Chapter Six Ashley
SIX ASHLEY
Ashley remembered the horrifying version of her mother who’d visited her in the days and weeks after her death: face bloody, curly dark hair in tangles as she followed Ashley around, sitting on the edge of Ash’s bed when she awoke in the middle of the night.
And when she opened her mouth, it was like an empty cave—the smell of moist earth and rock, ruined things; her voice was an echo from far away.
“No,” Ashley told her brother now, blinking the memory away. “It’s been almost two years since I’ve had any hallucinations. Not since leaving the hospital.” The medications, the therapy, they had fixed her.
Hadn’t they?
Malcolm took a long swig of beer. “It’s just… I worry about you, Ash.”
“You don’t need to worry, I promise, Mal. I’m fine.” She offered an exaggerated smile as proof.
“You’re still taking your meds?”
Ashley gritted her teeth. “Of course,” she said. But the truth was, she’d stopped taking the meds months ago, weaning herself off without telling anyone, not even Eileen, the kindly white-haired therapist she now saw once a month.
“Did you know Mom was taking antidepressants?” Mal asked.
“What? No. Where did you get that from?”
Her brother nodded. “She told me. The doctor put her on them about three months before her suicide.”
“But why didn’t she tell me?”
“I guess she didn’t want to worry you. You were so busy with school, had enough stressing you. She didn’t want to add to it.”
“But she told you?” Ash was incredulous. “That’s—”
Above them there was another scraping sound, followed by a loud thumping crash. The ceiling shook, and flecks of loose plaster drifted down.
Ashley was up on her feet, racing across the kitchen, down the hall, up the carpeted steps, Malcolm right behind her.
“Gram?” she called as she ran.
No response.
She smelled smoke in the upstairs hallway, the scent catching in the back of her throat.
“Something’s on fire, Mal!” she called back to her brother.
She knocked sharply on her grandmother’s bedroom door.
Again, no response. She kept her hand against the door, feeling for heat, but the door was cool.
“I’m coming in, Gram,” she yelled, turning the knob to find it locked.
“Shit!” She continued pounding at the door, calling Gram’s name, but the room stayed silent, smoke drifting in wisps from under the bedroom door.
She turned to her brother, her expression helpless and frantic. “What do we do?”
Malcolm threw himself against the door, but it didn’t budge.
He yelped in pain, rubbing his shoulder, staring at the door furiously. “Watch out,” he ordered, pushing Ashley back. Then he raised up his right leg and kicked the door. The wood frame splintered, and he shouldered the door the rest of the way open. A plume of smoke poured out.
Ashley followed Malcolm in, choking on the thick black smoke and acrid smell.
The old speckled canning kettle was in the center of the room, not far from the foot of Gram’s bed. Flames leapt up from it, and large bits of gray and black ash were drifting around the room like ruined snow.
“Get water!” Ashley shouted, and Malcolm obeyed, sprinting down the hall to the upstairs bathroom. Ashley stepped around the flaming pot and saw her grandmother stretched out on the floor, eyes open but fixed and glassy, her jaw slack.
Ashley’s mouth went dry and her heart jackhammered as she dropped to her knees.
“Gram!” she shouted, feeling for a pulse at the carotid artery, checking for breathing. Ashley could find no pulse. No rise and fall of the old woman’s chest.
“No,” she whimpered, laying her head on Gram’s chest, breathing in the smell of smoke, talcum powder, the faint trace of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice from the pickled beets.
“No, no, no,” Ashley wailed, a terrible keening song of disbelief. She coughed as she wrapped her arms around the old woman, holding her limp, frail body tight.
Malcolm came running in with the big, galvanized-steel watering can from the shelf in the bathroom and dumped it into the canning kettle.
The water hit the flames with a great dragon-like hiss and more black smoke belched out into the room.
More flakes of paper ash drifted up, catching in Malcolm’s hair and clothing.
He stepped back, coughing. Then he looked over and saw Gram and Ashley on the floor.
Ashley was crying, her body convulsing with great heaving sobs, tears soaking Gram’s flannel nightgown.
“Is she…”
Ashley shook her head without looking up, and replied with shaky breaths. “She… she’s not breathing. No pulse.”
Malcolm’s face contorted, changing from panic to little-boy anguish.
“Can’t you do something?” he asked.
“You were there when we signed the advance directives. She didn’t want to be resuscitated.”
Ashley stood up and gave Mal a long, tight hug.
They stayed like that for a moment, crying together, until she let go of her brother and leaned down to stroke Gram’s hair.
She took her hand, her old gnarled fingers stained with beet juice, her wedding band and diamond engagement ring loose.
Tears streamed down Ashley’s face, dripping onto Gram’s cheek.
She reached down and pulled Gram’s eyelids closed, covering the glassy eyes that stared out into nothingness.
She gently pushed the old woman’s jaw up, closing her mouth.
Now Gram looked almost as if she could be sleeping.
Ashley studied her grandmother’s beautiful, deeply lined face, and it wasn’t just Gram she saw, but her mother as well. Herself even.
“I love you so much,” Ashley whispered, part of her hoping Gram’s spirit was lingering with the smoke in the room.
“But I don’t get it. What happened?” Mal stammered.
“I suspect her heart, but maybe a stroke?”
“But—”
“She was ninety-seven years old, Malcolm. A body can’t go on forever. And at least…” She drew in a shaky breath and stifled a sob. “At least it was quick and she was—”
“But what was she doing up here?” Malcolm interrupted her.
“What is all this?” He gestured wildly at the canning kettle—the flames were out but smoke still rose from it.
Beside it was a small, old-fashioned trunk with the lid open.
Ashley now saw that the little door to the storage area behind the wall had been opened.
They never used it for anything. “Too full of mice,” Gram had always said. “Best if we just keep it sealed up.”
“I don’t know,” Ashley said. “I’ve never seen any of this stuff before. She must have dragged the trunk out of the storage space. I had no idea there was anything back there.”
Malcolm peered into the trunk. “It’s just a bunch of old papers and photos and stuff.”
There was a book with yellowed pages and a tattered black cover lying on the floor near Gram. Malcolm opened it and flipped through the pages. “It looks like a diary. From 1918 and 1919. But who the hell is Frankie O’Massey from Boone’s Ferry?”
Ashley shook her head. “Never heard of him.” She continued to stroke Gram’s hair.
Malcolm turned to the end of the book, showed Ashley the ragged edges of pages torn out, then looked at the canning kettle, still smoldering.
“She was burning them,” Malcolm said in revelation. “Tearing them out and burning them.” He looked at his sister, a shadow of confusion crossing his grief-stricken face. “But why, Ash? Why would she do that?”