37. Evelyn
My world was dark, but two hands were on my arms, guiding me forward. I stumbled, and Laszlo caught me.
“Why did I think blindfolding you was a good idea?”
I laughed. “You can take it off anytime, it’s okay.”
“Nice try,” he growled in my ear. “We’re almost there. Step. Good girl. Another step. Okay there are three more steps, then a landing. Look how good you follow directions, angel.”
“Unless you’re trying to get into my panties, Laszlo, you better stop that.”
He snickered, and there was a jingling of keys, then, “I’m gonna pick you up.”
Something prickled in the back of my mind. A familiarity. There was a scent… I knew it, but I couldn’t put it to words. Autumn had changed the flavour of the world, giving it a crispness, but this was something deeper, smokier.
His arm reached beneath my pale blue skirt, and under my long blonde hair so that he could hoist me up, supporting my legs and back. He stepped over the threshold, and I knew why it was familiar. Tobacco, stale and faded by time, stung my nostrils.
I tore the blindfold off without waiting permission.
“Bad girl, you cheated,” he said, but his voice didn’t hold any threat, because I was standing—being held—in my grandmother’s house for the first time since she died.
It was an old Romanesque style building, dark hard wood and faded wallpaper.
There was a rainbow of light filtering through stained-glass at my feet.
Nothing had changed, nothing but dust, and I gaped.
“Laszlo, did you break in?” I asked, my gaze dropping to the keys in his hands. “No… how? How did…?”
Tears stained my cheeks, and I swiped them away. He kissed the nearest cheek. I hated how emotional I always was. My mother told me when I was ten that it was all the guilt and shame over being a heathen child.
Of disappointing her.
Of alienating Caleb from her.
That same shame burned inside me, but Laszlo murred at my cheek.
“Don’t go down that road, my love. Your grandmother always wanted you to have this place. We can’t keep it, but for a little while, it’s yours. A way to say goodbye to your past. Get some closure.”
“You didn’t talk to Caleb about it, did you?”
“No. I went through intermediaries; no one will connect you to the sale. It’s yours. You owe him no gratitude, by the way. This was all me.”
My heart was pounding loud, blood rushing to my head, and his words filtered in slowly, hazily. His smile was lopsided, and I kissed his dimple.
“I like it when you’re a little cocky.”
He placed me down, holding me steady as my knees threatened to give out. My high heels clicked on the wooden floor. Being with my grandmother had been an escape from the cult. Our months together were precious, a lifeline I clung to when Caleb told me I’d be marrying my half-brother.
“I want you to find every pleasant sliver of your past, and bring it with us when we leave. They didn’t seem interested in any of her stuff. I asked to buy the entire estate, and they had no chattel requested. I don’t think your mother has been here.”
More tears fell, and Laszlo stayed in my shadow as I drifted like a ghost through the downstairs. “No, she wouldn’t have come. Caleb would have seen that as a failing, and she’s desperate to get back in his good graces.”
Not that she could. My mother would be forty soon, and I was her only child.
He gave her nothing, because she required nothing more to always be his.
Her loyalty had been etched into her soul.
Even as he moved on, she would pick out other girls in the flock for him, prepare them for what it meant to have Caleb’s attention upon them.
I traced my fingers along the bookshelf, finding some old leather-bound tomes. I pulled one out, opening it to find children’s stories I recalled her reading to me when I was four, during my first visit.
The next book was larger, a collection of my grandmother’s photography.
They were mostly in black and white. There were some of me as a kid, artistic in their candidness.
I stared off out the window in one, the stark shadows and blooming highlights giving it a thoughtful and moody expression.
In another, I was yelling at the television.
“Look how red your face was,” Laszlo said, all affection and awe.
“I can’t ever remember being that mad before.”
A firm hand went to my back, stroking it. I put the photo book back on the shelf.
“It’s weird being here without her. The days after she died… I was in a daze. I don’t remember much of anything.”
“The mercy of trauma,” he hummed, and I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. Knowing it wasn’t a mercy at all, though it wore the sheepskin of one.
It was nice to indulge in the fantasy that there was some kindness to the pain of the past.
“Do you want to see my mother’s room?”
I didn’t wait for him to respond, because I wanted to see the room. It had been locked ever since she left home at fifteen, pregnant with me. Mother never came back after running off with Caleb, but my grandmother always hoped she would.
Laszlo followed up the stairs, down the hall, but when I tried the door, of course it was locked. He tried his keys but none worked. Tears. More forsaken tears burned in my eyes.
“Hey, hey. None of that. Look,” he said, pulling out a small rectangular box from his long trench coat. He knelt down in front of the door, opening his tool kit, and pulling out several long, slender pieces of metal.
He stuck them inside the hole, and I stared, too bewildered to keep crying.
“What are you—”
“Shh, sorry Lyn, I gotta listen.”
Being quiet was a special skill of mine, and I stared out the window into my grandmother’s back yard. It was surrounded by large trees that were shedding orange and red leaves. The grass was covered in a tapestry of warm hues. The window was smudged and dirty from neglect.
This place would only be mine for a couple of weeks. There wasn’t any point in trying to clean it, but my hands itched, the impulse strong.
“There!”
Laszlo’s voice stirred me from my reverie, and I watched the door swing open, into a darkened room. He went in first, throwing open the curtains. Dust flew into the air and he cursed, sneezed.
I hid my giggle behind my palm, then followed in after him.
My mother’s room was not at all what I expected.
The walls had been plastered in pages cut from magazines. Every inch had a different face, a different person. Bands, it seemed. Most had dark hair, styled over one of their eyes. There were a lot of tattoos and black clothing. The men wore eyeliner, the women had hair that reminded me of a racoon.
“What… is this?”
I looked at Laszlo, because he wouldn’t have looked out of place on this wall. He had a smirk on his lips, brushing a hand through his own dark hair.
“She had a pretty hardcore emo phase, seems like.”
I crinkled my nose in confusion.
“It was a style of music, but also a counterculture. It developed from punk, but got picked up by some pop-rock bands, which made it more mainstream.”
“Counterculture? My mother was…”
Who was she?
I only knew her after her path diverged, after her life revolved around Caleb and his teachings. But before then, she’d been a person. A girl. I walked around the room, feeling the ghost of a person I never knew.
On the nightstand was a transparent phone, showing the wires inside. Next to it was an ashtray, littered with stubs. I didn’t know she had smoked. Beneath it was a notebook, and I opened it with no concern for her privacy.
The girl that had lived in this room was dead. She had no sacred secrets.
Laszlo sat next to me on the bed, sensing my need for his support. His arm was around my back as I flipped to the last page.
March 13, 2005
This is my last entry before I start my new life! I’m so excited. I’ve been searching for something for so long, wondering what the point of life was. That night I cut myself and almost died, I saw something. A glowing. I don’t know what it was, but now that I know I’m pregnant, I understand.
I have a purpose, and Caleb told me we’re going to live with him and his son, Henry. He’s ten now and excited to meet his little sister. Another few months!
He has a big plot of land in the mountains. Once I leave all this sin behind, repent for my past, I’ll be saved.
Caleb says mom has a sorry excuse for a husband, and that’s why she’s as wild as she is. He promises that he’s not like that. He’ll always guide me, show me the path to Godliness, as long as I respect and obey him. That’s the easiest thing in the world! My path is clear.
Mom will be happier without me, and the two of them can go back to partying.
My child will be raised in a house of worship. Caleb will be the solid father she deserves, and she’ll grow up, knowing she is blessed.
I hope Caleb proposes once I get there. I don’t want to have her out of wedlock. His first wife died giving birth, and I know I’ll never be able to replace her, but I’ll be a good wife to him.
I will live to serve him.
xoxo Rosie
I wasn’t aware of the tears streaming down my face until Laszlo wiped another one away. Looking down, my silk blouse was stained with them. I must have been bawling, but I didn’t feel it in my chest. There was no sobbing, no buckling over. Just hot tears, pouring like a river over my cheeks.
“She wanted to love me,” I managed through quivering lips.
“In her own way, she did.”
“For a while.”
Laszlo sat with me, never hurrying me along in my grief and pain.
The room was a monument to my mother’s teenage rebellion, her struggle to find herself, but instead she found a man willing to use her. Break her down, bit by bit, until she was little more than a shadow. She could never compete with Henry’s mother, because Henry’s mother was dead.
A symbol of feminine sacrifice, a tool for manipulation and cruelty, no longer a person.
I felt empathy for my mother, and I felt hatred for her.
She could have chosen me over him, but she didn’t. When he accused her of being a slut, of me not being his child, she didn’t blame him. She blamed me for not looking enough like him.
All I wanted was for her to love me, but that desire was in vain.
She could have left him, when grandmother died. She had access to the house, the inheritance, until I turned eighteen. Instead, she gave it all to him, and he did nothing with it. Her sacrifices meant nothing to him, but she carved herself up, piece by piece, desperate attempts to please him.
“I feel bad for her.”
“Yea,” Laszlo said, staring out the cloudy window, where the blue sky darkened beyond the trees.
“I shouldn’t feel bad for her.”
“It’s never that easy.”
“It’s not. She was a kid. He used her.”
“He did. But you were a kid when she hurt you.”
I stared off for a long time, rolling those words around. I wished I could love my mama. Instead, I pitied her. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it offered understanding, and maybe that was as close as I could ever get.
“Give Caleb my number. I need to face my fears.”
He stiffened at my side, then forced himself to relax, holding me tighter. “Okay, Lyn. If that’s what you think is best.”
Laszlo hated talking about his parents. Since our wedding, I captured fragments, trying to piece them together, but I had little more than a scrap of paper. Whatever was happening at that creepy mansion would happen soon, though, and I needed to ask him some painful questions.
“Do you think your parents will be at the party?” I asked, my voice thin.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You haven’t been able to track them down?”
“No.”
I cringed. Part of me wanted to drop it, but there was something big on the horizon, and somehow both our pasts were hurtling together towards the convergent point. One eclipse, two crappy childhoods.
“Do you think they’re alive?”
“My father had connections. They could have fake identities, plastic surgery. Been transferred out of the country.” His voice was hollow. I didn’t like it, and my words were untethering him. I placed a hand on his thigh, squeezing it. He looked down on it, then back out the window.
“I think I’m good enough that I would have found a trace of them, if they were alive. They were too egotistical to disappear into a simple life and pissed off too many people.”
“And Lilien?”
His frown deepened, but I had to know.
“I hope she’s dead. I hope she hasn’t been suffering all this time.”
The words were heavy, and we stared off, lost in our own misery. He was grieving the loss of a family he had no graves for, and I was grieving the loss of a family that still walked on Earth.
Darkness claimed the room, and we sat, holding one another, until my legs stiffened and my back ached. Laszlo pulled out a flashlight.
“I didn’t hook up the power. Didn’t want anything in our names,” he explained as we walked downstairs.
“Can you transfer the deed to Roxy?”
He leaned down, kissing the top of my head. “Of course. Whatever my wife wants.”
I grabbed the photo book, tucking it under my arm with my mother’s diary.
The ghosts of the past clung to us. The veil between the worlds was growing thin. It would be at its thinnest on the night of the eclipse.
We would have to steel ourselves against our past if we had any hope of survival.