The Bitter End She hung up the phone and stared at the wall in front of her. She noticed for the first time there was a crack on the surface, just above the baseboard, traveling upward in a crooked line half-way up, and half-hidden by the several coats of eggshell white paint. Just above it there hung a picture of her mother and dad, burnt sienna tones, standing in front of the courthouse with their arms around one another and blurry smiles upon their young faces. She tried to remember what year that picture was taken, was it 1954 or 1955? She wrestled with her memory for a moment then gave up. The room was oppressively small. She sat upon a regular-sized bed covered by a hand-stitched quilt her grandmother had made for her when she graduated from high school. The quilt had some frays on the edges, and one of the pieces of patchwork had been ripped off, revealing the tatting beneath. Despite its worn look, she refused to change it. Every time she came into this room she was reminded of happier times. She could almost smell the bacon frying and the coffee brewing as her grandmother moved around in the kitchen, preparing her breakfast for the day. That was a long time ago. Grandmother was long since buried in National Cemetery, next to her grandfather. She heard a movement outside the bedroom door and then someone clearing her throat. Her sister, Kate, having waited long enough, knocked on the door and asked to come in. Laura sighed, stood up to look into the mirror to check her eyes and adjust her hair. Then she opened the door. Kate was standing there with her hands clasped in front of her. Kate. Always the little girl, no matter that she was fifty-one years old. She looked at Laura expectantly, then asked, “What did Uncle Jesse say? Is he really gone?” Laura felt her body sag as she simply nodded, and Kate began to cry. She wrung her hands a few times, then excused herself to the other bedroom, leaving Laura there staring at the open door and the empty hallway behind it. The sun was just beginning to glow towards the horizon, and Laura turned to open the drapes to stare out at the sky as it woke up. So many thoughts were cascading up and down and around in her mind. She ran her fingers over the trinkets on the dresser, the one she used as a child. Many of her things remained, long after she had moved away to college and married. Her grandmother was sentimental, and insisted on keeping this room as Laura’s own sanctuary, a “home away from home” as Grandmother put it. She let her hand wander over to a snow globe, one given to her by her father when he returned from a trip to Paris. It had a tiny replica of the Eiffel Tower inside, with miniature people standing at the base of it. She picked it up and shook it and watched the white snow-like granules fall around inside the glassy bubble. She set it down and picked up a picture, in a pewter frame, of her father. He was in his Navy dress blues. The picture was black and white, so you couldn’t see the blue in his eyes, but she saw them, as if he were standing right there in front of her. Sparkling and wild and kind. Laura meandered to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. She and Kate had come to the small town outside of Atlanta two days before, to this house she had mostly grown up in, she from Houston and Kate from Maryland. As she filled the water reservoir and scooped the coffee into the filter, she remembered the frantic call she had received from Aunt Hillary last Wednesday, which now seemed years behind her. Uncle Jesse had gone over to her father’s house to check on him as they had not heard from him for a couple of weeks. Though her cousin Jeff had seen her dad only a few days ago filling his truck with gas at the local gas station, Uncle Jesse was concerned. It was not like his brother to ignore his calls. When he arrived at the house, Uncle Jesse found his brother, Jim, sitting in his recliner with a gunshot wound to his head. There was a note next to him on the floor, splattered with blood, which read, “I’m tired. All I can do now is sit here in front of this television and remember myself as a younger man, when the kids were home and we planted the garden together. I’m going fishing.” Uncle Jesse checked for a pulse and found that Jim was still alive, and immediately called for an ambulance. He was taken to the hospital and in intensive care for two days. Laura’s hands trembled at this memory of Uncle Jesse’s tale. When he called her this morning to tell her that her dad did not make it, his voice cracked, and he apologized and quickly hung up the phone. Her heart broke into a million shards of glass. The last time she had spoken to her father was the day she told him she was getting married. That was nearly thirty years ago. When she invited him to her wedding, and to give her away, he refused. When she asked him why, his only answer was, “I wish I could, but I just can’t do it. Sorry.” Hurt and angry, Laura wore that sweater of bitterness for many, many years. She cut off all contact with her dad, and even when her grandmother chastised her or her uncle called to beg for a truce, she staunchly held onto every bit of resentment she could, as if she were collecting it to make a full-fledged suit of armor. Thirty years of resentment and anger didn’t make a suit of armor, only walls of a prison, behind which she resided and nursed her hatred. Now as she stood in front of the kitchen window and listened to the sounds of the coffee pot gurgling, she stared at the sun rising in the early September sky, she felt a crack moving within her body, much like the crack on her old bedroom wall. The crack became louder as it moved, and more painful, until she found herself sitting in the kitchen floor, hugging her knees, and weeping uncontrollably. Kate came into the kitchen and put her hand on her sister’s head as Laura rocked back and forth. There were no words from either one of them. What could be said? No words could bring back their father, nor could they justify or explain why things happened the way they did. Laura knew at that moment that her stubbornness, and her inability to forgive her dad, would now be her cross to bear on her own. She could not go to him now, no, not in his living years, and forgive him. The forgiveness would have to come without his knowing it, and this made his suicide even more tragic. All he wanted was to be loved by his children, especially his Laura. She failed him. Now she would have to live with that knowledge and hopefully, if she could, forgive herself. The phone rang again. Kate answered it this time and when she hung up the phone she looked down at her sister and said, “We need to get down to the funeral home and make the arrangements, sis. I’m sorry.” Laura wiped her face and slowly stood up. The weight of her sins made it harder, but she managed to stand up straight. She took her sister’s hand and they poured their coffee in their car mugs, gathered their things, and headed out the door. © Kim Bailey June 26, 2013
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 09:57:58 +0000
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