“Hey, grease monkey,” she greeted from where she sat on the porch. I plopped down in the seat next to her, the mountains already shaded as the sun disappeared for the night. “Want a beer?”
I shook my head, and because she knew I didn’t want to talk, she filled me in on her day.
Where Ron and I had an understanding in silence, Momma Von was always there when I needed to talk. Sometimes I only said a few words, and sometimes I talked for hours. She was about the only person I still talked to like that, but it was because she knew—she knew Aunt Rose, she knew Dani, she knew me, she knew the past and the present and why I would never be the same man I was in one in the other.
I wanted to tell her Aunt Rose called, that I was feeling some sort of way about the anniversary of Dani’s death, but I wasn’t there yet. So I listened to her tell me about her day working in her garden and helping Yvette with Benjamin. I was staring out at the mountains, eyes adjusting to the darkness, half-listening and half-thinking about my own shit when she said Wren’s name.
“Poor girl didn’t know what to do with that baby in her arms,” Momma Von said with a chuckle. “She was holding him out at arm’s length, his legs dangling and diaper sagging. I’ve never seen a pair of eyes so big before, thought they were going to pop out of her head before Yvette got back with the changing bag.”
“What’s her story, anyway?” I asked, aiming for nonchalant, landing somewhere right around desperate for information.
“She’s a sweet girl, staying out here for the summer. I think she’s a little lost, trying to find out who she is and how she fits in the world.”
“Mm,” I said in response.
Momma Von had her eyes on me, a smile playing at the edges of her mouth.
“She’s not running from a crazy ex or something, is she? That’s the last thing we need out here, some lunatic showing up and then we all have to get involved.”
“I don’t think that’s my story to tell,” she answered with a cluck of her tongue. “But maybe you could ask her.”
I just shrugged, but more questions burned their way to the surface. Where was she from? What did she want to find out here? Did she really have a crazy ex? Shit, did she have a boyfriend?
“Aunt Rose called me today,” I said instead of asking any of them.
“You okay?”
I nodded. “Seven years next month.” I shook my head, fingers folding together from where they hung between my knees. I kept my eyes there, in that safe space, and asked the question I’d been thinking all day out loud. “How is that possible?”
Momma Von was silent a moment, rocking in her chair and pulling the blanket around her shoulders a little tighter. “Time has a way of doing that, Anderson—sneaking up on us. Sometimes I look back and can remember one day of my life more than I can remember an entire decade. I look at myself in the mirror every morning and wonder when those wrinkles appeared, when my hair started to gray, where my bright porcelain skin went.”
“I can still hear her laugh,” I said. “Like I heard it just this morning.”
“And you probably always will. Nothing wrong with that.”
My eyes stayed focused on my hands. “She could be here right now. If I wouldn’t have pushed her, if I would have—”
“Stop, Anderson.” She cut me off, but I was still shaking my head, rolling over the words I’d said to Dani the night before she died. “You have to let go of the blame you feel. It’s been seven years. She wouldn’t have wanted you to live like this.”
Her words might as well have been a hammer when I needed a drill, they were so useless. How did Momma Von know what Dani would have wanted, or anyone else for that matter? She didn’t survive long enough to tell anyone how she felt about the things I’d said to her, and so the comfort Momma Von tried to bring with her assumption fell flat.
I didn’t have anything else to say, and nothing had been resolved, nothing talked about really. But it was enough, and I stood, ready to shower and turn in for the night.
“Yvette and Davie are having a little bonfire tonight,” Momma Von said when I started down the stairs. “You should come. It’s been a while since you’ve seen Benjamin. He’s so big now.”
“I’m tired,” I answered. That was my answer for everything.
“Wren will be there,” she said, but I kept my eyes on my boots as I kept walking. “If that changes your mind at all.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Okay,” she added with a laugh. “So I’ll see you there later then?”
“Goodnight, Momma Von.”
She just laughed harder, and I shook my head, dislodging the thought before it had a chance to even attempt to stick. I hadn’t been to a bonfire in years, hadn’t been in a group setting with anyone but Momma Von and Ron in years. I’d tried a few times before, but every time I remembered why I couldn’t.
Because Dani couldn’t.
How could I live a normal life, a fun life, one with laughter and drinks and friends and fun when she laid buried six feet under less than a mile away?
The answer was that I couldn’t, and I repeated that over and over all the way back to my cabin.
REAL
re·al
Adjective
Not artificial, fraudulent, or illusory : genuine
I never realized how much more I had to learn about myself, not until I spent nearly every second of every single night alone.
The days were easy, because there was sunshine and other people to talk to. Even when the clouds hung low over the cabins or the sky opened up and poured down an afternoon of rain, there was always someone around. Momma Von on her porch, or Yvette and Davie walking Benjamin in his stroller, or Tucker swinging by to see if I wanted to do anything, which I never did, not with him, anyway. I kept myself busy during the day, working on little projects around the cabin and enjoying the scenery.
Nights were the hardest.
I was thankful the days were long, at least. The sun didn’t sink behind the mountains until around nine each night, but as soon as it did, I’d be alone with my thoughts. Sketching still wasn’t happening, which meant the thoughts I was left alone with weren’t even productive ones. No, usually they were filled with everything I’d yet to truly face—like my fear of failure, not only as a wife but as an artist.
Broken was the best way to describe how I felt.
I couldn’t sketch, couldn’t articulate my feelings, couldn’t fix everything in my cabin, couldn’t stay in the cabin for longer than three months anyway. I didn’t have a home, didn’t have a future that spanned further than tomorrow. Everything I thought my life would be, who I thought I would be, it had all vanished.
I didn’t have a husband. I didn’t have a child. I didn’t have a five-year plan. I didn’t have anything I thought I would at twenty-seven. And some nights, when I was weakest, I didn’t even remember why. Why did I leave? Was I really that unhappy? Every couple has problems, that’s what everyone around me said. Was I just immature, or stupid, throwing away a marriage I should have “fought for?”
But I did fight for it, for years. And years, and years. No matter what I did, or who I was, it was never enough for Keith. It never would have been, not until I’d given him every last piece of myself so he could rebuild me the way he saw fit.