A Painful Awakening

I'd always prided myself on my ability to remain calm, to assess situations, to look for solutions instead of letting things get to me. I can’t remember the last time I cried in public, the last time I raised my voice in response to an event or the words uttered by someone I classified as a fool.

When my ex-husband said I was “robotic,” and it was driving him crazy, I was sad but accepting. And so, after five years of what I thought was a nice marriage, we divorced when he said it was either couples counseling or giving up. I thought about it for a couple of days, then said, “Let’s file for a no fault, okay.”

Hed sighed and said, “I’m sorry but I can’t take it Lil, I need more. More responsiveness… more...passion, more …I don’t know…”

I'd said, sadly, “I don’t know why I haven’t got in me, I just don’t know, and maybe worse, I don’t think I want to know.”

A few months later, it was done. I found a nice apartment nearer to my job and moved in, furnished it in black and white, and added some touches of purple, a vase here and there, a couple of ebony bookcases in the living room, and sconces for lighting. The extra small bedroom housed two tall lamps to provide enough light for my computer station, files, and a desk to edit on. My bedroom with its queen sized bed was gray and white, with a TV stand, a large soft half sofa in dark gray with lovely white throw pillows. The furniture was mahogany.

I loved the calm environment I created.

For the next few years, life remained peaceful. I received a number of promotions at work, mostly due to my extraordinary productivity. It was easy to work at home in the evening given there was no turmoil to deal with. I edited and commissioned more books than expected, focused on subjects that were noncontroversial, such as scientific treatises, historical tomes such as discoveries from the ruins of Pompeii, biographical studies. Books that sold moderately well and enhanced the backlist and got solid reviews. These were the bedrock on which the company could stand when offering tales of political scandals, movie stars’ unbelievable deeds, murder and mayhem uncovered.

Then, one early afternoon on a Saturday, sitting quietly in my living room, reading and sipping a lovely cup of chamomile, my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID in surprise and saw the name R. Mounny. It bothered me, hinted at something, so I picked it up only to hear, “Lil, it’s me, Rashida, from that summer in the Catskills. I’m in town and thought we could get together. Are you free?”

Suddenly, I felt faint. Memories came roaring back. I hung up without replying. Memories I didn’t want but couldn’t stop.

I had few friends, but as an only child, I’d never needed company. I could always amuse myself. Then, the summer I was sixteen, my parents had decided we should go on a family vacation, a first real vacation for us, before I headed off to Wellesley College in the fall.

And so we left our tiny apartment in Queens, and headed to the Catskills, to a small hotel in Sullivan County. It was there I met a group of fascinating college kids, the workers at the hotel. Not a guest there was my age. It was young families with young children and older people, much older. My parents were part of that group, for they were old when they had me—my dad fifty-two, my mom ten years younger.

I’d never met people like these twenty-year-olds before, but they drew me into their world, a world of smoking weed, drinking, and loose sex. I was fascinated, and since I told them I was going to Wellesley in the fall, they assumed I was older than I was. I was told that in the evenings after the dining room was set up for the next day, they partied. To my delight they said to join them.

I did, telling my parents I would rather read than go to the hotel’s recreation room to watch second rate singers and trying to get experience comics, or watch people dance the Fox Trot. They said they understood. After all, I been given a reading list at orientation with the suggestion it would make things easier once the fall semester began.

However, with evenings free, I wanted to try my hand at being a college girl.

And try I did—everything from drinking rum and cokes, smoking whatever was given to me, and after a few days of this new life, I fell in love with Dave, a future doctor.

We were all a little wild I suppose. An African-American, girl, Rashida, decided I needed different clothes—tie-dyed tees, shorter skirts, and she loaned me some of her handmade wardrobe every evening. I felt free, free of the constraints of my ambition, my need to do what family expected, free of my role as “a good girl.”

Oh god, I thought as I began to remember those two weeks. I couldn’t understand what demons had taken me over. In that mirror of the past, I didn’t recognize myself, dressed as I had never dressed, made up Goth style. I was a new me. How had I forgotten all of this?

The nightmare of the end of those weeks came roaring back, and I must have fainted.   Awakened by the pounding on my door, I stumbled over to it in my foggy state, and there was Rashida. 

She entered the room, grabbing me as I began to shake and maneuvered me to the sofa and sat down with me, pulling me close. She murmured soft sounds, and we sat there for what she later told me was almost an hour.

“Lil, what is wrong? Did my call upset you?”

“How, why, did you find me?” I managed to get out.                

“We all lost touch after the fire, but I have written a book and reached out to a friend in New York to ask her where I could go to see if any publisher would be interested. When I described the book, she suggested a university press and gave me the names of some editors,” then she paused and added, “It’s just possible that Lillian King, over at Simon and Schuster might take a look. I think, no wait a minute, I think she went back to Kirsch, her maiden name after her divorce. I’ve seen her at a number of book Expos, but don’t really know her.”

“I said I might know you,” and she muttered something about you never come to parties even though you’re quite attractive, and searched some cards and gave me yours. So I took a chance and called.

“And Lil, why is this place so, well, bland. It’s like a hotel room. Where is that little adventurist, I met that summer?”

Upset enough at the horrible memories trying to claw their way back, I put on my business armor and asked her about her book.

She stared at me for a moment, then said, “You need a break, so, well, it’s a study of young African-American women who have left the marriage market. I was shocked by meeting so many where I teach, oh at Howard, telling me what their career hopes were, but laughing when I asked how those choices would affect their home lives.

One after another told me that they didn’t expect a “home life,” that they knew they’d never marry. Since I had never married and had never thought about it, I grew intrigued and stared looking into it.”

“Now,” she said, drawing a deep breath, “tell me why you got so upset seeing me. You literally went to pieces…”

I finally found my voice and whispered, “Memories. I’d forgotten the fire.”

“You’d forgotten the fire, the place was closed down that morning. The staff was given money to get home and left in a rush. I don’t understand,” Lil.

“Neither do I…Until I heard your voice…it was no place in my memories…now, oh my god, I want to erase…”

“No, Lil, it’s too late for that. You need to see someone, I know a couple of good people here in the city.”

“I killed my parents, Lil. I remember that now.”

“What are you talking about. You didn’t start that fire. It was the laundry room, those dryers filled with lint. That’s what the fire marshal’s report said.”

“No. It was me. My parents had run into the hallway to our rooms, looking for me, I was there on the floor in the hall, but they ran by me. Mom moving past me saying that the girl on the floor wasn’t me because those weren’t my clothes. Then a fireman saw me and pulled me out. But they’d gone on toward our rooms, and the ceiling collapsed on them. The firemen reached them too late. They were dead. Lil. Dead.”

Lil said quietly, “You managed to forget that?”

Somewhere inside me that memory vanished. All I knew was they’d died and my father’s brother brought me home and urged me to get ready to leave for Wellesley. He said I had to honor their wishes for me to go there, and while their life insurance wasn’t a lot, with the scholarship, I’d be fine. At his urging I took a few things from the apartment, mostly books, my clothes…. See, I can’t even remember what I took or what happened to them.

“What do you remember from those years, first months?”

“Oh Rashida, I don’t remember much. I studied. I stayed in my room or the library most of the time. As the first year was ending, I knew I didn’t want to go anywhere—there really was no place to go. My uncle never called, and he was the only relative my parents ever saw or talked about at all. I knew the apartment had been closed because my last letter from my uncle had a small check from selling what was left in the place.”

“What did you do?”

“I went to see the dean of students, and she said one of the professors was looking for someone to stay in his house to keep an eye on his mother who was suffering from dementia. She didn’t need a lot of care, but tended to wander off.” 

I asked her to tell me more and she explained that I’d have to move in and be there night and day. He and his wife would be gone for two months. Then she added that he had an opportunity to teach some summer classes in France, and that they were in desperate need for time to enjoy themselves. She finished, “He’s only offering a thousand dollars, but it does mean room and board. No one has been interested. It doesn’t sound much like a great summer.”

I said that it sounded fine, went for an interview, and my summer was set.

“Then…,” Rashida asked.

“Life went on. I found other summer jobs, saved every cent I could, and when I graduated, moved to New York and quickly found a low-level job in publishing. I did well, I met a promising a young author from the Midwest and we hit it off. We married, divorced, and here I am.”

“What are you going to do about the memories, Lil.”

“Nothing. Tuck them away, I suppose.”

“No. That won’t happen. You have to deal with them,” Lil, “Trust me they will keep coming back, haunting you, disrupting your life.”

“Maybe. But now I’m so angry?

“At me, Lil?”

“No at me, the killer. The pathetic creature who managed to forget who she really was.  Please leave, Rashida.”

“No, I can’t."

“Call me tomorrow. I really need to sleep now. I’m totally exhausted.”

She hesitated, so I said, “How about calling me at ten. We can have brunch.” That seemed to reassure her, and she finally left.

I knew what I had to do. I’d always managed to ignore people who were angry with me. But I couldn’t ignore my own anger. I opened the window, sat on the sill, and leaning back, said, “Goodbye.”