Nowhere to Go but On

Locking the door behind her, The Girl steps out onto the driveway, hands sweaty and cold. She shakily climbs into her mother’s car and jams the key into the ignition. The engine sputters to life, though this is almost surprising after such a long period of disuse. The Girl presses her forehead against the steering wheel and feels the weight of everything she must bear pushing her down, making her feel exhausted and heavy. She cries, knowing that she has very little idea of where to go but still must go anyway.

It takes almost fifteen minutes, but vehicle finally pulls away from the empty home and makes for the highway.

~~

Fact number one:

I suppose I should tell you that The Girl’s father is dead. He killed himself a little over eleven months ago.

All you need to know is that he waited for almost two hours for his wife and daughter to leave the house. They went to the store for groceries: vegetables, fruit, milk, eggs, yogurt, ice cream, and kibble (for the dog the family was planning adopting in a few weeks; they were going to name him Leo).

He did it while they were away. Considerate up until the last breath.

Her father’s penultimate thought was that he didn’t know if what he was doing was right. Waiting for the time to be right, he thought, would mean waiting forever. He couldn’t shoulder the heaviness of forever, the apathy and pain of ordinary days, of getting up in the morning. The weight of his depression dragged him down, like trying to swim whilst holding a car above his head. 

He couldn’t hold out forever, standing on the shore, waiting for the tide to turn. How could he wait that long if he couldn’t even get through today?

(What he didn’t know was that now always feels like forever, but never is. You keep going. You keep goddamn going. The time, he could’ve realized, would have never been right.)

That was his penultimate thought, though. His last thought was that he loved his family. There’s not much I can say about that, except that I wish he was still around to tell them. Or rather, tell The Girl.

By the time his wife and daughter returned home - they were only out for an hour - they were seven minutes too late. Without anyone to place it in the freezer, the ice cream melted. The bag of kibble laid pathetically on the floor, sagging in all the empty spots. It would go unopened, forever. A week later, would-be Leo went to another family.

~~

The hotel is a little shabby, but in otherwise decent condition. By now, The Girl has nearly reached the front of the check-in line, and that has been more than enough time for her to feel her heart surging tightly against her chest, pounding, pounding, pounding. With each wild beat, she is reminded of a novel from English class, two years ago – the Bell Jar, by Sylvia Path. “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.” Path had written. “I am, I am, I am.”

The Girl feels like weeping when she wonders how Sylvia Path could have gotten it so terribly wrong. The old brag of her heart, The Girl thought, was not “I am, I am, I am” but rather “still, still, still”. The tick-tock reminder. Still here. Still alive. Still alone.

When she reaches the front of the line, The Girl fights reason with what futile longing she can manage. The chances of her mother being here are so close to impossible, and yet, she cannot help but try. Raising her head slightly, The Girl asks the receptionist if a middle-aged and dark-haired woman has checked in recently. The woman is her mother, she explains. Her name is Marie. She has streaks of grey growing along the part in her hair and does not wear glasses? Please, has she checked in here recently? Please, have you seen her?

Underneath her words are all the questions that go unasked: Where is my mama? Has she left me for my father, who is now a ghost of a man? Why did my father leave us? Why did both of you leave me? Was I not enough for either of you to stay?

~~

Fact number two:

Grief is selfish thing. Feel me, it demands. All I need you to do is to feel me, make room for me. I promise I will do the rest.

In the aftermath of her father’s death, her mother became tired and quiet and ill. There were unanswered questions, but there was only one that mattered: why?

The Girl grieved quietly, angrily. Her mother grieved openly. Sorrow made nests in their hair.

~~

The Girl walks out of the hotel, slumping defeatedly. Of course, she expected this, but still, it hurts. She climbs back into her mother’s car without a word and drives away.

~~

Fact number three:

Death is selfish, too, but a different kind of selfish, more quietly so. It took with it all the hopes and dreams and possibilities but made sure to leave them the wanting.

~~

The highway is long, dark, and slick from rain. The Girl still does not know where she is going, but she keeps her foot on the pedal and her eyes on the road. The car smells like her mother. That is irrelevant. It was her father who taught her how to drive. That, too, is irrelevant.

~~

Fact number four:

The Girl’s mother, Marie, coped with reality by denying it. At first, she was fixated on the idea that her husband acted that day because he despised her, or her daughter, or their life. She was no longer beautiful like she was, ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years ago, she reasoned. Perhaps that was why he left. She was no longer desirable. Or he was unsatisfied with their marriage, or he was seeing someone else, or he had troubles that he did not share because he believed she could not understand. Every day Marie found something new to blame, though she rarely came close to the truth.

After this had become old (it is very hard, after all, to keep finding things to blame when you know you will never get an answer), she slipped into a cocoon of denial, waiting every day for her husband to reappear, as if praying alone was enough for resurrection.

In the end, Marie concluded, sad and bitter, that he had been searching for something, or someone, or someplace better. Their family was not good enough for him. Their daughter was not good enough for him. She was not good enough for him.

Marie called this his search for salvation. What an ugly search.

Of course, her jumbled thoughts didn’t make much sense, but whoever said that grief had room for rationality?

Her daughter cried for days, and soon began to sleep whenever she could. Waking up after a long nap, she realized, gave her a few seconds of temporary cloudiness in her thoughts. This was invaluable. Anything to drown out the pain.

Only a few months from becoming an adult, The Girl cooked for her and her mother, but they didn’t eat much. The food went into Tupperware containers and grew old in the refrigerator.

The Girl felt like an afterthought, expendable in nature, not worth enough for her father to have stayed, and worth little enough for him to leave. In this way, I must say, The Girl and her mother were very much alike.

~~

Four days after leaving home, The Girl parks at a rest station on the highway. She has stopped at three hotels and an old park her family used to go to, years ago, all with no luck. Her mother is seemingly nowhere, hiding in a limbo that The Girl will never find.

Every day, she thinks of her father and her mother. Every memory of her father has been tinged in grey, with The Girl wondering if she should’ve have seen the warning signs. She wonders if she could have stopped him. She tries to remember the last conversation they had; tries to rationalize that perhaps this was all an elaborate scheme. What if she finds her mother? Would her father come back? The imaginary bargains and the what-ifs are always at the forefront of her thoughts.

Strangely, even though her mother did not do what her father did, all The Girl can think of when she thinks of Marie is how her mama left her.

The Girl thinks of how her mother left her when she needed her the most, how her mother left because she loved her deluded thoughts more than her daughter. How she left because her daughter was second in her thoughts; expendable, just like she was to her father. How she left, forcing The Girl to go search for her alone, forcing The Girl to pray every moment that she would find her, because she does not think she can bear losing both parents, and having no one left but herself.

The Girl always cries when she thinks of her mother. Mostly, her tears are angry, but occasionally, like now, they are just sad.

~~

Fact number five:

Ten months after what happened to The Girl’s father (the event she and her mother began referring to simply as “It”), Marie left in the middle of the night. She didn’t even take the car, just left on foot, her daughter’s backpack slung over her shoulder.

The Girl didn’t know any of this until the morning, because her mother didn’t take her. When she woke up and realized Marie was gone, it was the the last straw; she had felt doused in kerosene-like panic for months now, filled up the the brim, and her mother’s disappearance was the spark.

The Girl screamed until her throat was raw and threw a chair against the wall. The leg popped off. She banged it viciously against the plaster until the other three legs were no longer attached to the seat, and threw them to the floor, where they lay limply. She pulled out handfuls of her hair.

The Girl was plagued by memories, haunted by the last few months: her father’s suicide and her mother’s abrupt leave (How dare mama? How dare she go? How dare she go without even saying goodbye?). She suffered from a Pandora’s box of afflictions: anguish, worry, despair, fury.

She was not like Pandora, though. Hope was nowhere to be found.

Her mother left on a search for her father, The Girl would come to believe, whom her mother was convinced had been looking for salvation. One made-up search nestled within a futile one.

~~

Two days, one hotel, and one homeless shelter later, The Girl is still alone, sitting in the car, shivering in a near empty parking lot. Her mother is nowhere to be found. Every minute spent looking, The Girl thinks despairingly, leaning back against the car’s seat, is a minute her mother may be doing something reckless. Every minute that passes is a minute her mother could be in trouble. Every minute that passes is a minute her mother could be dead. Just like her father.

“It” still weighs heavy on her conscience. Her father haunts her. She failed him, The Girl insists to herself, feeling at once both guilty and regretful. She could not save him from himself.

Her mother's disappearance gives her purpose, albeit a temporary and desperate one. She failed her father, but can still save her mother, she reasons to herself, furiously. She can find her mama, and maybe one day she will feel okay.

There is only one place left for her to check. Once again, The Girl presses her foot against the gas pedal and backs out of the parking lot. She drives towards the countryside, determination and dread coursing through her veins.

~~

Fact number six:

After slipping away that night, Marie got a ride from a stranger heading north. She told him it was an emergency: her aunt was ill and that she needed to get there immediately, but her car had a broken starter motor. Her destination was on his way, so he agreed to let her hitchhike. Marie arrived safely, and after assuring the stranger she would be fine on her own, the man pulled away, taillights becoming dimmer and dimmer as the vehicle sped down the road. Night fell fast.

During the hour it took to arrive at her destination, the only thing Marie thought of was her daughter. She made a promise to herself to return home the very next day. Just wait, darling, she had mumbled to herself as she picked her way through the brambles. I will be back for you. I love you. I just need answers, and I need to find them now. I need to do it alone.

Of course, by now, you already know her promise went unfulfilled.

~~

The old family home is more run-down than The Girl remembers. The red brick is still a fairytale cliché, though, and the wooden door still has the shiny brass knocker. If it weren’t for the mosquitoes and overgrown weeds, the house might have felt as it had years ago, rustic and quaint. She remembers playing here as a child, in the sun, sand and dirt pressed against her skin.

~~

Fact number seven:

There is nothing reassuring about the memories. There is nothing kind about the past.

~~

The Girl is not here for the home, though. There is only one key to this summer house, and her mother left it behind. No, The Girl is here for the backyard. Specifically, the small patio-like structure that sits unusually far away from the house.

Prior to “It”, her mother loved to tell the story of the house: Before The Girl was born, the house had belonged to her father’s family; their summer getaway. On their second date, he had taken Marie there, out to the patio, for their first kiss. His hands had trembled nervously. His lips were chapped. Her mother didn’t care. As the story progressed, The Girl’s mother would always feign a swoon when she described how, four years later, he got down on one knee for her in front of a sun-streaked sky, the paved stone ground speckled and warm. She said yes, of course. The gardenias were in full bloom. The irises had started to die.

Now, The Girl has traced her mother’s past, and gone back to the place where everything had begun – the place where her father fell in love with her mother, the home where she was conceived two years after their marriage. She walks towards the patio, terrified of what she might find. The sunny past of the home feels fake, like it never happened; a dream, or maybe a ghost.

When The Girl reaches the spot, cobblestone under her feet and the smell of weeds and flowers in the air, she finds only one thing. It is not her mother, but rather, proof that her mother was here. A piece of paper pinned under the leg of a wicker chair, folded in quarters. The Girl feels her throat constrict as she pulls out the note. There are only three words written neatly in pen, and she reads them, over and over and over again. The Girl feels relief, then dread, then deep searing pain, as realizes she is too late. She was late before she even left.

~~

Fact number eight:

I suppose I should tell you that The Girl’s mother is dead. She killed herself a little over two weeks ago.

There is a ravine, only about a mile from their summer home. Halfhearted wire and a rotting fence were strung around the perimeter, but to Marie, these only looked like suggestions. She didn’t go there intending to fall, but she did anyway, because she needed answers: Where is salvation? Where does she find it? How can she get her husband back? Is this the only way?

The Girl was wrong, by the way. Marie loved her daughter so very much. She knew her daughter needed a father. She wanted her daughter to be happy. All her worries made Marie terrifyingly afraid.

This was not it, though. I can tell you that she was also certifiably insane; the malady in her brain that had arisen from months of sorrow nesting in her hair. It struck hard and fast. She acted before she knew what she had done.

~~

The Girl cries, and the world spins so fast she feels as if she will vomit. She doesn’t know exactly what happened, but the message is clear enough; The Girl knows her mother is gone and will never be coming back.

After all that has happened, “I love you” on a note is no longer an affirmation, but a goodbye.

~~

Fact number nine:

The Girl will spend the rest of her life searching for closure. She won’t find it, at least not completely.

No matter what road she takes, she will see the faces of her mother and father everywhere she goes; all roads will lead back to them, to her memories before her mother’s disappearance, to a time before “It”. For years, The Girl will swallow grief like a pill every morning for breakfast and choke down guilt during dinner. They always taste the same, bitter and acrid and familiar. She will go to therapy, adopt a golden retriever and name her Mallory, the furthest thing from "Leo" that she can think of, and eventually become an elementary school teacher. These things will help, but the pain will always be there, sometimes shy and fuzzy and sometimes all-consuming, buried in her heart like shrapnel. It will follow her around, knowing that the deaths of a ghost like her father and crazed frenzy like her mother are a part of the blood flowing in her veins; an unshakable past that will never set her free.