Night-dark roads were hypnotic: the intermittent flashes of white and yellow paint reflecting the headlights that just couldn’t illuminate the bend far enough for comfort. Like the droning rhythm of a chant, the stripes blinked by. Neither woman spoke after the first half-hour of the trip—mesmerized instead by the repetitious flicker of the highway lines. Black silhouettes of pine tree tops on the far hills bit into the cloudless night sky, erasing stars as the vehicle moved through canyons, then releasing the lights again, like fireflies from a jar, as the car summitted a pass or began a descent.
The landscape was unspeakably dark: no lightposts, no town lights in the distance, not even a random porch light pierced the blackness around them. The only glowing items were reflective—highway signs and deer eyes. They saw plenty of both, though none of the deer chose for the fatalistic jump across the road.
At the first possible stop, only an hour into the journey, Shelley pulled over at a small gas station to use the bathroom—she explained that the four glasses of strawberry lemonade had made her more than a little squirmy for the past twenty minutes. Leilora took her time to get out of the car. She stretched some and then leaned against the car, folding her arms in the night’s chill. It hadn’t snowed much out this way, if at all, for which she was grateful.
When Shelley walked out of the gas station, her arms were full of treats. Leilora tried to scowl, but only laughed as she returned to her seat. “How do you expect to road-trip without goodies?” Shelley defended as she buckled her seat belt. Leilora only shook her head.
“What are you doing with Hershey bars? And are you going to eat all five of those Klondikes?” Leilora wondered as Shelley put the car into gear and pulled back onto the highway.
“Of course not; you’re going to help me. What’s an evening spent together without chocolate?” Shelley asked and Leilora laughed. “I’m serious, Lei. What is it?”
“I don’t know Shel…what is it?”
Shelley smiled. “Imaginary!”
Leilora let her head fall back against the headrest. “Right. I dream of the day when we’ll be mature enough to talk about important issues without chocolate and ice cream for stimulants.” It was Shelley’s turn to laugh.
“Ahh the critical Lei I love. Just eat your chocolate, will you?”
“It’s not midnight.”
“Since when has that ever stopped you?”
“Just let me sleep a bit first, ehh? I don’t want you driving alone too late. And I don’t want to take over without getting some shut-eye first,” Leilora explained. Shelley agreed.
“Alright. You get your beauty sleep. I’ll wake you in two hours or when I drive off a cliff.”
“Gee thanks, Shel.”
“Anything for you, beautiful.”
Leilora pulled off her jacket and balled it up for use as a pillow against the window. Her thoughts drifted to Aunty Mary when she closed her eyes; again she listened as the old lady spoke of the tragedy at the funeral. Again she was the little girl, tear-stained cheeks red in grief, sitting silently next to her quiet mother, unwilling to utter a single word in lament for fear of the consequences.
*
“For my part, I had advised Valerie not to marry James. For my part, I had advised Valerie to divorce James; I now regret that advice; I now regret those decisions were made. Such love had sewn together a wonderful family that such horrible tears were forced by its separation. They raised two amazing girls, one of whom we mourn here today. The other, God willing, will live long and make better decisions than I or her mother have.
“We shudder at the loss of a fine father and a joyous daughter and we wish we could cherish those moments of happiness we experienced with them forever. We mourn James. We mourn
“James was a fine man, as I hadn’t expected, and a phenomenal father.
Leilora watched as the wind tugged at Aunty Mary’s scarlet scarf. It flapped, tethered to its place as reluctantly as she was to her chair in the cathedral. She would have liked to have been pulled free by the current of despair and carried away to some deserted island where she could live out her days in grief. Both lights of her sky had been extinguished—only faint, flickering stars beckoned her to remain, but failed to warm her at all. She was cold and only more chilled by her aunt’s speech.
She had lied outright. All but her advice to her mother to split from her dad—she knew that was true. But the regret, the praises lavished on the dead, the sorrow, even the tear she flicked from the corner of her eye were all manufactured for the moment. She spoke to the small crowd as she did to her butler, to her chaperone, to the doctors, to her mother. All the same; all conveniently packaged for circumstance.
And so Leilora sat and empathized with a scarf while the priest said the final blessings over the two coffins. So she sat when they were lowered into the ground. So she sat while hugs and kisses and encouraging words fell upon her. So she sat until Aunty Mary patted her shoulder. Then she stood and ran—ran past the plastic chairs, crowds, and tombstones. She found the backseat of her mother’s car, locked the doors from the inside, and tried to remember her sister’s laugh and her father’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They were gone; the echoes had faded into the distance. Tears came again. Sniffling, heaving breaths shook her body. She was alone; not her mother, not her aunt had followed her.
In that moment of despair, she had wiped her nose with her sleeve and noticed the impossible: on the inside of her wrist, just below the cuff-line, was the faint outline of a tattoo. When she looked again, it had vanished. “Oh Daddy,” was all she could whisper before she collapsed and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
*
“Hey, Lei. Wake up.” Were the first words she heard. When she pushed through the fogginess of the unconscious and opened her eyes, she found Shelley leaning over her, waving a chocolate bar in front of her. “I have something for you…”
“Is it my turn to drive?” Leilora mumbled and stretched.
“Yeah. If you could make it to Price, that would be fantastic. In fact, I would probably love you forever,” Shelley yawned.
As Leilora changed to the driver’s seat, she shivered in the night air; it was freezing out. “You have the heater on, Shel?” she asked.
“Of course! I’m freezing.”
When she pulled onto the on-ramp to the interstate, Leilora felt the warm air blasting out of the vents with a hand and let it permeate her soul. She was almost tempted to roll down the window and open the sunroof. The mixture of bitter cold and soothing warm would be invigorating. But of course Shelley wouldn’t approve; she was trying to sleep. Instead she looked out at the moonless sky, at the miles of endless black barrens before her. Some would have rather driven this long stretch of the interstate at night, supposing it to be as boring as
Instead the blackness left her to ponder her own thoughts: a frightening prospect. She glanced at Shelley; her short and straight, red hair fell across her cheeks unchecked—her round face relaxed without a wrinkle. Her small, mouse-like nose was tucked into her coat collar and just a hint of a smile tinted the edges of her lips. Leilora wondered what she dreamt about, what doubts and fears gnawed at her subconscious while she slept there in the passenger seat.
Leilora turned her attention back to the hypnotic road and focused her mind on her task at hand: driving to
What would she do when she found her aunt’s address, when she entered the attic? What would she find? Anything at all? Somehow she doubted this venture would turn up any answer at all—like looking for a receipt for a purchase you made a month ago. But perhaps, as Shelley’s comment rang true, she was too critical; perhaps figuring this out would help her close all the doors of her family’s closet and begin anew.
She could at least inquire about her aunt—see if she really had faded from life, and, if that was so, to check about some sort of memorial or funeral service. As much as she had blamed, despised, or distanced herself from Aunty Mary, she was still family—and truly, the only she had left. Now that she thought about it, Aunty Mary had been much more of an influence on her life after her father and sister’s deaths than her mother had been. She had burned brighter and lived busier and grown thinner until, hollow at last, she had imploded. The stroke that came five years ago, had not been too much of a surprise to Leilora.
The memorial service was a quiet, short one, not well-attended; Leilora remembered sitting, alone again. She remembered receiving a few hugs, returning none. She remembered watching, waiting so that she could go back to her apartment and fix dinner. She remembered cursing Aunty Mary.
*
“Valerie,” the old, worn voice rang out among the small assembly, “was a strong woman; she endured when all else seemed overwhelming. She endured the tragic loss of husband and daughter in a single accident. She endured the hardships of a single mother. She endured long beyond any human capability to endure; she outlived her heart. Valerie was my niece, my friend, and my pride. May she finally enjoy the rest she rarely received in life.”
Leilora rubbed her forehead and listened. She wanted to speak her mind. She wanted to smack Aunty Mary and proclaim the truth about her mother, about her hidden addictions, about her lies, about her infidelities. She yearned to stand up at the microphone and erase any good memories about her mother from the minds of the audience. She longed to expose the corpse her mother was long before she took her final breath.
But she sat, instead. She waited, without a tear, for the time to pass. She looked at the grass, wondered how many feet had stood upon that blade there, how long that drop of dew would rest on it, if any ant had ever climbed upon it in search of food. And as the seconds stretched into minutes, Leilora abandoned the concept of family and decided on a better, more flexible system for relationships: roommates.
As the service drew on, Leilora formulated her rant which she would deliver to Shelley that evening when she returned. She would begin with her mom and work past all the hurts and wounds she had inflicted upon her, move to the liberty of college replacing the ties of family, and finish with a scathing critique of Aunty Mary. In fact, one old man—an usher—had to remind Leilora that when one so close to you dies, like a mother, you shouldn’t be smiling at her funeral service. With this aside, he almost convinced Leilora to speak her mind there and then, withholding nothing. But she screwed the lid on her musings tightly and feigned a contemplative grief—almost as well as had Aunty Mary.
When the service had finished, the coffin been laid to rest, and the small crowd scattered, Leilora drove back to her apartment—just a mile off-campus—which she found empty. Leilora flopped onto her bed, lying on her belly, and pulled out her phone. Nothing from Shelley. She had texted her roommate probably fifteen times throughout the service without reply. Leilora decided that she must have been working and instead picked up her journal. Two words in was all the further she could write; she never could write well unless she had talked with Shelley. Something about that girl freed her ideas, gave them wings, no matter how ugly they were.
So she stood and walked to the kitchen, a small corner of the apartment with a refrigerator, a sink, and a microwave oven. She found a store-bought lasagna and threw it in the microwave for dinner. Then Leilora pulled a cheap electric water-cooker from the cupboard, along with a mug and the hot chocolate mix. What a steaming cup of hot chocolate wouldn’t fix! Within minutes, she was sitting on their “couch,” a renovated love-seat from the mid 70’s—colored a tacky orange—and sipping at the mug. That was when she noticed a discoloration on her left-hand wrist and turned it towards the light. She wondered if she had leaned against a grease spot on a car or rested on an old, rusted fence or something. But as she looked, it gained texture.
It was mostly circular, but she began to determine a spiral-esque pattern to it on the inside. She rubbed at it with her right-hand thumb, but to no avail. Instead it grew darker and clearer. Leilora strode to the sink, poured some dishwashing soap on it and scrubbed. Nothing diminished from her mark. It resembled a tattoo, though she was confident she had never had one drawn there, not even in the worst of her moods (she wasn’t yet 21 and hadn’t been drunk in her life). The more she looked at the troubling mark, the more it felt familiar to her, as if she had seen this before. She stood beneath the strobe-light-like florescent lamp in her kitchen and wondered where she had seen this before. Two moments flashed before her eyes: the mark at her father’s funeral, the tattoo on Aunty Mary’s wrist while planting strawberries. Yes, it had to be the same. But how?
“Honey, I’m home! Jesus, it smells good in here; what you cookin’ Lei?” Shelley asked as she announced her arrival home. Leilora pulled the sleeve over her wrist and turned to greet Shelley with a smile.
“Lasagna, beautiful. Stoffer-style. How was your day?”
“Hell. What about yours?”
“Same.”
“Let’s watch a movie with dinner,” Shelley suggested.
“Sounds like a plan. Want some hot chocolate?”
“Always!” Shelley plopped herself on the couch and browsed their DVD collection. “So what made your day so bad?”
“My mother’s funeral…” Leilora began, while stirring the hot chocolate, but Shelley grabbed her face and dropped her jaw.
“Shit, Lei! I’m sorry! How’d it go?”
Leilora shrugged her shoulders. “Ehh, it was bad. I didn’t even cry. How crazy is that, huh? I go to my own mother’s funeral and I’m watching the clock, wondering when I can leave.”
“What the hell happened then? I thought you loved your Mom? I mean, doesn’t everyone? Fathers, shit, half of everyone has had poor one of those, but most everybody loves Mom. I thought you’d had a rough go at it at the hospital last week…but no bullshit, you didn’t even cry? No tears at all?”
Leilora nodded and chewed her cheek. “Yeah, I guess I just blame her for splitting up our family. I mean, I know it was her fault. She knew it. She had been having affairs. Lots. But she didn’t even apologize for it. Like we were just supposed to be okay with it, you know? I don’t know how Dad did it…I mean, he didn’t argue and yell and demand his right to keep us. He didn’t even take it to court. Not that he just laid down and died. But he was the one who really loved us, Shel. He was the one we wanted to go see, to stay with, to love. Not Mom. She was just…there. The law we obeyed. Tested every now and again, but largely obeyed. Then when they died, she just…kaput. Fizzled out. It took six years to happen, but I think she realized too late what was important in life and understood that she had lost that forever. It was only a matter of time, Shel. I knew that. Now that I think about it, I’m kinda glad she’s gone. One less voice to worry about, you know? Too many of those, already. Like Aunty Mary’s.”
“Aunty who?” Shelley interrupted.
“Aunty Mary, the old lady I stayed with the night my father and sister died.”
“Oh right, the one with the strawberries,” Shelley clarified.
“Yeah, her. Well she got up and went on about how wonderful and strong my mother was. She even said that she had endured beyond any ‘human capability to endure.’” It was lies, lies, and more lies. Almost as if she was whitewashing her tombstone. I wanted to stand up right there and tell them all off; tell them what a whore my mother was and expose Aunty Mary’s lies!”
“So why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know, Shel…I’m just not one to ruin face, you know? But damn you, Aunty Mary, and your lies! Why do you have to make everything seem okay and fine and good when it’s not! Why can’t you just stay in your old-folks home until you die! Why must you ruin everything!”
Shelley stared wide-eyed at her hot chocolate. “Yep,” she muttered, nodding her head. “You win. You had a much worse day than I did. I just stocked jeans all day.”
