Marcia Talley: Unbreathed Memories

I inched the mirror up the wall.

“Mom told me to stop fussing and come back in a couple of weeks when the movers were gone and things were less hectic. Sort of kicked me out, if you want to know the truth.”

“Imagine my surprise,” I said.

“As it turns out, I won’t be around in two weeks. I’m going on a buying trip to Bali.”

“Bali! That sounds like a classic boondoggle.”

“Bali’s the feng shui capital of the world.”

“Seriously?” I was still standing at the stove holding her stupid mirror against the wall.

“Seriously.” She pulled up a chair and sat down. “First I’m taking a wood carving course, then I’m checking into a health resort in Ubud. I need to get rid of all the poisons in my system.” She moaned with pleasure. “Saunas, herbal wraps, meditation, vegetarian meals, mountain hikes-”

“And don’t forget the souvenir T-shirt.” I jerked my head toward the wall, just in case she had forgotten about the mirror. “How long will you be gone?”

“About a month. Sunnye is taking care of the store.”

“What about Eric?” Eric Gannon was Ruth’s ex-husband. He still owned a half interest in the shop and used that as an excuse to pop in from time to time and fiddle with the displays, just to annoy her.

“Mon-sewer zee artiste won’t even notice I’m gone. Last time I saw him he was walking down Main Street arm in arm with that Sylvia creature who used to work at Banana Republic.” She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Thank God we didn’t have any children.” Ruth wiggled her fingers. “A little more to the right.”

I complied, although my arm was beginning to ache. You’d think she was building the space shuttle or something. When the telephone rang, seconds later, I made an eager move to answer it.

Ruth raised her hand, palm out. “You stay there, I’ll get it.” She snatched the receiver off the wall. “Ives residence.” She turned and looked at me, head tilted, considering the present placement of the mirror. “Oh, hi. How’re you doing?”

She waved her hand, indicating that I should move the mirror a few centimeters to the left. I was praying she’d find a cosmically acceptable position soon.

“Sure. She’s right here. I’ll get her.” She extended the receiver in my direction. “It’s Georgina.” Ruth wore that puzzled look where her eyebrows nearly met. “Apparently she doesn’t want to talk to me.” She held the receiver by the cord with two fingers, as if it were dirty and she’d forgotten the Lysol.

I set the mirror down on a chair, walked to the phone, and took the receiver from where it hung from Ruth’s outstretched fingers. “What’s up, Georgina?”

“Sorry to trouble you again, Hannah, but I thought of a couple more questions I wanted to ask about when I was a kid.”

“Why don’t you ask Mother? Or Ruth? Ruth was nine when you were born. She might remember more than I do. I was only seven.”

“I can’t talk to Mother and I don’t want to ask Ruth. She’s so… judgmental.” Georgina was practically whispering, as if she thought Ruth might overhear.

“If it’s for therapy, I’m sure we’d all be willing to help.”

“Don’t give me a hard time, please, Hannah. I’d rather talk to you, is all, if that’s OK.”

I sighed. Might as well get it over with. “Sure. Shoot.”

It seemed forever before Georgina actually spoke. Strange, for someone so anxious to talk. “Why was I hospitalized in kindergarten?”

That was easy. “You had your tonsils taken out.” I remembered how jealous we’d been when Georgina’d been allowed all the ice cream she could eat.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“How long was I in the hospital?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe two days.”

“I seem to remember it being longer than two days.”

“Georgina, you were only five. Two days away from your family would seem like forever to a five-year-old.”

“I guess so.” Georgina paused. She didn’t sound convinced.

I made a brave effort to change the subject. “Speaking of children, how are the boys liking Hillside?”

Georgina ignored me. Her next question caught me completely by surprise. “Tell me. How did Mary Rose die?”

Mary Rose was our infant sister who died when I was barely three, long before Georgina was born. I felt guilty that the only memory I had of Mary Rose, other than photographs, was from the tantrum I threw when the new baby moved into my room and I had to share a bedroom with Ruth. But I will never forget my mother grieving over the empty crib. “It was SIDS,” I told her, not believing that she didn’t already know this.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! If you don’t believe me, ask Mother.”

“I told you, I just can’t talk to Mother about this stuff. She wouldn’t understand.”

I turned my back to the stove where Ruth had her head under the exhaust hood and was using the heel of her shoe to pound a nail into the center of a white rose on the wallpaper. “I’m not sure I understand either, Georgina.” I paused, waiting for her to reply. When she didn’t say anything I said, “Look, I’ve got to go help Ruth. She’s running amok in my house, feng shui-ing all over the place. Call me back later if you still want to talk.”

“I thought that you, at least, would understand,” she said in a small, sad voice; then she hung up abruptly, leaving me with a dial tone buzzing in my ear. I shrugged and returned the receiver to its cradle, feeling like I’d just bought a one-way ticket into the Twilight Zone.

Ruth stepped back to the kitchen table and surveyed her handiwork. “Good!” she said. Then after a few thoughtful seconds asked, “What’d Georgina want?”

“She was asking me some damn fool questions about when we were little.”

“Questions? Like what?” Ruth mumbled around a nail that wobbled between her lips.

“Like when she had her tonsils out and why Mary Rose died.”

“How odd.”

“She says it’s to help with her therapy.”

One eyebrow arched. “Therapy? What the hell’s she in therapy for?”

“She’s been depressed. Although what having one’s tonsils out has to do with depression, I have no idea.”

“I’m glad she’s getting help, Hannah, but why on earth didn’t somebody tell me about the therapy? You , for instance.”

I poured us each a fresh cup of jasmine tea and motioned for her to join me at the table. “I didn’t think it was important.” But in less than forty-eight hours, with my hands wrapped around a similar mug of tea, I would learn how very wrong I could be.

Other than to make an appointment with Dr.Bergstrom, for the next few days I didn’t worry much about my reconstructive surgery. Or about Georgina and her imaginary problems. Instead, I spent my mornings engrossed in a project an old friend at St. John’s College had steered my way. I had been temping at a local law firm, filling in for a secretary on maternity leave. I confessed to my friend over lunch at El Toro Bravo that I was glad the woman was coming back. I was pretty damned tired of doing nothing more constructive than answering the telephone and filing updates as thin as Bible pages into fat black legal loose-leaf binders.

“Have you heard of L. K. Bromley?” my friend asked.

Of course . Everybody had heard of L. K. Bromley, the famous mystery writer, who in her time was crowned “America’s Agatha Christie,” writing more than seventy mystery novels in a career that spanned fifty years. But few people knew that L. K. Bromley was also Nadine Smith Gray, that tweedy, straight-backed, white-haired Annapolitan who lived in a wee brick house on the corner of College and North Streets and walked her dachshunds every day on the back campus. She looked more like a Navy widow or someone’s sweet old grandmother. So when she moved to the Ginger Cove retirement community at the ripe old age of eighty-two and left her entire library-or, rather, L. K. Bromley’s library-to the college, along with the money to process and maintain it, everyone was surprised. No one at the college could figure out why Ms. Bromley had singled out St. John’s for that honor. Maybe it was in gratitude for all the lectures she attended there, someone speculated, or the classic film series, or the privilege of letting her dogs poop on the well-manicured lawn. Ms. Bromley, as mysterious and tight-lipped as her protagonists, wasn’t saying.