The year She Fell (50 page)

He barely responded, and for a second I thought I would have to explain. But then his eyes narrowed enough that I knew the name had struck a chord with him. But still he did not speak.

Finally I said, “I was adopted when I was six. Before that, my name was—”

“I know what your name was.” He stared at me for a moment, then abruptly turned away, heading into the next room.

Slowly I followed and stood in the doorway. It had once been a bedroom— there was still a cot pushed against the wall, neatly made— but now it was a workroom, flooded with light filtering through the motes of sawdust. Along the wall were four more Virgins, each in a different pose, all in rich burnished hardwood. They were beautiful, austere, traditional. They did not look as if human hands had crafted them. But as I thought that, he took hold of the unfinished work on the table, just grabbed her by the shoulder, and picked up a carving knife. It was no more than a shape at this point, but he must have had a picture of her in his head, because he applied the knife to the mantle area with gentle, ruthless assurance. It was going to be a Madonna, only there was no place on her lap for a child. Mary after the crucifixion.

He wasn’t even looking at me. So I had to speak, and it was not easy, after a year of cloistered life, to start a conversation. “I wanted to find my family.”

“Why?”

The question came sharply, but he never looked over at me. “Because—” It shouldn’t be so hard to explain. I’d rehearsed this with Brian, but the script seemed inadequate, and the truth was —I didn’t know. Twenty years I’d waited. Why now? I’d met this boy who was looking for his family, and I decided to keep him company?

No. Because I needed to know. Because the prioress was right. I was running from something and I couldn’t choose my future until I faced my past.

Because the family I had didn’t feel like a family. Because Mother was sick and she would die someday and I would be alone.

“Because it’s time,” I finally said.

Now he looked at me. He regarded me for a long time, and I thought he must be remembering the moment near my car. But he must have concluded, as I did, that it was best to put such an awkward moment away. This was all new, and required renewed focus. “Terri,” he said. He wasn’t addressing me, really, just repeating the name as if he had to remind himself. “What do you want?”

I couldn’t remember any of the little speech about reconnecting. So I said, “I just wanted to see my family.”

He glanced around the workroom, as if someone might be hiding among the wooden statues.
 
“I’m the only one here.”

“I can see that.” I took a deep breath to smooth out my tone. “I thought you could give me their phone numbers.”

“Everyone’s dead.”

I stared at him. But he’d gone back to carving his Madonna, his knife scraping gently at her shoulder. The scratch of his knife was rhythmic and low. He looked medieval there, a big man, bent over his craft, the sun dusting his shoulders with light. I had come such a long way— oh, not in distance, but in spirit, and there was nothing here but a man who wouldn’t even look at me. “Your—our parents?”

“Dad died a few years after you left. Mom—she had cancer. Lingered for awhile. Died, after a couple years.”

“But Ronnie?”

He looked up, just for a second, before he went back to his work. “Yeah.”

“They’re all—” I could finish, so he finished for me, hard, quick.

“Dead. Yeah. Bad time.”

I whispered, “Bad time . . . after I left?”

“Sure. I suppose. When we moved away, anyway. Same year you left. It all went to shit.” He wiped the knife on a leather strap hung off his belt, and finally gave me another glance. “Dad just got worse and died. And Mom. She was always depressed. Ronnie went to reform school. He wasn’t a bad kid. But he just wasn’t interested in much of anything. Drugs. That’s all.”

“Why didn’t you contact me? Didn’t you know where I was?”

He shrugged. “Sure. More or less. We knew Mom’s rich boss had taken you. Bought you. That’s what Ronnie always said.”

“That’s not true. Mother didn’t—”

“Yeah, I know. I kept trying to tell Ronnie that if you’d been paid for, we wouldn’t have been poor anymore.”

He sounded cold and cynical and dismissive. I struggled to save whatever connection we’d established. “But you could have contacted me. Why didn’t you?”

“Mom wouldn’t let us. She told us to leave you alone. Let you live your good life. She’d given you up so you’d have a good life. She kept saying that. A good life with your new family.” He palmed the knife and used his finger to brush away some sawdust on the curve of the statue’s arm. “She always said that.” Matter-of-factly, he added, “We’d have ruined it, you see. Your good life. So we had to stay away.”

I sat there at his oak table, staring hard at his abandoned Madonna. There was so much lost—so many years. “But when—” I couldn’t call her Mother. “When she was dying. You didn’t call me.”

“She wouldn’t let us. She was happy in the end, thinking of you in your good life.” He turned back to his statue, his knife in hand. “And afterwards—well, what was the point?”

“But you and Ronnie—”

“Look. We honored her wishes. She didn’t want us disrupting things for you.” He paused and then added, “And we would have. White trash, you know.”

“You aren’t—”

“Give it up. It’s not like the words matter.”

He was implacable, standing next to that half-formed statue, refusing to look at me. It seemed almost impossible, that this family had an entire existence and I didn’t know. That he had been hating me like this and I didn’t know. I didn’t know. There was the emptiness that had frightened me, that had sent me searching. And now I found only more emptiness to fill it.

“Tell me,” I whispered. “Where was she when she died?”

He glanced back towards me. Not at me. “
Charleston
.
South Charleston
.”

“When?”

“Ten, eleven years ago.”

Eleven years ago. My hope that I’d been away doing mission work in
Romania
then faded. That was several years before I’d entered the convent. I’d started nursing school in
Morgantown
that year. If there had been an obituary, I had missed it.

“What about Ronnie?”

Now Mitch turned and looked at a closed door, across the little living room. “Last year. He died here.”

“How?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, quietly, “He was clean. That’s why I brought him here, to get him away from all that. But he’d wrecked his health. One morning his heart gave out. He didn’t wake up.” He shook his head. “They’re all buried together. Mom’s family plot, down in Paulsen.”

It seemed impossible that all this happened and I didn’t know. But I’d spent most of twenty years trying not to remember. “You weren’t alone, were you?”

“Nah. My uncles and two cousins came to the burial. It was okay.”

“Will you show me?”

He glanced again at the closed door, and then, finally, he looked square at me. “No. I’m not going down there. But I’ll give you directions.”

I didn’t want to go alone. Not this time. I was always alone, somehow. So was he, I thought, now. But he didn’t have to be. “Why can’t you come with me?”

He shrugged and looked away. “I don’t go down the mountain much anymore. Just as far as Rankin to ship the carvings, and get supplies. No real need to go down the rest of the way.”

“But—”

“No. I’ve seen enough family graves to last me a lifetime. They can cremate me. Just let me blow away.”

I tried once more to convince him to come with me, but something flickered on his face—panic. And I stopped. He didn’t want to leave here. He had his reasons.

I rose and picked up my bag. It couldn’t end here, could it? But what could I say to this silent man, up here with his wooden saints and his memories? “Your carvings are lovely. Where do you sell them?”

“Churches. Rich Catholic people. The
Wheeling
archdiocese commissioned this one, for a grotto outside the bishop’s office. I don’t know what it’s going to look like after a couple winters outdoors.”

I looked out the window at the little lean to, where other virgins stood shrouded in clear plastic. “Do you have a special devotion to Mary? There are so many of her.”

He gave a short laugh. “I don’t believe any of that. I just carve what they want to buy. Virgins and Madonnas sell best. Always have. Even back when Michelangelo was carving his marble.”

I couldn’t bear it any more—all the loss, his cynicism, his lack of care, his pain. But I had to ask. “Do you remember
Wakefield
? When we lived there?”

He shrugged. “I guess. We were in a lot of places, after we left there. All the towns kind of blend together.
Wakefield
’s just another place we lived.”

It was as clear a dismissal as I was going to get. But I reminded myself that I had come here without his invitation, came and interrupted his day, his work, his life. I hesitated, and then reached into my bag and pulled out a card I’d picked up from the rental car office. I jotted down my new cell phone number. Somehow I knew he would never call the
Wakefield
house. “Call me if—well, if there’s anything you think I should know.”

Leaving the card on the table, I went to the door. “Thanks,” I said. It was inadequate. It was all I had.

“Let me go out with you,” he said. “That wolf might still be hanging around.” When we were out in the sunlight, walking across the grass towards my car, he said suddenly, “So. Do you have it? A good life, like Mom wanted?”

I considered this, considered the years that separated me from her decision, her wish. “I have tried. To be good. I—did you know? No. Of course you didn’t.” I stopped near my car, a few feet from him, and he stopped too, and looked at me. “I joined the convent. Would—would she have wanted that?”

He regarded me, my civilian clothes, his face flushing a little behind the several-day stubble. He was remembering that moment when he’d held me—so wrong on so many levels. “The convent. Well. I don’t know. She was always praying for you. So maybe she would have been happy to hear you’re a nun.”

“I’m not. I was for awhile, but I’m with a different order now, and I haven’t taken my vows.”

“Okay,” he replied. “She’d be okay with that too. She just wanted you to be happy.”

“What did you want?” I whispered.

He tilted his head to the side, as if he’d never considered this. Then he said, slowly, “I just wanted to forget. Not to care. Me and Dad. That’s what we worked on. Forgetting. But Ronnie and Mom. They wouldn’t give up remembering. They just kept remembering. And now they’re dead, and you’re here. And it doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

He opened my door and I got in, and he closed it firmly, and walked away.

I’d done that so many times—walked away. I should have let him go back to his bare cabin and his wooden Madonnas. But I couldn’t. I rolled down the window and called to him. “Mitch. Wait.”

He stopped but didn’t turn. I spoke quickly. “Do you remember when they gave me up? Do you remember what they said? What you thought?”