it would. Although I suspect that she isn’t done with you yet.” Aunt June placed another log on the fire.
“I need another glass of wine.” An intense feeling had just hit me, something I couldn’t put my finger on. All I knew is that I wanted to dampen it.
“Wine isn’t going to make this any better,” she said as she went to the picnic table to open another bottle. She handed me a coffee mug half-full and leaned over to embrace me in a half-hug. “Things always seem the worst just after they happen. Time will take care of this as time always does.”
“Thank you.” I laid my head against hers for a second before she walked around and sat down beside Alice, who took her hand and held it in hers. We stayed out in the dark, feeding the fire and drinking wine well into the night. Aunt June began to mix my wine with water, something I was grateful for when I woke later that day.
All morning, Mother avoided being alone with me. We understood there was a chance that we would say something we would forever regret, so I was pleased when Father told me that they were going to leave a day early. I needed them gone. There was too much quiet between us. An unnatural quiet that comes with so many things left unsaid. As they backed out of the driveway and turned toward Route 9, my father tooted the horn goodbye. All I felt was relief.
Thanksgiving was quiet, as was Christmas. By Easter, Mother was talking to me again, and the Fourth of July brought a few laughs. I didn’t always spend the holidays with my parents, but that year I did. It was penance for leaving them without grandchildren. Only once did my mother bring it up, just after the fireworks, after she’d had more whiskey than usual and topped it off with a mint julep.
“You could adopt, you know. Raising a child not your own can be very rewarding. Janice Hall and her husband, the ones from the church, they adopted a cute little boy. Nothing wrong with him.” She was slurring and waving her drink around. “I would learn to love the little one.”
“I’m good. I have the kids at school. That’s enough for me.”
“Well fine, then. Don’t listen to your mother, not that you ever did.”
She was drunk and finally talking to me, so I let it pass. I’d been an obedient child and spent my entire childhood doing nothing but listening to my mother.
“But being alone isn’t the way to make you happy,” she said.
Yet, I was happy, eventually. All things take time. Grief can be wide and feel bottomless sometimes, but eventually, it begins to subside, to grow into something useful. I spent my time volunteering as a tutor, training for and running half-marathons, visiting Aunt June and Alice in Boston. For my
fortieth birthday, I forced myself out of my comfort zone, took cash out of my savings account, hopped on an airplane and spent the summer in Italy and France, reading books and wandering through ancient cities. I dated but never found affection enough for a relationship. As much as other people couldn’t understand it, I was content. Did I get lonely? Of course, but those bouts of loneliness passed quickly, and I could always find comfort in my own company. Alice told me this is a strength that many people don’t have. The need for conformity and for the attention of others can lead to a life of misery. I knew that half the people I taught with were simply going through the motions instead of actually living. So, I allowed them to judge me, and I judged them in return.
MY FATHER DIED on a Saturday afternoon. Mother was at one of her church functions and came home to find him slumped over on the lawn tractor. The grass was mowed, so he must have been putting the tractor back in the garage. It brings me comfort to think that the last thing he probably felt was satisfaction. He loved mowing the lawn. He was gone long before Mother got home, long before she dropped her purse, cradled his head and cursed him for leaving her. Before the neighbour noticed and called the ambulance.
I’d just walked in the door and placed my purse on the counter when the phone rang. It was Alice. Aunt June was already on her way to Maine and had asked Alice to call me. Even her calming voice couldn’t protect me from the sudden grief. I slumped onto the floor, my back against the kitchen cupboards as disbelief washed over me. My father was older, yes, but in my mind, still too young for death.
I cursed them both, my mother and my father. They hadn’t prepared me for death. I hadn’t had any great-aunts or great-uncles or grandparents to mourn when I was younger. There had been no gradual understanding of death to help me prepare for this. My grief was absolute. I hung up the phone and called the school to explain that I wouldn’t be in for a few days. I had the sense to pack a small bag and water my one houseplant before I locked the door and was on my way to my parents’ house. Only now it wasn’t my parents’ house; it was my mother’s house.
I sat in the driveway for a few minutes, admiring the perfect lines on the cut grass. The same neighbour who’d called the ambulance waved from the front window. The curtains were open to let in the light. Inside, it smelled of fresh coffee.
“Your mother is in her bed. A headache.” She handed me a cool cloth that she had been taking down the hallway. “She asked for a cloth.”
I placed my bag by the door and took the cloth from her hand, running it under cold water to chase away any warmth. “Thank you for everything. I can take it from here.” The neighbour nodded, turned and softly closed the door behind her. I squeezed out the excess water and walked down the hall. The door was ajar, and I slipped in quietly and took my shoes off. I lay down on the bed beside her and replaced the warm cloth with a cool one.
“I’m here, Mother,” I whispered.
“Norma, what am I going to do?” She started to sob.
Just like she used to do when I was a child and had those dreams, I gathered her in my arms and held her, her sparrowlike body heaving as I rocked her. I smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead. I cooed and shushed until she fell asleep. When Aunt June arrived, we were still lying there, my mother fast asleep, her head cradled in my arms, and me staring at the wall, watching the shadows fall as the sun set outside.
The next few days were a blur. Father had set out everything in his will. He’d agreed to a church service so long as there was a barbecue after. He left the house to Mother and a sum of money to me, enough to pay off all my debt and travel a bit. He even left a small sum to Aunt June to thank her for all she’d done for us. He was buried in the cemetery beside baby Sarah and his parents, who’d died long before I was born. As they lowered him into the ground while mostly strangers watched my mother and me grieve, something stood out to me. The name of my great-grandfather, the Italian one who had apparently bequeathed his Italian pigmentation to me, had the very un-Italian name of Brown. So many lies from the people I loved. As the others walked away, leaving small piles of dirt and a single rose from Mother cast on the coffin of my Father, I stared at the family headstones, lined up in a tidy row, the names hinting at a history of pale skin.
“Would you like to place dirt on the casket?”
I was alone when the funeral director handed me a small tin bucket. As I reached in and gathered a handful of dirt to scatter on the casket of my father, I forgot all about the names of my ancestors.
Mother hadn’t cried at the funeral. She’d saved it all up for the car ride home. Alice had to pull over so I could crawl into the back seat with Mother and Aunt June. Each of us held a hand as Mother released her grief.
It was big and it was ugly, yet she seemed so small and vulnerable, so filled with emotion I’d thought she lacked.
The day was chilly for September, but we had promised a barbecue after the funeral. Mark had heard about the death and attended, alone. It was nice to see him, but he stayed only long enough for hugs from Aunt June and Alice and condolences to Mother and me. I know that she appreciated his effort. Inside the house, people milled about. Having that many people in the house that had never welcomed visitors felt absurd, and the stress of it showed in my mother’s fidgeting—cleaning a spot of condensation from a water glass, wiping the dust from a shelf before it had time to settle, straightening a picture that wasn’t crooked. Finally, I got her to sit down by taking her elbow and lowering her into Father’s favourite chair, a glass of whiskey in her hand to help settle her.
“He was always the sensible one,” she said as she picked up the book he’d left sitting on the stand beside the chair.
“You’re sensible, too, Mother.”
She didn’t reply as she stroked the cover of the book.
I got her a plate from the table holding hot dogs, sandwiches cut into triangles, and squares made almost entirely of sugar, coconut and maraschino cherries. A man I didn’t know reached across me and took a peanut butter cookie. He startled me when he started to speak.
“I remember this one time your father told this joke. Between you and me”—he stopped to look around the room, as if he were ready to reveal some great secret—“it’s probably a joke he shouldn’t have told at work. But you know your father. Great guy, your dad. Funny guy.” He took a bite out of the cookie and nodded toward my mother. “Give my condolences to your mom.” He spit cookie crumbs when he spoke, and under any other circumstance, I may have been disgusted, but at that moment, I didn’t have the energy for disgust.
My memories of my father are generally not ones full of jokes. They tend to be limited to him reading in the den, mowing the lawn, and drinking whiskey with my mother. If I try really hard, I can see him at the beach with a detective novel in one hand and a beer in the other, or maybe I see him at the barbecue, inspecting a steak for doneness and flipping burgers. But him telling jokes is something even my vivid imagination couldn’t conjure. There were stories he used to tell when we cleaned the gutters to prep the house for winter. It was the one chore we did together without Mother, and
perhaps that’s why the stories were reserved for then. Mother would stay inside and watch out the window, worrying every time I climbed the ladder to help.
“Did I ever tell you about your grandfather? He was shot once in the chest and once in the back during the Great War. I can’t remember the battle, but I know he convalesced in France in a little town by the ocean.”
On the ladder next to him, I reached in with my gloved hand, scooped a handful of leaves and threw them to the ground. “He was okay?”
“Sure was. Never complained a day in his life. About his health, anyway.”
“I wish I could have known him.”
“Me too. He was a funny guy. Used to tell us how he’d lie in that bed over there in France and whistle at the nurses and then pretend he was asleep.” My father chuckled. “He was a good man.” Father went quiet, his hands on the ladder and his eyes pointed to the sky.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Oh yes, just remembering. You do that a lot when you’re old. I got a joke for you: Why were the trousers not allowed to enter the school?”
I shrugged.
“Because they were suspended.” Father started to laugh, and though I failed to see the humour, I laughed with him. His laugh made me laugh. “That was one of your grandfather’s favourites.”
It was unfair that I laughed so little with my father. Our conversations consisted mostly of my complaints against my mother and his defence of her. I would have liked to laugh more with him, and I feel cheated and a little annoyed that he never gave me the chance.
“Nonsense. That’s your imagination again. You overthink everything.” Aunt June was sitting across the table from me at the house. Alice had left to return to Boston, leaving Aunt June with us for a few days. “Your father loved you and your mother. He was just . . . reserved.”
I took a sip of my tea. “Apparently, he wasn’t.”
“People always say nice things about the dead. Especially when the family is in the room. They probably made it all up.”
“Aunt June?” I said as I reached across and took one of the leftover squares. I licked the frosting stuck to the plastic wrap.
“Well, I knew your father for more than a decade before you even came into the world, and while I never found him to be particularly funny, I know
that he loved you.” She sounded like she wanted to say more, but she held her tongue, and I could see something was swirling around behind those blue eyes. Mother had gone to bed, complaining of a headache, and Aunt June and I had cleaned everything up so Mother wouldn’t be upset in the morning, or at least any more than she needed to be. A dead husband and a dirty house and I might have lost both parents.
I’ve always wondered at the secrets the dead take with them. Some are unintended secrets, things they never got around to saying, like “I’m sorry” or “The money is hidden in the shoebox at the back of the closet.” Some secrets are so dark that it’s best they remain buried. Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets. Sometimes, the lie becomes so entrenched it becomes the truth, hidden away in the deep recesses of the mind until death erases it, leaving the world a little different. Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.
