The Tea Series Page 44

  “We were never allowed back there. It was private.”

  “Well, I was allowed back there. I remember it made me feel so superior to the rest of you. Bernie trusted me to go anywhere in the house. I spent a lot of time over there, and you guys didn’t.”

  “I remember. You just weren’t interested in the stuff we were interested in, so while we were doing sports and hanging out with that crowd, Mom would say that you were helping Bernie. I always thought it was kind of pathetic. You were hanging out with a little old lady, and we were having all kinds of fun.”

  “But I did have fun with Bernie. At least at first. She taught me how to cook. She used to make cleaning fun. I had an apron that matched hers but was little and fit me perfectly.”

  “That’s just sick.”

  “Shut up. We used to do canning, and we made homemade ice cream, and she would always have a cake ready if anyone dropped by. We squeezed lemons after we picked them from the trees in the backyard, and we would put the lemon juice in ice trays and freeze them to make lemonade later.”

  “She did make the best lemonade in the world.”

  “She’d help me with knitting and crocheting and sewing. Bernie was probably the reason I did all the domestic stuff, because she really loved it and I really loved how excited she would be when I would do it and get it right. She’s the one who taught me how to get a stain out of anything and everything.”

  “You do have a gift. This is all very interesting — actually, no, it is not — but it is just avoiding the subject at hand.”

  “Sorry. Maybe Mrs. MacBranain didn’t live with Bernie. She would come over and visit when I was there. I’m not sure. For a while there it seemed like every time I went to Bernie’s she was there. She and Bernie would talk out in the kitchen, and I would either be hanging clothes up to dry outside on that clothesline that opened up like an umbrella, or I’d be on the back porch reading. Bernie had all these really old books that she’d let me read. The paper would crunch if you weren’t careful. She said she brought them over with her on the boat from Ireland. They’d been through a lot, just like her. I was so honored that she would let me touch them that it really didn’t matter what the story was.”

  “Cara!”

  “Okay, you know what? I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but it was a very big deal to me, and you are just going to have to let me get it out my own way.”

  “Sorry. You’re right. I hate people that belittle the experiences of others. Your-sprained-ankle-isn’t-a-big-deal-because-I-broke-my-back kind of people. Especially when you know they didn’t break their back. They just think they know everything about everything and have experienced everything, and they have to make their lives more important than anyone else’s life.”

  “Tell me how you really feel, Teagan.”

  “Oh, I will. It’s a Honey thing. But first you tell me about this.”

  “I would if you would stop interrupting me.”

  “Sorry. Go.”

  “So, anyway, Mrs. MacBranain was over one day. It was a yucky day. I don’t remember why, but it was so hot and sticky in Bernie’s house that even the furniture was sweating.”

  “I hate it when it’s that humid.”

  “It just kind of drains you. Anyway, Bernie said she had to go down to the church and get some stuff going, and Mrs. MacBranain asked if I wanted to go with her to another house because it was cooler there. Bernie said it was okay. Mrs. MacBranain brought me there, and she had a man there — I’m not sure if he was her husband or not — but when we went over to her house she told me we were going to play a game. That we were going to pretend. I figured it was okay. It was a game. I’d played a game with Arlene.”

  My phone rang.

  It was my parents’ picture, the one I took at my brother’s wedding. They looked really happy. Normally it is my dad on the phone when that picture shows up. Mom always uses their other phone.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “It’s me, love. Can the two of you girls come back?”

  “That was quick. Can we bring you anything? We can drive through somewhere.”

  “I will put on the kettle. Thank you, Cara.”

  She was gone.

  “She called me Cara.”

  “That’s not good. When Mom remembers your name, and uses it, no good can come of it.”

  “She sounded so sad. So quiet. I don’t like this.”

  “We need to get over there. One car or two?”

  I took a deep breath and tried to sound sane. “One. I might be tempted to drive mine off a cliff on the way home if I’m alone in the car.”

  “A cliff? In Florida? Really?”

  “Shut up, Teagan. You’re driving.”

  We got over to Mom and Daddy’s house in minutes. Or maybe it was just that I was dreading looking Mom in the eye and I hoped that it would take a little longer to get there.

  This time Daddy was standing at the door when we walked up to the porch.

  “Daddy, I’m sorry.”

  “There is nothing for you to be sorry about. I was wrong. Your mother explained it to me.”

  I couldn’t speak.

  Teagan pretty much shoved me in the door.

  Daddy said, “Your mother is at the table. There is tea. I will not be listening to this a second time. Once was enough. Please, call me on your mother’s cell before you leave, and I’ll head back home.”

  Teagan and I exchanged a look.

  This could not be a good thing.

  Mom was sitting at the table with the good teapot and the teacups I’d once purchased for her at a garage sale. They reminded me of the ones I’d seen in a picture of my grandmother and her sister, and I bought them with the help of a lady who was too stupid to watch her own kid. Long story, doesn’t matter. Anyway I’d only bought my mom two of the cups, but there were three sitting on the table.

  That’s kind of weird.

  “Okay, I have to ask. Where did you get the third cup? Aren’t those the cups that I bought you?”

  “Yes, love, they are. They reminded me of the ones my own mother grew up with. I found some on the Internet. The first set I bought was so fragile that when I picked up the cup, the handle came off in my hand. The second set, as you can see, is in good shape. Two of these are the ones you purchased. I’ve purchased six more.”

  “How can you tell the difference?”

  “With a mother’s eye, Cara.”

  “You do know you’re freaking me out calling me by my name, right?”

  “Of course, love, that is what you get when you yell at your mother.” She smiled.

  I could have fallen on my knees right then and there and thanked the good Lord.

  Mom is going to be okay, and she’s going to be okay with me, which is just as important, at least to me.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “There is nothing to be sorry for, love. You were right. You are a grown woman. You may speak any way you choose. It was wrong of me to correct you, and it was very wrong of me not to stop you in the middle of our conversation and tell you what it was that scotched my mind. It was unfair to you. It was unfair to me. I am aware of that, but at the time, love, I could do nothing to help you. First I must help myself.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to explain.”

  “Yes, I do. It is time.”

  With that, the first tear fell. My mother never cries. Okay, not never, but hardly ever, and never without a really good reason.

  Teagan beat me to the box of Kleenex on the counter in the kitchen.

  She brought the entire box back.

  Weird that my mother didn’t have Kleenex with her if she knew this was going to be a crying kind of conversation.

  That must mean that her brain isn’t working, and if her brain isn’t working, this has gotta be bad.

  “Cara, I well and truly want to hear every bit of what you need to tell me, but I need to tell you something first. I always assumed I would take it to my grave, as ashamed
as I have always been, but I now believe that I need to share it with you.”

  “Mom, you aren’t obligated to tell me anything. What happened with me isn’t that big of a deal. I blew it all out of proportion. Really. It isn’t a problem.”

  Why was it such a big deal a few days ago when it seemed like nothing now?

  I’d made the trunk into such a huge mystery, and then it wasn’t a mystery at all. It was a reminder that I didn’t want to remember, and now it is the basis for my own mother’s nervous breakdown.

  I wish Bernie had never left me that stuff.

  It’s more than a little weird that she did.

  Who would leave reminders of crazy people?

  Better question, why did I forget all of it for so long?

  “Love, I am obligated. You were only a child. Your experiences are my responsibility. I failed you. I have no excuse for that, but I want you to understand why it is that the thought of Bernie doing anything to harm you was the furthest thought from my mind.”

  “Mom, it’s okay.”

  “No, it is not. But it will be. I have faith in that.”

  Teagan was losing her sense of humor. “Cara, stop trying to avoid the whole conversation. Shut up and let Mom talk.”

  “Sorry.”

  With that, Mom took a deep breath, aged five years right in front of our faces, and started to tell her story.

  “Girls, as you know, your grandmother and I were never very close. With family being as important to me as it is, did you ever wonder why?”

  Teagan answered for me. “I always thought that Grandma just didn’t like Dad very much.”

  “My relationship with your grandmother was dead long before your father and I became involved.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Me either.”

  “For me, as you know, life did not begin until I met your father.”

  “I always thought that was so romantic. You used to tell us that all the time when we were growing up. That your life began and ended with Dad, not to make you choose sides between him and us because he would always win. Or you used to say that the day you met Dad was the day you started to breathe. You always smiled. I thought it was because Dad made you so happy, not that it was rooted in something less pleasant.”

  Teagan seemed so sad. Like her whole romantic belief system just got punched in the gut. She is new to the whole thing. She’s only had a romantic side for about a minute and a half, so it’s still pretty fragile.

  “Oh, but it is a grand romance. Your father saved me. What is more, he had no idea how he had until this very day. Your father and the love he has always given me would be equally grand with or without my previous problems.”

  When neither of us responded, Mom tried again.

  “My childhood was a complicated one. Parts were magic. Parts were horrid. I have always chosen to share the magical part with you and your brothers and sisters. I believed that the ugliness in my childhood would taint you in some way if I were to share it with you. That, and I never wanted to relive it in the telling.”

  “You don’t have to now, Mom.”

  “Cara, shut up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Girls, stop. When I was a little girl my mother was what would now be called emotionally distant. You’ve both heard the stories of her childhood. She was broken. It does us no service to go into the details of that problem. Enough is said when it is said that she was not the kind of mother that I wanted to be.”

  “You did a great job, Mom. You’re the perfect mother.”

  “I appreciate that, Teagan, but I am far from perfect. When I was a child, my mother would leave me with her friend. I won’t go into great detail; there really is no reason to do so. His name was Charles. I despised him. Because of that, my mother didn’t believe me when I came to her and told her that he had molested me.”

  Teagan’s gasp was very quiet, but loud enough that we all heard it.

  My mother didn’t acknowledge it. “We didn’t use that term back then.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

  “I am too, love. Much more important than what that deviant did to me is the fact that when I told your grandmother, she didn’t believe me. She continued to insist that I spend time with Charles. She must have said something to him, because after that first time I spoke to her, things got worse; the attacks strengthened. He was well aware that I had no escape. No place of refuge. I thought that I simply did not make my mother understand what was happening. Again and again I told her what he was doing, and she was disgusted. With me! After many confrontations she finally said that it was not for public display and that I would do well to keep my mouth shut. I believe that she had few options in life and was not about to allow me to remove one of those options from her. She was of the opinion that he was doing to me what men would do to me all my life and therefore there was no cause to leave him.”

  “Damn. What did you do?”

  “I told Bernie. She was a dear friend of my mother. She came upon me one day when I was particularly upset. I had lost quite a bit of weight. If I recall correctly, my hair was starting to fall out. She was concerned that I had a physical ailment of one sort or another. I simply blurted the truth out to her.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She about had a conniption fit, which I had never witnessed in an adult. It frightened me, but there was a part of me that was grateful that she believed me and cared enough to be upset. My mother had been upset with me. Bernie was upset with my mother and her friend. She had a conversation with my mother, at the end of which my mother came back to Bernie’s, kissed my forehead and said I would not have to spend any more time with Charles.”

  “Well, that’s good. I guess. It would have been better if your mother had figured it out on her own.”

  “I’m not sure what my mother and Bernie talked about. I’m not sure what Bernie did or who she talked to. I never saw Charles again.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Quite literally he was gone from our lives forever.”

  “I hope she buried him in the backyard.”

  “Nothing that drastic, love. They whispered a thing or two into the right ears, and he moved on.”

  “Probably moved on to abuse another child.”

  “I know that now, but at the time, we didn’t think in those terms. If I had the power to go back and change things, I would.”

  My mother was showing such strength. Here she was telling her daughters that she had been sexually abused as a child, and she wasn’t shedding a tear. That kind of worried me.

  “I am sorry, love. It never occurred to me that our Bernie could allow anything bad to happen to you when she was the woman who saved me from everything bad in my life.”

  “I’m okay, Mom.”

  “As am I, but that is not what we are speaking of here. I put my trust in the wrong person, and you were the one who paid the price. I am well and truly sorry, love.”

  “I’m okay, Mom. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Certainly nothing like you went through.”

  “Don’t!” Teagan’s voice was so stern it shocked both Mom and me.

  “What?”

  “Don’t pull a Cara, Cara. Don’t make out like what happened to you wasn’t a big deal just because something else happened to someone else. You always do that. You sit back and say that if someone breaks an ankle it doesn’t make your sprained ankle feel any better, but at the first hint that anything bad happened to someone else you throw your stuff to the side and take care of them. I know what happened to Mom was terrible, but what happened to you was terrible too, and Mom’s stuff doesn’t erase your stuff.”

  “I didn’t say it did. What’s wrong with you?”

  “For all the things the O’Flynns do right, we do some stuff very wrong.”

  “What and who?” My mother whispered it.

  Teagan started to leak. The tears came silently and with such volume that it was kind of fascinating. “That guy wh
o lived in the rental house across from Mrs. Ladner when I was just starting to develop.”

  “The father or the son?”

  “The teenaged son.”

  “You never said…”

  “I didn’t want to get in trouble.”

  “I’m so sorry, love, that you thought you would get in trouble for telling your own mother such a thing.”

  “That’s not really why I thought I’d get in trouble. I figured I could tell you what happened to me; I just thought I’d get in trouble for what happened to him.”

  “What?”

  “He told me it was a school project. That it was really important. Science. That he’d already gotten your permission. I was helping.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “From what I’ve read, that is a common grooming approach.”

  “Yeah, well, it worked. Almost. Everything was going fine. He was looking. Comparing me to a book he had. Making all kinds of scientific noises and comments. Nothing different than what the doctor would do. It was for science. Made sense to me. I wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable.”

  “Then tell me, love, why did you think you would be in trouble?”

  “He figured he had me where he wanted me. He made the mistake of touching me. That just didn’t seem very science-y to me. So I told him to quit.”

  “Good girl.”

  “He didn’t quit. He got mad. He seemed to get…the word I would use now is aggressive; the word I would have used then was scary.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Remember back then, I was kickball champion at school. I could kick a ball from the base all the way over the back fence on the big kids’ field. Well, let’s just say that when I left, he was on the floor, throwing up.”

  “Good girl. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought I’d get in trouble for kicking him. You always said we could rough and tumble all we wanted, but no kicking the guys; that was unfair. I’d be hard pressed to kick any harder than that to this day. I’m sure I did some serious damage, but I never saw an ambulance come to the house. He didn’t die, or we would have heard about it. They moved not all that long after that. He never even talked to me again. In my little kid eyes, it was just better to pretend it never happened.”