What She Left for Me (21 page)

“No, it doesn’t make you bad. I just don’t want to see you conform to a world that doesn’t care how you feel. Our friends out here care about one another. We share what we have with one another and we don’t worry about a lot of rules. We keep things cool.”

“But I feel like something’s missing. I feel all empty inside. Like I need something, and I don’t even know what it is.”

Her father nodded. “All you really need is love. And you have that. I’ll always love you and so will your mom. You don’t need to be afraid.”

“But sometimes people stop loving,” Eleanor said frankly. “They stop caring.” She sat up and looked at her dad. “They leave each other and everything changes. What if Mom decides to leave? What if you decide to leave?”

“I know this won’t make things better, but, Ellie, everyone has the right to walk away when the time comes. You can’t hold on to people—you can’t put a leash around their necks and force them to your side. Would you like it if I said you could never grow up and leave?”

“Well, no, I suppose not.”

“Then why do you worry about that with me?”

“Because you’re an adult and you can do what you want. I’m just a kid. If you left, it would be bad, and I would be scared. I need you.”

“Ellie, you shouldn’t need anybody. That’s why you’re scared. You’re putting too much dependency on the people around you. We could all die tomorrow. I have no say over life and death in that way. I don’t want you to need me for your existence. If you do, then I’ve done something wrong in raising you.”

Ellie looked at her father quizzically. She pushed up from his lap and stared at him, trying hard to take in all his words. He stood and shoved his hands in his jean pockets. “The less you need in life, Ellie, the happier you’ll be. Think about that and you’ll find out soon enough for yourself that it’s true. If you don’t need people or things, then when they go away you won’t feel that sense of loss—that hurt. That’s one of the ways you control whether or not you get hurt.”

She felt a deep sadness wash over her. “So you don’t need me?”

Her father’s expression grew almost stern. “No, Ellie. I don’t need you. I love you, and that will never change. But I don’t need you.”

“And you don’t need Mom or the boys?”

“No. I don’t need them either. To need them would be to set up boundaries for myself that would fence me in and kill me.”

“So if Mom leaves or I leave, you won’t feel anything about it? You won’t care?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t care, but, Ellie, I’m a doctor. I see people being born and dying all the time. If I let myself care too much, it would destroy me. It’ll destroy you, too, if you don’t try to understand it now.”

“I’ll try to understand, but I don’t know if I will.”

She walked away and he didn’t call to her. She almost wished he would. There was a part of her that felt crushed and broken inside. She hated the feeling. What was wrong with everybody? What was wrong with her?

Eleanor spent the next few weeks longing to understand. She even talked to Sapphira about it, but neither girl could grasp what Eleanor’s father had been talking about.

“It seems to me that everybody needs somebody,” Sapphira reasoned.

“That’s what I think,” Eleanor replied. She and her friend were spending the night together in a tent not far from the Templeton trailer.

“I don’t think I’d like to go all my life and have nobody need me,” Sapphira confided. “I mean, that sounds awful to me.”

Eleanor knew exactly how her friend felt. It hurt inside to imagine that her father didn’t need her. She used to feel important in his life, and now she didn’t.

“Do you suppose we’ll get married some day?” Eleanor asked.

“I guess so. I think Tommy Meyers is kind of cute. I wouldn’t mind fooling around with him.”

“Sapphira!” Eleanor was surprised by her friend’s comment.

“Well, why not? That’s what people do with each other.”

“I know, but I didn’t expect you to, like, well, say it that way. It sounds bad when you talk like that.”

“Well, Ally and Samantha have been fooling around with some of the boys. Ally told me it feels really good. And if it feels good, it can’t be bad.”

“I guess that makes sense.” But in truth, Eleanor wasn’t sure anything made sense.

“The real key,” Sapphira explained in her thirteen-year-old wisdom, “is that you love each other. If you love each other, then fooling around is okay. That’s what my mom told me.”

“But a lot of people around here fool around with each other. Do you suppose they love each other?”

“Sure. Why not? We’re supposed to love everybody.”

“Then does that mean we can fool around with everybody?” Eleanor’s question sounded strange in her own ears. The logic seemed skewed somehow.

“I think it does,” she said. “It’s all about love.”

“My dad said love was all we needed.”

“Yeah, I think that’s right.” Sapphira yawned and rolled over, leaving her back to Eleanor.

For a long time Eleanor stayed awake, thinking. She was supposed to love people, and they in turn would or could love her back. She should never need anybody or let anybody else need her. And physical intimacy was all right as long as you loved the person you were with. And truth? Well, that was what she made it.

Somehow none of it set well with her. It just didn’t figure. Eleanor liked things reasonable and logical, and she couldn’t understand why it didn’t make sense. It was like trying to work a puzzle, but the pieces didn’t go together. They just didn’t fit.

****

The clock on the wall chimed and Eleanor opened her eyes. Gone was the tent and Sapphira. Gone were her twelve-year-old worries. She looked at Jana, somewhat surprised. She’d never intended to share all of that. What had gotten into her? By the look on Jana’s face, Eleanor knew her story would only lead to more questions, more demands for explanation. That was always the way when you shared something.

“I need to start supper,” Eleanor said, getting to her feet. She didn’t wait to hear any protest or comment from Jana, so she hurried into the kitchen, images of yesteryear still lingering around her.

She leaned against the counter and sighed.
Why did I tell Jana all of that? Why did I open myself up? I can’t let it happen again. I can’t let her know the truth. Not about my mother and certainly not about my father.

Nineteen

Jana sat in stunned silence as her mother left the room. How could all of that have been in her mother’s life and yet the woman had never said anything about it? It wasn’t like she’d experienced the difference between rural and city life. Jana’s mother had grown up in a heavy drug culture as a hippie, living free and wild. Jana would have been amused by the idea had it not been so extraordinary.

How had her mother journeyed from such loose morals and chaos to absolute order? Jana got up and followed her mother to the kitchen. Determined to get answers, she stood in the arched dining room doorway and watched her mother for a moment. It was clear she was upset, but Jana so desired more answers she selfishly decided to push for them.

“You can’t just stop there, Mom. You know that.”

“I can stop wherever I want to,” Eleanor said in a rather clipped manner. “I never meant to share that information to begin with. It was a mistake.”

“No it wasn’t. I hardly know anything about you—about my family. The things you told me give me some insight to better understanding why you raised me the way you did. That whole thing about not needing people could have been a page out of the textbook you used to raise me.”

“So what?” Eleanor took a package of celery out of the refrigerator and placed it on the counter. “It’s not important now.”

“But of course it’s important now!” Jana declared. She crossed the room and came to stand beside her mother. “Don’t you see? We’re finally having some real communication.”

“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic.” Eleanor turned away to retrieve a cutting board.

“I’m not being melodramatic, I’m being honest—something I don’t think we’ve done a lot of together. What little ‘together’ time there has been.”

“You make it sound as though you grew up in an orphanage. For pity’s sake, Jana, you’ve had a good life, and yet all I’ve ever heard from you has been complaints. You never went hungry or had to worry about the clothes on your back. You never had to live in danger or fear that all you enjoyed would suddenly be stripped away from you.”

“I also never grew up with a sense of family. You were always gone or else I was at boarding school.”

“I had a business to run, Jana,” Eleanor said, turning to look at her daughter. “That’s something you’ve never understood. The bookstore didn’t succeed on its own steam. I had to put a lot of hours in.”

“But you also had a child. I wasn’t succeeding on my own steam either, yet that never seemed to bother you.”

Eleanor began to cut the celery into chunks. “No one is ever happy with their upbringing, Jana. They can always point to some flaw, some indiscretion or frustration. They do this in order to blame someone else for the problems in their life. You want to blame me for the fact that your husband left you, but it’s not my fault that Rob ran off with his secretary.”

Her words stunned Jana. Was that what she thought this was all about? Did her mother honestly think Jana was simply looking for someone to blame? “I’ve never thought you were a part of my situation, Mother. I’m not even sure why you would suggest such a thing.”

Eleanor paused and looked at Jana. Jana thought her mother seemed to genuinely search her face for the truth of her statement. Then, shaking her head, Eleanor went back to work.

Jana decided a cup of coffee might be in order and went to the cupboard for a cup. “You want some?” she asked, holding out a mug.

“No.”

Jana poured her own cup and then went to the fridge for cream. There had to be a way to break through her mother’s walls.

“You still didn’t tell me much about what your mother was like,” Jana said.

“It really doesn’t matter. She’s dead, and there’s no purpose served by dredging up her memory.”

“I don’t understand you.” Jana walked to the back door and stared out at the well-tended lawn. One of Stanley’s great-grandsons came and mowed the grass every other week, while Taffy still puttered around planting flowers and trimming bushes. Jana often liked to take her coffee outside to the little picnic area Taffy and Eleanor had put together.

Jana turned away from the sanctuary, however, and decided to ask another question. Perhaps this would be enough of a curve ball that her mother would take the swing without thinking.

“When you said you loved me enough to protect me from the past,” Jana began, “was this what you were talking about or was it something else?”

Eleanor said nothing for several minutes, and Jana wasn’t even sure she’d heard the question. Finally, however, Eleanor put the cleaver aside and bent down to pull a pan from the bottom cupboard.

“The past is full of pain,” her mother stated as she put the celery into the pan. “What mother wouldn’t want to protect her child from that?”

“But the past is also full of good things.”

“Not according to you.”

Jana frowned. “What do you mean?”

Eleanor went to the faucet and turned it on. She let the pan fill halfway before shutting the water off. “Everything you’ve ever said about your childhood has been negative. Despite my best efforts to give you everything you needed to be healthy and well educated, it wasn’t enough. You bemoan the fact that you know nothing about your family ancestry, as though it negates everything else that was done for you.”

“Didn’t it ever occur to you that all I really needed was a mother and father who loved me—who wanted to be with me? That’s all I wanted.”

“Well, Jana, we don’t always get what we want.” Eleanor put the pan on the stove.

“That’s not a good enough answer. I’m a grown woman now, and I won’t be hushed up by my mother.” Jana nearly slammed the coffee mug down. “You owe me an explanation.”

“I owe you nothing,” Eleanor said indignantly. “I have a right to my own life. I have a right to have done things in the best way I could for me.”

“Is that some more of your father’s hippie philosophy? ‘If it feels good, do it’?”

Jana could see her mother’s jaw clench. She’d pushed her too hard.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not, because you never tell me anything.”

“I just told you quite a bit and it still wasn’t enough. This is exactly why I don’t talk about the past. Look at the way you’re acting. Look at the anger in your heart. Nothing is ever enough for you, Jana. It never has been. Not when you were a child and not now. You’ll never be satisfied, so please stop coming to me for the answers.”

The words cut deep. Jana leaned back against the counter. Was she right? Did her mother have a better grip on her than she had on herself? It hadn’t been enough—that much was true. Her mother had opened Pandora’s box, and Jana wanted another peek inside.

“Just answer me this,” Jana said, her voice more calm. “Is the past you’re protecting me from yours or mine?”