Blueberry Hill: a Sister's Story(15)

Coming Home




It is after nine o’clock when I pull into the garage, and I am weary to the bone. It is not the weariness of work but the weight of worry pressing down on me. As I turn into the drive I see the lights of our house aglow, and it warms my heart. The sight of it welcomes me home.

When Dick hears the garage door rumble up, he comes down the kitchen stairs to meet me. I have been gone nine days and he has had to shoulder the workload of running our ad agency alone, but he hasn’t complained. He knows how painful this trip was and asks nothing of me. He steps aside and makes room for my sorrow. When I am ready to cry, his will be the shoulder I lean on. He is not only my husband, he is my greatest confidante.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he says. “How was the trip?” He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me close.

“It was long,” I say with a sigh. “I’m so tired.”

This is painfully true. With Donna unable to speak, I forced myself to fill the voids with conversation. My mind never stopped. I reached out and grabbed bits of news, recalled memories of yesterdays, and laughed about long-forgotten friendships. The only thing I didn’t speak of was her silence.

“Have you eaten dinner?” he asks.

“No, but I’m not hungry,” I answer. The words are no sooner out of my mouth when I see the smile fade from his face. There is a foil-covered plate sitting on the back of the stove. He has dinner waiting for me.

Although I’ve given no thought to food, I feel warmed by his thoughtfulness.

“First I need a hot bath,” I say. “After that I’ll grab something to eat.” I pretend not to notice the plate.

Dick’s smile brightens again. “After that long drive, I thought you might be hungry. I baked a chicken breast and sweet potato. When you’re out of the tub I’ll heat it up.”

“Oh, honey, how sweet.” I kiss his cheek and head for the bathroom.

When the tub is filled with steaming water, I add two handfuls of jasmine bath crystals and pull my hair up in a rubber band twist. It looks more like a Brillo pad than a ponytail.

A bath is therapeutic. I take a shower to get clean; I take a bath to be rejuvenated. When the tub is full I step into it. The water is so hot it takes several minutes to ease myself into the froth of bubbles, and as I do my skin turns a rosy pink. For the first time in nine days I feel the muscles in my shoulders relax, so I lean back and let my head rest against the plastic pillow. Already I feel better on the outside, but the thoughts inside my head are still with me.

Worry makes my brain work overtime. When I’m at peace, thoughts fly in and out of my head like dandelion puffs carried off on a breeze. But troublesome thoughts take root and refuse to move on. They stay and pick at me with constant reminders of what I’m trying to forget.

I try to clear my mind by recalling the warmth of a summer day. I think of the lilac trees in the side yard and remember how fragrantly they will blossom in a few short months. For some odd reason the song “Blueberry Hill” comes to mind, and I hum a few bars of it. I haven’t heard the song for ages, so why now? My thoughts slowly drift back to long-ago days. Days when Donna and I were both so young, still in school and still unsuspecting of the life ahead of us.

“Blueberry Hill” was her favorite song, and she could dance to it like no one else could. I picture her tight jeans wriggling across the gym dance floor to the bump-and-grind sound of Fats Domino and start to relive a night that is now a lifetime ago.

~

“Wouldn’t you love to go there?” Donna says.

“Go where?” I answer.

“Blueberry Hill.”

Realist that I am, I chuckle. “Blueberry Hill isn’t a real place. It’s just a title somebody made up for this song.”

Donna shrugs. “Believe what you want, but I know it’s real.”

~

These are good memories. I try to hang on to them, wriggling my toes beneath the mound of bubbles and stretching my mind to recall what my favorite song had been. There is nothing. That memory is gone, and now I can recall only the chugging sound of her suctioning machine.



A gentle rap on the door shakes me from my reverie.

Dick calls out, “Honey, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I answer, even though I am far from fine. I’m here and I want to be here, I need to be here. But I’m angry with myself, because I can’t be in two places at once. I vacillate between great sympathy for what Donna is going through and a swell of anger that reminds me of how she ignored all the warning signs and allowed this to happen. Still, I say “I’m fine,” because that’s what you do. When someone asks how you are, you say fine, regardless of whether it’s true.

Dick says, “You’ve been in there an hour.”

“I’m unwinding,” I answer. “I’ll be out soon.”

“Okay,” he says. “As long as you’re all right.”

The sound of his footsteps tells me he is returning to the basketball game, and in a strange way I am glad to be left alone with my misery. Misery is not something to be shared. Just as Donna refused to share it with Don, I withhold it from Dick. Perhaps I do this because I know the sad truth is no matter how much I am loved, my husband can do nothing about the horror of this situation.