secret,” he said. “It goes with us down into the ground and we never mention it again.” He paused then, jaw clenched tight as he tried not to cry himself, the anger that always accompanied his weak moments there on the horizon. He had gone over the story of what happened so many times — she locked you in the basement for punishment —she was feeling confused. “If we do break the graveyard secret,” he said and reached as he normally would to clench and twist her arm but stopped just shy of her cast, “then it’s like saying you never loved Mom. It’s like hating Mom. And she’ll know. She’s listening right now and something really bad will happen to Dad.” Ann was crying then, halflistening to him, half wanting to run into their father’s room and beg him to never die. “Take the vow,” he said, and then she did, heavy promise poured and sealed in a concrete vault. And they never discussed it again, not even the times Ann wanted to, like whenever she thought of the way their dad and Rosemary had looked at each other or the way their dad had laughed during that little bit of time, a way she has yet to find in her own life, though God knows she has tried. She wanted to say something before their dad remarried, to speak, and not hold her peace when the minister made the request, but she wasn’t able. Later she put it off, ever distracted by her own struggle to find a friendship she could trust and believe in —the equivalent of stumbling along a dark corridor in search of a light —but it became a journey with its own momentum, a runaway train, incessant daily activities turning weeks to months and then years.
Still, she had thought of Rosemary Looney often, like anytime she saw George Clooney featured on the cover of a magazine or when the legendary singer died and Ann saw photos of her as a young woman, the same photos that had stared out from the albums their Rosemary brought into the house to play while she cooked. Sometimes one of the old melodies, “Hey There” or “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” got stuck in her head for days on end. It had been easier to fight against memory when living in Oregon and then Chicago, far removed from the South, where she wouldn’t stand a prayer of running into anything deepfriedin that sweet calabash batter or waking to the suffocating humidity she associated with her mother’s illness. She could fill her mind with new foods and places and people in a way that blocked and scrambled everything that hurt, everything except an arm bone faithful as an obedient dog when it came to predicting damp weather.
The day after her father’s funeral, Ann was desperate to get out of the house and away from the tension of her own marriage, alarmed by how even illness and death of a loved one could not buy a temporary reprieve from it all. She escaped by taking her five-year-old stepdaughter, Sally, to Chuck E. Cheese. Her marriage was over and yet she was dragging her feet for dread of losing Sally and the time she had with the child every other week. Sally was what kept Ann from feeling regret about the path her life had taken. And that was what was on her mind as she stood there beside a mechanical horse, the child bumping and laughing along, singing “Do Your Ears Hang Low” and begging Ann to sing along. She kept thinking of her dad’s life and how the last twenty years had been spent with a woman so similar to Ann’s mother that it was like on Bewitched when the new Darrin slipped right in and took the place of the old without making mention of how different his features were, the eyes, the voice. Her stepmother slept in their mother’s bed, sat at their mother’s vanity, even sat in the same chair in the TV room, the smaller“hers” version of their dad’s recliner. One Christmas Ann had even been surprised to see her wearing a cashmere cardigan that had been their mother’s, the scent of White Shoulders deeply woven into the fabric. It was hard
Still, she had thought of Rosemary Looney often, like anytime she saw George Clooney featured on the cover of a magazine or when the legendary singer died and Ann saw photos of her as a young woman, the same photos that had stared out from the albums their Rosemary brought into the house to play while she cooked. Sometimes one of the old melodies, “Hey There” or “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” got stuck in her head for days on end. It had been easier to fight against memory when living in Oregon and then Chicago, far removed from the South, where she wouldn’t stand a prayer of running into anything deepfriedin that sweet calabash batter or waking to the suffocating humidity she associated with her mother’s illness. She could fill her mind with new foods and places and people in a way that blocked and scrambled everything that hurt, everything except an arm bone faithful as an obedient dog when it came to predicting damp weather.
The day after her father’s funeral, Ann was desperate to get out of the house and away from the tension of her own marriage, alarmed by how even illness and death of a loved one could not buy a temporary reprieve from it all. She escaped by taking her five-year-old stepdaughter, Sally, to Chuck E. Cheese. Her marriage was over and yet she was dragging her feet for dread of losing Sally and the time she had with the child every other week. Sally was what kept Ann from feeling regret about the path her life had taken. And that was what was on her mind as she stood there beside a mechanical horse, the child bumping and laughing along, singing “Do Your Ears Hang Low” and begging Ann to sing along. She kept thinking of her dad’s life and how the last twenty years had been spent with a woman so similar to Ann’s mother that it was like on Bewitched when the new Darrin slipped right in and took the place of the old without making mention of how different his features were, the eyes, the voice. Her stepmother slept in their mother’s bed, sat at their mother’s vanity, even sat in the same chair in the TV room, the smaller“hers” version of their dad’s recliner. One Christmas Ann had even been surprised to see her wearing a cashmere cardigan that had been their mother’s, the scent of White Shoulders deeply woven into the fabric. It was hard
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