Transcendence

I died when I was twelve.

That’s when life as I knew it crumbled into a pile of rubble with unsuspecting souls trapped beneath. The joy and love that once filled my heart was sucked from me as indiscriminately as a Shop-Vac inhales every speck of matter in its path.

Up until the event that would mar my soul forever, life was grand in the sage-green mansion on the corner of Little-Known Traffic and Gentle Waves. Our house, with its white trim, angled roofs, and arched windows, was well-known in these parts. I was born on the third floor of that iconic home in a sleepy little town off The Sound. The house belonged to my grandparents; they’d had it built shortly before my mother came into the world. Mom was quite young when she had me—too young was what the townsfolk had to say about it, not that it was any of their business, but she had a gentle soul, and I couldn’t have asked for a more loving mother.

Some of my fondest memories—and the only ones I dare cling to—are when Mom put me to bed at night. She’d open my bedroom windows so we could hear the waves of Puget Sound as she softly sang me to sleep. My favorite was “Que Será Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be). Together we’d dream of the life she wanted for me as the ocean air cleared our minds and calmed our breathing. I’d eventually fall asleep in her arms as her beating heart gently delivered me into peaceful slumber.

Growing up on The Sound was magical in the early years of my life. In addition to our bedtime routine, these are the only other memories I have allowed myself to hold onto throughout the rest of my physical existence on this Earth. Even at a young age I was a dreamer fueled by the ocean breezes, lapping waves, calls of the gulls, and the sailboats that dotted the sparkling horizon beyond the rocky shoreline. Sometimes I’d sit on the bluffs for hours searching for orcas, watching boats glide effortlessly across the blue-green (sometimes reddish-orange when algae was in bloom) water and imagine myself navigating the seas with dolphin pods leading the way. I really couldn’t see myself earning a living on land in those early days of yearning and discovering the passions of my heart. I felt complete freedom when I was by the waterside. No chores. No schoolwork. No worries. Visions of living on a sailboat, traveling around coastal America with pen, paper, and camera in hand when I grew up occupied my creative mind so intensely that I could see it when I closed my eyes.

It never dawned on me that my life would take any other path than the one I’d firmly planted in my brain.

But life doesn’t always go as planned, does it?

When I was twelve, Grandma and Grandpa died. They died together but no one would tell me why or how. Not even Mom.

As hard as I’ve tried not to, I remember the day they passed. I was riding my bike in town, enjoying the cloudless sapphire skies and refreshing cool breeze. The only goal in mind was to be home by eleven o’clock to help Mom make lunch. As I headed for the house, the town clock rudely reminded me I had only three minutes left until I was expected at home, so I put the pedal to the metal, as they say, and boogied on home.

When I entered the kitchen huffing and puffing in an effort to catch my breath with each step, Mom was sitting at the table slumped over, holding her head with her hands and sobbing violently. I’d never seen her in this state and wasn’t sure what to do.

“Mom! Mom! What’s happened? What’s wrong? Mom? Mom!” I tried to give her a hug, but she swept me away with one mighty thrust of her right arm.

It took her a few minutes to pull herself together. Then, barely able to speak and red-faced, she said, “Mom and Dad are dead! Your grandparents are dead, Toddy!”

No sooner had she uttered the words, then a team of men in white coveralls, gloves, and helmets burst through the front door, swooped into the living room, stomped up the stairs, and returned lugging a couple of rolling cots with huge lumpy bags on them.

They disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

There never was a funeral.

***

Mom inherited the big sage-green house on the corner of Little-Known Traffic and Gentle Waves when my grandparents passed away, and life became almost a nightmare for me. The daydreams of my innocent self were squelched by a grieving woman’s desperate actions, selfish decisions, and disregard for me, her only child.

Then came the lies. But are they really lies if they’re withheld but never spoken? I’ll let you be the judge. Perhaps you can help me come to terms with this conundrum. There would prove to be many more perplexities rattling around inside my head over the coming years.

It was tough living with Mom after Grandma and Grandpa died. She was no longer a loving, soothing presence for me. She barely even spoke outside of giving me a list of chores to do. And she never answered my questions.

The one she avoided consistently was, “Who’s my dad?” I’ve never known him, nor do I know his name. From what I’ve heard, no one knows who my dad is except Mom.

But I’m not so sure about that.

Grandpa owned Baird Drug and Hardware in town, which explains how he was able to afford this huge house. That said, even at my young age, it was a mystery to me that my grandparents would leave the house, which was free and clear of debt, to Mom but not the store. How was she supposed to make money to pay the bills and put food on the table? Mom never worked while she was raising me. She didn’t have to as long as we lived with Grandpa and Grandma.

Turns out Mr. McGillicudy, who was Grandpa’s right-hand man took over the hardware store when Gramps died.

Weird, huh?

As baffling as the situation seemed to me, I wouldn’t delve into that mystery until years later. Not that I didn’t want to, trust me.

But…

At that point in time I needed to be by Mom’s side and help her through all of this as best as a young man who isn’t yet old enough to earn a living can.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was trying to figure out how the two of us were going to make it alone in this big house. It seems Mom was developing a plan of her own. She didn’t have any marketable workforce skills, but she could cook and clean, was friendly, a good listener, and genuinely loved people, so she devised a plan to turn the two lower floors of the residence into a bed and breakfast. She and I had the entire third floor, which was spacious and comfortable, so losing the use of the rest of the house wouldn’t affect our lifestyle in the least. Opening this charming seaside home to paying visitors made perfect sense.

Mom named the B & B Lacy’s Bed and Breakfast because Lacy is her name. It did really well for a while. For the first four or five years we were booked solid enough to earn an income, but not so overwhelmingly as to wear us out.

Then things got weird. Most of our guests were men—military men, not couples. What had changed? And why?

I noticed Mom paying more attention to this new breed of guests than in the past. Truth be told, it disturbed me quite a bit.

As time went on, she began serving less food and more booze. Booze was never allowed in our house when my grandparents were alive and I didn’t understand why it was offered—and generously, I might add—now.

One night when I couldn’t sleep, I ventured downstairs and found my mom sitting on a soldier’s lap. They were laughing, drinking, smoking (another no-no in our previous life!), and Mom was all over him!

I retreated soundlessly to my room and stayed there until the sun came up. I didn’t want to walk in on another scene like the one I’d just stumbled upon.

I would later learn many truths I’d rather have not known.

Shortly after witnessing my mom’s deplorable behavior with the soldier, which shook me to the core, Mom ended up dead.

I’d gone looking for her to help me clean up the debauchery that had become the lower two floors and couldn’t find her. After searching everywhere, I eventually found Mom in her bathtub lying in a watery pool of blood.

I don’t remember much after that.

***

It’s now ten years later and I’m using my inquisitive brain to research the answers to all the vagaries in my life.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Mr. McGillicudy, Grandpa’s right-hand man, raped my mother when she was fourteen. He was thirty-five. The circumstances leading up to the assault are a bit cryptic. All I know is the incident was documented but a police report was never filed.

Grandpa gave McGillicudy a job in order to shut him up and subsequently left the store to him as a way to keep the creep out of our (my) life. So now I know who fathered me. I can’t call him my father because if he can defile a fourteen-year- old, he certainly isn’t capable of being a loving father, let alone a role model. This is one of the aforementioned truths I wish I had never learned.

Mr. McGillicudy (I’ve grown to refer to him as “McGillicruddy in my mind) poisoned my grandparents with drugs he stole from Baird Drug and Hardware.

Mom was in on the poisoning. I found a letter from her to McGillicuddy wherein she plotted the deed in explicit detail. But why? Why would my mother plot to have her own parents killed? Did she want the house that badly? Couldn’t she have waited until they passed naturally? Was my mother that greedy? That evil?

Grandpa’s right-hand man (and successor of the store) became enraged when he discovered Mom was running a brothel under the guise of a B & B (Was he secretly in love with her? Had they been carrying on a clandestine relationship since the rape?) and slashed her throat while she was taking a bath. I know this because his dead body was discovered in the store a day later with a suicide note admitting to all the crimes I’d recently discovered.

***

One of the first decisions I made as an adult was to have the sage-green mansion demolished, rather than sell it and its many ghosts to an unsuspecting family. But I also did it for selfish reasons. I wanted to take a bulldozer to the crushing memories that I desperately needed to flush from my mind so I could pick up where I left off when I was a daydreaming twelve-year-old and become the person I’ve always wanted to be.

And I did just that: I bought a sailboat with the inheritance Mom left me and took up writing. I’m now free to roam and can earn a living wherever the winds take me.

Although the ugly memories have not been completely expunged from my mind, I’m taking the advice often given to writers and putting my thoughts down on paper in hopes that in so doing my soul will be cleansed and the secrets of my life will no longer be buried within my psyche.

So, Dear Reader, I present to you The Memoirs of Todd Baird.

Thank you for reading and allowing me to take a wrecking ball to the sins of my ancestors. I can now close the book on their—and my—horrendous secrets.

The End