God-fearing people raised on the Golden Rule. There’s a bar or church on almost every corner, sometimes both. If Tess left Louise’s box on the beach, she knew some Good Samaritan would eventually show up on her doorstep. Hey, there. I’m Bob. I found this when I was usin’ my metal detector down by the lake this mornin’, the man would say. He’d be rosy-cheeked and plump, maybe a little lit up. Ya probably been lookin’ all over the place for it, eh?
As Tess stared down at the golden box in the sand, it suddenly occurred to her that in her haste to be rid of Louise, she’d forgotten an important step in the process. She’d tossed the whole box into the water. How could she be so stupid! What she needed to do was open it and release the ashes!
With mounting desperation, she grappled in her purse for something sharp and her hand landed on her father’s Swiss Army knife. She flicked open the big blade and was about to begin stabbing at the cube when an awful thought grabbed a hold of her. What if she succeeded? On a calm day that might’ve been all right, but with the wind coming in strong the way it was, when she tipped the box to free her mother’s remains, the ashes would blow back in her face. She might inhale Louise. She’d become part of her and she’d never be free.
Horrified by the thought, Tess shoved her daddy’s knife back into her lucky purse and her mother into the damp grocery bag, and scrambled up the same slippery slope she’d come down.
After she arrived home, exhausted and defeated, she didn’t return Louise back to the kitchen cabinet next to the bone china. She set the ashes of the woman who still tormented her during the day, and woke her in the middle of the night with nagging criticisms on a garage shelf behind the bag of salt that Will scatters atop winter ice, which I found more poetic than anything ever written by Robert Frost.
Tess mumbles to herself as she pecks out the note.
“Please, forgive me, Birdie. I’m sick. I need you. You’d love Ruby Falls. There’s a store called The Emporium that sells the kind of candy we ate when we were kids. And there’s a spooky convent and cute shops and I miss you like I’ve never missed anybody.
Butterfly kisses,
Tessie”
Before she sends it off, she reads over what she’s written through tears that all but douse the flicker of hope that this might be the mea culpa that does the trick.
Bellowing
Tess rolled over in bed and called Haddie first thing this morning. She was thinking she might feel better about today if she could only hear the sound of her daughter’s voice, but there’d been no answer in the dorm room that she and Will paid extra for because her daughter couldn’t risk exposing her gaunt body to a gossipy roommate.
Henry, who was generally disgruntled and more so at 7:13 a.m., lifted his hoodie-covered head, mumbled something about eating breakfast with his friends at the Wooden Goose Café and disappeared through the backdoor before Tess could give him the hug she so badly needed.
Will, who’d returned home last night later than usual, managed to rouse himself on this momentous morning to prepare breakfast for his wife before she took off for her biopsy appointment then settled in behind the Sports page at the kitchen table. He read a story aloud about how Tiger Woods was playing with a bad knee. “Isn’t that brave of him?” he’d asked with a hitch in his voice. “To be in so much pain and keep going?”
To show compassion for a sporty stranger, but have such a hard time expressing to his family the same kindness instantly enrages Tess. Most of the time she can tame her anger and dark fantasies—both symptoms of her PTSD—using the special relaxation techniques psychiatrist Dr. Drake had taught her, but already wild with grief over Haddie’s recent departure, Henry’s blow-off, and her impending procedure, she imagined Will’s head on a tee, hauling back, and smacking it so hard that a
As Tess stared down at the golden box in the sand, it suddenly occurred to her that in her haste to be rid of Louise, she’d forgotten an important step in the process. She’d tossed the whole box into the water. How could she be so stupid! What she needed to do was open it and release the ashes!
With mounting desperation, she grappled in her purse for something sharp and her hand landed on her father’s Swiss Army knife. She flicked open the big blade and was about to begin stabbing at the cube when an awful thought grabbed a hold of her. What if she succeeded? On a calm day that might’ve been all right, but with the wind coming in strong the way it was, when she tipped the box to free her mother’s remains, the ashes would blow back in her face. She might inhale Louise. She’d become part of her and she’d never be free.
Horrified by the thought, Tess shoved her daddy’s knife back into her lucky purse and her mother into the damp grocery bag, and scrambled up the same slippery slope she’d come down.
After she arrived home, exhausted and defeated, she didn’t return Louise back to the kitchen cabinet next to the bone china. She set the ashes of the woman who still tormented her during the day, and woke her in the middle of the night with nagging criticisms on a garage shelf behind the bag of salt that Will scatters atop winter ice, which I found more poetic than anything ever written by Robert Frost.
Tess mumbles to herself as she pecks out the note.
“Please, forgive me, Birdie. I’m sick. I need you. You’d love Ruby Falls. There’s a store called The Emporium that sells the kind of candy we ate when we were kids. And there’s a spooky convent and cute shops and I miss you like I’ve never missed anybody.
Butterfly kisses,
Tessie”
Before she sends it off, she reads over what she’s written through tears that all but douse the flicker of hope that this might be the mea culpa that does the trick.
Bellowing
Tess rolled over in bed and called Haddie first thing this morning. She was thinking she might feel better about today if she could only hear the sound of her daughter’s voice, but there’d been no answer in the dorm room that she and Will paid extra for because her daughter couldn’t risk exposing her gaunt body to a gossipy roommate.
Henry, who was generally disgruntled and more so at 7:13 a.m., lifted his hoodie-covered head, mumbled something about eating breakfast with his friends at the Wooden Goose Café and disappeared through the backdoor before Tess could give him the hug she so badly needed.
Will, who’d returned home last night later than usual, managed to rouse himself on this momentous morning to prepare breakfast for his wife before she took off for her biopsy appointment then settled in behind the Sports page at the kitchen table. He read a story aloud about how Tiger Woods was playing with a bad knee. “Isn’t that brave of him?” he’d asked with a hitch in his voice. “To be in so much pain and keep going?”
To show compassion for a sporty stranger, but have such a hard time expressing to his family the same kindness instantly enrages Tess. Most of the time she can tame her anger and dark fantasies—both symptoms of her PTSD—using the special relaxation techniques psychiatrist Dr. Drake had taught her, but already wild with grief over Haddie’s recent departure, Henry’s blow-off, and her impending procedure, she imagined Will’s head on a tee, hauling back, and smacking it so hard that a
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