Pretending to Dance (41 page)

I looked up at her. “Where did all those pills go?” I asked.

“I flushed them this morning,” she said. She was crying, trying to wipe the tears away with her fingertips, but they kept on coming. “They were for his pain and he wasn't going to need them any longer,” she said.

“I don't believe you,” I said.

“Why on earth would I
kill
him?” There was anguish in her eyes.

“I don't know!” I said. “Maybe he was too much trouble. Maybe you wanted to get him out of the way.”

She slapped me. I gasped, my face stinging and my eyes instantly full of tears. I watched her turn away from me and head for the hallway. I heard her footsteps on the hardwood and the slamming of the bedroom door. I looked at Russell.

“I think she's been taking pills from the pharmacy,” I said. “Saving them up to kill him.”

“Molly,” he said patiently, “the doctor examined him and determined he had complications from the MS. I don't know why you'd think anything else. Why would you want to hurt your mother like that?”

I hated him at that moment. I hated both of them. I stormed out of the house and climbed onto my bike, heading for Amalia's. I found her sitting on the carved chair in her front yard. She stood up when I turned into her driveway and she stretched her arms out at her sides. I jumped off my bike and ran into her embrace. She clung to me and I knew she was crying as hard as I was.

“How did you know?” I finally managed to whisper.

“Russell called me this morning,” she said.

I pulled away from her, looking into her tear-streaked face. “Amalia,” I said, trying to make my voice very calm. I needed her to take me seriously. “Mom did it,” I said. “She was keeping these pills in that stained-glass pencil case you gave Daddy. And I found it by their bed this morning. Empty. She killed him.”

Amalia stared at me with such a stunned look on her face that I thought she actually believed me. “Oh baby,” she said after a moment, “that's nonsense.”

“It's not!” I said. “I think we should call the police.”

“No, we should not.” She ran her hands over my hair. “You're grieving, baby. Grief can make you crazy. You aren't thinking straight.”

“I'm the only person who
is
thinking straight!” I said.

She put her arm around my shoulders. “Come with me,” she said, and she led me inside her house. From the living room, I could see the phone in her kitchen and I thought of running to it. Dialing the police before she had a chance to stop me. But almost as if she knew my plan, she turned me firmly in the direction of the floor pillows in front of the windows. “Let's sit here,” she said, tugging me down to the pillows next to her.

“I want you to listen to me,” she said, holding my hand firmly in her lap. “First, you need to get it out of your head that Nora had anything to do with Graham's death. That's crazy talk, all right? She loved him. You know that.”

“But those pills!” I said.

“I don't know anything about ‘those pills.'” She sighed. “He took so many pills, they're probably lying all over the house,” she said. “You're reading too much into them. But there's something you need to understand.”

She looked through the window into her yard, and I could see dozens of crisscrossed fine red lines in the whites of her eyes.

“What?” I asked.

“He wanted to die, baby,” she said. “I know that's hard to hear, but if he could talk to you right now, he'd say how relieved he is that it finally happened.”

“But
why
?” I was almost shouting.

“Sh,” she said.

“His life was
fine,
” I argued. “He had us. He had his … ramps and special bathroom and everything.” Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were simple and weak. “He had
us,
” I repeated. “Why wasn't that enough for him?”

“You weren't inside his skin,” she said. “He hid it well from you. The bit-by-bit losses. The indignities. He was afraid of how bad it would get. He was afraid of being a burden. He wanted to be released from it.”

“He wasn't afraid of anything!” I argued.

“Of course he was,” she said. “He was human. But you know the one thing he wasn't afraid of, not even a little bit?”

“What?”

“Dying.”

“I would have taken care of him forever,” I said.

“He didn't want that. He didn't want anyone to have to take care of him forever.”

“So she helped him die,” I said, my anger at Nora boiling up again. “It doesn't matter if he wanted to die or not. She shouldn't have—”

“Molly!” Amalia said sharply, and she squeezed my hand hard enough to hurt. “She would
never
do that. It's cruel of you to think that of her.”

I jerked my hand away from hers. “Why won't you believe me?” I asked. “Those pills were—”

“The pills don't matter!” She got to her feet and looked down at me, and for the first time in my entire life, I felt as though she was fed up with me. I felt as though she was
sick
of me. “I don't understand why you're fixated on this,” she said.

“You just don't want to believe it,” I argued.

“Because it's not believable. How could you think Nora would do something like that?”

“She's happy he's dead. She went on and on about letting him die in peace. She was glad—”

“Stop it!” She began to cry again, raising her hand to her eyes. “She can be relieved he's finally at peace, Molly,” she said through her tears. “That doesn't mean she had anything to do with helping him get there.”

I didn't know what to say. She was never going to believe me.

“I don't want to hear you say another word about this,” she said. “It's ugly, what you're saying. How do you think your father would feel, hearing you accuse Nora of something like that?”

I stared at her. Who was this woman? This was the day no one seemed like themselves. Nora. Russell. Amalia. Maybe I didn't seem like myself, either.
Grief can make you crazy.

“I need to lie down for a while,” Amalia said suddenly, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “You can stay here if you want or…” She didn't finish her sentence, but she waved a hand through the air as if she didn't care what I did.

At the entrance to the hallway, she turned to look at me. “You want him back,” she said, more calmly now. “I understand that. And I understand that being angry at Nora is a way to keep from feeling the loss. But you need to feel it, Molly,” she said. “Just feel it.”

She walked down the hall, but I stayed on the floor pillows, my back against the glass wall. I hated the way she'd talked to me just now. I could always count on her to listen to me, to love me no matter what. Today, she shut me out.

I closed my eyes and tried to do what she said.
Feel the loss.
But my emotions were jumbled together with the crushed pencil case on the bedroom floor and my mother reaching into her pharmacy coat pocket and the way she told me to stay with Daddy the night before:
You can help me let him go.

And sitting there, I began to wonder. If I hadn't gone to the springhouse, if I'd been home where I belonged, could I have saved him? Could I have called the ambulance in time?

Could I have stopped my mother from taking my father's life?

 

56

 

For the most part, everyone left me alone over the next few days, although. Nora came up to my room at least twice a day. She brought me food I barely touched and I froze her out, ignoring anything she said to me. I stopped calling her “Mom” during those few days. She would forever after be “Nora” to me and I'd say her name in a cold voice designed to distance myself from her. It was my way of hurting her, the only weapon I had.

On the third day after Daddy's death, she told me his ashes were now buried in our family graveyard, and it was all I could do to wait until she left the room before I broke down. I wanted to open my window and scream,
“No!”
at the top of my lungs. He was nothing but ashes now. I couldn't imagine it. I couldn't bear it.

I tried to wrap my mind around the reality that he was gone. If I went downstairs, he wouldn't be there. I would never hear him call me “darling” again. I walked aimlessly around my room whispering to myself, “I want my daddy back,” the words coming out in a child's voice, because I suddenly felt very much like a child. I didn't know who that girl was who snuck out of her grandmother's house to have sex with a boy. I didn't know how she could have been so reckless. So selfish.
So wrong.
The two things—sneaking out to be with Chris and Daddy's death—were twisted together so firmly in my mind now that I would never be able to untwist them. If I hadn't been with Chris, I could have saved my father. Logically, I knew it didn't make sense, but logic was no longer my friend.

Amalia came to see me, but she said she wouldn't talk to me if I insisted on believing that Nora had anything to do with Daddy's death. I felt as though I'd lost her, too.

*   *   *

On the fourth day, Nora set a grilled-cheese sandwich on my desk, then sat down on the edge of my bed where I had burrowed myself beneath the covers.

“There's going to be a memorial service for Daddy tomorrow night at the pavilion,” she said. “I'd like you to come.”

“No.” I kept my eyes closed, the covers up to my nose. I wasn't sure what a memorial service was, exactly, but I didn't want to be there and see her fake her grief in public.

“It's a way to remember him, honey,” she said. When I didn't respond, she sighed. “I'm so afraid you'll regret it later if you don't come.” She rubbed my shoulder through the quilt and I yanked the covers over my head and stayed that way until she gave up and left my room.

*   *   *

I waited until the very last second before deciding to go to the memorial service, which was why I was still dressed in the shorts and T-shirt I'd been sleeping in for days. I'd looked at myself in the mirror that afternoon for the first time since it happened. My hair was dirty and my eyes were so swollen, the lids looked like little pink sausages, but I needed to go to the service. I kept thinking that Daddy's spirit might be there, and if he was there, I wanted to be there, too.

Nora drove the two of us to the pavilion. I smelled disgustingly sweaty to myself and wondered if she'd say anything about it, but she just gave me a sad smile and said she was glad I'd decided to go. I said nothing in response. I was done talking to her.

Once we got to the pavilion, I wished I hadn't come. The platform was crowded with our family and Daddy's friends. Chairs had been set up facing a microphone at one end of the pavilion, and about half the people were seated. They balanced little plates of food on their laps as they smiled and talked to one another, and I thought,
How can they smile?
Someone had set up a stereo and music rang out from the speakers near the back of the pavilion. I felt sick when I recognized the music as one of the mix tapes Daddy and I had put together for the midsummer party. It was wrong, playing that music now. Elvis followed by the Beatles followed by the Four Tops followed by Bing Crosby. It was all wrong. I picked up one of the chairs and moved it to a corner of the pavilion as far from the speakers as I could get and I sat there alone, out of the way, away from the crowd, trying to feel my father in the air around me.

Dani was sitting on the other side of the pavilion, and when she spotted me, she got up and started walking toward me. I didn't want to talk to her. I didn't want to talk to anyone, but soon she was standing next to me.

“Why don't you come sit with me and my parents?” she asked.

I didn't look at her. “I just want to sit alone,” I said.

She was quiet for a moment. “Mom told me you think Aunt Nora had something to do with Uncle Graham dying,” she said.

“She killed him.”

“Molly…” I could see her shaking her head from the corner of my eye. “That's so crazy. Are you cracking up?”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“You know,” she said, her voice breaking, “I loved him, too.”

I looked up at her. She wore no makeup today. No lip ring. I remembered her at my father's side the night he fell from the pavilion.
She's not your enemy,
I thought. “I know,” I said, contrite.

“Come sit with us?” she tried again, but I shook my head.

“No, thanks.”

She walked away and I went back to sitting alone and cursing the music. After a while, I noticed that Peter and Helen were sitting at the edge of the crowd, not far from me. They sat next to Janet and her Viking boyfriend. Peter spotted me and I groaned as I saw him leave his seat and walk toward mine. I lowered my gaze to my lap as he crouched down next to me. “I'm so sorry for your loss, Molly,” he said.

“Thank you,” I muttered.

“He was an inspirational man,” he said and I felt my lower lip begin to tremble.

“Let me know if I can help you in any way, all right?” Peter stood up again, resting his hand on my shoulder. “If you need to talk, I'm there for you.”

With your stupid Freudian therapy?
I thought.
No, thank you.
I wondered if he was the slightest bit happy now that his professional rival was gone.

“Okay,” I said. I was relieved when he walked back to his seat.

Soon, everyone was sitting down and someone turned off the music. Then people took turns at the microphone. Uncle Trevor and Aunt Claudia. Russell. Peter. They all talked about how wonderful my father was, but I hardly heard them. My arms were folded across my chest like armor.