Ordinary Beauty (21 page)

BABBLING INTO THE PHONE TO THE
911 dispatcher.

Calling back because I’d forgotten to tell them about Aunt Loretta.

Grabbing Ellie’s empty water bottle on the way back downstairs so she could have Pedialyte and feel better.

Whimpering, being afraid to touch the two of them and watching as my mother, forehead bleeding, teeth gritted and groaning in pain, pushed herself up off my sister and somehow balanced there. Crouching beside her, sobbing and frantically patting her arm, and her gasping, “I can’t. My back. Ellie . . . Don’t move her. Go call . . .”

“I did,” I cried.

“Beale,” she finished. “Oh God, oh God, oh, Ellie . . .”

I rose and backed away, frantic because her body was crooked and twisted and she
did
smell like alcohol and it was bad, really bad and there was so much blood and suddenly my mind was filled with black terror because Ellie wasn’t crying and she should be crying, no, she should be
screaming
 . . .

Calling Beale, losing it when he answered and said cheerfully, “Ha, missing me already? How are all my girls?” and not even being able to tell him if Ellie and Aunt Loretta were alive, hearing a tone in his voice I’d never heard before and realizing it was the same kind of terror I had, and wishing he wasn’t three and a half hours away but here, right now. . . .

Sirens growling closer, getting louder, screaming into the driveway and people piling out, following me in and flowing past me down those stairs and into the cellar, saying things I didn’t understand, asking me if there was anyone I could call to come stay with me and me saying
I’m going with my mother
over and over.

Sitting alone in the living room, holding Ellie’s little stuffed cat as they left with her in the ambulance.

The paramedics, all volunteers from Sullivan, loading my agonized mother into the second ambulance, her eyes huge and stricken, her hands lying frozen, upturned and empty.

Riding to the hospital with her, and neither one of us saying a word.

Being taken into the waiting room and the blast of chilly air that hit me when the doors opened and the paramedic ushered me in.

Telling the nurses my mother’s name and Aunt Loretta’s and Ellie’s, and answering their other questions as best as I could, trying to think, telling what had happened from the minute I stepped off the school bus, telling everything I heard and saw, except . . .

My mother’s drinking.

I said everything but that.

It seemed to take forever but finally Beale came striding into the emergency waiting room and when he saw me he came right over, picked me up, and hugged me hard, really hard, and said, “Thank God you’re all right,” and I started to cry all over again and let out an exhale I’d been holding for hours.

And then Beale took over, talking to the nurses and asking for answers, and within moments one of the emergency room doctors came out and led us to a small, private room with a table and chairs in it.

Beale held my hand the entire time the doctor spoke, and at one point, when he told us Aunt Loretta was gone and they thought the cause of death had been a stroke, Beale squeezed my hand so hard I felt the bones grind and I blubbered, “Ow.” Beale loosened his grip but didn’t let go, just sat there listening to the doctor, his expression stunned and drawn, tears slipping unheeded and unnoticed down his face.

My mother had a concussion, stitches, bruises, and contusions from striking the floor. She had injured her back, severely, and was headed up to Radiology for additional X-rays.

“And my daughter Ellie?” Beale choked out. “How is she?”

I wiped my eyes in time to see the doctor shake his head and give Beale a very grave look, and a terrible humming, like a thousand angry hornets, filled my ears, and a shimmering wave of silver speckles washed across my vision. I made a noise, a sick-sounding noise and suddenly Beale had my chair pulled back and was bending my head down toward my knees, and I held on to him like I was drowning until I could see again.

Ellie was in critical condition.

She was dehydrated.

Her ribs and her pelvis were broken from the fall.

She had a very severe head injury.

She was unresponsive.

Her skull . . .

Barring car accidents, it was the worst he’d ever seen in an infant.

“I want to see her,” Beale said, holding my hand even tighter. “We need to see her.” His voice hitched. “She’ll be scared all alone in that crib without us. We’re a family, you see, and Ellie’s used to having all of us . . .” A sob escaped, harsh and raw, and then he let go of my hand and buried his face in his arms and cried.

I sat beside him patting his arm, and when he stopped, we got up and went to see Ellie.

ELLIE LIVED FOR TWO DAYS AFTER
the fall, and I was with her almost every second of them.

Beale was a zombie, splitting his time between Ellie, my mother, trying to make arrangements for Aunt Loretta’s funeral, and running back and forth home to feed the animals.

But not me.

I stayed with my sister who never once opened her eyes to look at me, who never once wrapped her strong, tiny fingers around one of mine or cooed or burbled, laughed, cried, ate, or drank. She had tubes running into her, huge black-and-blue bruises from the fall, and her head—from her nose up—was wrapped in bandages.

The first time I saw her I almost threw up, backed away from her little bed in panic, denial, and outrage, and thought
No, that’s not her, that poor battered baby is not my sister, it can’t be,
but then Beale leaned down over her, touched her arm, and started to cry and I surrendered, staying with her day and night, refusing to leave, sleeping in the chair, eating whatever Beale or the nurses brought me, praying, begging, whispering to her, trying to call her back to me, crooning my “Ellie, Ellie” song, and telling her she had to get better because we had to go home, we did, all of us together, and so please, Ellie, please get better, and the unbroken silence made my head pound and my stomach sick, and tore my heart to pieces.

I thought about Aunt Loretta, too, as I sat there, and of what the doctors said about a brain stem stroke. The headaches had been a warning that something was wrong, but the stroke had followed fast, hitting her as she was doing the laundry. I shouldn’t have listened because their words made it so vivid in my mind, and I couldn’t stop thinking of her lying there terrified and alone, paralyzed and struggling for breath, unable to scream or move or get help, knowing she was leaving us, leaving everything she loved, leaving the baby upstairs alone . . .

I whispered her name to myself, sitting alone in that chair, whispered,
Come back, please. We need you so bad,
and missing her more than I ever thought I could, the pain tearing another jagged hole in my already damaged heart.

I thought about my mother, too. She was on another floor, her back wrecked, and almost totally out of it on pain medication. She wouldn’t open her eyes or talk to anyone, not even Beale, and wouldn’t eat or drink, so they were hydrating her by intravenous, and calling in a grief counselor.

I didn’t care. I really didn’t.

I had smelled her breath, I knew the truth.

My baby sister, Ellie Joy Galen, died at 5:16 on Monday afternoon, with me and Beale by her side, stroking her cheeks and holding her limp little hands.

She was fifty-nine days old.

ELLIE’S CASKET WAS SMALL, AND WHITE.

Aunt Loretta’s was mahogany, carved and beautiful.

We had framed photos of them both on the tables around the room.

The funeral home was stuffed full of floral arrangements, the room where the wake was overflowed with mourners.

It was the worst tragedy Sullivan had seen since Miss Mo’s murder.

My mother was out of the hospital and at the wake, propped in a chair on one side of Beale, sitting pale, drugged and silent, as the mourners offered their condolences. She didn’t even look up when Jillian’s mother came over, dabbing at her dry, bright, inquisitive eyes with a tissue and hugging Beale so tight he grunted.

I stood on the other side of him, numb, dry eyed and hollow inside, an empty shell being hugged and released, kissed and released, fussed over and released, and hardly remembering anyone except Jillian’s mother and Reverend Ganzler, the new youth minister, because he had a bright, reddish-orange beard and brought me a paper cup of water.

Yesterday we had given the funeral director Ellie and Aunt Loretta’s burial clothes, and now all I could think about was that Ellie was lying inside that coffin wearing a T-shirt under her lambie pajamas that said
SAYRE’S MY BIG SISTER
because I never wanted her to forget that.

I would have been such a good big sister.

My mother didn’t make the funeral. She didn’t say why, she just wouldn’t get up no matter how Beale pleaded and, finally, losing it, said Ellie was his daughter, too, and Aunt Loretta his mother. He had twice the agony to deal with and if she didn’t get up and go, he didn’t know if he could make it through without her.

My mother didn’t say a word.

Didn’t even crack an eye.

So we went to the funeral, me clinging to his hand, and at the gravesites, when the Methodist minister had finished the solemn service, I picked up my big bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace and stepped toward the caskets that were holding the people I loved, the caskets that were going to be buried in the dirt and would stay there forever, through all the seasons, and I would never get to see or touch Aunt Loretta and Ellie again, and that’s when the numbness cracked and the tears spilled over, raining down on those lacy flowers as I set them on the caskets and, sobbing, returned to Beale.

They were gone.

And three weeks later, so were we.

ACCIDENTS HAPPENED.

That’s what the grief counselor said, not without sympathy.

People made choices, some conscious, some automatic, and like pebbles dropped in a pond, the reactions from those choices expanded, uncontrolled, like ripples drifting in all directions. We could never have predicted that everything would go wrong at once.

It was no one’s fault.

It was a terrible, tragic accident. That was all.

I heard her, but all I could think of was
if
.

If Aunt Loretta had gotten her stroke upstairs, instead of in the cellar.

If she had gone to the doctor sooner.

If Beale hadn’t left for the auction.

If my mother hadn’t gone down to Candy’s that day.

If she hadn’t drunk. If she hadn’t worn flip-flops.

If I hadn’t just stood there mute, wracked with shock and unable to speak.

If even one of those ifs was different, then Ellie might still be alive.

And we would be happy again because now we weren’t.

Not at all.

Without Aunt Loretta, the farmhouse was an empty, cheerless place.

My mother would not get out of bed, wouldn’t talk to me, Beale, or the counselor, only lay in the room with the shades drawn.

Beale was miserable, his gaze still stunned and desolate. He would come into the house and stand there dazed, like he was waiting to wake up from a nightmare, waiting for Aunt Loretta to be in the kitchen and me to come barreling down the stairs saying, “Guess what we’re having for supper?” and Ellie to be waving her arms and kicking her feet and cooing at the sight of him, and my mother to come in and give him a kiss.

But there was no waking up because it was real, and everything was gone.

The fridge was full of hearty, homemade casseroles, cakes, and pies, all brought by Aunt Loretta’s friends, but somehow they were too rich and nourishing, and we couldn’t eat them, so we choked down bologna sandwiches for supper instead, and then afterward, when there was nothing to say and the silence grew deafening, Beale would rise, kiss my cheek, and go out to the barn. I followed him once, needing to be close, and discovered him sitting on a stool in the shadows, shoulders heaving, hands over his face and crying great, wrenching sobs as if his heart was broken.

I didn’t interrupt, only went back to the house, went back up to Ellie’s room and sat there in the rocking chair in the dark, too, as the wail inside me howled and howled without relief.

I heard him talking to my mother at night, heard him knock on his own bedroom door before going in, heard him bringing her food and asking how she was, telling her how lost he was, how overwhelmed, how every single thing he looked at reminded him of his mother or Ellie, and then his voice would break and he’d tell her he needed her, that he didn’t blame her for what had happened, that he didn’t blame anyone, but he couldn’t do it all himself, just couldn’t focus, didn’t care, was lonely . . .

I never heard her say a word in reply, and sooner or later, shoulders stooped and footsteps dragging, he would come out of the bedroom, slowly closing the door behind him, and plod down the hall to the guest room to sleep.

I didn’t tell him about smelling the alcohol on my mother’s breath. I don’t know why. Maybe because he would have looked at me, bewildered, and asked why I’d waited so long to mention it, or why I would be cruel enough to say that about my mother when it wouldn’t bring either of them back.

He was a stable, good-hearted, hardworking man from a good, stable family and he’d never lived with a full-blown alcoholic or an addict, never saw the depths to which they’d stoop to get what they needed, and had no clue as to how bad it really got. He’d thought the motor court was a hellhole dump when in reality it had been one of the better places we’d stayed and I could never have made him understand that. Could never have told him the way it really was.

Or maybe I knew that if he knew she’d been drinking, he would ask her about it, and once he did that, it would all be over.

Maybe I didn’t tell because I loved him, and I could see how much he needed my mother, how much he needed to know that he wasn’t alone, that somehow she would end her silence, and open her eyes and her arms and comfort him.

Or maybe my omission was automatic, and as simple as blood winning out.

I didn’t know, but I never said a word.

Days passed, and it was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning, feed the cats, and find food. I didn’t want to go back to school yet, and since Beale had to work and didn’t want to leave my mother alone all day, he didn’t make me.

I brought her toast in the morning and Campbell’s soup for lunch. She never finished anything but her pain medication. She never answered anything I said, and after a while, I just stopped talking. Life became a dull, gray, block of ice and I just couldn’t bring myself to care.

The world was falling down around us.

And then, two and a half weeks after Ellie was buried, when Beale had gone into town one afternoon to the lawyer’s to talk about Aunt Loretta’s will, I heard my mother get out of bed, but not stagger directly into the bathroom.

I ran upstairs and stood in the bedroom doorway, watching as she got dressed, moving stiffly and with no emotion on her face at all. She didn’t look at me, only said, “I’m leaving. Candy will be here in fifteen minutes. Go get me some garbage bags from the kitchen. If you’re coming, pack your stuff and be ready when she gets here.”

I gazed at her, thinking dully that I should be more surprised, that I should be horrified and angry and trying to talk some sense into her, or cry and plead that this was our home now and Beale loved us, and we couldn’t just walk out and leave him . . .

But I wasn’t surprised, and I didn’t cry, only made a small, helpless sound and sat down on the edge of the bed, dizzy. I’d been afraid this would happen, that it would end, that somehow she would wreck it because it was just too good, and I’d been right, I’d been right, and God, a furious flash of hate shot through me, drove me up and out of that room, down the hall to Ellie’s nursery where I stopped, sagging against the closed door, my hand on the knob but unable to turn it. Her soft, sweet baby scent lingered here, her powder and her lotion, and my knees gave way and I sank to the floor in despair.

Ellie hadn’t hated our mother. She’d loved her, she was
of
her, and so was I.

Oh God, my heart.

When Candy came I only stood back and watched, numb again, as she invaded the house and hauled half a dozen bulging garbage bags into the car, as she carefully helped my mother down the stairs, the bag of pills in her hand rattling with every step.

I took only one picture of me and Ellie off the fridge, and tucked it into my garbage bag. Made myself take one last look around, one last look at the best home I’d ever had, at Aunt Loretta’s room, at our First Family Christmas needlepoint piece hanging on the living room wall, at the terrible, one-line note I had penned—
I’m sorry. I didn’t know we were leaving. Love,
—and then I’d paused, wanting to write
Miss Sayre Bellavia
but it seemed like a pet name from a different time and using it now was a violation, so instead I just wrote
Sayre
and left it on the kitchen table with my mother’s house keys, right where Beale would find them when he got home.

I looked at everything except myself, and then I picked up my bag, stepped out onto the front porch, and closed the door behind me.