The Marsh King's Daughter(78)

I nod. It’s hard to know where to begin. I think about what it was like for my mother when I was growing up. About all of the things she did for me that I didn’t appreciate at the time. Trying to make my fifth birthday special. Warming me after my father put me in the well. How hard it must have been for her to nurture a child who was an echo of the man who kidnapped her. A child she genuinely and viscerally feared.

I could tell my daughters about the day I shot my first deer, or the time my father took me to see the falls, or the time I saw the wolf, but those stories are more about my father than my mother. And as I look at my daughters’ innocent, expectant faces, I realize that every story from my childhood that I might possibly tell them also has a dark side.

Stephen nods encouragingly.

“When I was five,” I begin, “my mother made me a cake. Somewhere in the stacks of cans and bags of rice and flour in the storage room she found a boxed cake mix. Chocolate with rainbow sprinkles.”

“My favorite!” Iris exclaims.

“Fav-it,” Mari echoes.

I tell them about the duck egg, and the bear grease, and the doll my mother made for me as a present, and end the story there. I don’t tell them what I did with the doll. How my callous reaction to my mother’s extraordinary gift must have pierced her heart.

“Tell them the rest of the story,” Cousteau says. “About the knife, and about the rabbit.” He and his sister are sitting quietly behind my daughters. Since my father died, they’ve been appearing more and more often.

I shake my head and smile as I remember the rest of that day, and how it ended with the first time my father acknowledged me with “manajiwin.” Respect.

Iris grins back. She thinks I’m smiling at her.

“More!” she and Mari exclaim.

I shake my head and get to my feet. One day I’ll tell my daughters everything about my childhood, but not today.

We gather up our blankets and start for the car. Mari and Iris dart ahead. Stephen runs after. Since my father’s escape, he rarely lets the girls out of his sight.

I hang back. Cousteau and Calypso walk beside me. Calypso takes my hand.

“Helga understood all now,” she whispers, her breath as soft as cattail fluff against my ear. “She was lifted up above the Earth through a sea of sound and thought, and around and within her was light and song such as words cannot express. The sun burst forth in all its glory, and, as in olden times, the form of the frog vanished in his beams and the beautiful maiden stood forth in all her loveliness. The frog body crumbled into dust, and a faded lotus flower lay on the spot on which Helga had stood.”

The final words from my mother’s fairy tale. I think about how the tale told me what I needed to do. How my mother’s story ultimately saved us both. How my father may be the reason I exist, but my mother is the reason I’m alive.

I think about my father. When the medical examiner asked what I wanted done with my father’s body, my first thought was to ask myself what he would have wanted. Then I thought about how his entire life was governed by his wishes and desires alone, and thought maybe I’d do the opposite. In the end, I picked the most practical and the least expensive. I’m not saying more than that. There’s a fansite devoted to my father’s exploits that sprang up not long after he died. I can imagine what the “Marshies” would do if they knew where my father was buried. I’ve tried several times to get the website taken down, but the FBI says as long as my father’s fans don’t break any laws, there’s nothing they can do.

Stephen corrals the girls and waits for me to catch up.

“Thanks for doing this,” he says, and takes my hand. “I know this is hard for you.”

“I’m okay,” I lie.

I think about how the marriage counselor also says a good marriage needs to be built on a foundation of honesty and trust. I’m working on it.

We crest the top of a small hill. At the bottom, a car is parked directly in front of our Cherokee. A news van is pulled up tight behind. A reporter and a cameraman wait beside them.

Stephen looks at me and sighs. I shrug. Since word got out that The Marsh King’s daughter killed her father, the media has been relentless. We haven’t given a single interview and have trained the girls not to say a word to anyone with a notepad or a microphone, but that doesn’t stop people from taking pictures.

I shake my head as we start down the hill and the reporter pulls a pen from her pocket and takes a step toward me. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve already written everything I can remember from my childhood in a journal I keep hidden beneath Stephen’s and my bed. I call my story “The Cabin,” and dedicated the journal to my daughters on the first page, like a real book. One day I’ll let them read it. They need to know their history. Where they come from. Who they are. One day I’ll let Stephen read it, too.

I could sell the journal for a lot of money. People and the National Enquirer and the New York Times have offered to buy my story many times. Everyone says that since my parents are dead and I am the only one left who knows what happened, I owe it to my mother and father to tell their story.

But I will never sell. Because this isn’t their story. It’s ours.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


A novelist gets an idea. The idea grows into a story, and eventually, the story becomes a book—thanks to the help of the following creative, talented, incredibly insightful, and amazingly hardworking people: