Chapter 6 Lorna Now
With all those happy figurines staring at her, lorna had lost her appetite.
Did she want to change? Well, yes, Micah, she did.
She hated what she had become. Who would want to be this sad, lonely woman?
At what point had she decided this small life of hers was enough?
How had she settled for using Precious Moments figurines as a substitute for living?
Did she really think she could make up what she’d lost in life with porcelain?
She threw away her half-eaten frozen dinner, then went to her bedroom to change. Agnes followed, finding her bed and circling four or five times before settling in. She let out a loud sigh.
“Oh, sure,” Lorna said, reaching down to pet her. “All that rolling over for attention and belly rubs must have really worn you out, huh? I feel like I don’t even know you. You could have at least told me you knew how to roll over.” She sniffed with indignation and stood.
Agnes yawned and rolled onto her side.
Lorna changed into pajama shorts and an old Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt.
She’d gone to see the band many years ago.
With Mike, her boyfriend of several months until he told her he couldn’t deal with the constant Kristen drama.
He’d bought her the T-shirt, so at least she had that.
That was fifteen years ago, when she used to date.
Never very successfully, but enough that she couldn’t be considered a total spinster.
She could hardly recall Mike now. He had shaggy hair and was a chemist at a large manufacturing firm.
Nice guy, but... but Lorna didn’t remember much specifically, other than it had ended because of Kristen.
Like everything else, it was so hard to recall who she’d been before she closed and locked the door to her internal bomb shelter.
She piled her hair on top of her head, then walked over to her small dresser and opened the bottom drawer, where she kept her important documents.
In the back of the drawer, behind many papers, was a file.
She pulled it out. Labeled simply Mom , it was all the paperwork that had been necessary to record her mother’s death and settle her estate.
Lorna took the file to the living room, settled into her favorite chair (a happy yellow, with flowers and butterflies woven into the upholstery), and put the file on her lap.
She wasn’t sure what she intended to do, but inside this file, among many other things, was the paperwork from her mother’s trust. Lorna hadn’t looked at it since she’d shoved it into that drawer more than four years ago, right after she’d met with the estate attorney who told her that her mother had made her the sole beneficiary of her estate, and anything left after paying creditors belonged to her.
.. on the condition she addressed her anger.
“You’re kidding,” Lorna had said.
“Nope. Not kidding,” Tyrone, the estate attorney, confirmed.
“She left a list of things she wanted you to address.” He’d looked at the list. “Interesting.” He’d shown her the list then, and Lorna recognized the items instantly—they were all the things she accused Kristen and her mother of ruining for her.
All the things she angrily spelled out to her mother one terrible night shortly before she died.
She had turned away, not wanting to read more.
Tyrone was a no-nonsense type and unemotional as he folded the list and put it with the trust paperwork.
Usually Lorna very much appreciated that in a person, but in this instance, she could have used a little This is outrageous attitude on her behalf.
Of course, Tyrone had no way of knowing that her mother had dedicated the last few years of her life to Al-Anon and the tenants of the program.
That she saw herself as a leader in the work of forgiving addicts and learning to set boundaries.
And that she had this annoying idea that if Lorna took stock of her personal inventory of grievances and made a list of the people she’d hurt and why, and then made amends or apologized or did whatever she needed to do to stop obsessing about the past, then maybe she could forgive herself, stop being angry, and get on with the business of living a long and happy life.
“Forgive myself for what?” Lorna had demanded when her mother first presented this wonky idea.
Her mother averted her gaze. “For not having saved your sister. For not being the sister you think Kristen needs.”
Lorna was taken aback. “Excuse me? I’m not the sister Kristen needs? What about the sister I need, Mom? I don’t need to forgive myself; I need to figure out if I can ever forgive Kristen, because I’ve tried, and I can’t.”
That conversation, like many that would follow, had gone from bad to worse. It had constantly amazed Lorna that Kristen could break every promise she ever made, and her mother would still seek ways to forgive her. There had to be an end point, didn’t there?
Anyway, that argument happened before her mother knew she was sick.
After her diagnosis, she turned up the volume on her wish/hope/demand that Lorna reconcile her regrets for the sake of peace.
“Think of it this way,” she said as she refilled a glass of wine that Lorna was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to be drinking with all the medicine she was taking.
“If you could let go of the things you can’t change, maybe you wouldn’t be so angry anymore.
You’d be able to move on from the hand that life dealt you.
You need to do it before it’s too late, Lolo. ”
Lorna had been incredulous. “It’s already too late, Mom.” She’d had enough of Kristen. What she could not understand was why her mother hadn’t.
Her mother doggedly continued her nonsensical argument until the day she died.
Lorna had ignored it then, and she kept on ignoring it after her mother was gone.
And after Kristen moved to Florida. She would have forgotten it all had it not been for the matter of her grandmother’s house.
With the house soon up for sale, she needed whatever money was in her mother’s trust.
She remembered a Sunday afternoon in the garage apartment they’d lived in behind Peggy Shane’s house.
Her mother was lying on a single bed, her face etched with pain.
Most of her hair was gone, and what remained had turned stark white from the chemo and the stress.
She was so thin, she looked like a living skeleton.
A breeze coming through the open windows kept the apartment comfortable, but her mother was covered with a thick blanket. Lorna had been infuriated with Kristen that afternoon. She was supposed to have been there with Mom, but as usual, she wasn’t.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember a time she hadn’t been angry with Kristen.
“Oh, Lorna, I worry about you so,” her mother had croaked after Lorna unleashed her opinion of Kristen skipping out on her one responsibility.
“Don’t worry about me, Mom. I’m fine,” Lorna snapped.
But she’d regretted her tone instantly. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that Kristen had bailed on caretaking responsibilities, disappearing into thin air without telling anyone.
Kristen didn’t have a job, but Lorna did.
Kristen didn’t have to pay rent, but Lorna did.
Her anger wasn’t really directed at her mother, but where else would she vent her frustration? Even when she caught herself, when she knew she was being unfair to her ailing mother, it came bubbling out because she didn’t have the strength to contain it. Fury seemed to ooze from every pore.
“Well, you don’t look fine to me,” her mother said hoarsely. “You hold so much regret and guilt, Lolo. It’s not good for you.”
Regret? Guilt? What she was holding on to was fury. At her mother for dying, at Kristen for leaving her to deal with her mother’s death on her own. At the world in general for always dumping on her.
“I wish you would consider joining Al-Anon. It’s made such a huge difference for me. If you’d just address your issues—”
“Stop,” Lorna said.
“I’m trying to help you.”
Lorna’s pulse was pounding, her head on the verge of exploding. “Stop, Mom.”
“You don’t need to live with guilt. You can free yourself of it.”
“Stop!” Lorna cried. “I don’t need to free myself from anything. You’re the one dying—not me.” The moment those words flew out of her mouth, she tried to claw them back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
Her mother, who once would have used that remark as a jumping-off point for a massive argument, smiled weakly. “Well, you’re not wrong about that, Lolo. So maybe give me the benefit of my deathbed insight, will you?”
Lorna had not given her mother the benefit of that insight. She’d grown impossibly angrier and said things she truly, deeply regretted. So much so that now she was choking with regret. Her mother had been right about that, at least.
She could hardly bear thinking of her mother’s last few weeks on this earth. Every memory felt like a gut punch. She missed her terribly.
She even missed Kristen, although she was hard-pressed to say why.
Lorna looked at the stack of unsent letters to Kristen and the unopened ones from her stepmother.
She looked around at her apartment. This was the space where Nana helped her and Kristen make Christmas ornaments.
They would sit around the coffee table with their yarn and glitter and felt and construction paper, listening to Nana tell stories about when she was a girl while they made snowflakes and Santas and stars.
This was the space where they created dance routines or, on the hottest days of summer, read their books under an enormous ceiling fan.
This was where Lorna had lived her happiest life.
Nana made meals for them—full meals, never microwaved.
She helped them wash their hair, and at bedtime she would hug them tight and tell them she loved them to the moon and back.
Mr. Contreras had chopped up all those memories. Now she was isolated in this space, her inability to trust anyone a thick coat of armor keeping her away from people and from life.
Keeping her lonely.
She stared down at the file. She couldn’t open it. She knew what was contained in those pages by heart; she’d practically written the thing herself that night she’d let out all her frustration and disappointment with her family on her dying mother.
She mentally flipped through her catalog of intact memories, and even those that were fractured confirmed what she always knew. Everything—the good and the bad—had always started and ended with Kristen.
The truth, which Lorna was very good at ignoring, was that she was terribly tired of being herself.
She was exhausted from being so angry and distrustful.
She wanted friends. She wanted to go for drinks and get invited to parties and know how to have casual conversations.
She wanted camaraderie with her coworkers and to laugh and go on vacations.
She wanted men like Seth not only to smile at her but to like her.
She did not want to be called King Kong. She wanted to be called Lolo.
Micah had urged her to open herself to the process.
She was afraid of his process, because she had the feeling he meant to open the door to her bomb shelter.
She was afraid of what she might say or do, things she could never take back.
How much more of her could she risk? It felt like there was hardly anything left of her as it was.
Without looking at the papers inside, she took the file back to her dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and put it away.
She didn’t know where to go from here. She was usually so practical, so set in her decisions about how to move forward. But tonight she felt like she was tumbling through space, thrown for a loop.
Micah had said it wouldn’t hurt her to try.
She guessed she’d try. But she wasn’t going to like it one bit.
Well, thanks a lot again, Kristen. I’ve been sentenced to a “wellness” program because I am uptight and still mad about you and all I want to do is get away from you, and all my new life coach wants to do is talk about you.
So great! I can’t wait to relive everything!
It was so much fun the first time through!
All this because Mom thought I was the problem, that I needed to let go of the past and all the things you made me do.
This is all YOUR FAULT. It’s always your fault.
You will probably argue it can’t be your fault because you’re not here, but that’s just it—you’re ALWAYS here.
You. Are. Always. Here. I don’t want you living in my head anymore.
But I don’t know how to get you out.