Never Coming Back(82)

“I wish I had told her how much I missed her when she made me go so far away,” I said.

“You can still tell her.”

I could hear Sylvia’s voice telling me the same thing. That there was power in the voice. That hearing remained when the other senses had faded.

“I wish I had told her a long time ago.”

“There are things I wish I’d told my mother,” Annabelle said. “And things Tamar wishes she’d said to hers.”

“How did my mother do, after I was gone?”

Annabelle shrugged. “You know your mother.”

What that meant was that she had toughed it out, the way she toughed out everything that came her way. My heart quickened and the look on Annabelle’s face softened.

“For what it’s worth, I think she knew how much you missed her.”

“You do?”

“You know how she always called you on Thursdays?” I nodded. “She used to be relieved when you’d get annoyed at that whole phone shtick she used to do. She took that as a good sign. ‘She’s making her own way in the world,’ she used to say. ‘That’s good.’”

Orion, the archer, and Cassiopeia were visible now. The Big Dipper, its arm obscured by the red pine. Constellations of the Northern Sky for $800, please. Annabelle Lee and my mother and I were all three of us northerners, all three of us familiar with the northern sky.

“She woke me up once when I was four years old,” I said, “and she brought me downstairs and onto the porch so I could see the northern lights.”

“Did she?”

“She did.”

“And? Were they beautiful?”

Yes. They were beautiful, in a strange and unearthly way.





* * *





The next time I went to visit Tamar I signed her copy of The Old Man.

To Tamar Winter, with admiration and love.

My full name I wrote out in careful script, the way a name deserved to be written. No slashes or curls or undulating waves standing in for multiple letters, the lazy way out. The forces of evil had to be fought with all the means at our disposal, and if you were a word girl, then names were distilled words and had to be treated with respect.

On the windowsill, the hammered-metal bookends that she called the iron claw held the one book that still mattered to her: Jonathan Livingston Seagull. All her other books were stacked beneath the window, the worn hardcover edges of each perpendicular to the one above and below. A pile of book-logs to see her through the winter. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was the only book in the whole room that hadn’t belonged to me first. It was the only book I ever saw my mother read, and she read it over and over, until the edges of her small blue paperback copy were worn nearly off.

“Ma! Why are you so obsessed with that stupid anthropomorphized-seagull book?”

Me as a high-schooler, badgering her. Embarrassed that she had chosen Jonathan Livingston Seagull, of all books. Anthropomorphized was one of my favorite new words and I used it frequently back then. I asked again—“What’s with you and that seagull?”—but she remained silent. So I stole the book from her nightstand one Wednesday night, when she was at choir practice, and I read it myself to see what the fuss was about. At first I was looking for a hint—a friendship, a romance, a mystery, something funny, something sad, something, anything—to see what kept her so riveted.

Now I thought, You were looking for her. You were trying to figure out your mother.

All I knew back then was that the book made no sense. It was about a seagull who could travel anywhere he wanted, at any time he wanted, by the sheer force of his mind. A seagull who believed that if he just thought hard enough and long enough, if he focused all his powers, he would transform.

I read it all that one Wednesday night, and then again the next Wednesday night, and a final time a week later. Searching for a clue. A trail of bread crumbs to follow.

Now I thought, She was looking for a way out.

She wouldn’t have expressed it like that. She would not have wanted me to think she longed for a way out of her life. She wouldn’t have wanted me to feel bad, as if I were holding her back. And I didn’t. I didn’t question my mother’s life. The life she was living must be the life she wanted to live, was what I assumed. Back then I didn’t think anything could stop a person from living any life he or she wanted. It was up to the individual, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it up to you and the power of your mind to focus your thoughts and make your life unfold the way you wanted?

Now I thought, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a beautiful, heartbreaking book.

Now I thought, What this book says is that there is a way out if only you work hard enough.

Now I thought, My mother worked so, so hard.





* * *





It was the day before the procedure and I got up early. One more day. Twenty-four hours. I placed the folder that held my will—all my money to the care of my mother, and all my earthly possessions to Sunshine and Brown, and my silver earring to Chris, and The Velveteen Rabbit to Eli Chamberlain—on the first rung of the ladder that led to the sleeping loft and my bed of books, and then I turned the key in the lock.

One last hike. Bald Mountain. The fallen leaves were coated with frost that looked like dried salt. Half an hour on the trail and the feeling began to spread inside me, the same feeling that hiking always brought to my body, a flickering sensation that grew until it was me and I was it.