Mine to Tell (19 page)

“Not now,” I answered. “First I just want to know how she felt.”

We settled onto the sofa together, our knees pointing toward each other as Kyle read.

~*~

I burned my journals. The ones I’d written of my times in Chicago when I’d fallen in love. I had to stop time, erase the past and prevent the future. I had to forget. Motion was marking time for me now, not memories, not anticipation, not fear of what was happening beyond my reach.

I kept moving, doing what I was supposed to do, whatever needed to be done. I wasn’t progressing, I was just making time stand still. I couldn’t go back and I didn’t want to go forward. I just did as I should, ticked off my duties each day, let all days be the same, so time didn’t have to pass.

But even though I stood still, my John moved forward. I couldn’t hate him, but I wanted to. I wanted to blame someone and hate them that my one love was going to be given to another. I’d kept myself. I’d violated God’s commands for marriage and kept myself pure.

John wouldn’t do that. He’d spoken of having children. He was going to go through the motions of loving another. Maybe he’d even love her eventually, whoever she was, and it wouldn’t be just pretend. He wasn’t going to keep that part of himself pure.

With heaviness that dragged my heart into the earth, I knew I had to do the same. I was married to Isaac. He was my husband. I could no longer avoid him or deny him what God granted him. Maybe when it was done I would be free. Free to love him as I was supposed to, free to stop trying to do what my heart had thought right.

I behaved differently that night. He crawled into bed as he usually did. Sour now, expecting nothing. Harsh and commanding as I went about our room blowing out lamps, putting his Bible on the table near the bed. When the room was dark and he was quiet, I crawled in beside him. He’d stopped telling me good night long ago, so we lay there in the dark and the silence. I moved closer to him, near enough to feel his warmth, but there was none. I edged closer still, my shoulder touching his. He felt cold. As I lay there I felt his fingers respond to my nearness, find mine, bent fingers fumbling with my own.

His skin was thin, lifeless, and dry. He moved next to me, his breathing deepening, his breath stale.

“I should say, it’s about time,” he said throatily in my ear. He clambered on top of me, his bony body hurting mine. I closed my eyes, even though it was dark. I clenched my teeth, held my breath, and escaped to somewhere far away, leaving my body for as long as it took him to finish. Then I returned to my body in the darkness, and I realized it hurt. His breathing slowed to normal as the pain subsided.

Then I silently cried.

Chapter 30

“The things revealed belong to us

and to our sons forever.”

“Why don’t you get your own phone?” Edith demanded when I called her back from my parents’ phone. “I have to wait at least an hour every time I call, while your family finds you and drags you to their house so you can call me back. Jill said it’s miles and miles away.”

“Oh, it is not. You know Jill. She exaggerates everything.”

“Well, it’s far enough, and I wish I could just call you whenever I wanted and you’d be there.”

I rolled my head and eyes around as Mama watched from nearby. She was nodding in agreement with Edith, as if she knew exactly what my editor was saying. I turned my back on my mother.

“So, I’m here now. What can I do to help you?” I sounded testy.

“It’s more like what can I do to help you?” Edith no longer sounded peeved. She sounded jubilant.

“What?”

“Your articles, they’re a sensation here in Cincinnati. Every woman in this city has either called or sent us a letter, wanting to know who you are, who this mysterious woman from the dark ages was. You’re a hit! And when we added some of Jill’s shots—oh, my, the roof came off everything. Annabelle, this is incredible!”

I peeked back at my mother, wondering if she was hearing this. She didn’t look worried, so I assumed not. I just had to be careful what my expression said to her. I was as jubilant as Edith. My story, my writing, a success! But I was also terrified, as terrified as my mother would be if she knew that all of Cincinnati wanted to know who her grandmother-in-law was.

“So, you need to keep them coming. Don’t let it end too soon. Draw it out a bit, keep the tension up. Keep every housewife and girlfriend in this city with one foot out the door, wondering whether they should take both feet out or not.”

“That’s not what this is about.” My defenses rose. What she said sounded like Trevor, like my family, like judgmental voices still shouting from their graves.

“Oh, I don’t mean literally, I mean figuratively. No more curse of Adam where our desire is toward the man all the time. Freedom to be a unique person.”

I’d never known Edith to be spiritual before. I was a little taken aback. “Uh, yeah, that’s what it’s about.” I wasn’t sure it would turn out so nobly in the end. I wasn’t sure Kyle was right about that at all. What would happen then?

“So tell me. What happens? Where did she go when she left?”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. There was brittle silence on the line, as if we’d been cut off.

“Say that again. I don’t think I heard you right.”

“I said I don’t know,” I enunciated more clearly.

“Yeah, I heard you. You don’t know? You’ve been out there how long, and you still don’t know? This could be disastrous!” Edith was starting to sound deranged, a bit like my mother, and I wasn’t sure I could rein her back in. She wasn’t usually an overly emotional woman, but evidently this series of articles had taken her to a new level, both personally and professionally.

“It’s a process,” I tried to explain. “I’m going about this very methodically.”

“This is your great-grandmother, right? That’s whose house you moved into. Doesn’t everyone already know what happened?”

“No, they don’t. I explained that before. They just think they do, but I think they’re wrong.” I hoped they were wrong. “And what’s more…” I turned away from Mama and cupped my hand around the mouthpiece of the phone to whisper. “No one here knows about the articles. Except my parents and the guy who’s helping me, that I mention in them. No one else can know. It would be devastating around here.”

“So your parents know. And that guy, Kyle. I know who you’re talking about. Jill showed me his picture.”

I was stunned to silence at the audacity of Jill letting even this tiny leak happen. “This can’t get out.” My voice was firm, whisper firm, as I kept my back to my mother.

Edith was quiet for a moment. Quieter than I was being as I tried to keep Mama from hearing me, but Mama’s radar was on, and she stepped around where she could see me, her eyebrows bunched suspiciously in a knot above the bridge of her nose.

“It’s nothing.” I placed my hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to Mama. “Just business talk.”

Her face said she didn’t believe me. Probably the same expression Edith’s had in Cincinnati, but Mama edged away and then left the room. I knew she wouldn’t go far. I’d have to tell her something before she’d let me out of the house.

“We might have problems keeping this anonymous.” Edith sounded worried. “You’ve really made a big impression here. Channel Eight called and wants to interview you. Wondered if they could send a news crew to your house.”

“No!” I screamed, without thinking. My mother reappeared from thin air, her eyes huge. I waved her away, trying to look calm and indifferent. She wasn’t buying it. She stayed where she was, her eyes pinned on me.

“Tell them no,” I said to Edith.

“How about letting Jill do an interview with them? She doesn’t have to say who you are or where you are.”

“No!” I nearly shouted again. I could see Kyle’s picture plastered on the news. I tried to calm myself. “Just tell them it would spoil the impact of the story if they do a piece on it.”

“I can tell them that, but you know how the media is. Well, that media. Not us, of course.”

I rolled my eyes. “Please do what you can,” I begged. “And make sure Jill isn’t flashing any private pictures around.”

“Okay. I will and she won’t. No one else saw any of the private ones. Jill was careful about that. But you keep the articles coming. Make them longer, if you want. Just make sure there’s a happy ending.”

“I’ll keep them coming if you keep them anonymous,” I said, worrying about the happy ending.

“Eventually I’ll send Jill back out, maybe when you get closer to the end…which I hope never happens, on one hand. Do you need anything? A new typewriter? Paper? Pencils? A secretary?”

“No, no, no, no, and no.” But I said it kindly. “I appreciate the offers, but I’m fine, really. Just keep things quiet and I’ll keep the story coming.”

“Great. And get a phone. I’ll even pay for it.” She hung up.

I thought about pretending Edith and I were still talking until Mama gave up and went away, but I didn’t think I had more stamina than she did. I replaced the phone in its handset and looked at her.

“Everything’s okay, Mama,” I said, trying to smile. “My editor says she wants more articles, and they’re not divulging any sources or names.”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me, searching for that tiny twitch that told her I was trying to deceive her. I held steady, concentrating on Edith’s consent to try to keep this quiet. That much was true.

“I want to read more of what you’ve written,” she said.

“You do?” I wasn’t sure of her motivation, so now I eyed her keenly.

“I need to know what really happened, and you tell it so well.” She glanced around the room as if she needed to verify we were alone while she betrayed the family, abandoned its vendetta against the facts. “But please”—she came close and touched my arm—“please don’t ever let anyone else know what you’re writing.”

If I just offered to do my best like Edith did, she wouldn’t be happy. I had to promise, vow this would never get out, stake my life on it. “I won’t let it get out, Mama,” I said. “I know how important it is to you.”

Chapter 31

“Give me a burial site among you,

that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”

It was such a small thing, such an obvious thing, but in the end so crucial.

I stood next to Kyle in the old country cemetery, looking at Isaac’s tombstone.

Isaac Jacob Crouse

Born July 13, 1872

Died September 29, 1929

Man of God, Husband, Father, Son

I stared at the aged eulogy, looking at a relative I felt really wasn’t mine, at least shouldn’t have been mine. It should have said John Baxter. That’s who should have been my great-grandfather, not this furry-eyebrowed, cold-skinned old man. The stone was like I imagined Isaac to be, white, uneven, brittle, with words not all that easy to read etched across the front.

Kyle touched me with his elbow, and when I looked at him he directed my gaze to the right with a nod.

I looked where his eyes were pointed, at the next stone near Isaac’s.

Claire Anne Crouse

Born October 10, 1878

Died December 2, 1905

Taken too soon

Wife, Mother, Daughter

I looked up at Kyle, the question in my mind clear on my face. He nodded and we both looked back at the two stones.

“Where is she?” I finally asked, with a voice full of shame because it had taken me all these years to come to the point of even thinking to ask this question. I couldn’t look at Kyle. What he must think of me. How had I not known, not been told, not thought to venture to the cemetery to see for myself that my great-grandmother wasn’t here? I recalled all those Memorial Days when I’d let Mama slip off to the cemetery with fresh-cut wildflowers stuffed into foil-covered mayonnaise jars. I’d never gone with her, never asked whose graves she was decorating, but neither had she volunteered to share the information.

I felt Kyle’s arm reach around my shoulders, gently, barely touching me. I appreciated his intention, but I wanted to shrug it off in my shame.

“I didn’t even know.” My voice was a whisper. “I’ve never come here to visit their graves. How could I have been so stupid?”

His arm tightened, but his hand wasn’t cupped around my shoulder as Trevor’s would have been. It just dangled there like the end of a comfortable shawl. “You were a kid,” he said. “You were never told, so you never thought of things like this.”

“But I always thought of her.”

“You thought of her as alive. That was the difference.”

My near panic ebbed. He was right. I’d never thought of Julianne in the past tense, as someone gone. She was always present with me, not just a picture under my parents’ bed.

“Thanks.” My voice was still a whisper, but this time it was reverent. For Kyle, not for the dead around us. “I have no idea why you’re going through all of this with me, but I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you. I mean, I would have tried, but you’ve made it so much easier, so much more meaningful.”

We stood there together awhile longer, and then, as if his arm was a rein, he tugged it slightly and steered me away. Away from Isaac and his real wife, away from my moment of humiliation and guilt. I let him lead me down the narrow lane that bisected the cemetery. Grass grew in a trail between the two graveled channels for tires. We kept the grass to my right, the two of us walking close together within one tread.

We came to Kyle’s car, something he rarely drove. I slid into the passenger side while he went to the driver’s. When he had closed his door, we just sat there. It was as if he knew I needed to ask again, and he was waiting.

“Where is she?” I finally broke the silence. “If she’s not here, where is she?”

He settled himself against his seat and ran his fingers around the steering wheel while he thought. “I’ve wondered that myself,” he said, and I knew this was something he’d pondered for years. It had been his idea to come to the cemetery today. It was his way of letting me know we were missing a piece of her puzzle.

I stared out the front window at the serene rows of tombstones with interspersed trees. All of these people, and my relative was missing. It didn’t seem right.