Cocoon (19 page)

Tonight, she realized she would love to do that. Seize the moment. Thing was she didn't know how to anymore. Scott didn't know it, but he was stepping into a vacancy she'd felt for years. He'd grown increasingly comfortable in her company, to the point that he'd performed on her some doggone intimate tasks with aplomb and innocuous warmth. He brought with him strength and joy and that inexpressibly male joviality to her home.

It was something she could not duplicate.

She yawned mightily as slumber lapped and tugged at her.

The last thought she had was of Scott dipping to kiss her cheek.

• • •

Seana's plunge seemed ongoing in her crazy world. The “inside herself” was now endless. Today when the doorbell rang while she was alone, the noise clanged in her eardrums, seeming to bounce against out-of-tune cymbals, then vibrate through her every pore.

She rolled over on the sofa and tugged the blanket over and around her head, trying to snuff out the racket. But whoever it was persisted until she tossed off the cover and stomped to the door, not even pausing to put on a robe.

She flung open the front door, fury furrowing her brow and flaring her nostrils.

“Mama.” Zoe strode past her, sizzling with her own brand of rage. “If you're going to barricade the house, at least have the decency to answer the doorbell without an Act of Congress.”

She spun and glared at her mother. “Holy Toledo. You look awful. Why does your hair look like a haystack? I know Joanie sends you out of her place with every hair in place. Do you style it with an egg beater? And that gown could fit a sumo wrestler!”

Seana brushed past her and slid onto the sofa, turning her back, and swaddling herself into the blanket like an infant. Why couldn't she go away? Didn't she know how intrusive she was being?

Zoe stomped her way over and leaned over her. “That's right, mommie dearest, run away. That's all you do anymore.”

“Go away.”

• • •

“What?” Zoe's voice rose to pitch level when she heard the muffled words filter through the blanket cocooning her mother.

Zoe knew she was being cruel but she couldn't find her mouth's shutoff valve. The words kept gushing out of their own volition, like a blasted sewer spill. On one level she felt horrible and vile.

On another, she felt the euphoria of release.

The events of recent months raced through her mind like a crop duster jet spewing venom. “What's happened to you, Mama?” Her voice broke and she collapsed into the easy chair facing her mother's cocoon.

Cocoon. That's what it was. And she'd better get used to it because it seemed that's where Seana would eternally hibernate.

The anger began to fizzle and slowly morphed into pain.

“Mama? Can you really not help it?” Her voice came out wispy as she melted against the soft leather, flaccid as overdone pasta. “Are you that far inside yourself? Can you not be reached anymore?”

Zoe shrugged limply. “I guess not. So I'll just talk to you like you're here. At least it'll make me feel better.” She propped her feet on the leather ottoman.

“You see, Mama. I miss you.” Her voice broke again, but she reined in her emotions, determined to have a good mother/daughter talk even if it was one-sided.

“And guess what? I'm attracted to Scott. Yeh.” A dry laugh burst from her as she rolled her eyes. “Who woulda ever thunk it?”

She stared at her mother's back, desperation rising.
Maybe, just maybe, she comprehends what I'm saying
.

Melancholy viciously stabbed her.

Maybe not
.

Something primal floundered in Zoe's bosom. Something strong and invincibly
her.

I'll pretend she does anyway, dadjimmit
.

“Now don't get all romantic on me, Mama. I know you. It's not love.” She huffed another dry laugh. “I'm not that stupid. You saw all the man-crap in my life, so you know. I just can't hold on to –”

The dam burst. Zoe dissolved into tears and then sobs so great they drew her into a knot, knees to chest as she rocked back and forth like a toddler. She heaved and gulped in air and wailed like a little child lost in a black forest at midnight.

When she finally ran out of breath and strength, she lay back like a dead thing, melded to the chair like something laid out to dry. Only she was already dried out. Her emotions now lay in a heap at her feet, stomped and battered beyond recognition.

But something timeless pulled Zoe to her bare feet and to her mother's side. She sank to her knees and softly buried her head against her mother's still, warm bulk. There, she surrendered to the need eating her alive. The need for a mother's love and nurturing. And even though her mother was not there emotionally, she was alive.

For that she thanked God.

Amazingly, more tears appeared, and she wondered, crazily, how a wrung dry sponge could produce more moisture. Tears puddled, then spilled over. For what, she could not say for certain. But she knew they represented emotions. That's what separated humans from animals. Tears, a uniquely human expression.

That realization connected her to the Divine. It awed her.

Tears certainly represented grief, for all things lost. But they went beyond that here. Gratefulness? For certain. As long as her mother lived, there was hope for her restoration.

What Zoe didn't want to admit, but here it was, staring her in the face.

Need.

She'd played this Amazon-woman role for so long, not requiring anybody or anything to get her through life, that this recent lapse had tossed her into a loopy insecurity.

She sat on the floor, back to sofa, and wiped her tears away, then squared her shoulders. Zoe didn't like the sense of inadequacy that pummeled her into this heap of wilted waste.

Nossir. She didn't like it at all.

Need was so not
her.

She could not have survived all that she had if she'd ever for one moment surrendered to it. She'd relied on two men and they had each, in the end, abandoned her.

Now, her mother had done the same.

She pulled herself to her feet and took a deep, steadying breath. Oh, she knew Seana couldn't help it. That was another thing that needled her.

Zoe paced to the window to survey her mother's estate. “You know, Mom, you didn't have a seriously sick day in your life until Barth came along.”

She gave a bark of a laugh. “The hero from nowhere.”

She shrugged. “But he did come from somewhere, I discovered. Not a good discovery, by the way. Your Mr. Wonderful was a murder suspect, no less. And though he'd been released for lack of sufficient evidence, the murder remains unsolved until this very day.” She rubbed her arms to ward off a chill.

Zoe walked over to collect her purse. “For all his charm and seeming great virtue, Barth McGrath still is hiding something.” She patted her mother's shrouded shoulder. “And I aim to find out what it is.”

Zoe's long-legged stride took her to the door, where she turned. “Oh, by the way, I enjoyed our mother daughter talk.”

The door clicked soundly behind her.

• • •

Barth closed his eyes.

Heartsick from what he'd just heard, he sat still as death on the stairs next to the den. He'd earlier driven his Toyota pickup to the back of the farm to trim some dead tree branches and load them into the pickup bed to haul off.

So Zoe had no idea he was around when she vented to her mother. But he'd seen her car and came in the downstairs entrance to drop off to Billie Jean a printed update on bone cancer treatment. Halfway up the open staircase, he'd heard Zoe sobbing out her angst and he'd frozen, just below floor level view. The vitriol had shaken him, causing him to sink down and sit it out, not wanting an explosive confrontation just then.

Not ever.

So Zoe had not shed her suspicions, as he'd hoped.

Prayed for.

He sucked in a deep steadying breath and went to check on Seana. He gently pulled the blanket down and saw that her eyes were open. She didn't look at him.

“Seana?”

“Is she gone?”

He experienced the same little shock every time she rejected her loved ones. It was so unlike the Seana he'd married. “Yes, she's gone.”

“Good.” She turned over, flicked on the television, and scrolled to the ball game.

He crossed to the easy chair and wearily sank down, hooking an ankle over his knee, steepling his fingers. “Seana, did you hear what Zoe said to you?”

“Yes.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No.”

That bothered Barth more than anything. That – short-circuited emotional system of hers. That non-feeling. It was like she was a blank screen.

Almost.

What did appear on the screen was angry and selfish and defiant.

It was not Seana.

Hopelessness, one that had hovered for weeks now, attacked him anew, gnawing at him mercilessly as he sat there, watching his wife stare unseeing at the moving players on the screen, not caring a hoot who was playing, winning, or losing. They could have been animated outer space figures for all she cared. The less intimate to her, the better.

Fact was, Seana didn't give a fig about anything or anybody any more.

That was the hardest thing for him to swallow. The nightmare that he'd fought for so long was, day by day, becoming a glaring reality to reckon with.

“It's time for my medicine,” Seana pronounced flatly, interrupting his rumination.

Barth gave her the meds and proceeded to prepare his warmed-over, stir-fry dinner and her pimento cheese sandwich. Suddenly, as he slapped the two coated bread slices together, an urge seized him to hurl them to the floor and stomp on them.

The impulse was instant and violent. He set his teeth together and resisted as he cut the sandwich in two and Seana joined him at the bar. The meal was, as always, silent. But tonight Barth felt the awful nothingness settle upon him like a damp, icy avalanche slowly heaping atop him, weighing him down, burying him.

He felt smothered and stopped eating just as Seana arose and returned to lie on the sofa.

“Brutus,” Barth called as he made his way out the door to the back deck. He heard Brutus's paws clicking, trailing him across the deck and down the back steps. March weather was offering glimpses of spring but still held a cool edge near nightfall.

Tonight it felt good. The brisk touch was just right to tingle his skin and pleasantly fill his lungs. Brutus paused along the way to mark his territory as they circled the back perimeter of the farm. Now Barth viewed the spectacular way the property presented itself. The two-level house's wood and brick façade spanned the terraced landscape and, with it, curved as if to embrace the blue mountainous range that rose straight up from a vast forestland that spread as far as the eye could see.

Barth began to jog and heard Brutus loping along beside him. And like lightning Zoe's words came back to haunt him.

“
Barth is hiding something. And I aim to find out what it is.”

Would she? Find out, that is. After all his careful evasion?

He began to run, his feet kicking up tufts as he gained speed with Brutus panting at his side.

But Barth knew: he could not outrun his secret past.

• • •

Billie Jean helped keep Seana's house in apple pie order. Of course, Barth was meticulous in everything he did so she really only had to do deep surface cleaning, like mopping and scrubbing bathrooms. She allotted her cleaning times to when Barth was at the church office.

She told him it was to keep him from being underfoot and make it easier for her. But Billie Jean had a deeper reason. Barth needed protection and nurturing.

The man was running himself into the ground. Plain and simple.

Joanie and Chelsea agreed. The three met at Fred's Deli each Wednesday evening following choir practice. From the church, it was a short walk down the street to his place. He had added booths in a cheerful little corner nook and piped soft music as folks stopped there to snack.

Tonight, Billie Jean mixed her little healthy veggie salad. “Barth's looking mighty tired these days, you know?”

Joanie sliced in half her ham and cheese on rye. “He does. I feel sorry for 'im.”

“Yeh.” Chelsea sipped her coffee because she was on another diet. “Even music fails to lift him anymore. Not enough, anyway.”

The other two munched for a while, musing. Finally Billie Jean spoke, “Seana's really slipped deep into this psychosis … with a vengeance. She's so honkin' mean sometimes, I can't understand how Barth survives.”

“Makes one wonder why these things are allowed to happen,” Joanie said, blotting her lips, then pulling on an iced diet cola, ignoring Billie Jean's censorious glances.

“Yeh,” Chelsea reached over to snag a chip from Joanie's plate and crunched into it. “Seana's the best of the best. It's creepy how this thing just took over her.”

“Whoa,” Billie Jean's palm shot out. “None of that ‘
taking over
' talk. That sounds like she's not coming back. Like – some other force is in charge. Not so, honey bun.
He's
in charge.” She pointed upward. “And she is coming back.” She took a bite of salad and munched contentedly.

Joanie and Chelsea looked at each other and raised their brows.

“I know what you're thinking,” Billie Jean said, as calm as could be. “But you're dead wrong. Nothing is impossible, my friend. I'm a great example of that.”

“You're right.” Joanie grinned, displaying Dolly Parton dimples. “I keep forgetting how far you've come, Billie Jean.”

“Yeh. Barth is constantly looking for anything that will help you,” Chelsea joined in. “He's such a great guy. A little quirky at times but smart as a whip.”

“My hero,” Billie Jean stated proudly.

“Is there anything we can do to help with Seana's care?” Chelsea asked. “I have Wednesdays and Sundays off and every evening.”