Chapter 20 Rachel
RACHEL
Rachel was sitting at the kitchen table with her homework spread out when she heard the key in the lock.
Her eyes slid off her lined workbook, where she was making notes for her English essay, a biography of Virginia Woolf.
She hadn’t been assigned the book, but was irresistibly drawn to it after hearing about Woolf’s obsession with her dead mother, how her writing and personal letters were littered with mentions of their relationship.
She has haunted me, Woolf had said.
Rachel was taking a moment to let her thoughts percolate as she stared out the big kitchen windows at the frozen lake.
This time of year, the beach looked like a miniature mountain range, the sand and ice forming into peaks that were regularly covered in snow.
The sand hardly moved when stepped on, and the water was frozen as far out as Rachel could see from their vantage point on the cliff.
At the sound of the key in the rarely used front door, she roused herself from her stare and turned, curious.
Dora had been out earlier, fetching some groceries, but Rachel thought she’d already returned.
Realization dawned on her then and she stood, apprehension buzzing in her veins as a figure emerged from the dark hallway.
“Mom?”
“Hey,” Mary said, walking into the kitchen. It was late afternoon, and the grey-filtered light from outside mixed with the golden glow of the lamp over the table, casting Mary’s skin a pale yellow. Rachel was reminded of lemon curd: bland to look at, but sharp on the tongue.
“What are you doing here?” Rachel asked, taking a tentative step toward her.
“I’m just…” Mary’s voice was high-pitched and wavering as she teetered on the edge of tears.
She looked at Rachel, then lowered herself to the floor and began to sob.
Rachel watched her for a moment as Mary hugged her own shoulders like she was trying to stop herself from breaking apart, rocking back and forth on her knees as her cries began to crest.
“I—are you okay?” Rachel asked, knowing she most certainly wasn’t.
Mary lunged for her then, sudden and ferocious.
Rachel cried out in fear as Mary pulled her into a tight hug and held on, tears drenching her sweater.
Rachel could feel Mary shaking, heart pounding hard in her chest as her breaths came sharp and shallow.
“I don’t—want to—be like this!” Mary’s words stuttered with her sobs and she held tighter to Rachel. It was starting to hurt.
“Gran!” Rachel shouted desperately to wherever Dora was in the house. “Gran, come quick!”
Rachel felt helpless, but nevertheless patted her mother’s back softly.
This was sickness, she knew. Her mother was ill and needed help.
But at the same time, she knew what would happen next.
This sort of meltdown could only mean disruption and drama and chaos.
Rachel didn’t think she had ever pitied her mother more than she did in this moment, but she also hated her for the storm she would bring down upon Rachel and Dora until her whims blew her away from them again.
Dora hurried into the room, and relief flooded Rachel. Mary let out a little cry and released herself, flung her body instead into Dora’s waiting arms.
“Mama,” Mary moaned, as Dora rocked her like an inconsolable child. She met eyes with Rachel over Mary’s head. What happened?
Rachel shrugged.
“Mama…”
And so Rachel stood by, watched as a mother and daughter loved and despised one another, resented and depended on each other in the same desperate breath.
No matter the distance between them, the love and dependence somehow always won out.
In her times of crisis, all Mary wanted was for her mother to hold her and tell her it was going to be okay.
And Rachel watched it all from afar, knowing she would never in her life feel the same.
Three days later, all they’d been able to get Mary to eat was a few bowls of tomato soup and a single sleeve of saltine crackers.
She sipped on tepid water from a green Depression glass that Dora said was her favourite from childhood.
She slept fifteen hours a day and stared at her bedroom wall or the television the rest of the time, leaving her bed only to use the toilet.
All they’d been able to get out of her was that something had happened with the guy she’d been seeing, and that she’d had thoughts of suicide for the past two weeks—egged on, she claimed, by images from her dreams.
New year.
New boyfriend.
New failure.
New crisis.
So often, Mary came back to the lake in the heat of summer, but this time, she’d come to hibernate. To overwinter like the perennials in Dora’s sprawling gardens, shrouded in protective burlap as they lay dormant beneath the frost and snow, their hearts filled with raw longing for spring.
“She needs help,” Rachel said to Dora on the fourth night as she stood watching her grandmother grind chamomile and spearmint for a calming tea.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, little one,” Dora said, brow furrowed as she worked away with the pestle.
“No, Gran, I mean…” Rachel hesitated, not wanting to offend. “I mean real help, like professional help. She needs a doctor. There’s something wrong.”
“Of course there’s something wrong,” Dora said, shaking her head. “There always has been.”
“No, but Gran, this is…” Rachel’s eyes were wide and imploring.
“I’m really worried about her.” As she said it, she realized it was true, and was overcome with a confusing sense of achievement.
It was often so difficult to understand or forgive Mary, but seeing her in such a vulnerable state was eye-opening.
Her mother was, in many ways, the oblivious author of her own misfortunes.
But how much of her poor judgment was dictated—or at least influenced—by her mental illness?
Seeing her now, reduced to a child-like shell of a person who could barely feed herself, Rachel wondered how anyone could make the right choices from such a place of helplessness.
It was all so complicated, but Rachel was doing her best to untangle it.
All she knew was that she had never felt sorrier for her mother than she did now.
“I’m concerned, too,” Dora muttered, tapping the side of the mortar with a clink to empty the herb blend into a jar. “I’ve never seen her quite like this.” She met Rachel’s eyes now. “She keeps asking for Reverend Holland. I suppose they made quite a connection the last time she was here.”
Rachel remembered a couple of summers ago, when her mother had spent most of her visit alternating between painting her nails and meeting with the reverend.
She’d seemed better that time, though, and Rachel wondered if perhaps the minister had had some positive impact on her.
She knew Mary was always looking for answers anywhere she could find them.
Rachel recalled with disdain the fortune-tellers, the televangelists and mediums Mary had touted over the years. Was the reverend really any better?
At Dora’s invitation, he arrived that evening, and sat with Mary for an hour as though she were on her deathbed. In a way, she sort of was: She’d given up all hope for her life and the images and voices had taken over any rational thought she possessed. She cried constantly.
Rachel stood outside her mother’s bedroom door, just out of sight, and eavesdropped. The reverend spoke of finding strength from God and from within.
“I want to be better, Reverend. I do.” Mary sobbed, blew her nose loudly.
“You have not had an easy life, Mary,” the reverend reassured her. “God has tested you with trials others have not been challenged with. It is a lot to bear.”
“And my mother, she just…she’ll never understand. She and Rachel hate me. I know they do. All they do is—”
“Your family does not hate you, Mary,” he interrupted gently. “You must—”
“But I hear the words,” she whispered.
“They tell you this?”
Silence. “No. In my head, I hear it. I hear that they hate me.” She paused. “Are they right? Do I need help?”
A pause. “No, I do not think you need any help that God cannot provide.”
Rachel had had enough. Fuming, she stepped into the room, and they both looked up at her in surprise.
“Rachel,” the reverend began, “I—”
“She doesn’t need God,” Rachel snapped. “She needs a doctor. Medication.”
Mary’s face was blotchy and wet, her nose running.
“When someone is sick, you call a doctor,” Rachel pressed, her mouth dry. She’d never spoken to an adult like this before, but had to say it.
Reverend Holland looked at her with something close to pity, and Rachel felt a squirm of defeat.
“Yes. But there are also chapels in hospitals, aren’t there?” he said.
Rachel gnashed her teeth.
“They trust the care of doctors,” Reverend Holland said. “But still they pray.”
That night, Rachel stayed up late to catch up on her homework.
It had been almost impossible to focus, with everything going on.
At midnight she stumbled, exhausted, into the bathroom.
She always wished the house had more than one shower, because ever since that night with Mary years ago, she hated using this one.
Every single time, she’d fight to shake off the lingering images of Mary, hands outstretched like Lady Macbeth, uttering accusations of witchcraft that could have gotten a woman hanged by the neck once upon a time.
The house was quiet now. Mary had finally stopped crying an hour ago and found her way into sleep. Rachel had finished her research, and could go to sleep now herself.
She sat on the toilet beside the shower, ran her eyes over the grid of grey grout between the tiles, a little moldy in places, thinking of Woolf’s words about her own mother.
Rachel never lingered in the shower like some teenagers did. She’d lather and rinse as fast as possible, fighting against the memories of water ricocheting off her mother’s body into her face.