The Tea Series Page 42

  Mom took a deep breath and settled herself. “We will be back to this topic in the future. Until then, please continue with your story.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I knew we would be talking about the whole break-in thing. Mom doesn’t let things like that go easily, but at least she was allowing me to continue with my story. I was pretty sure it would be without interruption, which can be even more difficult than when she asks questions all the time, because when my mother puts her mind to it, she has a true poker face. You cannot figure out what she’s thinking.

  “I promise I will tell you all about the break-in as soon as I am done, but I need you to know that it is all taken care of and I’m not in any danger.”

  My mom gave me that look of hers, but didn’t say a word; she just kind of nodded her head.

  “And A.J. was there the whole time. When he went out of town I spent all my time with Teagan, so I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t in any danger.”

  “We are certain to discuss that later, love. Tell me what has you so upset.”

  “Okay, so anyway, I was by myself, and I opened Bernie’s trunk. I don’t know if it was because of everything else that was going on and I was already all stressed out or what it was, but when I opened the trunk all these memories came flooding back at me.”

  “Memories of what, love?”

  “Of everything that happened over at Bernie’s.”

  “Cara, it is like pulling the teeth from a hippo. Will you tell me what it is that you are on about?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “All the stuff that happened at Bernie’s. You know everything about everything about your kids. You never have to be told anything, and you don’t know this? This big thing? I find that really hard to believe, Mom.”

  “Well, Cara Siobhan, are we not just the judge and jury today? I have no clue what it is you are going on about, and I am less than happy with your tone of voice. Please get on with it so that we might sort it out.”

  “Fine.” For the first time in my life, I really wanted to just do something unpleasant to my mother. I’m not going to say I wanted to punch her, although if I felt this way about Teagan, punching her would be the least of her problems.

  “Mom, I opened that trunk, and all these memories started flooding me. At first they were just little bits. I remembered this lady; her name was Mrs. MacBranain.”

  “Ah, yes, Violet. I remember her well.” The smile on my mother’s face made me want to scream. How could she like this woman? This woman that had been so…

  “Mom, she was one of them!”

  “One of whom?”

  “One of Bernie’s people. The people that screwed up my childhood.”

  “And just how did they come to do that, love?”

  Was she listening at all? She was like a Stepford wife. She should have seen how upset I was, but instead of any empathy there was no change in her affect at all.

  I thought my head would explode. “All their weirdness. Their sicknesses. Their strange beliefs. Their fights and projecting their bullshit on me.”

  “Language, love.”

  “You know what, Mom? I’m a full-grown adult, and if I choose to say bullshit, I’m going to say it.”

  Her voice carried a slight edge. “I understand that you are a full-grown adult. It would behoove you to act like it, love. I understand that you are stressed, but I expect you to comport yourself respectfully. Whatever it is that is upsetting you so, is not to be laid at my feet. I’ve done nothing wrong. There is no reason for you to speak disrespectfully to me or in front of me.”

  “Are you kidding me right now? I come to you and tell you that Bernie and her whackos ruined me, and you’re worried about me using a word? Really?”

  Every fiber of my being wanted to stand up and slam out the door, but I just sat there like our pet rats when we were little. If they escaped, Mom would have us sit in the dark with a pie tin with peanut butter in it. When we heard them scurry across the pie tin, we’d flip on the flashlight, and they would be stunned just long enough to grab them and put them back in the cage. It mostly worked. Except that Sara ended up pregnant, but that’s a story for another time.

  “Cara Siobhan. Stop. Take a breath. There is an obvious miscommunication at the minute. We will sort it, but not if you can’t have a proper thought.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to remember that I actually liked my mother. “Mom, I don’t think you understand what’s going on here, and I’m trying to tell you. Bernie and her friends were totally inappropriate. They hurt me.”

  “And just how did they do that, love? Are you telling me that Bernie and her friends molested you?”

  “Why does everybody go there? There are ways to hurt a child, to destroy her life, without it being sexual.”

  “Your life has hardly been destroyed, Cara.”

  I couldn’t help it. It just came out of my mouth. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  My mother’s eyes grew wide. “Cara Siobhan Macha O’Flynn!”

  “Don’t even bother with all my names. I’m trying to tell you something, and you’re not listening. My whole life you have been one kind of person, and now that I need you to be that kind of person, you are somebody else.”

  Every emotion ran across my mother’s face, and instead of feeling sorry for her, it just made me angrier.

  There should only be one emotion on my mother’s face, and that emotion was pure empathy. Or maybe a little sadness to hear that something that happened to her daughter, however far in the past, was devastating, but mostly empathy.

  You know, empathy, the stuff she had lectured me about my whole life. The stuff that she created all these weird and wonderful life lessons around.

  What good was the whole O’Flynn thing if the one time I truly needed the whole O’Flynn package, it was nowhere to be found?

  Now here’s the big confession. My mother — the woman that I’d give my life for, all my lives if all the stuff she’s been cramming down our throats all our lives is true — started to cry. And all it did was make me angrier.

  I got up and slammed out of the house. I slammed the front door so hard that I would have been surprised if there was anything hanging on any wall in the front half of the house.

  I’m not really a door-slammer.

  The great door-slam of eighth grade took care of that for me.

  I got mad and slammed the door really hard, but instead of slamming it shut, it bounced back open and hit Liam in the face and broke his front tooth. Not only did I have to feel bad that I broke my brother’s tooth, but Mom and Daddy made me pay for half the dentist bill.

  I shoved that whole thing aside in my brain and got in my car.

  I forgot to release the emergency brake, so when I slammed on the gas to make my dramatic exit, it sounded like I’d peeled out in a great movie in the fifties.

  I was halfway down to the fire hydrant in front of Mrs. Ladner’s house before it dawned on me what I’d done.

  I’ve probably ruined my brakes. Or my whole car.

  I don’t even care.

  I got as far as the park before I was hysterical.

  I called A.J. I’m not sure he understood anything I blubbered into the phone, but he offered to come and get me, and I said yes.

  I didn’t want my family to come looking for me.

  A.J. was there in record time. He opened the door, scooped me out of the car, put me in the passenger seat of his car, and drove me home.

  I’ve never felt so loved.

  When Teagan was in the living room, I’d never felt so betrayed.

  “Talk to your sister.”

  I knew that I sounded like a snotty little fifth grader, and I didn’t care. Real attractive. “I don’t want to talk to her.”

  “Cara, I’ve never asked you for a god-dammed thing. Talk to your sister.”

  Teagan didn’t say anything. She just walked over to me and wrapped her arms around me and let m
e cry it out.

  Somewhere along the line A.J. handed me a hand towel — my favorite tool for a really devastating crying session — and left.

  Somehow I ended up lying on the couch, with my head in Teagan’s lap and her playing with my hair. We used to do that when we were little. When we didn’t feel good my mom would have us lie on the couch while she stroked our hair. It’s a major comfort thing.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again. I made Mom cry.”

  “She’s a big girl. She can deal with it. What about you?”

  “Teagan, I tried to tell her about Bernie and the trunk, and she was just so weird.”

  “Maybe she can’t bring herself to hear it.”

  “What?”

  “Cara, you are her daughter. She is the one who brought you to Bernie’s. Entrusted Bernie. If Bernie did something horrendous, don’t you think Mom would take responsibility for the decision to allow you to go over there?”

  “If?”

  “I’m sorry. You know that I believe you. One hundred percent. You aren’t a liar, Cara. And no one would think you are lying now. Please don’t go hyper-focus on the words I use, or we aren’t going to be able to figure this out.”

  “There’s nothing to figure.”

  “Cara, tell me what happened.”

  “Okay, but can you just let me get the whole thing out before you say anything? I don’t want a repeat of what happened with Mom.”

  “I can do that. Go.”

  “When I first opened the trunk the other day, everything just hit me at once. Just a jumbled up mess of little bits of memory. It was terrifying because I couldn’t put it all together, and it was devastating because what I could put together was just wrong.”

  Teagan, true to her word, didn’t say anything. Which wasn’t working for me. “Okay, you can comment; just make the right comments.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I know. So, first I get this memory. I’m, like, third or fourth grade. Do you remember a friend of Bernie’s, a friend named Arlene?”

  “No.”

  “She was beautiful. She had these huge eyes. Heavy makeup. She painted it on. She wore white under her eyebrow, with blue on the lid and a darker blue in the crease, really heavy-winged liner, and lots of eyelashes. I’d never seen anything like that before, and I thought it was so pretty. She smoked. She let me call her by her first name. She had a husband who was never around; I think maybe he worked outside of the country. Bernie said that Arlene was her special friend and that it was my job to make sure that Arlene was happy.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “At first I would help her cut stuff out. She did all these weird odd jobs. Cutting shapes for some pre-school teacher was one of her jobs. We would cut out triangles and duckies, and I loved doing it. I was good at it. I could cut a bunch of them all at once, and Arlene would bring me over to that place on Burtcher and Belfast and buy me French fries and a coke and then drive me back to Bernie’s house.”

  “Bernie let her take you away from her house?”

  “Yep. I even spent the night there a couple of times.”

  “Did Mom know?”

  “Nope. I almost told her once. I told her that Bernie broke a rule. Before I could explain that the rule was allowing me to go home with Arlene, Mom told me that Bernie had her own house rules and that I was to do what Bernie said. No arguments.”

  “Wow, I guess she didn’t think that one through.”

  “Guess not.”

  “So, what happened when you spent the night?”

  “Nothing. She was really nice to me. Her best friend lived across the street, and we would go over there, and I’d play with her friend’s kids, and we got to stay up late and eat chocolate chip cookies and soda.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “I guess that’s why I didn’t tell Mom about it. I didn’t want it to stop.”

  “So, what happened? What did Arlene really want?”

  “She took me to a prison.”

  “What?”

  “I know. Weird. She was seeing this guy. Looking back, I guess she had some way to forge paperwork or something. I remember her telling people that I was this guy’s daughter and that she was my stepmother. He would pick me up when we first got in there and spin me around. I was so scared that all the cops would find out and that I’d go to jail, but the truth is, once you get through security, there aren’t a lot of cops around. Guards, I guess, is a better word for it.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “You said you knew I wasn’t lying.”

  “Oh, I believe you. I just can’t believe that some strange woman would sneak you into a prison just to visit some loser.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t believe she actually got away with it.”

  “You don’t have to carry an ID when you’re a little kid. Things weren’t as tight back then as they are now. We didn’t even have to take our shoes off at the airport.”

  “Good point. How many times did you have to do that?”

  “That memory didn’t come back to me until yesterday. I remember that I was so scared. Shaking kind of scared. Arlene told me that we were going to go to the prison and spend the night. That they had special little houses that allowed us to visit like a real family. That I would have my own bedroom. That it would be fun. But I was scared. Really scared. When we went to the prison they had this thing where they open a room like a cage and you step in and they close the one side and then they open the other side and you are locked in that little room. It scared the hog snot out of me. I don’t know why. I was crying and saying I didn’t want to spend the night. Arlene got really angry. She slapped me. Then she got all weird and said she only slapped me because I’d gotten hysterical. Anyway, I told Bernie.”

  “Bernie didn’t know?”

  “She knew that I was spending time with Arlene. She knew that we were going places. She didn’t know that Arlene was using me as some kind of shill so that she could spend the night with an inmate who was not her husband while her husband was gone.”

  “Bernie wouldn’t have liked that. She was a bit of a zealot.”

  “Yeah, shouldn’t that have been a bit of a sign. She’s a religious zealot who wrote porn.”

  “Good point. What happened?”

  “Bernie told me I didn’t have to go. I never saw Arlene again. I felt like it was my fault that they weren’t friends anymore. I saw Bernie cry once in the kitchen while she was making tea, and when I asked her what was wrong she said that she’d just gotten a call from Arlene and she was just a little sad. When I asked why, she said it was grown-up business, and she shooed me out of the room.”

  “What was Bernie thinking?”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about that ever since all these memories started coming back to me, and I think I know the answer.”

  “And the answer is?”

  “Bernie thought she was helping. She thought she was running her own little mission. She thought she was saving their souls.”

  “Sister Bernie?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Well, isn’t that special. Even if that’s the case, why would she put a child in the middle of it, and why would she use someone else’s child?”

  “Good question, Teagan.”

  “I can see how that freaks you out. You couldn’t get me into a prison with a bulldozer, and I’m a grown woman, but I’m not sure this constitutes ruining your life, Cara. Don’t get mad. Explain it so that I understand it.”

  “I’m done being mad. I’ve moved on to depressed.”

  “Glad to hear you’re making some advancement. Tell me, Cara.”

  “It wasn’t just Arlene. You remember when we opened the trunk the first time? We saw all those little wrapped packages.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I think they are all little remembrances from all the people that Bernie and I helped.�
� I had to do the finger quotes around helped because I didn’t believe we helped anyone. Bernie was probably just a crazy person messing with crazy people.

  “This really doesn’t make any sense, Cara. If you’d been molested or beaten or taken by gypsies, I could understand it, but this doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “That would kind of be the point.”

  “What?”

  “Can you make sense out of a random murder? If it isn’t about self-defense or whatever, does it make sense?”

  “True.”

  “Or molestation, which everyone seems to go to first, can you make sense out of that?”

  “No.”

  “And even if I didn’t get murdered or molested, that doesn’t mean it was any easier, and maybe harder, because nobody is going to understand what they did to me. Anybody I tell, it’s so far out of their reality, they aren’t going to see what happened. You know what is gonna happen, Teagan, if I’m stupid enough to say anything to anybody, which I’m not? They’re going to think it is some big nothing. That what happened wasn’t a big deal. But you know what? It changed me. When they did it and when I remembered it. In my whole life I’ve never made Mom cry. And I really didn’t even care. What is wrong with me? My own mother starts to cry, and instead of comforting her or apologizing or even just checking to make sure that Daddy was around to help her, I slammed out of the door. I just didn’t care.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Not enough to do anything, which is the same thing.”

  “Why are you so mad at Mom? Do you think she’s responsible for what Bernie and her friends did? ‘Cause, Cara, that’s just wrong.”

  “It’s a little bit wrong but not completely wrong. How many times has Mom told us that everything that happens before you’re eighteen is the parents’ responsibility? Well, guess what. This happened before I was eighteen.”

  “And if you didn’t say anything, how was Mom supposed to know what was happening?”

  “Really? The woman who knew — knows — everything about everything? Did you get away with anything growing up? Mom knew everything, so if she knew everything, why didn’t she know this? Only two answers, Teagan. Either she knew and she was okay with it, or she didn’t care enough to know.”