Back at the house, I drag my duffel inside and unpack for real this time, in one of the upstairs guest bedrooms I always used to sleep in, all those summers ago. It’s the smallest of the four bedrooms, so the others never wanted it, but I loved tiny space, crammed up in the attic under the eaves with a too-big bed and a chipped dresser. The flower-print wallpaper is faded now, but the windows are hung with gauzy blue curtains that flutter in the breeze, and the view looks all the way out across the shore.
I open the windows wide to the warm, afternoon breeze and hang my clothes in the closet, going down to the bathroom on the first floor to arrange my toiletries and makeup. I hum along to the radio, breathing in the scent of salty air and summertime. Now that I don’t have the anxious fear of seeing Emerson hanging over me, calm and relaxed, some of the dark shadows in the house fade away.
Some, but not all.
I pass a closed door in the hallway: the master bedroom. The one room I still can’t bring myself to step inside. I pause, and lift my fingertips to rest them against the wood, like I can feel the ghosts lurking, just on the other side of the door.
This was my mom’s room. Dad was never around enough for it to belong to him, so I always thought of it as hers. She picked out the pink comforter, and painted the dresser to match when I was still a kid: dripping paint all over newspaper on the porch. She even had some of my photos framed and hung above the bed. I can see it all so clearly, from that last afternoon.
The day that I found her.
I feel an ache in my chest, but this time, I don’t try to swallow it back. I just hold the pain there, breathing slowly, in and out. In and out.
I lean forwards and rest my head against the door. Tears pool, hot in my eyes, and I feel one trickle down my cheek. I want to open the door, I really do. I want to step inside, and see the stripped mattress, and the empty space—show myself that it’s all in the past. That the ghosts don’t live here anymore.
But something in me fights just as hard to keep it closed. Because as long as I can picture her there behind the door, she’s not gone yet. I can imagine walking in, and seeing her frozen body laying there motionless on the bed. I picture rushing to her side the way I did four years ago, grabbing her shoulders and shaking, filled with desperation and panic. I yell her name, begging, pleading at her to wake up. But this time, my terrified shouts break through her slow drift, and her eyelids flutter, and she opens her eyes.
I find her soon enough. I save her.
The way I couldn’t save her before.Nobody understands the secret guilt I’ve had to carry all this time, but why would they? We told everyone it was cancer that killed her, but that’s not the truth, not really. It was the reasons she died, sure, but in the end, my mom took her own life with a handful of painkillers washed down by a bottle of wine.
Suicide.
The doctor and my dad agreed to keep it under wraps. I didn’t even have time to tell Emerson before the funeral. The doctor told us after, that there was nothing we could have done anyway: the disease was too far advanced. Chemo, surgery—it was too late for anything. My mom knew, all along. It’s why she brought us here, for one last summer together.
And then, when summer was over, she left us without even saying goodbye.
I spent a long time hating her for it. Raging in my darkness that she could lie to me like that. Just give up, not even try to fight, and take the easy way out. But when the fury burned away, I could see, that there was nothing easy about her choices. She wanted to spare herself the slow, agonizing death of just wasting into skin and bones. She wanted to spare us the sight of watching her die.
I’ve forgiven her for what she did, but I’m still not sure I can forgive myself.
Because in my darkest hours, the whispers come, cruel and taunting. Maybe if I’d been a better daughter, she would have thought she still had something left to live for.
I let out a long sigh, and slowly step back from the door. The counselor at college I saw freshman year told me that every time I had a bad memory of my mom’s death, I should try and think of a happy one we shared, to balance it out. I only went to her for a few sessions: after I got the prescription for anti-anxiety meds, I figured it was best to just put my head down and try to get on with things, instead of endlessly talking about the past. But now I have that vision of mom’s body on the bed back in my head, I decide to take her advice. I wander downstairs and into the kitchen, searching my memory for something, anything, to replace it.
Meatloaf.
I see the baking dish sticking out of the top of a box, and remember. That last summer, mom had a weird fixation with teaching me to cook. She had a bunch of old recipes, handed down from her mom, and grandmother before that, and kept nagging at me to learn. I could care less—I was caught up in Emerson, and my photography, and the last thing I wanted was to stand around some steamy kitchen cooking, when I could be off at the beach somewhere with him. But mom kept on at me, and so one rainy afternoon when Emerson had to work, I agreed to let her teach me.
We drove through the rain to the market, and I trailed behind the cart and watched her pick out ingredients. She told me how to check with the guy at the meat counter about the beef, and pick tomatoes that weren’t watery, and what spices would make just the right sauce. There was something manic, almost frenzied about her enthusiasm, the way she babbled on about how her grandmother brought the recipe over from Europe before the war, and how her mom changed this and that. To tell the truth, I zoned most of it out, too busy texting Emerson flirty messages. Now I know why she was so insistent, thrilled to get the chance to pass on the family recipe before it was too late.