The Generational Implications of Weak Wills
She managed to keep the tears that were welling up inside
her from racing down her cheeks until she heard the car door shut and the roar
of the engine. She fell back
against the door and sank to the floor, wrapping her thin arms around her body
in a cold embrace. Sobs shook her
bony figure as she heard over again the words that had been whispered only
moments before. I love you too, Mom. Her daughter’s voice had cracked as if
it pained her to say those words these days. Her beautiful daughter, broken and bruised, yet trying to
hide it under icy eyes and bright but frigid laughter.
Looking
at Veronica was like seeing herself years earlier, lies and all. She wiped her sticky cheeks with
shaking fingers and closed her eyes, remembering the happy bells of Veronica’s
childhood laughter and seeing her blonde curls bounce as she bounded through
the grass like a little fawn. She
had been thin then with bony knees and features that were too harsh for her
delicate little frame. But with
age, and with the mysteries of cosmetic surgery, that skinny little girl had
grown into a thin but curvy young woman.
She
glanced through the living room and into the kitchen and could almost smell the
homemade pizza she used to cook when her children were young, see their faces
smudged from playing outside and hear their pleas for popsicles to soothe them
from the summer sun. This door
that now supported her fragile weight had seen so many things, shut in so many
secrets. And it was still here for
her to do what she was not strong enough to do, what she had never been strong
enough to do. A hot ball of
poisonous guilt seared itself deeper into her stomach and she imagined it
seeping out of her pores, another clue to the outside world of the horrors that
had taken place in that once-happy house haunted by secrets too terrible to
tell.
A
coo coo bird popped out of the old wooden clock to announce the hour and turned
to make his own retreat behind his little square wooden door. With resolve, she raised
up her body, weary with sadness and laden with shame, shuffling through the
silent house which failed to muffle the echoes of remorse that ping-ponged .
She
needed to finish the wash and mop the dog prints off the floor before he came home.
She half smiled, half grimaced as she remembered her former expectancy
and nervousness for his nightly arrival.
Sometimes the king of this little castle used to come home with cupcakes
and flowers, pleased with everything she had prepared and proud of his
children’s sports and school successes; other times he would crash in, bringing
the tempests of the day to the dinner table and to anyone or anything in his
way.
She paused on her way to the
laundry room and let her fingers caress the smooth rail that led up the stairs
where her children used to sleep.
She closed her eyes and caught her breath as she momentarily imagined
the crumpled body of Veronica lying at the base. The blood that had once stained this wooden banister and
some of the stairs was gone now, trampled in after years of use and now
forgotten—but not to her, and not to Veronica.
She
knew that her daughter had her own stairs now, soaking up blood and soaking up
fears. She knew that Veronica’s
heavy wooden door was also her faithful friend, muffling the arguments and
drowning out the whimpers of a mistreated wife. Her daughter never spoke of such things—Veronica learned
more than great cooking from her mother, Rosaline thought ironically. But she could see it in the tight lines
of her face, in the nervous glances her beautiful eyes cast around the room.
Rosaline
turned from the stairwell and continued to where the swishing of the dryer had
just stopped, shrieking out a dull buzz that brought her back to the
present. And she wondered, as she
took the steamy fresh clothes out in a pile, what would he have done, had he come home one day to no dinner and
to the chores undone. What would
he have done if she had taken her children, and her fears along with her—if she
had left? And she couldn’t help
but wonder, would her daughter have learned that from her too?
7/7/2009
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